I Was Looking Pretty Stupid Earlier Today . . .

. . . with the market down 300 points early today (after closing down more than 100 points yesterday), my prediction of 12,500 for Friday didn't look too smart.

But now I feel like a market genius after a 600 point intra-day swing (12,500 by close Friday still might not happen, though).

That's why you don't pay attention to the daily goings on of Wall Street, it's a long term market, timing is for crazy people.

Just ask all the people who thought they'd get rich flipping houses how well the strategy of trying to use a long term investment instrument (in the case of flippers, real estate) into a means of short term profits.

You Have a Right to Be an Idiot, So Long as It Doesn't Cost Taxpayers Anything . . .

. . . that would seem to sum up Michael Kinsley's argument with regards to one aspect of his critique of libertarianism (brought on, it seems, by his observation of the Ron Paul phenomena), and his support for intrusive government measures that trade 'public good' for limits on personal liberty. The problem with Kinsley's argument is that the government is in charge of defining what becomes an externality, and to what degree they must interfere to prevent an external cost for undesirable behavior. Rarely has the government used this argument to limit or reverse its own power, rather it always seems to ratchet up its interference into markets and the populations daily life. Markets work, governments distort, not everything can be purely commercial, but there's a lot of stuff in our society that would be better if it were more business, and less political.

Ilya Somin, posting at the Volokh Conspiracy, offers a solid counter-argument along the lines, 'if taxpayer costs are your problem with my liberty, then don't pay for my mistakes'.

I'd call it the Patti Smith version of libertarianism, to quote,

"Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine
meltin' in a pot of thieves
wild card up my sleeve
thick heart of stone
my sins my own
they belong to me, me"

And speaking of Patti Smith singing Gloria, here's a live version from back in the day.

Also, just cause markets are imperfect, doesn't mean that government will do the job better (and vice versa, but the set of things better done by government is much smaller than the set of things best accomplished through free market principles) .

And Ron Paul is still a nut, most of his supporters are loony, and if I knew as much about him as I do now back in 1988 when I voted for him, then I would have held my nose and voted for George Bush (that's right, my first ever presidential ballot was cast in favor of Ron Paul).