See You After Christmas

While "this time may be different" for the centrally-planned stock market, every historic example of subsequent ruin notwithstanding, the very recent past is again hitting Carnival Cruise Lines with a vengeance, as one short month after its disabled Triump cruise ship fiasco, in which passengers were trapped on board a filthy ship for five days, the cruise company is forced to suffer through a very humiliating case of deja vu.

While "this time may be different" for the centrally-planned stock market, every historic example of subsequent ruin notwithstanding, the very recent past is again hitting Carnival Cruise Lines with a vengeance, as one short month after its disabled Triump cruise ship fiasco, in which passengers were trapped on board a filthy ship for five days, the cruise company is forced to suffer through a very humiliating case of deja vu.

BALTIMORE — Royal Caribbean says a fire that broke out aboard a ship has forced it to cancel the rest of the cruise and that more than 2,000 passengers will be flown back to Baltimore from the Bahamas. The cruise line says the fire that began at 2:50 a.m. Monday was extinguished about two hours later with no injuries reported. A cause wasn’t immediately known.

HOUSTON — A cruise line says it is making the passengers stranded aboard a disabled ship in the Gulf of Mexico as comfortable as possible with running water and some working bathrooms, contradicting the accounts of some passengers who told relatives of filthy, hot conditions and limited access to food. The ship, the Carnival Triumph, is still at least a day from being guided to a port in Mobile, Ala.

Here we go, again.

BALTIMORE — An FBI spokesman says a death aboard a Royal Caribbean cruise ship has been classified as suspicious. The FBI is investigating the death of a 62-year-old Virginia woman who travelled on the Enchantment of the Seas. Royal Caribbean says the woman’s husband found her body Sunday inside her cabin.

Steven Horwitz I am back from a lovely week enjoying the bounty of the market in the Caribbean with a nice tan and no worse for the wear from largely ignoring economics while away.  And while I was away, my appearance on the terrific Freedom Watch episode on central banking aired and my piece on why wars don't end recessions (responding to a Krugman column) appeared in the Jan/Feb issue of The Freeman.