Tim Harford (h/t Mark Thoma) presents the old trade-off between Rationality and Cooperation, with a curious parenthetic: Except, nobody really thinks this is the way players would behave in reality. The optimal strategy seems sociopathic; isn’t it worth playing cooperatively in the hope that the other player will do the same thing? (Unlike much real […]
UPDATE: NYT Obituary here. Some book cover images added. Two years ago at Readercon, I found myself doing some hero-worship in the Green Room. Friday, we had discovered that my piece on Jorge Luis Borges was the first of the appreciations of that year’s Memorial Guest of Honor. (I assume this was because of its […]
Fed values Bear Stearns assets at a level where it has only cost them $100,000nothing—so far. (Indeed, there’s a $50,000 “buffer” left.) Strangely, the scuttlebutt in the market yesterday was that the valuation should be around $24 billion. Or at least that’s how I read this paragraph: If the portfolio’s value were to drop to […]
Barack Obama has been reading the Wall Street Journal.
But it’s difficult to argue with the rest of this piece. Now I qualify as Gloom and Doom member?
Tom’s post yesterday about British housing (following Felix), where the volume was down significantly with the average slightly up, seemed rather intuitive if you buy the argument that the majority of house prices haven’t been cut enough, and won’t sell until they cut more.* But, courtesy of our fellow Gloom-and-Doom maven, Barry Ritholtz at The […]
Will post-autistic economics review (who have, sadly imnvho, renamed themselves “real-world economic review) or The Economists’ [sic] Voice be the first to publish Robert Waldmann’s paper (a readable version of this blog post, which now also links to the paper)? Only Brad DeLong may know for certain. But you should read it now.
Yves Smith quotes Thomas Friedman accidentally telling the truth: Since President Bush came to office, our national savings have gone from 6 percent of gross domestic product to 1 percent, and consumer debt has climbed from $8 trillion to $14 trillion. Please explain this in the context of the “savings and investment boost” that was […]
This will teach them, right? H.R. 6377 directs CFTC to use all its authority, including its emergency powers, immediately to curb the role of excessive speculation in the energy and swaps futures markets and take other corrective actions as necessary to eliminate any market disturbance that prevents energy markets from accurately reflecting the forces of […]
Rick Newman of Useless News and World Report busts some myths. And gets to the heart of the “speculators” issue: Many companies, for instance, want to lock in the price they’re going to pay down the road for petroleum products and other supplies they need to run their businesses. So they make agreements with suppliers […]