Interviews Again

I thought it was time to repeat a couple of oldies but goodies. Here are two interviews I did in 2009 regarding IT and staffing. Take a look.

Investing in the IT Staff - with Gino Macarroni

So You Think You Know What a Recruiter Thinks? - with Diane Plymale

The Road to Serfdom - The Comic Book

I had the great pleasure of reading and re-reading Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" many, many years ago. I may be the only person I know who's actually read he philosophical foundation of Capitalism and free markets.

I continue to run into references to the greatness of Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom". Someday I'll have to read it. In the meantime, for us with short attention spans, here's the comic.

Best Drummer Since Ginger Baker?

Maybe not ... but he certainly wins on style points.

More Stubborn Facts

Here are the results of last year's Cash for Clunkers program. I haven't watched it closely but it seems that the federal tax credits for a home purchase expired at the end of May. I know there was a flurry of buying

as that credit expired. Then I read an article that home sales will plummet. I suspect the federal tax credit did the same thing in the housing market as it did in the used car market, just pulled sales from the future.


I suspect the housing market will recover to normal levels soon.

Facts are Stubborn Things

According to one Hillary Clinton, "The rich are not paying their fair share" of taxes. The top five percent of wage earners pay more than 54 percent of income taxes. She seems to bright not to know the truth so I wonder why she said that.

Crowding Out

Crowing out was a term I became familiar with in the 80-81 recession where Paul Volcker saved the future. The tenet is that government spending crowds out private spending. In other words, there are only so many dollars in the world and when the government spends them, they are not there for private enterprise to spend.

It's a simple concept and almost intuitively true. It also doesn't matter if we're talking about dollars taxed today or dollars borrowed against the future. There is a finite pool of capital (current or borrowed against the future) and private enterprise gets the leftovers.

Now, here's evidence that this is also a short-term phenomenon. If other research backs this up, this pretty-much blows Keynesianism out of the water.

The entire study is here.

I'm Starting to Like This Guy

Gov Christie calls S-L columnist thin-skinned for inquiring about his 'confrontational tone'