Utopia, you are standing in it!

One for the ‘planet on fire’ crowd to ponder, as the long solar minimum continues.
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Cold temperatures and a strong polar vortex allowed chemicals to gnaw away at the protective ozone layer in the north, says The GWPF.

A vast ozone hole — likely the biggest on record in the north — has opened in the skies above the Arctic. It rivals the better-known Antarctic ozone hole that forms in the southern hemisphere each year.

Record-low ozone levels currently stretch across much of the central Arctic, covering an area about three times the size of Greenland (see ‘Arctic opening’).

Nice piece on Federal Reserve history by Jeff Lacker, former President of Richmond Fed.

It is a great honor to be a part of this lecture series commemorating H. Parker Willis, who, in addition to helping create the Federal Reserve System, also served as the first secretary to the Federal Reserve Board and later as the first research director. As most of you probably know, early in his career, Dr. Willis was a professor of economics here at Washington & Lee. What you might not know is that, according to some accounts, the president of the university at the
time thought Dr. Willis spent too much time in Washington, D.C., consulting with Congress and forced his resignation. The students
protested—evidence of the abiding wisdom of your student body.

Tonight, I would like to discuss Dr. Willis’s wisdom and his original vision for the Federal Reserve. I will also talk about…

• “Bestselling Movies Are Not the Most Pirated Ones”

I’ve written about the fiscal implosion in Europe and warned that America faces the same fate if we don’t reform poorly designed entitlement programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.

But this new video from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, narrated by an Italian student and former Cato Institute intern, may be the best explanation of what went wrong in Europe and what should happen in the United States to avoid a similar meltdown.

I particularly like the five lessons she identifies.

1. Higher taxes lead to higher spending, not lower deficits. Miss Morandotti looks at the evidence from Europe and shows that politicians almost always claim that higher taxes will be used to reduce red ink, but the inevitable result is bigger government. This is a lesson that gullible Republicans need to learn – especially since some of them want to acquiesce to a tax hike as…

Given how trendy it is to blame ‘capitalism’ for all the world’s other ills, from wars to climate change, it’s no surprise that some have been quick to pin the current crisis on the failures of free markets too. Many have also used the need for unprecedented government intervention as evidence that the state should play a much bigger role in normal times as well. This is, to put it as politely as I can, rather disingenuous.

Let’s start by slaying a couple of strawmen. First, even the fiercest critics of the ‘nanny state’ would agree that public health cannot be left entirely to the markets. As Chris Snowdon has explained, the risk of a great many deaths from coronavirus is a textbook example of serious negative externalities that can only be dealt with by collective action. This is uncontroversial.

Second, most economists, whatever their leanings, would agree that…

Another skirmish ends in activist defeat, as reported in Pension and Investments Exxon, Chevron given OK to dismiss shareholder climate proposal. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

The Securities and Exchange Commission granted requests by Chevron Corp. and Exxon Mobil Corp. to again reject a shareholder proposal calling for reports on how the companies are addressing climate change goals. Similar proposals filed last year were also allowed to be excluded for Exxon after its challenge.

A document on the agency website noted briefly that SEC staff agreed March 20 with requests by company officials to exclude proposals from a group of shareholders, including the Church of England and As You Sow, asking if the companies will join other oil and gas companies in taking steps to align with the Paris Agreement goal of net-zero emissions by 2050, and calling for reduction targets, long-term business plans and other details.

“That…