By Dave Anderson:
The New York Times on a Carnegie Mellon economic decision making experiment:
The so-called ultimatum game contains a world of psychological and economic mysteries. In a laboratory setting, one person is given an allotment of money (say, $100) and instructed to offer a second person a portion. If [...]
By Dave Anderson:
Paul Krugman is too polite as he accurately describes the broken dynamic of the faux deficit hawks and centrists in the Senate, I'll translate at the end.
I’m talking instead about the self-described centrists, pundits and politicians, who have spent years lecturing us on the need to make' [...]
By Dave Anderson:
I'm an evaluator by profession and training. Good evaluation is a continuous learning process as we attempt to close the OODA loop so that smart decisions can be made on the basis of accurate, relevant and timely information. Doing this should allow for better programmatic outcomes and awareness' [...]
By Dave Anderson:
Matt Yglesias is being obtuse as he feigns confusion as to why Senate Republicans are voting against Bernacke despite Bernacke's promise to tie the anchor of 10% unemployment around the Democrats' necks for the next five years.
it’s somewhat baffling to me that six Republicans on the [...]By Dave Anderson:
The Pittsburgh Rivers Casino has broken out of its trend revenue.
The nose-dive has recommenced. Last week, the casino took in $143 dollars per machine per day. The week before that, the Rivers took in $154 per machine per day. This is a dramatic change.
After the G-20 [...]
By Dave Anderson:
At this point, no one likes the healthcare bill in the Senate. Let's accept that as a given. Let us also accept that there are some good things in the bill (notably recission, the framework of an exchange and regulation), some not so good things in the bill' [...]
By Dave Anderson:
I really don't get the Blue Dogs and the faux deficit hawks.
I really don't get their incentive structure to cover their own ass as their actions seem faulty as hell. I can understand marginal seat Democrats voting to extend the estate tax rate reductions as that is a [...]
By Dave Anderson:
Via the BBC, an interesting and useful map of what cartels are dominant where in Mexico:
[...]By Dave Anderson:
Changing policy to benefit entrenched, well-connected and well-funded interests is easy. That is the basic story behind Bush's tax-cuts. He wanted to give money to the well-connected and the elite. They were willing to take the money and to use their access and power to convince people that [...]
By BJ Bjornson
At this point I don't give a damn about Obama. If he's going to govern like Clinton or a Republican we might as well have a Republican.
Ron Beasley from I agree with Howard
Sure, Republicans will be worse, but only by degree and not categorically worse.
Dave Anderson from [...]
By Dave Anderson:
1) Get your knees up
2) Relax
3) Think of England
That is good advice in two situations. The first is in the fraction of a second before one is hit by an oncoming car as becoming a reed flexing in the wind (or through the windshield) is far safer than [...]
By Dave Anderson:
I am at best a believer in the weakest form of the mostly, sort of, kind-of eventually efficient market hypothesis --- namely that Stein's law is in effect and that sooner or later, valuations will roughly reflect reality but day to day price fluctuations are mainly noise. Strong' [...]
By Dave Anderson:
I have been puzzled as to why the Mexican cartels have not begun to attack the Mexican government's cash flow. The Mexican economy has five main sources of foreign currency; hydrocarbon exports, light manufacturing in the border zone, tourism, remittances and smuggling into the United States. The cartels' [...]
By Dave Anderson:
Ian Welsh summarizes politics 101:
Bad policy = bad outcomes for ordinary people. Bad outcomes for ordinary people when you control the House, Senate and White House make them figure they should try the other party. (See, 2006, 2008).
Dem politicos need to get this tattooed on their butt, [...]
By Dave Anderson:
That is where Tony Blair should be going anyways for a trial on the crime of waging aggressive war. He indicts himself this morning as the LA Times reports:
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has said he would have found a justification for invading Iraq even without the [...]
By Dave Anderson:
I have long thought that the primary cartel goal in Mexico is not a collapsed state, as we see that Somalia is too dysfunctional for large scale, complex criminality in the anarchic south, but a hollow state that maintains the pretenses and appearance of sovereignty but not [...]
By Dave Anderson:
I've been tough on Altmire and I still think that he faces an uphill battle for re-election as I have a very hard time seeing where he will get his doorknockers to rouse an apathetic Democratic base in a Tea Party friendly district. He has voted against' [...]
By Dave Anderson:
The Security Crank points out claims that a significant portion of the entire Chechan population is supposedly in Warizistan:
At some point, this kind of thing moves beyond parody.
According to the reports Haji Akbar Ali Mehsud, a 55-year-old resident of Zinda village in District Sararogha received, there [...]
By Dave Anderson:
Carbon taxes and cap and trade are both attempts to create price incentives to reduce carbon emissions. The goal is to raise the dispersed and mostly externalized cost of pollution into a concentrated and internalized cost for the polluter. From here, most polluters will seek to reduce emissions [...]
By Dave Anderson:
How much has piracy impacted Egypt? The main impact on Egypt is the loss of trade from ships that would otherwise have landed at an Egyptian Red Sea port but no longer or not as frequently and the loss of revenue from the Suez Canal. The first group [...]
By Dave Anderson:
Voice of America reports on a large series of attacks in Baghdad:
Iraqi police say a series of car bombings across the capital, Baghdad, has killed at least 112 people and wounded nearly 200 others....
Tuesday's attacks were the worst in the Iraqi capital since late October when twin car bomb [...]
By Dave Anderson:
One of the great structural problems that faces the United States is that our elites are insulated from their stupidity. There is sufficient wealth and social amnesia that being wrong is at most a minor inconvenience instead of a career killer unless the "wrongness" involves stating the unpleasantly [...]
By Dave Anderson:
Just a few things that I have seen about Somalia during the past week.
The Wall Street Journal reports on a partial decapitation strike on the Somali "government" that is completely dependent on foreign guns that are insufficient to secure the capital city:
A suicide blast at a [...]
By Dave Anderson:
Budgets are moral documents as they are the practical implementation and prioritization of plans and values.
Ezra Klein notes where the priorities of the American elite lie:
As Annie Lowrey points out, Obey isn't trying to make the Iraq and Afghanistan wars deficit-neutral. He's not even trying to [...]
By Dave Anderson:
The Typepad iteration of the Newshoggers has just put up its 5,000th post. We opened the doors here in April 2007 and have been writing up a storm since then. We are averaging a touch more than eight posts per day. Going back through the blogger 'Hog, the' [...]
