Quotes of the day

... Bernanke's reappointment (a good idea) is running at 70, Waxman-Markey is running at 50, and health care reform at 35, c'mon people get the volume on those Intrade contracts up.--Tyler Cowen

If you want your [goods] to be manufactured using primitive technology so that they cost a lot, then buy local--Arnold Kling

... the number one thing a scholar needs is the ability to sit still for a very long time.--David Steinmetz

It’s a shame what politics does to really smart people.--Michael Cannon

... [Woodrow] Wilson’s economic policies were perhaps the worst in American history. He presided over the creation of the Fed and the income tax, which went from 0% to something like 70% while he was president. In the long run the Fed may have been a good thing, but there can be no doubt that 1913 was premature, we didn’t know anywhere near enough about monetary policy to warrant a central bank meddling in the gold standard. He presided over a period of very high inflation after WWI, when we actually needed somewhat lower prices. Then we had a severe depression in his last year of office.--Scott Sumner

... without help from his rich daddy and rich friends, this cocky, arrogant, smart-aleck [John Maynard Keynes] would have fallen on his face, ended up digging ditches somewhere and we would never have heard of him. But he did have a rich daddy, who bailed him out. ... Don’t anyone write in and tell me that Keynes made lots of other good investments, because if you’ve got a rich backstop, none of that matters.--Scott Sumner

From what I can tell, the only threats from Harvard are the thing where the dudes dress like ladies and give awards to James Franco, and that one guy who tried to embarrass Matt Damon in a bar in front of Minnie Driver, about which I'll just say, Not cool, Harvard.--Michael Schaub

Yike. Forcing up energy costs doesn't create jobs? Who knew?--Tom Maguire

As Ricky Gervais once said after the wildly critical success of "The Office": "Something has to be your best work." On the other hand, it is the compulsion of any creative mind to constantly strive for something new and fresh; I don't think it is possible to be truly fertile without the conviction that your best work is ahead of you. --David Shenk