While I'm not one to dwell on presidents, I found this by Jeff Hummel a little interesting...thought you all might too. I'm sure we've all seen rankings of the presidents. The usual suspects are always near the top: Lincoln, FDR, Washington, Wilson and maybe JFK. They say it takes crises to make a great president. Uneventful times, by this logic, tend to hurt a President's stature in the eyes of historians and political scientists who look to assess a value on the men who served in the White House. The times make the man in this sense.

That's what I take from a couple of articles written by social democrats that I've read over the weekend. The pronounced and unmistakable willingness of some to justify having less as long as long as the better off have EVEN less in relation to the worse off is indeed troubling to me. The mental gymnastics that I see these people put themselves through with the full knowledge and implications of their wishes known to them is indeed cause for pause.

Excellent video about what happened on the local level in an LA High School. Well done, Drew Carey.

10 minutes well spent.

The New York Times has an article now about what's happening with the $25 Billion that were set aside for loans through the Energy Department for automobile companies and start-ups to hasten the arrival next-generation auto technology using batteries.

As of right now, the amount of money dispersed has been: $0.00.

But it's not for lack interest in companies looking for the loan money:

Yet another example of Paul Krugman's transition from economist to partisan hack

I absolutely hate them. Few things get my free market juices flowing like disgusting cartels propped up by slovenly favoritism and privilege from government.

Brink Lindsey has a new paper out called Nostalgianomics . Love that picture!

Many will recall by entries on his recent book The Conscience of a Liberal. See here and here for a follow-up to the first.

I'd been lightly following this Clive Crook story from afar without reading the actual article. Then I saw, via Will Wilkinson , that it's still growing and that Clive's original article even got responses from the two high profile macroeconomists mentioned in the article: Barro and Krugman.

See here .

Here's his summation at the end and it's really, really good:

Hat Tip to the Liberty Papers .

A rather interesting post by Steve Gordon at the Liberty Papers.

He links to an article from The Next Right where Patrick Ruffini calls for Rush Limbaugh to replace Bill Kristol as a token conservative on the NYT Op-Ed page.

OK. So the stimulus will soon pass. Debate at this point is pretty much ceremonial as different politicians will position themselves for a variety of good and bad reasons on the yea or nay side of these bills from the House from Senate. That's politics.

But I'd like to see what people actually think of the stimulus:

Agree or disagree and why?
What do think it will accomplish and why?
What do you hope it will accomplish and why?

Going by his own words in a recent address at GMU earlier this month, it would seem he has his veto pen ready first its first run...

Well, the Obama presidency is only a few days old and it's been pretty good...so far. Yes, there will be disappointments and bad policy in the coming months (from my POV at least) but in these first few days, Obama has made or is starting to make good on some good campaign promises...and that's always a good thing.

As a libertarian, I don't get much to cheer about regardless of which party is in power so seeing little battles being won in a long, daunting and bleak war is the best I can hope for.

Hat tip Peter Boettke .

Hayek as a special on Meet the Press in 1975 discussing inflation, employment, stimulus, recessions and economic policy and monetary policy. A Gem. Well worth a listen. Much of the discussion is so very relevant to what we are seeing today. His answers with the benefit of hindsight only serve to make him more correct and more brilliant than he might have seemed live in 1975.

Well, maybe they are.

Hat tip to Tyler Cowen.

If this is true , it's a real downer for my hopes of Obama's economic outlook as president.

As I drove to work today, I saw that the gas price at station I pass is now $2.13 per gallon. Yesterday, it was $2.15, the day before, it was $2.17 and $2.19 the day before that. We have all watched with some relief as gas has slipped and tumbled down to prices that we haven't seen in a few years. And while it all seems good from a consumer standpoint, I still reflect on what it all means geo-politically.

Sheldon Richman almost feels bad for Paulson...almost. But in the end, not really. I certainly don't. It's a pretty simple display of the politics of intent going awry...quite easily and quite predictably.

1. Paulson grandstands by selling Congress an impossibly and foolishly ambitious bag of goods about how he can somehow intervene with billions of dollars and bailout the financial industry from its debacle.

Cato's monthly in depth issue online magazine.

Hat tip to Will Wilkinson .

This month's topic is free-markets vs. corporatist markets.

Says Will:

this month’s Cato Unbound should be required reading for: leftists and liberals who think libertarians are corporate shills; conservatives with Adam Smith ties who love corporations; libertarians who love Wal-Mart a little too much.

Hat tip to Tyler Cowen at MR .

Harvard economist (and Republican-leaning citizen) Greg Mankiw gives Obama some good advice moving forward.

It's a short but good read.

After congratulating Obama on his historic win, Mankiw turns to economic policy and takes a cursory look at some broad issues on the forth-coming policy agenda with some advice.

In short these tips are: