Mark Thornton will participate in an AMA (Ask-Me-Anything) session on Reddit today at 4PM Eastern time.

UPDATE: Here is the discussion archive. 

Amazing! According to a Reuters Report, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York William Dudley admitted that the Fed does not know how Quantitative Easing policies work to help the economy and that they don’t have a well developed model of the economy that incorporates a “realistic” financial sector.

In Australia, Judith Sloan points out that the “prices” for health care services set by state adjuncts are not really functioning prices at all:

The Daily Caller reports:

Bernie Quigley at The Hill predicts that in 2014:

Ron Paul rises to senior mentor, with conservatives advancing a libertarian perspective and Austrian economics and bringing conservatives new thinking and new outlook as military issues rise in Asia.  

I have written about the housing bubble in Norway here, here, and here. Reuters reports that housing prices in Norway are finally expected to fall in 2014, but not by much. Their report indicates little chance of a big crash.

I attended this year’s ASSA conference in Philadelphia. The big story for most attendees was the weather, with a big winter storm leading to delayed and cancelled flights and trains, missed connections, and a slight damper on enthusiasm. It is a huge conference with several thousand participants and hundreds of sessions, panels, receptions, and other events. As you can imagine, with that much activity, the activities included the good, the bad, and the ugly.

James Grant in the WSJ discusses Roger Babson, Irving Fisher, and John Moody: