Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Students who Whine Like This are not Long for Class

The Battle of Late January has ended, as Amazon yields, gracelessly: We have expressed our strong disagreement and the seriousness of our disagreement by temporarily ceasing the sale of all Macmillan titles. We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan’s terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over […]

Measuring Bubbles

Brad DeLong and John Cochrane agree on something. I must dissent. Delong and Cochrane agree that “The underlying decline in wealth from the housing bust was … around $400 billion. …” Indeed, relative to the size of the economy the losses during the crash of the dot-com bubble were four times as large. I object […]

Howard Zinn…not in our high schools either

Henry Giroux says of Howard Zinn: Howard was one of the few intellectuals I have met who took education seriously. He embraced it as both necessary for creating an informed citizenry and because he rightly felt it was crucial to the very nature of politics and human dignity. He was a deeply committed scholar and […]

Cui Bono? The Kindle

John Scalzi makes a clear case that Amazon’s determination to subsidize the Kindle is coming at the expense of Authors’s and their Publishers: This asinine jockeying over electronic book prices has very little to do with what’s actually good or useful for anyone other than the manufacturer of a piece of hardware… who also happens […]

Beware of Doug

Robert Waldmann The Congressional Budget Office is different from you and me. Their forecasts are authoratative — literally. The rules of the House and the Senate refer to CBO estimates and forecasts not some debatable underlying reality. Hence this slightly edited dialog Sen. Max Baucus, Chairman: [skip]We’re not in the old situation where Sen. Grassley […]