Joe Biden?
They’re putting Joe Biden in charge of the “stimulus” package?!
It’s like Jimmy Stewart turning over his bank’s money to Uncle Billy for safekeeping in It’s a Wonderful Life.
As Glenn says, this must be some kind of cruel joke.
Category Archives: Economics
The Man Who Talked Back
In 1937, there was a radio debate between Wendell Willkie— later to become the 1940 Republican presidential nominee—and Franklin Roosevelt administration official Robert Jackson—later a Supreme Court justice—about the proper economic role of government. (The event and its fallout are wonderfully described in the outstanding book “The Forgotten Man” by Amity Shlaes.)
By all accounts, Willkie won easily by arguing that FDR’s efforts at nationalizing the utilities industry, his dramatic tax increases, and his administration’s push for prosecutions of businessmen had frozen the private sector with fear and prevented the country from returning to prosperity. The Saturday Evening Post would later dub Willkie “The Man Who Talked Back” against the New Deal and Big Government. I would love to see a debate between Santelli and Obama spokesperson Robert Gibbs.
Yeah, I’d pay to see that, but they’d have to institute a mercy rule, I think, after the first ten minutes.
I hope that Santelli is ready for his upcoming IRS audit.
Space Billiards
There is an excellent and comprehensive discussion of the recent satellite collision over at The Space Review today. There is plenty of blame to go around, from perverse incentives in the military, to government policies that are long on rhetoric and short on funding and priority, and corporate risk taking:
It also appears that either Iridium or the JSpOC terminated the collision screening for the Iridium constellation at some point between July 2007 and the collision in February 2009, as Iridium has made repeated public statements that they did not receive any warning. Likewise, the US military has stated that they did not have any warning. The following additional comment by Campbell at the same event may shed some light as why this happened:
That said, this isn’t aviation; the Big Sky theory works [emphasis added]. We figure that the risk of a collision on any individual conjunction is about one in 50 million. However if we have 400 a week for ten years, you can do the math; clearly that risk is something bigger than zero. As I said, our coordination with JSpOC is great.
Basing the protection of the largest low Earth orbit constellation of satellites on such a theory, even when there is a significant amount of data showing that it could be false, leads one to question the decision-making process involved. Perhaps Iridium decided that they could not afford the resources to deal with the decision-making and maneuver planning to properly operate their satellites in a safe manner. If that is indeed true—and there is no known hard evidence either way—then they placed the short-term financial well being of one company over the long-term welfare of all.
Clearly, the entire international system in place for dealing with this kind of problem (to the degree that it exists at all) needs to be overhauled.
What Ended The Depression
Megan McArdle says (correctly) that no one knows, and anyone who tells you that they do is lying or fooling themselves, but that what you were taught in school is almost certainly wrong. She also notes (again correctly) that there was a lot more to the New Deal than simply government spending (which likely didn’t have much stimulative effect), some of it good, much of it disastrous (particularly the artificial propping up of wages and prices by fiat).
One can’t run controlled experiments in economics, so we can never know for sure, but I’m inclined to at least go with economic theories that make sense and for which there is useful empirical evidence. Someone has to tell me what Hayek and von Mises got wrong to persuade me that Keynes is right. And most people who think that Keynes is right haven’t even read them.
[Update a few minutes later]
“Mr. Obama, give back my wallet.”
[Update a while later]
OK, so I’m not as impressed with David Brooks as the intelligentsia want me to be, but he does have some good thoughts occasionally:
The correct position is the one held by self-loathing intellectuals, like Isaiah Berlin, Edmund Burke, James Madison, Michael Oakeshott and others. These were pointy heads who understood the limits of what pointy heads can know. The phrase for this outlook is epistemological modesty, which would make a fine vanity license plate.
The idea is that the world is too complex for us to know, and therefore policies should be designed that take account of our ignorance.
What the world needs now is not love sweet love, but epistemological modesty. Particularly inside the Beltway. Unfortunately, the perverse nature of humanity is that often the less one knows about something, the more certain one is in his knowledge. They have never learned from the ancient Greeks that to admit the limits of your knowledge is the beginning of wisdom.
[Via Manzi, who reads David Brooks so I don’t have to]
[Late morning update]
Are we going to emulate Japan’s lost decade? It seems to be what they want to do, unfortunately.
[Bumped]
[Update a couple minutes later]
Renters are angry. They should be. They’ll probably join the tea party, too.
And here’s a novel concept: let housing prices find their clearing price. Can’t do that — it makes too much sense.
The Glamour Of Regulation
Virginia Postrel has thoughts on overregulation, and the corresponding prospects for liberaltarianism.
