Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Prostate Cancer Advance, and Europeans Free Riding on American Research

by Mike Kimel There’s a story going around in the news about a new prostate cancer drug. Here’s press release: A life-extending new drug to treat patients with advanced prostate cancer, developed by The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) and The Royal Marsden Hospital, has received its UK license. Abiraterone acetate, marketed by Janssen under […]

PSA: Steve Keen at the Roosevelt in NYC tonight at 5:00/6:00

Talk is called “Neat, Plausible, and Wrong: the Deluded Discipline of Economics.” I have to quibble with the “plausible” portion: there is no possible way to rationalize contemporary Microeconomics with any reasonable conceit that the Macroeconomics produced are “first-best” or anything similar.* I doubt I’ll be there at 5:00, but certainly by 6:00. Hope to […]

LBO:Private Equity::HFT:Algorithmic Trading?

The High-Frequency Traders who have been distorting the U.S. stock market and raising the costs for everyone else have had their pride wounded. After starting with a straightforward definition: High frequency trading — the use of computer-driven, algorithmic-based techniques to execute trades in a matter of microseconds — is drawing scrutiny, but Wall Street argues […]

CGI2011: Women’s Rights: What’s In It for Men?

As regular—well, obsessive–readers know, I’m stealing a title from the sainthood-destined Michèle Tertilt.  But it seems appropriate—and a better title than “Engaging Boys and Men as Allies for Long-term Change”—for today’s Plenary hosted by Former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet. We got a taste of this yesterday, on the panel hosted by Robin Roberts (now a […]

The ATM Myth

Brad DeLong cited this passage from Ron Suskind’s latest book on Monday: Both [Christina Romer and Larry Summers], in fact, were concerned by something the president had said in a morning briefing: that he thought that high unemployment was due to productivity gains in the economy. The same meme spread across the economics spectrum: Scott […]

PSA: Mark Thoma, Schlesinger and Jack Otter Answer Questions about the Economy at 2:00pm today (EDT)

From my email (with formatting lost): Ask the Experts: What’s Next for the Economy? It’s a big week for the American economy. President Obama announced his plans to reduce the deficit on Monday, and Wednesday afternoon the Federal Reserve announces its new plan to boost growth. Do these proposals make sense? And what do they […]

CGI 2011 – Developing Green Technology

Van Jones of Rebuild the Dream introduces the two presenters by noting that we are in the “post-Whale oil” strategy for liquid fuels; using algae and biomass technologies. Jonathan Wolfson, CEO of Solazyme, Inc. opens by thanking his investors and then stating,  “We make oil.”  He declares that oil is not going away, and is […]

CGI 2011 – Plenary on Climate Change (AGW)

President Clinton introduces the panelists, noting that there is a UN discussion of Libya scheduled for 10:00 a.m. and that they will have to leave quickly.  First up is Mexican President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, about whom President Clinton is enthusiastic. Calderon is less vibrant, but presents an impressive array of detail on Mexico’s unilateral reduction […]