When Arnold Kling Gets Angry

Well I don't know if he is angry, but he sure does stick it to those who argue in favor of greater government control. I'm going to post his entire post here since I figure many will be too lazy to click through. Tyler Cowen puts a lot of the blame for the financial crisis on leverage. He links to ...

Hundreds of Billions More

Howard Glackman at the Tax Policy Center is saying his sources in the Federal Reserve and the financial industry that hundreds of billions more are needed to recapitalize financial institutions in trouble. That is the current bailout is just not going to work. Also fits well with the decline in the stock market we've been watching lately. My sources ...

What Caused Our Economic Crisis Video

This video, called "Burning Down the House: What Caused Our Economic Crisis" (although, oddly, set to the tune of "Money for Nothing") is apparently all the rage (at least in my wife's office). It traces the subprime crisis to the Jimmy Carter era Community Reinvestment Act. To the extent this view is correct (and I suspect, like anything else complex, ...

If this is the crisis everyone makes it out to be…

...why are so many politicians running around engaging in partisan politics? Lets go with Ezra Klein's take on the situation, And so the Republicans killed this bill. Without their cover, the Democrats couldn't save it, because politically, they couldn't take ownership of it. If this situation is so bad (the Dow Tanking 700 points! OMFG!). How come they ...

House Kills Bailout, Dow Drops 700 Points

Drudge reported that the Dow plunged 500 points. Something happened. I'll post more as it comes in. Update: Looks like investors are fearing the bailout will not pass. Dow down now 700 points. Update II: I've heard several unconfirmed reportst that the bailout has not passed. One that it failed in the Senate and the other that if failed in ...

Rationale of the Bailout

While I am not a fan of the bailout, buying the toxic assets from foundering financial institutions, there is a logic to it that, in the end, could work. Here is the idea, Right now people are very uncertain and very nervous. As such they are most likely to to err on the side of caution. So when ...

Airport Security Lines

Seth Godin has a number of "random travel thoughts," several of which relate to airport security: When I go through security, why do I need to remove a cardigan sweater but the woman standing next to me can keep her cashmere blouse on? Are certain kinds of wool inherently risky? What would happen if Imagineers from Disney designed the security line? Why ...

Palin Channels Al Sharpton

Reading Gov. Sarah Palin's comments to Katie Couric about the financial crisis reminded me very much of Al Sharpton's incoherent meanderings on selecting a chairman of the Federal Reserve Board during the 2004 elections. Palin's unblinking certitude gave way at other times in the interview to a striking imprecision, as when she struggled to respond to Couric's suggestion that the $700-billion ...

Pick A Number, Any Number. Okay $700 Billion

Good pick! In fact, some of the most basic details, including the $700 billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy. "It's not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. "We just wanted to choose a really large number." As as us forecasters like to call it, "A number pulled from one's ass." Yet ...

More of Why the Paulson Plan is Bad

This time from Sebastian Mallaby. His views are similar to those I and others have noted before, namely the government going around and buying up toxic assets from financial insitutions. There are people who would buy these assets, but there is a problem. The financial insitutions don't want to sell them at the price these buyers are ...