Shameless
Here’s a good round up of the corruption and collusion between Congress and the financial industry:
While Americans were asked to foot the bill—for generations—to bail out Wall Street executives from their sub-prime, mortgage-mad, derivatives driven, un-regulated market—politicians from all parties lined up to feed at the trough—knowing full well that it was these same companies’ bad business practices that placed our financial system at systemic risk.
Sen. Christopher Dodd, who is being paid by taxpayers to oversee these institutions, should return the money on principle or resign from the committee.
Don’t hold your breath.
Throwing Good Money After Bad
Iain Murray says the new mortgage plan won’t work. Why would it?
[Update late morning]
More thoughts from Tim Oren:
There’s no way to resolve the rates on offer from the ‘bad money’ with those needed by rational, market driven ‘good money’ investors. The result is the good money will stay home. Home, in this case, mostly being China or the Middle East. The fraction of federally originated loans, already at 35 percent, is going to keep on rising, and it will done with more fiat money cranked out by the Feds.
The politicians are trying to reinflate the housing market. Their irresponsible behavior is instead likely to leave that market deflated by driving out the good money, while debasing the currency and piling up debt for the productive and future generations.
Just as in the thirties, all of these ad hoc, arbitrary panic measures are going to cause a lot more damage than simply letting the market work. Because the “Change” administration is deathly afraid of change.
The Laughter Is Over
The Washington Post has an obituary for Tom Rogers. I didn’t know that he was having kidney failure. I wonder how he was holding out otherwise? How bad was his heart condition? Could he have lived several more years with a transplant?
I’m always frustrated when I hear of people dying of kidney failure, regardless of age, because it would be needless for many to do so, if only the free market was allowed to work (as in many other things). People who support the current regulations in the name of “medical ethics” are consigning thousands to needless death each year. And if he could have held out for a few more years, we might get to the point at which we can grow new ones from stem cells.
Anyway, this will be his legacy:
In a 2005 interview with Today’s Engineer, a publication of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, he recalled delivering a talk on civilians traveling in space and afterward finding his wife in tears.
He asked her why she was crying. “Because I can’t stand so many people laughing at you,” she said.
Well, because he was willing to accept having people laugh at him, for years, a lot of the laughter has died down, and it’s finally becoming a real business, and likely to be the one that finally opens up space for the rest of us. And I hope that Estelle, in her understandable grief, is proud of him now. She certainly should be.
[Update about 9:30 AM Pacific]
Rich Coleman has info on the memorial service via email:
Memorial services are being held Saturday – Feb. 21 at 1 P.M. at the
Vantage House in Columbia, MD. The address: 5440 Vantage Point Road,
Columbia, MD 21044.I’m planning to attend the services, all are welcome, please let me
know if you plan to attend as well.
If I was still back there, I would.
[Update mid morning]
Leonard David weighs in over at NASA Watch:
In my near 30 years of jail time in Washington, D.C., Tom was an anchor for me. We had many morning meetings at the Cosmos Club – and I savor to this day his words of wisdom on space, and in particular space tourism.
In fact, I recall one memorable morning gabfest when Tom got so animated, swinging his arms wildly to make a point, that he knocked his own glasses off – sending them off into near space and forcing me into retrieval action.
That gusto was infectious…and spirited me onward.
Secondly, Tom was “there and on call” – a stalwart voice for space tourism when it was – quite literally – a giggle factor folly. His voice of trust, experience, and reason made the idea of space tourism not only compelling, but matter-of-fact. He was ahead of the power curve…and we ALL owe him a debt of gratitude for carrying the torch early on.
Thirdly, I remember Tom as one hell of a story-teller. He would launch into a treatise on some tangent of a factoid, so much so, that the listener might fall into a catatonic state – yet the saga would come full circle with the recipient of Tom’s words of wisdom invoking the “ah ha…I got it” response.
Tom Rogers was a true visionary – and thank god I retrieved his glasses that day at the Cosmos Club.
He was pretty far-sighted without them.
The Liberaltarian Discussion
…continues, with thoughts from Ilya Somin. And this continues to make me crazy:
In a strange way, the Bush record of massive expansions of government has also shifted the goalposts for liberal Democrats. They seem to assume that anything Bush and the Republicans did must have been “laissez faire” (despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary) and that the current Democratic agenda represents a needed course relative to failed free market policies rather than a continuation of Bush-era trends of greatly increased government spending and regulation.
I continue to be both appalled and dismayed at this inability of the Democrats to recognize (or to be honest about their recognition) that the last eight years bore no resemblance to free markets, or laissez-faire. We overspend, and overregulate, and when it goes south, it gets blamed on tax cuts and underregulation. Madness.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Randy Barnett follows up.
A Great Comment
In response to this post:
How come the Left always preaches ‘sustainability’ or ‘it’s for the children’…until it comes to their economic plans?
How come, indeed?