Cato and the Financial Crisis (2)
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Matthew Yglesias (1)
1 day, 18 hours
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A libertarian friend recommended as “great” this missive from Cato President Ed Crane making the case that if only we’d listened to the libertarians none of this financial crisis business would have happened. The analysis is pretty damn weak if you ask me. Crane writes: As for the subprime crisis, it was not just Peter Wallison sounding the alarm. In 1997 Cato published a Policy Analysis by Vern McKinley entitled “The Mounting Case for Privatizing ...
Some Anomalies (3)
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Yves Smith (3)
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naked capitalism (3)
2 days, 11 hours
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I am puzzled by some recent market anomalies, which are breakdowns of established patterns:1. Long dated Treasuries rising (a deflation signal) as stocks stage a dramatic rally2. Dollar weakening while long dated Treasuries rise (the dollar and bonds usually go together)3. Oil stocks rallying more than the S&P (28% versus 18%) when oil prices continue to weaken and heating oil looks primed to fallNow there are explanations for the appreciation in long-dated Treasuries that do ...
Ending Child Hunger (3)
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Matthew Yglesias (1)
5 days, 19 hours
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Hilzoy suggests universal free breakfasts for children at school would be a good anti-poverty policy at a time when we’re expecting a sharp rise in the poverty rate due to the recession. I agree and, indeed, this is one of the five points in the five point plan to end child hunger that Joel Berg and Tom Feeedman released the other day for PPI. This isn’t really an issue I think about much, but when ...
Here Comes Everybody Review (28)
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Bruce Schneier (0)
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Schneier on Security (3)
5 days, 23 hours
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In 1937, Ronald Coase answered one of the most perplexing questions in economics: if markets are so great, why do organizations exist? Why don't people just buy and sell their own services in a market instead? Coase, who won the 1991 Nobel Prize in Economics, answered the question by noting a market's transaction costs: buyers and sellers need to find...
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kris. nuttycombe said:
"most user-generated content isn't 'content' at all, in the sense of being created for general consumption, any more than a phone call between you and a sibling is 'family-generated content.' Most of what gets created on any given day is just the ordinary stuff of life -- gossip, little updates, thinking out loud -- but now it's done in the same medium as professionally produced material. Unlike professionally produced material, however, Internet content can be organized after the fact."
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Ganius Tanuel said:
Book review. Sounds promising.
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Ade said:
"We've all figured out that the Internet makes freedom of speech a much harder right to take away. As Shirky demonstrates, Web 2.0 is having the same effect on freedom of assembly. The consequences of this won't be fully seen for years."
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John said:
This one has been on my wish list since I watched the Shirky talk Jeff Atwood referenced at: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001122.html
The Rise and Fall of Lobbyists (2)
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Kevin Drum - Mother Jones (0)
6 days
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THE RISE AND FALL OF LOBBYISTS....On K Street, the free market is hard at work:An assistant department secretary leaving the Bush administration three years ago, with Republicans in control of the House, Senate and White House, might fetch as much $600,000 to $1 million a year in the influence business, recruiters and lobbyists said. But the same person might now expect less than half as much. ....But for Democrats, the bidding is fierce. Three years ...
The Future of Ephemeral Conversation (44)
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schneier (3)
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Schneier on Security (3)
6 days, 16 hours
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When he becomes president, Barack Obama will have to give up his BlackBerry. Aides are concerned that his unofficial conversations would become part of the presidential record, subject to subpoena and eventually made public as part of the country's historical record. This reality of the information age might be particularly stark for the president, but it's no less true for all of us. Conversation used to be ephemeral. Whether face-to-face or by phone, we could ...
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Logical Extremes said:
"But as technology makes our conversations less ephemeral, we need laws to step in and safeguard ephemeral conversation. We need a comprehensive data privacy law, protecting our data and communications regardless of where it is stored or how it is processed. We need laws forcing companies to keep it private and delete it as soon as it is no longer needed. Laws requiring ISPs to store e-mails and other personal communications are exactly what we don't need. Rules pertaining to government need to be different, because of the power differential. Subjecting the president's communications to eventual public review increases liberty because it reduces the government's power with respect to the people. Subjecting our communications to government review decreases liberty because it reduces our power with respect to the government."
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Robert Postill said:
The classic security blogger Bruce Schneier just made the call for better privacy laws. I'm with Bruce and I'm all the more interested in that happening in the US given the amount of our data that flows across US networks.
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kris. nuttycombe said:
"Until our CEOs blog, our Congressmen Twitter, and our world leaders send each other LOLcats – until we have a Presidential election where both candidates have a complete history on social networking sites from before they were teenagers– we aren't fully an information age society."
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past said:
I've been having this conversation with friends a lot lately. It's nice to see Bruce Schneier take the words off my mind and put them on Wall Street Journal. I won't sue this time.
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Rick Dillon said:
Brilliant.
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tumbleweed said:
I keep IM logs because I find them useful. When I remember, I gpg-encrypt the archives. We all keep e-mail these days. Hmm.
Mathematica on Amazon EC2 (15)
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AWS Editor (9)
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Amazon Web Services Blog (9)
6 days, 19 hours
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Last week, I talked about MATLAB on Amazon EC2. Today, I am very excited to talk about Mathematica on Amazon EC2. Wolfram Research announced last week that they will be embracing the Cloud and providing a "Cloud Computing Service" with help of Nimbis Services, Inc The Mathematica cloud computing service will provide flexible and scalable access to HPC from within Mathematica, simplifying the transition from desktop technical computing to HPC. "The two largest challenges in ...
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Grork said:
That sir, is the shit yo. Being able to compute my (fictional) mathematica shit in the cloud? Thats awesome.
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Shane Conder said:
Something like this would be great for rendering tools. Test render on your über fast 16-core workstation, but then push the real render to the cloud via a simple click of the button where you might be able to get results back a thousand times faster than your workstation -- all from within the comfort of the application you're familiar with. If pricing is kept low enough, this could also be used to enable workstation-level rendering performance from a simple netbook. Is this true thin-client computing?
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Nick said:
Example of HPC ISV building a cloud solution
'Gray's Paradox' solved: Researchers discover secret of speedy dolphins (5)
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EurekAlert! - Breaking News (0)
1 week
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In 1936, zoologist Sir James Gray observed dolphins swimming faster than 20 mph, but his studies had concluded that the muscles of dolphins simply weren't strong enough to support that speed. The conundrum came to be known as "Gray's Paradox." For decades the puzzle prompted much speculation and conjecture in the scientific community. But now, armed with cutting-edge flow measurement technology, researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have tackled the problem and conclusively solved Gray's Paradox.
I’m Gettin’ Money (1)
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Matthew Yglesias (1)
1 week
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Throughout the financial crisis, I’ve been dimly trying to remember something I read on Tyler Cowen’s blog a long time ago. Today, Paul Krugman shows off his Nobel Prize skillz by finding the post in question: I also found myself thinking about the Kaplan-Rauh paper finding that Wall Street was largely responsible for the surge in very high incomes, which was widely taken as evidence that the new rich were really earning their money (though ...
Can't Get Around It (7)
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Josh Marshall (0)
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Talking Points Memo (2)
1 week, 1 day
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Today's Times has a lengthy piece on what got Citigroup into trouble. In general, the plot line is not surprising -- broad problems of corporate culture, lax internal oversight of potentially risky practices, a big, risky and ultimately disastrous move into mortgage-backed securities. There's a lot of criticism of Chuck Prince who inherited the CEO job from Sandy Weill in 2003. But through all of it, woven into the tale, is the name Robert Rubin. ...
Markets, Property Rights, and Air Pollution (2)
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Matthew Yglesias (1)
1 week, 1 day
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I’ve gotten interested in Brink Lindsey’s project aimed at liberal/libertarian fusionism for the 21st century. But every time I read something from the Cato Institute on climate change, I can see that it’s going to be very hard to get this particular chicken to fly. For example, here’s Daniel Ikenson writing about some tensions inside the House Democratic caucus between greens and the Michigan delegation. It’s like a postcard from an alternate reality: The Greens ...
Why Conservatives Hate Social Security (3)
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Bruce Webb (0)
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Angry Bear (0)
1 week, 1 day
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By Bruce WebbPGL raises and answers this question over at Econospeak Health Care Debate: So This is Why Conservatives Hate Social Security. Or rather he allows Conservatives in the person of Michael Cannon at Cato admit the fundamental truth: successful government social programs fatally undercut future political success for the Right. Cannon: Blocking Obama's Health Plan is Key to the GOP's SurvivalPGL sums it up as follows: Truth be told – this is a major ...
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jlapenna said:
I hated it before it was popular.
The center-right myth (1)
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Steve Benen (0)
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Political Animal (0)
1 week, 1 day
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THE CENTER-RIGHT MYTH.... And the Observation of the Day award goes to the estimable David Sirota. As the graph shows, the use of the exact term "center-right nation" spiked [in the major media] immediately after election day (point "0" is the day my column published, point "1" is election day). While it's true -- this trend study doesn't tell us how many of the "center-right nation" references are saying this is "not a center-right nation." ...
Two Views of Capitalism (7)
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Matthew Yglesias (1)
1 week, 1 day
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Thanks to the financial crisis, I’ve been paying more attention to the business press than usual. The business press, of course, is trying to sell to businessmen and businesswomen. Thus, it tends to reflect the general presumptions and outlook of businessfolk. And I think it’s noteworthy that the business class, as a set, has a curious and somewhat incoherent view of capitalism and why it’s a good thing. Indeed, it’s in most respects a backwards ...
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Neil H said:
From the comments on this post, people think it's either brilliant or bone-headed. I'm still not sure which side I come down on.
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CJ said:
Every now and then Matt really hits one out of the park.
Citigroup's Collapse (2)
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Kevin Drum - Mother Jones (0)
1 week, 1 day
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CITIGROUP'S COLLAPSE....The New York Times explains the proximate cause of Citigroup's imminent demise:The current turmoil can be traced back to the last weekend of September, when it sought to reassert itself by swallowing Wachovia, the stricken bank based in Charlotte, N.C., whose vast deposit base would have turned Citi into one of America’s dominant lenders. As the global financial crisis drove Wachovia toward collapse, the government frantically engineered their marriage. At a bargain price of ...
Big Bonuses (1)
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Kevin Drum - Mother Jones (0)
1 week, 2 days
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BIG BONUSES....Dan Ariely writes in the New York Times today about an experiment he did to find out if paying people big bonuses motivated them to produce better results:We presented 87 participants with an array of tasks that demanded attention, memory, concentration and creativity....We promised them payment if they performed the tasks exceptionally well. About a third of the subjects were told they’d be given a small bonus, another third were promised a medium-level bonus, ...
Did Talk Radio Kill Conservatism? (33)
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noreply@blogger.com (Nate Silver) (2)
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FiveThirtyEight.com: Politics Done Right (2)
1 week, 3 days
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Nate Silver [NS]: Do you stand by all the statements in the survey as being unambiguously true?John Ziegler [JZ]: I stand one hundred percent by the notion that there is absolutely zero ambiguity as to what the right answer is to any of the questions.And then a bit later...JZ: [Laughs]. In your world, the question that I would ask you is what question [in the survey] is there any ambiguity as to what the answer ...
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Greg Falken said:
I don't listen to talk radio, so I've never thought about the peculiarities of its format. But Nate makes some very interesting points about the limitations of talk radio's ability to persuade.
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kris. nuttycombe said:
"...almost uniquely to radio, most of the audience is not even paying attention to you, because most people listen to radio when they're in the process of doing something else... Hence what Wallace refers to as the importance of "stimulating" the listener, an art that Ziegler has mastered. Invariably, the times when Ziegler became really, really angry with me during the interview was when I was not permitting him to be stimulating, but instead asking him specific, banal questions that required specific, banal answers. Those questions would have made for terrible radio! And Ziegler had no idea how to answer them."
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cp said:
" The failures of the Bush administration have woken the country up; conservatives now need to find a way to communicate with people who are actually paying attention."
Dress Rehearsal for Scandal (2)
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Marion Maneker (0)
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The Big Picture (26)
1 week, 4 days
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Let’s do a little focus group on the news released this morning that former MSNBC host, President and legal correspondent Dan Abrams is opening a new media consulting venture called Abrams Research. Abrams looks like he is copying the Gerson Lehrman formula of finding expert information for hedge funds (though instead of getting information from journalists he’ll be getting reactions) and combining it with the idea of jury consulting (where you hone to create a ...
Team of Rivals (1)
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Steve Benen (0)
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Political Animal (0)
1 week, 4 days
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TEAM OF RIVALS.... Doris Kearns Goodwin's "Team of Rivals," about Abraham Lincoln stocking his cabinet with his political enemies to help forge political reconciliation, has been getting more than its share of attention. The President-elect has not only talked about how much he enjoyed the book, but as everyone political commentator with an audience seems to have emphasized, Obama also seems to be following in Lincoln's example as something of a template. Matthew Pinsker, who ...
