Conor Clarke

The Financial Times editorializes about the future of newspapers like the Financial Times:Perhaps some of the reporting done up to now by for-profit papers will in future be funded by foundations or trusts. But the industry should not lose faith in the free market. When people really want or need something, they will pay for it, one way or another."When people really want or need something, they will pay for it, one way or another." This argument comes up a lot… More »

And Greg Mankiw is appalled. More »

The Wall Street Journal editorial page is upset that Maryland raised its income tax on millionaires. So after bragging about how all the millionaires had left the state, and then conceding that the recession probably just reduced the number the millionaires, the editorial page decides to make this truly odd argument against progressive taxation:No doubt the majority of that loss in millionaire filings results from the recession. However, this is one reason that… More »

It's mildly frustrating that when the Washington Post has a chance to interview Tim Geithner, the Secretary of the United States Treasury, the first question they ask about the administration's policies is: "How is this not socialism?" But it is surely just one big, festering national embarrassment that that the Republican Party actually considered a resolution to rename the Democratic Party the "Democrat Socialist Party" and passed a resolution urging the… More »

Paul Krugman says Robert Samuelson is a hypocrite because Samuelson is tediously, incessantly worried today about the long-run solvency of the social security trust fund, but isn't so worried about the long-run destruction of the planet via climate change. I have the feeling Samuelson wouldn't agree that the two situations are analagous, but let's assume Krugman is right on the merits: You can't play Cassandra with social security and Zeno with climate change. So,… More »

Via Mickey Kaus, here's an interesting paragraph buried in a Wall Street Journal story about Design Within Reach:Just getting people into stores can be difficult at a time when self-indulgent shopping has lost its allure, says Jim Taylor, vice-chairman of Harrison Group, a market research firm. Dr. Taylor has just completed a consumer study for American Express Publishing that suggests the wealthy no longer really enjoy shopping. What's more, their new,… More »

I'm quite impressed by this attempt from some conservative bloggers (Don Surber, Say Anything, etc) to turn the absolute least controversial aspect of Barack Obama's tax proposals into a thriving scandal. Say Anything says "Obama's tax changes are so burdensome and complicated that foreign investors are actually thinking about pulling out of American markets." Don Surber says simply that "Obama wants to dump free trade." What on earth are they talking about? More »

I'm sure Megan McArdle will have something to say about this, but since I think she's on vacation (could be wrong about that) I thought I'd note that New York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt has weighed in on the Edmund Andrews flap, which spun out of Megan's post on his wife's bankruptcies. And since Hoyt spends all of one paragraph on the subject, I can just reproduce that here:On Thursday, [Andrews] came under attack from a blogger for The Atlantic for not… More »

This New York Times magazine piece by Matthew B. Crawford -- which makes the case for working with your hands, rather than working in the more abstract realms of "information" -- has lots of lovely food for thought that I can't really do justice in a blog post. But this is the business of writing blog posts, so let's give it a shot. Simplifying somewhat (and acknowledging that the process of simplification is one Crawford's piece explicitly rejects) the piece has… More »

Congress is wrong. We should let college students go into debt. More »

What's wrong with credit cards? More »

That's five CEOs in four years. More »

Derek is making some good points here about sin taxes, but wanted to add two notes about taxes on alcohol and taxes on sugary beverages, since the Senate Finance Committee is on the verge of trying to increase them. (Or, in the case of sugary beverages, introducing them for the first time.) If we're going to tax booze and soda, what's the best way to do it? And what will we have left to drink? More »

Remember that spat between Jim Cramer and John Stewart? The one where Stewart called Cramer a "dartboard that talks"? The one that burned with a length and intensity that deserves its own Wikipedia entry? Well here's something interesting: Via Ezra Klein and DealBook, I see that two professors at Northeastern have released a new study of Cramer's stock picks (pdf here) and found that he doesn't do so badly. A hypothetical Cramer portfolio had a 12.1% annualized… More »

The New York Times, May 13, 2009: "Thriving Norway Provides an Economics Lesson" The New York Times, this morning: More »

I really like the New York Times new Room for Debate blog, but the discussion of the new credit card legislation they've had running for the past couple of days is a bit of a mess. The first contributor, Dave Ramsey, says his preferred method of regulation is a pair of scissors: "Cut them up!" He goes on to write that "There is no positive side to credit card use" and "There is nothing a credit card can do that you can't do with a debit card." Huh? Ramsey wouldn't… More »

It was no doubt painful for the Economist when it half-conceded, a couple of issues ago, that maybe the French economy is doing something right. The French! Somewhere between the socialized medicine and the runaway state planning, they managed to create a series of automatic stabilizers that kept unemployment from shooting through the roof and demand from the falling through the floor. This led to a hearty round of round of soul-searching about various European… More »

The Economist lists the cons and pros of the American recession:But has the Great Recession made things worse? In theory, it could do. Slumping investment may slow the pace of innovation. Soaring government debt could raise interest rates. Higher taxes, designed to reduce the debt, might dull incentives to work and invest. More regulation, in finance and beyond, could deter innovation. Workers' skills may atrophy as a result of joblessness. On the plus side,… More »

Parsing the new Michael Lewis piece. More »

Do they go up together? More »