[This paper is the first of a two-part series. The concluding article is “Reducing the Cost of IP Law“]
Floyd Norris’s recent “New York Times” article on the greenback is hands down the worst economics article I have ever read. It is jam-packed full of false history. It uses the falsehoods to justify monstrous crimes.
Great new law review article by Walter Block and Huebert, Defending Corporations, Cumberland Law Review 39:2 (2009): 363-85.
Over on the LRC blog, there were some posts about the jailing of tax protestors; the following was my comment:
The latest data for lending in the eurozone, the United Kingdom, and the United States display a visible weakening. In the eurozone, the yearly rate of growth of bank lending to the private sector fell to 0.6% this July from 9.3% in July last year. In the United Kingdom, the yearly rate of growth of lending to the private sector fell to 2.2% in July 2009 from 10.1% in July 2008.
Buried deep in this article is Nicholas D. Kristof implicit theory on how the state came into being. According to Kristof, “Until the mid-19th century, firefighting was left mostly to a mishmash of volunteer crews and private fire insurance companies. In New York City, according to accounts in The New York Times in the 1850s and 1860s, firefighting often descended into chaos, with drunkenness and looting.”
