All posts by Jim Garven

My name is Jim Garven. I currently hold appointments at Baylor University as the Frank S. Groner Memorial Chair of Finance and Professor of Finance & Insurance. I also currently serve as an associate editor for Geneva Risk and Insurance Review. At Baylor, I teach courses in managerial economics, risk management, and financial engineering, and my research interests are in corporate risk management, insurance economics, and option pricing theory and applications. Please email your comments about this weblog to James_Garven@baylor.edu.

Assorted Links (10/13/2010)

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

Christien Meindertsma: How pig parts make the world turn | Video on TED.com

ted.com

“TED Talks Christien Meindertsma, author of “Pig 05049” looks at the astonishing afterlife of the ordinary pig, parts of which make their way into at least 185 non-pork products, from bullets to artificial hearts.”

Google to map inflation using web data

ft.com

“Data could provide an alternative to official statistics.”

Higher Taxes Mean I’ll Work Less

nytimes.com 

“A personal case study looks at some of the ways higher taxes may affect the earnings of high-income taxpayers.”

Review & Outlook: The 2010 Spending Record

online.wsj.com

“The Wall Street Journal on the 21.4% federal spending increase in two years.”

Boehner’s ‘Plan B’ for ObamaCare

online.wsj.com

“In the Wall Street Journal, Main Street columnist William McGurn writes that congressional hearings can be used to sell market-friendly fixes.”

Europe the Intolerant

online.wsj.com

“In the Wall Street Journal, James Kirchick writes that the continent’s progressive image is a fabrication of the American liberal mind.”

NFL vs. ‘TV Everywhere’

online.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Business World columnist Holman Jenkins, Jr. says that TV’s fight to preserve its power in the face of digital ubiquity may be a lost cause.”

Book Review: Roosevelt’s Purge

online.wsj.com

“Jonathan Karl reviews Susan Dunn’s Roosevelt’s Purge: How FDR Fought to Change the Democratic Party.”

Irwin on France’s role in the Great Depression

cafehayek.com

“In the latest EconTalk, Doug Irwin argues that France played a much larger role than previously thought in causing the Great Depression. We talk about how the gold standard worked and how French monetary policy forced deflation on the rest of the world.”

The Decline of Cursing

online.wsj.com

“Bad words, once glorious, have been emptied of meaning by common use, argues Jan Morris in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.”

The Weekend Interview with Scott Rasmussen: America’s Insurgent Pollster

online.wsj.com

“In the Wall Street Journal, OpinionJournal columnist John Fund interviews Scott Rasmussen, who says that understanding the tea party is essential to predicting what the country’s political scene will look like.”

Paul Johnson – The Quest For God – The ReAL Book Review

torenewamerica.com

I really like Gerard Reed’s book reviews; here’s one about British historian Paul Johnson’s new book entitled “The Quest for God”. I first became aware of Paul Johnson more than 20 years ago, when I became deeply influenced by Paul Johnson’s essay entitled “The Heartless Lovers of Humankind” (see http://www.fortfreedom.org/h11.htm).

The Fed Compounds Its Mistakes

online.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Carnegie-Mellon University economist Allan H. Meltzer says the Federal Reserve shouldn’t deliberately use inflation to reduce unemployment.”

Diamond, Mortensen, Pissarides Share 2010 Nobel Economic Prize

bloomberg.com

“Peter Diamond, Dale Mortensen and Christopher Pissarides shared the 2010 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for their work on the efficiency of recruitment and wage formation as well as labor-market regulation.”

Four Lions: The Absurdity of Terror

www.thepublicdiscourse.com

“In the British film Four Lions, five Muslim men from Sheffield, England—four from immigrant families along with an English convert—seek to break out of their ho-hum average-ness by doing something which they think will launch them into hero status in their community.They plot a terrorist attack in the name of “jihad” in the U.K. In this farcical film, black satire meets terror-jihad and it is a match made almost in heaven. The would-be jihadists, however, end their lives only in tragedy, not in paradise.”

The MBA Oath

www.tutor2u.net

“At a time when capitalism, free markets, corporate greed, (WallStreet 2), bankers’ bonuses, is making headlines, here is the MBA Oath. The oath is a voluntary pledge for graduating MBAs and current MBAs to “create value responsibly and ethically’.”



