Hat tip to James McCarthy who notes: Still no mark to market – Steve Hsu at Information Processing via Dealbreaker Mortgage– 28 July 08 Mortgage-backed assets with face value of $30.6B were just sold by Merrill for $6.7B…but, amazingly, this 80% loss on the securities only gives a kind of upper bound on their value: […]

Hat tip to Mark Thoma link to Economistmom for this link to a WaPO column in the Human Behavior section by Shankar Vedantam. Psychologists have long been interested in what happens when people’s internal drives are replaced by external motivations. A host of experiments have shown that when threats and rewards enter the picture, they […]

by reader Laurie Tribal Economy There has been references on AngryBear to economic structures, workforce participation and economic justice among tribal/village residents in the past. Informed readers may know that Marx and Engels repeatedly cited Lewis Henry Morgan’s Ancient Societies; another of Morgan’s publications is League of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois). My mother has previously published […]

The Center for Economic Policy and Research reports that: Despite trade ministers’ hopes for a last-minute deal, World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations collapsed yet again today, and observers at the talks in Geneva say that the failure is not surprising, given the reluctance of India and other developing nations to sacrifice food security measures in […]

ataxingmatter ends an essay on oil money and our philosphy of money with: …yet talk about understanding ordinary Americans because they didn’t grow up rich and in which the have-nots suffer from the results of a focus on growth but not opportunity, wealth but not shared well-being. Anyone hear the words opportunity or well-being this […]

Roger Ailes notes that Tim Kaine (D-VA) is the frontrunner for Dem VP, while KathyG (whose post on Cass Sunstein is a must-read) notes that Tim Pawlenty (R-MN) appears likely to be McCain’s choice, likely ensuring one ovation at the Minneapolis convention. Hmm. The man who presides over his state being described as “the state […]

OSO writes from down under: Monetary Policy and Economic Shocks: Poor Ben Bernanke. You gotta feel for the poor guy. Faced with a whole bunch of economic problems all occurring at once he took the only option that seemed to be open to him – which was to create more money and postpone the inevitable. […]

CoRev sends a note: Al Gore used the term again in his speech and testimony before Congress. But what is it we are saving the planet from? Jennifer Marohasy has put up an article titled: Denying the Climate Crisis: A Comment from Jim Peden.We have well over 200 comments and still no Climate Crisis can […]

by cactus I have been somewhat out of contact, but while sitting in a lawn chair far from home I had a brief opportunity to read some of the comments to the post I put up courtesy of someone else’s internet access. (Also, Tom Bozzo’s excellent follow-up and Megan McArdle’s critique.) I’d like to provide […]

Economistmom says you gotta see this movie… A movie on economics? It must be a mystery or a thriller. Read up over at her site.