In his final speech as President, Dwight Eisenhower warned against a heretofore unrecognized danger to America, namely the growing influence of what the Commander in Chief called the “military/industrial complex”. This excerpt reminds us that despite our nostalgic view of the 1950s, the struggle against Communist was seen as an epic battle: Throughout America’s adventure […]
Read more...I’m intrigued when a commentator gives high praise to a work by someone who comes from a political vantage different from his own. I get even more interested when another take on the same piece seems straight out of Rashomon, a radically different account with only a few facts in common. The opus in question […]
Read more...I kid you not, the headline above is a faithful representation of the thrust of an article today in the New York Times, “The Scars of Losing a Home,” by Yale economist Robert Shiller. With friends like this, liberals have no need of enemies. Shiller’s argument is ludicrous: implement the legislation before Congress, which guarantes […]
Read more...As a resident of New York City, I am acutely aware of the perils of neuroticism. This town is full of it. I am as guilty as anyone, although I try to keep it under wraps. If I wasn’t concerned about looking like a control freak in front of clients and friends, I would grill […]
Read more...An odd set of voices is beginning to question the wisdom of America’s extraordinarily generous subsidies to homeowners. Paul Krugman once remarked that American like to consume houses, while the French prefer to consume vacations, but we shouldn’t overlook the role of incentives in those choices. At the Milken Institute Global Conference, a true disciple […]
Read more...The headline above may overstate the case a tad. I sincerely doubt the Milken Institute took much note of last Friday’s offering, Hubris, Denial, and the Financial Services Culture. They had plenty of coverage by the mainstream media and reportedly regard blogs with some skepticism (the person who was responsible for our panel on econobloggers […]
Read more...Today a brave filly died at Churchill Downs. Eight Belles was the only one of a huge field of twenty to break from the pack in the homestretch of the Kentucky Derby and attempt to run down the hard charging winner, Big Brown. She collapsed almost immediately after crossing the finish line, both ankles broken, […]
Read more...I am still recovering from the Milken Conference, and unlike my fellow blog panelists Paul Kedrosky, Felix Salmon and Mark Thoma, have not written any posts on particular sessions. In part, that was because in my other life as a consultant, I am well aware of the dangers of relying on memory even though mine […]
Read more...I believe in synchronicity, so I found it noteworthy that I came across two articles that gave great prominence to the issue of values, one Jeremy Grantham’s April newsletter, “Immoral Hazard,” the other a post by Willem Buiter on, of all things, the Olympics. Grantham’s excellent piece is unfortunately too long to present in full; […]
Read more...Well, Buiter did not go quite as far as I suggested in the headline. He recommended a 1500 year pause. This post made me realize why I have a certain fondness for Buiter. It’s not that I agree with his argument (I hate to confess, I have come to be completely bored by the event, […]
Read more...A Washington Post article, “From DNA of Family, a Tool to Make Arrests,” points to the increasing efforts to look for partial matches in DNA databases that might implicate close relatives. This is a disturbing development, since DNA, like other forensic evidence, isn’t as foolproof as its image in the popular imagination indicates. There have […]
Read more...Food shortages have gotten an uptick in press coverage in the last two days due to a G7 pronouncement that was curiously interpreted differently by the New York Times and the Financial Times. First, the NY Times: The world’s economic ministers declared on Sunday that shortages and skyrocketing prices for food posed a potentially greater […]
Read more...It’s no surprise to anyone in America that being middle class isn’t what it used to be. Even though we have more gadgets, middle class workers in the 1950s and 1960s could afford to have stay-at-home wives. For mort households, it takes more hours of paid labor, and more borrowing, to support a bourgeois lifestyle. […]
Read more...One of the hobbyhorses of the rational-choice economics types is that voting is irrational. The odds of your vote making a difference are ludicrously small, so why bother? Readers may recall that the New York Times picked up on the argument by Lloyd Cohen of George Mason Univerisity that, contrary to widely held views, buying […]
Read more...Bloomberg had a odd article on the varying fortunes of Harvard MBAs (and some alumni of other Harvard graduate programs). It duly notes that they range from unquestioned successes like Lou Gerstner to more controversial figures, such as Jeff Skilling, Paul Bilzerian, Henry Paulson,, Stan O’Neal, and of course, George W. Bush Generalizing about HBS […]
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