Not content with a protected near monopoly of the domestic market, American sugar producers are demanding that Congress make their pot of subsidies and protection even sweeter.

Chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, Rep. Colin Peterson (D-Minn.), is pushing language in the latest proposed farm bill that would raise domestic price supports for sugar and mandate that sugar imports be used for ethanol production.

His proposals would virtually lock in an 85 percent share of the U.S. market for domestic sugar beet and cane growers, even though a number of foreign countries can grow sugar more cheaply than most American growers. And by the way, did I mention that Rep. Peterson’s district is among the nation’s top producers of sugar beets?

The Bush administration, to its credit, opposes Peterson’s changes in the farm bill. The sugar industry, of course, loves the idea. A spokesman for the pro-protection American Sugar Alliance told this morning’s Wall Street Journal, “We have an administration that seems more interested in supporting foreign producers, than producers right here in America.”

Notice the sugar industry doesn’t mention American consumers. U.S. agricultural policies should not be about favoring “our” producers over “theirs,” but about advancing such national interests as freedom, prosperity, and a more peaceful world. As we’ve explained in detail at the Center for Trade Policy Studies, the U.S. sugar program favors American sugar producers primarily at the expense of the rest of America. American families pay higher prices at the store, while U.S. producers that use sugar as an input — bakeries, food processors, restaurants, candy makers, etc. — incur higher costs because of our sugar program.

As we read daily in the newspaper about soaring food prices, this Congress is the verge of passing a farm bill designed explicitly to raise domestic food prices.

Senator John McCain and other budget reformers are right to rail against the institutionized corruption of federal “earmarking.” Earmarks are, however, just a small part of the massive bloat in the federal budget. Earmark reform is needed, but presidential candidate McCain needs to propose more fundamental budget reforms in the coming months.

Representatives John Campbell (R-CA) and Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) have just introduced an idea that McCain could champion: A constitutional cap on the overall federal budget. You can read the proposed amendment here, but essentially these House budget experts propose that annual federal spending growth should not exceed the long-run average growth in the U.S. economy, except with a two-thirds vote or a declared war.

I’ve proposed a similar budget cap that would be statutory, not constitutional, and thus easier to implement. See here and here.

Either way, the point for Mr. McCain (or Mr. Obama, if he is so inclined) is to promote some sort of overall cap on the budget to drive home that the government’s budget should not grow any faster than the average family’s budget. 

In numerous unsigned editorials, The Wall Street Journal has argued that cutting the federal funds rate to 2% from 5 1/4% last September has been the main reason prices of crude oil and food commodities have soared in recent months. Such commodities are priced in dollars and the dollar was generally falling through February, though not in the past two months (even though the funds rate was reduced by one percentage point).

An April 28 editorial, “The Fed’s Bender,” notes that “since 2003 the dollar price of oil has climbed far more rapidly than the euro price — 273% in dollars, compared to 146% in euros.” It is not likely that the whole 2003-2008 picture reflects “the European Central Bank’s sounder monetary management,” as the editorial implies. The euro had dropped to below parity with dollar until late 2002. And the fed funds rate was repeatedly increased from 1% in 2003 to 5 ¼% in mid-2006 (well above the ECB’s equivalent 4% rate). The euro rose partly because it had first fallen, but also for reasons other than central bank interest rates (economists have no reliable model for forecasting floating exchange rates).

The editorial boldly concludes that “had the dollar merely retained the same purchasing power as the euro, today’s price of oil would be below $70 a barrel.” That is a counterfactual exercise that makes little sense.

Even if we accept the half-true premise that the dollar-euro exchange rate is sensitive to relative short-term interest rates, the dollar might have “retained the same purchasing power as the euro” by having the ECB lower interest rates to 3% and the Fed to keep ours at 3%. Or the Fed might have kept the funds rate at 5% and the ECB at 4%. Although either option might have stabilized that particular exchange rate, they would not have had the same effect on global economic growth and therefore on the world demand for oil.

If oil had been priced in dollars and the euro had not appreciated against the dollar, then the euro area would not have been as insulated as it was against the rising cost of oil. Because demand is responsive to price (particularly business demand), Europe would have bought less oil than it did. Or, to use the editorial version, if the U.S. still faced $70 oil then we would try to buy more. Either way, the price in dollars would not have remained the same.

