The privatization of holidays

The struggle over holidays oddly mirrors the intractable struggle between market and state, so that we have Labor Day, Presidents Day, and Memorial Day etc. for those who find their meaning in official civic celebrations. But for millions of others, a new calendar of sorts is starting to emerge that secedes entirely from the attempted nationalization of dates by the state. And thus is today International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Absurd?

Last Knight Live Blog 5 Kraus

The problem of “psychologism” or psychological approach to economic theory and its significance in writings of earlier Austrian economists (Menger, Böhm-Bawerk, and Wieser) as well as to theories of three eminent founders of the neoclassical school – Gossen, Jevons, and Walras (thereafter GJW), constitutes a major element in chapter 4 and is subject of today’s (critical) post.

More money makes us rich

It was this very day that I was telling some visiting students about the silliness of the old populist silver movement of the late 19th century, how they ridiculously believed that all economic troubles could be solved if only the government would print more money — not realizing that more money only means watering down the value of the existing money and disturbing pricing signals along the way. How silly these people were! Ha, ha, ha.

The Shaking Tower of Debt

The repercussions of the turmoil in the US subprime mortgage market are increasingly being felt around the world. What was initially thought to be a problem confined to a US credit market segment has increasingly transformed itself into an erosion of investor confidence in credit quality in general and, in some countries, concerns about the reliability of the banking sector. The most obvious symptom of eroding confidence is the alleged “liquidity crisis.” The term “liquidity” usually denotes the possibility to buy or sell a financial asset at any one time without causing noticeable changes in the price of the product being bought or sold. Market participants speak of “illiquidity” when it is no longer possible to sell financial products, or if selling is possible only at greatly diminished prices. In recent weeks, a number of financial market segments have indeed become illiquid in the sense defined above

None Dare Call It Genocide

How comfy we are all in the United States, as we engage in living-room debates about the US occupation of Iraq. But there’s one thing Americans don’t talk about: the lives of Iraqis, or, rather, the deaths of Iraqis. It’s about time that we think about the numbers. Opinion Research Business, a highly reputable polling firm in the UK, has just completed a detailed and rigorous survey of Iraqis. Here is the grisly bottom line.

Stick It in Your Earmark

President Bush has just signed the long-debated ethics bill, which Democrats are trumpeting as helping “drain the swamp” of corruption, in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-SF) words. However it is hardly “the start of a new day in Washington” that Senator Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) called it.

The core reform in the bill is requiring that earmark sponsors be identified. Unfortunately, naming those sponsors will not deter much pork nor substantially change the bipartisan culture of corruption.

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