Assorted Links (10/15/2010)

Here’s a list of articles that I have been reading lately:

The 4 Ways to Spend Money by Milton Friedman

www.youtube.com

“In his book Free to Choose, Milton Friedman described four ways to spend money. 1. You spend your own money on yourself. 2. You spend your own money on someone else. 3. You spend someone else’s money on yourself. 4. You spend someone else’s money on someone else.” In a nutshell, he makes a very compelling case for allocating resources through the private sector rather than the public sector.

Book Review: Extraordinary, Ordinary People

online.wsj.com

“Tunku Varadarajan reviews Condoleezza Rice’s Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family.”

Review & Outlook: ObamaCare in Court

online.wsj.com

“The Wall Street Journal writes that a Florida judge allows the major state lawsuit to proceed to trial.”

Review & Outlook: Liberalism and Public Works

online.wsj.com

“The Wall Street Journal writes that entitlement politics leaves little money for roads and tunnels.”

Stop Bashing Business, Mr. President

online.wsj.com

“Ken Langone, the co-founder of The Home Depot, writes in The Wall Street Journal that if he and his partners tried to start their business today, it’s a stone cold certainty that it would never get off the ground.”

Scott Gottlieb and Tom Miller: How to Reform ObamaCare Starting Now

online.wsj.com

“In the Wall Street Journal, Scott Gottlieb and Tom Miller of the American Enterprise Institute write that states should steer the mandated health-insurance exchanges in a pro-market direction and dare Washington to stop them.”

Book Review: The Hellhound of Wall Street

online.wsj.com

“James Grant reviews Michael Perino’s, The Hellhound of Wall Street: How Ferdinand Pecora’s Investigation of the Great Crash Forever Changed American Finance.”

Capitalism Saved the Miners

online.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Wonder Land columnist Daniel Henninger writes that the profit = innovation dynamic was everywhere at the Chilean mine rescue site.”

President Obama Looks Forward — and Back

nytimes.com

“Mr. Obama reflects on his presidency, admitting that he let himself look too much like “the same old tax-and-spend Democrat,” realized too late that “there’s no such thing as shovel-ready projects” and perhaps should have “let the Republicans insist on the tax cuts” in the stimulus.”

What is going on with marriage?

nytimes.com

“You’ve probably heard the latest marriage narrative: With the recession upon us, young lovers can’t afford to marry. As appealing as this story is, it has one problem: It’s not true.”

Should the Nobel Folks Be Sued for the Financial Crisis?

freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com

“The recent financial crisis clearly had many contributing villains. But if you’re looking to sue someone to recover losses, Nassim Nicholas Taleb maintains, the choice is clear: the Swedish Central Bank, which awards the Nobel Prize in Economics.”

The Foolish Foreclosure Moratorium — The American, A Magazine of Ideas

www.american.com

“Democrats are calling for a nationwide end to mortgage foreclosures. It’s hard to imagine a more shortsighted policy under our current economic circumstances.”