Category: Economics

Do You Like Being a Chump?

Current Affairs, Economics, Politics

The Left is turning the United States into a nation of chumps. It won’t end well.

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The Ever-Elusive Economic “Third Way”

Economics

Everyone is always seeking a third economic way. They don't want "unbridled capitalism" and they know Socialism kills, but there must be a third way.

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Von Mises and Roepke

Economics

I’ve always wanted to understand better the differences between Wilhelm Roepke and Ludwig von Mises. This article is helpful: Roepke and von Mises: The Difference http://t.co/HNOQ1TAEpt — The Daily …

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Monday

Economics

Econ Monday Long-time readers may recall that I blogged once a week on economic matters (“Econ Saturday”), in the wake of the 2008 meltdown. I stopped for a couple …

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Saturday

Economics

Depressing Stuff Anybody here pay their own health insurance premiums? I do. I received notice that my premium is going up 26% this year. And oh yeah: I have …

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Saturday

Economics

Econ Saturday So what happened yesterday? Stocks got hammered. Oil dropped 4%. Metals held their ground, but that’s no big deal. They often do well when the other investments …

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Monday

Economics, Education

Student Loans The student debt problem is getting more and more press . . . and more attention in Congress. The whole debate infuriates me. The federal government created …

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Wednesday

Economics, Miscellaneous

The Ben Bites Back Bernanke has been slashing back at Ron Paul and proponents of a gold standard. He says a gold standard handicaps the government’s ability to address …

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Monday

Economics

Antifragility Nassim Taleb is coming out with a new book. It sounds great. Unfortunately, it won’t be available for another eight months. I listened to a podcast about it. …

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Soros the Austrian? George Soros grabbed headlines yesterday with an interview in Newsweek. The rabid leftist octogenarian investment icon and social activist ain’t too optimistic. He’s expecting riots in …

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Wednesday

Economics

Happy All Souls Day. It’s probably my favorite non-obligatory feast day of the year. Occupy a Job Already The Occupy Wall Street people need to go home. I sympathized …

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Tuesday

Economics

This seems consistent with massive money printing: The extra money flows to the favored segments (Wall Street and its connections) but not to main street. Meanwhile, the extra money …

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You’re Not a Lunatic? Thank Your Daddy.

November 23, 2020

Portland’s feral children have bonded since the 1980s in “street families,” complete with “street moms” and “street dads.” Some of the most grotesque crimes in the city’s history have ensued thanks to “laws” about “family” loyalty
Triple Anniversary

November 22, 2020

CSL, JFK, and AH (Aldous Huxley). All died this day in 1963.
Pulling Thomas Aquinas Kicking and Screaming into the Twentieth Century

November 22, 2020

You can’t get through a Pieper book quickly any more than you can fly through poetry, or run through an art museum, or gulp fine wine. All such things are possible, sure, but they’re all acts of desecration: violations of …
Seven Days Make One Weak

November 21, 2020

Expertise is the taurine of the State and intellectuals are its caffeine. Experts and intellectuals make the State think that it can do far, far more than it can.
How We Can Still Celebrate Holiday Drinking in These Troubling Days?

November 20, 2020

The decadents think it’s a shortened version of “Black-out Wednesday,” but it’s not. It’s a play off “Black Friday,” which is “black” because retailers turn huge profits that day. “Black Wednesday” is black because it turns huge profits for bars.
What’s Going on at TDE?

November 19, 2020

Please use the Amazon search widget or any of the TDE Amazon links (bolded links = Amazon links) when you shop this year for Christmas presents.
Do You Like Being a Chump?

November 17, 2020

The Left is turning the United States into a nation of chumps. It won’t end well.
Finding Epicurus in a Time of Immense Woe and Suffering

November 16, 2020

How will I deal with Michigan shutting down the bars on Black Wednesday?
Let’s Celebrate St. Albert

November 15, 2020

I've often wondered whether St. Albert was sad when his greatest student, St. Thomas Aquinas, died before him.
Seven Days Make One Weak

November 14, 2020

TDE's Weekly Jeremiad and Recap. The Lockdown Death Rate, COVID hangovers, election recounts.

Triple Anniversary

CSL, JFK, and AH (Aldous Huxley). All died this day in 1963.
Dalrymple Explores the Exploding Underclass (11/22/2020)

I have encountered many alcoholic Sikhs, for example, who were among the most refractory with regard to abstinence of all my patients; I have encountered almost every kind of social pathology among Muslims, from incest to drug addiction.
A Few Interesting Red-Blue Facts (11/21/20)

Blue states and red states don’t even watch the same television shows. Game of Thrones was popular in Blue America, but Red America watches The Walking Dead.
Bill Eerdman, RIP (11/21/2020)

He forfeited an advance and backed away from co-publishing a book by an important English scholar because he came to see it as denying the preexistence of the Son, the only time in his own career, the originating English publisher later joked, that he had had a book turned down because it was "weak on the hypostatic union”
Do You Rely on Your Doctor? (11/21/2020)

Steven Levitt, of Freakonomics fame, was recently interviewed on Econtalk. At approximately minute 21:50, he said that, if you're diagnosed with a rare disease, you can research it for a day on the Internet and you'll know more about it than a general practitioner.
Negativity Bias Identified Long Before It was Identified (11/18/2020)

The minds of men always dwell more on bad luck. They accept ordinary prosperity as a matter of course. Misfortunes arrest their attention and remain in their memory.
Synopsis: 11/17/2020 Post

The Left, including Pope Francis, thinks savings and success are entirely or mostly the result of privilege and structural inequities, so it feels justified taking away the resulting wealth and giving it to those who weren’t so privileged.
The Smithsonian’s Assumptions of Whiteness

Things non-whites should shun: self-reliance, the nuclear family, the idea that “hard work is the key to success," the scientific method, mathematics, and rational linear thinking.
Epstein Corner

Walking along the beach, Goldstein finds a bottle, picks it up, and—surprise! surprise!—a genie emerges. . .
From Johnson’s Dictionary

myrmidon. Any rude ruffian; so named from the soldiers of Achilles.

“It is the inner mystery of every soul to be a new and unique tapestry of two basic tendencies—power and love, surmounting and surrender, domination and humility.” Erich Przywara
"The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another." William James
"Fight all error, but do it with good humor, patience, kindness, and love. Harshness will damage your own soul and spoil the best cause." St. John (not BLM fan) Cantius
"If I can acquire money, and also keep myself modest and faithful and magnanimous, point out the way and I will acquire it." Epictetus
“It is quite human for the sinner to acknowledge his weakness and to ask mercy for his failings; what is unacceptable is the attitude of one who makes his own weakness the criterion of the truth about the good, so that he can feel self-justified, without even the need to have recourse to God and his mercy. An attitude of this sort corrupts the morality of society as a whole, . . .”. John Paul II
“The holy man always conceals his holiness; that is the one invariable rule.” G. K. Chesterton
“All prayer begins by man becoming silent.” Romano Guardini
"Why can’t people let each other alone and not obtrude on each other?" Dorothy Day
"When self-love no longer receives any nourishment, in the end it can only starve to death." Wilfrid Stinissen