The Oct. 29, 1908 NYT has two stories which deal with questionable medical conclusions:

Dr. L.E. Landrone...commended the modern corset. In an address before the members of the Women's Literary Club he declared that the stays were good for the reason that the torso muscles have been weakened for centuries through the generous support of the corset until now the average female form could not stand without its help...

The speaker said that the body was composed of chemical fluids at the mercy of emotions. Anger, hatred, sorrow poison the fluids of the body while love, cheerfulness, and happiness serve as eliminators of the motive fatigue poisons.

"Anger and hatred will poison forty-two fluids of the woman's body," said Dr. Landrone. "Pleasure stimulates, and that is why, when tired, especially when young, an evening of dancing and music will remove all signs of fatigue."

Another story is even more shocking:

ADVISES SMOKING FOR WOMEN

Dr. Rachel Skidelsky, one of the best known women physicians of Philadelphia, started a brisk discussion last night when, at a meeting of the Women's Club, she supported the right of women to smoke. She said that smoking would undoubtedly be beneficial to the fair sex if it were properly indulged in. To bear out her statements she produced scientific data.

In the course of her arguments Dr. Skidelsky stated that men found relief from worry by smoking. "If a woman would sit down for five minutes before beginning her day and give the time to a cigarette," said Dr. Skidelsky, "she would be able to plan better her day's work. And the five minutes used, three times daily, would be, I think, of much benefit to her.

Many physicians held similar views, said Dr. Skidelsky, but hesitated to advise their women patients to smoke because of a fear that what was offered as medicine might become a habitual indulgence.

The Oct. 29, 1908 NYT reports more wagering on the upcoming 1908 elections:

A number of small wagers were made in the financial district yesterday at even money on Hughes and Chanler. Bets on Taft were few and far between, but a few were placed with odds on Taft, ranging from 4 1/2 to 3 to 1.

The largest bet heard of was one made early in the day by a Hughes man, who placed $5,000 on Hughes against $4,500 on Chanler. Later several bets of $1,000 were made on the State contest.

The largest bet on the Presidential outcome was reported from the Cotton Exchange, where it was said that $3,000 Taft money had been placed against $1,000 on Bryan. One Broadway Stock Exchange house placed $1,000 on Taft against $300 of Bryan money.

Those who have followed betting in Wall Street are agreed that there has never been a Presidential contest for a generation in which the wagering has been so light. Taft money seems to be plentiful, but the odds demanded by those with cash to bet on Bryan are considered prohibitive.

Taft wins (52% to 43%), as does Hughes (49% to 45%).

Please pardon the following commercial interruption, but the advertisement won't appear in the JOE until December because of California budget vagaries. So I am getting the word out.

The Department of Economics at San Jose State University invites applications for a tenure-track position at the level of Assistant Professor in Applied Economics. Qualifications include demonstrated teaching expertise and research potential. Preferred teaching fields are Industrial Organization, Labor Economics, Financial Economics, or Cost Benefit Analysis.

See below the fold for complete details. And please distribute freely.

Several months ago, Russell Roberts asked his readers whether he should vote or not. I can't find Russ's original post, but I would like to try something similar because I'll be thinking about this a lot over the next couple of days at a Liberty Fund conference on Bryan Caplan's The Myth of the Rational Voter and Guido Pincione and Fernando R. Teson's Rational Choice and Democratic Deliberation: A Theory of Discourse Failure.

Thus, I'm announcing The First Semi-Annual Division of Labour Purple Mountains Majesty Amber Waves of Grain Essay Contest, with the winner receiving a copy of James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock's The Calculus of Consent. Here's the prompt:

A common argument in favor of voting is that it allows the voter to let his or her voice be heard in the political process, but others have argued that silence can be deafening. Take a position: should I vote or not? In 500 words or less, persuade me to do one or the other.

Entries are limited to 500 words and must be submitted by email to cardena@rhodes.edu by 6:00 AM Central Time on Tuesday, November 4. Depending on the number of entries, I reserve the right to read only the entries I have time to read. Happy writing.

Update, 3:18 PM: the entries are rolling in, and they're pretty good so far. Keep 'em coming!

Here (HT: Tara Clark).

NB: it's also a useful exercise in the importance of social networks and social entrepreneurship. I got the link via a Facebook link from a student at the IHS "Liberty and Society" Seminar I taught at over the summer.

A somewhat lengthy letter to the editor published in the October 28, 1908 NYT suggests, once again, that there are not many new problems in the world just our problems. The letter might well be submitted today with only a few name changes:

They [Socialists] decry competition and call for more, and ever more, co-operation -- co-operation on a scale municipal, State, and National. They tell the propertyless that, in the nature of things, by the historical development of industry, it isn't possible for each man to be economically independent, for clearly each spinner cannot own a cotton factory and each engineer a locomotive, in the way each farmer started by owning his farm. So, they say, if you want a voice in managing your business, you spinners and engineers, you must get the factories and railways owned by the community, so that you can cast a vote in selecting the managers and fixing the wages and rules of your work.

The letter goes on:

That doesn't seem to me very alarming, unless one is afraid of democracy, for this programme of public ownership will inevitably be submitted piecemeal to the voters for judgment, and if it's found impracticable, wasteful, or immoral it won't be adopted. In a Nation as big as ours the danger is never that changes will come too fast. The Socialists will find that it is a terribly slow business to overcome the inertia of 80,000,000 of people.

The letter writer then fires a broadside against the "free marketers" of the day:

The principle of competition which the Socialists flog has already been discarded; they are whipping a dead horse. No trust promoter believes in free competition. Moreover, most of the Rooseveltian policies - the arid land reclamation schemes, the National forests, the leasing of coal and mineral rights, the renting of grazing lands, the construction of the Panama Canal by direct employment, the development of water powers under public ownership and control - are in strict harmony with Socialist principles....The faith of our forefathers in the sacred principle of competition as the self-acting force which yielded ideal justice and rendered to every man according to his deserts, has departed as surely as the belief in witchcraft. So why be alarmed because Socialism is inculcating with some success a political philosophy that means the conscious adoption of the method we are already, empirically, trying? There is no advantage in preaching one principle and practicing another, as do some good Republicans and Democrats.

The letter writer goes on to castigate the wealth redistribution schemes of the day:

"But," reply the nervous ones, "the Socialists want to abolish rent, interest, and profits; and when they succeed where will you be?" Probably in my grave. I'm not worrying. They can't threaten me worse than Theodore Roosevelt does with his inheritance and income tax schemes and the social workers of New York with their ever-increasing demands on the city budget. "There's a good time coming, boys," has been the song of radicals in all ages, and always the heaven of their hopes has receded as they advanced - though they won a little brighter earth. If capitalists were really shrewd they'd really encourage the Socialists to talk about their heaven, the blissful time when the capitalist lion will lie down inside the proletarian lamb and the earth will bask in the peace of universal brotherhood, for the Socialists are formidable only when they make concrete proposals for immediate adoption. And when they do their schemes will have to stand sifting and criticism exactly the same as the schemes of other parties.

According to a recent article in The Region by Minneapolis Fed economist Terry J. Fitzgerald, pundits' stories about income stagnation since the 1970s are greatly overstated (Hat Tip: Cafe Hayek).

You'll probably never hear politicians retract their statements about the stagnant middle class, though. I understand that they're busy feeling voters' pain, but why can't they ever feel our pain?

The October 28, 1908 NYT reports on one industrialist's prediction of what would happen if William Jennings Bryan won the 1908 Presidential election:

President E.P. Ripley of the Atchison, Topeka and Sante Fe stated to-day that if Bryan was elected the Santa Fe system would abandon extensions and improvements, principally in the Southwest, aggregating $3,000,000, not that it was Bryan or for partisan reasons, as he explained, but because a change in the National Government at this time would prove nothing less than an industrial calamity.

"The country is slowly recovering from the financial fright a year ago," said Mr. Ripley, "in which the laboring people and workingmen suffered. A change in the Government's policy just now must surely mean a reorganization of the country's industrial world, and this means two or more years of unsettled conditions which America is not prepared for. The extension of the connection of the Pecos lines with the Gulf lines is a very important project, but this, with other improvements, must be abandoned if the present Administration is not continued."

The October 28, 1908 NYT reports on an interesting investment opportunity:

Speyer & Co. and the National City Bank, having charge in this country of the subscription lists for the new thirty-five year 4 1/2 per cent. sinking fund gold bonds of the Institution for Encouragement of Irrigation Works and Development of Agriculture in Mexico, announced yesterday that these lists would be closed to-day. They report a large number of subscriptions having been received from all parts of the country.

The October 28, 1908 NYT reports a surprising fact concerning President Roosevelt's eldest son:

The announcement from Hartford, Conn. that Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., has been promoted to the worsted room of the Hartford Carpet Company, but that his promotion carries no increase of wages, is supplemented by the statement of a close personal friend here that the weekly pay envelope of the President's eldest son contains exactly $4.50 [$104.60 in CPI adjusted 2007 dollars].

From the same source it is learned that Theodore, Jr., is likely to be advanced to $5 per week during the coming month.

I am not sure I am buying this unless a) Theo, Jr. was simply a terrible worker, b) Theo, Jr. was intentionally taking a lower salary in order to "learn how the other half lives," or c) Both (a) and (b). On the other hand, perhaps Theo, Jr., was being paid considerably more than the average worker and this story is simply a viral means of deflecting from the state of privilege enjoyed by the children of politicos - especially "populist Republican" politicos as opposed to "populist Democrats" of today - about a week away from a Presidential election.

Go here for Secretary: Part 1.

From Andy Rooney's commentary last Sunday:

The highest minimum wage is in the state of Washington - $8.07 an hour. The lowest is in Kansas where some companies pay as little as $2.65 an hour.

Old Andy might benefit from a chat about the difference between binding and non-binding price floors. Kansas may have a minimum wage law of $2.65 per hour, but I bet few companies can get workers willing to work for that wage unless the job comes with tips or unusually generous non-cash compensation. By Rooney's logic that companies can get by with paying the legal minimum wage, New York's minimum wage must be whatever it is that he's being paid by CBS.

Any Kansans working for $2.65 an hour are welcome to send me an email and I'll append a correction.

One or the other has conspired to produce an interesting amalgam of ideas this evening. I just attended a discussion of democracy featuring two Marxists and returned home for an evening of quiet reading and non-alienation from my family. This evening's selections included among other things "The Letters of Ayn Rand" and CS Lewis's "God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics." After reading a few of Rand's letters this quote from Lewis's essay "The Laws of Nature" really struck me because it deals with Mises's explanation of human action and Rand's theories of reason and the creative mind as they relate to objective reality:

"Add six pennies to six and the result will certainly be a shilling. But arithmetic by itself won't put one farthing into your pocket." (p. 77)

6 + 6 = 12 is an objective fact about reality, but the creation of value and the putting of farthings into pockets requires the application of intelligence. We are always and everywhere constrained by the fact that 6 + 6 = 12, but this mere fact alone moves produces nothing. Production requires action.

I will incorporate this video into my economic history notes as well as every public lecture I ever give on the Great Depression. HT: David Beito.

Blogging has been light lately in part because I've been on the road a lot (MVEA meetings in St. Louis this past weekend, Liberty Fund in Indianapolis Thursday and Friday of this week) and in part because of hyperlinking problems with Firefox and Safari. According to www.al.com, teen pregnancy increased in Alabama in 2007 (http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2008/10/teen_pregnancies_up_in_alabama.html). This suggests a testable hypothesis. Minimum wages cause unemployment, and state-level variation in minimum wages would allow one to isolate the effect of a minimum wage on teen pregnancy. Here's a back-of-the-envelope theory explaining why higher teen pregnancy might be an unintended consequence of a higher minimum wage:

Idle hands are the devil's tools, and minimum-wage induced reductions in employment opportunities for teenagers will reduce the opportunity cost of casual sex. In addition, lower incomes means that demand for contraceptives will fall if they are normal goods. More sex coupled with greater risk tolerance should lead to more teen pregnancy. I stress that I haven't tested this theory, nor do I know whether anyone has. If anyone knows whether such a study has been done, I would be interested in seeing the results.

The Institute for Humane Studies is currently soliciting applications for the 2009-10 Humane Studies Fellowships. IHS hopes to exceed last year's award totals of $600,000 to more than 150 graduate and advanced undergraduate students from around the world. The awards support research into the principles, practices, and institutions that support a free, prosperous and responsible society. Select applicants are invited to the annual Humane Studies Research Colloquium and other advanced colloquia throughout the year. Fellows also join a growing network of over 10,000 IHS academics who are committed to the ideas of liberty and intellectual freedom. For more information, visit www.TheIHS.org/HSF. The deadline to apply is December 31, 2008

From my vastly curious SJSU colleague, Mark Brady, here is "a fascinating account of LIBOR", the prevailing benchmark for worldwide interest rates:

A simple computer program discards the lowest quarter and highest quarter of the estimates, and calculates the average of the remainder. The result is that day’s Libor. The calculation is repeated for each of ten currencies and 15 loan durations (from overnight to 12 months), so 150 Libors are published daily: overnight sterling Libor, one-week euro Libor, one-month yen Libor, three-month US dollar Libor and so on.

It’s the back-up arrangements that tell you something about how much the calculation matters. The co-ordinators have dedicated phone lines laid into their homes so they can still work if a terrorist attack or other incident stops them reaching the office. A similarly equipped building, near the office, is kept in constant readiness, and there’s a permanently staffed back-up site in a small town around 150 miles from London (I won’t be any more precise than that). Its employees periodically work in the London office, so that they’re ready to take over if need be.

The precautions are necessary because if Libor suddenly became unavailable, large parts of the global financial system would be paralysed.

...

The very possibility of a large-scale swaps market depends on the availability of a measure of interest rates that is unequivocal and credible enough to form the basis for contracts denominated in billions of dollars. Libor has provided that measure.

To economize on transaction costs, banks trade via brokers in London. The essay conveys some very intresting institutional details, including how informal codes of conduct regulate much of the money trades that depend on and inform LIBOR. Read the whole thing to discover how traders compete on good eyesight and "broker's ear".

As one broker put it to me: ‘When you’re on the desk you’re expected to hear everyone else’s conversations as well, because they’re all relevant to you, and if you’re on the phone speaking to someone about what’s going on in the market there could be a hot piece of information coming in with one of your colleagues that you would want to tell your clients, so you’ve got to be able to hear it coming in as you’re speaking to the person.’ ... It’s an embodied skill that affects the way Libor is calculated.

Now with stocks plunging and a steady drumbeat of layoffs, bankruptcies and foreclosures, sales efforts such as variable pricing, pay-as-you-go plans, package deals and even mandated cheap seats are growing. They're likely to only get more popular.

"We read the papers and know there are jobs disappearing and people being laid off," said Greg Schenkel, the Pacers' vice president of corporate and public relations. "We were not oblivious to the real world out there.

That's from today's AJC; the article also has some good stuff about teams' price discrimination strategies. Previous posts here and here.

The bailout is now the hottest lobbying game in town.

Insurers, automakers and American subsidiaries of foreign banks all want the Treasury Department to cut them a piece of the largest government rescue in U.S. history.

The betting is that many with their hands out will be successful, especially with financial markets in a stomach-churning dive and predictions the economy is about to tumble into a deep recession.

These groups argue that the credit squeeze is so severe and the risks to the economy so dire that their industries need financial support as well.

The Treasury is considering requests from a variety of industries, but has not decided whether to expand the program, officials said Saturday.

Lobbying efforts are intensifying.

The Financial Services Roundtable wrote Treasury officials on Friday requesting that the initiative to buy $250 billion in bank stock grow to cover insurers, auto companies, securities dealers and U.S. subsidiaries of foreign companies, including banks. The Treasury's plan is intended to bolster banks' tattered balance sheets and get them to resume making loans.

Source. Yet another example of why Gordon Tullock should have gotten the Nobel instead of Paul "Broken Windows" Krugman.

Andrew Biggs in today's WSJ:

Imagine this: Barack Obama proposes a Social Security payroll tax cut for low earners. Workers earning up to $8,000 per year would receive back the full 6.2% employee share of the 12.4% total payroll tax, up to $500 per year. Workers earning over $8,000 would receive $500 each, with this credit phasing out for individuals earning between $75,000 and $85,000.

Hold on a minute--I thought the 1993 Clinton EITC expansion already offset the payroll taxes for low income workers. Indeed, this snip from The American Prospect (a lefty mag) confirms my memory:

The EITC dates to 1975. The original idea was to offset the bite of payroll taxes on low-wage workers in low-income families. Since then, the credit has been expanded considerably. There are now three different schedules: a small credit for single-person households and childless couples, a much larger credit for families with one child, and a still larger credit for families with two or more kids. And since eligibility is keyed to family income, the subsidy is quite finely targeted (rich kids with after-school jobs need not apply). As family income rises, EITC benefits initially grow, then level off, and then begin to phase out. A working parent with two children gets 40 cents in tax credit for each dollar earned up to an income level of $9,720. (These figures are for the year 2000.) The maximum annual benefit is thus $3,888. Then, starting at $12,690 in annual income for this type of family, the tax credit declines by 21 cents for each dollar earned, phasing out altogether at an annual income of $31,152. For a family with one child, the peak benefit is $2,353, and for a single person, it's $353.

Drop the payroll tax pretense--the EITC is already more than double the payroll tax (including the employer part) that low income workers pay--and call Obama's scheme the confiscation that it is.

Can be found here. The comment is in response to other commentors, not to the blog author, the always excellent Seth Gitter. In response to those who want to ban padyday lending, commentor Dan responds:

As a pimp and sometime loan-shark, I'm voting YES on issue 5! Since I make my living off of prostitution -- something that's banned by law but has shockingly not gone away -- it's clear that the more we can push things out of transparent, regulated markets where participants in a contract have access to legal remedies if things go wrong, the more money I can make.

My brother the pot dealer agrees with me 100%.

Once small loan places are closed down, I look forward to servicing their customers, who will have no less of a need for short term loans. Of course, I'll charge even higher interest rates than the legal shops, and if they don't pay up, we have ways of getting our money back. They involve crowbars and car batteries. I anticipate a high level of success in my collections.

I'm also thinking about opening up a used car lot. Because as we've seen in other states that pass similar bans, when people need a short-term loan and can't get it through legal means and don't want to go to what some might call the "underworld of organized crime and street thugs," they're likely to sell their cars at fire sale prices.

So in short, as a criminal who preys on the weak, I look forward to the additional business that the well-intended but economically-illiterate backers of this ban will give me.

Another taking for private development is brewing in St. Paul, MN, whose port authority is threatening to take an equipment rental lot for private development.

A gem among the letters to the editor:

Governmental authority to use eminent domain must be restricted for use only when absolutely necessary for the country to function, such as for roads and bridges.

Here is Bruce Benson debunking the economic argument that eminent domain is needed even for roads and bridges.

Jeff Biddle explains the spread of residential air conditioning (sub req).

