When rebuilding after a flood, it is important to avoid repeating past mistakes. But that is easier said than done, politically as well as psychologically, as the recent news about post-Katrina reconstruction shows. One story described how increasing numbers of…
Let’s stop and think before regulating
There is not a lot of rhyme or reason about why we license certain businesses or professions and not others. Nor are we entirely coherent in how employers must or must not accommodate religious views that affect how people do…
Market drives excess cows and cubicles
A fourth of downtown St. Paul office space is vacant. That information, taken alone, might indicate a real estate cow market. That is not to be confused with a bull market, when all prices rise. It refers to the way…
Underlying ills intensify subprime peril
Subprime mortgages are the Balkans of the U.S. economy. Nineteenth-century German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck famously predicted that the next great European war would stem from “some damned silly thing in the Balkans.” Over 20 years later his prediction proved…