Michael B. Duff

"Around the world — most recently at last weekend’s deeply discouraging G-20 meeting — governments are obsessing about inflation when the real threat is deflation, preaching the need for belt-tightening when the real problem is inadequate spending."

Cold War II — This Time It's Personal! A secret cabal infiltrating some of the most powerful companies in the… Just kidding. They went straight for Congress.

U.S. consumers footed most of the bill for the scam because, amazingly, about 94 percent of all charges went uncontested by the victims. According to the FTC, the fraudsters charged 1.35 million credit cards a total of $9.5 million, but only 78,724 of these fake charges were ever noticed. Typically they floated just one charge per card number, billing on behalf of made-up business names such as Adele Services or Bartelca LLC. As credit cards are increasingly being used for inexpensive purchases — they're now accepted by soda machines and parking meters — criminals have cashed in on the trend by running this type of unauthorized charging scam.

"But I think it's important. I may be the only person who goes on Keith Olbermann and Glenn Beck and says the exact same shit. I am so much more socially liberal than Olbermann will ever be. You can't believe how pro gay and pro freedom of speech I am. I'm way out beyond anyone on the Left. And as for fiscal conservatism and small government, I'm so much further to the right than Glenn Beck. Nobody is further left and further right than me. As I'm fond of saying, if you want to find utopia, take a sharp right on money and a sharp left on sex and it's straight ahead."

The bill of materials for the Apple (AAPL) iPhone is $187.51 according to an iSuppli tear down of the phone. The research firm notes that the total is comparable to the $170.80 estimate it calculated in 2009 for the 3GS, or the 2008 estimate of $166.31 for the 3G in 2008, and the first iPhone at $217.73.

"Previous episodes of low interest rates suggest that loose monetary policy can be associated with credit booms, asset price increases, a decline in risk spreads and a search for yield. Together, these caused severe misallocations of resources in the years before the crisis, as evidenced by the excessive growth of the financial industry and the construction sector. The necessary structural adjustments are painful and will take time."

This is not the end of the world. Less than 1% of the spilled oil is ending up on the beaches. Watch TV, and that is not 150,000 barrels on the beach in Pensacola, Florida. Most of the crude is being moved parallel to the coast by the current and will eventually end up in the mid-Atlantic, where it will break down or dissipate. Tropical sunlight, salt water, and crude are all highly corrosive, and the three don’t last together long.

Certainly, the late nineteenth century was not an era of laissez-faire, despite the stubborn and persistent myth to the contrary. True, there were few government regulations on business, but high tariffs, railroad subsidies, and the national banking system prove that the government was no neutral bystander. Sumner more accurately termed it the era of plutocracy, in which politically organized wealth used the power of the state for selfish advantage.

President Obama on controlling the debt: "Somehow people say, why are you doing that, I'm not sure that's good politics. I'm doing it because I said I was going to do it and I think it's the right thing to do. People should learn that lesson about me because next year when I start presenting some very difficult choices to the country, I hope some of these folks who are hollering about deficits and debt step-up because I'm calling their bluff. We'll see how much of that, how much of the political arguments that they're making right now are real and how much of it was just politics."