Michael Giberson I’m not necessarily opposed to government funding for research, but does General Electric really need taxpayer funds in order to do research on high-temperature electronics intended to support high tech oil and gas drilling? Isn’t this exactly the kind of applied product research that, together, patent protections and markets can manage just fine? …
Lynne Kiesling I’ve spent the past several hours reading the Supreme Court’s opinion in Citizens United vs. the FEC; the document is available at the Supreme Court web site, and I encourage anyone who has an opinion about or interest in political expression and freedom of speech to read it. In other words, every American …
Citizens United, Competing Free Speech, and “Associations of Citizens” Read More »
Michael Giberson Many keystrokes this week have been devoted to praising or damning the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. I’m inclined to agree with the praisers, but others are more competent to address the legal and political issues addressed by the court. I just want to pass along a useful …
The Founders Were Deeply Skeptical of Corporations Read More »
Michael Giberson “It’s very hard to move mountains on energy policy, and Pickens has not yet even moved a hill,” said Amy Myers Jaffe, an energy expert at Rice University in Houston. “The problem that Pickens faces is that in this country if you are from the oil industry, people are naturally suspicious of what …
Michael Giberson Maybe there is more to this story than “no company with the least respect for stockholders money would invest in Venezuela these days”, but that might be a sufficient explanation. From Bloomberg: Venezuela’s Mariscal Sucre project, which has estimated reserves of 14.7 trillion cubic feet of gas, has failed to attract private interest …
The Costs of Policy Uncertainty: Venezuela Edition Read More »
Michael Giberson What does “price gouging” mean? Commonly it is taken to refer to merchants raising prices substantially on necessities during emergencies. Each of the three elements – substantial price increase, necessary items, emergency periods – is part of a proto-typical case of price gouging. However, the term is frequently also used in cases lacking …
Stretching the Meaning of “Price Gouging” in Venezuela and Alaska Read More »
Michael Giberson In the photo accompanying Arnold Kling’s EconLog post, he is smiling, but in his recent post “Market Failure” he does not sound like he is smiling: I want to propose a new definition of market failure. … This post ties together a couple of recent bitter themes. It is not intended in any …
Ignore the Smiling Photo – Arnold Kling is Bitter Read More »
Lynne Kiesling I don’t really have an opinion about Tucker Carlson’s new online journalism enterprise The Daily Caller. I do, though, really like what Arianna Huffington said in her guest column there today about the uselessness of the left-right political model, and how the media do themselves and us a disservice by leaving on those …
Left-right Political Model “Obscures More Than It Reveals” Read More »
Lynne Kiesling Another reason I’ve been staying away from the computer over the holidays is that between the Senate health care bill process, the futilely constructivist quest for government policy to stimulate the economy, proposals for financial regulation, and the craven stupidity of TSA policy proposals after the Christmas day bomb failure, I am fed …
Michael Giberson The Wall Street Journal summarizes the news that you already know: the U.S. Department of Energy has become one of the biggest financial forces in the clean energy innovations business. The DOE hopes to lend or give out more than $40 billion to businesses working on “clean technology,” everything from electric cars and …
U.S Government Becoming Clean Energy Venture Capitalist Read More »
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