The New York Stock Exchange said it will not impose the Sarbanes-Oxley Act on European firms if it merges with European exchange Euronext. This is a rejoinder to defenders of the onerous accounting law who claimed that it helps markets work better. The market itself has witnessed the unmitigated disaster of Sarbox, especially the dreaded Section 404.
AOL News is reporting that Daryl Hannah and others were arrested trying to stop a landowner from developing his Los Angeles property. Squatters have been using Ralph Horowitz’s 14 acres to grow crops while he “was paying $25,000 to $30,000 a month in mortgage and other land costs.” None of the protestors, including Hannah, Willie Nelson, or Danny Glover, were willing to demonstrate their preference that this land remain undeveloped. Oh, they demonstrated, but they never opened their wallets to show their true preference rank.
For the third month in the row, “core” consumer prices, which the Fed and accordingly also financial markets have decided to focus on ( for irrational reasons ) showed a 0.3% increase, which translates into an annual rate of more than 3.5%, well above the official comfort zone.
[This article originally appeared in International Journal of Value-Based Management 12: 195-207, 1999.]
Besides national defense, no government-provided service enjoys as much exemption from scrutiny as the provision and subsidization of primary public education. Even presumed champions of the free market, such as Milton Friedman, support the government subsidization of education through high school:
