The GSEs (government-sponsored enterprises) are large quasi-governmental financial institutions that own or insure about half of the nation’s mortgages.  They are fueling a housing bubble by injecting purchasing mortgages, bundling them into securities, and re-selling them or holding them.  They are able to borrow to fund their activities at prefernentially low rates because of an implicit government gurantee.

Police departments around the nation have begun utilizing high-tech video surveillance in their fight against crime, as the private sector has for many years. Officials in New Orleans recently announced that by October the city plans to have installed 100 of these surveillance cameras within its limits.

• Iraq ‘Needs Tens of Billions’ (BBC): “America’s administrator in Iraq has warned that the country will need tens of billions of dollars to rebuild its shattered infrastructure. Paul Bremer said it was “almost impossible to exaggerate” the country’s economic needs. The bill to overhaul essential services like electricity and water - running intermittently in many areas at present - would reach almost $30bn, Mr Bremer said.

An article on the Larouche in 2004 web site analyzes the housing bubble.  LaRouche’s political agenda is not Austrian at all.  It consists of a vast infrastructure boondoggle and other forms of central planning.  However, some of the analysts on his site have interesting things to say on specific topics. 

Another interesting article from the LaRouche site shows how the inflation statistics are distorted to produce a lower reported rate of inflation.  The government incurs a number of costs from a higher reported rate of inflation (CPI).  There are direct costs such as pensions that are indexed to the CPI, the “cost” of lower tax revenuje because regular income tax brackets are indexed to inflation (but not the evil AMT), and there is the lo

A reader sent this comment on the great Mises.org: “please give my regards to the web master. mises.org is the best streamlined site on the net. I do hope that they don’t junk it up.”

“Achieving and maintaining price stability is the bedrock principle of a sound monetary policy.” Federal Reserve Governor Ben S. Bernanke1

The headlines this morning are all about the new Congressional Budget Office prediction that the budget deficit next year (FY 2004) will approach $500 billion--far above the previous 1992 record of $290 billion. This is supposed to be a deadly blow to the White House.

A very nice  profile of the Google company in USAToday: Today, the founders and their landlady — who wound up quitting her job at Intel to join the boys — are in different wings of the four-building sprawling campus known as the Googleplex, a 1,000-employee paradise with free food, unlimited ice cream, pool and ping-pong tables and complimentary massages, plus the ability to spend 20% of work time on any outside activity. “They built Google to be their dream environment,” Wojcicki says.

It is now common to hear about failures in privatization and deregulation, with even the New York blackout being blamed on too-little government (even though electric utilities are still heavily regulated). Of course, every reduction of government intervention in commerce has its critics. Partial deregulation of the type that has occurred in utilities, which leaves in place many regulations that hinder market competition, invites such criticism.