You know you missed us.

Once again, my fault. I’ve been traveling and working on new essays and articles. The book is progressing (third draft) and evolving, and in the research process I’ve discovered some fantastic material for future writing. More on that in coming weeks and months.

For now, let’s kick off May with my latest column in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. I know you want me to write more about financial regulation, but I’m trying to save my most important points for the book. (And I doubt we’re going to get a great bill no matter what any of us write. It’s going to take many years to right this ship).

With that said, here is something important that Congress isn’t addressing in financial regulation: “We also need to regulate the regulators.” Read the column to see what I mean.

I know you’re also eager to hear my take on Greece’s troubles. In good time, dear reader. I will now be writing more frequently: Get ready for a busy summer!

Black Friday is to many adults what Christmas is to children. We go crazy with credit cards as the little ones lose control over toys. As much as we’d like to think we’re more mature, we can be every bit as petty and myopic—and not just with Christmas shopping. From one of my columns in the Hazleton Standard-Speaker last December, consider this your Black Friday warning:

There’s one thing about Jdimytai Damour that I can’t get out of my head.

By now, you’ve heard Damour’s tragic story repeatedly. At the age of 34, the Wal-Mart worker was trampled to death by early-morning shoppers on Black Friday. You’ve probably heard all the moralizations, too—fingers wagged at the decline of moral values and the rise of consumerism—but here’s the part I just can’t shake: We killed him.   Read more…

With Halloween just around the corner, I thought I’d show you how economics can even rid you of those pesky haunting spirits. But seriously, here’s my second column in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. The question I address lies at the heart of public choice economics, though I didn’t have enough room to delve into the details too much. I’ve written briefly about this subfield before, and I think it deserves more careful consideration by economists, not to mention the voting public. The peak of public choice came under James M. Buchanan (who won the Nobel Prize) and Gordon Tullock, both of whom concluded that most government intervention makes things worse. You can debate their opinion—and I do, on many counts—but too often we talk about market failure and don’t even think about the negative consequences of the government “solutions” we are proposing.   Read more…

My latest post is up on the Sun-Sentinel site. I haven’t written much publicly about the financial crisis lately because I’m saving most of the material for my forthcoming book, which is taking most of my time (hence the light posting here). Because compensation has received some heavy — and, as I argue, inaccurate — press lately, I felt compelled to make this little-understood argument clear. I make the point that there is a compensation problem, but it’s not the one you think. Find out what the real compensation problem is here. And now for my addenda:   Read more…

Jim Hamilton, truly one of the best macroeconomists of his generation, may not be smiling, but he’s getting closer. At all times, Hamilton keeps a cartoon face—smiling, frowning, or neutral—on his blog Econbrowser to represent his outlook for the economy. It’s like security threat levels for the business cycle. Yesterday, Hamilton replaced the longtime frowning face with a neutral one.   Read more…