Marketplace has taken notice of the Florida insurance mess.

In July 2007, I warned my faithful readers against buying property in Florida because the entire state had decided to be irrational about property insurance premiums (legislate them to be too low) and the very real risk of hurricanes. About a month later, The Economist echoed my concerns in an article appropriately entitled "Wishing the Wind not to ( Read more... )

I firmly believe that everyone on earth is working every day to improve their lot in life, within the resources they have, and under the rules they live under. Ergo, there is a huge bias toward progress.

Of course, resources are not evenly distributed, and lots of places have rather than less than ideal rules.

It would be best if both parties would commit to policies that result in the lowest price for all goods and services, so that the citizens' money has maximum purchasing power. This would be the greatest boon to the poor.

I see no reason to revise my basic analysis of the "subprime debt crisis" from last August; we're still waiting for:

1. 
   A full accounting of how much bad debt there really is.
   
   The loans are all being re-examined, grudgingly, to see which are OK, which can be salvaged at a lower rate of return, and which simply need to be foreclosed upon, with the ( Read more... )

On this evening's Newshour, their economics correspondent Paul Solman delivered a report on the sub-prime mortgage mess that was cogent and to the point.

Recently, PBS's Newshour did a two-part report on the No Child Left Behind Act, which is in the process of being reauthorized by Congress.

The take-away from the report is that the educational establishments are, in the large, doing everything they can to evade the accountability that the law seeks to impose. To hell with the consequences for the ( Read more... )

This week's Economist took notice of FL's property insurance mess also. I believe the phrase "dangerously undercapitalized" was used.

I wonder how many of the new/rebuilt houses in the below-sea-level parts of New Orleans are watertight, or can float as need be. Perhaps "seaworthy" should be the new standard?

This morning's Marketplace Morning Report had an interesting bit of information: the US mortgage loan market is $10.4 trillion, of which $2.6 trillion is that oft-mentioned "sub-prime" category, or roughly 25% of the total. So, who is holding the notes for all that debt? Uh, looks like almost everyone, but no one is sure, hence The Fear which is ( Read more... )

As a public service to my friends and other readers, I commend to your attention a news story reported today during PRI's Marketplace about Florida self-insuring against hurricanes.

At the behest of the People, the legislature created a state underwriter of hurricane insurance, and froze the premiums until 2009, apparently below the actual level of ( Read more... )