Whatever crosses my mind.
What if there are good reasons for the preternatural calm of German Chancellor Merkel’s inner circle as the English-language media (based, after all, in the investor capitals of London and New York) light their collective hair on fire about the euro’s imminent immolation?
David Apgar: Could Germany Be Right about the Euro? « naked capitalism
An unconventional and intriguing view of the Euro crisis.
Greenspan said that one of the worst U.S. federal government policies is its H1B visa system, the system that allows only 65,000 immigrants a year into specialty occupations. He pointed out that because of this tight restriction on supply, pay for high-income people is even higher than otherwise. This, he said, is helping cause the large income inequality we see today.
If Beijing volunteers to make green-energy products more widely available and more affordable to Americans by subsidizing our consumption of such products, why should we complain? If we cheer (or at least tolerate) Uncle Sam’s many efforts at distorting markets in order to increase the supply of – and the use of – green-energy products, why do we jeer at Beijing for doing the very same thing? Shouldn’t we cheer Beijing’s policies even more loudly than we do those of Uncle Sam, given that the costs of Beijing’s distortions are borne overwhelmingly by the Chinese? Shouldn’t we send bouquets of (green) roses to China for relieving us of much of the cost of refitting our homes and businesses with solar panels?
The Science of Public Choice Reveals that Government is Motivated by Politics and Not by Science
It seems our government spends as much time and energy discouraging green energy as it does encouraging it.
In the ongoing discussions about the Occupy Wall Street movement, for example, I think we need to be very careful to distinguish between the very correct and very justified opposition to and anger about “crony capitalism” or special privileges and wrong-headed arguments against free markets. My impression is that what outrages the Occupiers is not merely that firms co-opt the state to increase their profits. They are upset that firms pursue profits to begin with. In short, I think that there are more than a few members of the Occupation who are suspicious not of the way that patterns of exchange are distorted by government intervention and rent-seeking special interests. My impression is that they are suspicious of exchange itself. I hope I’m wrong.
Were it not for people dropping out of the labor force, the unemployment rate would be well over 11%.
It is getting more difficult to foreclose on a defaulted mortgage. According to LPS, the average time to foreclose now takes 631 days … This is one of the biggest problems we have and it a major factor contributing to our economic malaise. Many banks still hold these mortgages and the longer it takes to get rid of them, the longer their balance sheets will be tied down with bad debt.
Foreclosure Time In U.S.: 631 Days | The Daily Capitalist
I don’t hear a lot of sympathy for the banks these days, but it’s a fact that it’s difficult for the economy to rev up when the banks are sick.
In sum, the government’s monetary and fiscal authorities are currently engaged in the expropriation of private wealth on a vast scale. Entire classes of investors—especially people who saved during their working years and expected to live on interest earnings on their accumulated capital during their retirement years—are being steadily wiped out. Astonishingly, this de facto robbery is being committed by a government that misses no opportunity to shed crocodile tears over how single-mindedly it seeks to protect the weak and helpless among us.
I suspect that the relationship between pay and value for CEO’s falls far short of the standards of cosmic justice. But I suspect that even coming up with those standards is far beyond anyone’s capability.
