October 11, 2009
Britain's Central Planning Death Panels
October 11, 2009
Free Market M.D.
October 11, 2009
Economies of Scale in Compliance
October 11, 2009
Balan's Challenge
October 10, 2009
The Pleasure of Telling Others What to Do
October 10, 2009
Gonick the Great - and How He Could Have Been Greater
October 9, 2009
More Scott Sumner
October 9, 2009
Not From The Onion
October 9, 2009
Thoughts on a Second Stimulus
What the hell is Obama saying?
I think both Obama and Cowen are doing what philosopher Harry Frankfurt describes in this essay:
http://www.gwinnettdailyonline.com/articleB5BD6D4417AF444DBD8F9770AA729B26.asp
Cowen, put down the Kool Aid! Obama does a great job of parroting what his economic advisers have to say when he wants to sound knowledgeable about the economy. If he's not in "sound knowledgeable about the economy mode," he spouts pseudo-populist protectionist left-wing nonsense that belies his ignorance of economics. I honestly don't think he knew much, if anything, about economic theory before he started running for President.
I appreciated that he was straightforward about providing finance for the U.S. economy vs. Wall Street securitization as a U.S. comparative advantage. How much economic policy is aimed at making sure that we have finance for the American people and how much of it about having Wall Street
export financial services to the rest of the world?
Tyler’s comment, whether he realizes it or not, is more of an indictment of economics than praise for Obama. It reminds me of the exchange that took place between Chris MacNeil and Father Damien Karras in the movie, The Exorcist:
MacNeil: I thought you were supposed to be an expert on this.
Karras: There are no experts. You probably know as much about possession as most priests.
Canada requires insurance to be purchased on high-loan-to-value mortgages, so subprime mortgages account for less than 5 per cent of Canadian mortgage lending.
http://www.bankofcanada.ca/en/speeches/2008/sp08-16.html
If the US had a hard-and-fast regulation against >80% LTV mortgages, I suspect the whole real estate bubble would not have grown to such levels, nor would so much principle have been lost in defaults.
"If the US had a hard-and-fast regulation against >80% LTV mortgages, I suspect the whole real estate bubble would not have grown to such levels, nor would so much principle have been lost in defaults."
Then poor people wouldn't be able to afford housing that they can't afford and then companies like Freddie Mac and Frannie Mae wouldn't have had millions to donate to politicians pockets to get the votes of those that can't afford the houses they now live in...
Señor Econotarian wrote:
If the US had a hard-and-fast regulation against >80% LTV mortgages, I suspect the whole real estate bubble would not have grown to such levels, nor would so much principle have been lost in defaults.
Principal was lost in defaults.
Principle was lost in the bailout.
(And why not set the threshold at 90% LTV? That way my initial mortgage would still have been legal. By the time I refinanced, the LTV was more like 60%.)