Joe Queenan on Jimmy Carter’s Addiction to Writing Books

online.wsj.com

“The American people wanted Jimmy Carter out of office in the worst way, and to this day they are paying the price. If we had to do it all over again, I think a lot of people would vote to amend the Constitution and allow presidents to run for five, six—as many terms as they wanted. That wouldn’t leave them much spare time to write books.”

Assorted Links (10/9/2010)

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

Revolt of the Accountants

online.wsj.com

“Washington is turning America into Paperwork Nation, writes Peggy Noonan in The Wall Street Journal.”

The End of Free Trade?

online.wsj.com

“High tariffs and currency wars cost us big in the 1930s. We can avoid making the same mistakes again, writes Douglas A. Irwin.”

Bad Policies Push U.S. in Wrong Direction

www.cato.org

“Policies that lead to higher taxes, more debt, socialized health care, costly regulations, protectionism, and unstable money undermine U.S. economic strength and frustrate the natural equilibrating function that characterizes a dynamic market system based on freely determined prices, the rule of law, and sound money.”

The Battle for the Future

www.creators.com

“For most of the life of America, and when it grew fastest, government spent just a few hundred dollars per person. Today, the federal government alone spends $10,000.”

Sex, and Studying It, Is Complicated – The Numbers Guy – WSJ

blogs.wsj.com

“A new study offers fascinating glimpses into the sexual life of Americans, and also raises some statistical conundrums.”

The Economic Way of Thinking: Jobs Report Friday

wot.typepad.com

“With it being another jobs report Friday this morning, it seems like as good a time as any to remind readers of where we are with respect to unemployment compared to where Team Obama said we would be by now.”

The Facebook Searchers

www.nytimes.com 

“”The Social Network” is spot on with its parsing of who wins and loses in our information economy and hypercompetitive meritocracy.”

Charles Krauthammer – The Colbert Democrats

www.washingtonpost.com

“His comedy in Washington marked the end for the 111th Congress.”

The Protectionist Instinct

online.wsj.com

In the Wall Street Journal, Emory Professor Paul Rubin writes that political support for free trade is a remarkable achievement of civic education—one threatened by our weak economy.

Obama Pulls Down His Party

online.wsj.com

“In the Wall Street Journal, Wonder Land columnist Daniel Henninger writes that the president’s approval ratings, like George W. Bush’s, are sinking his party’s congressional candidates.”

Toward a New American Century

online.wsj.com

“Michael Milken writes in The Wall Street Journal that immigration reform, investments in human capital, and better housing policy can help restore U.S. economic leadership.”

Austerity or prosperity?

cafehayek.com

“When you ask Keynesians for empirical evidence of how government spending creates prosperity, their best and most frequently cited answer is how World War II ended the Depression–a massive, increase in deficit-financed government spending. But as Robert Higgs has pointed out, the sharp decrease in unemployment that resulted was not due to the magic of some Keynesian multiplier but rather from conscription—forcing Americans into the Army.”

Elitism and Judicial Supremacy

www.thepublicdiscourse.com

“For years, I have been working on the problem of judicial supremacy—the idea that the courts have ultimate control of the Constitution. Judicial supremacy is a problem because the explanations offered by those who wish to justify it really don’t work. The Constitution certainly doesn’t justify it.”

Taxes and Presidential Math

www.american.com

“Let’s compare the size of the tax cuts to the total amount of spending over the next ten years and see how ‘drastically’ it would expand the deficit.”

So Maybe Sexy Media Doesn’t Lead to Teen Sex?

freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com

“A new study (summarized here) casts doubt on the popular notion that exposure to sex in the media is linked to earlier sexual activity.”

$10,000 Gold?

www.project-syndicate.org

“Now that gold has crossed the magic $1,000 barrier, some investors evidently believe that, like the stock market when the Dow Jones index hit 1,000, the price can increase ten-fold. What was true for the alchemists of yore remains true today: gold and reason are often difficult to reconcile.”

Gallup Delivers a Stunner – WSJ.com

online.wsj.com

“John Fund writes in The Wall Street Journal that the real historical parallel may be 1894 when Republicans took 100 seats.”