Alex Padilla and the students of Metropolitan State College of Denver will be my hosts Thursday as I give a talk: "Campaign Finance: Are we Spending Enough?" Check out the cool flyer they made! Based on my earlier entry. Also discussed on MR.

I recently made a casual prediction to co-blogger Bob that an Obama presidency (combined with a Congress to the left Mao) would trim at least 0.5 points and 10 ranks off the United States economic freedom rating (currently 8.04 and tied for 8th). (Reflection makes me think dropping 10 spots in the ranking is too pessimistic because other countries are also likely to be curbing economic freedom.) BTW, going back to the 2002 EFW Report reveals that the U.S. has fallen 3 places (3rd to 8th) during the George W. Bailout (I'm thinking of updating to George Herbert Hoover Bush) years and had its economic freedom rating fall from 8.5 to 8.04. And to think he's some sort of radical Friedmanite!

With that in mind, I saw Paul Rubin's "Get Ready for the New New Deal" in yesterday's WSJ. An excerpt:

But a President Obama would also enjoy large Democratic majorities in Congress. His party might even win a 60-seat, filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, giving him more power than any president has had in decades to push a liberal agenda. And given the opportunity, Mr. Obama will likely radically increase government interference in the economy.

Until now, this election has been fought on the margins, over marginal issues. But it is important to understand how much a presidential candidate wants to move the needle on taxes, trade and other issues. Usually there isn't a chance for wholesale change. Now, however, it appears that this election will make more than a marginal difference. It might fundamentally change America.

I've opened comments for a few days if anyone else wants to venture a prediction. If I actually make it through 4 years of Obamanomics without too big a financial hit I might even send some DOL swag to someone who makes a particularly good prediction.

Yours truly in Thursday's WSJ:

Your article "Crisis Shakes the Foundations of the Ivory Tower" (Currents, Oct. 17) reports that American Council on Education President Molly Corbett Broad thinks that public colleges "face the greatest challenge in a slumping economy because they get as much as three-quarters of their revenue from state taxpayers."

Please pardon private colleges if they don't share Ms. Broad's lament for government colleges. Instead of being heavily supported via compulsory taxation, private colleges must attract revenue by appealing to donors and by competing for students. Thanks to the financial crisis largely attributable to Fannie, Freddie and other governmental bungling, potential donors to private colleges are now considerably poorer than they were just a few months ago. Likewise, the financial turmoil has decimated the college savings of many families, thereby making it increasingly likely the affected students will choose a taxpayer-subsidized government school instead of a private college. Government largesse tilts the playing field in favor of government colleges, and the governmentally-induced financial crisis exacerbates the challenges facing private colleges.

E. Frank Stephenson
Chairman
Department of Economics
Berry College
Mount Berry, Ga.

The Oct. 22, 1908 NYT reports on a firebrand speech given by Eugene W. Chafin, who was the Prohibition candidate for president in 1908. He was giving his first speech at the Cooper Union. Some choice nuggets were reported:

"The Democratic platform is so long that it takes two newspapers to print it. It is like an old fashioned Mother Hubbard - is (sic) covers everything and touches nothing. The only difference between that and the Republican platform is that the latter looks like it was made for a child of four."

And he had this bold prediction:

This is a peculiar campaign. The people haven't yet made up their minds. Such a thing hasn't happened in forty years...Why haven't they made up their minds? they are thinking. They are not satisfied. This is the last battle of the Republican and Democratic Parties, anyway. In fact, there is no Democratic or Republican Party. It is either a Bryan or a Roosevelt party, each doing the master's bidding.

Prediction markets are all the rage today but they are not really new. Betting on whether Candidate A or Candidate B wins the election is as old as, well, elections. From the Oct. 22, 1908 NYT:

Two election wagers aggregating $11,000 were made at the Waldord-Astoria yesterday afternoon by Wall Street men, according to "Oscar," who says he was made stakeholder.

The first bet was of $5,500 that Bryan would not carry New York State; the second was the Chanler would defeat Hughes. Both bets were at even money.

These were said to be the largest wagers in this campaign yet recorded at the Waldorf.

CNN headline: "Stocks slump on recession fears."

Now, I'm not going to bother with a Lexis search, but hasn't the press had fears of a recession for at least two years by now?

According to the BLS, we had negative GDP growth the last quarter of 2007, surrounded by two quarters of positive growth. The previous negative growth quarter was back in 2001Q3, and it too was a one-quarter only drop. The most recent two-consecutive-quarter negative growth period was way back when I was a freshman in high school, 1990Q4 and 1991Q1. I didn't know we were in a recession back then, but maybe that explains my lack of dates.

Try as they might, the media can't seem to convince the economy to go into a recession. Like a similar Onion-esque story I had on my office door entitled "Congress forbids economy to fix itself until Congress passes a bid to fix the economy." I know, I know, who wants to watch a newscast where the anchor says "things are going along just fine"?

In preparation for the possibility of starting a vintage base ball club in Auburn, I'm doing some historical research on local base ball history and was pleased to discover very early evidence of base ball in Auburn.

Thomas Porter Whitby, a veteran (1862-1865) of the 37th Alabama Regiment of Volunteers , organized a base ball club in Auburn in 1866 while attending the East Alabama Male College (which ultimately became Auburn University).

The Auburn University archives has Whitby's original paper listing the "Members who paid for Base Ball". It is dated March 12(?), 1866.

The note also indicates that he "Paid for Ball - 1.00" which is $13.47 in today's terms (using the CPI). For comparison, an official MLB ball is on sale today for $11.41. A high school ball goes for about $5.

...and pretty soon we're talking about real money.

Turns out, the famous Senator Everett Dirksen (R-IL) may never have coined the phrase that is so widely attributed to him. At least that's what the Dirksen Congressional Center concludes. However, the late Senator, for whom this building is named, had a penchant for pithy tales. Here is a good one:

"One time in the House of Representatives [a colleague] told me a story about a proposition that a teacher put to a boy. He said, ‘Johnny, a cat fell in a well 100 feet deep. Suppose that cat climbed up 1 foot and then fell back 2 feet. How long would it take the cat to get out of the well?'

"Johnny worked assiduously with his slate and slate pencil for quite a while, and then when the teacher came down and said, ‘How are you getting along?' Johnny said, ‘Teacher, if you give me another slate and a couple of slate pencils, I am pretty sure that in the next 30 minutes I can land that cat in hell.'

"If some people get any cheer out of a $328 billion debt ceiling, I do not find much to cheer about concerning it." [Congressional Record, June 16, 1965, p. 13884].

