URLs du Jour

2010-01-16

  • The Washington Post documents one must-include phrase for our (at least) four year Obama Drinking Game: 'Let me be clear'. (There's video narrated by reporter Alec MacGillis, entertaining, but also a good argument that some reporters should stick to the keyboard.)

  • Genius Harvard Econ Prof makes a (weak) case for Obama's bank tax proposal. If I may summarize: it's like insurance for future government bailouts for big banks, even though it's being sold as a payback for past bailouts. Mankiw argues that the taxpayer will always bail out too-big-to-fail banks, so equity demands that banks pay for this extra protection.

    I don't really buy it, but Mankiw may convince you.

  • The editorial writers at the WSJ are more convincing to me, though.
    The White House has spent months imploring banks to lend more money, so will President Obama's new proposal to extract $117 billion from bank capital encourage new bank lending?

    Just asking. Welcome to one more installment in Washington's year-long crusade to revive private business by assailing and soaking it.

    The WSJ also points out a number of "too big to fail" entities that wouldn't be hit by the tax: GM, Chrysler, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac.

  • Mark Steyn writes about the MA senate race for the Orange County Register. I liked this especially:
    You don't need to have been in an actual coma. Subscribing to The Boston Globe, the unreadable and increasingly unread Massachusetts snooze-sheet, has much the same effect. As the house organ of a decrepit one-party state, the Globe endorsed Martha Coakley with nary a thought using its Sober Thoughtful Massachusetts Election Editorial template ("[INSERT NAME OF CAREERIST HACK HERE] For Governor/Senator/Mayor/Whatever") and dutifully obscured what happened when one of the candidate's minders shoved to the sidewalk a reporter who had the lese majeste to ask an unhelpful question. If you're one of the dwindling band of Bay Staters who rely on the Globe for your news, you would never have known that a Massachusetts pseudo-"election" had bizarrely morphed into a real one – you know, with two candidates, just like they have in Bulgaria and places. On Friday, the paper finally acknowledged that something goofy was happening: As the revealing headline put it, "Race Is In A Spinout." As in "spinning out of control"? You mean, out of the control of the party and its dopey media cheerleaders? What they really mean is that the Democrats' coronation procession is in a spinout.
    Yeah, that reminds me of the Globe, and why I stopped subscribing to it. But read the whole thing.

  • On a related note, Curt Schilling confirms that he's not a Yankees fan.