Here is something weird, and a little creepy:
The freakshow that is DeepCapture.com seems to have grabbed all of the Facebook friends of anyone who has ever: a) written anything positive about short selling or 2) said anything negative about Overstock.com.
For those of you who are unaware of what [...]
The only thing more shocking than ClimateGate is the climate science community's response to ClimateGate. As Clive Crook points out in the Atlantic today:
The first line of response to the leaked or hacked emails, you recall, was to say that they showed science going on as usual--even science at [...]
Australia’s latest unemployment numbers seem now to suggest a levelling off of unemployment at or a bit below 6 percent, at least for the next few months. The unemployment rate in November dropped to 5.7%, with full time jobs rising by 31,000. Full time jobs are still down about 150,000 [...]
This evening while shopping at Target I noticed that, in a single trip out to the parking lot, one (teenage) employee manages to round up and return to the entry-way of the store a quantity of shopping carts that, when I was working such jobs 30-plus years ago, required the [...]
With the government, the opposition and the media all heavily engaged in gratuitous bank-bashing, few people have given much attention to the implications of tighter capital adequacy regulation for the cost of borrowing to consumers. RBA Governor Glenn Stevens was remarkably frank about [...]
Sometimes, even suckers get lucky. As a result, I’m currently stationed in Copenhagen for the next two weeks. I will be regularly blogging events as they transpire for RFF’s climate blog Weathervane, which I will also post here. In addition, I will take full advantage of the lack of [...]
It may sound like a case of “the pot calling the kettle black”. Asciano is worried about the behaviour of QR after it is privatised by the Queensland government. The story is here. However, Asciano have a good point. When privatising large utility companies – like QR, which owns [...]
...a Laevinic defeat, according to "Benjamin." Hoisted from Comments:
Another Such Defeat and We Will Be the Winners!: Benjamin said...
a Laevinic defeat would certainly be the correct term, Publius Valerius Laevinus being on the receiving side of Pyrrhus' victory.
However, the Berkeley Classics Department inclines toward' [...]
This evening at 7pm ET:DURING his latest confirmation grilling, Ben Bernanke was asked about deficit reduction strategies. He replied colourfully:
Citing legendary [...]
What just happened? A 90-year-old winner of a Medal of Honor pulls the political card to trump a contract he freely signed. And the White House is involved (at some level, anyway).
If only the homeowners association would have put up a fight.
Note: So what was the supposed reason [...]
WSJ’s Dave Kansas tells colleague David Weidner much of the ideas for preventing future crisis that were presented at the Future of Finance conference were “apple pie.” He says it reflects the conservative mood among financial executives and policy makers.
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S&P 500 Index (SPX) – Weekly Chart
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As seen above the S&P 500 Index still remains in an up trending wedge (green lines) however for the last two weeks the index has stalled under a secondary downtrend line (red line # [...]
Why oh why can't we have a better press corps? I mean, it hasn't even crashed and burned. It's dead and rotted: a source of smell and disease.
Matthew Yglesias
Matthew Yglesias: Fred Hiatt Wants The Washington Post to Go Out of Business: FWhat other explanation could there be for [...]
Risk is always present, and always changing, and always surprising. Some of today’s risks may end as false alarms. Meanwhile, what seems benign, perhaps even beneficial, can bite back tomorrow. So it goes in the money game. The challenge is a) understanding the unending dynamic; and b) managing portfolios accordingly [...]
A business in the private sector is utterly and completely dependent on customers for its revenue, so the revenue they spend on gift giving necessarily comes from the customers too! Why do they believe that they are fostering good will? FULL ARTICLE by Jeffrey Tucker
[...]“This is the question that is being posed in Copenhagen,” said Robert N. Stavins, director of the environmental economics program at Harvard University. “How much money do the developed countries have to put on the table to bring [...]
Felix Salmon, in "The economics of kissing-and-telling," asks several interesting questions but provides no answers.
Eugene Robinson at the Washington Post quotes a colleague's "theory about philandering":
Roberts postulates that famous, powerful men who stray would be smart to choose women who have just as much to lose if [...]
I told you big change was coming to higher education:
Kira Cassels applied to 11 colleges and got in to every one. The kitchen of her Laurel home came to resemble a high school guidance office, the breakfast table buried beneath brochures and financial aid forms from destinations such [...]
This has got to belong in the New York Times crashed-and-burned-and-smoking watch:
Stanely Fish: My assessment of the book has nothing to do with the accuracy of its accounts. Some news agencies have fact-checkers poring over every sentence, which would be to the point if the book were a [...]
Why are we spending a multiple of Afghanistan’s total GDP on fighting a war in the country?
Some follow-ups are:
Couldn’t more be done, for cheaper, with cash for bribes and development? How is it that it doesn’t take the Taliban years to train competent soldiers?
That is all from Matt Yglesias.
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