Independence at the Fed

Columnist and professor Thomas Cooley (love the name!) argues for continuing independence at the Federal Reserve and defends the organization from accusations in Congress in this article.

How Private Property Rights Saved the Pilgrims

The story is recounted at the Volokh Conspiracy site, here. There are links to other articles regarding these events, as well.

Geography of Jobs

This is an animated map of job gains and losses over recent years. Illuminating and alarming.

More Nobel Prizes

Two Americans won the Nobel Prize for Economics this year.

UPDATE: By the way, nine Americans won Nobel Prizes this year, very nearly sweeping all the categories except Literature. Quite an achievement, even if the Peace Prize for President Obama was quite controversial.

The Nobel Prizes for Physics, Medicine and Chemistry are generally regarded as fair and nonpartisan, though of course controversies arise about whether some worthy candidates are overlooked. The Literature prize has always been regarded as highly politicized; the Peace Prize is very political by its nature, and it is worth remembering that almost everyone is going to be pleased with some controversial award at some point. (Although, as Peggy Noonan points out, this is a NCNA award... No Conservatives Need Apply. Republican officeholders who have had tremendous achievements in international affairs are routinely ignored by the Peace Prize committee, while reaching the top of the Democratic party seems to be an actual qualification for winning the prize regardless of actual achievements.) The Economics prize was only added long after Alfred Nobel's death, in 1968, and sometimes seems to be given for political reasons, although free market economists have often won the prize.

320 Americans have won Nobel Prizes, far more than twice as many as the next competitors, the United Kingdom and Germany. Americans routinely dominate the hard science and economics prizes in particular, but no American has won the Literature prize since Toni Morrison in 1993; before that it was William Faulkner in 1949 (although several Eastern Europeans and a Canadian who also had American citizenship won in the intervening years).

While we're on the topic, 19 graduates or members of the faculty at the University of Michigan have won Nobel Prizes. There have also been one from Michigan State University and one from Michigan Technological University.

The Future of GM

Or at any rate of its executive staff, discussed usefully here. That's about how I see it, too.

Devastation

Oh how I hate the Twins.

Sotomayor's First Day on the Court

This Washington Post article describes Sonia Sotomayor's first session with the Supreme Court. She was regarded as a very active questioner on the lower courts, and she quickly continued that habit.

Notice that the writer can't resist pointing out that Justice Thomas never speaks during arguments; true, but not especially revealing. Many appellate judges don't have much to say; this current Supreme Court lineup is well known to be unusually "hot". That is to say, they talk a lot.

Lawyers would prefer that the judges simply shut up and let them make their arguments in the limited time afforded them. I'm inclined to agree that Thomas is doing better by them.

(Hmm. I just suggested in a blog post that judges should shut up and let lawyers talk. I guess it's pretty obvious I teach rather than practice, eh?)