“We calculate the costs and benefits of the largest ever U.S. Government intervention in the financial sector announced the 2008 Columbus-day weekend. We estimate that this intervention increased the value of banks’ financial claims by $131 billion at a taxpayers’ cost of $25 -$47 billions with a net benefit between $84bn and $107bn. By looking at the limited cross section we infer that this net benefit arises from a reduction in the probability of bankruptcy, which we estimate would destroy 22% of the enterprise value. The big winners of the plan were the three former investment banks and Citigroup, while the loser was JP Morgan.”

Economics and Public Policy

• How to Destroy American Jobs, by Matthew Slaughter

“Obama’s proposals for increasing the tax burden on U.S.-based multinationals would harm our most dynamic companies.”

• From bail-out to bail-in, by Paul Calello and Wilson Ervin

“…Paul Calello, the head of Credit Suisse’s investment bank, and Wilson Ervin, its former chief risk officer, propose a new process for resolving failing banks.”

• Stop! (from The Economist)

“The size and power of the state is growing, and discontent is on the rise.”

Foreign Policy

• Where Is America in Asia’s Future?, by Claude Barfield

“Recent events and trends within Asia may well portend a stepped up pace for Asian regionalism—and heightened danger that the United States will find itself on the outside looking in.“

Politics

• How to Make a Weak Economy Worse, by Amity Shlaes

“FDR’s war against business showed that a president must choose between retribution and economic recovery.”

The Economy

• Why the Recovery Will Be Robust, by David Ranson

“It’s the normal V-shaped bounce after a deep recession.”

Economics and Public Policy

• The Crack-up, by Vincent Reinhart

“The administration might be settling for superficial progress on financial reform to avoid being on the wrong side of public anger; a better approach would channel the anger into making meaningful reform.“

• The Runaway Subsidy Train, by Wendell Cox

“In some corridors, ‘high-speed’ rail won’t be much faster than trains in the 1930s.”

Politics

• The Obama Contradiction, by Peggy Noonan

“Washington is sick and broken—and it can solve all our problems.”

• The Obama Spell Is Broken, by Fouad Ajami

“Unlike this president, John Kennedy was an ironist who never fell for his own mystique.”

Terrorism

• The handling of the Christmas Day bombing suspect: the scandal grows, by Charles Krauthammer

“The real scandal surrounding the failed Christmas Day airline bombing was not the fact that a terrorist got on a plane — that can happen to any administration, as it surely did to the Bush administration — but what happened afterward when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was captured and came under the full control of the U.S. government.”

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“After having just delivered his first State of the Union speech, it’s a good time to look at what the Intrade markets are predicting for President Barack Obama in 2010.

Much has been made of the President’s falling approval ratings, which according to Real Clear Politics currently stand at 48.7% – a similar rating to both Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan after their first year in office. The Intrade markets suggest this rating will likely hold steady for the immediate future. There is 73.5% probability the President’s approval rating will remain above 45% at the end of March, and a 43.6% chance it will climb to above 50%. The figures for the end of June paint a similar picture: a 75.0% chance of an approval rating above 45% and a 40.0% chance it will be above 50%.

The continuing lack of cooperation from Republicans and the loss of that key 60th Senate vote will make it tough for the President to advance his domestic agenda in 2010. The market gives his heath care reforms only a 34.0% chance of being passed before the end of June. Another of his signature policies, a cap-and-trade system to regulate carbon emission, currently only has a 19.9% probability of being established. Early trading also suggests the President will be unable to close Guantanamo Bay detention camp before the end of the year.

What about the economy? The market shows it should continue to grow, with a 90.1% probability of positive growth in Q1 of 2010 and a 86.0% probability of positive growth in Q2. The chance of the economy slipping back into recession during 2010 are only 18.7%. But according to the market, unemployment will continue to be a problem. There is a 65.1% probability the unemployment rate will remain above 9.5% at the end of the year, and a 44.9% probability it will climb above 10.0% at year-end. The stock market is not expected to see significant growth. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has 56.0% chance of staying above 10,000 and a 49.1% chance of being above 10,500 at the end of 2010.