Green Supremacists

online.wsj.com

“James Taranto on an environmentalist fantasy of violent totalitarianism.”

Europe’s Choice on Conscience Protection « Public Discourse

www.thepublicdiscourse.com

“This Thursday the Council of Europe, a transnational body created in 1949 to promote democracy and human rights, will vote on a resolution and series of recommendations on conscience protection. Americans, who faced similar issues during the debate over the health care overhaul, will find much of interest in the resolution.”

Review & Outlook: Of Scoundrels and Speech

online.wsj.com 

“The Wall Street Journal writes that the First Amendment protects even jerks.”

Fouad Ajami: Pax Americana and the New Iraq – WSJ.com

online.wsj.com

“In the Wall Street Journal, Fouad Ajami writes that Iraq’s Shiites, especially, have a healthy fear of Iran and a desire to keep Persian power at bay.”

President Obama’s ‘Rap Palate’

online.wsj.com

“In the Wall Street Journal, Thomas Chatterton Williams asks why President Obama praises violent, misogynistic hip-hop stars.”

Obama Administration Has Been An ‘Academic Exercise’

blog.investors.com

“A day after President Obama declared that his administration is not “some academic exercise,” Lawrence Summers announced plans to step down as director of the president’s National Economic Council and return to Harvard University. Christina Romer just left her post as head of the White House Council of Economic Advisers to go back to the University of California, Berkeley. The current administration has suffered from a historic lack of private-sector experience, from Obama on down. There’s almost no one on the White House payroll who’s actually ever had to meet a payroll.”

Assorted Links (10/5/2010)

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

Evidence of Solar Scientists Raise Fears of Imminent Ice Age

www.suite101.com “New study by American solar experts identifies a sharp fall in sunspot activity since 2007 that fits the hallmarks of a soon arriving ice age.” (This is not an Onion article! Hat tip to my Baylor colleague Dave VanHoose for pointing it out to me…).

The Bill Gates Income Tax

online.wsj.com

“In the Wall Street Journal, Arthur Laffer writes that if Washington’s most famous billionaires are really worried about their state’s finances, they’d write personal checks to the government and leave everyone else alone.”

Review & Outlook: ‘Essential’ Bailouts

online.wsj.com

Notwithstanding political rhetoric to the contrary, this article explains how the recently passed Dodd-Frank financial regulatory reform law enables a “new” system of bailouts. Specifically, “…under the new law, firms deemed too big to fail by the new Financial Stability Oversight Council can be protected from bankruptcy, if regulators so desire, and instead put into an alternative process managed by the FDIC. The idea is to provide the firm with taxpayer cash that would not be available in a bankruptcy, and then try to recover the taxpayer’s money over time from sales of the company’s assets.”

Book review: Adam Smith

online.wsj.com

“Jeffrey Collins reviews Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life, by Nicholas Phillipson.”

How to Cut Carbon Emissions

www.youtube.com

This video is quite graphic in its violence and ironically comes off as rather Orwellian. Apparently one is only entitled to adopt what the filmmaker defines as the “consensus” (groupthink) opinion, and if you happen to deviate in any way from this opinion, then no pressure… you die a gruesome death… See http://bit.ly/do8wK4 for the Guardian’s (not surprisingly) favorable assessment of the video in an article entitled “There Will be Blood”.

The Trade and Tax Doomsday Clocks

online.wsj.com

“Donald Luskin writes in The Wall Street that tariffs against China and failure to extend the Bush-era tax cuts would repeat the worst mistakes of the Great Depression.”

Big Tax Breaks Beget Small Investments – Why the American Jobs Creation Act lowered taxes but failed

insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu

“The American Jobs Creation Act (AJCA) of 2004 temporarily lowered the tax rate paid on income that American firms bring back from their foreign subsidiaries to the United States. Congress said it gave businesses this tax break in order to stimulate domestic investment, and indeed, during the two year window more than $300 billion was repatriated to the United States in response to the law. However, according to research by Mitchell Petersen, a professor of finance at the Kellogg School of Management, many of the firms made little incremental domestic investment. In addition, the law resulted in a substantial tax savings for many multinational businesses and a huge loss to the U.S. Treasury.”

