Quotes of the day

Bankruptcy doesn't make assets -- such as factories, machines, contractual options to buy raw materials, workers' skills -- disappear. If markets still exist for products produced by these firms, Chapter 11 is the best way to discover this.--Don Boudreaux

I think that the CEO's at Freddie and Fannie were in a better position than anyone else to stop the madness. But if your idea of a housing system is to build up two firms with enormous power and count on them to exercise that power judiciously, then you might want to rethink your model.--Arnold Kling

... the [payroll] tax cut stimulates demand not only by increasing disposable income and consumption spending (the textbook Keynesian channel) but also by incentivizing more investment spending. A similar result might obtain if the tax cut included, say, an investment tax credit. ... My advice to Team Obama: Do not be intellectually bound by the textbook Keynesian model. Be prepared to recognize that the world is vastly more complicated than the one we describe in ec 10. In particular, empirical studies that do not impose the restrictions of Keynesian theory suggest that you might get more bang for the buck with tax cuts than spending hikes.--Greg Mankiw

New Yorkers are Democrats, and even the terrors of the 70s and the revival of the 90s weren't enough to change that.--Bryan Caplan