Economic Outlook 2008: Darkening Clouds

'View of Dresden at Full Moon' (1839) by Johan Christian Clausen DahlPresidential election years usually are not recessionary but next year will be an exception. Several economic factors are colliding in an almost perfect storm to markedly slow the general economy and the stock market. Unfortunately, we will not be able to “inflate” our way out of this recession this time. We will simply have to take our lumps and let market forces liquidate the bulk of the malinvestments caused by the unprecedented Greenspan money bubble.

Evonomics

From Scientific American Magazine - January 2008: Evolution and economics are both examples of a larger mysterious phenomenon
...As with living organisms and ecosystems, the economy looks designed—so just as humans naturally deduce the existence of a top-down intelligent designer, humans also (understandably) infer that a top-down government designer is needed in nearly every aspect of the economy.

How to Bureaucratize the Corporate World

This stakeholder theory of corporate social responsibility is in direct opposition to the primacy of the interests of shareholders as owners of the corporation. Instead of working for the profit of shareholders, corporate managers are instead directed by this doctrine to act in the interests of a diverse group of “stakeholders,” with the shareholder considered to be merely one of these stakeholders. The groups to whom shareholder profits are to be sacrificed include employees, customers, business partners, suppliers, competitors, government regulators, the general community and even “pressure groups” and “influencers.”

David Frum on the Gold Standard

David Frum is on the warpath. In a National Review Online blog post, then an NPR commentary, and most recently in a National Post article, Frum has mercilessly ridiculed the gold standard. But as with most modern critiques of the “bad old days” of the laissez-faire 19th century, Frum’s analysis is fraught with theoretical and historical problems. Frum’s main objection is that the gold standard is allegedly rigid, preventing the economy from smoothly adjusting to various shocks.

2007 in song:The Ballad of Alpha, the Bull’s Bull, All Geared

With regards to the great Irish songwriter Percy French for his comic ditty (tune here) which originally concerned the conflict between the Tsar and the Ottomans - and familiar to all true rugby fans in a decidedly more ribald version - a little seasonal levity regarding the state of financial markets and the very Austrian lessons to be drawn from the current turmoil.

Illegal to Transfer Legally Purchased CD to a Computer?

[I]n an unusual case in which an Arizona recipient of an RIAA letter has fought back in court rather than write a check to avoid hefty legal fees, the industry is taking its argument against music sharing one step further: In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music int

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