Current Affairs Feed

"Chicago: A City in Freefall"

This is nicely put by John Di Leo:

In nearly every other arena of life, we see people and organizations in a competitive environment rise to the challenge.  When a sports team gets better, its rivals do, too.  They have to.  When a restaurant or department store becomes more popular, its competitors across the street or across the mall quickly up their game as well, offering better value, better service, better quality, better ambiance — whatever it takes to win back the customers they’ve lost.

Only in politics do we see this apparent disinterest in results.  Only in the sphere of state and local governments do we see politicians uninterested in the decline of their cities, the indigence of their population, the loss of opportunities for the generations to come.


"20 Years to Disaster"

"The United States has about 20 years for corrective action after which no amount of future tax increases or spending cuts could avoid the government defaulting on its debt."

Related:

There's No Easy Way Out of This Debt Spiral.

What it would cost to stabilize the soaring national debt.

Underlying US Budget Gap Doubled in Latest Year. (Shows the sources of this increase.)

The Real Scandal in Washington Is the Government's Reckless Spending.


"Weekly Market Pulse: Dark Matter"

Joseph Calhoun of Alhambra Investments tacitly supports Milton Friedman:

I am constantly amazed that economists who consider themselves staunch capitalists, believe that, given sufficient information, they could do what they firmly believe socialists and communists cannot. Namely, to shape the economy through policy, fiscal and/or monetary, to produce a better outcome than the market left to its own devices. 


"Who benefits from rent control? Evidence from San Francisco"

Key paragraph:

In the long run, landlords’ substitution toward owner-occupied and newly constructed rental housing not only lowered the supply of rental housing in the city, but also shifted the city’s housing supply towards less affordable types of housing that are likely to cater to the tastes of higher income individuals. Ultimately, these shifts in the housing supply seem likely to have driven up citywide rents, damaging housing affordability for future tenants.