Via Mankiw, who notes that “among economists listed” at PinnacleSports, Martin Feldstein is the favorite. I was going to snark that that must be because they have a lousy field for bettors, but Mankiw links to Ladbrokes, too, where people rationally expect that declaring Economics once and for all irrelevant (i.e., giving the award to […]
In this case, it was probably because—unlike the Vice Presidential candidate whose account he allegedly accessed—David Kernell tries to figure out how the world works.
Because Hilzoy asked, and I agree with Brad DeLong that it’s not an unreasonable question. No guarantee the 11 are on this list, of course. This is a simple cross-reference of “The McCain ‘100’” and “NBER Family Members.” There are 14 Faculty Research Fellows, 13 Research Associates, and 2 OLs on this list.* *I can’t […]
Here’s what Happens When I Click a Link by Accident: Does anyone believe the market rate for taxi drivers in Maryland is $11.41 an hour? The base salary for an Assistant Professor of Economics is $115-120K for elite schools (well, Harvard and Stanford, but you get the idea).* Morgan Stanley offered $85,000 for an Analyst […]
sc, commenting at Alea on September 24th, was much better: How to play this to make money? GLD and SKF (if it starts behaving properly) and OTM [out of the money] puts on C, BAC, WB. That last is WalkAllOverYa, which is either WFC or Big C bound, depending on time of day, phase of […]
Alea notes TAF results: Total propositions submitted: $138.092 billionTotal propositions accepted: $138.092 billionBid/cover ratio: 0.92 Number of bidders: 71 The auction in question was supposed to be a $150B, 85-day auction to get firms through year-end. (For contrast, the last 84-day [12 week] auction had a bid-to-cover of 1.27.) Clearly, all the firms that are […]
UPDATE: Brad DeLong notes that there is no requirement, under the bailout bill, for halfway measures and delays: Every other country that is in this business is nationalizing the banks and injecting capital into them. Only the United States is operating on the asset side along. It’s unlikely to work, and Neel is now responsible. […]
Ken Houghton Or at least optimistic. McCain is going after Medicare and Medicaid. But Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Sen. McCain’s senior policy adviser, said Sunday that the campaign has always planned to fund the tax credits, in part, with savings from Medicare and Medicaid. Those government health-care programs serve seniors, poor families and the disabled. Medicare spending […]
Stormy noted that Wells Fargo’s bill is based in part on “exploiting a presumed tax loophole.” I forgot to ask the question one should always ask when confronted with a Chess Ending problem, “What was the move before?” In this case, we know (from A C Shareholder’s comment) that Wells had been discussions to purchase […]
A detail of tax law makes all the difference in Stormy’s post below. Buy the whole thing, get the tax break. Buy part of it, you don’t.* The other half of the answer is that “timing is everything.” And playing Chicken with the FDIC often has Unintended Consequences.** So let’s turn the continuous-not-discrete timeline details […]