Free Republic

As a young economics professor in the late 1970s, Richard Thaler began noticing small but nagging ways in which ordinary people defied the predictions of economic theory. A friend confided that he mowed his lawn to save $10, but winced at the suggestion that he mow someone else's to make $10. A colleague confessed that he'd never go out and buy a $50 bottle of wine for a family meal, but that he'd recently opened up a $50 bottle at dinner because it happened to be lying around. The textbooks assumed people would behave identically when equal amounts of money...

Even academic departments famous for having a “character” are far from intellectually homogenous, but they do suggest certain family resemblances. George Mason University’s economics department is populated by many libertarians, but libertarianism is not its most salient feature. In speaking with several members of the department, I searched for le mot juste: “Freakonomics”? “Weird economics”? “Interesting economics” turned out to be the least inaccurate term for a sub-discipline that encompasses such questions as whether bounty hunters are (and pirates were) as violent as is commonly supposed, how best to survive torture, and whether one ought to pay to have one’s...

John McCain will be the Republican Party's presidential candidate in November. Most Republicans certainly know who John McCain is, but there still seems to be a question as to just what he is. President Bush said last week that there was "no doubt in my mind he is a true conservative." But is he a Ronald Reagan conservative, or more like a Bob Dole moderate? Or is he like Dwight Eisenhower, who claimed in the 1952 nomination battle that he was "just as conservative" as his opponent, Sen. Robert Taft? Mr. McCain's lifetime American Conservative Union rating is 82, compared...

IT has become common wisdom that the battle for the presidency is all about the economy. Voters are being told that the country’s economic health depends on pulling the right lever in the polling booth. This election is certainly important. But based on the historical record, it isn’t likely to result in a major swing in economic policy. Fundamentally, democracy is not a finely tuned mechanism that can be used to direct economic policy as a lever might lift a pulley. The connection between what voters want, or think they want, and what ultimately happens in the economy, is far...

LONDON — The British government announced Sunday that it would bring Northern Rock, the struggling mortgage lender, under its control. It was the first nationalization of a bank in more than a decade and a huge blow for the government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The government rejected two takeover proposals for the lender, which ran into trouble last year because of a funding shortage that followed the subprime mortgage crisis in the United States. The government was forced to shore up the company with about £55 billion, or $107 billion, in loans and guarantees. “The government has completed its...

I am having trouble fully appreciating the phenomenon that is Senator Obama. Certainly, Obama’s overpowering charisma has an amazing effect on any listener, such as spontaneous tears or quasi-erotic tingling in one’s leg. (The latter phenomenon is dubbed the "Matthews syndrome” after a man whose capacity for rational thought has been completely destroyed by the syndrome’s effects.) For me, however, any such tingling is immediately recognized and countered by my brain, which forces the nascent Obasm to a premature and unsatisfying conclusion. Usually, my brain counters the Obasm by asking difficult and disturbing questions. For example, I will begin trembling...

February 14, 2008 -- IF you still don't believe me that the US government has an organization called the Plunge Protection Team that intervenes in the stock market, consider this: * A former Federal Reserve official proposed just such a market-rigging operation decades ago. * US Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson, publicly brags that he has revitalized a group that some - including me - thinks is capable of rigging the market. * Paulson has admitted on TV that he regularly discusses financial trouble spots with "market participants," perhaps even at the Wall Street firm he once headed. * A former...

I dream of better days; I dream of Barack Obama. In the silent spaces of our lives, we long for Barack Obama. Barack Obama knows that the future is nothing to fear. If we so wish, our future will be a gentle walk in the sunlight, or a stroll along a well-beaten forest path. We need no longer fatigue our minds with our corrosive cynicism. Barack Obama believes that we can solve our problems if we try. There is nothing that we cannot do if we work together. No more Us and Them - only Us. How tired we have...

On Sunday, after he learned he'd won that day's Democratic presidential primary in Maine but before his appearance on CBS's "60 Minutes," Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) sat down at the keyboard of his computer to write an e-mail. Not to a media consultant or a delegate counter, but to banker Robert Wolf, chief executive of UBS (UBS, news, msgs) Group for the Americas. The two men exchanged notes about the Senate-passed economic stimulus package and that weekend's G-7 economic summit, Wolf says. ... Obama has also been in touch with former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, who endorsed the freshman...

Article is in PDF format. Quotes: "The welfare subsidy on single-mother homes was never really ended so much as it was shifted. Reformers essentially replaced welfare with child support, on the reasonable but largely irrelevant principle that fathers rather than taxpayers should be supporting their children (which is irrelevant for reasons we will see)." "Child support thus transformed welfare from public assistance into law enforcement, creating a federal plainclothes police force with no clear constitutional authority." "Perhaps the most striking aspect of this mobilization is that the initiative came entirely from government officials. No public outcry ever preceded these measures,...

