Lynne Kiesling It’s gotten to the point where I just can’t believe the whole freakin’ thing. My disgust, anger, and cynicism in buckshot form: I’m in the same place as Mike’s post from yesterday, and I find that David Harsanyi’s Reason article says it pretty well for me: Here’s an idea: If you stop nationalizing …
Lynne Kiesling At the Atlantic’s newish business web site, Greg Clark has a very good post on the history of government spending in Britain. He starts in the early post-Magna Carta period: In England, for example, from the Magna Carta of 1215 until the Glorious Revolution of 1689, public debt was always tiny — a …
An Economic History Lesson on Fiscal Responsibility Read More »
Lynne Kiesling [sorry for the pun-ed.] In doing my morning reading I find posts at EconLog from both Arnold Kling and David Henderson that are in line with my thoughts on government bailouts and increasing anger and frustration. Arnold says Starting last September, our country has gone through six months that shook the world. We …
Lynne Kiesling Count me in as a taxpayer, mortgage holder, and economist who thinks that the Obama mortgage bailout program is bad policy-it’s expensive with little obvious benefit, it creates bad incentives and ex post rewards bad decisions (bad decisions that were abetted by bad government policy), and it’s morally reprehensible. Peter Klein’s remarks on …
Lynne Kiesling I recommend this EconTalk podcast between Russ Roberts and John Cochrane very highly: John Cochrane, of the University of Chicago, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the financial crisis. He talks about the origins of the crisis, why the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) was flawed from the beginning, why mark-to-market accounting …
Bailouts, Stimulus, and Debt: John Cochrane and Russ Roberts on Econtalk Read More »
Lynne Kiesling In the post-election show of sleeve-rolling-up meeting between Barack Obama and John McCain, their main rhetoric revolved around how they could work together to “fix up the economy”. At the time I wrote about how that language rankled me (and Russ Roberts), because the economy is not a closed-system project, and politicians who …
“Fixing” the Economy: How Do You “Fix” an Ecosystem? Read More »
Lynne Kiesling Going into 2009 with a recession, the discussion of a federal stimulus plan has kicked into high gear. This useful aggregation at the New York Times has some recommendations from economists about the form such a stimulus should take. Like Tyler Cowen, I find Andrew Samwick’s comments particularly important to bear in mind: …
Lynne Kiesling Via Ron Bailey at Reason: the biofuels industry asks where their bailout is. I had to chuckle when Ron pointed out that the Renewable Fuels Association says that they, unlike other lobbying organizations, are offering ideas instead of just asking for a handout. OK, I did more than chuckle … Ron quotes a …
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