$328 billion. Quaint, no?

Two weeks ago I attended the Atlantic Economic Society meetings, where Franklin Allen's presidential address grimly said the most likely scenario to unfold is the nationalization of the banking industry. We've already seen early, incremental signs of course (over the weekend the Dutch injected $10 billion into ING with many strings attached). Today, Financial analyst/journalist Christopher Whalen explains why he is bearish on big banks and bullish on more intervention. After describing the Treasury Department's "voluntary" capital plan and its high hopes:

We regret to say that the Q3 2008 earnings reports from US banks will do little to dissuade markets that more crisis remains ahead. In front of us still are several quarters of old fashioned realized losses in the form of possibly record levels of bank loan charge-offs, so don't hold your breath waiting for US commercial banks to start growing lending exposure anytime soon.

The $125 billion allocated to bank capital infusions by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson so far is the appetizer and soup course of the meal, in our opinion. Next year comes the main course, when we could see Citigroup (NYSE:C) and JPMorgan (NYSE:JPM) end up under government control if aggregate loan loss rates peak well-above 1990s levels. Click here to see the non-accrual loans of the largest US banks by assets.

Remember, Paulson's tune has changed over the course of the past year from one of "nothing to see here" to "the sky is falling and the Treasury needs to prop it up." He has also famously made false promises (e.g. "bazooka"). How reasonable is it to expect that all is well now? That we won't be asked to hand over just this little bit more power?

An overlooked problem: once Paulson et al. say "everything is going to be okay, we're confident that we got it right this time," now they are accountable for future downturns, at which time they'll say "okay, now we really mean it, just a little more power and we'll get it right this time."

We've seen this before, of course. In fact, it's the broadest cause for the housing bubble to begin with. Once politicians started to take credit for increasing home ownership rates, the political incentive structure was set in place to ruin the housing market. Again Whalen:

The precursors of the Great Subprime Bust of 2008 start in Washington, with members of both political parties feeding at the affordable housing trough and "spreading the wealth" to use the well worn phrase. Indeed so much wealth was spread, like jam scraped over too much bread, that the result is a partially nationalized US banking system and trillions of dollars in realized losses to investors. And this all in the name of "affordable housing."

Thus we wonder if the next evolution of the public debate regarding the banking industry bailout should be to consider not whether more capital must be injected into the largest banks - rising loan loss rates should make this obvious to all by now - but what is to be done with the biggest banks that the Treasury may very well control by the end of 2009. Building bigger, dumber mega banks, we submit, is a bad choice, while redistributing the deposits and assets of the big banks into more numerous, stronger hands makes enormous sense.

Pedro H. Albuquerque at the blog Incentives Matter, in a sympathetic commentary on Anna Schwartz's anti-bailout perspective, adds this brilliant extension:

the problem of asymmetric information in financial intermediation [is] probably the most important component of this financial crisis.

... the Treasury's bailout plan [makes] the information problem worse by keeping unhealthy banks afloat. The government is artificially creating a lemon market when it does not allow discrimination between healthy and unhealthy banks to occur via bank failures. Besides the redistributive problems that the bailout plan creates, it endangers the entire economy through planned obfuscation. An exemplary case of government failure.

Emphasis added by me.

See also his follow-up post.

In reading Mary O'Grady's fine column on the presidential debate exchange over the U.S.-Columbia Free Trade Agreement, this passage caught my attention:

But when Mr. McCain pointed out that opposing the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement doesn't make sense -- because the U.S. is already open to imports from Colombia and because the agreement will open new markets for U.S. exporters during rough economic times -- Mr. Obama was caught flat-footed.

If Ms. O'Grady is correct that the deal is essentially a reduction in Columbian trade barriers, then why doesn't Columbia simply drop its barriers and avoid dealing with the do-no-good U.S. Congress? I must be missing something here.

In response to the following question from Bryan Caplan:

If the Tiebout model were correct, how would you expect local governments to raise revenue? Carefully explain your answer.

Lots of good comments ensue. Be sure to scroll down to Bill Fischel's.

Hong Kong adopts a minimum wage.

CNNMoney.com reports the following statements today during Ben Bernanke’s testimony before the House Budget Committee:

In addition, Congress should weigh whether to make credit more available to consumers, homeowners, businesses and other borrowers, Bernanke said. He said that loan guarantees and direct lending by government are among the ways lawmakers can get credit flowing again. […]

Lawmakers also questioned Bernanke about the need to help state and local governments avoid budget cuts. The federal government could loan states money at significantly lower rates than available in the financial markets, he said.

Yes, the federal government (after borrowing yet more money at the Treasury's borrowing rate) can lend -- to consumers, business, states, whoever -- at rates however far below the market they choose. But it isn’t a free lunch. It would dump yet a further burden on innocent taxpayers. There is a reason why a competitive financial market charges various borrowers various premiums (over the Treasury’s borrowing rate). The reason is default risk. If the Treasury lends at below-market rates, it would be charging too little to cover expected default losses, and would therefore putting federal taxpayers on the hook .

I leave it as an exercise to the reader to enumerate the many other problems with creeping financial socialism. (Hint: think socialist calculation problem, Hayek's “Road to Serfdom”, Mises and Tullock on bureaucracy, and public choice.)

ADDENDUM: Jeff Miron does a great job here of explaining why "government ownership of banks has frightening long-term implications." Having the federal government expand its operations in competition with banks -- lending funds to consumers, businesses, etc. -- has the same implications.

Poisonous Chemical Linked to Deadly Chinese Milk Crisis Found in Edible Sex 'Spreads'

Chocolate-flavored body "spreads" sold in British sex shops are said to be tainted with the same poisonous chemical blamed for the deadly Chinese milk crisis, Reuters reported Monday.

I'm sure Dr. Krugman would say this too is Milton Friedman's fault?!

Or in this case, the real Sarah Palin:

Is now online here. It includes a piece by yours truly, rebutting Paul Krugman's view that the subprime crisis is the result of too little regulation.

Anna Schwartz, interviewed in the weekend WSJ by Brian Carney today, is feisty and on the money.

Regarding the chief cause of our current financial mess:

"If you investigate individually the manias that the market has so dubbed over the years, in every case, it was expansive monetary policy that generated the boom in an asset. ... The particular asset varied from one boom to another. But the basic underlying propagator was too-easy monetary policy and too-low interest rates that induced ordinary people to say, well, it's so cheap to acquire whatever is the object of desire in an asset boom, and go ahead and acquire that object. And then of course if monetary policy tightens, the boom collapses."

