Regulatory Review; EconoFAQs on QE2

(1) Bill Black on Obama's Regulatory Review: I had to chuckle at the Times' headline about Obama's regulatory review a couple of days ago:  Obama Asks for Review of Rules Stifling Jobs.  As I mentioned in my last post, the new post-Tucson civility has rendered the Republican's phrase "job-killing" into "job-destroying";  now it has morphed into "job-stifling" (and at the top of my browser the Times's headline speaks of "barriers to hiring").

Bill Black has another Huffington Post piece, this time on Obama's anti-regulatory initiative.  The title is great:  Obama Embraces "An Economic Philosophy That Has Completely Failed", as Obama once called the Republicans' anti-regulatory creed.

(2) EconoFAQs on QE2: D&S collective member Alejandro Reuss has started a new regular department for the D&S website, EconoFAQs.  These will be questions and answers on current economic topics.  The first installment, Why Is the Government Buying Long-Term Bonds?, focuses on the Fed's so-called "quantitative easement 2" or QE2 program.  In a way this first EcononFAQ is the questions and answers that we wish that funny but highly miselading YouTube video, Quantitative Easing Explained.  I posted that video with reservations, just because the anime figures and voices were so amusing, and then tried to atone for it in my next post with an interview with Bob Polling on QE2.  (I still got some flack--well deserved, I admit--from a D&S subscriber named Stephan, who referred us to a "revisited" YouTube video with the same cute characters (here). Thanks, Stephan.)  Can someone figure out how to make the cute characters give Alejandro's questions and answers?

More soon--I have been annoyed by the NYT's recent articles on state fiscal crises and taxes, e.g. the article that claimed that raising taxes, even if governors were willing, wouldn't solve the states fiscal problems. Really?  I will rant on this soon.

--Chris Sturr