Quotes of the day

The [Obama housing] plan is moderate, and in today’s atmosphere, I view moderation as a triumph.--Ed Glaeser

Instead of rewarding the mortgage cheats, the government should bail out the honest and hardworking taxpayers who put their money in 401(k)s.--Don Surber

... can we claim a tax-deduction for our neighbors’ mortgage interest too?--Edward Stafford

Suppose you spent $1 million every single day starting from the day Jesus was born — and kept spending through today. A million dollars a day for more than 2,000 years. You would still have spent less money than Congress just did.--American Issues Project

Is the Department of Justice taking court orders seriously these days?--Judge Emmet Sullivan

Starting last September, our country has gone through six months that shook the world. We have abandoned free markets. We have abandoned democracy, in the sense of having policies that reflect the popular will. The United States has become a technocratic dictatorship.--Arnold Kling

One word that is extremely unpopular in aid documents but has great historical resonance on “power to the people” is “liberty.” Neither the 347 page World Bank 1998 “Participation Sourcebook” nor the 372-page World Bank 2006 “Empowerment in Practice” ever mentioned the word “liberty.” The poor cannot have liberty, but they can have lots of empowerment and participation and ownership and civil society. I’d rather have liberty myself.--William Easterly