PRESTOPUNDIT -- A Good Blog at a Great Price. Guaranteed.

UC Riverside economist declares "stimulative effect" due to fire destroyed housing in Southern California could "be a lift to the economy". But will enough houses be destroyed to assure a Bush re-election? Hmm. Does any economist want to put this bit of "predictive science" into a mathematical equation, thus giving it the economist's official seal of approval as real "science"? (Via Jeff Tucker, who identifies this as the classic economic fallacy exposed most famously by Bastiat and popularized among "scientists" by the crank JM Keynes).