In this third year of the Bunkum awards, the true barons of bunkum have bullied their way to the front. Perennial powerhouses Friedman and Fordham once again made the list for poor research and execution. Sadly, the Cato Institute in 2008 failed to hit its mark. Their entry into the competition was a global review called Markets vs. Monopolies in Education: A Global Review of the Literature. Normally, a report that excludes major studies, ignores selection bias, and oversimplifies the complex characteristics of educational markets would be a contender. Further, in an act of self-aggrandizing puffery, the report proclaims itself to be of “profound” importance to U. S. educational policy. Alas, they were knocked from this year’s rankings by their application of alleged lessons from the educational systems of Pakistan, India, Tanzania, Ghana and Nigeria to the fundamentally and structurally different system of the United States. This left our judges no choice but to dismiss the report as merely silly.