Free kibbles

JPMorgan buys Washington Mutual Bank.

Somali pirates capture Ukranian ship carrying 33 tanks. I guess it never crossed the Ukranians' minds to protect that ship in pirate infested waters.

McCain agrees to debate. Now I think this is a smooth move. His position now is he made the gesture to suspend his campaign and cancel the debate for the good of the country. Obama didn't make that sacrifice. McCain went to Washington and stood up to the socialist forces of Bush and Democrats, showing real leadership in making an alternative proposal feasible. Obama didn't. Then McCain was still able to make the debate. I think McCain looked quite a bit like a leader in this situation while Obama looked like a typical politician. If McCain does well at the debate tonight, he's going to leave Obama looking second rate all the way around.

The Washington Post runs a great article describing how this huge bailout proposal has created market value for Cato scholars espousing libertarian ideals. This is nice portrait of Cato.

In 1997, Cato describes how Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, because they are government protected organizations, were putting the entire financial market and therefore taxpayers at risk. It also describes the role of the Community Reinvestment Act. This stuff isn't rocket science, and this collapse was anything but unexpected.

Author explains that Wall Street as we knew it no longer exists. He also explains that trying to blame this crisis on deregulation is absurd, his word and mine.

Cato scholar highlights how often politicians appear to be surprised by the obvious, and he lists numerous examples from the US and abroad. Very entertaining and humorous, but he ends seriously when he explains why this happens and calls for criminal prosecution for them. The cure for this problem is severely limited government.

Links to many Cato articles on the financial crisis. I could have used that last week.

Cato recommends privatizing NASA, pointing out that NASA is making space flight more expensive instead of cheaper.

Insight into the process of negotiating the biggest socialist program in history.

Reason asks a number of free market economists the same 3 questions about the current economic crisis. I wish they had asked for alternative solutions.