A recent good post at Cafe Hayek reminded me of some observations from Iraq. The post at Cafe Hayek noted: “Jim Cantalupo was CEO and Chairman of McDonald’s when he died unexpectedly on April 19th. Although nearly two weeks have passed since this death, I notice that McDonald’s continues to supply Big Macs, Egg McMuffins, and its other menu items to hordes of customers.
In an article in the March 2003 Harvard Business Review entitled ‘For the Last Time: Stock Options Are an Expense’, authors Zvi Bodie, Robert S. Kaplan, and Robert C. Merton attempt to justify the expensing of stock options.
Reprinted from The Gold Standard: Perspectives in the Austrian School. Edited with an Introduction by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. Copyright © 1992. The Ludwig von Mises Institute. Auburn, Ala. Pp. 116-130; The Gold Standard: An Austrian Perspective. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1985, pp. 1-17; Reprinted in The Logic of Action One: Method, Money, and the Austrian School. Glos, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd., 1997, pp. 364-383.
The Wall Street Journal’s recent piece, Fed May Have Acted on False Alarm [link - ($)] recounts how the Fed’s policy of ultra-low interest rates were sold to the public as the Fed’s efforts to avert a disastrous deflation (what’s so bad about deflation, anyway?). The deflation phobia was motivated by very low rates of measured inflation. But a low CPI may not be an indication of low inflation.
According to the Christian Science Monitor, Inflation hits the family dinner table. There are some who believe that inflation has been much higher than CPI numbers would indicate for some years now. There are a number of techniques that the BLS uses to remove accelerating prices from their index computation (see my previous BLOG on this issue). This manipulation is becoming harder to do, when:
Why did Google go public? “They have no choice,” says the Christian Science Monitor. “A 1934 law requires that any private company that reaches a certain size must provide its operation figures and finances to the federal government. Google passed that threshold last year and needed to comply by Thursday, according to reports. An initial public offering (IPO) of stock is expected to follow.” [Thanks Kent Snyder]
