In the post from this morning about the op-ed by the CEO of Whole Foods, John Mackey, challenging Obama-care, I wondered whether left-wing Web sites would call for a boycott of Whole Foods as a way of punishing the company for the executive's decision to express his political views. Less than 24 hours later, the results are in: Jusiper: "BOYCOTT Whole Foods...Its CEO has come out foursquare against health care reform....Come on, you can do it, boycott them for at least a week and discover how much money you can save at Trader Joe's." Daily Kos is running a poll of its readers, asking, "Will you still frequent Whole Foods?" with responses when I checked running 89% (2597) no and 10% (293) yes. The "Fresh Paint" blog invokes "great boycotts of the past" and tells readers that the op-ed is "the most screaming, looney ultra-right wing bit of crap." There are plenty of reasons it's rare to see capitalists standing up publicly for capitalism, but the vehemence of the reaction from certain consumers when they do so may be one of them. It will be interesting to see whether there's any appreciable effect on Whole Foods's revenues or if this backlash is just a lot of chatter on the Web that won't actually amount to much at the cash register. Most grocery shoppers probably care more about price, selection, quality, and convenience than about the political views of the store management. And who knows, for all the left-wingers alienated by the op-ed piece by Mr. Mackey, there may be some free-market types who start shopping at the store more because of his views on health-care and his willingness to express them publicly.

Whole Foods Versus Obama: FutureOfCapitalism.com, 7:02 a.m. John Stossel, 11:30 a.m. Instapundit, 5:33 p.m. Instapundit quotes the same sentences of the op-ed that we did.

In his column Monday, Paul Krugman wrote of the effect of the "stimulus" on employment: "reasonable estimates suggest that around a million more Americans are working now than would have been employed without that plan." Now John Stossel quotes the chairwoman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, Christina Romer, as saying of the stimulus, "employment is now about 485,000 jobs above what it otherwise would have been." How does Professor Krugman justify his claim that the stimulus created more than twice as many jobs as the White House's top economist claims it did? How does the White House economist justify her claim that the stimulus created half as many jobs as Professor Krugman claims it did? What is it about the entire debate that generates the feeling that these numbers are, as the White House would say, "fishy," and that, as Lawrence Summers would put it, "It is not even clear how we will know ultimately whether they have succeeded, because of the difficulty of constructing a counterfactual and knowing what would have happened without intervention."

The CEO of Whole Foods, John Mackey, risks alienating all those Obama supporters who shop at his stores by publishing an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal that says, "the last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health-care system. Instead, we should be trying to achieve reforms by moving in the opposite direction—toward less government control and more individual empowerment." The op-ed is sensible enought, but perhaps more interesting will be whether left-wing Web sites call for a boycott of Whole Foods, and whether the government in any way ramps up its regulatory oversight of the company.

A professor of computer science at Stanford, John Ousterhout, is quoted on the official Google blog offering his thoughts after a recent Google faculty retreat:

If we want to maintain the leadership position of the U.S., we must find ways to make as much information as possible freely available. There will always be vested commercial interests that want to restrict access to information, but we must fight these interests. The overall benefit to society of publishing information outweighs the benefit to individual companies from restricting it.

"According to Moody's, the ratings agency, the stimulus package has saved more than 500,000 jobs," the often sensible Niall Ferguson writes in the Financial Times this morning. It's not clear what Moody's reasoning is, or how it is better than the reasoning that had the firm placing good ratings on mortgage-backed paper that turned out to be toxic. Moody's is under scrutiny in Washington for the role it and other ratings agencies, which benefit from essentially a government-granted oligopoly, played in the financial crisis. It can only help itself with the Obama administration and with Democrats on Capitol Hill by touting the stimulus as a success. All in all, there's plenty of reason to be skeptical of the claim, not least the statement of President Obama's economic aide, Lawrence Summers: "It is too early to know how successful our policies have been. It is not even clear how we will know ultimately whether they have succeeded, because of the difficulty of constructing a counterfactual and knowing what would have happened without intervention."

