Copyright 2008 The New York Sun Fri, 19 Sep 2008 03:59:44 -0400 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Amity Shlaes :: Stories from The New York Sun http://www.nysun.com/authors/Amity+Shlaes istoll@nysun.com (Ira Stoll) webmaster@nysun.com en-us AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/opinion/rules-not-rulers/86034/ Wed, 17 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST Paulson. Merrill Lynch. Lehman. Bernanke. Names are what investors start talking about at moments like this. Names, the faith is, will rescue Wall Street and by extension the American economy. When a market crash is big enough, people are too panicked to think about the technicalities of reform. They think about the names they are losing and the names who, they hope, will save the day. Names certainly have their uses in tense moments like this one. But only rules can bring the markets back in... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/opinion/fannie-fragile-since-the-60s/85637/ Thu, 11 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST "Sudden" is the word used to describe the change in the fortunes of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And the evaporation of $100 billion or so in the market capitalizations of the two government-sponsored enterprises certainly was sudden. Nonetheless, the instability of the mortgage companies, especially Fannie, was long visible. Indeed, Fannie can be viewed as a flower child whose fragility was evident as far back as 1968. The story of Fannie, of course, begins earlier, with President Roosevelt. In... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/opinion/recovery-without-bailout/86239/ Fri, 19 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST Recovery without federal bailout? Impossible. That's what we think as we watch the Federal Reserve and the Treasury move to rescue Bear Stearns Cos., Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and now, American International Group Inc. Bailout was the rule in preceding slumps as well. From the New Deal to the Chrysler bailout of 1979, to Long-Term Capital Management LP to today, bailouts are what America does. So the only thing remaining to think about is exactly when the next bailout will come — when, say... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/opinion/the-character-fixation/85152/ Thu, 4 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST There are bumps, and there are bumps. For starters, there's the Bristol bump — the bump of pregnancy that put Sarah Palin's teenage daughter all over the Web this week. There's the Republican vice presidential candidate's own bump — the triumphant bump of $7 million in cash Governor Palin pulled in for the McCain campaign the week the Alaskan was announced. These two bumps obscure a third one: that mysterious bump in gross domestic product. On August 28, even as Senator McCain was eliminating... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/opinion/homes-haven-or-prison/84313/ Thu, 21 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST Everything will be all right if we just fix the housing problem. That was the hope investors clung to as they watched Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac crumble this week. The presidential campaigns reflect a similar faith in housing's curative power. Senator McCain recently suggested that not merely mortgage-loan defaults but also anxiety about those mortgages was our worst problem: "Americans are uncertain about this crisis." "Three-Bedroom Ranch," a Barack Obama campaign commercial, suggests that... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/opinion/five-ways-to-wreck-a-recovery/84172/ Tue, 19 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST Perverse monetary policy was the greatest cause of the Great Depression. But five non-monetary missteps were important in making the Depression great, and the same missteps damaged the global economy as well. While many are thinking about the Depression, few seem concerned about replicating these Foolish Five today: Giving in to protectionism. In Herbert Hoover's time, Senator Smoot and Rep. W.C. Hawley proposed a tariff that was to raise effective duties by as much as half. More than a... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/opinion/martys-lesson/83839/ Thu, 14 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST So Google Inc. now is pushing further into the business of content. Founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page confront the universal question of the information business: How do you add value? The proximate example is Wikipedia, which adds value by collating facts already known. Wikipedia bends over to be objective and to reject elitism — its hallmark is that anyone may contribute, or edit anyone else. As a result, Wikipedia's pages are fact-rich. When it comes to ideas, though, Wikipedia sometimes... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/opinion/mad-men-of-washington/83030/ Fri, 1 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST Sometimes television and politics conspire to tell the country the same story. That's certainly the case this week. The new season of "Mad Men" debuted with another episode chronicling Don Draper's secret life. The ad man in the cable-TV series knows he's not supposed to have that many drinks at lunch. He knows he's living too hard when he smokes Lucky Strikes. He knows he shouldn't cheat on his wife. But he does it all anyhow. And he keeps doing it. Why? Because it is just so easy. In the same... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/opinion/obama-at-a-war-symbol/82529/ Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST Sometimes it is the words that get the politicians in trouble. Sometimes it is the images. In Berlin, a single picture of Barack Obama is likely to paint a thousand words about the limits of his foreign policy. Consider the Obama plan. The likely Democratic presidential nominee will arrive in Berlin after a tour of the Middle East. Today, he's scheduled to speak to Berliners and the rest of the world in a televised address at the Victory Column, in the center of the German capital. The euphoria... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/opinion/a-connection-premium/81577/ Thu, 10 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST They have to get in. Sometimes it's an Ivy League link they covet. Other times it is that slot at a college that people talk about at church. Either way, college and grad-school applicants clearly believe that a lifelong benefit derives from admission to a certain school. Recently, a team of economists dubbed this ineffable value a "connection premium." Most of us assume that a business school connection brings the highest reward of all, especially for that clannish crowd, equity analysts. But... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/opinion/mccain-builds-levees-for-taxes/80730/ Thu, 26 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EST At about the time the river rose above its banks in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, people in Washington began talking about how Senator McCain was going to put the whole country underwater with his tax plan. Suggesting that McCain = Disaster is weird. The fiscal program of the presumptive Republican nominee for president is hardly disastrous. Or, to put it all in diluvial terms, Mr. McCain's levies are like levees. They may look expensive on paper. But they'll provide a valuable infrastructure that will... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/opinion/count-those-square-feet-in-gold/80267/ Thu, 19 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EST American leaders tell themselves that citizens aren't interested in the nuances of the dollar's value. The yuan exchange rate? That is something Treasury Secretary Paulson deals with at summits like the one this week with China's Vice Premier, Wang Qishan, at Annapolis, Md. The inflation rate? Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke grapples with it. The rest just live with the results. The politicians deceive themselves. Each American brain is constantly updating and editing its own personal dollar... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/opinion/too-clever-by-half/79822/ Thu, 12 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EST Welcome to the new era of tax intelligence. If a tax idea doesn't sound as if it were written in a seminar at Swarthmore College, it is stupid. The more complex, the better. Democrats are adroit at developing such proposals. The party appears to favor plans that serve at least two seemingly unrelated ends: We should punish oil companies while soothing middle-class mothers (windfall-profits-tax revenue plan), and we should curtail carbon emissions while paying tribute to the glories of the free... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/opinion/economists-lip-sync-led-zeppelin/78827/ Thu, 29 May 2008 00:00:00 EST Rock stars want to be development economists for some reason, and development economists seem to want to be rock stars. Both groups treat economic doctrines like songs: A new doctrine zooms to the top of the playlist. The ex-favorite gets dropped faster than you can say Gini Coefficient. This pattern seems to be holding for the Washington Consensus, a program for developing countries laid out in 1989 by economist John Williamson of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Mr... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/opinion/china-katrina-connection/76803/ Wed, 21 May 2008 00:00:00 EST The picture of the angry parents protesting the collapse of the school in Wufu is so sad that you get the impression there could be nothing like it. But then you remember something like it, in, of all places, Louisiana. Writing about the corruption in that state in the 1920s, the author Robert Penn Warren described a man's shock "when the first brick schoolhouse ever built in his county collapsed because it was built of politics-rotten brick and it killed and mangled a dozen poor little... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/opinion/hillarys-long-goodbye/76190/ Fri, 9 May 2008 00:00:00 EST Last week, Harold M. Ickes seemed like Hillary Clinton's only angel. This week, it is becoming clear that he is her undoing. Exactly how Senator Clinton's strategist has played such an important role in her presidential campaign becomes more obvious when you scrutinize not one Harold but two: Harold M. Ickes and Harold L. Ickes, his late father. Harold M. has led Mrs. Clinton's campaign using a traditional Democratic approach to politics, in which a party functionary works like crazy for a... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/opinion/hillary-pulls-a-carter/75768/ Fri, 2 May 2008 00:00:00 EST Jimmy Carter's in the news again. The former president wants a windfall-profits tax. No wait, he wants America to recognize Hamas. Hillary Clinton is the one who wants a windfall-profits tax. It seems that every year, usually just around the time Memorial Day slides into view, a politician demands a tax on oil profits. Richard Nixon's economists offered one up in 1973, arguing, almost vindictively, that they were justified in imposing a stiff levy because the tax would "make up in some degree... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/opinion/south-side-slugout/75074/ Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EST Pennsylvania happens to be the physical location of the latest contest between Senators Clinton and Obama for the Democratic nomination. But in terms of political culture their duel is situated in Mrs. Clinton's original home and Mr. Obama's current one — Chicago. You can even say that the battle is between two neighborhoods on the South Side of the Windy City. The first of those is Bridgeport, the down-to-earth district from which Richard Daley, the father of the current mayor, ruled the city... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/opinion/no-great-depression/74896/ Thu, 17 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EST "Depressing" is the adjective we're hearing a lot when it comes to the U.S. economy. There are reports of how the University of Michigan's consumer-sentiment poll is lower than at any time in the past quarter century. Senator Obama speaks of how, in some places, "the jobs have been gone 25 years and nothing's replaced them." A recent Pew survey suggests that fewer Americans see their lives improving than at any point in almost half a century. The gloom is so thick that it feels positively... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/opinion/dollar-mystery-and-tibet/74373/ Wed, 9 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EST These days, nobody seems to doubt that the U.S. dollar will lose its status as the world's reserve currency. To watch the financial news channels you would think that the dollar-yuan relationship is so unstable that the only question is whether it will be Ben Bernanke or Chinese monetary authorities who will determine the details of the breakdown. Perhaps the dollar won't surrender its anchor role so soon. And perhaps that loss, if it comes, will happen because of events that take place nowhere... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/arts/shock-doctrine/74068/ Wed, 2 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EST The Great Depression was the Katrina of the 1930s. Like a natural disaster, it hit in waves, making everyone feel helpless. First came the crash of the stock market, then the failure of the local banks, then the failure of larger ones, then joblessness, and more joblessness, and hunger. By the time the country elected Franklin Roosevelt on his New Deal platform in 1932, one in four was unemployed. In that moment, economists diagnosed a mismatch of supply and demand. Overly efficient factories... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/opinion/fed-keeps-us-guessing/73693/ Thu, 27 Mar 2008 00:00:00 EST More government is the remedy that the U.S. Congress is reaching for as it moves to evaluate the Bear Stearns Cos. disaster. Yet as the story of another banking catastrophe reminds us, government involvement can also be a curse. What's especially problematic is when the role of public officials and institutions is unclear. In 1913, Congress was busy creating a central bank for the U.S., the Federal Reserve Board, to serve as lender of last resort. The Fed was supposed to provide an additional... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/opinion/ghosts-of-1929/73421/ Fri, 21 Mar 2008 00:00:00 EST No question, Bear Stearns Cos. evokes the crash of 1929 and the Great Depression that followed it. Politicians are already making analogies to Herbert Hoover, the demon of that period, and Franklin Roosevelt, the angel. On March 16, Senator Schumer of New York said on television: "We're in the most serious economic problem we've been in a very long time — much worse than 2001. The president's hands-off attitude is reminiscent of Herbert Hoover in 1929 and 1930." Within 24 hours, Rep. Rahm... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/opinion/spitzers-apologies/72742/ Wed, 12 Mar 2008 00:00:00 EST There is a god. A god of Wall Street, at least. That's what many may be telling themselves as they take in the news of Eliot Spitzer. The New York governor, as the world now knows, was caught on a wiretap after allegedly arranging a meeting with a prostitute who traveled from New York to meet him in Washington, in possible violation of federal law. At a news conference Monday, Mr. Spitzer, with wife Silda at his side, apologized to his family. He also has acknowledged that in a vague way he has... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/opinion/stiglitzs-iraq-war-math-is-wrong/72441/ Thu, 6 Mar 2008 00:00:00 EST Three trillion dollars is the amount that Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz puts as the cost of the Iraq war. In a new book with Linda Bilmes of Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, the Columbia University economist argues that the Bush administration has underestimated outlays for the war by hundreds of billions of dollars. "The Three Trillion Dollar War" offers a valuable reminder that wars usually cost more than budget figures suggest. Still, the profs are off the mark when it... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/opinion/one-flawed-gift/71987/ Thu, 28 Feb 2008 00:00:00 EST Africa is easier than the Middle East. It's not all about the oil. You don't have to send the 1st Cavalry Division there. All Africa needs is money to become healthier, more democratic, friendlier — you name it. That seems to be the conclusion of Barack Obama. In the Senate, the Democratic presidential candidate is pushing for passage of legislation that requires the American government to cut global poverty in half by 2015. The bill's mandate seems likely to force presidents to back expanded... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/opinion/on-cuba-policy-copy-poppy/71523/ Wed, 20 Feb 2008 00:00:00 EST The American presidential primaries have been crowding out news about the change in Cuba. That's because most of us are telling ourselves not much happened in Havana. One dictator, Fidel Castro, handed over the reins to another dictator, brother Raul. We imagine a gradual story, with Cuba going step by step toward democracy. Before you know it, Mr. Castro will be popping up in Louis Vuitton commercials, soulfully advertising a line of overnight bags. That, after all, is what happened to Mikhail... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/opinion/no-need-for-spin/70898/ Thu, 7 Feb 2008 00:00:00 EST "Teachable." That's the adjective you hear from John McCain's advisers. The economy may not be the Republican front-runner's favorite topic. But the man is "open" and "capable of learning." With the right teaching, Senator McCain could be another Ronald Reagan. This argument is laughable. On economics, Mr. McCain is about as impressionable as the statue of General Ulysses Grant on the National Mall. To Mr. McCain, tax proposals aren't teachables. They are tradeables, something you give up in... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/opinion/that-kennedy-high/70467/ Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:00:00 EST Florida's voters may remember being adults under Jack Kennedy, but most of the rest of us don't. So whence the staying power of the Kennedy image in this election week? What were people responding to when Caroline Kennedy, endorsing Barack Obama, spoke of a "president like my father"? Caroline herself supplied the answer when she spoke of recapturing the American Dream. She was reminding us that President Kennedy, like Mr. Obama, didn't rise organically from his political party but was grafted... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/opinion/bernankes-brain/69982/ Wed, 23 Jan 2008 00:00:00 EST Ben Bernanke is spooked. That's one explanation for the Fed chairman's decision to lead the Open Market Committee in yesterday's unprecedented 75-basis-point cut in the fed funds rate. The Fed spoke of a "weakening of the economic outlook and increasing downside risks to growth," a vague phrase that reminds us that what Milton Friedman said in 1965 is still true: "We are all Keynesians now," monetary and fiscal fiddlers who think the government has a broad mandate to manage the economy. But... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/opinion/what-duct-tape-wont-fix/69687/ Thu, 17 Jan 2008 00:00:00 EST One reason the White House, Congress, and the presidential candidates are talking so easily nowadays about tinkering with the American economy is that economic experts have already endorsed the concept of such short-term measures. Former treasury secretary, Larry Summers, has suggested a number for how much would be required to soften a potential recession. Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz has spoken about tax rebates. President Bush, briefed by experts, may take up the stimulus concept as... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/opinion/get-bush-off-campaign-trail/69196/ Wed, 9 Jan 2008 00:00:00 EST Proposing ways to deal with the prospect of recession is a job requirement for presidential candidates, and every one of them — from John Edwards to Ron Paul to Mitt Romney — is offering some antidote or other. The surprise is that one of the largest projects under discussion comes from a man who isn't running for office at all. His name is George W. Bush. Ok, so the president would probably call the package of ideas that he was hinting at recently in Chicago "economic stimulus," not "political... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/opinion/staph-meets-nurse-betsy/68647/ Thu, 27 Dec 2007 00:00:00 EST At holiday time you badly want to like nonprofits, but so many don't seem worth the investment. We all know them. The foundation with the morphing mission. The one with the agenda as long as Michigan Avenue. The dinner committee that lives to serve the culinary whims of the second wife of its vice chairman. And of course the institutions that suffer from March of Dimes syndrome, outliving by half a century causes for which they were created. Why can't "nonprofit" be more like "for profit"?... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/opinion/bushs-full-monty/68423/ Thu, 20 Dec 2007 00:00:00 EST There are two kinds of people in business: deal people and price people. For deal people, it is all about the relationship. They want to gain advantage in a current relationship, or position themselves for the next relationship. Price people don't want to hold hands. They want a number. Day to day, this difference is merely one of style. But when it comes to a financial crisis, the distinction matters. In crises, prices are better than deals, even when the price is very low. A low price at... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/opinion/scaretax-not-fairtax/68160/ Mon, 17 Dec 2007 00:00:00 EST In the 1990s, it was the flat tax. This time it's the so-called FairTax. As far back as last summer, a FairTax Bus was rolling around Iowa. Supporting the FairTax has boosted Mike Huckabee to such an extent that Rudy Giuliani has felt the need to go around preaching the sanctity of the home mortgage-interest deduction. Even Ron Paul is playing catch-up. One pro-Paul Web site, www.dailypaul.com, gave Paul supporters an explicit script for challenging the FairTax: "people need to know that we can... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/opinion/christine-trumps-cecilia/65422/ Mon, 29 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST News that Cecilia Sarkozy is divorcing her husband, President Nicolas Sarkozy, is all over the U.S. press. We know now that the breakup was civilized, that Cecilia once modeled for French fashion house Schiaparelli, that the 49-year-old likes the idea of relocating to New York so she can jog in Central Park. But there is another woman in the Sarkozy constellation who matters more than Cecilia. She is Christine Lagarde, the 51-year-old finance minister. Ms. Lagarde, a lawyer who was the first... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/opinion/peg-boomers-can-love/64825/ Thu, 18 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST High tide is a mystical moment for a lot of us. We actually stand around the beach hoping to capture that second when the foam reaches farthest up on the sand. Another kind of high tide is sweeping the country these days. It is the high tide of Social Security money. This week the first baby boomer demonstrated she's ready for more beach-time by applying for a Social Security pension. Kathleen Casey-Kirschling, born on Jan. 1, 1946, leads millions like her. As the boomers head for the beach... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/opinion/charm-of-the-fixed-rate/64489/ Fri, 12 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST There's nothing wrong with fixed — the fixed-rate mortgage, that is. As the mortgage crisis has unfolded, everyone has blamed the new-fangled mortgages: Interest-only, pick-a-payment, subprime ARMs, Alt-As became pejoratives overnight. In the midst of it all you didn't hear people talking much about the traditional model. The possibility that interest rates might go down soon and allow adjustable-rate mortgage holders to pay less for a while was tempting. The fixed format is still viewed as... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/opinion/giving-history-a-new-spin/63581/ Fri, 28 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST If the Republicans were a stock, they would be unshortable. The war in Iraq, earmarks, and "wide stance" scandals have brought the Grand Old Party low. And GOP critics aren't content with seeing the Republicans in Congress look like the losers this decade. They want to take the 1990s away from those righties, too. Call it the Ru-Span version of history, after two recent autobiographies. The first is the 2003 memoir of former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, "In an Uncertain World." The second... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/opinion/view-from-medelln/63046/ Thu, 20 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST Is there a town in the world with a reputation worse than Medellín's? Colombia's second-biggest city has a rep so bad that it has almost become a parody of itself. In the HBO series about Hollywood, "Entourage," the characters are obsessed with capturing the evil of drug lord Pablo Escobar by making a film called "Medellín." To most American citizens those three syllables are code for all that is wrong with Latin America — the lawlessness, the drugs, the delusion that a network of thugs... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/opinion/rubins-reality-check/62540/ Thu, 13 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST The Democrats are on the march, the tax march that is. Charles Rangel, the New York congressman and chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, is talking about "the mother of all reforms," a plan that is said to include raising the capital-gains tax rate for many investors. Back in July, presidential candidate John Edwards proposed a return to the 28% rate that the country hasn't seen in more than a decade. Other Democrats are making similar points by arguing that the 20 percentagepoint... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/opinion/we-dont-deserve-it/61007/ Wed, 22 Aug 2007 00:00:00 EST We deserve this. Or so many of us think watching the stock market plunge. Somehow, humans view the Dow Jones industrial average as a morality play. A period of high times, we reason, must be followed by a commensurate dark period. That questionable lending in the subprime mortgage sector sparked the turmoil seems to confirm this rule. There is, of course, no such law. Sure, lenders preyed on naive home buyers. And sure, downturns follow recoveries. But bad times do not have to match the good in... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/opinion/their-own-katrina/60641/ Thu, 16 Aug 2007 00:00:00 EST This week Nancy Pelosi is leading a Democratic delegation to New Orleans. It's a blunt move to recall the Bush administration's failure to curtail the recovery costs of Hurricane Katrina. The Speaker of the House and her colleagues are also highlighting the remaining damage in New Orleans, the goal presumably being a feisty debate over how many rehab dollars the Gulf Coast needs. Hillary Clinton is on the Katrina case, calling for a White House appointee to address Gulf Coast concerns... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/arts/lifting-up-a-continent/60113/ Wed, 8 Aug 2007 00:00:00 EST Sixty years ago this summer, the miners of the Ruhr were starving. They were promised rations of 1,500 calories, but only received 700 or 800 worth. Then, one day in June, they heard some astounding news. The U.S. Secretary of State, George C. Marshall, planned an aid program so expansive as to bring them — and the rest of Europe — back to physical and economic health. "Assistance," Marshall had said in a speech at Harvard, "must not be on a piecemeal basis." Marshall's goal was an ambitious... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/opinion/mysteries-a-tax-spread/59725/ Thu, 2 Aug 2007 00:00:00 EST Senate Finance Committee leaders are signaling that Congress will take up the topic of capital gains and private-equity firms next year. And no wonder. The 20 percentage-point difference between the 15% capital-gains rate that many Wall Streeters pay and the 35% income-tax rate paid by a surgeon at a hospital makes a tempting election year target for Democrats. The focus on this particular spread is a shame. What really matters about the capital-gains rate isn't its relationship to the... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/opinion/best-place-in-the-world/58833/ Fri, 20 Jul 2007 00:00:00 EST Our 13-year-old likes a lot of things: his Wacom Graphire set, a session of pick-up soccer. But the thing he likes most is his summer camp. September, November, March are all fine months, but to him they are just wait time until he can get underwater in McWain Pond at "the Rock" — his camp, Birch Rock. Visiting day his second summer he stood behind a large outdoor hearth and told a revealing little parable. "My life at home is like life in a harbor. At home there's candy, and there are video... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/opinion/whos-worse/55025/ Wed, 23 May 2007 00:00:00 EST Jimmy Carter told NBC yesterday that he had been misinterpreted over the weekend in his comments on President Bush. At issue was the former president's statement in the Arkansas Post- Gazette on May 19: "I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history." Yesterday, he was calling his remark "careless." Mr. Carter was probably inspired to mouth off by the fresh popularity of the politician most like him — Al Gore, who's being... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/opinion/hedge-is-in-the-mail/54303/ Fri, 11 May 2007 00:00:00 EST The desire to hedge is universal. People want to hedge inflation — especially this week. They want to hedge market losses, oil-price changes, even wars. But there are those of us who are also obsessed with betting against a highly specific kind of risk: government waste. Part of that desire is emotional. After all, the Internal Revenue Service, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and other bureaucracies act with little consequence. They are rarely held to account for the national deficits or... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/opinion/her-perks-are-not-the-problem/53288/ Thu, 26 Apr 2007 00:00:00 EST The number that triggered the attacks on the World Bank president, Paul Wolfowitz was $193,590. The figure represented the salary that he endorsed for his girlfriend, communications adviser Shaha Riza. Even though Mr. Wolfowitz did try to recuse himself from decisions about Ms. Riza, colleagues have turned against him so violently that both his anticorruption campaign and his career at the bank are now on hold. Yesterday, the European Parliament called for his resignation. Some observers will... AMITY SHLAES http://www.nysun.com/opinion/grand-cru-of-tax-years/52309/ Thu, 12 Apr 2007 00:00:00 EST Tax years are like wine vintages. A bad spot of weather — new taxes, high interest rates, or a recession — can annihilate the harvest. Good weather by contrast may yield sublimity and long afternoons. Each year, each grape, each vineyard is different. And you don't know the quality of what you have until a few years after the harvest. This year has the makings of a glorious year for the taxpayer. Stocks have bounced back from their February stumble, unemployment is 4.4%, and tax rates are low...