OTB Radio - Tonight at 7 Eastern
The next episode of OTB Radio, our BlogTalkRadio program, will record and air live tonight from 7-8 Eastern. Dave Schuler will co-host with me tonight. We'll have as our special guest Megan McArdle, the world's tallest female econoblogger. We'll be talking, again, about the mess in the financial markets, the various bailout plans, the presidential and vice presidential debates, ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on October 1, 2008 14:18
Bailout Politics (Updated)
An interesting meme is developing among smart commenters from across the political spectrum that the House's failure to pass the bailout bill demonstrates the soft underbelly of our political system itself. Ezra Klein: Above all, though, this is a failure of politics. Like with global warming, with health care, with the national debt, with immigration. It is further proof that we have ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on September 29, 2008 15:45
Bush’s New Deal?
The Bush administration is "working on a sweeping series of programs that would represent perhaps the biggest intervention in financial markets since the 1930s, embracing the need for a comprehensive approach to the financial crisis after a series of ad hoc rescues," Deborah Solomon and Damian Paletta report for WSJ. At the center of the potential plan is a mechanism that ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on September 19, 2008 09:41
Legalize Sports Cheating
John Tierney and Megan McArdle argue that we should let athletes use whatever performance enhancing drugs they want since some will cheat regardless of the rules and because our definition of "fair" competition evolves over time. The response to that, though, is obvious: many of these drugs are dangerous and legitimating them all but mandates them. John, an early commenter on ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on August 12, 2008 15:57
The Illogic of Empire
Regarding the situation in Georgia, Megan McArdle writes:Another way to look at the question is: are we going to allow Russia to reassemble the old Russian empire? At its heart, that's what this is about. Maybe we should; maybe it's none of our business who Russia decides to invade, or what puppet governments they decide to prop ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on August 11, 2008 14:46
American Olympic Favoritism
Megan McArdle offers a defense of Americans from the charge that Americans are only interested in Olympic sports in which Americans are strong medal contenders, noting that we're a large country with established team sports loyalty and so forth. It's all true. More fundamentally, though, I reject the premise that Americans' America-centric view of sports is problematic. As Sir Paul McCartney, ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on August 8, 2008 13:50
Hell or New York City
A debate about the relative desirability of city and suburban living is spreading through the blogosphere at a surprising clip, given the timelessness of the topic. It began, as best I can determine, by Duncan "Atrios" Black (a PhD economist) explaining that there are tradeoffs to having a big yard. [I]f everyone has a big yard the community ceases to be ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on August 7, 2008 16:01
Protesting the Protest Letter
John Cochrane's July 12 fisking of a letter from his University of Chicago colleagues protesting the creation of a Milton Friedman Institute has finally made its way around the interwebs to yours truly via Steve Bainbridge. (Megan McArdle and Tyler Cowen had weighed in previously but they fell through the cracks of my RSS reading.) Cochrane's critique is worth reading in ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on August 5, 2008 07:18
Ectogenesis Questions
Bryan Caplan discusses the phenomenon of "ectogenesis," whereby babies would be conceived via artificial insemination and then grown in an artificial incubation tank rather than the mother's womb. He asks, 1. If this technology were safe and effective, what fraction of prospective parents would pay an extra $10,000 to avoid pregnancy? 2. If insurance covered ectogenesis, what fraction of mothers would ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on August 3, 2008 10:10
Blogging’s Glass Ceiling, Or Why Baby Poop Don’t Get No Respect
A Sunday NYT piece about the BlogHer convention begins, FOR two days last week, many of the men’s bathrooms at the Westin St. Francis Hotel here were turned into women’s bathrooms. The stalls on the second floor were lined with note cards featuring nurturing messages like “You are perfect.” Nearby, women were being dusted with blush and eye shadow, ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on July 27, 2008 07:27
