You always hear talking heads saying business hates uncertainty. But why don't we hear that politicians love it?

My favorit account: Amity Shlaes' book FORGOTTEN MAN. That Roosevelt, he knew from uncertainty.

The president's crowing about keeping this promise is akin to a baseball player bragging about getting his batting average above the Mendoza line. There are lots of Obama campaign promises that have not been kept--closing Gitmo, not hiking taxes on people earning below $250k, posting bills on the internet for a few days before signing them--but I suppose he hopes we won't remember those.

This paper estimates the effect of ambulatory surgical centers (ASCs) on hospital surgical volume using hospital and year fixed effects models with several robustness checks. We show that ASC entry only appears to influence a hospital's outpatient surgical volume if the facilities are within a few miles of each other. Even then, the average reduction in hospital volume is only 2–4%, which is not nearly large enough to offset the new procedures performed by an entering ASC. The effect is, however, stronger for large ASCs and the first ASCs to enter a market. Additionally, we find no evidence that entering ASCs reduce a hospital's inpatient surgical volume.

This finding is something to keep in mind when folks who restrain ASCs bleat about how their reforms expand access to health care.

Criminal gangs and impoverished Roma communities near borders with countries where prices are lower -- Serbia, Macedonia, Moldova and Ukraine -- have taken to smuggling which has wiped out gains from higher excise duties.

Bulgaria increased taxes by nearly half this year and stepped up customs controls and police checks at shops and markets. Customs office data, however, shows tax revenues from cigarette sales so far in 2010 have fallen by nearly a third.
Source.

"By moving the plant to the Oneida homelands, the Nation is availing itself of a long-settled law that recognizes the right of Indian tribes to sell products they manufacture on their own reservations without interference from state tax laws," tribe officials said in a statement.

Source. NY has hiked cigarette taxes $1.60 and is trying to crack down on untaxed sales on Indian reservations.

And like many people, QE2 sounds to me like the Queen Elizabeth 2, the Cunard Line cruise ship.

But that makes me think of the "Love Boat." (Only Kevin Grier and I would do this; we like to sing, badly and loudly). So I sang "Cash....Exciting and new..." on the Takeaway radio show this morning.

Here's the quote Andy pulled with my changes:

If the importance of the regulation grades is too high, then a rating agency professor will not provide any real information to investors students or employers. [He] will simply inflate ratings grades.

Yup, sounds about right my way too.

In other news, two of our recent graduates have landed nice positions. Shawn Regan is working at PERC and Erin Wendt has joined Berry grad Keri Anderson at IHS.

The most important accomplishment: grads Justin Neal and Andrew Chupp (and their Berry grad wives) welcomed their first children this summer. We look forward to seeing them in the class of 2032.

Appallingly, I mispronounced the name of Chile's president at least twice. "PiñerO": Now I'll talk about President "Abamo" and act like it's all on purpose.