Do Markets Need Government?

“The person who says it can’t be done should not interrupt the person doing it.” This saying, which I often read for inspiration, could well summarize Private Governance, the inspired book by Edward Peter Stringham. Many economists, and others, have argued that government is needed to enforce contracts and settle disputes. They say that the market—private actors—can’t do that. Stringham would say that these skeptics should not get in the way of private actors who are doing just that: enforcing contracts and protecting people from predators.

Leave Scalia’s Chair Vacant

It is a measure of the stature and the significance of Justice Antonin Scalia that, upon the news of his death at a hunting lodge in Texas, Washington was instantly caught up in an unseemly quarrel over who would succeed him.

But no one can replace Justice Scalia.

He was a giant among jurists. For a third of a century, he led the conservative wing of the high court, creating a new school of judicial thought called “originalism.”

The Dubious Case for Rubio’s Electability

Alysia Finley thinks that the vacancy on the Supreme Court is an opening for (you guessed it) Marco Rubio:

The death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has raised the stakes of the presidential election. If there is a silver lining, it’s that maybe conservatives will finally sober up and stop indulging their self-destructive impulse to choose the “most conservative” candidate or the one with no internal censor (or compass). They may finally realize how important electability is—and take a fresh look at Marco Rubio.

American Democracy? - Money, Super-Delegates, & Hacked Voting Machines

Authored by Cynthia McKinney, Op-Ed via RT.com,

Jesus once remarked to a wealthy man that “it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to go to heaven.”

Today, we could amend the words of that Biblical reference with the US presidential race underway:

“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a voter in the US to know and understand the rules regulating the administration of all elections, including elections for President of the United States.”

China Created A Record Half A Trillion Dollars Of Debt In January

China Created A Record Half A Trillion Dollars Of Debt In January

Yes, you read that right. Amid a tumbling stock market, plunging trade data, weakening Yuan, and soaring volatility, China's aggregate debt (so-called total social financing) rose a stunning CNY3.42 trillion (or an even more insane-sounding $520 billion) in January alone.

In fact, since October, China has added over 1 trillion dollars of credit... and has nothing but margin calls, ghost-er cities, and over-supplied commodity-warehouses to show for it... oh and even-record-er debt-to-GDP ratio.

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