28 minutes of awesomeness:

Today’s must read, courtesy of Ramesh Ponnuru and Robert Stein.

Well worth reading.

As is Mark Steyn’s dig at Clinton’s “It’s 3 AM” ads.  (”Jeepers, will all business during the Clinton administration be transacted at 3 AM? Is it some union-negotiated flex-time deal?”)

He will speak on the topic, “Is Corporate Law Still a Race to the Top?”, at Case Western from 4:30 to 5:30 ET.  You can watch it live here; at some point in the future it will be available on demand from this site, as well.

Senator Clinton is currently crowing that she “is ready on day one to be Commander-in-Chief of our economy.”  (The line comes at the end of this 2-minute video clip.)

Egad.  Wrong, wrong – on every level, in every way possible.

Yes, the bubble ain’t what it used to be, but there are still areas of the US where home values are on the rise.  Hats off to Birmingham for making the list.

Check out James Glassman’s new venture for AEI, which launched last week.  Here’s the mission statement:

The American is a magazine of ideas for business leaders. Modeled on Henry Luce’s original vision for Fortune Magazine, it surveys the full scope of American life through the lens of business and economics. The magazine is published six times a year–our first issue came out on November 15, 2006. Our web site, American.com, takes the same editorial mission to the web, with original writing every day and a selection of thought-provoking links from around the web. The American is a project of The American Enterprise Institute.

Opinion Journal offers Thomas Sowell’s tribute and a set of quotations from Friedman’s columns for WSJ, in addition to the Journal’s editorial page tribute.

Truck and Barter has collected many links and anecdotes.

Friedman was the cover story of the Fall 2006 Rutgers alumni magazine.

You can read Friedman’s 2000 interview for the PBS series Commanding Heights here.

The Dallas Fed honored Milton and Rose in an October 2003 conference on “The Legacy of Free to Choose.”  You can read the papers (in PDF) by a strong group of participants, here.

Reason’s Jeff Taylor has a great take on this.

The Nobel laureate and dogged defender of liberty passed away in San Francisco earlier today. He was 94. He will be missed. Several posts about this sad news on Division of Labour include a number of good links, plus you can hear two recent interviews of Friedman by following the links at the bottom of this page. The Cato Institute offers several items in its tribute.

More from:

* The University of Chicago (provides links to obituaries at the NY Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Financial Times)

*  The Hoover Institution.

*   Greg Mankiw reposts his 1998 essay naming Friedman “the economist of the century.”

*  There are long — and growing — posts celebrating Friedman’s life on PrestoPundit and A Second Hand Conjecture. (HT for the latter to Instapundit.)

David Friedman.

Margaret Thatcher.

The lengthy London Telegraph obit.

Richard Ebeling and Sheldon Richman for FEE.

Finally, the Free to Choose website offers a long list of Friedman links.  

This is almost enough to make me hate capitalism.

Project Posner is the handiwork of former clerk Tim Wu, now on the Columbia Law faculty.  Here’s his explanation of the site:

The purpose of this site is to make freely and easily available to the public Richard Posner’s largest and greatest body of work — his judicial opinions. The database contains opinions from 1981 to 2006. It will not contain the most recent opinions.

Why this site? While Posner’s books and popular writings are easily available to the public, his opinions are difficult or expensive for the public to access, let alone search. This site, for the first time, collects almost all of his opinions in a single searchable and easily readable database.

For lawyers and those interested in law, Posner’s opinions have a particular substantive value. One thing that distinguishes the opinions is the effort to try and get at why a given law actually exists, and an effort to try and make sense of the law. That can make them more useful than most case reports.

In addition, the opinions often develop the American general and state common law. Posner is among the judges who feels free to take the rule of Erie as more suggestion than injunction.

Finally, some of the opinions are funny.

The full text of Free Markets Under Siege: Cartels, Politics, and Social Welfare (2005) is available free as a set of PDF files, thanks to the Hoover Institution.  (Thanks also to Peter Robinson for pointing this out yesterday on The Corner.)

Dierdre McCloskey, most recently the author of The Bourgeois Virtues, did a 30-minute podcast on “The Virtues of Capitalism” with Nick Schulz for TCS last week.  I strongly recommend both the book and the podcast, for those interested in this subject.

Also recommended:  This NYRB review of the life and work of Leszek Kolakowski, in partricular his Main Currents of Marxism (1978).  Here’s a bit of it (minus footnotes):

Kolakowski’s thesis, driven through 1,200 pages of exposition, is straightforward and unambiguous. Marxism, in his view, should be taken seriously: not for its propositions about class struggle (which were sometimes true but never news); nor for its promise of the inevitable collapse of capitalism and a proletarian-led transition to socialism (which failed entirely as prediction); but because Marxism delivered a unique —and truly original—blend of promethean Romantic illusion and uncompromising historical determinism.

The attraction of Marxism thus understood is obvious. It offered an explanation of how the world works—the economic analysis of capitalism and of social class relations. It proposed a way in which the world ought to work—an ethics of human relations as suggested in Marx’s youthful, idealistic speculations (and in György Lukács’s interpretation of him, with which Kolakowski, for all his disdain for Lukács’s own compromised career, largely concurs). And it announced incontrovertible grounds for believing that things will work that way in the future, thanks to a set of assertions about historical necessity derived by Marx’s Russian disciples from his (and Engels’s) own writings. This combination of economic description, moral prescription, and political prediction proved intensely seductive—and serviceable. As Kolakowski has observed, Marx is still worth reading—if only to help us understand the sheer versatility of his theories when invoked by others to justify the political systems to which they gave rise.

I still don’t understand Marxism’s appeal, but can admire Kolakowski’s Herculean attempt to explain it.

The Scottish philosopher and author of The Wealth of Nations was born this date, 1723.  There’s a short bio here, and many Smith-related links (and other Scottish Enlightenment links) on a course page of mine, here.

A very productive way of marking the occasion would be to read Arthur Herman’s wonderful book, How the Scots Invented the Modern World.

Coincidentally, today was also the birthday of John Maynard Keynes, in 1883.

First Quarter GDP Growth Fastest in 2.5 Years:

The U.S. economy shot forward at an upwardly revised 5.3 percent annual rate in the first quarter, the fastest growth in 2-1/2 years, as companies built up inventories and exports strengthened, a Commerce Department report on Thursday showed.

Me: And yet Republicans are still getting their butts kicked in the polls. As it turns out, not only are most of them hypocrites and bad policy makers, but they seem to be incredibly inept politicians as well.

Any SA readers knowledgeable about the research literature on Wal-Mart are hereby requested to take a look at my post on Division of Labour this afternoon.

Yesterday the Federal Trade Commission released its study of gasoline price fluctuations during and after the Katrina disaster, and Chairman Majoras testified before the Senate Commerce Committee to summarize the report’s findings, which include:

*  No evidence to suggest that refiners manipulated prices through any means, including running their refineries below full productive capacity to restrict supply, altering their refinery output to produce less gasoline, or diverting gasoline from markets in the United States to less lucrative foreign markets. The evidence indicated that these firms produced as much gasoline as they economically could, using computer models to determine their most profitable slate of products.

*  No evidence to suggest that refinery expansion decisions over the past 20 years resulted from either unilateral or coordinated attempts to manipulate prices. Rather, the pace of capacity growth resulted from competitive market forces.

*  No evidence to suggest that petroleum pipeline companies made rate or expansion decisions in order to manipulate gasoline prices.

*  No evidence to suggest that oil companies reduced inventory to increase or manipulate prices or exacerbate the effects of price spikes generally, or due to hurricane-related supply disruptions in particular. Inventory levels have declined, but the decline represents a decades-long trend to lower costs that is consistent with other manufacturing industries. In setting inventory levels, companies try to plan for unexpected supply disruptions by examining supply needs from past disruptions.

*  No situations that might allow one firm – or a small collusive group – to manipulate gasoline futures prices by using storage assets to restrict gasoline movements into New York Harbor, the key delivery point for gasoline futures contracts.

The FTC report also throws cold water on the Congressional enthusiasm for a federal price-gouging statute, by 

describing the challenges of crafting a price gouging statute and the difficulty of distinguishing “gougers” from those who are reacting in an economically rational manner to the temporary gasoline shortages resulting from an emergency such as a hurricane. After discussing the critical role of prices in market-based economies, the policy section concludes that if natural price signals are distorted by price controls, consumers ultimately might be worse off, as gasoline shortages could result.

These results come as no suprise to anyone who knows anything about the long history of antitrust investigations of this industry, and you might think the FTC study would settle the issue — but, alas, you’d be wrong: 

“The FTC ignored the 800-pound gorilla in the room,” said Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, contending that the agency ignored subtle manipulation by the oil companies. “The oil companies engage in price leadership — setting prices higher than what real competition would merit.”

Quick show of hands:  Who would prefer that Senator Schumer and his peers run the U.S. petroleum industry instead of the current crop of industry executives? 

This morning I’m just too lazy to reproduce the links and so on, here.  So, if you’d like to read my post on the annual report of the Trustees of the Social Security/Medicare System, click here.  If you’d like to peruse a set of links to a bunch of economics/public policy topics, click here.

And, as always, thanks for your patronage.

On a day when President Bush followed the leading Congressional members of his party in pandering to gas pump hysteria and know-nothingism, Southern Appeal readers might need a little cheering up on the subject.  I recommend Mac Johnson’s columm, “The O’Reilly Fiction.”  (Audio version available.)  An excerpt:

Of course, these newfangled “futures” contracts that Mr. O’Reilly has uncovered aren’t just bets made by “Vegas-style” people removed from reality. They are binding contracts and the buyers of these contracts agree to buy oil at the high prices that we bemoan. They lose their butts if they just bid up the paper price for no reason. I would encourage Mr. O’Reilly to enter the futures market and bet against these crazy Vegas-type speculators with his amazing insights into cabals and paper and so-called markets.

Johnson’s website is worth a look, too.

(Cross-posted on Division of Labour.)

Mart Laar became Prime Minister of Estonia when he was only 32 years old. He had read only one book on economics: Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose. He naively believed the book merely reported economic reforms that had already been implemented in the West. Despite the fact that his economists told him his flat tax, free market moves to privatize an economy that had been almost completely state-run could only fail, he pushed ahead.

The result: Estonia achieved the largest real per capita income of any of the former Soviet states. His policies are now being copied in the former eastern bloc.

Now, he’s being honored with the Cato Institute’s $500,000 Milton Friedman Prize for Liberty. That prize is aptly named, friend, because economic liberty is a massive part of what liberty is all about.

Read more from the Cato Institute and Pejman Yousefzadeh.

As many of you know, France has recently thrown in the towel again.  Not to the Germans this time, but to young workers and trade unions.  Reform proposals would have allowed companies to fire young workers without giving a reason during their first two years on the job.  Unemployment is double digits in France and it was hoped that this reform would liberalize and modernize France’s labor market.  Apparently, the young people of France would prefer having a “right” to life-time employment even if there are no jobs for them to have because of the existence of this “right.”

Lew Rockwell sums up the current inverse feudal system:

Under the present system, there is no fraternity or equality, much less liberty. Workers are free to withdraw from their jobs. To leave employment is rightly considered a human right; to deny it is tantamount to slavery or feudal serfdom. At the same time, then, it is pure hypocrisy to expect that the employer not be able to sever contracts with employees. To deny that – as the French protestors demand – is tantamount to enslaving employers and turning them into indentured servants of workers and their unions.

Lew is on point.  France is in bad shape, but the young workers and unions don’t have enough good sense to support reform.  They expect cradle to the grave state benefits and will not even consider, what appears to me, to be a very modest reform package.  Actually, the proposed reform would not have gone far enough to actually save the French economy.

Rockwell explains:

So we don’t have to puzzle about why there is unemployment in France. We know why. The proposal to loosen labor regulations addresses only a tiny part of the reason. And that is precisely the problem with the reform: it doesn’t go nearly far enough. France needs reform that simultaneously frees business in its hiring and firing decisions, frees wages to adjust based on supply and demand, frees the business sector from regulations that inhibit entrepreneurship, and reduces the costs of hiring by eliminating mandates and taxes.

Because of the recalcitrance of the unions and youth, the economic sitution in France will likely only get worse.

After an enjoyable spring break, including a trip to lovely Charleston (although the weather was not such that it reminded one of spring), I came across this excellent interview with Thomas Sowell in the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal.  Be sure to check it out.

A question to SA’s dem readers: Does President Bush get any credit for this?

Yesterday I joined the first-rate economics blog Division of Labour, thereby raising the number of law professors among its members from one to two. (Surely some of the economists on the blog are saying, “Well, that’s more than enough now.”) I’ll still be posting on SA as usual, and probably cross-listing regularly — like now. If you’re interested, you can read my first three DOL posts by following the links below:

* Margaret Thatcher’s rejection of the advice of the UK’s economics mandarins
* “Free” health care for Chilean oldsters
* Frank Buckley’s defense of market liberalism at AEI this week

There’s a nice introduction to this idea on TCS Daily, with links — and cool artwork, too.

This is Ben Stein’s advice to us all — but particularly to young people.  (He doesn’t really get to the point until the section headed “Retiree Vulnerability.”)

was pretty thoroughly trashed by CEI’s Isaac Post on NRO last week.  You can view the video of a recent AEI conference titled, “Is Corporate Social Responsibility Serious Business?,” by clicking here.

What follows is a slightly cleaned-up and hyperlinked version of the 10-minute talk I gave Thursday at the Oglethorpe-Berry conference I described below:

As you all know, it’s easy to find empirical evidence of the public’s ignorance on issues of politics, government, and public policy. There is also no shortage of commentary on this state of affairs, and prescriptions for reform of civic education. Most of the latter stress the need for more serious study of the Founding. (more…)

Fans of Hutcheson, Hume, Smith, and the rest of the gang should check out Proportional Belief.