In a letter to the Economist on May 3rd, Mark Neale, Chief Executive of the UK’s Financial Services Compensation Scheme (the country’s deposit insurance provider), chastised the magazine for its view of deposit insurance as a “corrosive trend” in the state’s involvement in finance.

Mr. Neale points out that deposit insurance is not funded by the government, but is financed through levies paid by the banking system. He further claims that “all insurance creates some moral hazard”, implying that deposit insurance is not radically different from other forms of insurance.

I don’t know if you are as popular with the political insiders as I am, but already today I have received emails from Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and Debbie Wasserman Schultz. In fact, I’ve received more than a dozen emails today alone from either the Democratic Party, Democrats involved in election campaigns, or Democratic interest groups.

The Democrats aren’t the only ones who email me. I’ve also received emails today from Republicans and Libertarians, though not as many.

Forbes’ columnist John Tamny executes an inspired and wonderfully savage critique of GMU economist Tyler Cowen’s dotty blog post touting the positive effects of war on economic growth.  Tamny takes his cue from Henry Hazlitt and writes in plain and muscular language.

The National Association of Credit Management issued its Credit Managers Index, calling it “less than impressive.”

After years of QE and other loose monetary policies, central banks are starting to get jitters about the effects of their policies.

An organization representing the world’s main central banks warned Sunday that dangerous new asset bubbles were forming even before the global economy had finished recovering from the last round of financial excess.

Just prior to my debate at Oxford Union I asked the organizers; had there ever been an unanimous vote on any debate? They replied; oh no, that would be a very bad result because it meant that they had formulated a very poor proposition to be debated and/or that they had formed very unbalanced debating teams for and against the proposition. In my case I suppose you could declare it a perfect debate because it ended in a tie.

With all the fuss about the French economist’s tome on capital and perpetually growing inequality, one perspective that is uncommon in the commentary is what “the market” thinks of Piketty’s characterization of it. In other words, do those involved in investing and developing capital agree with Piketty’s analysis? Whereas one should hesitate to place too much value on individual people’s anecdotes, the “real world” rather than outrageously simplified models should be close to any Austrian’s heart on economic theory.

Think the government is expensive? It’s about to cost a little more.

On the 100th anniversary of the start of WWI this unlikeliest of anecdotes comes to us from Forbes and Mark Hendrickson.