2010 is shaping up as a tough one for President Obama. And to top things off the Democrats will most likely be operating with reduced Congressional majorities after November’s mid-term elections. The bright side? The market shows a 58.4% chance he will be re-elected in 2012.”

I also highly recommend Russ Robert’s Econtalk website, which provides an ongoing set of podcasts featuring (see http://www.econlib.org/library/About.html#econtalk) “…one-on-one discussions with an eclectic mix of authors, professors, Nobel Laureates, entrepreneurs, leaders of charities and businesses, and people on the street. The emphases are on using topical books and the news to illustrate economic principles. Exploring how economics emerges in practice is a primary theme.”

Economics

Peter Schiff provides some fascinating commentary on the American Samoan economy and the assortment of unintended consequences associated with the imposition of the federal minimum wage by the US Congress (recorded January 17, 2010):

Financial Crisis and Public Policy

• The President’s Bank Reforms Don’t Add Up, by Peter Wallison

Wallison’s analysis seems quite clear; specifically, that in failing to properly differentiate between banks and bank holding companies, an unintended consequence of the “Volcker Rule” may be that banks will be incentivized to overinvest again in real estate, thereby virtually guaranteeing yet another bank crisis in the future.

Foreign Policy

• Clinton for Haiti Czar?, by Mary Anastasia O’Grady

“If the country is ever to develop it will need less cronyism and more transparency.”

Health Care Reform

• It’s dead, by Keith Hennessey

Keith Hennessey officially pronounces Obamacare as Dead on Arrival, and also provides a interesting example of Photoshop!:

Humor

• NBC Will Regret Appeasing Leno, by Joe Queenan

“Conan was the Czechoslovakia of late-night TV.”

Politics

• The New Political Rumbling, by Peggy Noonan

“Massachusetts may signal an end to old ways of fighting.”

I would like to offer, as an antidote to Patterson’s article and video, Steven Shreve’s October 2008 Forbes article entitled “Don’t Blame the Quants”.  Steven Shreve is the Orion Hoch Professor of Mathematical Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University, where he has built one of the world’s leading quantitative finance educational programs.  Professor Shreve notes that:

“It is easy … to point an accusing finger at the “quants” on Wall Street, that cadre of mathematics and physics Ph.D.s who crunch numbers in esoteric models. Without the quants, the complicated mortgage-backed securities that fueled the housing bubble and led to the freezing of credit might not have been created…To prevent a recurrence of financial crises, some call for a return to a simpler time, before derivative securities and the quants who analyze them–a time when investors bought stocks and bonds and little else. Such complaints miss the point (italics added for emphasis). When a bridge collapses, no one demands the abolition of civil engineering. One first determines if faulty engineering or shoddy construction caused the collapse. If engineering is to blame, the solution is better–not less–engineering. Furthermore, it would be preposterous to replace the bridge with a slower, less efficient ferry rather than to rebuild the bridge and overcome the obstacle.”

I completely agree with Professor Shreve’s perspective on the role played by “quants” during the financial crisis.  The problem was not with the technology per se.  Rather, the problem involves a combination of poor managerial judgment coupled with perverse managerial incentives.  It is difficult to exercise sound judgment about financial engineering and risk management when top management views risk models as black boxes which exist for the purpose of printing money.

Finance

• Restoring Faith in Financial Markets, by John C. Bogle

“It is time institutional investors exerted control over publicly held companies.”

Financial Crisis and Public Policy

• Obama’s Double-Dealing Bank Tax, by Holman Jenkins

“…it’s a formula for turning the banks into what Fannie and Freddie have become: profitless channelers of taxpayer-guaranteed money into whatever loss-making loans politicians happen to want made.”

