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

For the Record, No: A Review Too Late

Were Lawrence Summers what his critics say he is—a political hack with an inflated sense of his own skills that is matched only by his sense of entitlement, accompanied by a grotesquely non-realistic view of his accomplishments—this is precisely the letter he would write. Felix, who was The Voice of Reason on this  before and […]

The Last Economist to Understand that Bad Policy Has Ill Effects

Nobel Memorial Prize Winning Economist James Heckman has a piece in the Opinionator section of the NYT (is that a printed section, by the way, or online-only?) that reveals the lie behind the farce that is Arne Duncan’s “leadership”:  Children raised in disadvantaged environments are not only much less likely to succeed in school or in […]

About that Alleged Decline of CNN…

There has been a bit of breast-beating among the blogsphere about how CNN has become shite. A few weeks ago, it was All Zimmerman, even as trains crashed and wars broke out. (See here and here, for instance.) I’m just not convinced it has changed that much. As the Most Profound Philosopher of Our Generation […]

Academia.edu Coding Fail

I was going to write a post called “Barack Obama Fellates the Shark, then Wonders Why It Bites Off His Lower Half,” but decided instead to go for comedy instead of pointing out that the 2014 midterms are going to make 2010 look like the peak of LibDem activism. Academia.edu is “a place to share […]

The Ledeen Doctrine – Who Do We Invade Now?

by Mike Kimel Back in 2002, Jonah Goldberg wrote this in the National Review: So how does all this, or the humble attempt at a history lesson of my last column, justify tearing down the Baghdad regime? Well, I’ve long been an admirer of, if not a full-fledged subscriber to, what I call the “Ledeen Doctrine.” […]

Catch of The Day: Tim Duy

Carpe diem, indeed: Mr Bernanke’s own appointment in 2005 was a case in point. There were several candidates that year. According to people involved, then-President George W. Bush leaned towards Martin Feldstein, a former economic adviser to Ronald Reagan…. But Mr Feldstein was a director of the insurance company AIG, which restated five years of […]

Milton Friedman was Correct. Especially about his Alma Mater.

As my 35+-year wish to be an alumnus of a Big Ten school* approaches fruition, it is, perhaps, time to see what the cost of that ambition has been. Not to me; I got my Masters in Economics from the same school that granted Elizabeth Warren her J.D., and I don’t regret a moment of […]