Has the Murdoch era already begun? Two days in a row we have had page one stories in the Wall Street Journal that managed to skew the facts. Today’s piece, “Foreign Investors Face New Hurdles Across the Globe,” is misleading in a minor and a major way. The minor way is likely to be apparent […]
Read more...In a firm, articulate op-ed piece in the Financial Times, “Protect workers from the private equiteers,” Jack Dromey, an officer of the trade union Unite, says, “Workers deserve better in private equity deals.” I’ve gotten so used to writers that are afraid to take on the orthodoxy of free markets that it’s refreshing to see […]
Read more...In “GAO: Consultant Conflicts May Slash Pension Returns,” CFO.com reports on a GAO study that looked into the performance of defined benefit pension funds that used consultants that had undisclosed conflicts of interest. The analysis found that the funds that relied on these advisors had lower investment returns. Their annual results were 1.3% lower on […]
Read more...Larry Summers has a remarkable piece in the Financial Times today, “Harness market forces to share prosperity.” It’s noteworthy not so much for the information, arguments, and recommendations Summers makes regarding rising income inequality, but for the line Summers takes. After so many years in the wilderness, it appears that liberals are finally regaining their […]
Read more...The press is all a twitter about the possibility of a Bloomberg presidential bid (see ReutersNew York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Financial Times). Despite the New York mayor’s statement that he is not a candidate, his announcement Tuesday that he was leaving the Republican party was seen as precursor to a bid […]
Read more...This is the title of what, according to Steven Shapin in the New Yorker, is a very good book by British historian David Edgerton on technology. Edgerton makes a bold argument, namely, that the way we think about technology is dominated by a heroic narrative in which a new approach sweeps aside what came before […]
Read more...In a MarketWatch story that was ostensibly about the continuing saga of the Bear Stearns hedge fund implosion comes a juicy tidbit about the composition of subprime loans. It turns out half weren’t even for housing purchases but to refinance other debt: Subprime loans are made to less credit-worthy borrowers at higher rates. It’s a […]
Read more...A post on the Guardian’s blog by Jeremy Seabrook blames a lot of the social ills afflicting British youth on the intrusion of the marketplace: binge-drinking, the “normalisation” of drugs, the cult of celebrity, the supremacy of what money can buy, incivility, absence of respect, obesity, the epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases – are by-products […]
Read more...An article, “Better Deeds,” by Doug Smith at Slate tells us that, contrary to popular opinion, one group of subprime mortgage lenders has done well with the product and is experiencing default rates comparable to that of prime mortgages. And no, they aren’t seeing rising arrearages either (generally speaking, mortgage defaults and foreclosures track the […]
Read more...The blog Overcoming Bias pointed to an article in Reason Magazine, “More Information Confirms What You Already Know.“ The article cites a study by the Cultural Cognition Project at Yale Law School. “Affect, Values, and Nanotechnology Risk Perceptions: An Experimental Investigation,” which sought to assess attitudes towards new technology but has broader implications: [R]esearchers polled […]
Read more...A more accurate title might be “The Wall Street Journal Goes Out of Its Way to Demonize Chavez.” Narrowly speaking, Venezuela (except perhaps its actions as an OPEC member) are outside the beat of this blog. However, we do take a keen interest in the biases in the Wall Street Journal’s reporting, and this one […]
Read more...In a New York Times article, Daniel Gross sympathetically discusses a paper by MIT economists Peter Temin and Frank Levy on the role of institutional behavior and social attitudes in income inequality. As a preface to his comments about their work, he sets forth some of the conventional arguments for the inevitability of inequality, namely, […]
Read more...Since Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has increasingly shifted his focus from his technology enterprise to his charity, the William and Melinda Gates Foundation, he has also had time to clarify and refine his objectives. Unlike the super-wealthy of the past, whose giving typically has been motivated by a combination of enhancing their prestige (often revealed […]
Read more...We have only occasionally commented on the lively debate on the serious economics blogs on heterodoxy in economics (basically, the loyal opposition is a beleaguered minority). However, Mark Thoma on his blog, Economist’s View, picks up and elaborates on an insight by Steve Waldman that has much larger implications. Waldman argues that neoclassical economics has […]
Read more...Despite it’s “Don’t Be Evil” slogan, Google rates below the oft-demonized Microsoft on its privacy practices, according to the London group Privacy International. (For the record, Microsoft and Apple were in the next-to-the-bottom tier). Now in this era of a Federal government that has been footdragging on shutting down its illegal warrantless wiretap program, the […]
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