Foreign Policy

• To Help Haiti, End Foreign Aid, by Brett Stephens

“For Haitians, just about every conceivable aid scheme beyond immediate humanitarian relief will lead to more poverty, more corruption and less institutional capacity.”

Health Care Reform

• Health Care Is Hurting Democrats, by David Brady, Daniel Kessler, and Douglas Rivers

“How can a little known Republican run a competitive Senate campaign in Massachusetts? The culprit is the unpopularity of health reform, and it means that Democrats will face even worse problems later this year in less liberal places than Massachusetts.”

Public Policy

• Missing the Target, by Martin Feldstein

Harvard Economics Professor Martin Feldstein provides a critical assessment of Obanomics…

• The U.S. Isn’t as Free as It Used to Be, by Terry Miller

“Canada now boasts North America’s freest economy.”

Lately, the upcoming (January 19) United States Senate special election in Massachusetts has become particularly interesting because up until the past couple of weeks, the Democratic candidate (Martha Coakley) was heavily favored to defeat the Republican candidate (Scott Brown).  Below, I list the time series graphs for the MA.SPEC.SENATE.DEM and the MA.SPEC.SENATE.REP contracts that are currently trading on intrade.com.  The MA.SPEC.SENATE.DEM contract is a (100,0) bet on Martha Coakley winning this special election, whereas the MA.SPEC.SENATE.REP contract is a (100,0) bet on Scott Brown prevailing.  Both contracts were initially offered on this exchange in September 2009, but only since the beginning of 2010 has there been much interest in trading these contracts.  

MA.SPEC.SENATE.DEM

 
MA.SPEC.SENATE.REP

Lately there has been strong momentum in Brown’s favor, and as I write this, the MA.SPEC.SENATE.REP contract is up 13 points from its previous (1/15) close of 41, whereas the MA.SPEC.SENATE.DEM contract is down 12.5 points from its previous close of 61 (note that that the contract prices can sum to slightly more or less than 100 because trades are non-synchronous).  The price change since earlier this week has been quite dramatic, going from a roughly 80/20 advantage for Coakley to the present situation which indicates a slight advantage probabilistically for Brown.  Anyway, it will be obviously very interesting to see how this election plays out!

Foreign Policy

• Obama Contra Niebuhr, by Joseph Loconte

“Supporters of President Obama’s ‘moral realism’ are unaware of many elements of Reinhold Niebuhr’s political theology.“

Health Care Reform

• The Health Lady Has Yet to Sing, by Kim Strassel

“ObamaCare is still no sure thing.”

• The High Cost of No Price, by Veronique de Rugy

“Economists have shown that if a good’s price is zero or decreasing, then the demand for this good will likely increase. In 2008, consumers were only directly responsible for 11.9 percent of total national healthcare expenditures, down from 43 percent in 1965, according to new data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. This means that someone other than consumers pays roughly 88 percent of all healthcare costs, giving consumers little incentive to mind costs and much incentive to over-consume.”

Politics

• Slug the Obama Story ‘Disconnect’, by Peggy Noonan

“He and the public are on different pages, if not in different books.”

• One year out: President Obama’s fall, by Charlkes Krauthammer

“What went wrong? A year ago, he was king of the world. Now President Obama’s approval rating, according to CBS, has dropped to 46 percent — and his disapproval rating is the highest ever recorded by Gallup at the beginning of an (elected) president’s second year.”

Public Policy

• The Green Con Job, by Dustin Chambers and Dan Ervin

“The U.S. economy is sensitive to high energy prices. An aggressive push toward green power would result in the net loss of millions of jobs. There is a better way forward.“

Terrorism

• Don’t panic. Fear is al-Qaeda’s real goal, by Fareed Zakaria

“In responding to the attempted bombing of an airliner on Christmas Day, Sen. Dianne Feinstein voiced the feelings of many when she said that to prevent such situations, “I’d rather overreact than underreact.” This appears to be the consensus view in Washington, but it is quite wrong. The purpose of terrorism is to provoke an overreaction.”