Category Archives: Media Criticism

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Next Stage Of Wrecking The Economy

8 Comments

Get ready for the cram down:

Now, maybe higher interest rates on home loans would be a good thing. Home ownership is heavily subsidized in this country, and the reason bankruptcy law currently protects banks from losses on principal is so that they can keep mortgage-interest rates low. But is Congress really going to let mortgage-interest rates rise as a result of this new law? Liberal interest groups already think credit-card interest rates are a crime against humanity. Can you imagine the hue and cry whenever mortgage-interest rates start to tick up?

The more likely scenario is that Congress passes some new law that keeps mortgage-interest rates suppressed, even though the new bankruptcy law has exposed banks to greater risk. If your goal is to re-inflate the housing bubble and create another credit catastrophe, well, there you go.

It’s truly infuriating the way politicians muck with the market, then implement more mucking to deal with the unintended consequences of the first muck, and then blame laissez-faire capitalism for the problems. And the media let them get away with it, repeatedly.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Man Who Talked Back

Jimmy Pethokoukis:

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.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Remembering Our First President

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I’m on record as being opposed to “President’s Day,” which seems to be simply another excuse for a federal holiday, and it mushes all the presidents together as though they’re all equally worthy of honoring, when clearly some are better than others, even if we disagree on which are which. Back in the olden days, we used to celebrate both Lincoln’s birthday on the 12th, and Washington’s birthday on the 22nd (today). Scott Johnson has some thoughts on the birthday anniversary of the American Cincinnatus, a man who could have been king, but instead created the republican template for all presidents to follow, broken only by FDR, who ran for third and fourth terms.

Business, Economics, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

What Ended The Depression

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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.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

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.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Fighting The False “Consensus”

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Frank Tipler on the tendency of the global warm-mongers to argue from authority rather than from the science:

…why did Halsey believe the meteorologists against the evidence of his own eyes? The report of the Board of Inquiry on the disaster answers that question. Halsey simply accepted the authority of his chief meteorologist, against his own experience. The report listed the “qualifications of this “expert” — his degrees, the numerous courses on climate studies he had taken, his years flying over hurricanes. But in contrast to Bryson’s successful forecasts, two of which I have described above, not one correct forecast was mentioned by the Court of Inquiry! I find this extraordinary. Imagine picking an admiral on the basis of the prestige of an officer’s education. Halsey himself had two famous victories, the Battle of Guadalcanal and the Battle of Leyte Gulf. I admire Halsey immensely, but he was wrong to give any weight at all to mere academic credentials, rather than performance credentials like his own. For true scientists, one knows the achievements, not the academic credentials. Albert Einstein discovered relativity (everyone knows E = mc2), he discovered the photon, and he discovered gravitational waves. But where did Einstein go to school? Who cares?

Not me.