We've seen a pretty wild ride this week on the stock market.  Yes, there has been troubling news coming out the sub-prime mortgage market (in my opinion, the bad news is that there IS a sub-prime mortgage market), but the wild extremes of highs and lows has been a little scary.

Why?

Because wild negative swings in value are what cause margin calls, and margin calls are what start runs.  It was margin calls that started the subprime crisis, as lenders starting calling their chits and the mortgage companies became cash-strapped.

So why the wild swings?

Do you know the nine scariest words in America?

"I'm from the government, and I am here to help."

Ronald Reagan's famous quip has been repeated often, and it has never been more true.

There is a lot of heat, and very little light being shed in the battles over the news that Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. will purchase the Dow Jones Company (publishers of the Wall Street Journal).  The lefty socialists in Congress are all knicker-twisted over the alleged "consolidation" of media (funny-- they didn't screen when Viacom bought CBS or Disney bought ABC).  The unions at the Journal are worried about the editorial independence.  Everyone seems to have a dog in this fight.  (Mine is the hope that Murdoch drops the stupid paywall for articles!)

But I think there is another angle to this story that no one is catching.

Niall Ferguson, a noted British author, spreads Fear, Uncertainity and Doubt over at The Telegraph  while worshiping at the alter of the oft-discredited Malthus.  Ferguson, in traditional modern British style, forgets the influence of markets (good and bad) and the results of well-intentioned but stupid policies on the part of government in claiming that our bigger worry should be about grain, not oil.

Before any farmers -- and I know a lot, and I even live on a farm -- think this an attack on them, get your britches out of twist and read the whole post.

Big Agriculture has indeed won another big fight on capital hill, and for the rest of us -- including family farms-- the result is not good.  The agriculture bill recently passed by Congress is another in a long history of payoffs to big agriculture that go back to the founding of the Republic.

Maryland State Government is an abject failure.  Why?  Because no one in leadership wants to own up to the simple fact about our structural deficit:  raising revenue will not fix it. And when I say "no one in leadership", I include everyone on the political spectrum, not just the lefty Dems that hold court right now.

Well, some Old Ghosts of jobs past are cropping up.  It turns out that the lawsuits against executives at the former Recoton Corporation (a former employer of mine) are heating up again.  It's a shame the plaintiffs don't have the real scoop.

In a colossally stupid move, shareholders of Laureate Education approved the $3.8 billion buyout offer from Doug Becker and his back-room friends.  How this wasn't also a collosal conflict of interest-- Becker as Chairman charged with maximizing value and at the same time as buyer trying to get the lowest price -- is beyond me.

Laureate is one-half of what used to be Sylvan Learning Systems.  SLS was given over $10 million in tax breaks and incentives back in 1999 in order to keep the from moving the HQ out of Baltimore City.  They built a new tower on Fleet Street, and purchased the Koldkiss Building for their eSylvan unit.  (Full disclosure: I used to work for eSylvan and watched as Becker and Hoehn-Sarinc and David Graves made collosal leadership and management blunders that doomed that unit to hte obscurity it enjoys today-- and blew $70 million in the process.)

Of course, those breaks came with certain conditions, like hiring 1000 well-paid employees.  Guess what?  Never happened.  NEVER HAPPENED.

So, as a former eSylvan stockholder AND a taxpayer, I have one question:  when does the state get its money back?

I'm waiting...

Why does the Left love the Fairness Doctrine -- an illiberal policy if there ever was one?

Because the Left fears competition in a way that is self-defeating, self-emasculating, and self-serving.  And the Fairness Doctrine -- among other invidious regulations-- is anti-competitive.  The Fairness Doctrine acts much like Marxism does.  By making the market flatter for all, it diminishes the opportunity for the uniquely talented among us to succeed without succor from the state.  It constrains creativity, argument, debate, reason, and investigation, substituting these high qualities of The Enlightenment for cold elitism of the Guilded Age.

I have said it before, and I will say it again:  markets always seek equilibrium.  Just as nature abhors a vacuum, markets abhor an imbalance.

And no matter what the Demcrats do to try and bring back the 70's with their Energy Bill, nothing will change the rules of economics.