A credit crisis has been spreading through the economic system. It began with the collapse of the housing bubble, which was the result of years of Federal Reserve–sponsored credit expansion. This credit expansion poured hundreds of billions of dollars into the purchase of homes largely by subprime borrowers who never had a realistic capability of repaying their mortgage debts in the first place. And, not surprisingly, large numbers of them in fact stopped making the payments required by their mortgages.

I can’t say enough good things about the film version of “Horton Hears a Who!“ now in theaters. I’ve generally tended to avoid these film adaptations, which stray too far from the original book and introduce strange twists, usually something designed to preach left-liberal ideology, that just end up being a bother and a distraction. None of this is true of Horton. Yes, it elaborates on the original but in seamless ways that actually end up enhancing the value of the story.

Quite an interesting blog entry about and net neutrality. Paul Sweeting summarizes various views espoused by academic economists during a video policy symposium. Some highlights:

Computerworld reports that a committee of regulators has a copy of the next version of Microsoft Windows, aka Windows 7, schedule to ship in 2011 and are evaluating it to ensure that non-Microsoft components can replace certain features provided by Windows.

Sadly, Borders Group, Inc. is in trouble and it’s up for sale. More and more of these companies continue to drop as consumers pinch pennies on wanna-have but don’t-need items. I listened to analysts talking about this on Bloomberg yesterday, and they don’t seem to really get it. There was a discussion of ways in which Borders can improve sales, and one of them was new book club memberships to be offered by Borders.

Larry Elliott in the Guardian writes that

[This article by Murray N. Rothbard follows “The Road to Civil War,” and is excerpted from the same unpublished report to the Volker Fund, 1961.]

The Civil War was one of the most momentous events in American history, not only for its inherent drama and destruction, but because of the fateful consequences for America that flowed from it.