Open thread for this weekend.

This will teach them, right? H.R. 6377 directs CFTC to use all its authority, including its emergency powers, immediately to curb the role of excessive speculation in the energy and swaps futures markets and take other corrective actions as necessary to eliminate any market disturbance that prevents energy markets from accurately reflecting the forces of […]

Rick Newman of Useless News and World Report busts some myths. And gets to the heart of the “speculators” issue: Many companies, for instance, want to lock in the price they’re going to pay down the road for petroleum products and other supplies they need to run their businesses. So they make agreements with suppliers […]

Calculated Risk has not done his usual analysis of the monthly personal income report from this morning, so I will take it on myself to comment. Essentially it repeats the earlier retail sales report that consumers are spending their rebates.Real personal consumption rose 0.4%. this compares to these recent monthly growth rates: Dec… -0.1Jan… +0.2Feb… […]

I had thought the following had been published as part of this series, but in the course of comments on XXIV see that it wasn’t. Instead it was written in the month before I got privileges here. But it dovetails neatly into discussion of the newly released Issue Brief No. 5: Social Security Reform: Strategies […]

Everyone investing says: Anything you can do, I can do better!

by coberly In a recent thread about global warming it was stated, accurately, that the concentration of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere was 0.035%. One reader commented with what seemed like a sneer that such a “trace amount” did not need to be taken seriously. Here are three small points about that: In a cubic […]

Former Dallas Fed President Bob McTeer lists the “bad thinking habits” that cause people to make irrational economic decisions. It promises to be a series of posts. The first might be subtitled “Never Look a $10 tie in the local currency.”

“This isn’t a matter of dissing Microsoft, but Intel information technology staff just found no compelling case for adopting Vista,” the person said. From here, h/t Felix.

For those of you not in the mood for numeric wonkery Biggs also points us to Furman’s response to Larry Lindsey’s Obama Turns FDR Upside Down. In an letter included in Obama’s Proposals for Social Security Considered Furman gives us this: There is much to disagree with in Larry Lindsey’s June 20 op-ed, “Obama Turns […]