Economic Notes

John Rutledge is noting that capital availability is getting hit right now, after working through the asset market (check the Baltic Dry Index portion).  This is still following an Austrian cycle and the consumer demand hit has yet to come, though retailers are already predicting a weak Christmas season.

Arnold Kling has Unpresidential Remarks which make me want Kling to be President.  He’s absolutely right on all of these points, I would say.  Government should stop trying to screw things up with the cockamamie bailout (which is just getting worse and worse, with Democrats trying to bail out the auto industry and Paulson not having any idea of what’s going on) and just allow the market to adjust.

The Austrians at NYU have a new blog:  ThinkMarkets.  My hope is that they’ll update it regularly.

Steven Horwitz, writing a response on Cato Unbound to Roderick Long’s article, makes a good point that corporatism and corporate welfare are terrible ideas, but in his “let’s make peace with the left here” plea, he forgets that it’s the left that came up with corporatism and corporate welfare to begin with.  That is, after all, a goodly portion of “third way” systems (including Italian fascism).  If libertarians could use intellectual judo to get the left to remove oligopoly-forming market restrictions, bully for them, but as far as I can see it, it’d be like teaching a scorpion not to sting, for it is in the nature of the leftist to desire control and centralization (having “the best people” running things, as they can do anything).

Finally, this is not quite related to economics, but here’s the best solution to the Guantanamo Bay problem that I’ve heard.  There’s no way it could fail!