It appears that the word of the month is Melamine, and that a lot of those large bags of semibiodegradeable candy may have been imported from China.

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.

rdan William Polley has a note on paying interest with links to Altig, DeLong, and others: David Altig takes up the question with links back to Marginal Revolution, DeLong, as well as my post from yesterday. (Thanks, David!) Rather than looking at it as what DeLong calls “Operation Twist”, Altig opts for the simpler explanation […]

rdan Dean Baker at Beat the Press notes Brokaw’s definitive pronouncement about Social Security: If Social Security Was a Private Corporation Then it Would Sue Tom Brokaw for Every Penny He Has If a news reporter deliberately makes a false statement claiming that a private company like Boeing or Microsoft is going broke, the company […]

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 […]

By Divorced one like Bush ”From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,” said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ”If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out […]