(Data via Yahoo! Finance)

One of the most notable things about ski trips to the States from Canada was that they offered “U.S. medical insurance”—a buy-in that cost around the same as a lift ticket if you wanted to ski Stowe instead of Tremblant. One of the scariest moments in Sicko is when the Canadian relatives note that they […]

Bruce Bartlett posts a note that could have come from me (but, for reasons that will become obvious, did not: During the 8 Reagan years, when marginal [tax] rates were sharply cut (but deficits were substantial), equities on the NYSE and the S & P 500 about doubled. During the 4 Bush 41 years, when […]

Ken Houghton, having realized there is still a Commercial Paper market, looks at one implication of it. One of the things that gets ignored in all the fussing about government debt is how small it is by comparison to corporate debt. The shortest-term debt, Commercial Paper, can be very interesting. With a maturity that is […]

Dr. Black starts digging into the question why so many Georgia-based banks fail. The picture painted isn’t pretty: The review also contains a photo of a planned 238 townhouse project that the bank financed for $5.6 million in 2007 even as the real estate market was softening. By September 2008 about three quarters of the […]

It has long been a standard claim of economics—iirc, Robert Lucas was the first to say it aloud, though it may have been Gary Becker*—that a man who marries his housekeeper lowers GDP. Apparently, Dubner and Levitt have taken this claim—along with their Rick James title**—to heart. Echidne has the details. A short sample: There […]

Brad DeLong does in less than a weekend. He is as enchanted as Robert was*: My personal favorite is a giant parasol 18,000 miles in diameter at L1 to absorb and then reradiate a chunk of sunlight in other bands. but notes the reality as well: But I have never been able to find anyone […]

This cannot be true, can it? Louisiana Justice of the Peace Denies Marriage License to Interracial Couple: According to [Keith Bardwell, a justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish], he won’t support interracial marriages because he doesn’t feel that black or white society will accept the children of the couple once they are born. I […]

Dr. Black had a link to foreclosures in Irvine, California. This one especially caught my eye: 5031 Alcorn Lane, Turtle RockAmount owed: $298,876.14Last sale: July 2001, $485,000Auction date & time: Nov. 5 at 10 a.m.Location: In front of the flagpoles at Placentia Civic Center, 401-411 E. Chapman Ave.Trustee sale #: JPM-580Information: 714-573-1965 [emphasis mine] I […]

The close: [W]hen the New York Times came and offered [Ross Douhat] a column, he did not turn it down saying “no, I clearly do not deserve this honour, others are far more qualified for it that me”. The NYT thinks Douhat’s important because people link to him. They neither realize—nor care—that you’re laughing at […]