In 2005, the US current account deficit reached 805 billion US dollars or about 7% of the US gross domestic product. For some analysts, this figure is way beyond the standard critical threshold, while other observers see no risk at all and rather contend that this number indicates the strength and the attractiveness of the United States economy.
Of course, trade deficits indeed present no problem as long as they get financed. What, however, will happen when the United States is forced to reduce the deficit and needs to obtain surpluses in its foreign trade?
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has overturned investment banker Frank Quattrone’s lifetime ban from the securities industry. This comes on the heels of a federal appeals court decision overturning his 2004 conviction on obstruction of justice charges. The SEC ruled that the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), a separate market regulator, had violated its own rules by barring Quattrone from the industry in November 2004.
I just posted a review of the De Soto book here:
This is a book for the ambitious layman. It explains how banking practices play into economic fluctuations, and vice-versa, virtually from the invention of banking to modern times. At over 800 pages, it is capable of handling its imposing brief very thoroughly, and it does — not one page is wasted.
In his speech on March 20 the new Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke admitted that he is not so sure whether the Fed should be tightening its stance further or whether the central bank should pause. The reason, according to Bernanke, is the unusual behavior of long-term interest rates.
AEI libertarian Charles Murray has a new book advocating Milton Friedman’s bad old idea of a “negative income tax.” The feds should hand out the cash, Murray says, because “we” are so rich.
In a recent survey of the ideological persuasion of 1,643 full-time professors at 183 colleges and universities, three eminent scholars, Professors Robert Lichter of George Mason University and Stanley Rothman and Neil Nevitte of the University of Toronto, found that nearly three-quarters of college faculty call themselves liberal. In the study of classical languages and literature, the humanities, they counted 81 percent and in the social sciences 75 percent. Even among engineering faculty they found 51 percent and in business faculty 49 percent.
In the last of a series of three posts on a blog for conservative philosophers called Right Reason, Professor Edward Feser has raised disturbing charges against Murray Rothbard’s libertarianism. The “Rothbardian view of the world,” he claims, “is radically subversive and paranoid.” Rothbard’s worldview “parallels Marxism” and is incompatible with natural law and the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. Catholic supporters of Rothbard are “acolytes of St.
