Tag Archives: Trade

Podcasts

Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse lectures on basic economics

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Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse

Here is a podcast on basic economics from Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse.

About the speaker:

Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D. is the founder and President of the Ruth Institute — a project of the National Organization for Marriage — which seeks to promote life-long married love to college students by creating an intellectual and social climate favorable to marriage.

She is also the Senior Research Fellow in Economics at the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty.

She is the author of Smart Sex: Finding Life-long Love in a Hook-up World, (2005) and Love and Economics: Why the Laissez-Faire Family Doesn’t Work (2001), recently reissued in paperback, as Love and Economics: It Takes a Family to Raise a Village.

Dr. Morse served as a Research Fellow for Stanford University’s Hoover Institution from 1997-2005. She received her Ph.D. in economics from the University of Rochester in 1980 and spent a postdoctoral year at the University of Chicago during 1979-80. She taught economics at Yale University and George Mason University for 15 years.

The MP3 file is here.

Topics:

  • The study of economics is anti-postmodern – there is objective truth independent of what people think
  • The study of economics believes in fixed principles of human nature
  • Economics studies the allocation of scarce resources that have alternative uses
  • Economics studies how people exchange resources
  • How both people who engage in a voluntary trade always believe that they will be better off
  • How both people who engage in a voluntary trade both benefit from the exchange
  • How incentives motivate people to act
  • Understanding supply and demand
  • Understanding how “free” government services are rationed
  • Understanding opportunity costs
  • How prices signal producers to produce more or less, and consumers to buy or not buy
  • Market-driven prices versus price controls
  • The role of substitution
  • The necessity of allowing failure in a free market

The requirements of economic growth:

  • private property
  • contracts
  • the profit motive
  • competition
  • free trade
  • entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation
  • the rule of law

If you want to learn more about basic economics, I recommend picking up a book or two by Thomas Sowell – the first book I usually give away is “Intellectuals and Society”, and then next “Basic Economics”.

News

The Weekly Standard podcasts on Democrats’ terrorists for traitor swap

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I listened to these 4 podcasts on the weekend, and I thought there was a lot in there that I had not heard in the news. The Weekly Standard is my favorite political podcast.

June 2nd:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was recently traded for five Taliban prisoners from terrorist captivity.

The MP3 file is here.

June 3rd:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with Thomas Joscelyn, Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and frequent contributor on why the Bergdahl swap is a terrible deal for American Security.

The MP3 file is here.

June 4th:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with editor William Kristol on the Obama administration’s changing explanations of the Bergdahl prisoner swap.

The MP3 file is here.

June 6th:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was recently traded for five Taliban prisoners from terrorist captivity.

The MP3 file is here.

June 9th:

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on his recent story about  how many White House statements about the Bergdahl/Taliban 5 swap have been contradicted either by facts or by testimony.

The MP3 file is here.

I recommend listening to all of them. The VA scandal was bad, because it was basically the Democrats killing off wounded soldiers. But the release of these 5 terrorist commanders goes beyond that – endangering our men and women in the military and just encouraging our enemies to kidnap more Americans and bargain with them. If you want the bad guys to stop being bad, you kill them. You don’t reward them. That just makes them act more badly.

 

News

Army told soldiers who served with Bergdahl told to lie about his desertion

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Left-wing Mediaite reports.

Excerpt:

In an appearance on Fox & Friends on Wednesday, retired Army Spc. Josh Fuller, a soldier who served with Sgt. Bowe Bergdahlsince 2008, said that the military informed him and other soldiers that the “narrative” they should maintain is that Bergdahl was captured by the Taliban rather than that he intentionally left his base. When asked if he believed he was told not to “tell the truth” about Bergdahl by military authorities, Fuller said that he did.

“The sentiment that everybody knew was that he walked off the base in the middle of the night, left all his gear there, and went – just walked off the post,” Fuller said. “So, we had all known that it was — that he had deserted his post, and there was never anything about him getting captured or POW until a little while later whenever it came down from the chain of command that we needed to keep quiet and not say anything.”

“We’re going with the narrative that he was captured,” Fuller said of the military’s position on Bergdahl’s alleged desertion.

“So, they basically told you not to tell the truth,” Fox host Brian Kilmeade said.

“Yes, sir,” Fuller replied.

Fuller concluded by corroborating the claims of Bergdahl’s former team leader, Sgt. Evan Buetow,who told CNN on Tuesday that the Taliban’s attacks became more directed after Bergdahl was captured.

“The ambushes we use, the certain tactics we use, the Taliban was picking up on those things,” Fuller said. “You could tell it was from somebody on the inside that had that info.”

Wow. So we gave away five Taliban commanders not just for a deserter, but for a traitor. Is this supposed to make us safer?