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Media Infiltrations: TARP Looking More Criminal by the Minute  National Review Online April 24, 2009 Death By Rescue National Review November 17, 2008
"What has been your worst blogging experience? "That's a guy who actually stalks me on the Web and once stalked me personally." "I'm saying this...guy's a jerk."
 The Great Depression and the New Deal Eric Rauchway What I'm listening to:  Langley Schools Music Project What I'm watching:  There Will Be Blood What I'm playing:  Speed Racer Order these from Amazon.com at Amazon's normal low prices... and a fraction of your order goes to help support this site. Thanks!
Thanks to Irwin Chusid, public editor.
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Chronicle of the Conspiracy
Join us as we discover, document, expose and challenge the bad people, the bad institutions and the bad ideas that stand in the way of wealth creation -- and show you how to fight back!
Thursday, September 27, 2007
THE MAESTRO AND THE JUICE: THE INTERVIEW Alan Greenspan and O. J. Simpson talk about their books and the art of writing:Simpson: I loved your book, by the way.Thanks to our monetary affairs correspondent "Irrational Exuberance".Greenspan: Thank you.
Simpson: As I was reading it, I was thinking to myself, He’s writing in a whole new voice, isn’t he?
Greenspan: After years of testifying before Congress, I thought it might be interesting to try something in English.
Simpson: I also thought your book was fascinating, not just for what you said but for what you chose not to say. For example, when you were chairman of the Federal Reserve, didn’t you get a lot of tail?
Greenspan: I’m a happily married man.
Simpson: (laughing) I’ll take that as a yes! Seriously, though, N.F.L. players get buckets of ass, but being able to cut the lending rate—that must make the ladies horny as hell.
Greenspan: (laughing) As I used to say when I was at the Fed, it is my policy not to comment on rumors.
Simpson: Touché.
Greenspan: The first draft of my book actually had a lot of steamy sex scenes in it, but my publisher was afraid they wouldn’t stock it at Wal-Mart.
Simpson: Don’t get me started on publishers. Have you seen my book’s cover? They made the “If ” in the title so small it looks like the title is “I Did It.” I mean, talk about exploitative. It’s like if Herman Melville’s publisher printed “Moby” in tiny letters so that people would think the book was called “Dick.”
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 6:34 PM | link
JOKE OF THE DAY
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 10:09 AM | link
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
KUDLOW REPLAY Here's the YouTube video, in which Michael Metz wins this week's coveted Omigod Award for Self-Mutilating Argumentation. Here's his case against my view that inflation is a mounting risk:...they've [i.e. the new wealthy in emerging markets] learned owning dollars, owning dollar debt instruments, is a bad thing. They're now transferring that money whether it's to gold, maybe to buy Bear Stearns, maybe to buy oil in Canada and so forth, and this is one of the great movements in the world, and I think it's profoundly significant.Hmmm. Oh yes. Profoundly significant, indeed, yes yes. But how is that anything but a case for rising inflation? Wait... there's more of profound significance (and the same argument for inflation, all over again).
I think there's a flight from currencies into other stores of value...
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 9:16 PM | link
HILLARY: BATTLE-HARDENED, DECORATED
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 10:38 AM | link
CONSCIENCE OF A LIBERAL How nice it must be, to be Jonathan Chait, who, while not a trained economist, has a job at the New Republic writing about economics, and who, secure in that job, can write about economics (not being trained in that field) without worrying about whether other people have jobs:
For most people, the alarming thing about a prospective recession is the possibility of losing their jobs or not getting a raise. For me, it's the horrifying thought that I'm going to have to go back to refuting the same tax rationales I was refuting six years ago...Thanks to Jameson Campaigne for pointing out this particular bit of limosine liberalism.
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 7:44 AM | link
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
"THE PROBLEM IS THE NET" The Wall Street Journal edit page takes a principled view of the mess the New York Times and MoveOn.org have found themselves in:...the Times's passion for regulating everyone else's speech has now boomeranged, with politicians calling for an investigation into its favor to MoveOn. This is getting to be a bad Times habit: Recall its campaign for a special counsel to investigate media leaks that turned into a probe of its own sources and led to judicial rulings that limited press freedom.House Oversight and Government Reform Ranking Member Tom Davis (R., Va.) wants hearings on whether the MoveOn discount represented a contribution in violation of campaign finance laws, and whether those laws are actually enforceable. Mr. Davis is indulging in some partisan opportunism here, and we wish instead that he was explaining that the problem is not that these organizations slipped through some campaign finance net. The problem is the net.
The DailyKos argues that it qualifies for the "commentary" exception under McCain-Feingold, while the Times would presumably qualify under the newspaper exception. Anyone who reads either one quickly figures out that they are both stalwart supporters of the Democratic Party and liberal causes. This is their right, but it's hard to see why their political speech deserves any more special legal protection than that of Big Labor or the NRA. As for the Times's ad discount, we also don't see why it shouldn't be as protected as the paper's inevitable endorsement next year of Hillary Clinton for President. Won't that be an "in-kind" political contribution worth at least a few thousand dollars?
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 8:02 AM | link
Monday, September 24, 2007
KUDLOW REPLAY Here's the YouTube video from last week's in-studio appearance.Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 10:23 AM | link
BRAVO HOYT! New York Times "public editor" Clark Hoyt delivers an uncompromising condemnation of the paper's discounted publication of MoveOn.org's "General Betray Us" advertisement:
FOR nearly two weeks, The New York Times has been defending a political advertisement that critics say was an unfair shot at the American commander in Iraq.But I think the ad violated The Times’s own written standards, and the paper now says that the advertiser got a price break it was not entitled to...
...MoveOn.org paid what is known in the newspaper industry as a standby rate of $64,575 that it should not have received under Times policies. The group should have paid $142,083. The Times had maintained for a week that the standby rate was appropriate, but a company spokeswoman told me late Thursday afternoon that an advertising sales representative made a mistake.
...the ad appears to fly in the face of an internal advertising acceptability manual that says, “We do not accept opinion advertisements that are attacks of a personal nature.”
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 7:40 AM | link
Sunday, September 23, 2007
WILL THE REAL MR. THOMPSON PLEASE STAND DOWN? I can't believe I hadn't realized this before, but the villainous president of the United States in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged is named Thompson -- and we have a candidate this election cycle by the same ominous name. Here's a YouTube video exploiting this coincidence, dramatizing John Galt's famous speech at the climax of Rand's book, in which he throws President Thompson off the air and addresses the nation himself. Here it's Fred Thompson who gets pre-empted.Thanks to Rick Gaber for the link.
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 3:15 PM | link