Suchergebnisse

There has a been a pretty vibrant debate in South Korea over building an indigenous aircraft carrier. That debate has been especially resonant where I live – Busan – because it would probably be built here. This post is a … Continue reading →

With the accession of both legislative chamber
leaders for the 2024-28 term of the Louisiana Legislature now
settled, a question of whether to retain the practice of granting minority
party members committee chairmanships is up for debate – and change.

This practice almost no other state follows. A few
here and there will place a minority party member at the head of a temporary
committee, or perhaps give one a vice chairman's slot. Some allow for minority
reports to be issued about legislation. But in today's era, the only states
that appear to do this (absent special situations where party representation in
a chamber is even between the two major parties, or Nebraska's
unicameral/nonpartisan organ) are Louisiana and Texas.

Texas
legislators appear to be making a conscious effort to back away from the
process. This year, its Senate Republican leadership shed the last minority
member who had been a chairman, while its House Republican leadership reduced
its number to eight of 34 standing committees, and a deliberate emphasis to
shunt Democrats as chairman to low-profile panels. Texas has small GOP
majorities in each chamber at present.

In contrast, Republicans in Louisiana have
supermajorities in both chambers, projected to grow slightly as a result of
elections to conclude this weekend. Yet as of now, of the 16 House committees
two retain Democrats as chairman and four others as vice chairmen. In the
Senate, of 17 committees Democrats head up five and serve in the second slot on
two of those and four more (with more committees and fewer senators, there are
fewer choices).

By no means is this ingrained practice. Democrats had
every legislative seat and of course the governorship from 1920-60, and only in
1964 did Republicans start creeping into the House and into the Senate in 1976,
but none in 1980 when the first GOP governor in modern times Dave Treen took
office. The custom of gubernatorial choosing of legislative leaders by then was
decades old, but purely among Democrats' factions.

Treen had no choice in the Senate and just ten of
his party in the House, so nothing changed in that all leadership was
Democrats. The tradition started when Democrat Gov. Buddy Roemer assumed the
office, who ideologically on fiscal issues was closer to the 17 House and 5
Senate Republicans. He managed to have his preferred floor leaders installed
(who about halfway through his term would be dumped by Democrat Gov. Edwin
Edwards allies who restored his team from his previous term) who then appointed
a few Republicans as chairmen.

When Edwards came back for his fourth term, after
a contentious election where he relied upon Republican voters to return him
(even as the GOP dropped their House total by one), he continued the practice
as a larger, if indifferently applied, pledge to govern in a more bipartisan
fashion. Then when Republican Mike Foster succeeded him, with 30 GOP House
members and nine in the Senate, the momentum was unstoppable and a GOP governor
had plenty to choose from.

The tables began turning, naturally, when during
Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal's terms the GOP took control in both chambers, so
then it became a matter of accommodating Democrats. Again, keep in mind that the
practice didn't grow out of any desire to include the minority, but because of
the custom of gubernatorial leadership selection and the particular combinations
and circumstances of different eras.

Thus, there's no real reason to continue it, particularly
as during Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards'
terms, precisely because center-right majorities ruled the chambers in contrast
to an avowedly (secretively at first, but much more openly after reelection) leftist
governor, the Legislature began selecting leadership more independently. Now,
there's a return to a period – likely to be extensive – where the governor will
align ideologically with a large majority of legislators.

Regardless of whether they consult with incoming GOP
Gov. Jeff Landry, Republicans state
Rep. Philip Devillier
and state Sen. Cameron Henry
should ensure every committee chairman or chairwoman comes from their party.
The people have spoken loudly in favor of their conservative agenda, and if
Democrats want to have any more than peripheral input into the policy-making process
when it differs from Republicans, then they need to win elections. 

The Biden administration's foreign policy record in 2023 won't give the president much to boast about in next year's election. The U.S. is even more overstretched at the end of 2023 than it was at the beginning, and the president has had very few policy successes. For most of the year, there weren't any major debacles, but that changed over the last two months as the president gave the Israeli government a blank check to wage a brutal war in Gaza. The president committed Washington to support another foreign war in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel while the conflict in Ukraine settled into a stalemate. Even though the U.S. was under no obligation to support this war, the president made a point of turning it into one of his signature policies and linked it closely with support for Ukraine in his public rhetoric. Biden did not, and has not made a compelling case that unconditional support for Israel's campaign is in the best interests of the United States, and the costs of that support have been rising ever since. Furthermore, backing the war exposed U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria to renewed attacks from local militias, and it has also led to increasing risks for U.S. ships in the Red Sea as the Houthis have been launching attacks on commercial shipping to protest the war. The risks that the conflict could escalate and spread into other parts of the region have been growing, and so has the risk that the U.S. could become directly involved in a multi-front war. The president's instinct to back Israel to the hilt has made a wider war more likely and it has put U.S. forces in greater danger.U.S. support for Israel in Gaza has not only overshadowed the rest of Biden's foreign policy agenda, but it has also tied the U.S. to an indiscriminate bombing campaign and a punishing siege that is driving hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians into famine conditions. The Biden administration has not only torched whatever remained of Washington's credibility on human rights and international law, but it has closely associated the U.S. with the war crimes committed against Palestinian civilians.The damage to America's reputation has already been considerable, and the damage to American interests in the Middle East and beyond over the longer term will likely be significant.The setback for Biden's own agenda has been undeniable. The administration's biggest diplomatic initiative of 2023 — the ill-advised pursuit of Saudi-Israeli normalization — stalled when the war in Gaza showed the administration's understanding of the region to be fundamentally flawed. Having bought into the false assumption that U.S.-facilitated normalization agreements between Israel and Arab clients would stabilize the region, the administration failed to recognize how bad things were getting in occupied Palestine. Like their predecessors, the Biden administration did nothing to keep Netanyahu's coalition government in check as it pursued its creeping annexation of the West Bank. Believing that the Palestinians could be safely sidelined and that their grievances could be ignored, the administration was trying to find out what inducements it would take to get Mohammed bin Salman to endorse normalization. If they had been successful, it would have meant another security commitment and more costs for the United States, so it was just as well that this policy was derailed.It isn't clear how much of a factor the push for Saudi normalization was in contributing to Hamas' decision to attack, but it clearly wasn't helpful for the U.S. to waste so much effort on trying to entice the Saudis into a deal while tensions between Israel and the Palestinians was about to explode. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan's infamous line uttered shortly before the start of the war about how the region was quieter than it had been in decades reflected how much the administration had come to believe its own press releases. Support for the war has cost the U.S. a lot of goodwill in countries of the Global South, and the administration's stubborn opposition to a ceasefire has left the U.S. as deeply isolated at the United Nations as it has ever been on a major issue. The administration had earlier emphasized the importance of competing for influence with other major powers in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, but with its hardline position on Gaza it seems to have frittered away most of whatever gains it has made. Especially for an administration that constantly talks about the importance of America's leadership role, it has outdone itself in alienating and driving the rest of the world away from the U.S. on this issue.U.S. support for the war in Ukraine has been undermined by backing for the war in Gaza in two ways. First, it has diverted U.S. attention and resources away from Ukraine as the U.S. has turned its focus once again to the Middle East. It has also made a mockery of the administration's rhetoric in support of Ukraine. The U.S. spent the better part of two years extolling the importance of international law to rally support for Ukraine, and then demonstrated that the U.S. doesn't hold its own clients and partners to the same standard that it expects from other states. The Biden record this year wasn't all bad. On the plus side, the U.S. made some modest progress in stabilizing relations with China near the end of the year after months of deteriorating ties in the wake of the spy balloon incident in February. There was a small diplomatic breakthrough with Iran in the summer that led to the release of five Americans that had been wrongfully detained by the Iranian government. Unfortunately, the administration then reneged on releasing Iranian funds that had been frozen under "maximum pressure" sanctions because they didn't want to be seen as "rewarding" Iran following Hamas' attack.The administration also recently secured another prisoner release agreement with the Venezuelan government. While these were positive results, they were also hardly earth-shattering.The Biden administration had more success in working with established allies. They further developed the technology-sharing AUKUS arrangement with Australia and Britain, and they took advantage of a temporary improvement in relations between South Korea and Japan to strengthen ties with both. In both cases, the administration was pushing on an open door, and it is questionable whether either arrangement will endure, but they can at least point to these things as examples of advancing Biden's agenda. Even more than in previous years, the Biden administration's foreign policy in 2023 has been defined by too much reliance on military tools and too little effort put into diplomatic engagement. That may be one of the reasons why the public now broadly disapproves of Biden's handling of foreign policy. Both for his own sake and for the sake of U.S. interests, the president needs to make some major course changes in 2024 in Gaza and in his overall approach to the world.

Nicholas Anthony


Senators Cynthia Lummis (R‑WY) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D‑NY) introduced an updated version of their Responsible Financial Innovation Act. The bulk of the bill addresses issues around market structure and cryptocurrency exchanges—issues my colleagues Jack Solowey and Jennifer Schulp have discussed at length. Yet, within the bill also lies an interesting section on combatting illicit finance within the cryptocurrency market.
What makes this section so interesting is that Senators Lummis and Gillibrand appear to have largely adopted this section from a separate bill introduced by Senators Elizabeth Warren (D‑MA) and Roger Marshall (R‑KS). In fact, all four senators just joined hands to introduce this section as a standalone amendment to this year's National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). As many might remember, the Warren‐​Marshall bill received a nearly instant wave of criticism from Cato, Coin Center, Bitcoin Policy Institute, Bitcoin Magazine, Filecoin Foundation, and many others when it was first introduced.
Coin Center's Peter Van Valkenburgh wrote, "The bipartisan Digital Asset Anti‐​Money Laundering Act, introduced today by Sens. Warren and Marshall, is the most direct attack on the personal freedom and privacy of cryptocurrency users and developers we've yet seen." Filecoin's Marta Belcher wrote, "The bill would also effectively ban privacy‐​enhancing technologies in blockchain networks. The bill is a disaster for digital privacy and civil liberties."
A cursory look at the bill makes it easy to see why everyone was so concerned. The Warren‐​Marshall bill proposed expanding anti‐​money laundering (AML) and know‐​your‐​customer (KYC) surveillance to self‐​hosted wallets and cryptocurrency ATMs as well as effectively setting a prohibition on the use of cryptocurrency mixers. The bill also proposed having the Treasury, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) levy new examination and review processes on the companies they oversee. Finally, the bill proposed a requirement for Americans to report to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) if they transact more than $10,000 in cryptocurrency if at least one party in the transaction is outside the United States. As Valkenburgh and Belcher said at the time, it was a direct attack on digital privacy and civil liberties.
How the Two Bills Stack Up
The good news is that the new Lummis‐​Gillibrand bill did not copy the Warren‐​Marshall bill entirely. The Lummis‐​Gillibrand bill would not necessarily expand surveillance to self‐​hosted wallets, prohibit the use of cryptocurrency mixers, or force Americans to report cross‐​border transactions over $10,000. The bad news is that the Lummis‐​Gillibrand bill did pick up other pieces of the Warren‐​Marshall bill (see Figure 1).












Like the Warren‐​Marshall bill, the Lummis‐​Gillibrand bill would require cryptocurrency ATMs to "verify the identity of each customer using a valid form of government‐​issued identification or other documentary method, as determined by the Secretary of the Treasury." The bill would also require owners of cryptocurrency ATMs to report the physical location of ATMs to FinCEN every four months. Targeting ATMs may not be as severe as surveilling self‐​hosted wallets and effectively prohibiting mixers, but it's important to recognize that requiring cryptocurrency users to have their identities verified is still taking a stance against financial privacy.
The Lummis‐​Gillibrand bill also adopted the Warren‐​Marshall proposal to have the Treasury, SEC, and CFTC create new "risk‐​focused examination and review" processes for the companies they oversee. These examinations would be intended to monitor how companies are complying with anti‐​money laundering requirements. Considering compliance is already estimated to cost financial institutions $46 billion a year in the United States to stop an unknown amount of crime, it's unclear what exactly this added burden will contribute, especially since the specifics are left for the agencies to determine.
Where the Warren‐​Marshall bill would have prohibited the use of cryptocurrency mixers, the Lummis‐​Gillibrand bill takes a more nuanced approach by instead requiring FinCEN to issue a report to Congress that explains how mixers are used in markets currently and to make recommendations on possible future legislation. This approach is better than the prohibition proposed by the Warren‐​Marshall bill. However, this approach will require watchful eyes on the part of the public. On the one hand, the report could easily give FinCEN another tool to argue for further expanding its authority over financial transactions. On the other hand, the report could result in essentially kicking a prohibition to a later date.
Beyond Warren and Marshall
The Lummis‐​Gillibrand bill also makes a few unique additions of its own outside of what was adopted from the Warren‐​Marshall bill.
Notably, the section on combatting illicit finance opens with an amendment on penalties for cryptocurrency related crimes. By amending 12 U.S.C. Section 1957, the Lummis‐​Gillibrand bill would make it so violations of financial recordkeeping laws (12 U.S.C. Chapter 21) where cryptocurrency is involved can lead to additional punishments with up to $10,000 in fines and up to five years in prison. It's possible this provision is partly a response to the fall of FTX given it raises the stakes for keeping proper accounting standards.
The Lummis‐​Gillibrand bill would also see to the creation of a working group dedicated to crafting proposals to combat illicit finance. The group would include officials from both law enforcement and regulatory agencies as well as businesses working on cryptocurrency technology, financial institutions, and research organizations. Within this theme, the bill would also require the President to issue a separate, public report. Although exchanging ideas in an open manner is commendable, it's unfortunate that legislation is required to make that happen. (Though, perhaps that's more so a commentary on politics at large.)
Continuing the theme of opening new dialogues, the Lummis‐​Gillibrand bill would create an "Innovation Laboratory" within FinCEN. The laboratory would be dedicated to promoting "regulatory dialogue, data sharing between the FinCEN and financial companies, and an assessment of potential changes in law, rules, or policies to facilitate the appropriate supervision." This idea might sound nice to some, but FinCEN's history of repeatedly refusing to provide data to prove the effectiveness of anti‐​money laundering surveillance in general makes it hard to have faith in the agency's ability to live up to what the senators have in mind. One may be comforted because it's a statutory requirement, but events earlier this year have shown that statutory requirements have still not been enough to get real answers about the effectiveness of anti‐​money laundering requirements.
Finally, although it was not in the section on combatting illicit finance, it's worth mentioning that the Lummis‐​Gillibrand bill does address self‐​hosted wallets elsewhere in the bill. When discussing risk management, the bill says that the CFTC and the SEC must create standards regarding money laundering, customer identification, and sanctions compliance for exchanges dealing with self‐​hosted wallets. This move is not the same assault levied by the Warren‐​Marshall bill. Yet, at the same time, it is concerning that these rules are being left open for regulators to decide and will require watchful eyes if it comes to fruition.
Conclusion
Taken together, the Lummis‐​Gillibrand approach may not be as concerning as the Warren‐​Marshall bill, but that is not to say it is not concerning at all. Although Senators Warren and Marshall sought to take a leap forward for expanding financial surveillance, Senators Lummis and Gillibrand are still creeping forward by pushing forth these proposals. It's for that reason that the Lummis‐​Gillibrand and Warren‐​Marshall alliance should be concerning for advocates of privacy and freedom.
It was only a few months ago that Senator Warren was described as "building an anti‐​crypto army." The fact that her proposals spreading, even in limited form, should give people pause to ask if that army isn't growing. The new bill is not the full assault from last year, but it also isn't a retreat.
As debates move forward on both this bill and the recent NDAA amendment, it will be important for the public to keep a watchful eye.

The videos and speeches of the Bradley prize winners are up. My video here (Grumpy in a tux!), also the speech which I reproduce below. All the videos and speeches here (Betsy DeVos and Nina Shea) My previous interview with Rick Graeber, head of the Bradley foundation. Bradley also made a nice introduction video with photos from my childhood and early career. (A link here to the introduction video and speech together.) And to avoid us spending all our talks on thanking people, they had us write out a separate thanks. That seems not to be up yet, but I include mine below. I am very thankful, humbled to be included in such august company, and not so boorish that I would not have spent my whole talk without mentioning that, absent the separate opportunity to say so. Bradley prize remarks (i.e. condense three decades of policy writing into 10 minutes): Creeping stagnation ought to be recognized as the central economic issue of our time. Economic growth since 2000 has fallen almost by half compared with the last half of the 20th Century. The average American's income is already a quarter less than under the previous trend. If this trend continues, lost growth in fifty years will total three times today's economy. No economic issue — inflation, recession, trade, climate, income diversity — comes close to such numbers.Growth is not just more stuff, it's vastly better goods and services; it's health, environment, education, and culture; it's defense, social programs, and repaying government debt.Why are we stagnating? In my view, the answer is simple: America has the people, the ideas, and the investment capital to grow. We just can't get the permits. We are a great Gulliver, tied down by miles of Lilliputian red tape.  How much more can the US grow? Looking around the world, we see that even slightly better institutions produce large improvements in living standards. US taxes and regulations are only a bit less onerous than those in Canada and the UK, but US per capita income is 40% greater. Bigger improvements have enormous effects. US per capita income is 350% greater than Mexico's and 950% greater than India's. Unless you think the US is already perfect, there is a lot we can do. How can we improve the US economy? I offer four examples.I don't need to tell you how dysfunctional health care and insurance are. Just look at your latest absurd bill. There is no reason that health care cannot be provided in the same way as lawyering, accounting, architecture, construction, airplane travel, car repair, or any complex personal service. Let a brutally competitive market offer us better service at lower prices. There is no reason that health insurance cannot function at least as well as life, car, property, or other insurance. It's easy to address standard objections, such as preexisting conditions, asymmetric information, and so on.How did we get in this mess? There are two original sins. First, in order to get around wage controls during WWII, the government allowed a tax deduction for employer-based group plans, but not for portable insurance. Thus preexisting conditions were born: if you lose your job, you lose health insurance. Patch after patch then led to the current mess. Second, the government wants to provide health care to poor people, but without visibly taxing and spending a lot. So, the government forces hospitals to treat poor people below cost, and recoup the money by overcharging everyone else. But an overcharge cannot stand competition, so the government protects hospitals and insurers from competition. You'll know health care is competitive when, rather than hide prices, hospitals spam us with offers as airlines and cell phone companies do.  There is no reason why everyone's health care and insurance must be so screwed up to help the poor. A bit of taxing and spending instead — budgeted, appropriated, visible — would not stymie competition and innovation. Example 2: Banking offers plenty of room for improvement. In 1933, the US suffered a great bank run. Our government responded with deposit insurance. Guaranteeing deposits stops runs, but it's like sending your brother-in-law to Las Vegas with your credit card, what we economists call an "incentive for risk taking." The government piled on regulations to try to stop banks from taking risks. The banks got around the regulations, new crises erupted, new guarantees and regulations followed. This spring, the regulatory juggernaut failed to detect simple interest rate risk, and Silicon Valley Bank had a run, followed by others. The Fed and FDIC bailed out depositors and promised more rules. This system is fundamentally broken. The answer: Deposits should flow to accounts backed by reserves at the Fed, or short-term treasuries. Banks should get money for risky loans by issuing stock or long term debt that can't run. We can end private-sector financial crises forever, with next to no regulation. There is a lesson in these stories. If we want to improve regulations, we can't just bemoan them. We must understand how they emerged. As in health and banking, a regulatory mess often emerges from a continual patchwork, in which each step is a roughly sensible repair of the previous regulation's dysfunction. The little old lady swallowed a fly, a spider to catch the fly, and so on. Now horse is on the menu. Only a start-from-scratch reform will work.Much regulation protects politically influential businesses, workers, and other constituencies from the disruptions of growth. Responsive democracies give people what they want, good and hard. And in return, regulation extorts political support from those beneficiaries. We have to fix the regulatory structure, to give growth a seat at the table.  Economists are somewhat at fault too. They are taught to look at every problem, diagnose "market failure," and advocate new rules to be implemented by an omniscient, benevolent planner. But we do not live in a free market. When you see a problem, look first for the regulation that caused it.Example 3: Taxes are a mess, with high marginal rates that discourage work, investment and production; disappointing revenue; and massive, wasteful complexity. How can the government raise revenue while doing the least damage to the economy? A uniform consumption tax is the clear answer. Tax money when people spend it. When earnings are saved, invested, plowed into businesses that produce goods and services and employ people, leave them alone.Example 4: Bad incentives are again the unsung central problem of our social programs.  Roughly speaking, from zero to about sixty thousand dollars of income, if you earn an extra dollar, you lose a dollar of benefits. Fix the incentives, and more people will get ahead in life. We will also better help the truly needy, and the budget.Some more general points unite these stories:Focus on incentives. Politics and punditry are consumed with taking from A to give to B. Incentives are far more important for economic growth, and we can say something objective about them. Find the question. Politics and punditry usually advance answers without stating the question, or shop around for questions to justify the same old answers. Most people who disagree with the consumption tax really have different goals than funding the government with minimum economic damage. Well, what do you want the tax system to do? State the question, let's find the best answer to the question, and we can make a lot of progress.Look at the whole system. Tax disincentives come from the total difference between the value your additional work creates and what you can consume as a result. Between these lie payroll, income, excise, property, estate, sales, and corporate taxes, and more, at the federal, state, and local level. Greg Mankiw figured his all-in marginal tax rate at 90%, and even he left out sales, property, and a few more taxes. Social-program disincentives come from the combined phaseout of food stamps, housing subsidies, medicaid or Obamacare subsidies, disability payments, tax credits, and so on, down to low-income parking passes. And look at taxes and social programs together. A flat tax that finances checks to worthy people is very progressive government, if you want that. Looking at an individual tax or program for its disincentives or progressivity is silly. The list goes on. Horrible public education, labor laws, licensing laws, zoning, building and planning restrictions, immigration restrictions, regulatory barriers, endless lawsuits, prevailing-wage and domestic-content rules, are all sand in the productivity gears. Oh, and I haven't even gotten to money and inflation yet! And that just fixes our current economy. Long-term growth comes from new ideas. Many economists say we have run out of ideas; growth is ending; slice the pie. I look out the window and I see factory-built mini nuclear power plants that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is strangling; I see a historic breakthrough in artificial intelligence, facing an outcry for the government to stop it. I see advances in biology that portend much better health and longevity, but good luck getting FDA approval or increasingly politicized research funding.Many conservatives disparage this "incentive economics" as outdated and boring. That attitude is utterly wrong. Incentives, and the freedom, rights, and rule of law that preserve incentives, remain the key to tremendous and widespread prosperity. And it is hard work to understand and fix the incentives behind today's problems.Yes, supply is less glamorous than stimulus. "Fix regulations" is a tougher slogan than "free money for voters." Efficiency requires detailed reform in every agency and market, the Marie-Kondo approach to our civic life. But it's possible. And we don't need to reform all the dinosaurs. As we have seen with telephones, airlines, and taxis, we just need to allow new competitors, to allow the buds of freedom to grow.Many people ask, "How can we get leaders to listen?" That's the wrong question. Believe in democracy, not bending the emperor's ear. Take action. My fellow prizewinners have grabbed the levers of influence that belong to citizens of our free society, and done hard work of reforming its institutions. And ideas matter. The Hoover Institution motto is "ideas defining a free society." The Bradley Foundation tonight celebrates good ideas, and is devoted to spreading them. When voters, media, the chattering classes, and institutions of civil society understand, advance and apply these ideas, politicians will swiftly follow.   Notes:Growth: Real GDP 1950:I was $2186 billion, and per capita $14500; in 2000:I, $12935 and per capita $45983; in 2022:IV, $20182 and per capita 60376. From these numbers, average log real GDP growth 1950-2000 was 3.56% From 2000-2002, 1.96%. In per capita terms,  2.31% and  1.20%. (2.31-1.20)x22 = 24.4. Cross-country comparison: Calculations based on purchasing-power-adjusted GDP per capita: US $69,287, Canada $52,790, UK $50,890, Mexico $19,587, India $7,242. Source: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD The PPP adjustment tries to take account that some things are cheaper in other countries. Converting at the exchange rate produces even larger differences. US $70.248, Canada $51,987, UK $46,510, Mexico $10,065, India $2,256. Source: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CDMankiw: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/business/economy/10view.htmlThanksI have been fortunate to benefit from the effort, time, wisdom and affection of so many people, and many institutions that supported their efforts.Of course it starts with my parents, Eric and Lydia Cochrane. They expected children to think and speak at the family dinner table. They exposed me to different cultures, on the south side of Chicago and in Italy, sometimes beyond my desires. They set an example by how they lived: They steadfastly followed their intellectual pursuits with extreme honesty. They treated people with a radical egalitarianism. And then left me alone to pursue my own passions. I was lucky to learn from some extraordinary and dedicated teachers, at the Ancona Montessori School, the U of C Lab school, Italian public schools, and Kenwood high school. There, in an inner city public school, Arlene Gordon (Math), Judith Stein (English) Walter Sherrill (Chemistry) and especially Joel Hofslund (Physics) gave me absolutely first rate experience. Thanks also to Ed Shands' patient coaching of our swim team. I moved on to MIT to study physics. This was more impersonal, and a difficult time for me, but as it turned out a superb education in the kind of mathematical modeling essential to economics. I went on to study economics at the University of California at Berkeley. Faculty took PhD teaching seriously, not just of their own research, and I soaked it up. I thank especially my advisers, Roger Craine, Tom Rothermberg, and George Akerlof.  Many of their lessons are vivid today, but like my parents they provided only gentle guidance and feedback on my own imperfect quests. I was supremely luck to land a job at the University of Chicago. I learned a tremendous amount in the wide open collegial atmosphere at Chicago, thanks in large part to Lars Hansen and Gene Fama, but also colleagues too numerous to mention in this short space.  Generations of MBA and PhD students also pushed me hard to understand economics and became lifelong friends and colleagues. At just the right moment Hoover came calling, allowing me the time and institutional support to blossom as a public intellectual and commenter as well as an academic. A special thanks to John Raisin for that. No man is an island. The world of ideas is a conversation. Everything I know has been shaped by teachers, friends, colleagues, collaborators, students, journal editors, referees, and others who took the time and effort to help me think about things. Many small interactions have had a crucial effect on my life. A coffee conversation at a conference with John Campbell resulted in our best known academic paper. A lunch conversation with Luigi Zingales produced my first public writing during the financial crisis. As a result, Amity Shlaes invited me to a conference. Howard Dickman, then at the Wall Street Journal, liked my presentation and asked, "Why don't you write opeds for us?" I answered, "Why don't you stop rejecting them?" My oped career was born. And so forth. I thank these and many more, and lady luck who put us together. Of course my greatest thanks go to my wonderful wife, Elizabeth Fama. We met the night I returned to Chicago. It was love at first sight. We were engaged on the second date. She has been my best friend and constant companion ever since, though marriage to a passionate researcher, busy teacher and lover of time consuming sports cannot have been easy. Together we raised four amazing children, Sally, Eric, Jean, and Lake, who fill my heart with love, and now that they are grown a bit of nostalgia.