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Obama's Threat to Charities and Universities: His Budget and Taxes
Tweet Share on Facebook February 27, 2009 Comment (20)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
In the 1830s Alexis de Tocqueville identified as one of this country's great strengths Americans' propensity to form voluntary associations. It remains one of America's great strengths today, one which distinguishes us from every other nation. But it is under attack from the Obama administration. As the Wall Street Journal reports:
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A Mortgage Securities Fix: Instant Online Financial Data
Tweet Share on Facebook February 26, 2009 Comment (23)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Another interesting article from Wired presents a proposal I have been trying to come up with. The problem with mortgage-based securities is that no one can value them because no one knows what's in them. My idea has been that in order to have transparency, we should regulate the markets the way the Chicago Board of Trade started regulating the grain futures market years ago—separating grain into four (or some similarly low number) grades of grain and declaring all grain within that category fungible. In Wired Daniel Roth has a far better idea:
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Wall Street Became Over-Dependent on Numbers, Lost Touch With Reality
Tweet Share on Facebook February 25, 2009 Comment (18)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Several economic blogs have pointed me to this excellent article by Felix Salmon in Wired on the Gaussian copula devised by mathematician David X. Li in 2000. This was a mathematical formula to quantify risk that "was adopted by everybody from bond investors and Wall Street banks to ratings agencies and regulators. And it became so deeply entrenched—and was making people so much money—that warnings about its limitations were largely ignored." It turns out that the formula underestimated the risk of many homeowners defaulting on mortgages at the same time. A method which was useful for insurance actuaries—for estimating the likelihood that a person whose spouse had died would die earlier than the actuarial tables would lead one to expect—turned out to be unreliable.
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Intellectual Honesty Among the Not So Intellectual House Democrats
Tweet Share on Facebook February 24, 2009 Comment (1)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Mickey Kaus endorses writer-and-labor-lawyer Tom Geoghegan for Congress. He's running in the Illinois 5th district special election to succeed Rahm Emanuel. I concur!
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Why the Census Is Important
Tweet Share on Facebook February 23, 2009 Comment (3)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
As a footnote to my column on the Census, here is Peter Baker's good piece on why the Census is important to politicians.
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Michigan Voters Favor Auto Bailout for Chrysler, GM in Poll, Unlike Rest of Nation
Tweet Share on Facebook February 23, 2009 Comment (12)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Not surprisingly Michigan voters tend to favor government loans to General Motors and Chrysler. But only by a 52-36 percent margin; I would have thought it would be higher. On this, Michigan is out of step with the nation, which is 44-33 percent against the loans.
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California Liberal Gentry Empowers Unions to Plunder the Private Sector Economy
Tweet Share on Facebook February 23, 2009 Comment (5)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
A pretty definitive take on the decline of California from Joel Kotkin. The chief culprits today: "the gentry liberals and the public sector." On the former:
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Major Healthcare Overhaul Less Likely for Obama Now Than When Daschle Pulled Out
Tweet Share on Facebook February 23, 2009 Comment (2)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
The White House may abolish its health czar position before it is even filled. According to this Politico article, Barack Obama is reluctant to hire Nancy Ann Min DeParle for this post. Actually, she's highly qualified. She was head of HCFA (now CMS) in the Clinton administration. But she's also held some private sector positions since then that apparently make Obama wary about her. Which raises the question: where do you find highly qualified people who haven't had any experience in the private sector? This leads me to suspect that the chances for major health care legislation are even less than when Tom Daschle withdrew from his nominations to be HHS Secretary and White House health czar.
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Foreclosures Are a Regional, Not a National Problem--Half Are in Four States
Tweet Share on Facebook February 20, 2009 Comment (13)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
A very interesting Web posting from stateline.org shows the foreclosure rates in each state from December 2007 to January 2009.
What's fascinating, when you look at the numbers, is how geographically concentrated the foreclosures are in a few states. Only nine states have foreclosure rates (number of foreclosures per 5,000 housing units) above the national average. Four states have massive high foreclosure rates—the four Sand States, as some call them:
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Obama Is High in Polls, But Issues Like Mortgage and Auto Crises Help Republicans
Tweet Share on Facebook February 19, 2009 Comment (14)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Some interesting results from pollster Scott Rasmussen.
