Wednesday's interesting reads

Should've posted this yesterday.

"Housing Bust Fuels Blame Game" -- WSJ. I'll write more about this at another time.

Practically the whole Opinion Section of the WSJ:

"Discovering Obama": I still believe that Obama is only going to "unify" a majority that will elect him to office. After that, it'll be liberal business as usual.

"And the cause of all this human misery? Why, "a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many." Mr. Obama's villains, in other words, are the standard-issue populist straw men of Wall Street and the GOP, and his candidacy is a vessel for liberal policy orthodoxy -- raise taxes, "invest" more in social programs, restrict trade, retreat from Iraq.

Needless to say, this is not an agenda rooted in bipartisanship or even one that has captured a national Presidential majority in more than 40 years. It would be unfortunate if Mr. Obama's candidacy were toppled by racial neuroses, and his speech yesterday may have prevented that. But it also revealed the extent to which his ideas are neither new nor transcendent."

"Inflation Dissent": I think the Fed should be focused on inflation. Anything more than that creates problems down the road.

"Yesterday's policy statement, while allowing that "uncertainty about the inflation outlook has increased," reiterates Chairman Bernanke's view that slower growth and lower "resource utilization" will bring inflation back into the Fed's comfort zone.

Good luck with that. To the extent that the Fed has recently taken extraordinary actions, such as opening up the discount window, to reliquify troubled financial markets, it is doing what is necessary to avoid a financial meltdown. But keeping its eye on price stability is the Fed's main obligation. The silver lining in the Fed's continued accommodation to easier money yesterday is that at least two Fed Governors behaved as if they still believe that."

"More Visas, More Jobs" largely quoting Bill Gates: I've thought for awhile we need to issue considerably more visas to foreign workers on both ends of the skill-scale. Foreigners will only keep us competitive as they have thoughout the last two centuries.

" "Congress's failure to pass high-skill immigration reform has exacerbated an already grave situation," said the Microsoft chairman. "The current base cap of 65,000 H-1B visas is arbitrarily set and bears no relation to the U.S. economy's demand for skilled workers...Today, knowledge and expertise are the essential raw materials that companies and countries need in order to be competitive. We live in an economy that depends on the ability of innovative companies to attract and retain the very best talent, regardless of nationality or citizenship."

The preponderance of evidence continues to show that businesses are having difficulty filling skilled positions in the U.S. By blocking their access to foreign talent, Congress isn't protecting U.S. jobs but is providing incentives to outsource. If lawmakers can't bring themselves to eliminate the H-1B visa cap, they might at least raise it to a level that doesn't handicap U.S. companies."

"Last Exit": Again, I'll go more into the housing problem later.

"[W]e're not talking about unusual numbers of people who suddenly lost their jobs and no longer can make house payments they previously were able to afford -- the circumstance traditionally behind most foreclosures.

Employment was strong when the crisis started and continues (so far) to be quite decent. Yet the mortgage default rate has risen to about twice the average rate of recent decades, and the difference consists largely of people who contracted mortgages their incomes wouldn't support based on a bet that rising home values would bail them out...

The shortest road back from this perdition, as improbable as it may sound, would be to foreclose on and demolish some of the least-wanted houses, with taxpayer money if necessary."

"The Bear Precedent" by Nicole Gelinas: I'm just not comfortable with the idea of the Fed being the one to save the day. Sorry, but I'll quote a lot from this one.

"But even in a world of bad choices, there's always a worst choice. And the Fed, by being so quick to jettison the bankruptcy process, cut off a valuable source of new information to financial markets and blurred the critical distinction between sophisticated and unsophisticated investors...

For the markets, a bankruptcy would have generated something more valuable than a short-term, soon-to-wear-off boost in confidence. That something is knowledge...

A spectacular bankruptcy would shine a bright line on this mess. To start, Bear's trading counterparties and other creditors would have to show themselves and explain their positions to a public examiner. And then bankruptcy lawyers would have to pore through each and every one of Bear's assets and liabilities, making the full autopsy public...

What the Fed has done instead for these sophisticated investors is to offer them a rough approximation of FDIC insurance, even though they are not depositors and knew going in to the deals they had no such insurance...

No doubt these newly protected traders and other creditors are happy, at least for now. But they should realize that, along with government protection, could come all kinds of unwelcome new regulations so that the Fed can protect itself."

"A New Deal for the New Economy" by Rahm Emanual: This is why I'm not a Democrat. A few of the offending lines.

"[T]he fact that our party is still debating [Nafta] 15 years later is proof it hasn't lived up to its hopes." That or we just think it's a good way to pick up some votes in Ohio.

"[W]e must reform the way we educate the next generation of workers to ensure that our nation stays competitive [by] requir[ing] all students to receive one year of training and education after high school -- be it at a community college, technical school, or a four year university." That's right -- if you don't do what we want you to do voluntarily, we'll make you do it. That's the liberal way.

"Covering every child is a moral responsibility." Doesn't SCHIP and Medicaid already do this for the children who need it most? And aren't there a lot of kids the states simply haven't signed up yet? Why does the government need to cover my kids?

"[W]e must support the development of new, energy-efficient technologies that will make energy less expensive for consumers and businesses, help protect the environment, create millions of green-collar jobs, and make our nation energy independent." How is the government supposed to know which technologies to support? They can't. And I believe that any efforts to make us energy independant is not only a pipe dream but also not what we really want.

"Herbert Hoover's Ghost Haunts Markets, Democrats" by Amity Shlaes (not from the WSJ): I really want to read her book called "The Forgetten Man" about the economic impact of the New Deal. I can't find any good, sums it up quotes. Just read the whole thing.