Free Money!

GENTLEMAN Farmer and Matthew Lesko used to hold the same title, currently being glorified on the Bravo network. Later, due in part to clinical insanity, Matthew Lesko went on to become a minor celebrity, while Gentleman Farmer settled into relative anonymity.

Lesko, of course, is the ubiquitous face of the FREE MONEY! infomercials, designed to key "regular folks" into the world of federal grants, previously reserved for that snotty violinist at your kid's school and other Front Row People. He wants to tell you the government is just GIVING IT AWAY! Lesko - you're right, dude.

In his previous apprenticeship, Hired Hand learned a considerable amount about public finance from (the equally insane) Michael Boskin, who was G.H.W. Bush's chief economic advisor. Professor Boskin spoke of the perils of crowding out private investment by excessive deficit spending - it raises the sovereign's risk premium, increases interest rates, and generally makes it harder to borrow more.

Apparently Boskie was wrong. The Kids are have racked up some monster deficits, and Greenspan's going all night on a stationary bicycle in the basement of the Fed but STILL can't get interest rates up. What gives? Either the government really DOES have free money, and nobody told us, or something big and bad is gonna happen to the economy, and nobody knows what it is.

Lesko and Boskin need to get together and work this out. 'Cause if I could get my hands on some of that free money, that'd be terrific. I believe I'd buy myself some real estate. Real estate's good, right?

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Since this is my first post, I'll give a H/T to Gentleman Farmer, who blogged even on his birthday. I'm told he celebrated by drinking a jar of sweet tea on the porch.

UPDATE: Daniel Gross is an idiot.