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By all accounts, U.S. spending on health care has been growing much more rapidly than national output. Health statistics–health spending as a share of national output or per person, compared across developed nations–routinely ranks the United States at the top of the list, and statistics on effective health care delivered per dollar spent routinely ranks the United States near the bottom. So news reporters could not miss the clear implication that Americans need to cut health care spending growth and make their health care sector more efficient. If we could reduce spending on unnecessary and low-value health care services, it would go a long way in achieving both objectives.

Now for the doublespeak: Many proponents of Health Savings Accounts (HSA) that can only be accessed under a high-deductible health plan tout the increased role of health care consumers. With larger out-of-pocket spending initially, consumers have greater incentives to eliminate unneeded and costly health services. But success on this count is routinely dismissed in the media as having undesirable side effects–as in today’s Wall Street Journal (HSA Users Find Hassles Amid Savings, May 1, 2008, Personal Journal, page D1):

…average health-insurance costs rose 3.6% in the past two years for employers who offered high-deductible plans, compared with a rise of 7% for employers without such plans.

That’s followed by

Some analysts say much of those employer savings come because many HSA participants tend to forgo care.

Excuse me, but isn’t this exactly how it’s supposed to work?! The language in all such instances usually hints (as does this WSJ report) that the forgone care is valuable and people with HSAs are therefore suffering unduly. Such implied criticism is unjustified unless accompanied with the qualification that the rejected health care services may not be valuable or cost effective.

Indeed, the article later cites a patient with an HSA “fighting” with a doctor about routine physicals and cardiac exams. The doctor wants these exams to be taken regularly, whereas the patient does not because the high-deductible HSA implies larger out-of-pocket payments. In my personal experience, both types of health checkups are most often a waste of time–all they do is separate the patients from their money, which goes to the doctors.

But if many more consumers were to obtain HSAs and economize their health care spending, it would clearly be a problem for the medical profession. And news reporters usually accept, without further questioning, analysts’ comments about unneeded patient suffering because of forgone care. Clearly, wider use of HSAs and better management of consumers’ health care dollars face tremendous hurdles–the medical profession’s self-interest being the biggest one of all. (And I hope my doctor doesn’t read this.)

In The Wall Street Journal on April 15, Martin Feldstein of Harvard took a position between Makin and Chapman, saying the Fed should have left the federal funds rate at 2 1/4%, because a lower rate would cause “rising food and energy prices.” Feldstein told The Guardian the dollar had to fall further on April 11, so the link he envisions between Fed policy and commodity markets is not through exchange rates (I’ll discuss that in a later post), but just upside speculation alone:

Lower interest rates induce investors to add commodities to their portfolios. When rates are low, portfolio investors will bid up the prices of oil and other commodities to levels at which the expected future returns are in line with the lower rates.

But investors go short as well as long–betting the price will fall– and they can use credit for that too.

The only reason to make a leveraged bet that the price of oil, gold or corn will go higher is if you expect the prices to rise by enough (during the holding period) to exceed the interest expense.

Ignoring trading costs, if you can borrow at 5% to invest in something whose price is expected to rise by 8% that may look like easy money. Yet oil futures are cheaper than near-term spot prices, and gold has recently fallen by about 13%, so momentum trading is dangerous. It is properly called “greater fool investing” – just like paying too much for a Las Vegas condo on the assumption that some greater fool will later pay even more.

It seems unlikely that today’s quarter-point cut in the fed funds rate will result in lower margin rates for commodity traders. But even if it did that is not nearly enough to make a significant difference for more than a day or two.

U.S. politicians seem equally angry with upside “speculators” and downside “shorts,” but it is the contest between the two that constantly gropes for the right price.

I am shorting oil through an exchange-traded fund (DUG), and shorting precious metals through a mutual fund (SPPIX). I’m also slightly long the dollar (UUP). Don’t try this at home without a net. But if I win those bets, the world economy wins too.

At a recent health policy forum in Washington, D.C., noted health economist and wit Uwe Reinhardt shed some light on that question:

[T]he following can be said: the United States Congress has absolutely no interest in reducing . . . dubious Medicare expenditures. Let me repeat that. The United States Congress has no interest whatsoever in reducing dubious Medicare expenditures . . .

