If you drive a car , I’ll tax the street.
If you try to sit , I’ll tax your seat.
If you get too cold , I’ll tax the heat.
If you take a walk , I’ll tax your feet.
. . . And if you don’t use your gift cards within two years, I’ll seize them all.
(With apologies to the Beatles)
In the Tulipmania crash the common Witte Croonen bulb, that rose in price twenty-six times in January 1637, fell to one-twentieth of its peak price a week later
From 1717 to 1720, shares of John Law’s Mississippi Company were bid up by frenzied Frenchmen from 500 livres to a high of 10,100 livres, before Law was run out of France and the shares crashed along with the value of Law’s banknotes.
As energy prices rise with the never-ending vitiation of the dollar, euro, and other major currencies, the perennial hue and cry for government intervention in energy markets is again being heard. Interests promoting these policies advocate both government manipulation of markets for oil, coal, natural gas, and other commodities, and also consolidated state control over unrefined resources, such as oil fields and mineral veins, like those in the Arctic Natural Wildlife Refuge.
The New York Times opinion page recently ran a series of short pieces on Rethinking How We Teach Economics, making the point that we need to change our economics instruction to be able to account for the financial crisis. There are several articles in the “debate,” but I would like to consider Alan Blinder’s contribution.
If only Dickens had written about a Tiny Tim whose father remained unemployed due to labor-union barriers.
You’d think banks had all the political friends they need. After all, court cases have been going their way since 1811 when Master of the Rolls Sir William Grant ruled in Carr v. Carr that the term “debts” mentioned in a will included a cash balance in a bank deposit account. Grant ruled that since the money had been paid generally into the bank and was not earmarked in a sealed bag, it had become a loan rather than a bailment, thus codifying fractionalized banking.
Edgar the Exploiter is a wonderful animated short by Tomasz Kaye that defends voluntary employer-employee relations and demonstrates the harm that policies like minimum-wage laws inflict on the very people they are supposed to help.
Edgar is a capitalist who hires Simon as an unskilled laborer, until a minimum-wage law impels Edgar to lay Simon off.
Give it a view. It is beautifully done.
In his lecture at George Washington University on March 20, 2012, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke said that under a gold standard the authorities’ ability to address economic conditions is significantly curtailed. The Fed chairman holds that the gold standard prevents the central bank from engaging in policies aimed at stabilizing the economy after sudden shocks. This in turn, holds the Fed chairman, could lead to severe economic upheavals. According to Bernanke,
