Supported by the way by the other Bush Administration, after that other stock market meltdown:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,970673,00.html

Posted at September 16, 2008 9:41 AM in response to Medicine for Wall Street: A Financial Transactions Tax

MM is in cold storage, and I'm in Information Retrieval.

Posted at September 10, 2008 11:07 AM in response to Palin Calls for Drilling in FDIC

No point in drilling, there's nothing there but IOUs.

Posted at September 10, 2008 11:01 AM in response to Palin Calls for Drilling in FDIC

Wilentz told lies about Nader during past elections. Any who took note then are less surprised at his more recent antics.

Posted at August 28, 2008 4:05 PM in response to Another One Bites the Dust

That hit the spot.

Posted at August 12, 2008 10:46 AM in response to Are the Dinosaurs of Free-Market Fundamentalism Headed For Extinction?

We still need to explore the interpenetration of the predators with the Clinton Administration, particularly in the realm of high finance.

Posted at August 11, 2008 1:09 PM in response to The Shackles of the Predator State

Small correction: I'm no longer employed at EPI.

Posted at August 11, 2008 11:25 AM in response to This Week At Cafe

I'm with Purple State & Ebbet.

Imagine borrowing a ton to buy stock of equal value. If it goes up, you sell, repay the debt, and pay tax on the capital gain (which should really be taxed as ordinary income, but that's another story).

If it goes down, you hand the stock to your creditor and say bye-bye, no skin off my nose? I don't think so. Note the lender gets to write off the busted loan as a loss; a loss on one side has to be a gain on the other. The capital loss is the lender's, not the speculating home-buyer's.

If the borrower had flipped the house for a profit and repaid the debt, they would (and should) owe tax. The loss they incur with no debt forgiveness is consumption they must forego. Hence debt forgiveness is (and should be) consumption and taxable.

If they bought the second home with their own money and sold it for a loss, that would be a capital loss that could be used to offset capital gains (or ordinary income, if a gain was taxed like ordinary income).

The moral of the story is that you should not be borrowing an amount that is large compared to your net worth for investment purposes.

Posted at May 30, 2008 10:10 AM in response to A Huge (and Unfair) Tax Bill on Top of Foreclosure

Andy -- My post was directed at RP's post, not at the book in toto, which as I noted I've barely begun. Though in general RP gets a little too worked up about the excesses of the 60s left. Just a little. By the way, I wouldn't call urban civil disorders -- without doubt a social cataclysm and political watershed -- an expression of 'the Left,' or any left for that matter.

I've acknowledged that those left of center were political vulnerable to the crime issue, partly on substantive (albeit debatable) grounds. But if this was an absolute deal-breaker why, as RP has noted, did the Dems do well in the 1970 off-year elections?

Jay (luv ya on Eschaton) -- RP's long suit is political and cultural history. Radical left ideas, not so much. He seems to conflate Nixon's political fortunes with the shortcomings of the left -- again I'm not judging the book. Lord knows the left was jam packed with deficiencies, but there was more there as well.

The crux of the matter: left ideas and analysis now and then are not that all-fired different in basic outline. Naturally there is a mountain of new material. To discount the past is to neglect sharp criticism of the present incarnations of "the left" -- the ideologically moderate blogosphere and its 'netroots.'

There's progressive and there's pwogwessive. We need both, but more of the former relative to the latter.

Ted -- "Mr Sawicky"? I'm not playing shuffleboard yet.

Posted at May 27, 2008 4:23 PM in response to Taking the Adversary Seriously: History and Condescension

I had been saving the book like a rich dessert, but I finally dipped in and appreciate it. But this commentary is deficient.

The Right, back in the day, was not advancing the sublime thoughts of Russell Kirk or Ludwig Von Mises. Their "ideas" were states rights and the destruction of nascent nationalist/socialist movements, governments, and leaders in the developing world. These ideas were contemptible and deserved condescension, not least because of the implicit endorsement of the attendant violence and misery. As Ellen of the bewitching eyeball notes, justifiable rage amplified the condescension.

Mr. Buckley knew how to behave himself in personal relations, but he also projected vicious, demagogic idiocy in his public pronouncements. (I can tell you Pat Buchanan is very affable in person too.) DeLong has treated us to a running series on the obscenities in the National Review. One I remember is a headline greeting the demise of Adam Clayton Powell: "The jig is up." Even so, Buckley was taken seriously enough for a substantially liberal audience to propel his show "Firing Line" on public television.

RP conflates the historic underestimation of the political appeal of the Right with leftist intellectual narrowness. But the Right did not advance on the basis of intellectual popularity. It advanced on the backs of race, as any glance at the changing electoral map will attest. In light of the wipeout of Goldwater, there was some reason to suspect another lightweight B-movie actor had limited horizons as well. Presently we observe disdain for acumen of Mr. Bush, not least from RP; is that intellectual narrowness?

A secondary point, liberals' political vulnerability on law and order I venture to say was part liberals are soft on blacks and blacks commit crimes, part reaction to numerous, justifiable acts of non-violent civil disobedience, and part unfounded faith in the deterrence of incarceration relative to rehabilitation. Of course there was crime and there was violence from parts of the Left. There is something there, but less than RP makes out.

Posted at May 27, 2008 9:05 AM in response to Taking the Adversary Seriously: History and Condescension