So the interesting and intriguing question for all, for journalists too, [is]: why is the Congress so disinterested in cost containment when it constantly whines about having to restructure Medicare? That is to me a huge mystery.

Obviously, Prof. Reinhardt hasn’t read this.

In The Wall Street Journal on April 29, another AEI economist, John L. Chapman, took the exact opposite position from John Makin. Chapman suggested the Fed “should soon begin a series of rate increases.” The title was “The Fed Must Strengthen the Dollar,” but that is not what he wrote. Chapman just advocated “a stable dollar.”

The dollar was stable in March and April. The Fed’s index of the dollar’s value against a broad basket of currencies (Jan. 1997=100) was 95.84 on March 6 and 95.81 on April 29. The index against major currencies (1973=100) remained close to 70. That was just two months, of course. But those were the months when we were deluged by editorials blaming rising prices of food and oil on “the falling dollar.” In any case, if the goal is being achieved with current Fed policy, then changing that policy would mean deviating from that goal.

Chapman, like some other economists, sees “inflation warnings” in rapid growth of a measure of money supply (or demand) known as MZM (money with zero maturity), which is largely driven by institutional money market funds. These short-term investments tend to expand when corporations and financial fiduciaries are nervous about investing longer-term, and therefore park more cash in money market funds for security.

The trouble with using MZM as an omen of inflation is that it has never worked.

MZM grew rapidly in 2001, during a recession, but MZM was nearly flat in 1973 when inflation began to explode. MZM fell from $854.3 billion in September 1978 to $827.3 billion in April 1980, yet this was a period of rapidly escalating inflation. Core inflation, excluding food and energy, reached 8.5% in the year ending December 1978, then 11.3% and 12.2% in the following years.

There may be an argument for raising the fed funds rate whenever oil and food prices rise, but MZM is not it.

The Wall Street Journal has been extremely ecumenical about airing a variety of critics of the Federal Reserve on its editorial page. In a series of posts, I will suggest reasons for remaining skeptical about the logic and evidence behind all of this policy advice.

On April 14, John Makin of the American Enterprise Institute proposed, “The Inflation Solution to the Housing Mess.” He thinks, “The Fed should announce its intention to add to its holding of Treasury securities in order to provide additional liquidity.” Makin knows “there is a substantial risk that inflation may rise for a time – this would be the policy goal.”

To establish higher inflation as a “policy goal” gives a small part of the economy (the existing inventory of new and used homes) priority over the rest (he does not and could not claim inflation would be confined to housing). He thinks easy money could halt declines in the Case-Shiller index of homes prices, although I have shown that index is not representative of nationwide housing prices

Makin argues that

the Fed’s lending programs have not provided adequate liquidity to financial markets: Reserves supplied to the banking system have grown at a tiny 0.6% annual rate since December. That’s because the reserves the Fed is injecting by lending are effectively pulled out or “sterilized” by its sales of Treasury securities. The Fed has been selling these securities to keep the fed funds rate at the level targeted by its Federal Open Market Committee directives.

But it doesn’t matter whether the Fed increases the monetary base (reserves and currency) by buying Treasury bills, gold bars, or Bear Stearns’ securities. In each case the Fed pays for new assets by writing a check on the Fed which ends up being added to bank reserves at the Federal Reserve banks.

The biweekly bank reserve data bounces around too much to speak of an annual rate of change between two dates. Reserves were $91.8 billion in the two weeks ended October 24 and $97.1 billion by March 26, but converting that into an annual rate of change would be just as misleading as Makin’s selective comparison.

Bank loans have been growing at a 10% annual rate this year, with Commercial and Industrial loans growing at a 20% pace. This does not look at though the banks are starved for reserves or that the Fed is “pushing on a string.”

Makin’s inference that monetary policy is too tight is dubious but also redundant. He clearly wants inflation to be higher, as a policy goal.

Hurry, hurry, hurry! Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, and see the Diva of Deception, the Impresario of Illusion — THE AMAZING HILLARY!! Watch her make the federal gas tax SEEM TO DISAPPEAR!! But in fact, you’ll still be paying the same price for gas! Even the media can’t figure out this trick!! She’s remarkable! She’s astounding! So hurry right in and see the First Lady of Legerdemain, the Mistress of Magic!

