Return to the Gold Standard?
When it comes to a return to the gold standard, my newest favorite financial writer, Randall Forsyth, vehemently disagrees with my older favorite financial writers, like Rothbard and, to some extent, Allan Meltzer (though Meltzer says the gold standard could work for the U.S. only if the rest of the world adopted it as well). Forsyth derides the idea. I tend to side with the Rothbardians on this, but my knowledge of the matter is only a scintilla of Forsyth's so I won't endeavor to dispute his points.
I like reading people like Forsyth because he's clearly a writer of honesty and goodwill . . . and he ain't no Keynesian. If you want to see an honest account of the gold standard arguments, by a guy who then attempts to refute them, check the article.
Sloppy Science, Episode 1,009,992
One of my newest regular reads, Mangan, points out that, though he has little doubt that cigarette smoking is bad for you, the anti-smoking science is much weaker than people suppose: The Scientific Scandal of Anti-Smoking.
While the process of inhaling smoke that contains hundreds of carcinogenic chemicals, hundreds of times daily over a period of decades, seems intuitively bad for health, selection effects may account for much or most of the damaging effects of cigarettes. Simply put, smokers are presumably also those with lower IQ, greater impulsivity, lower socioeconomic status, and if their parents smoked as well, lower birth weight, all of these being correlated with worse health. That said, I have a hard time believing it, but all studies done so far provide little evidence that smoking, in and of itself, lowers longevity.
Miscellaneous
Happy first day of Winter. Thanks for patronizing this site through Amazon. If you have last-second gifts to buy online, please enter from here. It's greatly appreciated. "The American winter holiday runs from Thanksgiving to Super Bowl Sunday." Forbes 12/28/09 (p. 23). Through Super Bowl Sunday? I've never heard that before. Expect slow blogging through the holidays (through January 1st, not the Super Bowl).
