BusinessWeek on Tyler Cowen, Oil Dictatorships, Big Government Keeping Small Business Down, and *Gasp* Greece Missed Fiscal Targets?!

BusinessWeek has an interesting article profile of George Mason University Tyler Cowen who owns the popular blog Marginal Revolution.  I know Marginal Revolution is listed as one of the blogs I follow, but I hardly ever check it out and mainly catch headlines from other blogs.  Perhaps that will change if Cowen keeps pointing out headlines like this:

There’s a measles outbreak in Massachusetts, probably thanks to low vaccination rates.

Now even if Romney tried to brag about the success of RomneyCare, he may hit a catch-22.  The article also includes this chart on the most popular financial/economic blogs:

Krugman at #1?  Really?  And how does Robert Reich even make it on there?  The dude's solution to everything is "raise taxes on the rich, unionize Wal-Mart, and inflate housing prices."  You would think using the class warfare care over and over again would get old.  I am reminded of this fantastic line from the slightly contradictory song Baby I'm An Anarchist:

You call the cops
On the looters and piethrowers.
They call it class war,
I call it co-conspirators

I'm not much for looters but you get the point.  Anyway, it's nice to see EconLog, The Big Picture, and CafeHayek on the list.  Surprisingly, I don't see Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis which I thought was fairly popular.

Bloomberg has compiled this chart of the democracy ratings for oil producing countries in the world.  Wouldn't you know, most of them treat their citizens like crap:

I bet you don't have to get your genitals checked out when getting on a plane in Russia...just saying.

Apparently small brokerage firms are finally realizing that those government regulators that were meant to level the playing field are doing the exact opposite.  From the New York Post:

Small stock brokerage firms say regulators are trying to kill them.

And they think the largest independent regulator of the securities industry -- the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or Finra, for short -- is nothing more than the hit man for large brokerage firms.

"I've been fighting with Finra for years. In some ways it's like an organized crime group," said John Busacca, founder of the Securities Industry Professional Association. "It's like paying protection money in Bensonhurst."

Busacca, who aired his grievances to me in a phone interview, complains that Finra won't take legal action against large firms but has become extremely picky when dealing with small broker/dealers.

Big business and big government in bed together?  No way.  Everyone knows that those regulators are just angels in disguise doing the public good.  It's bad to think about all the small firms that "could have been" but on the other hand, how can they seriously not see this coming?

And for the most shocking news of all, it turns out Greece was, get this, unable to meet its fiscal targets!

(Reuters) - Greece has missed all fiscal targets agreed under its bailout plan, a mission from an international inspection team found, putting further funding for Athens at risk, according to a German magazine.

And the "denying the inevitable game of Greece default" shall continue.