Once again, Tyler Cowen disappoints. His piece in the New York Times is a defense of the latest welfare proposal from the central planners – universal 401k accounts for the poor, with the rest of us providing the “match” through government redistribution. Of the current proposals to address income inequality, the universal 401(k) is the [...]

A gentleman’s interesting post about political capitalism on an email list put me to some thoughts while I drove home tonight. What about accounting scandals? Enron, yes. That’s what people talk about. But I’d offer a suggestion that what folks deem The Enron Problem is not best pigeonholed as “Enron” nor “Enron-Worldcom stuff,” but rather, [...]

I bought a really fun book at the airport, to read on the way home – The Tao of Warren Buffett. This book is full of the words of wisdom from the mouth of Warren Buffett – that is, his words on business, not politics, as those words are far less brilliant. I’ll start out [...]

Mr. Jospeh Rago, an assistant editorial features editor at the Wall Street Journal, doesn’t like blogs. In fact, he likens the world of blogs to an unchecked democracy that is in need of checks and balances. Mr. Rago’s problem is in thinking that only someone who has pushed a pencil in a candy-ass journalism program [...]

A true story from my friend Sheryl. The kiddies had a Christmas party at (public) school, and the mothers showed up to bring food, participate, etc. So the kids are going to play Christmas bingo, and her son’s fifth-grade teacher asks the kids to raise their hands, offer some Christmas words, and she will write [...]

Looks like I’ll get into a tit-for-tat with the “starve-yourself” crowd. I wrote about this NY Times piece two months ago because I was so horrified when I saw the photo of Mike Linksvayer, a CR (calorie restriction) advocate. Someone just sent me this piece from Mr. Linksvayer – he has a blog – wherein [...]

My latest Amazon review goes like this: I have been waiting to purchase the ideal portable speaker system for iPod. Then the mm50 happened. Oh sure, it doesn’t sound quite like the Bose, however, it’s one-third the price of the Bose. I have wanted something that is very portable and has crystal clear sound that [...]

I was impressed to see the great headline in the Wall Street Journal today: The Bloomberg Diet: The nanny state reaches into the kitchen. Accordingly, the article notes that Michael Jacobson’s Center for Science in the Public Interest, an activist, consumer advocacy group that has been striving for the trans fat ban in New York, [...]

Mr. Eliot Spitzer, every free man’s most hated prosecutor, has spoken out against the possibility of revamping the Sarbanes-Oxley regulations that are strangling business in America. In the world according to Spitzer, the current regulatory environment may need some ‘tinkering,” though, he says, it is not legion of rules or massive compliance costs that are [...]

Bill Bonner hits a grand slam: A man can make a fool of himself whenever he wants. Generally, he pays the price himself and the rest of the world goes on with its business. But in order to get a real public spectacle going you need to separate cause from effect. Because it is only [...]