Jun
22
2007

URLs du Jour

2007-06-22

  • Elizabeth Warren is a Harvard Law School professor, and she has a Big Idea: to create a federal "Financial Product Safety Commission" to—as you might guess—bring additional regulations to the financial sphere. The title of the linked article, "Unsafe at Any Rate," is obviously meant to leech off whatever good feeling today's "progressives" have for Ralph Nader's 1965 book Unsafe at Any Speed and the regulatory onslaught it inspired. Probably she doesn't detect the irony of the "progressive" rehashing of 42-year-old memes instead of coming up with anything actually innovative.

    And Professor Warren is postitively giddy over at TPM Cafe, where she reports that John Edwards, presidential candidate, has embraced this idea (although he's renamed it the "Family Savings and Credit Commission"). "John Edwards has stepped up," she swoons. "Will other candidates join him?"

    But another prof, Don Boudreaux, has an excellent response to this, packaged as a letter to the editor:

    If such a commission does its job, I suggest that the first dangerous financial product that it attacks be Social Security. Not only are Social Security's returns lousy; not only does the institution providing it have no sound plan to keep it solvent; not only does this institution intentionally mislead its clients about its insolvency (witness its discussions of the illusory "trust fund")—but its "customers" are forced to buy it. THAT is a dangerous financial product!
    "Indeed."

  • The US Senate passed an energy bill last night. Andrew Roth calls it "an amalgamation of bad ideas." For Iain Murray, it's a "disastrous move". More:
    It avoided the worst proposed excesses, the $28 billion tax hike and an increased mandate for expensive, inefficient renewable power, but includes a 36 billion gallons mandate for miracle fuels that don't exist yet, new efficiency standards for appliances, etc., much higher CAFE standards but no automatic increases after 2020, and criminalizes "unconscionably excessive" gasoline prices. The result will be much higher prices for gasoline, appliances and less-safe autos, but not (for now) for electricity.
    And both of New Hampshire's senators voted for it. Moan.

  • I never metaphor I didn't like: "Sure enough, a quick check revealed that the boxes were, indeed, completely empty."

  • Yes, that last item contained, arguably, a pun. The people responsible have been sacked.

  • Four words: Photo by Steven Spielberg.


Last Modified 2012-10-19 12:52 PM EDT