Now that the furor over the botched response to Hurricane Katrina has largely subsided, we can calmly examine an aspect of the episode that most commentators have neglected. Let me motivate the examination by first making the (perhaps surprising) claim that I don’t think the FEMA bureaucrats did anything particularly outrageous. Yes, it is true that the main damage to New Orleans was caused not by the hurricane per se, but by the government’s poorly designed levee system.

An economist who is also a concert pianist? Yes indeed, and here is the proof. And the pianist is playing what many people consider to be the world’s greatest piano, right in the offices of the Mises Institute.

The music and performance display passion, mastery, and musical eloquence. It could easily become your favorite. Download samples.

Submitted from Dave Gallagher:

I was sitting at Starbucks this morning sipping a Venti Latte which I obtained via a mutually beneficial voluntary exchange. My companion, a good natured but eternally self contradicting “progressive” had been yacking about “Big Oil” price gouging. I flipped open the local paper to the business section where the following article caught my eye.

GM spokesman Jerry Dubrowski said speculation of a GM bankruptcy is inappropriate and doesn’t reflect the predominant view on Wall Street. “We have no plans to declare bankruptcy, and we don’t think it’s appropriate to continue to comment on what I would term sensational speculation by some observers,” he said.

The first libertarian intellectual, writes Murray Rothbard, was Lao-tzu, the founder of Taoism.

The hallmark of Frank A. Fetter’s approach to economic theory was his “radicalism,” writes Murray Rothbard.

I’m looking at the new issue of Chronicles, which features a happy kid using a plough pulled by some oxen, and behind him stands an old corner store but in the back of the supposedly idyllic scene is that dreadful menace Wal-Mart shown in black and white. Wal-Mart! Why, the store intends to take that kid from behind that plough and plunk him behind some counter pushing goods made in China, and thus does the world end.

This might be the first crack in the housing bubble. The graph below is of the Philadelphia Housing Index (major home builders) since the index began in 2002. The HGX index (In blue) has remained above the Index´s 200 day moving average line (in red) until very recently. This “technical” sign is not surprising given the increase in interest rates by the Fed and in long term governmen bonds. The index shows a 150% gain in the last couple of years, but several of the home builders are up much more since the housing bubble began.