Newmark's Door

But they are doing very important work.

It's not so much they don't "want to," of course, it's just that it would be so very, very difficult. Since almost everything they do affects almost every company in the U.S., a ban would mean that our distinguished servants probably wouldn't be able to sock their huge wealth into . . . stock!

Hmmmmm. Let me see . . . 

Good question. One answer:

Why then would anyone buy an Illinois municipal bond, or accept a state contract that requires future payments, or move a business to the state, or keep a business in the state, or do anything else that required faith in the willingness or ability of the state to pay its bills? The only possible answer is that Illinois isn’t Greece; it’s Spain or Italy, an entity so big and important that its failure is inconceivable. When it hits the wall, Washington will have no choice but to step in and cover its unfunded pensions and teacher salaries and muni bond interest. In the same way that a Spanish bond is really a German bond because Germany has no choice but to make good on it, the big insolvent US states are wards of the central government.

Duke finance professor Campbell Harvey's answer: Germany.

Or not much, anyway: Mel Kiper's "Re-drafting the 2006 draft class".

A useful collection.

. . . and maybe very soon to be gone. You probably saw this in last Friday's WSJ: "No Need to Panic About Global Warming". But you may not have seen Burt Rutan's follow-up.

Or, even more important, this from the Daily Mail: "Forget global warming - it's Cycle 25 we need to worry about (and if NASA scientists are right the Thames will be freezing over again)". (Link via Instapundit.)

Dr Nicola Scafetta, of Duke University in North Carolina, is the author of several papers that argue the Met Office climate models show there should have been ‘steady warming from 2000 until now’.

‘If temperatures continue to stay flat or start to cool again, the divergence between the models and recorded data will eventually become so great that the whole scientific community will question the current theories,’ he said.

As a public service the Door will accept nominations for the Next Terrible, Awful Crisis We Must Spend Lotsa Money On should AGW fizzle.

Funny. And yes, being a university administrator largely stinks. That's one good reason why there should be fewer of them.

Link via John Whitehead at Environmental Economics. 

Argument that Governor Walker's attempt to rein in public-sector unions in Wisconsin is--OMG!--saving money.

And compare and contrast: Wisconsin and Buffalo. 

How much evidence does anybody need?

Sounds like a guy worth rooting for. I'm favorably disposed toward anyone who quotes The Old Man and the Sea.