One practice of smart public-sector managers (and of smart private sector-managers, for that matter) is to measure outcomes rather than inputs. An example of the problem with measuring inputs rather than outcomes is a police department that pats itself on the back because it has made a lot of arrests. A better measure of police success is not an increase in arrests, but a reduction in the crime rate. If the police are really doing a good job, there may be fewer arrests, because there is less crime. That's a context in which to view the August 5 speech by the director of the enforcement division of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Robert Khuzami, before the New York City Bar Association. WSJ.com has a copy of the speech available for download. Here is an excerpt:

Comparing the period from late January to the present to roughly the same period in 2008, the Division has opened 10% more investigations (approximately 525, compared to 475); have been granted 118% more formal orders (which grants us subpoena power) (275, compared to 126); have filed 147% more TROs (52, compared to 21); and have filed nearly 30% more actions (397, compared to 306). These results underscore the fact that the criticism of the SEC that resulted from Madoff – however justified – should not be permitted to obscure the 75-year tradition of vigorous enforcement resulting from the dedicated efforts of thousands of public servants who work tirelessly and with impressive results to protect the investing public.

"China is preparing to give millions of street vendors legal status," the Wall Street Journal reports. Meanwhile, here in America, police in Tulare, Calif. have shut down a 7-year-old girl's lemonade stand, John Stossel reports.

One of the best counter-arguments to Paul Krugman's claim this morning -- "reasonable estimates suggest that around a million more Americans are working now than would have been employed without that plan — a number that will grow over time — and that the stimulus has played a significant role in pulling the economy out of its free fall" -- is the one made by President Obama's economic aide, Lawrence Summers: "It is too early to know how successful our policies have been. It is not even clear how we will know ultimately whether they have succeeded, because of the difficulty of constructing a counterfactual and knowing what would have happened without intervention."

The Huffington Post carries a translation of Bernard-Henri Levy arguing that the French Socialist Party is a "large corpse falling backward" and that the party should change its name. He asks, "What is it waiting for to launch an assault against these speculative instruments -- hedge funds, short selling stocks, leveraging -- which could be easily exposed as destroying more value than they create and as generating a resurgence of social misery?" Sounds like the French left has been taking cues from the Wall Street Journal editorial page.

The Wall Street Journal's Heard on the Street column argues that General Electric should be subject to an even more obtrusive federal regulatory regime than Rep. Barney Frank, the liberal Democrat who heads the House Financial Services Committee, thinks the company deserves. The Journal's first argument is that "it creates a level playing field; Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and American Express all had to convert into bank-holding companies last year."

Just to further mark the absurdity of the Wall Street Journal's venture-capitalist exempting test for intrusive regulation, as discussed below: "Washington could let the SEC address any concerns simply by adding three questions to the form: Do you use leverage? Do you trade equities or debt? Do you trade derivatives? Anyone answering 'no' to all three would be free to go find the next Microsoft." This afternoon came news that Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway "returned to profitability in the second quarter on gains in derivatives tied to world equity markets." The Journal seems to be suggesting that a venture capital fund that invests in unproven startup companies is somehow less risky than buying a share of Mr. Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway.

Venture capital funds should be subject to less regulation than hedge funds, to listen to the Wall Street Journal editorialists this morning, who write, "Washington could let the SEC address any concerns simply by adding three questions to the form: Do you use leverage? Do you trade equities or debt? Do you trade derivatives? Anyone answering 'no' to all three would be free to go find the next Microsoft." The editorial is a stirring defense of the venture capital business, but it buys into the idea that federal regulators are capable of determining which hedge funds are systemic risks, and that that endeavor is worth subjecting hedge funds to all kinds of intrusive regulation. The editorial seems to imply that venture capital funds are valuable in fostering innovation, but hedge funds -- "high-rolling hedge funds," the editorial calls them -- serve a less socially useful purpose.

The shipping company DHL will pay a $9.4 million penalty for violating American law by shipping more than 300 packages to Iran and Sudan without proper records, the Treasury Department announced today. This is interesting on a number of levels, but the one that concerns us here is the way in which people have a way of just getting used to, or forgetting, that certain companies are government-owned. Neither the Treasury Department press release nor the stories on the Web sites of the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times mention that Deutsche Post DHL is 30.5% owned by KfW Bankengruppe, which exists "under the ownership of the Federal Republic" and the federal states "to encourage sustainable improvement in economic, social, ecological living and business conditions, among others in the areas of small and medium-sized enterprise, entrepreneurialship, environmental protection, housing, infrastructure, education finance, project and export finance, and development cooperation." Nothing like a little government-backed "entrepreneurialship" to get those packages to Iran and Sudan.

The Fifth Amendment restriction on a "taking" of private property by the government without just compensation might be grounds for health insurance companies to challenge President Obama's plan to compete with them by offering a "public option," the manager of the Congressional Effect Fund, Eric Singer, writes in Investor's Business Daily. Mr. Singer's mutual fund, incidentally, invests in stocks when Congress is on recess and goes to cash when Congress in session, on the theory that Congressional action destroys wealth. Its performance so far is here.