There’s a reason for this. After the (wholly justified, understated) bitterness of my last post, a moment of cheer:  An old friend of mine is in the process of losing his job. Now, normally I wouldn’t celebrate anyone—let alone a friend—losing a job, but, you see, he sells medical insurance in Texas and Indiana.  And […]

I doubt even the Internet’s self-appointed Chief Geithner Apologist will be foolish enough to stand by him after this piece of shite: Some people just don’t like movies with happy endings. How else to explain this week’s report by the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP)? Rather than […]

This is actually good news, since everything else the Fed has done has been to benefit the insolvent large banks. Still, I didn’t expect my post of three days ago to be such a perfect “negative indicator” so soon.

I have (vainly, I suspect, in both senses of the phrase), tried to start a meme on Twitter, #ifTimGeithnerrantheEmergencyRoom. “The defibrillator would only charge to 30 to prevent scarring; anything more and you’re on your own” probably isn’t winning friends or influencing people, but it does make me feel better. It also makes me look […]

Via Jonathan Turley, a real “it gets better” video:

Chris Blattman highlights the latest version of Janet Currie and Reed Walker’s research on a positive externality of the shift to E-Z Pass (PDF link). From the Abstract: We find that reductions in traffic congestion generated by E-ZPass reduced the incidence of prematurity and low birth weight among mothers within 2km of a toll plaza […]

From the Lex column in today’s FT: Tim Geithner’s extraordinary denial that the US is deliberately weakening its currency is a reminder that the [Hong Kong Monetary Authority] should no longer talk blithely of the “unparalleled credibility” of US monetary policy.

I took a couple of days to let life interfere with blogging, but none of the standard politics/economics bloggers seems to have highlighted this note from the Lex column of last Wednesday’s (13 October 2010) FT (again, no link; feel free to provide in comments) under the heading “Defence M&A”: Lockheed has two small services […]

When the question is asked whether the Obama Administration are fools or liars—and a certain Chicago mayoral candidate is often nominated as both—you can be certain discussion of “the public option” will come up. It doesn’t come up directly in today’s FT (page 4 of the print edition; no link; I get the paper edition, […]

I’ve been working on White Paper on Liquidity and the idea of a “market,” and plan to post some pieces of it here over the next week or so. But this is too good to pass up, and I’m late to the game as is. On 15 September, the CFTC and the SEC held a […]