Neighborhood Schools, Local Business

Over at The League, the (extra)ordinary Mr. Kain has a splendid piece on “the concept of the school itself as an essential part of one’s community.” It is, rest assured, well worth the read. (At Front Porch Republic, Professor Fox offered, a couple of months ago, the very interesting “A Partially Localist Defense of Public [...]

Wilhelm Röpke FTW

Courtesy of fellow Hoosier Jeremy Beer, at Front Porch Republic, this TAC piece from Dermot Quinn on the most underrated economist ever.
An Aristotelian preference for balance and variety, a Burkean delight in the little platoons, a Chestertonian love of the local and the down-to-earth—that was Roepke.
This is all very well, you might say, but [...]

No Faith in the Fed

From an article in today’s Post
After his speech, Bernanke was asked when he expected the economy would recover.
“My forecasting record is about the same as the win-loss record of the Washington Nationals,” he said.
In four years in Washington, the Team Formerly Known As The Expos have a record of 284-363, only in the first season [...]

“Reviving Our Sense of Place, Our Priorities of Localism, Agrarianism, and Self-government”, Part II

Why, then, a “Jeffersonian” New Urbanism? (Part One.)
A few years have passed since I last read any of the Anti-Federalist Papers; lately, slowly, I’ve been getting back to that, starting with introductory material from editor Ralph Ketcham and some of the important Constitutional debates. To me, one of the greatest failings of the Anti-Federalists [...]

Conservatism versus Capitalism: Eschewing “Creative Destruction”

From the forthcoming issue of The Terrapin Times (It’s about damn time we go to print again. *sigh*), my CPAC 2009-inspired op.-ed. on the tension between conservatism and capitalism.
Having submitted to morbid curiosity, I ventured to the Friday installment of CPAC 2009, hoping again to hear and to meet Ron Paul (Double-check!) [...]

Economic Piranha

Random post-shower thought this morning:
Bringing a Walmart to town to stimulate economic development is something like replacing two dead fish in a tank with two piranha. They’ll replace the now-defunct life in the environment and, be they one male and one female, may even add additional life. They’ll also eat the other fish who already [...]

Mighty Powerful: Professor Deneen on Black Friday

And, today, if we can identify the rampaging “consumers” who killed that poor, poor, undeserving man who sought to open the doors of Wal-Mart for minimum wage on Black Friday, we will exonerate ourselves from any stain that we may all bear in assenting to a culture in which hordes stampede for cheap flat screen [...]

In the wake of Wall Street crises, we mustn’t forget that poor people can be greedy, too

Heather MacDonald, at City Journal, has it here:
In June, the city’s Rent Guidelines Board approved a rent increase for apartments whose tenants have lived in them for more than six years and that rent for less than $1,000 a month. The Board acted in response to rising fuel, water, and tax expenses, which have hit [...]

The consolidation of financial power continues

From the New York Times:
In a surprise twist, the West Coast bank Wells Fargo & Company, said Friday that it had reached an agreement to acquire a rival, the Wachovia Corporation, for about $15.1 billion in stock.
The announcement came just four days after Citigroup had agreed to buy Wachovia’s banking operations of Wachovia for $2.2 [...]

We’ve been sold up the river

by the House of Representatives.
By a vote of 263-171, the House of Representatives on Friday accepted the Senate’s revised version of the $700 billion plan for the Treasury to intervene in financial markets.
I almost hope that this fails — not that anyone knows just how much, if at all, it will succeed. I don’t [...]