matthutch

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    • Fri Nov 7th 15:58 PM
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      Free-Market Healthcare Falling Victim to Recession
      I don't understand what was meant by this statement:

      "Could it be possible that our free market healthcare system is rationing care just like the socialist systems?"

      Any resource with less than an unlimited quantity available for consumption needs to be "rationed" somehow. Healthcare is no exception. The difference between rationing with a market system (usually referred to as allocation) and rationing under socialism is who does the allocating. Under a market, resources are allocated based on prices that people respond to. Socialism allocates by bureaucrats/committee. Our current system of health care in almost no way resembles a market, let alone a free one.
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    • Tue Aug 5th 17:28 PM
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      Two Types of Speculation: One Harmful, One Not
      "The kind of speculation we should worry about is "bandwagon behavior." This is speculation that is disconnected from fundamentals. For example, suppose that people become convinced that [housing prices could go up indefinitely]. Even though this isn't true, suppose people become convinced that it is true through some sort of misleading information campaign, perhaps abetted by a media more interested in hyping controversy than in informing people of the facts."

      His thesis seems to be that because speculation based on incorrect information causes a misallocation of resources, it is bad. OK. Granted. So what? Did I miss his action step conclusion? Does he think this kind of speculation should be banned? Surely not. Who gets to decide what is good information and what is bad information? I hope he doesn’t think that people should be disallowed of an investment/speculation because they disagree with the accurate information police. Or maybe he simply prefers people should only be able to speculate on information that his wisdom deems accurate? This is nothing more than political hackery dressed up as economic analysis.
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    • Thu Jul 24th 10:26 AM
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      Bill Gross: The Housing/GSE Bill Is Best Way Out of Credit Crisis
      beat me to it, strad. don't you just love how one guy (or maybe a small group of guys at pimco) know that houses are too cheap and need to be "made" to go up? i trust the thousands of people out there buying homes. do you think a couple decades of success has contributed to mr. bill's "fatal conceit"?
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    • Wed Jun 25th 14:26 PM
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      Illiinois - Countrywide: Potentially Devastating
      this really scares me. i don't like government officials using their leverage to go after politically convenient targets. among the charges is that they relaxed underwriting standards. all this means is that they offered a lower rate than they would have otherwise or allowed them to borrow more than they would have otherwise. would i complain if countrywide lowered their standards for me so i could get a cheaper loan? would any of us complain if our credit card providers lowered their underwriting standards for our benefit? what about auto loan providers?
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    • Mon Jun 16th 16:14 PM
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      Defending the Vulture Funds
      I read your original blog post awhile back. Generally, I think people are OK with the profit motive unless you aren't "taking advantage" of someone. That could come in the form of "taking advantage" of the fact consumers have to buy gas for their cars (big oil), workers in third world countries need money to buy food to eat ("sweat shops"), and developing governments needed money so they entered into a contract to borrow that money and to eventually pay it back (vultures). They all seem to revolve around the idea that a company/investor has some moral obligation to abide by someone else's value system, regardless of the consequences of doing so.
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    • Fri Jun 13th 12:42 PM
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      Drilling in ANWR: What's Not to Like?
      i didn't say they all like us (in fact i admitted many don't). i simply said that there's a lot of difference between dislike and wanting them destroyed (and actually going through with the destroying). do you like your boss? a lot of us don't. that doesn't keep us from working for him or her, because we value the economic exchange. It doesn't matter whether or not you like the person on the other side of the exchange. in fact, greater economic integration actually goes a long way toward peace and international stability.
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    • Fri Jun 13th 11:29 AM
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      Drilling in ANWR: What's Not to Like?
      sorry: THEIR economic livelihood depends on us buying oil from them.
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    • Fri Jun 13th 11:16 AM
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      Drilling in ANWR: What's Not to Like?
      quick question: if the saudis want us destroyed, why don't they stop selling us oil right now? surely they know that not producing oil would cripple us beyond belief.

