Summer is coming, which means it's power company scaremongering season. Specifically, the story about how power companies want to put "smart meters" and "smart thermostats" in your home so that they can "control your thermostat and appliances". Here's what's really going on ( Read more... )

mmcirvin and I have been talking about the counter-argument to what I said in my last post.

Deficits under Democratic Presidents have happened to be smaller than Republican Presidents not because of who's in the White House but who's in Congress. Deficits exploded under Reagan because the Democrats in Congress wouldn't cut discretionary spending. ( Read more... )

I wanted to write a little more on the common belief that Democrats are irresponsible tax-raising spendthrift liberals and conservatives are fiscally responsible tax-cutting advocates of small government ( Read more... )

I didn't get a chance to complete this post before HR 3590 was signed by the President today. Some of what I say here is no longer true as a result of the bill (and some of it still is), but I thought I should post this anyway to show where we came from.

If someone buys a car or house they can't afford you can reposess that car or house. Not so ( Read more... )

I'm generally a fan of the free market. Competition is good, both on the supply side (who can sell the best stuff at the lowest price) and on the demand side (who can find the best stuff, and haggle for the lowest price). Free markets produce the best choices at the lowest prices. A free market is a good thing in itself, but also a component of an ( Read more... )

In this year's planetmoneymp3 anniversary episode they go over how bad things were one year ago, how close to the brink things were, how much progress we've made since then and how much is still left to do. They mark today - September 15 - as the day that things really started going wrong. Lehman failed, the commercial paper markets froze, the TED spread ( Read more... )

My parents are building a house. Dad went looking for a cement guy to pour the foundation and walls, and on the recommendation of their contractor he talked to the best cement guy in town. Unfortunately, Cement Guy's bid was pretty high. Cement Guy told him that he'd love to give him a better price but business hasn't been good lately ( Read more... )

I just found this comic from 1934, warning Americans about the New Deal that the Tea Party folks might appreciate. (Click for higher res.)


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This April 15 is Tea Party Day. And while I understand the anger over being "fed up with a Congress and a president who" ... I've got one glib and one not-so-glib item to say about this ( Read more... )

One of the smartest things that I overheard the weekend I went back to Arizona came from my youngest brother. He pointed out that a big problem with modern economies is debt and financing when it runs amok. (To be clear, in this post I am not paraphrasing what he was saying, although he gave me some food for thought and I'm running with it ( Read more... )