Regarding current policy for addressing the mess:

"The Fed," she argues, "has gone about as if the problem is a shortage of liquidity. That is not the basic problem. The basic problem for the markets is that [uncertainty] that the balance sheets of financial firms are credible."

"They should not be recapitalizing firms that should be shut own."

Regarding the proper policy:

Rather, "firms that made wrong decisions should fail," she says bluntly. "You shouldn't rescue them. And once that's established as a principle, I think the market recognizes that it makes sense. Everything works much better when wrong decisions are punished and good decisions make you rich."

Do read the whole thing.

HT: GPO

Here is an excellent video of my former colleague and frequent co-author George Selgin giving a recent talk at West Virginia U, with some very helpful charts thrown in for good measure. Selgin's talk begins at about 4:00 minutes in -- you can skip the introductions by paging forward to slide #2 -- and ends at about 25:00.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke in a 2007 speech on the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA):

recent problems in mortgage markets illustrate that an underlying assumption of the CRA -- that more lending equals better outcomes for local communities may not always hold.

Such a warning is scalable: it applies to credit markets generally, and to the national economy as a whole. More lending does not equal better outcomes for the economy when the lending comes from artificial credit expansion. If only Alan Greenspan had recognized that, he might not have pumped up total credit so vigorously in 2001-06. If only Ben Bernanke will keep the generalized warning in mind henceforth. In a fiat money regime the central bank's task is to keep the nominal money flow (MV) on a steady (preferably flat) path, not to expand credit to fuel more lending than can be sustained.

Here’s a recent debate from the pages of Numismatic News that students of money and banking will find informative. (For you instructors, that’s a hint!) Should we rely on a government monopoly to manufacture our coins?

Economist George Selgin says no, Get Government Out of Coin Manufacture.

Coin collector Scott Barman says yes, Hamilton was Right in Creating U.S. Mint.

Because the federal government has already committed itself to bailing out Wall Street, it will soon find itself obligated to bail out many of the ancillary enterprises that depend upon Wall Street for survival. One of these is sports franchises. The government will be forced to lease the skyboxes at stadiums that were previously occupied by brokerage houses, commercial banks and investment banking firms. This is not an eventuality that either Henry Paulson or Ben Bernanke had envisioned when they first floated the subject of a bailout. These guys just can't keep their eye on the ball.

One can readily imagine the hue and cry that will greet the announcement that the Treasury Department has taken over a dozen skyboxes at Arrowhead Stadium and another dozen at Coors Field. Yet the alternative is unacceptable. Without the cash generated by luxury boxes, numerous sports franchises will go under. This would further undermine the public's mood, particularly in smaller cities, where watching ice hockey is literally the only way to have fun on a cold Friday night in February.

That's Joe Queenan writing in the WSJ.

As distilled by Will Wilkinson, live-blogging from the 2nd debate.

The financial crisis

Obama:

We’ve got an antique regulatory structure. Need to put back early 20th Century laws!

McCain:

Got to do something about home values. We have to make sure that markets prices don’t adjust. Government should buy tons of houses …

[Will the economy get worse before it gets better?] Not if we give people free houses!

Healthcare

Obama:

I’m gonna reform health care, which won’t cost anything.

When we’re this wealthy, the idea that sick people should have to not spend other people’s money is an outrage. Mandate won’t hurt that much. It’s for your own good. McCain doesn’t give a crap for kids because giving a crap for anything means voting to give them things.

McCain:

Online records, improve efficiencies. Obama is all like “government this government that.” Obama will fine you if you don’t get insurance. I’ll give you tax credit you can take anywhere.

Energy and the environment

Obama:

People other than us benefit from higher oil prices, which is outrageous. … Let’s think harder about how we use energy. Holy god there is nothing more important than not trading with foreigners for energy.

We can centrally plan green economy into prosperity.

McCain:

If only we had nuclear power Indians would not weep. The French do it! America’s the best! We can do anything!

Fiscal policy

Obama:

If people make more than you, its not fair for you to have to tighten your belt.

I will cut taxes for everyone other than the despicable wealthy.

McCain:

Freeze spending, except defense, VA, entitlements, and buying every house in America.

Foreign policy

Obama:

Basically, I have no principle. I leave it at the discretion of my evolved moral intuition.

Iran can’t get nukes. But let’s talk about it.

McCain:

America is greatest force for good in history of universe forever. We shed our blood everywhere. The question of when to kill people needs to be left [to] soldiers like me. Our wars are awesome because we’re a nation of good.

We should do whatever we can to help whenever we can. I have no principle for intervention either.

The Department of Economics and Management at Beloit College invites applications for a full time tenure track position at the rank of Assistant Professor, beginning fall semester 2009. Evidence of a strong commitment to excellence in teaching and scholarship is a must. Teaching responsibilities will include introductory economics, international economics, international trade and finance. Teaching and/or research interests in some of the following areas would be a plus but are not essential for consideration; international business, economic history/new institutional economics, law and economics, entrepreneurship, statistics, experimental economics and area studies such as Latin America, East Asia, Africa. The successful candidate will also contribute to all-college programs (e.g., first-year seminars, writing program, interdisciplinary studies and international education). Candidates must have completed a PhD in economics, or expect to complete their degree by September 2009. The teaching load is a 3/2. Average class size is 20 students.

Beloit College is a highly selective, small residential liberal arts college located in southern Wisconsin. Beloit College is committed to the educational benefits of diversity and urges all interested individuals to apply. AA/EEO Employer

Submit Instructions: Send vitae, a writing sample, a brief essay on your approach to teaching economics, a proposed syllabus for an international economics course with a principles prerequisite, three letters of reference. No electronic submissions but links to additional supporting materials are welcome. Complete applications must be received by December 1, 2008 to be considered for an interview at the ASSA meeting.

CONTACT: Jeffrey L. Adams, Chair, Department of Economics and Management, Beloit College, 700 College St. Beloit WI 53511. Additional information available at: http://www.beloit.edu/economics/

An update on my RICO & ACORN post--apparently the FBI is investigating ACORN.

I'm guessing Joe the Plumber will be getting an IRS audit next year if we have an Obama victory. On a related note, Joe the Plumber is featured in Mike Lester's cartoon in today's RNT.

Folks who doubt gridlock is good might want to check out this article (scroll down to the box) in today's WSJ. The Repubs ability to filibuster the Senate has stopped much mischief. Here's hoping the GOP, for all its flaws, can keep at least 43 Senate seats.

