August 29, 2007 by Tom Armstrong.

Here’s an article from John Stossel on some new health care rankings.

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August 29, 2007 by Tom Armstrong.

You’ve got to love the NY Times. Here’s the typical leftish spin in a Times editorial today on the recent release of poverty data. It begins with the typical doom and gloom statement:

The economic party is winding down and most working Americans never even got near the punch bowl.

It concludes with suggestions that will put us on the path to utopia–and insults the present administration:

This stilted distribution of rewards underscores how economic growth alone has been insufficient to provide better living standards for most American families. What are needed are policies to help spread benefits broadly — be it more progressive taxation, or policies to strengthen public education and increase access to affordable health care.

Unfortunately, these policies are unlikely to come from the current White House. This administration prefers tax cuts for the lucky ones in the top five percent.

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August 29, 2007 by Tom Armstrong.

The opinion section of today’s WSJ has a good write-up on global warming news, and Burton Folsom writes that Mexico needs more property rights protections and American-style robber barons, as opposed to “political entreprenuers” like Carlos Slim.

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August 29, 2007 by Tom Armstrong.

From today’s WSJ, section C1:

Forget about Scylla and Charybdis. In the next few days, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has to set a course between market mayhem and the “Greenspan put.”

 The Greenspan put is the idea that, in times of crisis, the Fed will step in to bail out financial-market participants with lower interest rates, as it did in response to the Russian debt crisis in 1998, when Alan Greenspan was at its helm.

The term was coined in early 2000 by Credit Suisse trader Steve Kim, then a derivatives analyst at Merrill Lynch, and popularized by Pimco economist and fund manager Paul McCulley. A put option insures investors against losses. Both men felt that the belief the Fed would similarly insure investors against losses whenever markets got rocky encouraged risky investment behavior.

With markets again in turmoil, there’s been a cry from some Wall Streeters and corporate head honchos lately for the Fed to lower short-term interest rates to settle frayed nerves.

 The Fed took a step in that direction this month when it lowered rates on borrowing from its discount window. The more widely used federal funds market could be next. Fed- funds futures contracts, which price off of interest-rate expectations, show investors are nearly certain the Fed will cut its target fed funds rate by a quarter point to 5% next month.

But as they head off to their annual symposium at Jackson Hole, Wyo., this weekend, Fed officials may try to disabuse Wall Street of the notion. As ING Investment Management economic advisor Jim Griffin recently put it, the Fed “doesn’t want to embed a ‘Bernanke put’ in market mythology, or otherwise validate the irresponsible lending that produced the current mess.” (My emphasis)

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