Not-So-Select Short Subjects

Now that I know we’re just members of the “Peanut Gallery,”* let this random links post work as a placeholder for longer posts as we prepare for the “holiday”:

Shorter Mark Thoma at Marketwatch: If you can’t build a better model, best to reappoint a man who doesn’t think he has to do half of his job. (UPDATE: Or even less than that. [h/t Linda Beale])

Shorter Mark Thoma at his own blog: All of our current models prefer people to starve and die.

A fun graphic (h/t Abnormal Returns)

Think the Health Insurance “Reform” Bill will “bend the cost curve”? Think again.

*That the “Periodic Table” pretends to be about Finance Bloggers and yet categorizes DeLong, Thoma, and Mankiw, to name three, as “Rocket Scien[tists]” instead of Economists should in no way be seen to impune the quality of the analysis, of course.