I’ve been writing for the U.S. Chamber for a little over six months and have had a blast. In the over 250 posts I’ve written in that time I’ve covered the EPA, taxes, had a little fun at Canada’s expense, and even covered Metallica hedging foreign exchange rate risk with derivatives.
Here are the most-trafficked posts [...]
For thinkers like Richard Epstein and Thomas Sowell (as well as Adam Smith), it’s about having a systemic analysis of society. Good political economies involves establishing good processes and institutions that direct people’s incentives to benefit society as a whole. Attempting to manage particular outcomes through wealth redistribution ends up failing due to the inability [...]
There’s a gap between Warren Buffett’s idea to tax high-income earners and the administration’s “Buffett Rule”. Today, Buffett said on CNBC [emphasis mine]:
My program is to have a tax on ultra-rich people who are very tax rates. Not just all rich people. It would probably apply to 50,000 people in a population of 300 million.
In [...]
Somewhere inside the confines of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing there’s a complete separation of aesthetics and technology. In the hopes of keeping a few steps ahead of counterfeiters our government continues making our currency into a blotchy mess of color:
The folks who print America’s money have designed a high-tech makeover of the $100 [...]
The Hayek vs. Keyes rap battle hit the interwebs yesterday.
If it wasn’t for Russ Roberts being behind the project I would have asked myself, “Why? Why?” Roberts has written a few novels where economics plays a role, yet they contain interesting characters that make the stories enjoyable in themselves.
Roberts is also a solid economist [...]
Oliver Williamson and Elinor Ostrom won the 2009 Nobel Prize in economics. Williamson is a name you should’ve run across if you’ve taken intermediate microeconomics or industrial organization courses. His worked in “new institutional economics” stood on top of Nobel laureate Ronald Coase’s work on why firms exist in the first place. The Nobel Prize [...]
For centuries patience and rejecting instant gratification have been known as keys to success. Now, we have Joachim de Posada offering experimental proof.
Such virtue would help ease a lot of our current problems.
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Louise Fresco argues that foodstuffs like Wonder Bread (which are awesome for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches) are how we’ll feed billions with fewer and fewer people.
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Dreams of making handfuls of cash from President-elect Obama’s inauguration have gone POOF. That people, is economics in action.
“Inaugural Rentals Begging For Takers”
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What’ more interesting than the Federal Reserve dropping short term interest rates to a range of 0-0.25% is what creative things Ben Bernanke will do next when the Fed finds their latest effort has been ineffective. Right now, the Fed is pushing on a string. More credit and liquidity isn’t instilling confidence in financial markets. [...]
Douglas Rushkoff needs to stick to media studies and being a techno-guru. Because he sure doesn’t have a clue about economics. His “brilliant” idea is for local communities to invent their own currencies:
Promote and research the development of local, complementary currencies to supplement economic activity from the bottom up, allowing communities to create value, and [...]
Foreign aid critic William Easterly sounds skeptical of the latest trend in helping the world’s poor: join development at the hip with the military:
Imagine Lenin’s puzzlement if he were alive to see the territories of the globe divided up not among capitalists but among foreign aid bureaucrats. I am exaggerating a little; but a surprising [...]
In an attempt to satisfy consumers who are worried they might not be able to buy health insurance in the future UnitedHealth has a new product:
For these economically uncertain times, the UnitedHealth Group has a first-of-its-kind product: the right to buy an individual health policy at some point in the future even if you become [...]
What happens to the hedge funds after the dust settles on the financial crisis?
So much for that. The hedge fund mystique died with the crash of 2008. Youthful traders and big shots from investment banks won’t soon be given billions to invest based on their résumés. Mystery and opacity will be a negative, not cause [...]
The idea behind prediction markets is collecting the a wide variety of information and opinions to predict events. The gathering of scattered bits of knowledge is suppose to result in better predictions. The macro result might be based on reason but digging into the individual grains of emotions and rumors show people have their own [...]
