Politics

I know I shouldn’t beat this dead horse but I can’t help myself. Just this past Friday, when describing Andy Xie’s hopeful tone in sensing a change of the short-sighted and ruinous mindset that was driving policy makers in the U.S., I…

This is the third in a series of posts about ideas for financial reform generated by the “Make Markets Be Markets” conference I attended yesterday in New York City on 3 Mar 2010. You can download all of the written presentations here. A…

Pretty funny video by SNL characters bringing back a host of former Presidents to advise Obama to protect consumers from the banks. See the behind the scenes video and the Dana Carvey Dream Sequence too.

I came across an article in the FT by Gideon Rachman which examined “How Reagan ruined conservatism.” It is an interesting piece which claims that traditional conservatives abhor populism and respect knowledge, while the Reagan Revolution…

Apparently, some of the ‘best reforms’ now being instituted in the U.S. to prevent a liquidity crisis in the future include limitations on demand deposits (hat tip Karl Denninger). What financial institutions are trying to prevent is a bank…

Last summer, I heard from a source close to the Obama Administration that the public option was mostly a bargaining tool and that the Obama Administration would only use it in order to pass healthcare reform. Translation: the Obama…

Here’s my take on a recent story of apparent plagiarism at the New York Times.  Some are probably conjuring up memories of Jayson Blair.  However, I see something different, namely a battle regarding the credibility of independent…

Below is the text of the brief EU statement on Greece debt crisis. All euro area members must conduct sound national policies in line with the agreed rules. They have a shared responsibility for the economic and financial stability in…

The money line comes right at the end.

A while back I wrote a post called A populist interpretation of the latest Boom-Bust cycle that used a passage from Jared Diamond’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Guns, Germs and Steel on kleptocracy as a jumping-off point for a larger discussion…