Could Ron Paul be considering a third-party run for the White House after the GOP primaries are over? After all, in 1988 he left the GOP to run as the Libertarian Party candidate. He is just ornery enough to do it again.

A hint of his dissatisfaction came last night during the CNBC debate when Chris Matthews asked him if he would promise "to support the nominee of the Republican Party next year." Mr. Paul's answer was a flat no. "Not unless they're willing to end the war and bring our troops home. And not unless they are willing to look at the excess in spending. No, I'm not going to support them if they continue down the path that has taken our party down the tubes."

When I saw Mr. Paul last Friday after a speech he gave to Americans for Prosperity in Washington, he was clearly feeling his oats on the public reaction to his stand opposing the Iraq war. He rejected my comment that his anti-war emphasis was crowding out his free-market message "Everything is tied to the war. It threatens our financial security as well," he told me. I left our brief encounter with the clear impression he wanted to continue to talk about his message well into the future beyond the GOP primary race.

Despite his libertarian views, a Paul third-party run might hurt the Democrats more than Republicans. If he emphasized his support for pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq immediately, he would trump Hillary Clinton on the left. If he talked about his support for drug decriminalization, he would clearly appeal to a constituency ignored by both major parties.

The logistics of a Paul run are also there. The Libertarian Party national convention doesn't meet until late May in Denver, and becoming its nominee guarantees a spot on 26 state ballots immediately. Another 20 state ballot lines are fairly easy to obtain.

Mr. Paul could, of course, retire from the House if he ran for president. But Texas law also allows him to both run for president and seek re-election to the House, thanks to a statute rammed through by Lyndon Johnson. The GOP primary in which Mr. Paul is being challenged for his seat is held in early March, well before he would have to publicly announce any third-party intentions. Nothing prevents him from running as, say, a Libertarian for president and a Republican for the House at the same time.

It's also likely that Mr. Paul might be the rare third-party candidate who could actually raise his own money. He took in over $5 million in the last quarter, exceeding the fundraising totals of candidates such as John McCain and Mike Huckabee. A chunk of his money comes from liberals such as singer Barry Manilow, and he might find himself the recipient of some support in a general election from anti-Hillary Democrats who deplore the grip of the Clinton clan on their party.

...Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid seems to have had a change of heart.... This is a little awkward for a party that has made income inequality a campaign staple. But the turnabout isn't so mysterious in an election season when Wall Street moneymen have made more than $6 million in political donations, with most going to Democrats, especially a certain Senator from New York. Hillary Clinton's main Presidential competitors, Barack Obama and John Edwards, were particularly dismayed yesterday at the bill's demise, as it happens. Though she'd endorsed the idea in the past, Mrs. Clinton was mum.

...The question is what happens if there are 57, or perhaps even 60, Senate Democrats in 2009. Somehow we doubt those Wall Street campaign checks will stop Mr. Reid then.

Revision was the watchword in the September jobs report. For August, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a statistically insignificant decline of 4,000 in non-farm payrolls, prompting the New York Times to run the headline, "Unexpected Loss of Jobs Raises Risk of Recession." Not for the first time, and probably not for the last, the loss of 4,000 has now been revised to a gain of 89,000. Imagine the corrected headline: "Unexpected Upward Revision in Jobs Raises Risk of No Recession."

Don Luskin's market outlook generally addresses the intermediate and long terms. His expectations for the market were mostly on-target with respect to overall market direction for 2001-2003, if somewhat early in calling the bottom. He has been over-optimistic for 2004-2006, but has recently turned pessimistic for the long term.

...there was sure a lot of lawyering going on across the blogosphere. One of the reoccurring themes here on AI is that too many investors act like lawyers, arguing their case from a predetermined point of view, and seeking out facts that support that point of view. Good investors act more like detectives, starting with an open mind and letting the evidence lead them to a conclusion.

