MiltonFriedom

In addition, I'd like to point out the following.

• Nordic countries have low, competitive corporate tax rates.

• They use a VAT system, which is known to be regressive (but raises more revenue)

• They have very low barriers to trade.

• Strong property and contract laws.

• Quite a few have a good deal of oil wealth.

• Homogenous, small populations in many places

He's probably not going to win, to be completely honest, but I think his campaign is at least valuable in bringing ideas to the American people.

Honestly, Bernie Sanders might even be a better Congressmen than President. He has a lot of strong principles he will not compromise on, so he struggle as President, where he will be forced to bow to the checks on his authority.

In addition, he clearly doesn't care much for foreign policy. On so many debate questions on that, he swivels immediately back to domestic policy. That's more appropriate in a Senator than President. He cares way more about this country, than its place in the world.

It's not like he won't have power in Congress. Elizabeth Warren, similar to Sanders, wields lots of power, especially with regards to financial institutions.

Glass-Steagal had little to nothing to do with the subprime mortgage crisis.

Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch, along with Goldman Sachs, were all major players in the subprime mortgage meltdown, but none of these investment banks had ever taken advantage of the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act and ventured into commercial banking. They were strictly investment banks, just as they had been before Glass-Steagall was repealed.

http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/050515/did-repeal-glasssteagall-act-contribute-2008-financial-crisis.asp

It's a talking point, nothing else.

I'd look more at the Commodity Future Modernization Act of 2000.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_Futures_Modernization_Act_of_2000

In addition, the encouraging by the Department of Housing and Urban Development to lend to high risk individuals:

The root cause of the financial crisis was the subprime mortgage meltdown. At the heart of that problem lies the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which all but required mortgage lenders to make home loans to millions of individuals who simply did not qualify to receive the loans beginning in the 1990s. HUD set a goal of having 50% (later increased to 55%) of all mortgage loans made to lower-income individuals who did not qualify for mortgage loans under traditional loan guidelines. In order to meet HUD's goals, lenders began to institute policies such as foregoing any requirement for a down payment and accepting unemployment benefits as a qualifying source of income. (Again, the majority of these lenders were private mortgage lenders, not banks, so the Glass-Steagall Act didn't even apply to them.)

(same link as first)

In general, I feel like it could just be cleaned up a bit, as I feel lost in a sea of links and oversized subtitles and titles for various sections. A new user would get put off very quickly.

I like structures similar to Cochranes and Wren-Lewis or Sumner, but I realize posting links is very important to your blog. Thoma's blog is ugly but much easier to read, for example. (Though the sidebar is a mess)

A lot of the info at the top can be moved to the side, Recent Posts could be changed to a style like in Wren Lewis blog, taking up less space yet enabling easier access (maybe separate sections for different kinds of links). Font sizes should be reduced so that the page is more information dense and the structure is more obvious.

I hope I am being constructive here. I don't really have an eye for what a radical overhaul would look like and I would suggest it if I could. Perhaps investing in a web designer could be of use, as I know others have complained about the blogospheres lack of good web design.

Thanks for doing this AMA!

Are there any plans to overhaul the blog interface?