Jeg ved godt, at nedenstående er blevet et langt citat-helvede, men jeg synes bestemt det er værd at læse – jeg tillader mig at vurdere, da jeg ikke selv har skrevet det.

Mankiw – Bernanke on Happiness:

I am reminded of a story about Abraham Lincoln. According to the story, Lincoln was riding with a friend in a carriage on a rainy evening. As they rode, Lincoln told the friend that he believed in what economists would call the utility-maximizing theory of behavior, that people always act so as to maximize their own happiness, and for no other reason. Just then, the carriage crossed a bridge, and Lincoln saw a pig stuck in the muddy riverbank. Telling the carriage driver to stop, Lincoln struggled through the rain and mud, picked up the pig, and carried it to safety. When the muddy Lincoln returned to the carriage, his friend naturally pointed out that he had just disproved his own hypothesis by putting himself to great trouble and discomfort to save a pig. “Not at all,” said Lincoln. “What I did is perfectly consistent with my theory. If I hadn’t saved that pig, I would have felt terrible.”

Æren burde strengt taget tilfalde Bernanke, men jeg læste det hos Mankiw.

Tyler Cowen – Sentences to Ponder:

“There’s a reason elite schools speak of training leaders, not thinkers—holders of power, not its critics.”

Paul Krugman – Ignoring The Elephant In the EURO:

[N]ote that if you pretend that it’s all about fiscal profligacy, the problem seems solvable with a bit more discipline, but if you admit that the original optimum currency area issues are key to the situation, you wonder whether the common currency really makes sense.

Tyler Cowen – Social welfare expenditures in the United States and the Nordic Countries:

Per capita net public social expenditures in the U.S. rank behind only Sweden. Add in the private spending, and per capita spending in the U.S. is higher than in all of the Nordic countries.

James Hamilton – Inflation, taxation, and the underground economy:

Even though much of economic activity is outside of the government’s control, the government can still tax that activity by choosing a higher inflation rate

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Aruoba’s interpretation is that the weaker a country’s institutions, the greater the attractiveness of the informal sector, and the more the government is likely to rely on inflation rather than standard taxes to raise revenue.

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Tyler Cowen thinks those bars look unsettlingly like dominoes.

Martin Feldstein – For a solution to the euro crisis, look to the states:

The structure of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) that created the euro actually encourages members to run large deficits. A country with its own currency would see that currency deteriorate and its interest rates rise if it sold large amounts of debt to global investors. But because EMU countries share a currency, there has been no market feedback to warn when a country’s deficit is getting dangerously high.

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Here there may be something to learn from United States. (…) The basic reason for these small deficits is that each state’s constitution prohibits borrowing for operating purposes. States can issue debt to finance infrastructure but not salaries, services, transfer payments or other operating expenses.

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The European Central Bank could accelerate this process by restricting collateral to bonds issued by governments with satisfactory constitutional limits on their deficits.

HT: MR. For godt hundrede år siden rejsete Chauncy Morlan(1869-1906) rundt med et cirkus, hvor mennesker betalte penge for at se ‘den fede mand’.

Gad vide, om man overhvoedet ville lægge særligt mærke til Morlan på gaden i dag?

Mens man overvejer det dybt filosofiske spørgsmål, kan man jo lytte til Dylan klassikeren ‘Times they are a-changin‘, der var tema-melodi til en fremragende film, der dog ikke havde noget med fedme at gøre.

Helt konkret er jeg forarget over følgende artikel: Anders Samuelsen afhøres om boller. At myndighederne overhovedet overvejer at følge op på en historie om hjemmebag i et privat hjem for eventuelt at udstede en bøde er ganske enkelt grotesk.

Når sådan en henvendelse kommer, skal hvem end der tog telefonen bare smække noget så grusomt på igen, at vedkommende i den anden ende følger sig enten forlegen eller trådt på – either way works fine!

Hvad bliver det næste? Forbud om rygning i private hjem hvis der er ikke-rygere tilstede? Forbud mod at tvinge børn til tandbørstning? Påbud om at alle danskere skal være CO2-neutrale?

Eller sagt på en anden måde: Hvornår stopper vanviddet?