“New Zealand Covid deaths soar to RECORD high as Omicron wreaks havoc: Scientists claim nation is vulnerable because it spent too long under ‘hermit’ China-style eradication strategy”. (HT Will Jones)
“England’s Latest Covid Wave Peaks Without Masks or Restrictions“.
TANSTAFPFC (There Ain’t No Such Thing As Free Protection From Covid.)
“One good comedian is more valuable to society than a hundred public intellectuals because nothing exposes power as a joke at its expense … for the tyrant can endure anything except being laughed at.” – Jeff Polet
Joseph Sternberg is no fan of Ben Bernanke’s new book. Two slices:
That this evolution in Mr. Bernanke’s views doesn’t on its face undermine his credibility could be explained by the fact that there’s still quite a lot that economists don’t understand about these policies and how they work—as Mr. Bernanke acknowledges. But it might also be a clue that something is awry in the economics behind Mr. Bernanke’s new approach to monetary policy. Or that his enthusiasm for the Fed’s new tools could be a tad premature.
It turns out to be the latter. A glaring omission from Mr. Bernanke’s book is any sense that central-bank policies may themselves contribute to the negative productivity, employment or output trends to which—as Mr. Bernanke and so many others believe—a central bank merely reacts.
…..
That’s all economics, though, and Mr. Bernanke’s book is best read as a political rather than an economic treatise. The Fed’s interventions since 2007 have grown steadily more controversial. The crux of the indictment against the Fed, from both the left and the right, is that with its ever more aggressive policy tools it has strayed into the kind of distributional decisionmaking that’s properly the prerogative of elected politicians.
Gary Galles helps us to better understand protectionism. A slice:
Protectionism provides special treatment for political favorites at the expense of others’ rights and well-being. In fact, it harms all American consumers not given special protection, by removing options they chose for themselves (as illustrated by the fact that undoing protectionist policies could lower prices paid by Americans at a time when rapid inflation is supposedly political topic number one), yet it persists.
Here’s more from Scott Lincicome on the baby-formula fiasco.