Daily Archives: June 26, 2007

Regulating dangerous financial products

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cash062607.jpgHarvard Law professor Elizabeth Warren wants to establish a federal commission to regulate subprime mortgages and other “dangerous” financial products that are foisted on unsuspecting consumers. For a number of reasons, that’s a bit like using a sledgehammer on a problem for which a scalpel is more appropriate. But if it comes about, Don Boudreaux informs us about a really dangerous financial product that the new commission needs to examine:

If such a commission does its job, I suggest that the first dangerous financial product that it attacks be Social Security. Not only are Social Security’s returns lousy; not only are its “customers” never vested their “contributions”; not only does the institution providing it have no sound plan to keep it solvent; not only does this institution intentionally mislead its clients about its insolvency (witness its discussions of the illusory “trust fund”) – but its “customers” are forced to buy it. That is a dangerous financial product!

That’s some leadership, eh?

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HoustonTraffic%20062507.jpgIt has not been a good week for local leadership. After Harris County Commissioners endorsed perfectly sensible congestion pricing for the overloaded Westpark Tollway — which is overloaded primarily because the local transit authority undermined the size of the project when it was built — the Commissioners revoked the sensible policy because some citizens yelled loud who didn’t want to pay the higher toll during rush hour or be inconvenienced by traveling the tollway at a time other than rush hour.
My goodness. Why didn’t County Commissioners simply call Houston’s urban policy wonk, Tory Gattis, to sort all this out in the first place?

Talking about the 2007 U.S. Open in 2042?

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Oakmont%20chuch%20pews.jpgThis Peter Williams/New Zealand Herald column elaborates on the point that I’ve been making about the draconian setups for the U.S. Open courses that the United States Golf Association has been inflicting over the past couple of years on the competitors:

Golf, like all sports, is in the entertainment business. Its money comes through being an exciting spectacle on television.
The best TV sport is always when the best players perform at their optimum in conditions fair to everyone. I don’t think those conditions prevailed at Augusta in April and certainly not at Oakmont last week. In two major championships this year, nobody has finished under par. That’s entertainment? Give me a break. It’s survival and not much fun to watch or play.
The story goes that after Johnny Miller shot 63 to win the 1973 US Open at Oakmont, the USGA and Oakmont membership vowed that never again would they be embarrassed by somebody ripping a championship course apart.
Embarrassed? That was brilliant play; engaging, exciting and still talked about 35 years later. Will they be talking about the 2007 US Open in 2042? About the greatest player of all time not able to make a birdie in his last 32 holes because of greens so fast you couldn’t hit a putt firmly enough to hold the line?

Read the entire column.