Posner on the Precipice
In recent years, Posner abandoned his rational-choice approach in law for what he has been calling “pragmatism.” Keynes also thought of himself as a pragmatic, nondoctrinaire person.
The Lawless State
Today, in the land we like to think of as the most free on earth, governments at all levels reaches into every level of our lives. It controls and it coerces, it bullies and it brags, it browbeats and it blusters.
Patent Lawyers Who Don’t Toe the Line Should Be Punished!
In his post Reality Check: Anti-Patent Patent Musings Simply Bizarre, patent attorney Gene Quinn is baffled that any patent attorney would openly oppose the patent system--or be hired by anyone. He writes, in part:
Loan Mod Fraud
I had missed this excellent story in the NYT by Peter Goodman about the dubious loan modification companies that have emerged out of the mortgage industry. They ask people to cough up money and promise to negotiate for lower rates with lenders. Once they get the money, they vanish.
Broke, The Movie
Broke, a new documentary by Michael Covel, offers an extremely engaging look at what went wrong with the macroeconomy but in a very interesting way: he provides close examinations of several microeconomic sectors that affect the financial well being of the household.
Most impressive is his contemporary history of the housing bust. Most of the energy of the film seems to have been focused on this area, and it is the most successful part of the film. Covel illustrates the vast gulf that separates the promise from the reality.
Some Recovery
Philip Greenspun debunks the notion that the economy is recovering: 1) you can’t trust GDP, 2) investment is falling, 3) there is no recovery in private sector jobs. It is also very interesting to me that the money stock is falling because lending has collapsed despite vast injections of reserves.
Against Preemptive Strike
During the 1920s and 1930s, a majority of Americans came to believe that our involvement in World War I had been a horrendous mistake. The war was supposed to have made the world safe for democracy, but fascism, communism, and aggressive nationalism were the order of the day in Europe. In an effort to forestall future involvements in European conflagrations, Congress enacted stringent neutrality legislation.
Patent Law, State Courts, and Free Speech: The Case of Troll Tracker
I wrote previously on the Troll Tracker case (see Update on Patent Troll Tracker; Troll Tracker Lands Job Fighting Patent Trolls!). This case concerns defamation suits filed against “Troll Tracker,” aka Rick Frenkel, by two Texas lawyers, in the aftermath of Frenkel’s identity being revealed, after bounties put up by one of the subjects of his criticism, patent attorney Ray Niro.
Howard Buffett: A Man of the Old Right
Wearing a pair of round eyeglasses, and with his hair slicked and combed to one side, the thirty-nine-year-old securities trader from Omaha, Nebraska, searched for something to say. Reporters pressed him for a reaction.
