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There is a slight downtrend once you drop out the U.S. taxpayer supported outlier, Israel. What nearly all the countries on that plot have in common is more debt than they'll ever pay back.

Your title is misleading. The ruling was not that computer programs can't be copyrighted, it is that copyright does not apply to the functionality of the program. If I write a program that slices, dices, and purees, and you write a program that does the same things without copying my code, you...

The cheap labor "conservatives" have always been happy with illegal immigrants. They're the ones who hire them. As for health care, the brute reality is that there will always be far higher demand for health care than there will be money to pay for it. So it's an unfixable problem, for the...

What about stocks with a short restriction due to simply falling too far too fast? Can option MM short those? For example, today PBH has a short sale restriction in effect because a bid to buy the company has been withdrawn so the stock tanked by 15%.

The issue is not how much you make during the 80% of the time when the market stays in a range but how much you lose the other 20% of the time.

Some states have been bludgeoned by reality into making real cuts in spending. But if you think the federal government has cut spending, please tell us where. Our congressmen have fits over the prospect of simply slowing the growth in the spending. They never, ever, actually cut it.

The Republicans look further right to liberal academics because the left keeps moving further left. Susan B. Anthony, a first wave feminist, was against abortion. Who knew then that making killing fetuses legal would become a litmus test for being on the left? Just 30 years ago, who...

This is the first time I've been impressed by testimony from Bernanke. Of course our politicians will continue to ignore reality and keep spending money we don't have.

The hate seems to be coming from you.

It is a non sequitor to say that because climate change can happen without human intervention, that human intervention can't cause climate change. CO2 levels rise every single year, and no, that isn't due to a sudden spate of volcanoes. Given that CO2 is the second most important greenhouse...

The CBO estimates that the cost of the government conservatorship of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is $238 billion. Add to that the Federal Reserve purchasing $47 billion of GSE debt and another $53 billion in mortgage backed securities from the GSEs, and the Treasury Department buying $71 billion...

If Obama really wanted to get rid of government programs that don't work he'd be on the same side as Ron Paul in wanting to get rid of the Department of Education. Fat chance of that. Of course I'm not naive in thinking that Romney will be any better than Obama at cutting the spending.

Speaking of ideologues, look in the mirror.

If your such a fan of GSEs, please pay my share of the taxpayer bailout of them.

Yes, GSE loans failed at a lower rate than the Wall Street subprime super bomb specials. But the fact remains that plenty of those loans failed. When Maxine Waters praised Fannie Mae for the innovation of "100% loans" (i.e., zero down payment loans) does it seem to you Fannie Mae was a model...

The GSEs were by no means the sole cause of the crash but they did contribute to it. Both the management of those organizations and their bond investors were willing to take on excessively risky loans because of the moral hazard created by our government. Although the bonds weren't supposed to...

Tell that to the Zimbabweans.

You'll give Obama credit for the sun rising.

Not all subprime loans were "liar loans". A loan could meet Fannie Mae's lowered standards and still be a crappy loan. And Freddie Mae was run by that damn fool who said that 3% reserves were more than enough. If Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were so well run, why did they have to be bailed out...

Republicans wanted to impose stronger lending standards on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgages. The Democrats were adamantly against it. It was the ability of banks to offload their subprime mortgages onto Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that was a major factor in creating the mortgage crisis. So...