By Adam Bitely Petition To the 111th Congress of the United States Whereas, the United States Congress has otherwise appropriated, committed, borrowed, and printed some $10 trillion throughout 2008 and into 2009 over and above the regular budget, and Whereas the bulk of these funds have been used to...

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Martin Wolf - FT.com What has Japan's "lost decade" to teach us? Even a year ago, this seemed an absurd question. The general consensus of informed opinion was that the US, the UK and other heavily indebted western economies could not suffer as Japan had done. Now the question is changing to whether...

I feel a bit like Judas Iscariot. When Mary Magdalene poured expensive fragrant oil over the Messiah's feet, Judas was irked and complained that the money could have been better spent on the poor..... Jesus put him in his place: “For the poor you have with you always, but Me you do not have always...

Part of my continuing attempt to think through the Decline of the Chicago School--here I try to argue that Milton Friedman tried too hard to sell a stable nominal money growth rule as a laissez-faire policy, and thus undermined the ability of his students' students to actually say anything coherent ...

There’s a quote from an unattributed USAF Major at Ben Tre (detailed in personal detail here) describing the logic of destroying an entire village while attempting to rout a deeply embedded Vietcong: “[It] became necessary to destroy the town to save it[.]“ I don’t disagree w...

When you sign up for a checking account, most banks automatically enroll you in a "courtesy overdraft protection" program. This program means that the bank will approve overdrafts from your ATM or debit card — and charge you a $35 fee for each transaction, etc. But what if you don't want the s...

I just love all the cute acronyms they use. Is there a MILF fund, perhaps? Release Date: February 3, 2009 For release at 10:00 a.m. EST The Federal Reserve on Tuesday announced the extension through October 30, 2009, of its existing liquidity programs that were scheduled to expire on April 30, 2009....

A correspondent critiques my overexcited critique of John Cochrane: I read your blog post today on John Cochrane’s new article, and I think you are misreading him.... Look at the first paragraph in the section entitled “A monetary argument for fiscal stimulus.” In the end, John con...

FROM ACLU.org What is Section 215? Section 215 allows the FBI to order any person or entity to turn over "any tangible things," so long as the FBI "specif[ies]" that the order is "for an authorized investigation . . . to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities....