The Cassandra Hunt (4)
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Tyler Cowen (22)
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Marginal Revolution (27)
2 days, 15 hours
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Kevin Drum comments, here is Brad DeLong, and Matt Yglesias, and Arnold Kling; they make good points all around. There aren't nearly as many Cassandras as you think, once you require more of a person than "having called" the housing bubble. A simple question is what financial stocks a person had shorted as of, say, November 2007, or for that matter July 2007, and no "my wife wouldn't let me" is not an adequate comeback. ...
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Hammer said:
An interesting question -- did anybody *really* call the economic collapse? Not in the sense of predicting "the sky is going to fall" but actually articulating how it would happen?
Better Dead Than Red, I Say (7)
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John Gruber (51)
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Daring Fireball (49)
1 week
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Speaking of BlackBerry Storm reviews, this is a strange passage from Rosemary Hattersley and Mark Hattersley’s BlackBerry Storm review for Macworld: And while we’re on the subject of welcome features that users are clamoring for, let’s not overlook (cue fanfare) cut-and-paste. BlackBerry has shown Apple how it’s done, by using the same multi-touch technology used in the iPhone 3G. Here’s how it works: you put one finger at the start of what you want to ...
That Romer article on the Great Depression. (1)
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Eric (29)
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The Edge of the American West (1)
1 week, 1 day
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Christina Romer, the appointee-designate (or whatever) as director of the president’s Council of Economic Advisors is said to have argued, in her influential article “What Ended the Great Depression?” [JSTOR link], that “expansionary monetary policy was the key to the partial recovery of the 1930s” and therefore, “monetary policy is key.” And indeed Romer does argue this, but contrary to a variety of panicky emails that have shot through my inbox, her argument is not ...
All of your toxic assets are belong to us (2)
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Megan McArdle (0)
1 week, 1 day
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The US government agrees to bail out Citibank.The federal government agreed Sunday night to rescue Citigroup Inc. by helping to absorb potentially hundreds of billions of dollars in losses on toxic assets on its balance sheet and injecting fresh capital into the troubled financial giant.The agreement marks a new phase in government efforts to stabilize U.S. banks and securities firms. After injecting nearly $300 billion of capital into financial institutions, federal officials now appear to ...
Queen Rania spoofs Letterman's Top 10 while accepting award at YouTube Live (8)
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Joi (2)
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Joi Ito's Web (2)
1 week, 2 days
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As most people already know, Queen Ranai of Jordan won the YouTube Visionary Award for her channel on YouTube. Here's her awesome acceptance speech a la Letterman style. It's really funny. I love how many members of the royal family of Jordan have such a great sense of humor. I remember a talk by Prince Abdullah at a conference I once attended and he opened with the line, "Well, Jordan is really stuck between Iraq ...
The Bush twins, Barbara and Jenna, taught the Obama girls, Sasha and Malia, how to jump on the White House beds. (1)
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annalthouse@mac.com (Ann Althouse) (2)
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Althouse (4)
1 week, 2 days
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First Lady Laura Bush verified the story, and added that there was a real trick to proper White House bed-jumping: "They're really tall beds; you need to get a running start."***In some families, you can jump on the beds, and in some, they tell you no jumping on the beds. Both the Bushes and the Obamas allow bed jumping. Or, no, maybe Barack and Michelle are the no-jumping-on-the-beds kind of parents. And Malia and Sasha ...
iPhone Firmware 2.2 Jailbroken! QuickPwn 2.2 Released! [Apple] (10)
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Dan Nosowitz (0)
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Gizmodo (544)
1 week, 3 days
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Once again, anything Apple can make, the enterprising Dev Team can break: the brand-new firmware 2.2 has been jailbroken. QuickPwn should take care of everything, unless you're one of those unfortunate owners of the second-generation iPod touch, in which case you're out of luck at the moment. But everything else seems to be running fine—anybody here broken the new firmware yet? Let us know in the comments. [iPhone Dev, thanks Mehmet!]
An Underserved Market (6)
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Hot And Fresh Out The Kitchen (2)
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Spencer Ackerman (4)
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ATTACKERMAN (4)
1 week, 6 days
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By Spencer Ackerman Ever since the dawn of the blogosphere, there's been a great deal of emphasis placed on the Cult of the Cocktail Party -- that is, the supposedly all-consuming and all-corrupting social event in which journalists are absorbed into the Washington hivemind. Yet we at the IFA can report that journalists have far too much integrity to be purchased for a meager glass of white wine. In truth, journalists lose their souls not ...
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Fletch said:
I like to think that I have graduated from attending events for the free wine, but some days I'm not so sure of myself.
Republicans Dive Deeper into Fantasy (1)
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Brad DeLong (7)
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Grasping Reality with Both Hands: The Semi-Daily Journal of Economist Brad DeLong (7)
2 weeks, 1 day
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If there is a prominent reality-based Republican officeholder, his name is Arnold Schwarenegger. Paul Krugman has evidence that there is no prominent reality-based Republican officeholder: Fannie Freddie Phony: So I was listening to Arnold Schwarzenegger before doing the "This Weak" round table, and he was mostly making sense — except for one thing. He asserted, as a simple matter of fact, that “government created the housing bubble”, because Fannie and Freddie made all these loans ...
Where has all the income gone? (3)
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Tyler Cowen (22)
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Marginal Revolution (27)
2 weeks, 2 days
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The U.S. Census Bureau reports that median household income stagnated from 1976 to 2006, growing by only 18 percent. In contrast, data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis indicate that income per person was up 80 percent. Three data issues adversely impact reported median household income gains: the choice of price index, a change in the mix of household types and the measure of income used. After adjusting the Census data for these three issues, ...
Bill Easterly reviews Paul Collier (1)
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Indian Math Online (2)
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philg (3)
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Philip Greenspun's Weblog (3)
2 weeks, 3 days
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This New York Times piece talks about a Web site that teaches math to American kids using a curriculum from India. “Math homework in India consists of math problems that students work through, as opposed to the United States, where homework is heavy on reading about math topics in a textbook.” This echoes some of my recommendations to computer science teachers in Africa.
Et monopol sikre dig som kunde (1)
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Czar (0)
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Peter Czar Larsen (0)
2 weeks, 4 days
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Det er altid rart lige at få frisket ting op. Jeg husker feks dette helt forkert. Jeg er rimelig sikker på at jeg i min barndom, dengang vi var socialistiske og 10 år og sang med på greenpeace sange om at redde regnskoven, “verdens lunge” osv, da er jeg ret sikker på at vi også havde en anden opfattelse af betydningen af et monopol. Men okey. Nu er jeg liberalsocialistisk, jeg vil gerne være grøn ...
Fewer Security Guards for NYU (1)
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Dene Chen (0)
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NYU Local (0)
2 weeks, 5 days
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The New York Post reported today that our very own university has decided to cut the number of safety officers and security measures in an effort to divert $25 million to academic programs. Academic programs? Maybe– and maybe also to our president’s weekly visits to the new NYU campus in Abu Dhabi? Who knows? Though this is news to any parents of prospective students looking into NYU, I think it’s pretty safe to say that ...
Central Planning in World War II, by David Henderson (1)
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EconLog (4)
2 weeks, 6 days
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In my Veteans Day tribute to economist Richard Timberlake yesterday, I highlighted his experiences in World War II as a pilot of a B-17 bomber. I didn't mention his economic insights in his book, They Never Saw Me Then, because that was not my focus. Still, he did present some interesting thoughts about central planning, both in pilot training and in the allocation of gasoline. On pilot training, Timberlake writes: I found out many decades ...
Will the American finance industry recover? (1)
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Economist.com | NEW YORK (0)
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Free exchange (2)
2 weeks, 6 days
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IT SEEMS that every day another bank announces lay-offs or a hedge fund closes its doors. The finance industry is undeniably contracting—the New York Fed anticipates tens of thousands fewer jobs in the finance industry than had been the case in recent years. Will these jobs come back or has the American finance industry had its day?Thomas Philippon’s recent paper models why the financial sector became so large, and offered the rewards that attracted so ...
Sink, swim, or invest (1)
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Economist.com | WASHINGTON, DC (2)
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Free exchange (2)
3 weeks
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THIS story is simply amazing:The president-elect of the Maldives, a nation of 1,200 low islands in the Indian Ocean, is planning to establish an investment fund with some of its earnings from tourism so it can buy a haven for its citizens should global warming raise sea levels at a dangerous pace, according to several news reports.Of course, if the Maldives produced enough of the world's carbon emissions to materially affect climate change, it might ...
On Larry Summers... (3)
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Brad DeLong (7)
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Grasping Reality with Both Hands: The Semi-Daily Journal Economist Brad DeLong (0)
3 weeks, 1 day
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I see that Sheryl Sandberg is writing--corectly--that Larry Summers has "[been] a tireless advocate for girls' education... fought for social security benefits for women working in their homes, better enforcement of child support obligations, and an expansion of child care tax credits..." in addition to being "a supportive and deeply caring mentor for [her] and many other women who had the opportunity to work for him" and the Harvard Economics professor who "helped us the ...
Greg Mankiw's Blog (8) permalink
Thanks to my friend Mark Showalter for sending this in.