I am not in the habit of posting vanities, but I consider this an important topic, and I have not seen any articles in the MSM or alternative media about it. As an investor, I try to consider the probability of various outcomes happening, and plan accordingly. Rather than react when it is too late, I prefer to plan well ahead and consider contingencies. I regard the potential change in power in DC in 2008 as a distinct threat to individual financial security, and perhaps even to individual liberty. First, although McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee, claims that he will...

Interesting comments about Obama as a law professor in the comments section of this article. We should be careful to take these comments with a teaspoon of salt unless they can be verified. Selected items: ******************************* I took his Voting Rights Class at UChicago Law at the crack of dawn. His class was still packed. He was incredibly charasmatic and engaging, but is really, really, far-left liberal in the socialism completely rocks kind of way. I got a 80+ from him though, so no specific dirt-dishing on my part! ******************************* I took Con Law III, Equal Protection and Due Process,...

LONDON (Reuters) - The automated teller for home loans is empty and Americans are relying increasingly on credit cards to pay their living costs, indicating tough hurdles ahead for U.S. consumer spending and markets. Federal Reserve data released on Friday showed U.S. consumer borrowing rising by $12.18 billion in August, more than 20 percent more than economists had forecast. Most striking was an 8.1 percent increase in borrowing on revolving credit lines, mostly credit cards, to a record $909 billion. Credit card borrowings rose at the sharpest rate since early 2002. So what was it that persuaded consumers to rack...

That CNBC/MSNBC debate on Tuesday, the one ostensibly pegged to "Your Money '08," was supposed to be Ron Paul's Passchendaele. "There are plenty of people to whom Paul's anti-war, limited government message appeals," The Scotsman's Alex Massie wrote, "who might pause to reconsider their enthusiasm if he's seen banging on and on about returning to the gold standard. It may be a dangerous moment for the campaign." The dangerous moment came early, after the top three Republicans had fielded their first questions and Chris Matthews asked Paul about "the bonanza in the hedge fund industry." "There's transfer of wealth from...

It was only last summer when stock markets plunged nearly 10 per cent, shocked by a sudden credit crunch emanating from the implosion of the American housing bubble. It seemed that the era of easy credit and ever-rising stocks had ended. Now, all this appears to be just an unpleasant memory. The Dow Jones industrial average has more than erased its earlier losses, closing well above a previous record set in July. Other major indexes are well on the way to recovery. With the Fed in easing mode, what could go wrong? Even dour old Alan Greenspan seemed on the...

Appalling standards of care and a catalogue of failures contributed to the deaths of 331 patients in the worst outbreak of a hospital superbug ever recorded in the NHS, a report has found. Crowded wards, a shortage of nurses and financial problems led to 1,176 people contracting Clostridium difficile over two and half years at three hospitals in Kent. Though the superbug was rife on the wards, managers failed to act. Isolation units were not set up, nurses were so rushed they did not have time to wash their hands and patients were left in soiled beds. Bedpans were not...

The roller-coaster career of maverick trader Victor Niederhoffer took a sharp downturn after losses mounted and a key investor withdrew money from his firm, demonstrating how the market's recent volatility has shaken even some veterans. Mr. Niederhoffer's hedge-fund firm, Manchester Trading LLC, ran into difficulties a decade after Mr. Niederhoffer lost most of his personal savings when his previous hedge fund collapsed. Last month, Mr. Niederhoffer's largest hedge fund, Matador Fund Ltd., was liquidated after suffering losses of more than 70%, according to people close to the matter. Adding to Mr. Niederhoffer's problems, according to a person close to the...

It's been called the most important securities fraud case to reach the Supreme Court in years, with fortunes riding on the decision and the scandal of Enron just in the background. But after oral arguments yesterday, it doesn't seem like much of a cliffhanger. In this artist's rendering, attorney Stephen Shapiro argues before the Supreme Court on behalf of Charter Communications shareholders. In this artist's rendering, attorney Stephen Shapiro argues before the Supreme Court on behalf of Charter Communications shareholders. (By Dana Verkouteren -- Associated Press) TOOLBOX Resize Text Save/Share + Digg Newsvine del.icio.us Stumble It! Reddit Facebook Print This...

Cargo containers crammed with foreign-made goods that were supposed to set a record in August at major U.S. ports took an unexpected turn, with imports sinking 1.4% in another sign of the slowing of the economy. Imports of items as diverse as toys and tiles could also be lower in September and October, when retailers will be stocking shelves for the holidays, because shell-shocked shoppers are expected to continue to pull back. Entry point click to enlarge Graphic Is trade boom over? click to enlargeThe falloff "reflects the consumer-demand-driven weakness in the U.S. economy," said Paul Bingham, an economist with...