As most DOL readers are likely aware, tonight brings a new John Stossel special, the "Politically Incorrect Guide to Politics." That's must see tv at my house. 10:00 Eastern.

Another superb bit from the folks at reason.tv:

Here's a very interesting TED Talk in which Virginia Postrel talks about glamour. And here's one of my favorite books for a penny plus shipping.

UNC-Chapel Hill now has an official smell. A new collegiate perfume boasts that it captures the essence of the school.

The $60 bottle is among a handful of fragrances targeting universities with big, loyal alumni bases. Each perfume is based largely on the university's color scheme.

What does Carolina blue smell like? Champagne, lemon, jasmine and lavender, apparently. To contrast: the University of Alabama's color is crimson: a scent heavy in reds such as apple and pomegranate, said Katie Masich, a chemical engineer and president of the perfume company, Masik Collegiate Fragrances.

Source. Thanks Jane Shaw for the pointer. HT to MR for the MIE concept.

Today is “Blog Action Day;” here’s an apparent mission statement from the official website:

“Today thousands of bloggers will unite to discuss a single issue—poverty. We aim to raise awareness, initiate action and to shake the web!”

I’ve been telling people for weeks that economists are the wet blankets of the world, so keeping this in mind I thought I would offer a few ideas about what we can do to reduce poverty around the world.

1. Free Trade and Open Borders. Let’s open the borders to trade with anyone and everyone without strings attached. Economist Lant Pritchett argues that open immigration is one of the most effective ways we can improve the plight of the world’s poor. One of the principles of economics is that there are gains from exchange, and these gains from exchange do not stop at international borders. Stopping trade at gunpoint enriches special interests, but it oppresses the poor.

2. Competition in Education. Competition encourages innovation and leads to better educational outcomes. Affluent suburban schools and private schools have to compete with one another because the students they serve are mobile, but the geographic immobility of urban students gives large urban schools a lot of monopoly power. For example, a relatively affluent family in the Memphis area could choose where they live based on school quality and thus can choose between schools in Germantown, Bartlett, Southaven, Marion, Cordova, or any of the region’s private schools. A poor family in the Memphis city limits can choose from…Memphis City Schools. And that’s about it.

3. If you’re criticizing a “sweatshop,” make sure you have a good reason for it—i.e., criticize a sweatshop if it is actually enslaving people, committing fraud, or something like that and not because it pays “low wages” or offers lousy working conditions. Most of us in the developed world would recoil in horror at the idea of working in a “sweatshop” for pitifully low wages and in relatively unsafe working conditions. That is because we have better options. Many people around the world, however, are not so fortunate, and their working conditions have roused the indignation and anger of many around the world. These sweatshops are better than poor workers’ next-best options, which is always a job that offers either lower wages or worse working conditions. In the case of some laid-off child workers in Bangladesh, the next best alternative was prostitution or starvation. Economists Benjamin Powell and David Skarbek have studied sweatshop wages and conditions around the world and have found that sweatshops usually offer higher wages and better working conditions than average for the countries in which they operate. The road out of poverty can be long and arduous, and closing off opportunities for the very poor only makes that road more difficult to travel.

4. If you’re criticizing Wal-Mart, criticize them for the right reasons (like their aggressive pursuit of local government subsidies). I’ve studied Wal-Mart at some length, and I think the company gets a bum rap. In their book The Wal-Mart Revolution, Richard Vedder and Wendell Cox report an admittedly back-of-the-envelope calculation that the social saving from Wal-Mart is roughly 5% of US GDP—in percentage terms, that’s roughly the same impact as railroads in the nineteenth century. Even if their estimate is twice as large as the real effect, 2.5% of GDP is roughly a year’s worth of economic growth. Economists Jerry Hausman and Ephraim Leibtag have argued that the benefits of Wal-Mart’s policy of “Every Day Low Prices” have accrued disproportionately to poor households. If you want to alleviate poverty, protesting Wal-Mart isn’t the way to do it.

5. Protest less, produce more. Economics Nobel Laureate Robert Lucas has argued that no society ever got rich by redistributing resources. Production alleviates poverty. Carrying a sign, shouting slogans, and chucking a brick through the window of a Starbucks might feel great, but at the end of the day it either accomplishes little or hurts exactly the people the protestors are trying to help. Informed dissent is critical to the health of a free society; uninformed dissent, however, can be grotesquely destructive. I stress that it is very important and certainly noble to fight for those whose voices are silenced by oppression and coercion, but we have to be very careful about what we fight for and what we fight against. Voluntary exchange is not a human rights violation, and treating it as such has led to horrific consequences.

6. Drug Approval Denationalization. Here’s Dan Klein.

7. Look for private rather than political solutions. While I harbor no rose-tinted illusions about the unfettered marketplace producing utopia, I’m very skeptical of trying to use government to control it. Evil will always be with us, but I agree with George Washington: government is not eloquence, beauty, or poetry. Government is force, and it will tend to be co-opted by the special interests, for the special interests, and of the special interests. Experimenting with voluntary solutions like cruelty-free, fair-trade, and “green” certifications might be far more effective than agitating for more government policy.

Cross-posted at The Mises Blog, The Beacon, Division of Labour, Lifehack.org.

A small tidbit of interest from the Oct. 15, 1908 NYT:

Baseball writers connected with the leading daily papers of every major league city, excepting Brooklyn, met here [Detroit] to-day, prior to the closing game of the world series, and formed an organization to be known as the Baseball Writers' Association of America. Its objects are to promote uniformity in scoring methods, to act in conjunction with the leagues in rules revision suggestions, and to gain control of baseball press boxes, the conduct of which is a sore spot with working newspaper men all over the country.

Here is the association's amazingly annoyingly green website, and I'm not talking about the environment.

The Oct. 15, 1908 reports on the final game of the 1908 World Series, which the Chicaco Cubs won over the Detroit Tigers 2-0:

The series, however, created less interest in the two cities most affected than that of last year, if the attendance may be taken as a guide. The paid admissions were only 62,232 for the five games and the receipts totalled $94,976 [$2.3m in 2007 dollars], as compared with $101,000 last year. The attendance at teh final game this afternoon was only 6,210, with gross receipts of $9,577.50.

Of the money taken in the players of Chicago, the winning team, get $27,669 and the Detroit players $18,446. The club owners get $19,681 each and the National Commission $9,497.

