Beached whales die in Australia BBC
Research on mice links fast food to Alzheimer’s Reuters
The Return of the Skyscraper Index Dollar Daze
Retiree Havens Turn Younger to Combat Bust Wall Street Journal
PwC survey says consumers stay home as they repay debt Times Online
Quantitative easing: printing money like mad to ward off deflation Ed Harrison. Harrison takes a bit of an Austrian turn in his definition of inflation.
How to Squeeze the Most Out of a Stimulus Plan Louis Uchitelle, New York Times
World stability hangs by a thread as economies continue to unravel Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Telegraph
My “non-testimony” on the regulation of swaps and derivatives Richard Bookstaber. Do read this if you have any interest in derivatives.
German complacency poses a serious threat Wolfgang Munchau, Financial Times. A good piece, but a nitpick. Economists Tom Ferguson’s and Peter Temin’’s excruciatingly well documented paper on the 1931 currency crisis debunk Munchau’s charge against Weimar last chancelllor Heinrich Brüning , Munchau is wrong in his charge that Heinrich Brüning efforts to balance the budget were hopelessly misguided. The facts are far more complicated. It was bad political decisions that deep-sixed the German republic.
Germany was about to lose access to international capital. Brunig’s efforts to balance the budget brought a change in international perception. German bonds traded up, Germany was increasingly seen as a responsible borrower, there was even talk among analysts that outstanding issues would trade at par within a year, a radical turnabout.
So what screwed it up? The French were, after the US, the biggest international bond buyers. Germany moved forward with a plan to build a couple of pocket battleships (rearmament) and worse, entered into a customs union with Austria (this was done back door, effectively foisted on Brunig). This was a violation of the spirit, and pretty close to the letter, of the 1918 armistice. France refused to buy German bonds. Chaos resulted internally as the government, which was providing extensive social support, could no longer fund itself. Exit Weimar.
Doris Dungey, Prescient Finance Blogger, Dies at 47 New York Times. I am deeply saddened to learn that Tanta passed on. She was kind enough to respond to my direct queries sometimes, and I was struck by how generous she was in giving me detailed and thoughtful replies. I very much enjoyed her work at CR. I will miss her wry, penetrating style and her unwavering commitment to accuracy, which is all too rare these days. Please also read CR’s heartfelt post: Sad News: Tanta Passes Away.
Antidote du jour:
Anonymous 
Posts
A clear case of tit for tat:
The first exotic animal known to have been exhibited in America was a lion, in Boston in 1716, followed five years later in the same city by a camel. A sailor arrived in Philadelphia in August 1717 with another lion, which he exhibited in the city and surrounding towns for eight years.
While lions do not usually hunt people, some (usually males) seem to seek out human prey; well-publicized cases include the Tsavo maneaters, where 28 railway workers building the Kenya-Uganda Railway were taken by lions over nine months during the construction of a bridge over the Tsavo River in Kenya in 1898,