| Why do we use such a silly name for the problem? |
| Paul Rosenberg angrily indicts the economics profession with the rather uninformed notion that all-powerful regulators were napping rather than regulating: The fact that this bubble was clearly visible as early as 2002, and that significant negative consequences of a collapse were already foreseeable, is a powerful indictment of the failure of the economics profession as well as the rest of economic establishment--the real estate lenders, the wider financial sector that gobbled up mortgaged-based securities, the regulators, who were busy doing their Rip Van Winkle imitations, the business and financial press--you name it, they were all in fail mode. We might smile affectionately at Rosenberg's misunderstanding of economics' basic principles were it not for his angry nearly-encyclopedic tabulation of quarter truths. Deregulation, Reagan, trickle-down theory, tax cuts -- all these he says caused a housing crisis that ought to have been prevented by wise and stalwart regulators. What he doesn't seem to know is bubbles have been well understood as near-impossible to to stop -- for a wide variety of reasons -- since the seventeenth century. And, since then, everyone has also known nothing but a bubble's eventual "bursting" (whose accurate timing remains an economic-theoretic-holy-grail) can bring them to an end. All this, of course, is why we call them "bubbles" in the first place. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 11:16 AM |
Friday, August 28, 2009
| What to do? |
| Banks are more concentrated than ever. 40% of all savings deposits are in J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo. 50% of all mortgages, as well as two thirds of all credit cards, are issued by these three plus Citigroup. Interesting -- the numbers reflect some need for regulation, no? The problem is the numbers were in large part created by regulation. These are the "too-big-to-fail" institutions, proving that what you get when you save institutions that are too big to fail is institutions that are even bigger than too-big-to-fail! UPDATE: If you can somehow manage to avoid hyperventilation you'll probably agree these numbers aren't really so disturbing or unusual. Some highly competitive industries can be shown to be comprised of as few as two firms with an 80% market share, and many others competing nicely for the remaining 20%. The United States represents a huge marketplace. A simple 5% US market share is actually a very large number in everyday terms. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 10:05 AM |
Thursday, August 27, 2009
| He invented Spider Man and Dr. Strange |
| I've just learned my childhood hero Steve Ditko is (a) alive and (b) a follower of Ayn Rand. You might call his masterpiece, "The Unchecked Premise," a comic book adaptation of the basic principles underlying Atlas Shrugged. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 12:57 PM |
| New business cycle speaks... |
| Via Instapundit, Doctor Doom speaks his mind. It seems to me Roubini is using a metaphor he doesn't really need -- borrowing to pay interest on public (or private) debt is obviously unsustainable. No need call it a Ponzi scheme to win readers over or capture their attention. His strongest argument -- that inflation as well as inflationary expectations are nearly impossible to halt once they've taken hold -- is seriously weakened by the simple fact we've not yet had a runaway inflation preceded by a well-known historical incidence of just such an event. In 1972 we were arguing over simple price-ignorant Keynesian models versus Milton Friedman's exotic notion monetary elements are primarily responsible for sustained price movements. Now monetarism is so familiar its very terminology needs to be explained to students. In short: since we know now what we didn't know then, outcomes will be different. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:31 AM |
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
| Quote of the day... |
| Howard Dean: The reason tort reform is not in the [health care] bill is because the people who wrote it did not want to take on the trial lawyers in addition to everybody else they were taking on. And that's the plain and simple truth... |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 5:49 PM |
| Culture of poverty returns... |
| in (once) Great Britain. By the way, a quick review of the numbers says that (very) roughly 9% of the population now live in households comprised entirely of the unemployed. UPDATE: Meanwhile, elsewhere in the economy... UPDATE II: And elsewhere, we see how the "public option" is working out by looking here and here... True, these are all anecdotes -- but we're now in a battle of anecdotes, aren't we? |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:35 AM |
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
| NYT debunks peak oil... |
| Peak oil is a myth -- this must be true considering the source. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:05 AM |
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
| Wait long enough and everything happens... |
| Nat Hentoff is finally and actually frightened by a White House administration. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:32 AM |
Friday, August 14, 2009
| The Death Panel Chart |
| Via Instapundit this valuable little essay on the likely shape of things to come. And by the way, here's a chart showing probably likelihood of medical intervention as a function of age under the rational sort of system now being proposed by the House:  This link takes you to the original 2009 Lancet article by Persad, Wertheimer, and Emanuel. Read it and decide for yourself how you feel about the issues involved. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:43 AM |
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
| What do those fat cat insurance companies actually rake in? |
| If numbers like these can be trusted and substantiated, it is only a matter of time before the substance of the current debate shifts in a major alternate direction |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:51 AM |
Monday, August 10, 2009
| Call screening not set up for this... |
| Via Instapundit, Chicago-style direct political action slams Chicago talk radio. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:46 AM |
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