This Week's SAL

Welcome to the second Saturday for the Cranky Economist blog. Without further ado, your Saturday Assets and Liabilities (which both happen to come from the New York Times?!):

Assets

President Bush. But for something that probably hasn't registered on your radar screens: Amtrak reform. Although you'd never guess it from the tone of this article, the news here is actually good; Bush might be putting the fear of God in Amtrak's board.

National passenger rail in this country just isn't working. The trains rarely seem to run on time, the automatic ticket machines can be friendlier than the staff, and there's that smell that sticks in your clothes until you launder them. Amtrak claims it could fix all these problems -- and problems we passengers don't see, such as crumbling infrastructure in the heavily traveled Northeast Corridor -- if only the Feds would pony up even more cash than the billions they have poured into Amtrak already. If you believe that, well, here's the bridge link I posted a few days ago.

In reality, the only way to fix Amtrak is to destroy it. There is a need for passenger rail in America, but only in part of it -- the Washington-to-Boston corridor that is already the only profitable line in the system. Unfortunately, rather than funding capital investments to improve service where people actually use the trains, a significant chunk of any additional appropriations will find their way to subsidizing lines that carry no one through the middle of nowhere. Do we really think that a Congressman from Kansas or Texas or Nebraska is going to agree to spend his constituents' tax money to subsidize rail travel for Manhattanites?

So let today's Amtrak go bankrupt, as the President is (at least saying he's) willing to do. When it's sold off for parts, the profitable Northeast Corridor will go to someone who can actually run it efficiently. What would happen to the other parts of the network is an open question. But it's not like there are any riders there to complain.

Liabilities

George Soros. Now, it's impossible to know who's right and who's wrong in the insider-trading case for which Soros' conviction was just upheld. After all, all the players are either French or George Soros. But the case surely does have a certain, how shall we say, odeur about it, so it's not unreasonable to suppose that the court has pegged the Hungarian-turned-Kerrynista just about right. Further proof that politics makes strange bedfellows: I wouldn't have thought the populist MoveOn.org-ers would give the time of day to a corporate criminal. But I guess they're happy to take his ill-gotten gains.