That’s what Hillary Clinton’s campaign managers should be barking about her joining John McCain in proposing to suspend the federal gasoline tax for the 2008 summer driving season. Says Candidate Clinton, the move would “immediately lower gas prices.”

What makes her proposal a true work of wizardry is that, she claims, it would not reduce government tax revenues. Whereas McCain says he would reduce government spending to make up for the lost tax money (an example of magical thinking?), Clinton would implement “a windfall profits tax on the big oil companies” to close the revenue gap.

Did you catch The Amazing Hillary’s trick? Did you see why consumers would still pay the same price for gasoline? No? OK, let’s watch the sleight of hand in slow motion:

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Yon Goicoechea, leader of the pro-democracy student movement in Venezuela, has been awarded the 2008 Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty. Under Goicoechea’s leadership, the student movement organized mass opposition to the erosion of human and civil rights in Venezuela and played the key role in defeating Hugo Chávez’s bid for a constitutional reform that would have turned the country into a dictatorship. Goicoechea’s vision of optimism, tolerance, and modernity has breathed new life into efforts to defend basic freedoms in Venezuela and elsewhere in Latin America where freedom is threatened.

Full Details

Taxpayers can breathe a sign of relief. According to the Tax Foundation, April 23 is Tax Freedom Day. That means that the average American has finally earned enough to pay estimated federal, state, and local taxes for 2008. One of the most depressing finding in the Tax Foundation’s report is that Americans pay more in tax than they do for food, clothing, and shelter combined. To compensate for being the bearer of bad fiscal news, the Tax Foundation released an amusing video. It doesn’t quite equal this classic tax video, but it’s worth watching.

According to HealthLeaders Media:

South Carolina-based Companion Global Healthcare added three Singapore hospitals to its network. The deal now allows Americans access to medical and surgical services at ParkwayHealth operated hospitals at pre-negotiated, in-network rates lower than those of U.S. hospitals…

David Williams, consultant and cofounder of MedPharma Partners LLC[, notes,] “It may be a bit of a wake-up call to the local hospitals in South Carolina, putting them on notice that they are facing a broader set of competitors.”

More than one million members of Blue Cross Blue Shield and BlueChoice HealthPlan of South Carolina now have access to the three Singapore hospitals—Mount Elizabeth, Gleneagles, and East Shore—at preferred network rates. The hospitals are accredited by the Joint Commission International, the affiliate of The Joint Commission.

Competition is healthy.  (You know what?  That’s catchy.)

Peter Goodman writes in the New York Times that we live in a laissez-faire world created by Milton Friedman and that that wild, unfettered market has led to our current economic problems.  David Henderson, the first editor of Cato Policy Report, begs to differ. David R. Henderson is a research fellow with the Hoover Institution, an economics professor in the Graduate School of Business and Public Policy at the Naval Postgraduate School, and the editor of The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics (Liberty Fund, 2008). Here’s his critique of the Times article:

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Economists Jonathan Klick and Thomas Stratmann find that it does.  In the latest issue of the Journal of Law and Economics, they write:

In the face of rising rates of diabetes, many states have passed laws requiring health insurance plans to cover medical treatments for the disease. Although supporters of the mandates expect them to improve the health of diabetics, the mandates have the potential to generate a moral hazard to the extent that medical treatments might displace individual behavioral improvements. Another possibility is that the mandates do little to improve insurance coverage for most individuals, as previous research on benefit mandates has suggested that mandates often duplicate what plans already cover. To examine the effects of these mandates, we employ a triple-differences methodology comparing the change in the gap in body mass index (BMI) between diabetics and nondiabetics in mandate and nonmandate states. We find that mandates do generate a moral hazard problem, with diabetics exhibiting higher BMIs after the adoption of these mandates.

Two weeks ago, the Senate passed legislation ostensibly intended to address home foreclosures. That legislation is now being criticized as little more than a handout to corporate interests. The criticism is legit; the bill is largely a package of tax breaks for developers (and other struggling industries, including those that have nothing to do with housing), along with tax credits for the purchasers of foreclosed homes (a provision that has its own criticisms) and grant money to local governments that want to play Flip This House.

Across Capitol Hill, the House is considering different foreclosure legislation that would give tax credits to first-time homebuyers and developers of lower-cost housing (proposals that are subject to some of the same criticisms now being lobbed at the Senate bill). House and Senate committees are also considering additional legislation that would permit the Federal Housing Authority to underwrite as much as $300 billion in mortgages for borrowers who are at risk of falling behind on their payments.

Lawmakers’ interest in combating the mortgage problem is understandable: default and foreclosure are painful for homeowners, clusters of vacant houses are hard on communities, and the struggling homebuilding industry is a significant contributor to the nation’s overall economic malaise. (Another factor that makes it understandable: this is an election year.)

However, before Congress puts taxpayers (most of whom are also paying mortgages or renting their homes) on the hook for billions of dollars in grants, tens of billions in tax breaks, and guarantees for hundreds of billions of dollars in mortgages, three points should be acknowledged:

1. The bailout proposals are as much a benefit to lenders as borrowers.
2. The homebuyers who are to be rescued are not the victims of “raw deals” (unless they were deceived or defrauded).
3. The bailout could make the nation’s overall economic condition worse.

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Las Vegans have been a little jumpy — and rightfully so — since public health officials revealed that a number of endoscopy clinics re-used syringes and medication vials, thereby infecting at least seven patients with hepatitis-C. 

Nevada’s physician-licensing board has proved largely inept in this matter, and a little too cozy with the profession it’s supposed to regulate.  Nevertheless, some want to give the licensing board more power.

Here’s an interview I did on Las Vegas 1’s Face to Face with Jon Ralston.  I argued that licensing laws don’t add much in the way of patient protection, and instead block innovations that would improve patient safety.  (The first interviewee provides lots of good information about the crisis, but if you want to skip to my interview, it begins about 12 minutes into the program.)

“Libor Fog” is the apt warning above the headline of today’s front-page Wall Street Journal piece by Carrick Mollenkamp, “Bankers Cast Doubt on Key Rate Amid Crisis.” The article is about the interest rate on loans between banks—the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor). “A small increase in Libor can make a big difference for borrowers,” says the author. For example, “A risky ‘subprime’ mortgage loan might carry an interest rate of Libor plus more than six percentage points.”

An accompanying graph shows the spread between the 3-month Libor and the 3-month Treasury bill rate. The article explains that “the gap between the two stood at 1.58 percentage points Tuesday, and has averaged 1.39 percentage points since the crisis began in August.”

Anyone reading this article surely thought Libor had increased “since the crisis began in August.” Why else would the graph be titled “Costly Credit”? Why else would the article have emphasized the way an increase in Libor affects subprime adjustable rate mortgages?

“On Tuesday [April 15],” the article says, ‘the Libor rate for three-month dollar loans stood at 2.716%.” In July 2007– before “the crisis began in August”–that Libor rate was 5.360%.

The reason the spread between Libor and Treasury bills widened is not that Libor rates have increased but that 3-month T-bill rates fell from 4.95% last July to about 1.2% lately, thanks to Fed easing and a flight to quality. That drop of 3.75 percentage points in T-bill rates since last July was even greater than the 2.65 percentage point drop in Libor, so the spread between the two widened. So what??? You and I can’t borrow at the T-bill rate either.

Like other factually misleading news reports, cutting the Libor rate in half (“since the crisis began in August”) is not what most people think of as a “credit crisis.”

I was exploring some old CBO reports for information on dynamic budget scoring and I came across this nugget:

If a tax cut—such as a rebate or a higher standard deduction—does not reduce the tax on income from an extra hour of work, the additional income will create an incentive for people to cut back their working hours and spend more time at home. Not everyone will respond, but some people (especially second workers in a family with one full-time earner) may decide to leave the labor force to care for children or aging parents or to pursue other interests.

(Supplement to CBO’s May 9, 2002, Testimony on Federal Budget Estimating May 2002 CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE, page 9)

We are about to receive a rebate in May this year as part of the economic stimulus that Congress passed in February. I suppose the folks at the CBO would have pointed out that although a rebate may stimulate consumer spending, it is also likely to reduce labor supply. The net impact, therefore, would not necessarily involve any increase in national output but it would certainly induce stronger inflationary pressures—adding fuel to the inflationary fire the Fed’s apparently stoking by cutting interest rates so rapidly. So it’s perhaps not surprising that the dollar’s value took a nosedive during February this year.

Higher rebate-induced debt and higher inflation implies higher future interest rates and, therefore, increased cost of financing consumer and investment spending. Rebate recipients will benefit today, but everyone will lose in the long-term as the economy becomes more sluggish.

Bottom line: Politicians gain by appearing to be doing something – and most of us lose!

On this unfortunate day, when many of us are pulling out our hair as we deal with last minute tax headaches, it is helpful to think there may be a better future. Some of us fantasize about a flat tax while others of us dream about a national sales tax. Both of these tax plans share common principles - including a low rate, no double taxation, and equal treatment of economic activity. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the existence of two attractive tax reform plans has divided the pro-tax reform camp, and this has rebounded to the benefit of the status quo. But this division is not necessary. In a new video released by the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, I explain why it is important to junk the system. More important, I suggest a strategy for uniting tax reform advocates:

As always, I welcome feedback on these videos.

While most other East European nations have adopted pro-growth flat tax systems, Hungary and Poland are still burdened by class-warfare systems that penalize people for contributing more to economic performance. The Budapest Times, however, reports that Hungary’s small parties may combine to push through an 18 percent flat tax:

MDF leader Ibolya Dávid called for opposition parties to attend talks on 15 April to work out details of a bill to submit to parliament by May. The party wants to emulate regional peers such as Slovakia and Romania by introducing a flat 18% personal income tax to reduce a tax burden it called “unfairly high”. The Free Democrats (SZDSZ) and main opposition party Fidesz - along with its ally the Christian Democrats (KDNP) - have said in the past that they would favour a flat tax. …The MSZP has only 190 seats in the 386-seat parliament, meaning that the opposition parties could force through a flat tax bill by banding together. Hungary is ranked as having the second-highest tax burden for single people, behind Belgium, amongst the members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Many feel the high burden - made worse in 2006 when the government hiked taxes as part of its economic reforms - damages Hungary’s regional competitiveness.

Meanwhile, the Polish government already has promised to implement a flat tax, but a key official has suggested that the new system may be implemented in 2009 rather than in 2010 or 2011 as originally planned. Because of its size and geography, Poland’s shift to a flat tax would be a momentous development and could sharply increase the pressure for pro-growth reforms in Old Europe:

According to Zbigniew Chlebowski, head of ruling Civic Platform’s (PO) parliamentary club, there is a possibility of introducing a flat tax rate as early as 2009. Chelbowski said that Prime Minister Tusk supports this option and is ready to fight President Kaczynski should he veto it. Chelbowski, however, did not give a concrete rate of the possible flat tax, but stressed that it shall surely be lower than 18 percent, because such a rate would be higher than the present tax rates. The final decision is to be made in July or August. The ruling Civic Platform had originally planned to introduce the new tax in 2010 or 2011.

I’m not sure exactly what a “bubble” is. The popular view is that a “bubble” exists when the fundamental value of an asset (the present value of the stream of cash flows that one might expect to receive in the future) deviates significantly from the market price of that asset. But future cash flows are by definition uncertain. Because market fundamentals are based on expectations regarding future events, I don’t know how one can know a priori when a bubble exists unless one has access to a time machine or crystal ball. There are plenty of citations I could offer (like this paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and this paper from Brookings) from very credible economists arguing that the rise in housing prices was perfectly consistent with “non-bubble” economic fundamentals.

Moreover, “bubbles” (that is, market expectations regarding future returns that turn out to be incorrect) can last a long time. Economist Robert Shiller, for instance, analyzed approximately 400 years worth of housing data and concluded that, over time, housing prices track increases in income. But housing markets can – and have – deviated markedly from that fundamental price trajectory for as many as 50 years before reversion to the mean.

Two questions naturally arise. First, is a 50-year bubble really a bubble? Second, are investors irrational (or engaged in irrational speculation) if they invest based on solid data regarding returns from a multi-decadal economic trend? It may be perfectly rational to invest in an over-valued asset if one has good reason to think that one can take the profits and run before the bubble bursts. And it may be perfectly rational to believe that market fundamentals have changed so much that 50 year-old data is no longer relevant to the market at present or future.

I am unsure whether we’re witnessing a bubble in oil markets today. Two “non-bubble” explanations for the price run, after all, are perfectly plausible. First, it may very well be that low-cost crude is running low and/or that demand will continue to surge to such an extent that prices have nowhere to go but up. Second, OPEC member states may continue to invest modestly in upstream capacity in order to maximize revenues, so even if there is plenty of low-cost oil still available in the world, the cartel will prevent new supply from reaching the market. For the record, I am skeptical of both propositions, but I do not dismiss them out of hand.

The initial driver for the oil price increases we’ve seen since 2003 appears clear to me. A combination of tight production capacity and a surge in demand provided the foundation for the current price run. The oil market moves in rather predictable boom and bust cycles, and historic market patterns foretold the timing of this event if anyone was paying attention. For that trend data, see chapter 3 in this book by my colleague Peter VanDoren.

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David Brown has an excellent article in the Health section of today’s Washington Post:

Most of us naturally assume that preventing a disease is cheaper than waiting for the disease to appear and then treating it. That belief is especially dear to politicians, who often view prevention as an underused weapon in the battle against health-care costs.

The campaign Web site for Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) notes that her health-care plan is “targeting the drivers of health-care costs, including our back-ended coverage of health care that gives short shrift to prevention.” Rival Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) asserts that American families can save up to $2,500 a year each if five cost-containing strategies are implemented, one of which is “improving prevention and management of chronic conditions.”…

Even when prevention greatly reduces future cases of a particular illness, overall cost to the health-care system typically goes up when lots of disease-preventing strategies are put into practice. This is usually true whether treating the preventable diseases is cheap or expensive.

I raise similar points here and here.

Two points bear clarification, however. First, just because preventive medicine often increases medical spending, that does not necessarily mean (in the words of the article’s headline) that it is “Cheaper To Let People Get Sick.” Illness imposes its own costs, and so it may be cheaper to spend money on preventive care even when doing so increases overall medical spending because the benefits of avoiding illness outweigh the additional spending. But we should not think that spending additional money on preventive medicine would reduce medical spending. Second, contrary to what Brown claims in his first sentence, there very likely was a period in health economics when an ounce of prevention was worth a pound of cure. During the period when public health measures first began to control contagious diseases and foodborne illnesses, prevention probably did deliver health improvements 16 or more times greater than those delivered by treatments for existing conditions.

The article also contains this priceless comment from Louise B. Russell of Rutgers University:

“The point of the medical-care system is to serve people. It is not the point of people to serve the medical-care system.”

Let’s hope that one gets a lot of play in the near future.

There’s good news and bad news in the Land of Lincoln. Starting with the bad news, a handful of state politicians want to impose a so-called progressive tax scheme that will double the tax burden for productive citizens. The good news is that this requires an amendment to the Illinois Constitution, which requires both three-fifths support from the legislature and - more important - three-fifths support from state voters:

A group of House Democratic lawmakers announced Thursday they want to ask voters to amend the state constitution to double the income tax burden on Illinoisans who earn more than $250,000 a year. …”I believe a flat rate income tax is a regressive tax, it’s an unfair tax and by moving to a progressive tax - one that taxes those who earn more at a higher rate - we can accomplish some of these goals that have eluded the state for a number of years,” Smith said at a press conference at the capitol. Smith said about 107,000 of the more than 5 million taxpayers in Illinois would be affected by the proposed increase. In order for the Illinois Constitution to be amended, both chambers of the General Assembly must approve the proposal by a three-fifths majority. Afterward, 60 percent of voters must vote in favor of the amendment on a referendum that will appear on the ballot in the next election.

In the Washington Post Shankar Vedantam discusses “the action bias, or the desire to do something rather than nothing when you have just been through a terrible experience.” He cites evidence that both individuals and politicians often prefer to do something rather than nothing, even if “nothing” would be the wiser course.

When people suffer losses and confront the possibility of even greater reverses — it doesn’t matter if you are talking about a terrorist attack or a meltdown in retirement savings — it is psychologically difficult to do nothing, to hold course. This is true even when the action you contemplate produces an outcome that leaves you demonstrably worse than you were in the first place….

Economist Ofer Azar recently came up with a novel way to study the insidious nature of the action bias. He examined whether soccer goalies were more likely to stop penalty kicks when they dived to the left, dived to the right or stayed in the center of the goal. In a study of 286 penalty kicks faced by elite Israeli goalkeepers, Azar found that goalies had the best chance of stopping a kick when they remained in the center — partly because when they dived to one side, they left themselves with no chance of stopping a kick aimed at the other side or a kick aimed dead center. And even when they correctly guessed the direction of the kick, they still had only a 1-in-4 chance of stopping a goal.

Despite the clarity of the evidence, Azar found that goalies dived to one side or the other 93 percent of the time.

And of course it’s not just goalies. Vedantam suggests that “the Iraq war might be Exhibit A for the action bias”–noting Hillary Clinton’s statement in 2002: “In balancing the risks of action versus inaction, I think New Yorkers who have gone through the fires of hell may be more attuned to the risk of not acting. I know that I am.”

Good point. And he might go on to discuss the current rush to regulation in the wake of the subprime crisis and the Bear Stearns collapse. Voters expect politicians to “do something!” Regulators don’t want to look unresponsive. So everybody has a plan for more money, more regulation, or some sort of action. And of course it’s a recurring problem. Enron failed, and politicians panicked right into the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, whose costs will be with us long after we’ve forgotten what Enron was.

The bias toward action is one good reason for constitutional and procedural constraints on government actions. Constitutional limits on what government can legislate, bicameral legislatures, supermajorities, the filibuster, the presidential veto–all are designed to prevent hasty action, whether from popular delusions, demagogic campaigns, or the simple desire to be seen doing something rather than prudently refraining from misguided actions.

“Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings will require all states to use one federal formula to calculate graduation and dropout rates,” reports the New York Times, as part of a campaign to keep more kids in school.

The idea that we can reduce the public school dropout rate simply by measuring it better is misguided. It’s like believing that the North Koreans could improve their economy by more accurately measuring the number of people who are starving. As with the North Korean economy, the problem with U.S. public schooling is that it is a monopoly that takes choice away from families, takes professional autonomy away from educators, and takes normal economic incentives away from everyone.

Meanwhile, there is evidence from a sophisticated nationwide study that inner city minority kids — those most at risk of dropping out — are more likely to graduate, more likely to get into college, and more likely to graduate from college if they attend private instead of public schools — and that’s true after controlling for differences in student and family background. Other small scale studies of the Milwaukee school voucher program show similar results.

We already know how to reduce the dropout rate: ensure that all families can easily afford to choose the public or private schools best suited to their children. Until that happens, expect to see millions of American kids continuing to starve for a real education.

The Case-Shiller index of house prices covers just 20 major metropolitan areas. It shows house prices down by 10.7% between January 2007 and 2008, but that largely reflects the fact that Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco account for 27.4% of the index.

In Fortune magazine’s March 17 interview, economist Paul Krugman says “We’re probably heading for $6 trillion or $7 trillion in capital losses in housing.”

Such estimates begin by assuming the S&P Case-Shiller index of house prices (which is now down 12.5% from its peak month) has a lot further to fall, and that it accurately represents the value of all real estate held by U.S. households throughout the 50 states.

The Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances (updated with flow-of-funds data by David Malpass of Bear Stearns), shows U.S. real estate worth $22.5 trillion in the fourth quarter—up 2.5% from a year earlier and accounting for 31.2% of household wealth.

If you think the Case-Shiller index will eventually fall by 30% (Krugman said 25%), then 30% of $22.5 trillion would yield an estimate of $6-7 trillion capital losses “in housing.” But the $22.5 trillion is not just single-family homes—it includes commercial property, apartments and farm land. More important, even single-family housing wealth is not located in only 20 major metropolitan areas.

The Office of Federal Housing Oversight (OFHEO) index covers all 50 states, including nonmetropolitan areas, but not the most expensive homes (which is not where Case-Shiller finds the biggest declines). The OFHEO index shows house prices down 3% in January, compared with a year before. But even that average is by no means typical of all housing (much less real estate) in the entire nation.

Between the fourth quarters of 2006 and 2007, house prices rose in all but two of the many states excluded by Case-Shiller, and the increase averaged 3.8 percent.

Economists and journalists who use gloomy predictions about the Case-Shiller index to predict a comparable loss of real estate wealth are making several serious mistakes.