Which brings us to Snoopy, who has, for reasons I don’t fully understand, long been the emblem of the insurance giant MetLife. “At the end of 2014 the regulators designated MetLife, whose business extends far beyond individual life insurance, a systemically important financial institution. Other firms faced with this designation have tried to get out […]

As Dean Baker and several (mostly) alternative-media and hobbyist bloggers—including actual experts on Dodd-Frank and on financial-institution governance—have noted since the New York Daily News editorial board released a transcript last Tuesday of its interview with Bernie Sanders, it was not Sanders but instead members of that editorial board who were deeply confused about what […]

Noah Smith posted a cartoon about how the minimum wage works. The cartoon came from Mark J. Perry at the American Enterprise Institute. Noah said that it is Econ 101ism and I totally agree. Now the cartoon is obviously a wrong way to look at minimum wage. (I use the word “obviously” to play upon […]

A question to Senator Lindsey Graham by “The Daily Show’s” Trevor Noah asking why he endorsed Cruz for the Republican Presidential candidate over Trump. Earlier, Noah ran a clip of Graham stating it was a choice between getting shot or being poisoned and the reasoning for the choice of Cruz was there may be “an […]

I was doing manufacturing throughput consulting in the eighties for Ingersoll Engineers. I was on a gig in Peoria, IL with an older man (I did the research and he presented as I looked too young to be an expert) at Caterpillar attempting to help them find out where all the parts went after they […]

It’s by Zachary Karabell, who heads a hedge fund and has authored a book.  The article’s title is somewhat misleading, describing the less important of the two topics the piece discusses. ____ CORRECTION: This is from the comments thread: Kevin Meyer April 8, 2016 12:33 pm FWIW, Karabell does NOT ‘head’ or otherwise run a […]

A notion is rapidly crystallizing among the national media that Bernie Sanders majorly bungled an interview with the editorial board of the New York Daily News.His rival, Hillary Clinton, has even sent a transcript of the interview to supporters as part of a fundraising push. A close look at that transcript, though, suggests the media may […]

by Sandwichman Zero-Sum Foolery 2 of 4: Doomsday Climate Machine We have met the doomsday machine and it is us. The “doomsday machine” became a household word after Herman Kahn speculated about building such a device in his 1960 book, On Thermonuclear War. Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove: How I learned to stop worrying and love […]

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren Senate Republicans held a Banking Committee hearing today to talk about why we should roll back the rules on mortgages and credit cards because they’re just too costly for the banks. One of their witnesses, Leonard Chanin, had helped lead the Federal Reserve division that refused to regulate deceptive mortgages — […]