Valuing the Government Guarantee – Determining the U.S. government’s liability for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu

Not surprisingly “Fannie and Freddie are enormous obligations for the U.S. government.” Two Northwestern University finance professors (Robert McDonald and Deborah Lucas) derive a set of empirically robust estimates to this effect!

First Among Equals? – Prime ballot position improves a candidate’s chances of winning office

insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu

“Specialists in the mechanics of voting have long recognized that the order in which candidates’ names appear on a ballot influences voters’ decisions. Typically, candidates listed at the top of a ballot earn a greater share of the vote than they would receive in any other position, regardless of their policies and personalities… the first listing on the ballot also increases a candidate’s chances of actually winning office—by almost five percentage points.”

A Man for All Factions

www.nytimes.com

“President Obama has managed the difficult feat of alienating both sides of the Democratic Party at the same time.”

Assorted Links (10/2/2010)

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

Basel III and Risky Banking Behavior: Too Little, Too Lenient, Too Late?

knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu

“…a repeat of the financial crisis requires much more than the Basel III reforms. Moral hazard, or the tendency to take risks in hopes of government bailouts if things go wrong, is still a problem.”

Why is Obama sending troops to Afghanistan?

www.washingtonpost.com

“What kind of commander in chief sends troops to war announcing a fixed date for their withdrawal?”

The Twister of 2010

online.wsj.com

“America’s political landscape will never be the same, writes Peggy Noonan.”

Notable & Quotable

online.wsj.com

“At some point, …we will have the academic version of September 15, 2008-as parents no longer choose to take on $200,000 in debt to send their children to 4-year liberal arts schools, in which they will be likely indoctrinated that they should oppose the very American institutions that created the wealth and freedom that fuel their colleges and pay their faculties.”

The Broadway-Buffalo Divide

online.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal’s Cross Country column, Fred Siegel writes that Gothamites who disparage Carl Paladino would do well to understand why other New Yorkers voted for him.”

Charles R. Schwab: Enough With the Low Interest Rates!

online.wsj.com

“In the Wall Street Journal, Charles R. Schwab writes that Fed policy punishes savers without making credit more readily available.”

Healthamburglar

online.wsj.com

“The Wall Street Journal on what happened when McDonald’s met ObamaCare.”

The Weekend Interview with Eric Cantor: ‘Things Could Get Pretty Messy’

online.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Steve Moore interviews Eric Cantor, the man who would be the next House majority leader, on the GOP agenda and working with Obama.”

Black Churches and the Prosperity Gospel

online.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Pastor DeForest Soaries Jr. says that depending on miracles as a financial strategy is a dangerous way to live.”

Echoes of the Great Depression

online.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, former U.S. Senator Phil Gramm notes that as in the 1930s, policy uncertainty and hostility to business have retarded recovery. At least this time around the political price for economic failure promises to be swift.”

In Elizabeth Warren We Trust?

online.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, George Mason University Professor Todd Zywicki says the unaccountable head of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has repeatedly used shoddy data to push policies she favors.”

Assorted Links (9/30/2010)

Here’s a list of articles that I have been reading (and videos that I have been viewing) lately:

Chinese Company’s Device Turns IPod Into IPhone – Video

www.bloomberg.com

“Bloomberg’s Margaret Conley reports on Yosion Technology’s Apple Peel 520. A Chinese company is trying to overcome copyright restrictions before releasing a device that can provide Apple Inc.’s iPod Touch with iPhone functions.”

Review & Outlook: Department of Disinformation

online.wsj.com

“The Wall Street Journal on Kathleen Sebelius’s North Carolina fairy tale.” This is the WSJ’s followup to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’s WSJ article from yesterday entitled “Health Insurers Finally Get Some Oversight” (see http://bit.ly/9Z62E1), which helps provide some context…

The Pelosi-Reid Deficits

online.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Steve Moore says to blame Congress, not presidents Bush or Obama, for our perilous fiscal situation.”

Review & Outlook: Blaming the Voters

online.wsj.com

“The Wall Street Journal writes that Democrats embrace the Chris Farley school of political motivation.”

Europe’s Social Safety Net and the Jobless U.S. Recovery

nytimes.com

“If the United States expands its social safety net, Americans might enjoy some of the European lifestyle, or recover the jobs lost during this recession, but not both, an economist writes.”

