Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

Economist destroys three conventional wisdom assumptions for the causes of the current economic crisis.

"In the banking industry, however, bankers’ heterogeneous strategies were homogenized (although not entirely) by the Recourse Rule, which loaded the dice in favor of the regulators’ ideas of where risk did and did not lie.
The regulators thought that AA or AAA tranches of asset-backed securities were 60-percent safer than individual mortgages. To be sure, this was not an “irrational” theory, either: The tranching structure created by Moody’s, Standard and Poor, and Fitch had a lot to be said for it, and even the little-known fact that the SEC had effectively conferred oligopoly status on these three rating companies[7] did not guarantee that disaster would follow from placing further official weight on their ratings. But the crucial fact is that however reasonable it seemed at the time, the Recourse Rule imposed a new profitability gradient over the bankers’ calculations, producing the same effect that is intended by all regulations: The regulatory carrot altered the behavior of those being regulated, the better to align it with the regulators’ ideas about what would make for prudent banking. By thus homogenizing the heterogeneous competitive process, the regulators inadvertently made the banking system more vulnerable--if, in fact, the regulators’ theory turned out to be wrong.
If we seek the sources of a systemic failure, a logical place to look is among the legal rules that govern the system as a whole. Unfortunately, being legal mandates, these rules--unlike the different strategies pursued by competing capitalists--aren't subjected to a competitive process. So if they are based on mistaken ideas, we all suffer the consequences. That turned out to be the case with the Recourse Rule.
Contrary to popular belief, then, the crisis of 2008 is best described as a crisis of regulation—not a crisis of capitalism."

It always comes back to government regulation or money.

HEALTH CARE:

The Baucus bill cuts the cost to $856 billion. Like that's supposed to be a good thing. Obama has numbed us to anything less than a trillion, but that's real money taken out of our pockets. No thank you. CNNMoney points out several of the hidden costs of Baucus's bill. Wait, did I say CNN?

POLITICS:

Just in case anybody forgot what a world call dumbass Jimmy Carter is, he reminds us all by calling the resistance to government controlled health care racist.

MISC:

The income tax is the root of all evil. Pretty close.

"This was, to be sure, "the home of the free and the land of the brave." Americans were free simply because the government was too weak to intervene in the private affairs of the people — it did not have the money to do so — and they were brave because a free people is always venturesome. The obligation of freedom is a willingness to stand on your own feet."

I want to memorize that paragraph.

"[B]y enabling the federal government to put its hands into the pockets and pay envelopes of the people, [the 16th amendment] drew their allegiance away from their local governments. It made them citizens of the United States rather than of their respective states. Theft loyalty followed theft money, which was now taken from them not by their local representatives, over whom they had some control, but by the representatives of the other forty-seven states. They became subject to the will of the central government, and their state of subjection was emphasized by every increase in the income tax levies."

I might to memorize this entire essay.

Briton gets it right: don't further regulate financial markets - liberalize them. Libertarian candidates should use the argument and term liberalize at every opportunity. Liberals would be shocked to find out what the term really means.

"The notion that the present financial system is "laissez-faire" is, of course, ludicrous. At present, we have a nationalised organisation that holds a state-granted monopoly on the issuance of currency. If this were any industry other than finance, the Bank of England would be seen as the Soviet-style planning board that it is.
Defending laissez-faire is therefore not a defence of the status quo; it is a positive prescription for a totally new regime. Here are three courses of action that would liberalise the banking system:"

Three general but powerful policy descriptions follow. Maybe this is why we should open the presidency to foreign nationals. Just joking.

Company opens plant to transform plastic into $10 per barrel fuel. This story fails the sniff test. This company is in Washington D.C., home of the biggest lies and liars on Earth. It's the home of the political economy, not real innovation. I bet this claim is manure to feed politicians so they'll steal more of our money and give it to this company.