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Ad Hoc Fed, Treasury Acts Caused the Financial Crisis, Not Deregulation, Tax Cuts
Tweet Share on Facebook March 10, 2009 Comment (57)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
If you want to read a very short book on how we got into the financial crisis, I don't think you could do better than John B. Taylor's Getting Off Track: How Government Actions and Interventions Caused, Prolonged, and Worsened the Financial Crisis. Taylor argues persuasively that the Federal Reserve kept interest rates too low for too long in 2002-05 and that "government programs designed to promote home ownership, a worthwhile goal but overdone in retrospect," together with the credit that was plentiful because of unduly low interest rates created the housing bubble.
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Back to the Future on Online News
Tweet Share on Facebook March 9, 2009 Comment (1)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Amazing. Here's a TV report from 1981 on how you can read a newspaper on your home computer. The economics have changed. It cost $10 to download the paper then (without pictures or comics) versus virtually nothing now.
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Britain's Double Standard on Islamist Extremist is National Suicide
Tweet Share on Facebook March 9, 2009 Comment (4)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
In London the Centre for Social Cohesion has brought legal action to seek an arrest warrant for Islamist extremist and Hezbollah spokesman Ibrahim Moussawi if he enters Britain. The Centre's head Douglas Murray points out that the Home Office barred Dutch parliamentarian and filmmaker Geert Wilders from entering Britain, but has twice allowed Moussawi to do so. The Telegraph points out that the British government has a double standard, extending great tolerance to violent Islamists while cracking down on those who point out that they are violent. This seems something like national suicide to me.
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Why Don't the Unemployed In Detroit Get Jobs in Ann Arbor? They Lack the Skills
Tweet Share on Facebook March 9, 2009 Comment (15)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Great interactive graphic from the New York Times showing December 2008 unemployment by county. Where is it highest? To the best of my mouse's ability to discern, the answer seems to be Imperial County, California (22.6 percent). This is the agricultural Coachella Valley, a majority-Hispanic area. Second highest, according to my mouse, is Baraga County, Michigan (20.6 percent), in the old mining country of Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
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When Will Microsoft Word Stop Making Obama Into Osama?
Tweet Share on Facebook March 9, 2009 Comment (6)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
By the way, when is Microsoft Word going to stop offering autocorrecting for Barack and Obama? They're pretty commonly in use these days. The number one choice for Barack is Barrack and the number one choice for Obama is—get this—Osama. Or am I just using a too-old version of Word?
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Minnesota Voters Are Split on Whether to Redo the Coleman-Franken Senate Election
Tweet Share on Facebook March 6, 2009 Comment (24)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
According to Scott Rasmussen, Minnesota voters tend to believe Al Franken will be elected to the Senate, but are split evenly on whether there should be a rerun election.
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Detroit's Racial Intolerance: John Conyers' Wife Banishes White Witnesses
Tweet Share on Facebook March 6, 2009 Comment (18)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Detroit City Council President Monica Conyers, wife of House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, presides over a hearing where white witnesses are advised to leave the room. Congressman Conyers joined the Judiciary Committee in 1965, when the Chairman was Emanuel Celler and the ranking was Republican William McCulloch, co-sponsors of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. What would they have thought of this? As a nation, we have become more tolerant and inclusive in the years since 1965. Detroit, alas, seems to have moved in the opposite direction.
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Obama's Dangerous Appointment to the National Intelligence Council
Tweet Share on Facebook March 6, 2009 Comment (10)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Good column by Rich Lowry on the execrable Chas Freeman appointment to be chairman of the National Intelligence Council. Lowry aptly notes, "Freeman was ambassador to Saudi Arabia, the most lucrative diplomatic posting in the world because the ambassadors usually end up in the employ of the Saudis after leaving public service." Usually, but not always. It's worth taking a moment to remember the late Hume Horan, who served as Ambassador to Saudi Arabia but afterwards avoided lucrative employment by the Saudis and was recalled at the insistence of King Fahd. Here is a remembrance published by the Middle East Policy Council, together with some of Horan's writings. Here is another from the Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs. Here is his obituary in the Washington Post. By all accounts, a remarkable man. And a reminder to those of us inclined to disparage the Foreign Service, that it contains some remarkable people.
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Obama's Radical Scheme Puts Country At Risk While Financial System Collapses
Tweet Share on Facebook March 6, 2009 Comment (16)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Obama's radicalism is the theme of Stuart Taylor, mild-mannered centrist. Great quote: "The house is burning down. This is no time to water the grass." Charles Krauthammer makes the same point at greater length:
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The Upscale Party: Obama's Budget Gives Republicans a Shot With Wealthy Voters
Tweet Share on Facebook March 5, 2009 Comment (10)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
In National Review Online Ramesh Ponnuru and Reihan Salam take issue with me very politely (they call me a "distinguished political journalist") on whether the Republicans should go upscale or downscale. I say (tentatively) upscale, they say (with intelligent qualifications) downscale. It's a thoughtful article, and one worth pondering for a long time. Let me indicate where I agree and disagree.
