Author Archive | David Bernstein

My father tells me that he has quite a few Jewish friends in their 60s and 70s who tell him that they would vote for McCain over Obama but for the issue of abortion rights. This is a bit odd; obviously, few people in their 60s and 70s are concerned that they will have direct […]

Rich’s column suggests that McCain-Palin’s rhetoric is risking the assasination of Sen. Obama. His evidence: “raucous and insistent cries of ‘Treason!’” links to “a crowd member [that is, one crowd member] screamed “treason!” during an event on Tuesday after Sarah Palin accused Barack Obama of criticizing U.S. troops. “raucous and insistent cries of … ‘terrorist’ […]

Jennifer Rubin has some. I suspect that no matter how good a campaign McCain runs from now on, he’s doomed unless the economic news suddenly takes a turn for the better. Speaking of which, I have to give some credit to the powers-that-be. I remember in 1988, knowledgeable observers, but not the general public, were […]

An idea that emerged from random conversations: pick the neighborhoods in the U.S. with the highest foreclosure rates, and give buyers a substantial tax credit–say 20-30%–on the purchase price after a fixed period–say five years–in which they hold and maintain the property. You can add features to prevent damaging speculation, like requiring a substantial down […]

The McCain campaign is unleashing attacks on Obama’s judgment and trustworthiness, in particular by highlighting his ties to Bill Ayers. At first, voters aren’t go to pay attention to this, because it seems like a silly distraction when we have an economic crisis on hand. On second thought… well, there’s a comment on Ann Althouse’s […]

Closed-end mutual funds, which have a fixed number of shares and are traded on stock markets, have been absolutely clobbered by the turmoil in the financial markets. Not only have their underlying net asset values gone done, but many of them are trading at historically high discounts to net asset value. There are even some […]

Repeatedly calling me and everyone else in the United States “my friends” is extremely annoying. In part, it’s just an irritating phrase. Beyond that, I’m not your friend. I don’t know you, and, from what I know of you, I don’t even really like you. Sorry to focus on such superficialities when the world economy […]

Let’s play an analogy game. A debate moderator asks you about your relationship with unrepentant domestic terrorist Bill Ayers. The analogy you choose to draw with Ayers is: (a) Justice Hugo Black, who joined a terrorist organization in his youth, but later contributed greatly to liberal reform; (b) Timothy McVeigh, because he is another domestic […]

Orin suggests that I’m “connecting Obama to radical views.” Well, connecting is a bit ambiguous, but I did specify quite strongly (and sincerely) that I don’t think that Obama shares the views of people like Ayers or Wright. I do, as Orin says, think that Obama is the product of a particular (and, to most […]

On Saturday, I wrote that Obama’s ties to Ayers and Wright, and his apparent lack of self-consciousness about these ties and how they might affect his political career, “suggest to me NOT that Obama agrees with their views, but that he is the product of a particular intellectual culture that finds the likes of Wright […]

Here’s my take: Obama is an extremely ambitious man. He’s been interested in a national political career for many years. It’s not that surprising that he wouldn’t find Ayers and Wright objectionable company–in the very liberal, Hyde Park/Ivy League circles that he’s traveled in since attending Columbia, people with such views are more mainstream than, […]

First two paragraphs of an AP story: Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin on Saturday accused Democrat Barack Obama of “palling around with terrorists” because of his association with a former 1960s radical, stepping up the campaign’s effort to portray Obama as unacceptable to American voters. Palin’s reference was to Bill Ayers, one of the […]

There’s an interesting difference between the financial troubles of today and the Savings and Loan debacle of the late 1980s. In the latter case, the MSM (except for the WSJ editorial page, natch), quickly decided to blame deregulation and not, in any substantial way, the “moral hazard” of federal deposit insurance, which was a prerequisite […]

Where did the $700 billion figure come from, a figure that Paulson insisted on when members of Congress suggested that perhaps they could authorize some of the money right away, and then provide more later? “It’s not based on any particular data point,” a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. “We just wanted to choose a […]

Wishing all of our Jewish readers a happy, healthy, and sweet New Year!