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The European Union is giving Microsoft a “last chance” to defend itself against anti-trust charges before it is slapped with a fine of up to $3.2 billion.  Microsoft may have to disclose how its PC and server operating systems communicate with each other, and offer a stripped-down version of Windows, to help its competitors, writes  Deutsche Welle

The Hoover Institution’s Melvyn Krauss, in an op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal ($) ,notes some recent events that indicate that markets are no longer buying Greenspan’s messages on the economy.  For instance, Most of the growth in the second quarter GDP figures was due to non-recurring war revenue and thus masks persisting structural problems

From a story in today’s Wall Street Journal on the Fed’s overstating deflation fears earlier this year: “The catalyst for the debate was Fed officials’ widespread discussion during the spring of the risks of deflation, or generally falling prices, and what ‘unconventional’ measures it could take to combat it. The discussions prompted investors to

Is the weak dollar, like steel tariffs , simply another political strategy out of Karl Rove’s playbook? Today’s New York Times reports that the shift to a weak dollar policy “may have begun under President Bush’s first Treasury secretary, Paul H. O’Neill, who placed less emphasis on keeping the dollar strong than on letting market forces rule. The

Who would have thought that Sweden might turn out to be the harbinger of a successful anti-euro movement? Writes Jean-Christophe Mounicq on  today’s Tech Central Station , “[b]y saying ‘No’ to the euro, whether for good or bad reasons, the Swedes have done a great favor for themselves and other Europeans. As Professor Jean-Jacques Rosa

A reader from New Zealand wrote the following to me, about my Grasso article on today’s Mises.org: I am in the fortunate position of not being taxed on my stock market tradings in your country, which is one of the primary reasons my money is invested in the US of A. Another reason that I choose to invest via the US stock markets is precisely

A new Tax Foundation study ranks states on the basis of the ratio of tax dollars sent out to Washington in federal tax payments to tax dollars returned via federal spending.   The top five winner states — New Mexico, North Dakota, Alaska, Mississippi, and West Virginia — receive more than they send out.  The top five loser states — New Jersey,

According to a research paper put out by the Reason Foundation ( summarized here in .pdf ), the U.S. federal government is getting old.  The average federal employee is 46 years old.  By 2004, nearly one-third of all federal employees will be ready for retirement.  Another 21 percent will be eligible for early retirement in that year.    Concludes

Bill Anderson’s  recent Mises.org piece  on Krugman rings truer each day.  In  today’s New York Times Magazine , Krugman attempts to push supply-side theory out of the economics profession, as he attempted several years ago to do to the Austrians.  It is clear that Krugman believes the only professional economists are Monetarists and Keynesians of

The recent wave of sports stadium and arena construction is costing the U.S. Treasury more than $100 million annually because the projects have been financed with tax-exempt bonds.  At least 38 major league sports venues have been built or rebuilt using nearly $7 billion in tax-exempt financing since 1990, according to a  Washington Post  review