Newmark's Door

Interesting brief analysis of whether current business buybacks of stock are "too high". With a story about the East India Company I hadn't heard before.

John Cochrane summarizes, and largely agrees with, a recent paper by Larry Kotlikoff ont the cause of the Great Recession.

In my view, the understanding that the crisis was a run, that without a run there would have been no crisis, somewhat like the 2000 tech stock bust, and that lots and lots more capital is the only real answer, has emerged slowly over the last 10 years. Larry's essay is good for putting all the others to rest.

Link via Arnold Kling.

UPDATE: In a short piece Kotlikoff makes his case. But he refers to "leverage and opacity" as the cause and misses a better phrase. A commentator I read once stated that almost all financial crises are the result of "leverage and lies".

I seem to remember 20+ years ago when Deep Blue beat Kasparov, a number of folks predicted that almost no one would want to play chess anymore. Oops. Is this a metaphor for the much-feared AI takeover of society?

The first three minutes of this video present the questions. I agree, they are a lot of fun to present Liberals with. (Some of the last twelve minutes discusses the origins of the Great Recession--and Barney Frank's underemphasized role--and is also interesting.)

Take a refresher course in U.S. history, Bernie. Does the name Woodrow Wilson ring a bell?

After the circus of the last few weeks, cheer yourself up and watch this. (7 minute video.)

Or this, in which Justice Scalia destroys the "What about Brown v. Board?" objection to originalism.

Or "Lecture (Q&A only) Justice Antonin Scalia," just for the sheer fun of it.

How anybody could seriously think this is beyond me. But Russ Roberts does a nice job of explaning why the proposition is false.

It's amazing what people can do even in the absence of guidance from our all-knowing federal government.

Did you know that between 300,000 and 500,000 people left Lower Manhattan Island by boat on September 11, 2001? The boat-lift was spontaneous, self-organized for the most part, and has been relatively unsung. The Coast Guard eventually acted as sort-of-coordinator, but had little or nothing to do with the efforts at first.

Review by Amity Shlaes of a new book . (If it doesn't come up right away, click refresh on your browser.) I learned some things about Mr. Willkie.

But the power of Willkie’s arguments forced the Republican Party away from isolationism, and the Willkie movement shamed Roosevelt into softening his anti-business stance.

It's qualitatively the same point that's been made here a few times: there is a big difference between capitalism and crony capitalism.

UPDATE: link added. Thanks to commenter elliott for the correction.