Oldvet– very good on the long run bond market. Here is another chart to put that trend in perspective. I suspect that to get back to the solid trend line it will take a Japaneses type depression scenario.

The Financial Accelerator, Revisited This was on the WSJ blog by Greg Ip and I though it was worth passing on. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s newfound urgency in addressing the risk of recession can be traced in part to the insights he gleaned from his pioneering research on the financial system and the Great Depression. […]

The Guardian reports a letter signed by five notable military persons sent to their respective governments concerning preemptive nuclear attack. The risk of further [nuclear] proliferation is imminent and, with it, the danger that nuclear war fighting, albeit limited in scope, might become possible,” the authors argued in the 150-page blueprint for urgent reform of […]

An Inconvenient Truth from John Bogle via Fool.com cautions investors. In my opinion the exuberance of playing even mutual funds, much less stocks, in the grand scheme of average investors is telling. I recently came across a chart that John Bogle, founder of the Vanguard Group, posted on his blog. This blog highlighted some startling […]

A review of costs in the Pharmaceutical industry for comparison between research and ‘marketing and administration’ budgets was done for 2004. Posts on the issue have argued the point. A quick review of this source looked reasonable, but needs a more careful study. There are better minds to do this than I, but offer the […]

The GAO reports on the inability to measure small amounts of toxins in the Great Lakes that can cause harm. The same is true, as described in other posts, for unborns and babies. Is this a worthy function of government to oversee, water and babies being crucial also to us? How would a free market […]

In this mornings New York Times Bruce Bartlett published a nice list of anti recession measures by Congress and makes the point that they are always too late. However, if you read the list of 14 different measures he list you find that 12 of them are for public works programs and he is completely […]

Bruce Bartlet of The NYC gives us this perspective on rescue plans. The history of anti-recession efforts is that they are almost always initiated too late to do any good. This chart, based on recession timelines from the National Bureau of Economic Research, shows the enactment of stimulus plans is a fairly accurate indicator that […]

This article states state of the art research for propranolol for PTSD. At this point in the research, though, it’s too early to tell how well beta blockers might work even as a therapeutic aid, Altemus said. “There were two small studies that have already been done using propranolol for PTSD, where they treated people […]

Martin Luther King Day organization asks for action, not vacation and a three day weekend. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. sought to forge the common ground on which people from all walks of life could join together to address important community issues. On January 21st, 2008, millions of Americans across the country will once again […]