Our nation’s financial sector reportedly is shrinking. That is a good thing, even if many of the reports in the financial press have a mournful tone. In the go-go years leading up to 2007, we let the cart of finance…
Category: Other
Preserving the past can be too costly
As a former history major and lifelong history buff, I love old things. But preserving old things uses up economic resources. So not every old thing is worth saving. When that issue enters the public sphere, things get knotty and…
Limiting public liability makes sense; here’s why
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals returned a measure of economic sanity to the loony world of tort liability with the ruling that federal government, acting through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, cannot be held liable for damages in…
Income redistribution is popular in practice
“Income redistribution” is more popular than many think. Just as for “entitlement,” the term “income redistribution” has taken on a pejorative meaning. But both entitlements and income redistribution are popular with most people, as long as they themselves are the…
Romney isn’t 100% right about the 47%
It is clear that self-serving economic considerations are one factor in how people choose for whom they will vote. All other things equal, farmers tend to vote for candidates who support farm subsidies and against ones who would cut them.…
Promises meaningless – because of partisan gridlock
When a nation has an economic problem that seems unsolvable, it usually is a sign of an underlying political problem that its citizens have not addressed. The persistent fiscal problems our country faces are a prime example. The two presidential…
Does AIG bailout look better in hindsight?
The U.S. Treasury has sold a large chunk of its shares of AIG at a price high enough to recover the initial outlay made to bail out the insurance giant, four years ago this week. News headlines report this as…
Campaigns ignore infrastructure, public good
Barge traffic on the lower Mississippi river has been at a near-standstill for a few weeks now. Barges full of grain, coal, chemicals, fertilizer and other bulk products have been tied up along the banks in Louisiana and Mississippi for…
Ending the mortgage deduction works, in theory
Would the housing market crash if we eliminated the home mortgage interest tax credit? Real estate agents and mortgage-related businesses argue it would. Basic economic theory says there would be at least some decline in home values. But economic historian…
Averages are misleading, from taxes to actuarials
Everybody knows what the word “average” means and that it is the most widely used simple statistic. But it can be highly misleading. That occurred to me in two recent news reports. One article a week ago detailed how households…