I can’t help but notice that some increasingly sharp geopolitical skirmishing over islands in the South and East China Seas coincides with this year’s centennial of the outbreak of World War I. If Europe could stumble into a war that…
Author: Ed Lotterman
Knowledge is key to reducing the damage of ‘external costs’
Resources get wasted when a society does not develop effective ways to manage the damage that can occur when the economic activities of one person or company harm another — what economists call “external costs.” It is inevitable that this…
West Virginia chemical spill provides lesson in managing external costs
Last week’s chemical spill that contaminated water supplies in West Virginia hammers home the fact that in a modern nation of about 315 million people, the economic activities of nearly anyone — no matter how beneficial overall — usually impose…
Cutting public good hurts all
Americans have much less trust in government than they did only a few decades ago. Libertarians, who want minimal government, are a growing force. And there is a faction, largely in the right wing of the GOP, that thinks many…
The politics of exporting U.S. crude oil
The question of whether our country should continue a 40-year ban on exporting crude oil is much more political in nature than economic, but it does involve some interesting economic questions. Politics are such that it is doubtful the ban…
Cutback in jobless aid won’t be a panacea
About 1.3 million people have just had unemployment compensation benefits cut off in one fell swoop. Whether that is fair is debatable. It will save the federal budget several billion dollars. And it will lower the “headline” unemployment rate, although…
100 years proves Fed is a sound system
Hardly anyone noted last week that Monday was the centennial of President Woodrow Wilson’s signing of the Federal Reserve Act. Perhaps that is as it should be. The media take little notice of anniversaries of agencies like the Food and…
Inside the military pension cutback
A little-noted feature of the recent budget bill, together with wrangling in many states over public employee pensions, raises a question that has economic implications as well as legal and moral ones: Are defined-benefit pension plans explicit contracts of compensation…
It’s time to question the Fed’s influence
The Federal Reserve’s policy-making Open-Market Committee met this week and, as many expected, decided to reduce its large monthly purchases of bonds. It pays for these bonds by creating new bank reserves that, in turn, increase the money supply and…
GM bailout legacy a debate for the ages
On Dec. 9, the U.S. Treasury sold off the last block of stock it held in the “new” General Motors, thus ending one facet of the private company bailouts stemming from the financial debacle that unfurled 2007-2008 and still looms…