I think we need a Fox News to English dictionary

Dick Cheney famously said that, "deficits don't matter". Well Fox News has taught us that definitions don't matter. First, they merged the words "socialism" and "fascism" together and carelessly defined them as any government intervention in the economy, no matter what. Now, it seems that "secularism" and "paganism" have been conflated:



Of course, if religious belief is important to economic growth than that relationship should hold within Europe, as well as between Europe and the US. Is there any evidence for this? Not that I've seen. Northern Europe is more secular than Southern Europe, and is also more prosperous. Nor does this hold outside of Europe. East Asia, despite being relatively secular, has seen enormous economic growth over the past 40 years. In the Middle East, Iran was quite rich until theocratic rule took over in 1979; but then again, the Fox News crew might call Iran a "fascist state", or complain that only Christianity is good for economic growth.

I could go on, but this conversation doesn't warrant serious engagement. These commentators have abused words to the point where debate simply cannot happen. Secularism is not paganism and environmentalism is not "worshiping the Earth". Just saying these things doesn't make them true.

On the other hand...

Maybe President Obama doesn't have plans to euthanize the elderly and disabled.

Last week Iowa Senator Chuck Grassely seemed to agree with Sarah Palin's "death panel" accusation, saying:

"There is some fear because in the House bill, there is counseling for end-of-life... And from that standpoint, you have every right to fear. You shouldn't have counseling at the end of life. You ought to have counseling 20 years before you're going to die. You ought to plan these things out. And I don't have any problem with things like living wills. But they ought to be done within the family. We should not have a government program that determines if you're going to pull the plug on grandma"

Due to the outrage caused by Palin's asinine comment, Congress is no longer considering end-of-life counseling as part of the health care bill. But now that the faux controversy is over, Grassely can re-acquaint himself with reality:

"Grassley says he opposes that counseling as written in the House version of the bill, but a spokesman said the senator does not think the House provision would in fact give the government such authority in deciding when and how people die. The House bill allows patients to decide for themselves if they would like such counseling."

If someone proposed an bill covering end-of-life counseling in a different context (were we not debating health care reform), it would be overwhelmingly popular. Too bad.

Usually when people make comments as dumb as Grassely's, I'm left asking myself whether they are stupid, crazy or disingenuous. Fortunately, Grassely answered the question for us.

If you don't know what a word means, you probably shouldn't use it

First he was a socialist. Now he's a fascist. And Obama has only been president for three months.

Fascism seemed to be the metaphor of choice at last week's Tea Party Protests. Consider this guy:

Or this guy:

As always, we can consult the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics to find out what a term like "fascism" actually means:

"Under fascism, the state, through official cartels, controlled all aspects of manufacturing, commerce, finance, and agriculture. Planning boards set product lines, production levels, prices, wages, working conditions, and the size of firms. Licensing was ubiquitous; no economic activity could be undertaken without government permission. Levels of consumption were dictated by the state, and 'excess' incomes had to be surrendered as taxes or 'loans.' The consequent burdening of manufacturers gave advantages to foreign firms wishing to export. But since government policy aimed at autarky, or national self-sufficiency, protectionism was necessary: imports were barred or strictly controlled, leaving foreign conquest as the only avenue for access to resources unavailable domestically. Fascism was thus incompatible with peace and the international division of labor—hallmarks of liberalism."

Of course, this is a terrible and inane metaphor for current policy. There are no plans to cartelize the economy, to set production goals or to dictate wages. The government is not going to take-over large segments of the economy. In fact, the Obama administration has consistently resisted bank nationalization, and has continued the "receivership" status of AIG--a particularly strange piece of legal gymnastics, which allows the government to own 80% of the company, but completely abdicate ownership rights.

The government is increasing expenditures to combat a recession, and is propping up the banks in order to combat a financial crisis. These may or may not be the right policies (I think the Obama administration has been a mixed-bag up to this point). But these policies in no way resemble fascism. Again, from the Concise Encyclopedia:

"Fascism is to be distinguished from interventionism, or the mixed economy. Interventionism seeks to guide the market process, not eliminate it, as fascism did. Minimum-wage and antitrust laws, though they regulate the free market, are a far cry from multiyear plans from the Ministry of Economics."

We are seeing an increase in government intervention in the economy. We are not seeing fascism and we are not seeing socialism. If you look at the definitions of the words, you can see that.

On a side note, it was sad to see the word "fascism" used not only by fringe protesters, but by anchors on Fox News. As a Jew, I think that comparisons to Nazi Germany should be treated with respect. Yes, you may not like the current administration's tax policies. But they are not comparable to the Holocaust. I think conservatives and libertarians would be wise to distance themselves from people who don't get that obvious distinction.

Just so you know, that's not what the kids are calling it these days

People don't like paying taxes. I get that. I don't like paying taxes either. And it drives me crazy when the government uses its revenue for things other than public goods and providing a social safety net (ie agricultural subsidies). But I think we're going to look back in 20 years and realize that we're not undergoing the kind of radical change that some people fear.

This is all by way of saying that if you do feel that Obama's new tax proposals are onerous and a substantial and unprecedented violation of your liberty, you're not alone. Hundreds, if not multiple hundreds, of people across the country are holding gatherings in the spirit of the Boston Tea Party to let the government know how they feel:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

In case you didn't know, "teabagging" refers to a sexual act. If you don't want people to make fun of you, don't call your get-togethers "teabagging parties". Some people may get the wrong idea.

Making gay marriage count

With Iowa becoming the fourth state in the US to legalize gay marriage, it would seem reasonable to assume that the number of married couples (both heterosexual and homosexual) would increase. Unfortunately, when it does, the federal government won't (officially) take notice. The reason for this, is that the Census Bureau--the government's statistical agency--can't legally count these couples as married:

The federal law banning gay marriage bars the agency from counting same-sex marriages, the Census Bureau says, even though they are legal in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and, most recently, Vermont and Iowa.

Last summer, census officials announced that legally married same-sex couples would be reported as unmarried, same-sex partners.

The 1996 Defense of Marriage Act allows states to refuse recognition of gay marriages from other states, and bars the federal government from recognizing gay couples as "married". This means that when legally married gay couples are surveyed by the Census Bureau, their answers to questions pertaining to marital status will be recoded by Census Bureau statisticians.

It's not all that uncommon for research to be subject to political pressures. But the purpose of the Census Bureau is to be the nation's "leading source of quality data about the nation's people and economy". It's hard to fulfill this role when you're legally bound to deny reality.

And it's not as if this issue is going away anytime soon. According to polling and statistics expert Nate Silver, a majority of states could oppose gay marriage bans by 2012. Momentum is on the side of greater freedom and equality and if the Census Bureau wants to accurately measure marriage rates in the US, they will have to count gay married couples sooner or later.

Fortunately, New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn are advocating for equality and for sanity:

"Although we understand that federal law may not recognize same-sex marriages for the purposes of administration of federal benefits programs," they wrote, "we do not believe it prevents the Census Bureau from reporting statistics from the forms of self-identifying same-sex couples married under state law, like all married couples."

Who are you calling Socialist?

If I didn't watch Fox News, I'd have no idea that we were in the midst of an American-version of the Russian Revolution. Didn't you hear? The new administration is looking to turn our country into a worker's paradise! As Mike Huckabee lamented to the Conservative Political Action Conference, “Lenin and Stalin would love this stuff.”

In the interest of fairness, moderate conservative David Brooks gave the Obama administration space to respond to these accusations. Here's Brooks' recap of what they said:

"In the first place, they do not see themselves as a group of liberal crusaders. They see themselves as pragmatists who inherited a government and an economy that have been thrown out of whack. They’re not engaged in an ideological project to overturn the Reagan Revolution, a fight that was over long ago. They’re trying to restore balance: nurture an economy so that productivity gains are shared by the middle class and correct the irresponsible habits that developed during the Bush era.

The budget, they continue, isn’t some grand transformation of America. It raises taxes on energy and offsets them with tax cuts for the middle class. It raises taxes on the rich to a level slightly above where they were in the Clinton years and then uses the money as a down payment on health care reform. That’s what the budget does. It’s not the Russian Revolution.

