A federal appeals court has upheld a lower court’s dismissal of lawsuits accusing Merrill Lynch of hyping stocks and causing investor losses during the collapse of the tech bubble. Hundreds of lawsuits spawned by New York state attorney general and gubernatorial candidate Eliot Spitzer have been filed against Merrill, Morgan Stanley, and Lehman Brothers.

January 29 marks the anniversary of Thomas Paine’s birth in 1737. He is primarily remembered for his fiery rhetoric in support of America’s revolution, and it would be hard to overestimate his role in it.

As John Adams once said, “without the pen of Paine, the sword of Washington would have been wielded in vain.”

Robert Wright in the New York Times today makes the case that markets are the way to bring freedom, not invasions... or sanctions. In The Market Shall Set You Free, he argues that President Bush and his neocon advisers, though professing a desire to see freedom in other countries are ignoring or threatening to impede the greatest force for freedom: the growth of markets.

Today’s report on fourth quarter GDP came in slightly lower than expected at 3.1% annualized real growth versus average estimate of 3.5%. A sharp (10.3%) increase in business investments and a continued increase in private consumption and inventories contributed to the increase while government consumption and residential investments slowed and net exports deteriorated.

I reeceived the following e-mail raising questions about my recent Mises.org critique of “forced savings” as a solution to the mess that is Social Security. My response follows.

Professor Westley,

A speech by Fed Governor William Poole GSE Risks, outlines the risks that the GSEs could trigger a financial crisis. While this might be part of the Bush administration’s efforts to reign in Fannie Mae (covered in an excellent Fortune Magazine article this week), it is still surprising that a central banker would be so outspoken on this point — in the speech he uses the word ‘crisis’ ten times. Poole says:

A few days ago, the supposedly politically independent Swedish government agency Skolverket (the Agency for Education)published a report which showed that private schools are more efficent —their students perform better at lower costs— than public schools and moreover that the presence of private schools in one locality improves the efficency of government schools too, presumably because of the pressure from competition.