Digusting Line of the Day, and the Winner Goes To

Dave Wenhold, of the American League of Lobbyists, said lobbyists bring expertise to the job. "Just because you are registered to lobby doesn't mean that you are evil, " he said.

I got this line from this post up at Cafe Hayek.

So You Think the Government Can Spend Its Way Out of Our Current Predicament?

Even FDR's treasury secretary, Henry Morgenthau, said in 1939, "We have tried spending money . . . and it does not work . . . we have just as much unemployment . . . and an enormous debt to boot." Nor did a decade of infrastructure spending help the Japanese escape three recessions and a decade of stagnation. It did, however, saddle Japan with a national debt burden four times ours.

That's Mike Boskin from Stanford talking in today's WSJ, more here.

U of Chicago's Finance Guru on Post-crisis Regulations

More generally, current events are certain to produce more regulation, and
much of it is likely to be counterproductive. My longtime colleague, George Stigler, was famous for his argument, buttressed by empirical evidence, that regulators are eventually captured by the regulated. As a result, regulation often has results opposite those intended.

---- That's Chicago Business School's Gene Fama talking

More here.

Correct me if I am wrong, I think Hong Kong's financial sector czar Dr Chan Ka-keung was Gene Fama's student. Wonder what he thinks of his mentor's thoughts on the matter.