Second, they argue, the Obama administration will not usher in an era of big government. Federal spending over the last generation has been about 20 percent of G.D.P. This year, it has surged to about 27 percent. But they aim to bring spending down to 22 percent of G.D.P. in a few years. And most of the increase, they insist, is caused by the aging of the population and the rise of mandatory entitlement spending. It’s not caused by big increases in the welfare state."

I think it's time for conservatives to take a deep breath. Whether or not you like the Obama economic agenda, this is hardly a revolution. If the budget projections are correct, we'll soon be back to levels of government spending, budget deficits and marginal tax rates in line with the past 30 years.

Of course, there has been a lot of hand-wringing over the plan to raise the top marginal tax rate. But people forget that as recently as the Reagan presidency, the top marginal rate was 50%, 10 percentage points higher than what Obama is proposing. We've come a long way on taxes, baby.

And that's why they call them "marginal" tax rates

Media Matters highlights a baffling bit of nonsense in an ABC News report on Obama's plan to raise taxes on individuals making over $250,000:

"According to ABC, one attorney "plans to cut back on her business to get her annual income under the quarter million mark should the Obama tax plan be passed by Congress and become law." According to the attorney: "We are going to try to figure out how to make our income $249,999.00." ABC also quotes a dentist who is trying to figure out how to reduce her income.

This is stunningly wrong.

The ABC article is based on the premise that an individual's entire income is taxed at the same rate. If that were the case, it would be possible for a family earning $249,999 to have a higher after-tax income than a family earning $255,000, because the family earning $249,999 would pay a lower tax rate.

But that isn't actually how income tax works.

In reality, a family earning $255,000 will pay the higher tax rate only on its last $5,001 in income; the first $249,999 will continue to be taxed at the old rate. So intentionally lowering your income from $255,000 to $249,999 is counter-productive; it will result in a lower after-tax income.

The people ABC quoted don't seem to understand that. Worse, ABC doesn't seem to understand it, either."

According to standard economic theory (in fact, it's principle #3), people make decisions at the margins. So if the marginal income tax rate goes up for income above $250,000, I might decide that it's not worth it for me to work an extra hour if my wage for that hour is taxed beyond a certain point. But if all the other marginal rates stay the same, why would I try to bring my income down below the threshold?

I think the real question is how people this dumb can make $250,000 per year?

(HT: Paul Krugman)

Why everyone should know pre-calculus

I overheard someone today talking about how much better one thing was than another. "It's logarithmically better", the person said. Of course he meant "exponentially better". We can see the difference graphically. Logarithmic increases look like this:

and exponential increases look like this:

Maybe he meant that it was getting better at a smaller and smaller rate. Probably not, though.

Forget Tim Geithner, we need Suze Orman at Treasury!

Robert Shiller thinks that some of the stimulus package should go to improving financial literacy in the US:

Many errors in personal finance can be prevented. But first, people need to understand what they ought to do. The government’s various bailout plans need to take this into account — by starting a major program to subsidize personal financial advice for everyone.

A number of government agencies already have begun small-scale financial literacy programs. For example, the Treasury announced the creation of an Office of Financial Education in 2002, and President Bush started an Advisory Council on Financial Literacy a year ago. These initiatives are involved in outreach to schools with suggested curricula, and online financial tips. But a much more ambitious effort is needed.

Clearly, many financial errors were made over the past few years (interest only loan, how can I lose?). According to Shiller, this stems from a simple lack of financial knowledge:

A paper by Kris Gerardi of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Lorenz Goette of the University of Geneva and Stephan Meier of Columbia University asked a battery of simple financial literacy questions of recent homebuyers. Many of the respondents could not correctly answer even simple questions, like this one: What will a $300 item cost after it goes on a “50 percent off” sale? (The answer is $150.) They found that people who scored poorly on the financial literacy test also tended to make serious investment mistakes, like borrowing too much, and failing to collect information and shop for a mortgage.

Improving financial literacy is a low-cost, potentially high-benefit government program. Strangely, it's not discussed that often. But consider this letter to the Wall Street Journal from Duquesne University economist, Antony Davies (HT: Cafe Hayek):

In the article "Big Slide in 401(k)s Spurs Calls for Change" (page one, Jan. 8), 35-year-old project manager Kristine Gardner says in response to the 44% drop in her 401(k) last year: "There's just no guarantee that when you're ready to retire you're going to have the money." Newsflash: Higher returns are the compensation for incurring risk, and lower returns are the price of safety. Ms. Gardner's 401(k) would have been completely safe had she shifted her investment allocations into money markets. As money markets yield a paltry 1%, Ms. Gardner's real complaint isn't that 401(k)s are unsafe, but rather that financial markets require her to incur risk in exchange for being compensated for incurring risk.

