Quotes of the day

Children resemble their parents. When the resemblance is physical, we usually think it's funny or cute. But when the resemblance is financial, it's an Issue.--Bryan Caplan

"Live free or die!" sounds like a battle cry: We'll win this thing or die trying, die an honorable death. But in fact it's something far less dramatic: It's a bald statement of the reality of our lives in the prosperous West. You can live as free men, but, if you choose not to, your society will die.--Mark Steyn

If James Biden were to bring in a $100 million pension-fund investment, a $10 million “placement fee” would be payable immediately. In the end, no such fees were paid. But it gives you an idea of (a) how profitable hedge-fund investments are, for funds-of-funds; and (b) how big the incentives are for middlemen to go out and sell hedge funds to big investors.--Felix Salmon

For the time the [unemployment] rate was under 6%, [stock returns] showed an annualized real return of 3.7%. When the rate was over 6%, the real return jumped to 17.3%.--Eddy Elfenbein

He promised to stop the crazy deficit spending, cut up the credit cards, live within our means. And he did exactly the opposite. Schwarzenegger increased spending faster than we saw under Gray Davis.--Tom McClintock

Correct me if I’m wrong, but [Nancy Pelosi and the Congress] likes the CIA telling Bush the WMD dirt was all wrong, which means the Dems have to figure out when they want the CIA to be telling the truth, and when they want the CIA to be lying. --Jules Crittenden

... if you are going to use research by a brilliant Nobel-Prize winning new Keynesian economist in order to attack discredited ideas, then makes sure the discredited ideas being attacked are not . . . your own.--Scott Sumner

All this drivel in the blogosphere about velocity, multipliers, liquidity traps, Ricardian equivilence, budget constraints, etc, etc, are merely verbal tools that can be wielded to achieve any desired outcome. It’s an insiders game. The real battle is elsewhere.--Scott Sumner

It's pretty clear that scientists who have a lot vested in the current model of Lyme (their careers, possible malpractice accusations), have at least for now won the debate. It's not quite so clear that they should have. And the government imprimatur has done a lot to seal the fate of the dissidents. This is all standard stuff to anyone who's read The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. But those revolutions happen because there are multiple possible centers of power. The government has the ability to potentially shut the revolutionary centers down.--Megan McArdle