Some Things are too Important to be left to the Market

I always have to give this lecture near the beginning of my class when we talk about why some markets work well without government interference, and others, well, they require government interference. How would you feel, as an example, about letting our uranium supplies go to the highest bidder in a completely unregulated [...]

Stealing Home

Any one of a certain age that attended university pre-Iranian revolution had many, many Iranian friends. I certainly did. After the revolution, many disappeared for reasons I never new. Since the hostage taking at the end of the Carter years, we now only hear disappointing things about life for the people [...]

Shorting Bermuda

I admit to being an over-the-top anglophile, so I’ll just announce that bias right now. From the moment I read my first Shakespeare play and met my grandfather’s British cousins, I swooned. I have two majors as an undergrad, one of them is history, and it was English History. I started [...]

At WHAT point does HE own it?

The Political Memo in today’s NYT minces few words in Blaming the Guy Who Came Before Doesn’t Work Long and I’d like to just tag right along with that. Its thesis is clear. The Obama administration wastes no opportunity to turn the phrase “we inherited a lot of problems”.
As [...]

What’s that, Lassie? Little Timmy fell down the well?

I’m not sure what Secretary Tim Geithner is smoking these days, but I’m sure there’s a huge market for it.  Maybe we could tax it then pay off the national debt.   The news of the Treasury Secretary’s trip to China is just developing enough of a surreal feel that I felt like Photoshopping a [...]

Who is Harshing our Memorial Day Weekend? Better yet, WHY?

I was going to try to take a breather and stick to spring cleaning and cocktailing this weekend.  The rest of the world evidently doesn’t know it’s the official start of the US summer!  I suppose one of the things about blogging is its ability to play to the obsessive streak that probably exists in [...]