Tuesday means Thomas Sowell

Mr. Sowell's column today has nothing at all to do with his opinion - or mine - of the Nobel committee. Aren't you thrilled about that? I DID find a column about that - by Rich Lowry - that you might want to take the time to read. Let's just say that it isn't complimentary to any of the participants.

Mr. Sowell speaks about economics in a way that even I understand, and he uses examples I can understand. Every politician who wears the label 'Elected Official' should be required take lessons from him...but of course, real Servants of the Republic would already know that, wouldn't they. The doublespeak and gobbledygook we get from them is DESIGNED to keep us ignorant of what they're really up to, because serving the cause of the People of the United States is not on their personal agenda. Making money and being reelected is their agenda. Sad, but so true. Some bits from the column that reminds us that THEY DON'T REPRESENT US:

Back in the days of the Soviet Union, two Russian economists who had never lived in a country with a free market economy understood something about market economies that many others who have lived in such economies all their lives have never understood. Nikolai Shmelev and Vladimir Popov said: "Everything is interconnected in the world of prices, so that the smallest change in one element is passed along the chain to millions of others."
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While this may be easy enough to understand, its implications are completely lost on many people in politics and in the media. If everything is connected to everything else in a market economy, then it makes no sense to have laws and policies that declare some given goal to be a "good thing," without regard to the repercussions, which spread out in all directions, like waves that spread across a pond when you drop a rock in the water.
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We are now living with those repercussions, which include the worst unemployment in decades. That is the price we are paying for increasing home ownership from 64 percent to 69 percent.
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Mortgage lending standards were lowered, in order to raise the magic number of home ownership. But, with lower lending standards, there were — surprise! — more mortgage payment delinquencies, defaults and foreclosures.
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The other big lie is that this was a failure of economists and others to foresee that the housing boom would turn to bust and set off financial repercussions across the economy.

In reality, everybody and his brother saw it coming and said so — including yours truly in the Wall Street Journal of May 26, 2005. As far away as London, The Economist magazine warned about the danger. So did many American publications and individuals. The problem was that politicians refused to listen.

UPDATE: If you can, please forgive any spelling or grammatical errors in post or headline. MOST times, I know how to write according to the way I was taught by mum, grandmother, and a few assorted teachers...but that doesn't mean that what my brain knows necessarily translates to my fingertips!