Jennifer Schuessler of the New York Times blogs about the recent resurgence in Hayekian interest: As I describe in an essay in this Sunday’s Book Review, “The Road to Serfdom,” published to modest sales and respectful debate in Britain, became a huge hit and a political lightning rod in America after Max Eastman, the leftwing radical turned staunch anti-Communist, ran a condensed version of the book as the lead article in Readers Digest in 1945. Eastman’s condensation went on to sell nearly a million copies. For those who found even that crib sheet a bit taxing, a cartoon version appeared in Look magazine soon after.
From Mark Whitehouse at the WSJ Real Time Economics: Number of the Week: Euro Zone Debt Is Coming Due (ht jb) $1.65 trillion: Euro zone bank debt coming due in 2010 and 2011. …
To the right is an image of Doug French sitting outdoors in a French cafe. Sitting across from him, it took me a few minutes to fully realize that this was not a French cafe and it was not outdoors. It is indoors at the Paris hotel in Las Vegas, a town that provides many such illusions and where you constantly have to remind yourself that you are not in fact where you think you are but rather you are in a place that was once a barren desert
I propose that there’s a difference between bigotry and racism. Bigotry simply means you don’t like a particular group, e.g., “I hate those filthy Klingon bastards.” Racism is a subset of collectivism; it’s a set of beliefs about how you expect different groups to behave within the social order. Not every chattel slave-master, I’d imagine, hated Africans, but they clearly believed there was a “proper place” for these individuals, and any failure to conform to such expectations justified, in the racist’s mind, actions to compel such conformance
CR Note: This is part 2 in a series on sovereign debt issues by reader “some investor guy”. Here is Part 1: How Large is the Outstanding Value of Sovereign Bonds
A cartoon inspired by “libertarians” . Join the discussion and post a comment Related posts: Oppenheimer’s Classic: The State ECB Cartoon on Price Stability The Wonderful World of Disney
Bay National… zip Ideal Federal… whoosh A trifecta miss : – ( by Soylent Green is People From the FDIC: FDIC Approves the Payout of the Insured Deposits of Ideal Federal Savings Bank, Baltimore, Maryland As of March 31, 2010, Ideal Federal Savings Bank had approximately $6.3 million in total assets and $5.8 million in total deposits.
From the FDIC : Bay Bank, FSB, Lutherville, Maryland, Assumes all of the Deposits of Bay National Bank, Baltimore, Maryland As of March 31, 2010, Bay National Bank had approximately $282.2 million in total assets and $276.1 million in total deposits. … The FDIC estimates that the cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) will be $17.4 million
This has been a light week for economic news, but the pace will pick up again next week … I guess no news is good news for the stock market: Here is a graph from Doug Short of dshort.com (financial planner).
The following article confuses “liar loans” with underwriting based on the “Three C’s”: creditworthiness, capacity, and collateral. From Forbes: ‘Liar Loans’ Make a Comeback Did you think the housing collapse killed off “liar loans”–those infamous bubble-era mortgages for which people were allowed to get creative in portraying their ability to make the payments
From HotelNewsNow.com: STR: US results for week ending 3 July 2010 In year-over-year measurements, the industry’s occupancy increased 10.0 percent to 63.4 percent. Average daily rate rose 1.3 percent to US$96.65.
Paul Krugman for now has left his “We need more spending, not austerity” theme in order to push his “We need more government spending so that businesses will spend, too” mantra. (It’s always about the spending.) In a couple of posts, I have contrasted Krugman’s “spending” theme with “regime uncertainty” that our own Robert Higgs has been emphasizing. My links here and here deal with the concept of “regime uncertainty” and how it contrasts with Krugman’s views, and then another post that deals with Krugman’s view that the Obama administration is doing just fine in its attempts to force businesses (and doctors) to adhere to its policies
From Sharon Bernstein at the LA Times: Jobs outlook for small businesses may be getting bleaker Intuit Inc., which provides payroll services for small employers, says the nation’s tiniest companies had fewer new hires last month than any time since October. … To calculate its estimate of national hiring, Intuit uses payroll information from its 56,000 small-business customers
It now looks as if neither property taxes nor water charges will feature in the next budget. Shifting the tax burden from income to property and resource use would provide a welcome stimulus to the economy. That said, water charges need water meters and property taxes need a valuation database — and the government does not appear to have put much thought into these matters since the Commission on Taxation released its recommendations.
