Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Beauty-Scoring Evolution

Despite winning the big prize, evolution scores low on the scale at the Miss USA pageant: Only Miss Massachusetts and [newly crowned Miss USA, Alyssa] Campanella stood up for Darwin. Score one for Charles Darwin. Campanella, 21, of Los Angeles, who calls herself “a huge science geek,” says evolution should be taught in public schools. […]

Consumption and compensation: explicit and implicit wealth effects in finance

Readers of this blog know that I am in finance, specifically global fixed income. This blog post covers wealth effects in the financial industry, which is a relatively dominant share of total US compensation, 7.3% in 2009 and likely higher now (data are truncated at 2009). My view is that economists underestimate the wealth effects […]

From the coastline to the city All the little pretties raise their hands

I’ll add the scene from It later. Or someone can put it in comments and we’ll promote it to here. UPDATE: R.I.P., Clarence Clemons. QOTD from Walter Jon Williams: Young folks may be shocked to discover that Clarence Clemons had a band before Lady Gaga.

Kash is En Fuego Today

Go. Read. US Bank Exposure to Greece, part 3. The FT lets someone from Nomura argue that Kash’s declaration of U.S. bank exposure to Greek default in Part 2 (referenced here, but just go to Kash’s link for the gist) was overstated. Nomura and The FT lose the argument, badly. “Disasters for an economy — […]

McKinsey Thought-Experiment: What If They Are Correct?

I’m not going to do this with graphics (at least for now), but the finger exercise seems intuitive. Assume—against all evidence—that the “once we educated them, 30% said they would stop offering health insurance to their lowest-paid employees” study is accurate. How does that, as John Boehner declares, cost America jobs? From Boehner’s site: At […]

The Medicare Sky Is Falling (Part 2)

by run75441 The Medicare Sky Is Falling (Part 2) Chicken Little, Courtesy of “EW.Com Entertainment Weekly” Over at The Health Beat Blog, Maggie Mahar explains why the collapse of Medicare HI is less likely with the passage of healthcare reform. The Medicare “Crisis: A Shaggy Wolf Story. Potentially heading off the shortfall of Medicare funding […]

Being Early to the Party: Bad for Links, But Good for Information

Yahoo! News, Tuesday early afternoon Dr. Black, Wednesday, just before noon. Brad DeLong, about fifteen minutes after Dr. Black Me, Monday morning. But this isn’t a “First Mover” claim. It’s a note that there are no “savings” in getting rid of the website. There aren’t even the “registration fee” that applies to private enterprises. Commenter […]

Is the House Trying to Encourage Criminal Activity?

I left out of the last post why David Vitter (claims) he is blocking the two SEC nominees: Sen. David Vitter (R., La.) will block two nominees to the Securities and Exchange Commission until the agency announces whether victims of R. Allen Stanford’s alleged Ponzi scheme are owed compensation from the Securities Investor Protection Corp….“We’ve […]