Few consumers like high oil prices. Do-it-yourselfers like me wish copper pipe and fittings had not gotten so expensive. But such high prices do illustrate how markets work. Prices in an economy function to transmit information and motivate actions. High…
Push for liquidity neglects history
The Federal Reserve’s policy-making Open Market Committee meets Tuesday for the last time in 2007. It faces harder tradeoffs than any time in many years. Whatever the FOMC decides, it will be years before the success or failure of its…
Mortgage plan may be least bad option
The general outline of a government-fostered plan to reduce defaults on adjustable-rate mortgages is emerging. Lenders would agree to freeze interest rates at current levels for those borrowers who have met loan payments to date and who can continue to…
“Greater criminal” gets loose
Punishment for theft often varies inversely with the amount stolen. When English landowners evicted peasants and deprived them of their customary rights, someone noted: They hang the man and flog the woman/Who steals the goose from off the Common;/But let…