Retirement consultant Robyn Credico claims that "This is the biggest test that the 401(k) plan has seen . . . and it has failed." Au contraire, 401(k) plans have worked exactly as designed. It is the workers (and their retirement consultants) who have failed. There is only one reason why the average person close to retirement should have lost 50% of his 401(k): incompetence. Most workers at that age should have long since shifted the bulk of their 401(k)s into bonds and money markets. The 401(k) is a powerful investment tool but can be dangerous when abused.

If you aren't willing to put forth the effort to learn the principles of investing, that's your choice. But don't hobble the rest of us by asking for government regulation of a tool that works perfectly well just so that you can be spared the effort of figuring out how to use it.

Shiller is much more diplomatic, but the point is the same. A market system is one of profit and loss. You can't have one without the other.

Many, if not most, of the mistakes made over the past few years could have been tempered by better financial education. This does not explain the baffling decisions made on Wall Street and it does not excuse predatory lending practices or government regulators asleep at the wheel. But it's definitely part of the puzzle.

Madame Secretary, your first address to the people:

This just in: 18 year olds talk about sex!

If you want to frighten parents and educators, mention "MySpace". The social networking site has become public enemy number one in the fight against teenage vice. Now, even the medical community is getting involved. According to a study published in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, "54 percent of teens talk about behaviors such as sex, alcohol use, and violence on the social networking giant MySpace".

Actually, that quote is a bit misleading. A few paragraphs down, we find out:

The study looked at MySpace profiles of 500 people who identified themselves as 18-year-old males and females in the United States. References to risky behaviors included both words and photos, the authors said.

So this means that 54% of 18-year-olds on MySpace reference sex or drugs (there's no mention of "rock-n-roll" in the study) in their profiles. Let's put aside for a moment the fact that 18-year-olds are legal adults. Studies of the sexual behavior of Ameircan teens reveal that 58% of 18-year-olds in this country have had sex. If you believe these statistics, MySpace users are actually less likely to have sex than the general population.

You may be wondering why anyone would be interested in this (I know I was). Accodring to one of the authors:

Even if teens have not actually engaged in risky behaviors but merely brag about them online, this can still affect their future behavior, said study co-author Dr. Dimitri Christakis, professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington and director of the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at Seattle Children's Hospital.

Those who lie about the behaviors to show off may receive positive feedback from others -- comments such as "that's great" or "I do the same thing" -- that encourage them to actually try out the behaviors, he said.

So the danger here is not MySpace, per se, but rather peer pressure--pressure that results from essentially any contact with peers.  That means that if MySpace is dangerous, then so are cell phones, or any other communication device.  If MySpace is dangerous, so is talking.

Interestingly, one of the researchers makes this point, though it is buried in the article:

"It's really not that MySpace is bad or good. I think the lesson is that it's a tool, and how you use it determines the kinds of outcome you're going to get," Moreno said.

Technology changes, but people typically stay the same.  Teenagers--in this case, young adults--think about, and talk about, sex.  It's easier to see that now that social networking sites have gained popularity.  But just because it's more apparent, doesn't mean it's new.  

Turkey bites the hand that pardons it

I guess Obama won the poultry vote, as well:


HT(Environmental Economics)

Are you smarter than a politician?

Courtesy of Marginal Revolution.

Yes, this is real. As bad as it is that the average score on the civic knowledge test was 49%, it's worse that elected officials scored 44% on average. Here's one of the questions they got wrong:

"Asked about the electoral college, 20 percent of elected officials incorrectly said it was established to 'supervise the first televised presidential debates.'"

Didn't we just have an election?

Here's a copy of the test. Some of the questions at the end are a little specific to economic policy, including questions on free trade and the difference between market and centrally planned economies. In the interest of full disclosure, I got a 97%.

