DISQUS

No cigar, Will. Ryan and other 'progressives' have the reigns of the State, and hence care not to make definitive cases anymore. This is simply the other side of the Bush/Republican coin. Expect more nasty, well-poisoning, ad-hominem tactics for the next 8 years...or i guess till the end of time, as party identification matters, not..power does.

Errr umm..what about the First Amendment? Canada has a giant FAIL in that category, at least by the standards of the 1st Amendment.

IS the point then that a private solution will probably not emerge if we just auctioned off all the land the roads use (as opposed to only the roads)? That prices will not signal scarcity efficiently? That entrepreneurs will not use these price signals for innovation
and serving transportation needs especially using current technology?

If so, that should be a tough case to argue using established economic theory.

Exactlyyy the point I was trying to get thru in the Financial Dirigisme Thread. its just so hard, I agree. Thank you

What webgrrl said.
Brad Delong has pointed out how this was a catastrophic failure of risk
management in 4 points in the chain, and then he goes on to completely
ignore the bottom of the chain - the subprime mortgages itself,
the underwriting practices attacked by congress, whether for "ownership
society" reasons or low-income-ppl-deserve-a-home-too reasons. Arnold
Kling has pointed out that the pseudo-semi-privatization of Frannie was a
way for President Johnson to move liabilities off the governments books
in time of an unpopular war.
So that is the government failure.
And then we have market failure in risk management by the ibankers
and firms like Countrywide.
Simply screaming more regulation does not seem to re-align all these
incentives for the public good.

Jen
I made no causal connection between SarbOx and the financial mess. My point was
about the whole narrative of "deregulation caused this" being adopted reflexively.
And yes your facts are correct. Again like I said people will ignore my point about the knowledge problem, as you just did. Webgrrl just demonstrated and Warren Buffet concedes that OFHEO Frannie's regulator sat on its hands, collecting paychecks for 200 regulators for 2 companies for the taxpayers. What makes you think "MORE regulation" will be effectively in this regard, unless you think regulators have clairvoyance...then go back to my post before the previous one.
sigh

uhh the point is that the INDUSTRY is the most heavily regulated. and the last major banking legislation was a huuge regulation NOT a deregulation..heard of Sarbanes Oxley anyone? right. So all you can say is that the regulators were not active enough....and then we run into the knowledge problem, but of course ppl just ignore that argument. so carry on this silly debate.

Its always amusing reading the same cornucopia of comments when it comes to regulation, especially with religious trolls like muirgeo.
Here's the bottom line: the financial industry is THE most heavily regulated sector in the economy. thats a fact. It is simply incontestable.
Now you can argue about whether this regulation was enough? or too much? in terms of quantity or good? or bad? in terms of quality.
You then realize that the next bubble and crisis has always happened no matter how much regulation was on the plate. If simply hitting the PLUS button on regulation was enuf, socialism wud've been grand. But therein comes the "Knowledge Problem" in the socialist calculation debate. Perhaps then you realize BETTER regulation is the answer. And this is certainly a possible answer. Then you realize you have to find out what BETTER means. what does it mean? By constraints of reality, this will be limited to, at best, the smartest and best minds that the regulators can use to design regulations. If these people can regulate to perfection, this situation again bumps up into the socialist calculation debate.
So what is one to do?
Then maybe deregulation is the answer?
Perhaps, but the problem with deregulation is, when done piecemeal, it again runs into the knowledge problem as arbitrage opportunities are created with each deregulation, maybe even more so than with regulation. So unless a whole sector is completely deregulated (save for some transparency regulations), this might not work.

So what is someone to do?
Economists are still working at it.

Muirgeo,
Except uhhh..he said "except really!" which u were too blindly partisan to read
:)

John V you took the words out of my mouth. I respect DeLong and read him almost every although as a libertarian i obviously disagree with him many a times. But his comments section is a complete gutter swamp and I avoid it.