Here's a letter that I sent a few days ago to the Washington Post:

In yesterday's Washington Post, Peter Wallison rightly challenges the Obama administration's conclusion that ordinary Americans lack the capacity to understand complex financial instruments - an incapacity so overpowering that even full disclosure by sellers of these instruments is insufficient to ensure that the typical person can be trusted to choose whether or not to invest in such instruments.

But let's accept, for argument's sake, the administration's judgment that ordinary Americans can't adequately assess complexity.  Doesn't it then follow that Americans' election of Mr. Obama to high office deserves no credit?  After all, isn't the task of assessing the merit of one person's ideas on economics, foreign affairs, ethics, law, and other difficult topics extraordinarily complex?  Given that Joe Six-Pack and Jane Soap-Opera cannot be trusted with the relatively straightforward task of sensibly investing their own money, how can they be trusted to meet the far more complex challenge of choosing powerful national leaders?

Here's a letter that I sent recently to the Washington Post:

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"I want to keep what I earn" is regarded as greedy and unenlightened.

"I want to take what you earn" is regarded as selfless and progressive.

From Planet Money:

But those poor (and developing) nations have their own group. It's called the anti-G20, in a nod to the G20 collection of industrialized states. The anti-G20 met at the U.N. last month, where Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Martin Khor explained what keeps impoverished countries down. Answer: Their debt to the IMF and wealthier nations.

There are plenty of things rich countries do to make poor countries poor. Refuse to trade with them. Give the thugs who run the country money. But this IMF argument has always struck me as strange. The poor countries are poor because they IMF expects them to pay back the money that the poor countries borrowed? How do the loans get made in the first place? Don't the thugs who borrow the money bear some of the responsibility? How would forgiving those loans solve the problem?

Go here and scroll down to near the bottom. It's all good. But this part is the punchline, where he imagines Nancy Pelosi negotiating a car purchase. The picture is good, too:

DEALER: Yes sirree, I can let you have this cherry-red baby for $19,999.99! Plus undercoating and dealer prep.

PELOSI: I'll pay $50,000.

[+] Enlarge

AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais"Children, this is where we give away your future."

DEALER: For a limited time only, I can throw in remote-controlled eight-way power cupholders, for another $999.99.

PELOSI: I'll buy them at $75,000.

DEALER: Do you want the extended warranty?

PELOSI: No. But I'll pay another $25,000 for it.

DEALER: Aren't you worried something will go wrong?

PELOSI: If it does, I'll just send the bill to the taxpayer.

DEALER: So you are willing to pay $150,000 for a $20,000 car? I'll have to go ask my manager! (Disappears into back, pretends to talk to manager, returns.) Lady, you drive a hard bargain. He says that for $31 billion, we will give you absolutely nothing at all.

PELOSI: Sold.

Here's a letter that I sent yesterday to WTOP radio (103.5 and 107.7 on your FM dial in and near DC):