Perhaps we shouldn't be all that surprised that elected officials scored worse than ordinary citizens. While people often compare the political process to high school student council (where it's all a popularity contest), I liken it more to college student council, where the people who get elected are the only ones interested in having the job. Far from getting the best and brightest, many of our politicians are simply the ambitious and power-hungry; and in some cases, they're simply people who couldn't get hired to do anything else.

All this points to one conclusion:

"Those who can't do, legislate"

The stupidest comment ever made about the financial crisis

Stupidity knows no ideology. In fact, we could start a whole other blog dedicated to asinine comments made by people on both the left and the right about the financial crisis. That said, I believe I have found the stupidest commentary on the subject (thus far) and it comes from Daniel Henninger of the Wall Street Journal:

"This year we celebrate the desacralized 'holidays' amid what is for many unprecedented economic ruin -- fortunes halved, jobs lost, homes foreclosed. People wonder, What happened? One man's theory: A nation whose people can't say "Merry Christmas" is a nation capable of ruining its own economy...

Responsibility and restraint are moral sentiments. Remorse is a product of conscience. None of these grow on trees. Each must be learned, taught, passed down. And so we come back to the disappearance of 'Merry Christmas.'

It has been my view that the steady secularizing and insistent effort at dereligioning America has been dangerous. That danger flashed red in the fall into subprime personal behavior by borrowers and bankers, who after all are just people. Northerners and atheists who vilify Southern evangelicals are throwing out nurturers of useful virtue with the bathwater of obnoxious political opinions.

The point for a healthy society of commerce and politics is not that religion saves, but that it keeps most of the players inside the chalk lines. We are erasing the chalk lines."

In the words of my 10th grade English teacher: "No, no, no, no no!" There is no war on Christmas and there never was. And since when is lack of religion in the public square been a problem in America? And why doesn't Western Europe, which is vastly more secular than the US, experience more financial crises than we do?

Capitalism has taken a real beating in recent months, probably more than it deserves. This crisis is not the end of the free market; it took massive failures on both the private and public sides to make this a reality.

That being said, markets do fail sometimes and we need to admit that. We can't just pass something like this off by saying, "well the system works, but the problem is people aren't responsible enough". That's not analysis.

If it's so easy to get an editorial job at the Wall Street Journal, can I have one?

Is Barack Obama a Fascist Communist?

A few weeks ago, I listened with quiet bemusement to an interview with Patri Friedman. Friedman is the main proponent of "Seasteading":

"Seasteading means to create permanent dwellings on the ocean - homesteading the high seas. A seastead, like in the picture above, is a structure meant for permanent occupation on the ocean...

...the world needs a new frontier, a place where those who are dissatisfied with our current civilization can go to build a different (and hopefully better) one.

Currently, it is very difficult to experiment with alternative social systems on a small scale. Countries are so enormous that it is hard for an individual to make much difference. Seasteaders believe that government shouldn't be like the cellphone or operating system industries, with few choices and high customer-lock-in. Instead, they envision something more like web 2.0, where many small governments serve many niche markets, a dynamic system where small groups experiment, and everyone copies what works, discards what doesn't, and remixes the remainder to try again."

It's crazy. I mean, I'm a frequent skeptic of government, but have things really gotten so bad that we need to create new, floating societies? If we keep electing people like Congressman Paul Broun, I might just grab a life-preserver:

A Republican congressman from Georgia said Monday he fears that President-elect Obama will establish a Gestapo-like security force to impose a Marxist dictatorship.

"It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he's the one who proposed this national security force," Rep. Paul Broun said of Obama in an interview Monday with The Associated Press. "I'm just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may — may not, I hope not — but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism."

Read the whole article to see what Broun was talking about. I like his mixing of metaphors. Somehow Obama can be both a Marxist and a Fascist at the same time. He truly is a post-partisan president.

The Daily Show's John Oliver explains the many interesting parallels between Obama and Hitler:

Look who's "Nailin' Palin" now

Schadenfreude
Function: Noun
Definition: enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others
Example: Does it make me a bad person that news of Sarah Palin's ignorance and immaturity elicits such Schadenfreude?



I'm probably going to Hell, but I'm enjoying myself right now.

Once more, with feeling...