      another question: if they destroyed us (as well as our allies), who would buy their oil? the truth is, they may not like us terribly, but they know our economic livelihood depends on us buying oil from them. i think that the less we depend on them, the more likely it is that they try to do something to us - the costs are less.
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    • Fri Jun 13th 11:00 AM
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      Drilling in ANWR: What's Not to Like?
      a few points...

      why do we keep talking about our "addition to oil"? as far as i can tell, using the same logic, i'm addicted to all kinds of things: air, milk and bread, concrete and steel (looking out my office window at several buildings 30 stories +), etc. rather, I choose to use oil b/c its cheap.

      as far as the effect of drilling on the environment? first of all, we shown that with recent technology, the impact is minimal. second, we effect the environment every time we turn around. so what? so do animals. so does falling water. as far as science tells us, dinosaurs died by some crazy natural phenomenon. beavers build dams - cute; humans build dams - disgusting. why are humans less natural than anything else?

      so what if we run out of oil? as we run out, the price of oil will skyrocket. that, and that alone, is all the incentive we need to go to other options. the more expensive oil is, the better other option will be. so why, in the meantime, should we limit the use of our resources? we can see what hoarding of food has done for other countries. we don't need artificially higher priced energy.

      as for who benefits when we drill for oil in anwr? how about tax payers? the oil companies don't own the land right now. the land will be leased. and maybe we charge by the barrel for extraction. any money the treasury receives from selling the rights to extract is less money taxpayers will have to pay. (that of course assumes you think government will lower taxes; i personally think they'll simply spend more.)

      why so we need some kind of "race to the moon" type government-funded program? why are we as a society better off because we went to the moon? no one lives there. no one's close to living there. we don't vacation there. the government decided we needed to go there, so we spent a lot of money doing it. i'm sure there was some rocket or satelite technologies that were discovered in the process, but was it worth the cost? i'm skeptical that it was. i can't think of many (any?) technological directions the government has chosen for us that have been better at the process than the market.

      and to make a short list of our future energy sources and say "that's it" is ludicrous and shortsighted. how in the world can any of us predict the direction of energy? we can't predict what the market will do next week. energy innovation in 20 yrs? forget about it. didn't you see "back to the future"? using banana peels and beer cans was imaginary, but you can count on innovation. which speaks to one persons comments about t. boone pickens thoughts about the efficiency of wind. my belief is that you can't base the efficiency of an energy source right now on someone's investment. he's betting, just like al gore and others, that we will either 1) be mandated by government to use at energy (you don't think they aren't funding the green lobby, do you?) or 2) seriously run out of other energy sources at which time the relative efficiency of these energy sources will increase dramatically.

      sorry for the long post.
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    • Thu Jun 5th 17:48 PM
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      Why Cap-and-Trade Beats a Carbon Tax
      But isn't it only harder from a political standpoint? If senators and representatives want to go on record to help the environment and force Americans to pay the full price of the energy they consume, wouldn't we want that to be as transparent as possible? How much harder is it mechanically to raise (or lower) the tax rate than to raise (or lower) the cap? Depending on how the thing would be administered (and admittedly I don't know that), I assume, or hope, changes would go through the same process. (Surely the tax increase wouldn't go to the floor for a vote while cap-and-trade "tweak" would simply be delegated to the bureaucracy.) Part of my problem with cap-and-trade is that it would allow so much be done at a level unaccountable to voters.
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    • Mon Jun 2nd 11:36 AM
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      Windfall Profits for Big Food: Where's The Outrage?
      Answer: constituencies.
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    • Thu May 29th 12:33 PM
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      Greenspan: Bubbles Are a Necessary Part of Innovation
      Bubbles certainly come with innovation. Whenever a new innovation comes out, the marketplace will struggle to price it. Sometimes "the market" is wrong. Whether or not bubbles are "necessary", I don't know. I do know, though, that I wouldn't sacrifice our capitalistic method of discovering innovation for a world without bubbles.
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