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Archive for August, 2009

Best Sentence that We’ve Read in Awhile

Andy Spero | August 28, 2009 | 0 Comment(s) |

And a Brief Mention about the Decline in Numbers of Religious Personnel

“Interfering with people’s property, labor, and exchange–except where necessary to uphold justice and sustain society–is a violation of the sacredness of the person.”

That’s from an essay by Greg Forster, “Sacred Enterprise,” in the Claremont Review of Books, Summer 2009. (Unfortunately, it’s only available on-line to subscribers.) He goes on to write, “And increasing the total amount of available wealth is morally good, so it is wrong to stifle economic growth or to force potentially productive assets to… Read the rest

Bad News About Mortgages and Housing

Andy Spero | August 21, 2009 | 0 Comment(s) |

We tend to be pessimistic; so, perhaps the news isn’t as bad as it seems, but consider these two facts, which were both reported in today’s The Wall Street Journal:

  1. A survey by the Mortgage Bankers Association found that 13.2% of mortgages on homes with one to four units were at least one-month overdue or in the foreclosure process in the second quarter. That’s almost 50% higher than at the same time last year, and much of that increase is due to problems with prime loans, not subprime loans. (See

… Read the rest

Is It Easier to Get 60 Votes Than 50?

Andy Spero | August 20, 2009 | 0 Comment(s) |

The Nuclear Option

As usual, James Taranto’s daily column ’Best of the Web‘ is both informative and entertaining.

In today’s column, Ardent Partisanship, we are particularly interested in the section, Splitting the Bath Water. In it, Mr. Taranto notes that (1) it seems unlikely that all sixty (60) Democratic Senators would vote to end a Republican attempt to filibuster the health-care bill, and (2) Democrats may attempt to change Senate tradition to get a simple majority (rather than a 60-vote super-majority) to close debate and vote on the bill (or… Read the rest

Fathers Against Stupidity

Andy Spero | August 19, 2009 | 0 Comment(s) |

The Wall Street Journal‘s web site has an article, Drunken-Driving Arrests Jump Among Women. The study covers the years between 1998 and 2007 and finds that arrests of women were about 29% percent higher in 2007 than in 1998.

According to the article, when asked, here is what Laura Dean-Mooney, president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, had to say, “There’s no hard data on that. What you’re hearing more is that women are under more pressure, they’re now perhaps the breadwinner because of the unemployment rate.”

Indeed, the… Read the rest

Where’s the Science?

Andy Spero | August 19, 2009 | 0 Comment(s) |

Here’s a great sports- and science-related article in today’s edition of The Wall Street Journal: The Africans Are Hearing Footsteps. We think it’s great because it exposes what claims to be a “scientific” approach to long-distance training as something that seems to be quite the opposite, i.e., something that seems to be quite non-empirical.

The article describes how American long-distance, Kara Goucher, is successfully using “African” methods–which were, in fact, used by most Americans prior to the 1980′s–to train for marathons. As described, her method seems to focus more on… Read the rest

More Health-care, Not Less

Andy Spero | August 17, 2009 | 0 Comment(s) |

This is one of the most novel essays about health-care that we’ve read in quite some time: We Don’t Spend Enough on Health Care. It’s by Craig S. Karpel, and it’s in today’s edition of The Wall Street Journal.

His point: once basic, material needs and wants are met, expenditures on health-care become an increasingly larger percentage of a person’s budget and the overall economy. Here’s another way to think of it: there probably isn’t much cosmetic surgery in Haiti. Or, do you really want the same percentage as, say,… Read the rest

Royal Pains

Andy Spero | August 16, 2009 | 0 Comment(s) |

Special Treatment for Volunteers and Donors

We like the new television show Royal Pains because much of the pilot episode rang so true with us.

If you haven’t seen it, we’ll explain why.

During the episode, a former emergency-room physician, Dr. Hank, serendipitously becomes a concierge physician in the Hamptons. He is a former emergency-room physician because during the first few minutes of the show he was fired by the administrator of a New York City hospital.

He was fired by the administrator because he followed protocol–i.e., did the right thing–and treated… Read the rest

It’s the Unintended Consequences, Stupid.

Andy Spero | August 16, 2009 | 0 Comment(s) |

The quote below–courtesy of a transcript provided by The Wall Street Journal–was stated by President Obama at his health-care reform rally in Grand Junction, CO.

What you can’t do — or you can, but you shouldn’t do — is start saying things like, we want to set up death panels to pull the plug on grandma.  I mean, come on.  (Applause.)  I mean, I just — first of all, when you make a comment like that — I just lost my grandmother last year.  I know what it’s… Read the rest

Value Creation and a Man’s Worth

Andy Spero | August 16, 2009 | 0 Comment(s) |

There’s a worthwhile, syndicated column in today’s edition of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. It’s by the economist, Donald J. Boudreaux, and it is entitled, Can’t buy me love.

In the column, Mr. Boudreaux describes his affection for Paul McCartney and the Beatles.

More importantly, he distinguishes between Mr. McCartney’s worth or value and Mr. McCartney’s net, financial resources, which are estimated to be $1 billion. For example, he writes, “When I read of McCartney’s fortune, I am struck by how puny it is compared with the amount of pleasure he… Read the rest

This Isn’t Good News for CMBS Holders and Erstwhile Pipelines

Andy Spero | August 15, 2009 | 0 Comment(s) |

We occasionally write about CMBS or Commercial Mortgage-backed Securities and the CMBX index. For example, last November, we wrote CMBS Is Like Lumpy MBS and That’s Not Good. We tend to get more hits on our tongue-in-cheek post, How to Trade CMBS? and find that a bit scary.

What should truly frighten both CMBS holders and banks with large commercial-mortgage loan portfolios more than our discussion of our page rankings is this article in Saturday’s edition of The Wall Street Journal: Hotels Deliver Some ‘Jingle Mail.’ The… Read the rest

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