Yes, I know I've already covered this. But for some reason, it just won't go away:



About half way through the interview, Barbara West quotes Karl Marx and asks "how is Obama not being a Marxist?" when he calls for changes in US tax policy. Later on she worries that Obama envisions turning America into a socialist country like Sweden.

Maybe some people are content with Barbara West's understanding of the history of economic thought. But for the rest of us, it's worth checking out the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, a wonderful resource maintained by the Library of Economics and Liberty. According to them (and, well everyone else who actually knows what these terms mean), Socialism is "defined as a centrally planned economy in which the government controls all means of production". Examples of socialist countries throughout history include the Soviet Union, Cuba under Castro and China up to the mid to late 1970s. On the other hand, Social Welfare States like Sweden are not socialist, since they have private ownership of production.

This is not a minor technical issue. "Socialism" and "Marxism" are politically charged terms that evoke powerful images. Socialism failed as an economic model. Robert Heilbroner, himself a socialist for much of his life, was ultimately scathing in his appraisal of the idea:

"Socialism...was the tragic failure of the twentieth century. Born of a commitment to remedy the economic and moral defects of capitalism, it has far surpassed capitalism in both economic malfunction and moral cruelty."

Clearly, linking Obama to the failures of Socialism is a powerful political strategy. But we can get lost in the rhetoric. The following chart from the Wall Street Journal shows proposed tax rates by both McCain and Obama, as well as under current law:

There are clear differences between the two candidates on tax policy. But to put this into context, Obama favors increasing the top marginal tax rate to 41%, roughly the same as during the Clinton years and lower than under Ronald Regan.

Serious people can debate the merits of Obama's tax policy. Gregory Mankiw, for example, has raised some interesting concerns about the effect on work incentives. But unfortunately much of our national debate isn't conducted by serious people; it's conducted by people like Barbara West.

Politicians say the dumbest things...

Obviously liberals were never going to like Sarah Palin. She's a feisty, devout Christian who hates reproductive rights almost as much as she hates polar bears. And looking a lot like Tina Fey only makes it easier to parody her:



But then again, she hasn't done herself any favors. Compare this SNL skit to the transcript from her actual interview with Katie Couric, which was cited in a scathing piece by Fareed Zakaria:

COURIC: Why isn't it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families who are struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries; allow them to spend more and put more money into the economy instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?

PALIN: That's why I say I, like every American I'm speaking with, were ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health-care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping the--it's got to be all about job creation, too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health-care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade, we've got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, scary thing. But one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we've got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.

Wow. And this was after weeks of prepping from senior McCain advisors and consultants. You're better off asking Paris Hilton for policy analysis.

Unfortunately for Palin, the right-wing is also starting to notice her, let's say, "shortcomings". Writing in the conservative National Review, Kathleen Parker says:

"Palin’s narrative is fun, inspiring and all-American in that frontier way we seem to admire. When Palin first emerged as John McCain’s running mate, I confess I was delighted. She was the antithesis and nemesis of the hirsute, Birkenstock-wearing sisterhood — a refreshing feminist of a different order who personified the modern successful working mother...

It was fun while it lasted.

Palin’s recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity, and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League...

If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself."

But before we're too hard on Palin (and trust me, no one has less respect for her intellect than me) Paul Krugman reminds us that John McCain isn't exactly a great mind himself, especially when it comes to the economy:

"We’ve known for a long time, of course, that Mr. McCain doesn’t know much about economics — he’s said so himself, although he’s also denied having said it. That wouldn’t matter too much if he had good taste in advisers — but he doesn’t."

This, of course, is the same John McCain who once said interest rates should always be set at 0%. So when McCain and Palin get together, it's not exactly a MENSA meeting.

In the interest of fairness, however, Don Boudreaux provides a uniquely libertarian perspective on the issue:

"Mr. Zakaria is incorrect to suppose that these traits separate Gov. Palin from other candidates for high political office. Calls by Senators McCain and Obama for cracking down on "speculators" are full of classic and wrongheaded catchphrases, as is Sen. Obama's vocal skepticism about free trade. Gov. Palin is merely less skilled in passing off inanities and claptrap as profundities."

This is true on some level. But Governor Palin is working really hard to distinguish herself.