Information is important to decision making and in this case I wonder if attendance to the last game would have been a bit higher if it had been advertised that the Cubs wouldn't win another World Series for 100+ years? The 1908 World Series per-cap revenue was $1.54 or approximately $37 in 2007 dollars. This year, depending on the stadium in which the Series takes place, the face value of upstairs tickets will be in the $150-$200 range.

I'm not normally one to whine about how Americans take so little interest in the affairs of other nations. But I couldn't help noticing this morning that my daily paper, the Columbus Dispatch, did not include any mention of yesterday's parliamentary elections in Canada.

This is one of the 30 or so largest daily papers in the U.S., in the capital city of a state which shares an extensive (albeit lake) border with Canada, the United States' largest trading partner. Trade between Ohio and Canada amounts to about $30 billion annually, about six times the trade between Ohio and any other foreign nation. It has been estimated that over 200,000 Ohio jobs are dependent on trade with Canada.

I found not a word about the Canadian elections in either the print or on-line editions of the Dispatch.

By the way, for those interested, the ruling party, the free-trading Conservatives, returned an increased plurality, but still fell short of a majority. They are expected to form another minority government. At the same time, the anti-NAFTA, anti-trade New Democratic Party and Green Party both gained seats in parliament.

Here's Mike Lester's offering from today's RNT:

Here's a video that summarizes McCain's new economic plan and his campaign in general:

Wondering about the widespread allegations of ACORN shenanigans, I emailed several acquintances earlier today about the possibility of a RICO prosecution for ACORN. My question was timely as one friend pointed me to a civil RICO suit filed in Ohio:

The Buckeye Institute, a Columbus-based think tank, today filed a state RICO action against the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) on behalf of two Warren County voters. The action filed in Warren County Court of Common Pleas alleges ACORN has engaged in a pattern of corrupt activity that amounts to organized crime. It seeks ACORN’s dissolution as a legal entity, the revocation of any licenses in Ohio, and an injunction against fraudulent voter registration and other illegal activities.

Greg Randolph - fellow WVU graduate and current Southern New Hampshire economics professor - came in 3rd place in the faculty category of the 2008 Sir John Templeton Essay Contest sponsored by the Independent Institute. Not only is Greg an excellent teacher but he is also a fine scholar. Well done, Greg!

A nice article by Judy Shelton appeared in Monday's Op Ed page of the Wall Street Journal.

She uses the Nicolas Sarkozy quote (in the title above) to play up the irony of a French political leader having to correct our misguided media criticisms and naive popular opinions of the very institution that created so much prosperity for the U.S. and the rest of the world.

Her thoughtful editorial is a concise list of many of the institutional characteristics necessary for free markets to promote prosperity within democratic society. It is also a clear illustration of how over the years our country's economic structure has fallen well short of honestly earning the honorable title of "capitalism."

The NBA is eliminating about 80 jobs in the United States, the first major American sports league to announce layoffs because of the worldwide economic turmoil.

Commissioner David Stern told The Associated Press last month the league would cut staff in anticipation of the downturn. He said Sunday the figure would be about 9 percent of the American work force, and the league confirmed the number of jobs the next day.

“My guess is that by the time we tip off in a week or so, we will be down modestly in season tickets. … We think we’ll be up in revenue, but I just can’t say for sure whether we’ll be up or down in attendance because it’s just so touch-and-go, because sports tickets are very much disposable income,” he said. “So, we’re not going to see a huge impact, but I dare say we will see some impact.”

Source. Previous post.

Prior to the announcement of the 2006 prize I said:

My prediction:

Bhagwati, Dixit, and Krugman - for international trade theory

I would have liked to see Krugman win solo for his excellent economic geography work, but I don't see that happening since I think the committee would prefer to have him share the award.

While I certainly appreciate where commentators like Russ Roberts and Pete Boettke are coming from, on the awarding of this year's prize to Krugman I am in agreement with the thoughts and conclusions of Tyler Cowen and Kevin Grier. Like Ed Glaeser did with urban economics (and may he one day win a Nobel too), Paul Krugman saved economic geography. (Note that this sentiment is not incompatible with the excellent comment of Barkley Rosser on the neglected precursors to Krugman's work).

While I think the Nobel is deserved, my preferences for the current Nobel are close to what they were back in 2006 when I wrote:

Tullock and Krueger - for rent-seeking

Baumol and Kirzner - for entrepreneurship

Hanushek and ? - for economics of education

Richard Muth, Edwin Mills, and Jan Brueckner - for development and extension of the monocentric city model of urban location.

Today, I would only make one change. Today, I would certainly add Alchian and Demsetz for property rights economics to the list, just below Tullock and Krueger and above Baumol and Kirzner.

I'm surprised, because I didn't think of Krugman's professional work as highly influential (which is more subtle than just counting citations) on the professional literature. Perhaps I was just wrong about that.

Here is thoughtful commentary from Pete Boettke on the award's implications.

Here is Dan Klein with coauthor on Krugman the NY Times columnist.

At his request, here is Daniel Klein proposing drug approval denationalization as a simple step toward a better world. I like the argument: basically, he argues that we should allow the international marketplace for drugs to be more competitive by getting the government to quit stopping drugs at the border. If something is approved for use in Canada, for example, there is no reason why Americans shouldn't be allowed to use it. That said, here's Dan:

From the Oct. 13, 1908 NYT:

Waterbury, Conn. - Dennis Burns of Bridgeport and his wife made themselves objectionable on a trolley car running from Bridgeport to Waterbury last night. Because the man insisted on hugging and kissing the woman dramatically to the disgust of the passengers he was stopped at Naugatuck and arrested under an old blue law which says a man may not kiss even his wife in such a public and ostentatious manner.

Judge Hungerford did not care to entertain the charge of wife kissing on Sunday, and Burns has fined for disorderly conduct enough to make a total with costs of nearly $20.

Burns justified his conduct by the statement, "I love my wife dearly and have a right to kiss her, law or no law."

The October 13, 1908 NYT reports on the pending new world order (I suppose we are still waiting):

The Rev. Wilbur F. Crafts, D.D. of the International Reform Bureau, who spoke at the Warren Avenue Baptist Church last night, declared in his address that within a few years Theodore Roosevelet would be "President of the World."

Dr. Crafts said that his bureau's work would result in an international government at The Hague with legislative and executive departments. At the head would be Mr. Roosevelt bearing the title above mentioned.

The article is amusing, but not that great. I just couldn't resist the reference to Frank's post.

I just got around to reading the Sept. AER. Not much to my taste,