Nouriel Roubini and Barry Ritholtz's posts on yesterday's NFP release both smack of lawyering. Both harped on the large increase in teaching/education jobs, which is a legitimate albeit limited point. If changes in the school calendar made measuring teaching jobs difficult, then indeed July and August reports were understated. So the bad news we thought we were getting in those months really wasn't as bad as we thought. I note that neither blogger wrote one word about the education job issue after either the July or August report...

In both cases, I can't help but feel as though the writer is looking for bearish news to report. When August jobs was reported as negative, both sounded the alarm that a hard landing was coming. But when August was revised higher because of a legitimate discrepancy in the data both bloggers dismissed the revision as a mere data discrepancy. You can't have it both ways.

...if you really want to make money in the investment game, drop your bearish (or bullish) view. And then examine the data with an open mind. Instead of imposing your own viewpoint, try instead to think along with the Fed. Read what they say, and then read between the lines of their statements. You'll find that your ability to forecast will improve dramatically.

Bear Leader: We all know why we are here today. TV wants a bear on every show. Now it is not just Bloomberg and Bubblevision. We also have to cover Fox. Meanwhile, our ranks are thin. It has been tough to be a bear. Some team members have even cut back on appearances. Your job is to change all that! Now let me hear it!

Cubs: Sub-slime! Sub-slime! Housing Led Recession!

Bear Leader: That's the spirit. Now you have all read the Bear's Guidebook, so this session should just be a review. Let's start with the economy. When you get a GDP report that looks good, find something wrong! Say that it will be revised. Find something wrong with the timing. If a quarter is lower than the past quarter, then the economy is "decelerating." This is beautiful because it is a big word that sounds terrible even if the rate of growth is OK. You can milk a bad quarter for months this way.

Cub: What if the next quarter is better?

Bear Leader: Easy. That's backward looking data. We look forward to the next quarter! The same with economic indicators. What is the best indicator?

Cub: Baltic Dry Freight? Dr. Copper?

Bear Leader: NO!! Those are the old indicators. Get the new playbook or you are off the team. We are going with industrial production and housing starts. Those are the only bad numbers recently, so use them.

Even as economists have derided the U.S. dollar as heading toward parity with Monopoly money, Monopoly money itself has held its value with marked consistency.

Price of Boardwalk in 1950: $400

Price of Boardwalk in 2007: $400

Concurrent decline in the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar: 87%

Recommendation: Not only would the switch to monopoly provide the US with a more stable currency, but it would also grant the Fed even further control over the economy by enabling them to set the “house rules.” By determining the “Free Parking Rules” and financial outcomes from such events as “rolling snake eyes” and “landing directly on Go”, the Fed could steer the economy with even greater precision. Too little liquidity? Just tell the “banker” to actually become a bank and provide loans rather than solely acting as a cash register. More research is needed, but there seem to be real and compelling reasons for the US to switch to the Monopoly currency

Well, Friday's dismal jobs report showed that the Bush boom, such as it was, has run its course.

Bradford (1997) reports the following exchange between Sen. Paul Sarbanes and Alan Greenspan: “The Senator could scarcely believe his ears. ‘Now my next question is, is it your intention that the report of this hearing should be that Greenspan recommends a return to the gold standard?’ Greenspan responded, ‘I’ve been recommending that for years, there’s nothing new about that. . . . It would probably mean there is only one vote in the Federal Open Market Committee for that, but it is mine.’”

Bradford, B. (1997) “Alan Greenspan and Ayn Rand.” The American Enterprise Magazine (September/October).

Milton is often cited, starting with Time magazine in December 1965, for the famous quote: “We are all Keynesians now.” However, we learn from the Memoirs that the quote was taken out of context to change the meaning. The full statement reconstructed by Milton in a letter to Time in 1966 is: “In one sense we are all Keynesians now; in another, nobody is any longer a Keynesian.” Milton explains that the first sense refers to the rhetoric and style of macroeconomic analysis — Keynes essentially invented macroeconomics as a distinct field. The second sense applies to substantive implications; specifically, to the idea that (almost) no one now advocates the simplistic policy activism recommended in Keynes’s General Theory. Although the second observation is more significant, the first one got most of the press.