Liberal Talk Radio

Those of you who listen to the show somewhat regularly will know that, while I’m a big fan of markets, I’m also highly critical of one of the central tenets of neoclassical economics – the “rationality assumption”. In short, in order for its predictive models to work, neoclassical econ requires that all of the [...]

Detroit Free Press has an interesting analysis of Cash for Clunkers.  Unlike the government’s own analyisis, which did not aggregate sales data across 2x and 4x models, the Freep totalled the sales numbers for all types of vehicles together. Among the findings:
* Trucks, including that paragon of fuel efficiency, the Chevy Silverado (14 mpg city) [...]

Oh well. At least we’ll always have Madoff:
The only real motivation that anyone at A.I.G.-F.P. now has is fear. Mr. Cuomo has threatened to “name and shame,” and his counterpart in Connecticut, Richard Blumenthal, has made similar threats — even though attorneys general are supposed to stand for due process, to conduct trials in courts [...]

Today on one of the Sunday talk shows, Sen. Richard Shelby, a Republican on the banking committee, floated the idea of letting Citigroup fail, chips fall where they may.
Kevin Drum responds beautifully:
All I can say is: Richard Shelby has way bigger balls than I do. Call me a wuss if you [...]

Since nationalization is in the news these days, I’ve been thinking a bit about a different kind of nationalization — specifically, the kind that happens when you’ve got a single buyer for a product, aka “monopsony”.
This is what the defense industry is today, an industry that has only a single client.
I’ve been noodling on what [...]

The President’s newest gambit: capping executive pay at $500k/year for banks that have received bailout funds. Loopholes abound:
Obama’s pay rules focus on any firms that seek and receive future help from government, with a firm cap on those getting “exceptional” assistance. Citigroup and Bank of America among the few examples of firms so far [...]

Cash strapped GM is heading to the pawn shop.
General Motors’ cash problems could give car buffs the rare opportunity to buy some of GM’s most unique vehicles at auction next week, giving gearheads an extraordinary chance to own some of Detroit’s history.
The auction is part of an effort to raise cash for the struggling automaker [...]

The unions are stoked about Obama’s choice for Secretary of Labor, Rep. Hilda Solis.
I’m still a bit disappointed that the Labor Secretary wasn’t rolled out with the rest of the “economic policy team” a few weeks ago, but maybe she hadn’t accepted yet. Anyway, the symbol of nominating a latina Congresswoman from East L.A. [...]

This is exactly what GM should be doing.
In a similar vein, this piece in TNR about how to structure a rescue package.

Regarding the Big 3 CEOs driving to DC (instead of taking private jets), I was pretty much on the same page as Ezra Klein, who wrote, “The industry has lots of problems, but overuse of the corporate jet by busy CEOs is not one of them. This’ll waste 18 hours or so at a time [...]