Reuters reports on Mr Obama's speech:

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The economy cannot sustain "21st century markets with 20th century regulations," Obama told reporters after the meeting with lawmakers.

"If we once again guide the market's invisible hand with a higher principle, our markets will recover, our economy will once ag/… Read full post »

Amartya Sen, the Economics Nobel Prize winner in 1998, said this in defense of free-market economics:

"To be generically against markets would be as odd as being generically against conversations between people (even though some conversations are clearly foul and cause problems for others—or even fo…

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David Brooks needs to be more rigorous with his analysis:

"The White House has produced a chart showing nondefense discretionary spending as a share of G.D.P. That’s spending for education, welfare and all the stuff that Democrats love. Since 1985, this spending has hovered around 3.7 percent of G.D…

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Yesterday, the New York Times published a report about Mr Obama's "secret letter" to President Medvedev, the president of Russia.

"President Obama sent a secret letter to Russia’s president last month suggesting that he would back off deploying a new missile defense system in Eastern Europe if Mosco…

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Jim Cramer, the host of CNBC's investment show "Mad Money", and Jon Stewart, the host of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart", spent twenty minutes together on Stewart's show. Actually, to be precise, Cramer spent twenty minutes with Stewart being lectured to.

Here it is: http://www.thed… Read full post »

Who watches the Watchmen? I just saw the 2009 film adaptation of Alan Moore's critically acclaimed graphic novel, Watchmen. The graphic novel is the only comic book to make Times magazine's top 100 books of all time. The film does not disappoint.

Free Exchange, at my leisure, will spend the next month…

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Two weeks ago, CNN reported on a website called BlueServo.net, where vigilant private citizens may watch 15 cameras that monitor the Mexican-American border.

From the article:

"Lawmakers are raising concerns about drug-related violence spilling into the United States from Mexico. And, bucking an upward…

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Mr Obama plans to include this in his speech tonight, reports Bloomberg:

“We have lived through an era where too often, short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperity; where we failed to look beyond the next payment, the next quarter, or the next election."

That's ironic. The economics that s…

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From Reuters:

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Obama said he would name a team of managers to ensure that billions of dollars slated for infrastructure projects would be spent wisely.

"The American people are watching. They need this plan to work," Obama said at a gathering at the White House with dozens of the nation's mayors.

"And…

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More Isocratic business, I'm afraid. I do end with a proposal though. This time, your correspondent is responding to a heartfelt call for morally inspired foreign policy. My response is below.

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I'm afraid I am an unapologetic member of a different club; if you recall, our time-honored clubs played a…

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I have taken a long break from blogging because the end of my high school career is fast approaching and I want to spend more time doing things I never had time to do before and become better friends with people I never had the chance to in the years past…

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"Hitherto Mr Zardari may have trusted to support from America, Britain and Pakistan’s army, who are all, to varying degrees, wary of the populist and conservative Mr Sharif. He can no longer do so—the Punjab police’s decision to free Mr Sharif from confinement was very likely in response to an…

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Bryce's graph, the founder of Prospective Value may be eerily prescient. We will see how closely we follow the trend of the Great Depression. Ben Bernanke, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, is a student of history and specializes in the Great Depression; he is intimately familiar with the mistakes…

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On March 9th, I wrote:

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This is less a criticism of President Obama's budget, and much more a criticism of his projections. The statement "3.1 percent by 2019" assumes a certain figure for GDP in 2019. The economic forecasts of Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, the Treasury and the Fed have all been…

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Though lacking Karl Marx's sense of the dramatic (not to mention the metaphysical), your correspondent is nonetheless concerned that Mexico has retaliated to the US' protectionism by imposing tariffs.

The specter of Smoot-Hawley is not truly rising; at least, not yet. When Senator Reed Smoot (R - UT)…

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Reuters reports on the rumor that Timothy Geithner, America's Secretary of the Treasury, would finally release the details of his plan to remove toxic assets from bank's portfolios:


"The slow start of the new Federal Reserve consumer lending program this week has been seen as a sign that private capit…

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To date, your correspondent has been invited to co-author two new blogs: Prospective Value and at the Isocracy Network.

http://www.prospectivevalue.com/
Prospective Value, is, in part, a blog about investments. I will be posting much of my policy analysis over there to aid their efforts. Check it out!

h… Read full post »

Your correspondent was quick to agree with The Economist's assessment that this financial crisis could bring the EU closer together, rather than break it up.

Some highlights from this Bloomberg report illustrate this:

"German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck said euro-region countries may be forced to…

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A more detailed look at The Street's interview of Jim Cramer:

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2007/08/05/more-on-scott-moritz-and-the-jim-cramer-street-misinformation-engine/

Some quotes from Jim Cramer --

1. "...fomenting the market [the act of using disinformation to manipulate stock prices[... [is] act…

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The silver lining in the economic gloom is the political effect it has had on the EU:

From the BBC:

"Mr Barroso said doubling the emergency funding ceiling to 50bn euros would be "a good signal that the EU is ready to show solidarity and support... to the countries that may need it.""

This…

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In addition to school-work I have been occupied at Isocracy:

In response to a post on the Isocracy Network, I wrote:

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The Platonic vision of citizenship is one I respect tremendously: a good citizen is one who is active in the politics of his society. I think you have characterized the relationship be…

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The exciting stock-market rally of the last few weeks persisted in part because the government and the Fed's announcements of optimism and detailed plans to shore up the American financial system have given investors a sense of confidence. Confidence in America's political stability and the rule of l…

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Reuters reports on Mr Obama's speech:

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The economy cannot sustain "21st century markets with 20th century regulations," Obama told reporters after the meeting with lawmakers.

"If we once again guide the market's invisible hand with a higher principle, our markets will recover, our economy will once ag…

Read full post »

Shakespeare's Hamlet outlines, to me, the playwright's idea of a strong nation-state. Hamlet's realization that strong institutions, not strong men, will hold a strong state together takes place in Act IV, Scene II:

“The body is with the king, but the king is not with the body. The king is a thing."…

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This is the response I posted to The Economist's monthly debate: "This House believes that Brand America will regain its shine."

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Dear Sir, America's economic shine has long been the work of immigrants at every level of the production chain. Recall that US Steel was founded and run by Carnegie, the s…

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