Order another round of recession-is-over stories. Federal Reserve data show that U.S. households got slightly richer in the fourth quarter of 2009 — marking nine straight months of increasing household net worth.
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Zombie Banks Well Enough to Go Off Life Support While Living Fight Over Canned Goods
In honor of this week’s 10th anniversary of the dotcom stock market peak, NetworkWorld’s Paul McNamara rounds up some entertaining contemporary coverage of a market bust that seemed impressive at the time but now stands in relation to the real estate bust as the Great War stands to World War II: A few of the names live on as poster children for failure, of course: Pets.com, Kozmo.com, MVP.com and Go.com… [T]here were remarkable and enduring successes during this period — Amazon, eBay, Craigslist, Yahoo, Google — even if it would be insulting to call them dot-coms and their real fortunes had so many chasing empty dreams. Highlights include this CNet obituary for one celebrity-enabled digital cash site: Flooz.com was a perfect example of a “what the heck were they thinking?” business
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Ten Years Ago This Week: A Requiem for Petopia
I love a nice political stunt. Just in time for tax season, California Senate candidate Carly Fiorina (and former HP exec) is backing legislation that would set up new rules to give the heave ho to any federal employee who hasn’t paid their taxes . The bill was proposed by Rep.
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Don’t Pay Your Taxes, Don’t Get Paid in Tax Dollars. Simple.
In Louisiana, you can’t sell flower arrangements unless you have permission from the government. In Virginia, you need a license to be a yoga instructor.
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New at Reason: John Stossel on the Right to Work
Serial eminent domain abuser and corporate welfare queen Bruce Ratner took out a full-page ad in today’s New York Times trumpeting his despicable Atlantic Yards stadium project in Brooklyn as a glorious opportunity for “building the community from the ground-up.” It’s an ugly yet revealing way to put it—though I suppose Ratner is feeling cocky about things since he’s planning a ceremonial groundbreaking today at 1:30 PM. (I’ll be there and will report back later with scenes from the event and the protest .) Here’s something you should never forget: The 22-acre footprint for Ratner’s proposed “urban utopia” isn’t a blank slate. Before Ratner partnered with the state government in order to seize private property via eminent domain, the area was home to private residences and successful businesses
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Bruce Ratner: “Building the community from the ground-up” by Bulldozing Homes and Businesses
Palestinians pull out of peace talks . Ethics troubles mount for Sen.
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Reason Morning Links: Palestinians Balk, Virginia Says No to Obamacare, Helu Tops Gates and Buffet
…when it comes to federal deficit spending that is, with February’s coming in at $220 billion vs. a yearly deficit for 2007 of $161 billion
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Obama to Bush: My Month Beats Your Year
With the tedious details of healthcare “reform” and tickle-fighting fantasists sucking up all of the media oxygen, it takes someone like James Pethokoukis, the most informative Greek-American since Dimetrios Synodinos , to remind us that President Obama is neglecting (or purposefully ignoring) a hugely important issue: free trade . Not that Obama has a problem with trade. In his State of the Union speech to Congress last January, he stated an ambitious goal of doubling U.S exports by 2015. It is trade policy that he seems uncomfortable with
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Whatever Happened to Free Trade?
A great post from Robert Wright at the New York Times about why the disproportionate attention paid to Toyota recalls is worrisome and innumerate: if you drive one of the Toyotas recalled for acceleration problems and don’t bother to comply with the recall, your chances of being involved in a fatal accident over the next two years because of the unfixed problem are a bit worse than one in a million—2.8 in a million, to be more exact. Meanwhile, your chances of being killed in a car accident during the next two years just by virtue of being an American are one in 5,244.
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You Might Die in Your Toyota. It Happens.
Atlantic Yards Report brings word of the latest ordeal suffered by Brooklyn homeowner Daniel Goldstein as developer Bruce Ratner and his partners in the state government move forward with their plans to build a basketball stadium on top of Goldstein’s home: Things are getting truly strange for Daniel Goldstein, spokesman for Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, who with his wife and child is the only resident left on Pacific Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues. Goldstein lost his condo to condemnation last week and his street and two others were closed and made private.
