[Excerpted from Tragedy of the Euro (2010)]
My new Forbes article asks “If We Win the Future, Who Loses?” While we’re talking about it, here are a few other comments that correct some popular misconceptions:
This is according Alternet.org, which offers what has to be the most upside-down history of the 20th century ever written. It includes gems like:
Keynes and Hazlitt: their lives and loyalties are a study in contrast — and mostly of choices born of internal conviction, in Hazlitt’s case, or lack thereof, in Keynes’s case.
Italians love cash and avoid credit and debit purchases at the highest rate of all the euro region. As a result, they are among the region’s least indebted and biggest savers. It’s estimated that the government loses 100 billion euros of revenue a year in untaxed transactions, while its banking cartel loses out on billions of possible fee revenue when the average Italian makes only 26 credit card purchases a year. Needless to say, the government and banks are joining forces in a war on cash, cash salaries, and cash transactions.
As I’m a practicing patent attorney, I often get promotional material from various vendors and local and international law firms–calendars, etc. I received a The 2011 Keller Patents Top Twelve Calendar recently from a patent seacher. Interestingly, he writes:
The Law of Supply:
Other Things Equal
Quantity Supplied Rises
When the Price Rises
The Law of Demand:
Other Things Equal
Quantity Demanded Falls
When the Price Rises
On Comparative Advantage:
Yes, Trade Creates Wealth.
Costs Will Fall while Incomes Rise
When We Specialize.
Special thanks to Scott Barton for the first line of the Supply and Demand Haikus, which allowed me to get the “all else equal” condition in there.
At current rates of spending, the federal government may bump up against its debt limit as early as March. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner warns that it will be “catastrophic to the economy” if Congress doesn’t increase Uncle Sam’s credit limit.