Why Obama Needs Fox News

foxnews.com

“…it would be far worse for Obama if there was no Fox News, because then he’d only have the American people to get mad at. There is no Republican adversary right now, and without Fox News–who’s left?”

Obama Calls Fox News a `Destructive’ Channel – NYTimes.com

nytimes.com

The president tells Rolling Stone that Fox News promotes a point of view that is “destructive” to the growth of the United States.

Obama Rolling Stone interview: three awesome bits

www.csmonitor.com

Yes, yes, President Obama talks about plans for energy policy and so forth in his interview with Rolling Stone magazine. But the intriguing bits include attitudes about … his socks?

Social Media Revolution 2

www.youtube.com

Social Media Revolution 2 is a refresh of the original video with new and updated social media & mobile statistics that are hard to ignore.

2010 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics Pool

harvard.edu

Every year in early October the Nobel Prize Committee honors a few select individuals who have made tremendous contributions to science and society. Shortly afterwards they hand out a prize in Economics. Continuing an annual tradition, the Harvard Department of Economics is hosting the world’s most accurate prediction market—The Nobel Pool.

Daily Presidential Tracking Poll – Rasmussen Reports

www.rasmussenreports.com

Capture

“The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Wednesday shows that 29% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president. Forty-three percent (43%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -14 (see trends)… Only 34% of voters believe last year’s economic stimulus plan helped the economy. A plurality holds the opposite view.”


America in an Age of Open Field Politics


www.american.com


“This year’s Republican success will likely prove to be no more permanent than the 2006–2008 Democratic successes were.”

Assorted Links (9/27/2010)

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

It’s Easier to Be Brilliant than Right

www.american.com

“There is a danger with intellectual brightness. It is to overemphasize and develop a bias for cleverness, quickness, facility with data, and the ability to persuade.”

Curb Corruption or Lose the War in Afghanistan

online.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, former CIA official Rufus Phillips says that association with the agency has given some Afghan officials impunity, threatening Gen. David Petraeus’s counterinsurgency strategy.”

How to Grow Out of the Deficit

online.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Hoover Institution fellow Edward Lazear says that limiting spending increases to inflation minus 1% would balance the budget in less than a decade.”

Jeffrey Goldberg is Fidel’s Latest American Dupe

online.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Americas columnist Mary Anastasia O’Grady notes that the Atlantic Monthly’s Jeffrey Goldberg is not the first American journalist to cuddle up to Castro.”

The Regulation Tax Grows

online.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Lafayette College economists Nicole V. Crain and W. Mark Crain say that federal regulatory burdens, not Chinese competition, are responsible for the decline of U.S. manufacturing.”

The Seduction of the Tea Partiers

nytimes.com

“Will the rhetoric of the House Republicans’ Pledge to America win over Tea Party members?”

The Weekend Interview With Tony Blair

online.wsj.com

“In the Wall Street Journal, Global View columnist Bret Stephens interviews former British prime minister Tony Blair, who defends the West and Third Way politics.”

Tax Cuts and Revenue: What We Learned in the 1980s

online.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Richard Rahn says that supply-siders never argued that all tax cuts pay for themselves. But the evidence is clear that lower rates on high earners do produce more revenue over time.”

Jim Towey: Pastors For ObamaCare? – WSJ.com

online.wsj.com

“In the Wall Street Journal, the leader of George W. Bush’s faith-based initiatives office writes that if the office is going to be used as a propaganda unit by President Obama, it might as well be shut down.”

Book Review: John Kenneth Galbraith, the Non-Economist’s Economist

online.wsj.com

“James Grant reviews Galbraith: The Affluent Society & Other Writings, published by the Library of America.”

Faith and Science Symposium

My good friend Larry Linenschmidt has organized the “Vibrant Dance of Faith and Science” Symposium, which is scheduled to take place October 26–28 in Austin, TX.  Larry is executive director for the Hill Country Institute for Contemporary Christianity, and he has succeeded in putting together a very impressive roster of speakers, including (among others) my Baylor colleague Walter Bradley!

For more information about the Symposium, visit the website at vibrantdance.org.  In closing, here’s Larry himself describing the Symposium in his own words: