Some Links

Charles Blahous at Real Clear Markets explains that Obamacare's revenue streams have fallen away, one by one. (h/t Greg Mankiw) Blahous strikes a non-partisan chord by concluding that

...the actors in this drama are too diverse to blame any one person or group. The task now facing both supporters and opponents is to take the steps necessary to prevent further fiscal damage, by scaling back the ACA's spending commitments before millions become dependent on benefits that the government is not in a position to pay.

Steve Sailer sheds light on the kind of boy he was as a teenager:

To a highly intelligent adolescent female mind, this most famous quote from the history of 20th Century physics is alien and horrifying. To a certain number of highly intelligent adolescent male minds, however, "destroyer of worlds" is the most awesome thing anybody ever said outside of a comic book.

Speaking of Steve Sailer, now this is really interesting. Apparently, he totally mooches off his wife. I did not expect the god of the "man-o-sphere" to let his little lady to all the heavy lifting for him. Well, I don't fault him for that; bread-winner wives are inevitable in this day and age. But Steve Sailer? P.S., he also wants your money.

Nick Van Dyk is prescient on the future of health care:

I got in to see my doctor a few hours later.  Supporters of the ACA, remember that sentence in a couple of years -- you probably won't see it ever again.

Fascinating, from Free Banking:

The situation started as a result of economic and monetary mismanagement on the part of the Indian government and central bank (though the US Federal Reserve's pumping money into the global system and "exporting" our inflation for a time certainly played a role). When Indians increasingly abandoned paper money for gold, the government responded by trying to falsify the demand signals by trying to limit gold imports. 

Now the people are adapting again not from gold to paper with diminishing value but to silver. HT to GATA for the news. Reuters reports that despite India's raising the import duty three times this year imports from January to August this year India imported 4,073 tons of silver, more then double the total from all of 2012.

And while we're on the topic of the futility of central banking, Russ Roberts adds this hilarious metaphor:

Being Fed chair is less like Odysseus steering between Scylla of inflation and the Charybdis of unemployment and more like the Wizard of Oz: grand pronouncements in a booming voice amplified by the media who love the theater of the wise man or woman who will find a way to get us home. We are not to pay attention to the real man or woman behind the curtain, the uncertain one who is whistling in the dark while purporting to find just the right calibration of the dials of monetary policy.