John Shure writes , Those who are blaming states for their severe budget shortfalls and arguing that Congress shouldn’t provide much-needed assistance until states “clean up their act” ( here’s a recent example) are wrong on both counts. Pointer from Mark Thoma . Shure argues that state and local revenues are down because of the recession
Here ’s an interesting article from the Irish Times by Simon Carswell in which NAMA’s senior officials squirm about their changed assessment of the quality of their loan portfolio, blaming most of it on the fragile psychological state of our bankers last Autumn (poor dears). The highlight: Mr McDonagh said some loans – on top of the 25 per cent that were generating income – were yielding some, if not all interest due, but Nama was still assessing this. “Twenty-five per cent is cashflow generating – the rest has some cashflow generating,” he said.
Indian economy to grow 9.5 pc in 2010: IMF. The International Monetary Fund on Thursday raised India’s growth forecast for 2010 to 9.5 per cent, stating that favourable financing conditions and robust corporate profits will accelerate …
This is the tale of two economists who lived parallel lives, and then pursued two different and contrary goals. One was devoted to liberty and one was devoted to the state. The first remained a teacher during his entire life, never in any prestigious institution and never exercising any power
Somehow, and no one seems to even imagine how, this country managed to survive and thrive before 1984 without a national minimum drinking age. Before that, the drinking question was left to the states. In the 19th century, and looking back even before — prepare yourself to imagine horrific anarchistic nightmares — there were no drinking laws anywhere, so far as anyone can tell
The Department of Finance has released an interim update of its macroeconomic projections: you can find it here . While the upgrade to the real GDP forecast has been well publicised, this release also notes that the decline in the GDP deflator is sharper than expected - but it does not provide a number for nominal GDP growth. A more elaborate revision of its forecasts will be published in the Autumn.
by Edward Hugh: Barcelona As Croatia enters the final stage of its EU membership talks , it is perhaps a fitting moment to review the other half of the picture, namely where the Croatian economy finds itself, and what the outlook might be for a continuing convergence with the requirements of Euro membership.
I had thought there was something a bit odd about how the NAMA business plan extrapolated from the 50% discount applied to the first tranche to come up with its figure for the amount it would be paying for its full portfolio. After all, the fraction of Anglo loans in the first tranche was higher than for the total portfolio and these are likely to be worse in quality than the average loans from AIB or BoI. Surely, the correct approach would have been to calculate this figure applying the institution-by-institution discount from the first tranche to the total consideration, assuming for example that the first tranche haircut for AIB is the appropriate figure to apply to the rest of AIB’s NAMA portfolio. So, I did the calculation ( here ’s the spreadsheet) and, lo and behold, it projects that NAMA will pay €41.7 billion for the portfolio, not the €40.5 billion they published in the business plan based on extrapolating from the first tranche aggregate discount.
Arnold Kling of EconLog talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the weird world of banking. Why do mortgages look the way they do? What do banks contribute to economic activity
You might remember that a few months ago, NAMA CEO Brendan McDonagh appeared before the Oireachtas Finance Committee and told them that one third of NAMA’s assets are cashflow producing. I noted at the time (based on the information in bank annual reports) that this didn’t seem to me to be correct, with the likely figure being a good bit lower
A tunnel in the tomb of Seti I, a pharaoh who ruled Egypt about 3,300 years ago, has been discovered after a two-decade-long search in the Valley of the Kings, Culture Minister Faruq Hosni said.
