Economics

Matt Ridley: The Rational Optimist

Submitted by JimV on Fri, 07/30/2010 - 4:27pm
Matt Ridley: The Rational Optimist
Source: www.youtube.com
At TEDGlobal 2010, author Matt Ridley shows how, throughout history, the engine of human progress has been the meeting and mating of ideas to make new ideas. It's not important how clever individuals are, he says; what really matters is how smart the collective brain is.

Anchoring Effect « You Are Not So Smart

Submitted by JimV on Thu, 07/29/2010 - 5:36pm
Anchoring Effect « You Are Not So Smart
Source: youarenotsosmart.com
You try it on, look in the mirror and decide you must have it. While wearing this item, you imagine onlookers will clutch their chests and gasp every time you walk into a room or cross a street. You lift the sleeve to check the price – $1,000.    
This is how you get duped into buying things on "sale" that are still priced a lot higher than they are worth.    

Monsters in the Market - The Atlantic

Submitted by JimV on Thu, 06/17/2010 - 4:11pm
Monsters in the Market - The Atlantic
Source: www.theatlantic.com
In today’s exchanges, strong programs prey on weak ones, humans are hard to find, and the SEC struggles to keep up.    
This isn't investing, it's a casino.    

NY Times: The Real Arithmetic of Health Care Reform

Submitted by JimV on Mon, 03/22/2010 - 4:32pm
The Real Arithmetic of Health Care Reform - NYTimes.com
Source: www.nytimes.com

Could this really be true? How can the budget office give a green light to a bill that commits the federal government to spending nearly $1 trillion more over the next 10 years?

The answer, unfortunately, is that the budget office is required to take written legislation at face value and not second-guess the plausibility of what it is handed. So fantasy in, fantasy out.

    
Hate to rain on the parade.

TED: Daniel Pink on the surprising science of motivation

Submitted by JimV on Wed, 03/10/2010 - 4:33pm

He doesn't use this term, but this fits into the paradigm of behavioral economics.

MarketWatch: Our debt time bomb is ready to go ka-boom

Submitted by JimV on Wed, 02/03/2010 - 5:56pm
MarketWatch: Our debt time bomb is ready to go ka-boom
Source: www.marketwatch.com

Yes, 20. And yes, any one can destroy your retirement because all 20 are inexorably linked, a house-of-cards, a circular firing squad destined to self-destruct, triggering the third great Wall Street meltdown of the 21st century, igniting the Great Depression II that George W. Bush, Ben Bernanke, Henry Paulson and now President Obama have simply delayed with their endless knee-jerk, debt-laden wars, stimulus bonanzas and bailouts.

 

A not so encouraging look at the future. Survivalist hysteria has been popping up on Seeking Alpha for some time, but now it's on MarketWatch. Does that make it more credible?

McClatchy Newspapers: How Goldman secretly bet on the U.S. housing crash

Submitted by JimV on Mon, 11/02/2009 - 6:40pm

In 2006 and 2007, Goldman Sachs Group peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages, but never told the buyers it was secretly betting that a sharp drop in U.S. housing prices would send the value of those securities plummeting.

Goldman's sales and its clandestine wagers, completed at the brink of the housing market meltdown, enabled the nation's premier investment bank to pass most of its potential losses to others before a flood of mortgage defaults staggered the U.S. and global economies.

The Atlantic: How American Health Care Killed My Father

Submitted by JimV on Fri, 10/30/2009 - 4:23pm

After the needless death of his father, the author, a business executive, began a personal exploration of a health-care industry that for years has delivered poor service and irregular quality at astonishingly high cost. It is a system, he argues, that is not worth preserving in anything like its current form. And the health-care reform now being contemplated will not fix it. Here’s a radical solution to an agonizing problem.

A well-reasoned plea from a Democrat for a free (as in free market) health care sector. Worth reading the whole thing.

Rolling Stone: Wall Street's Naked Swindle

Submitted by JimV on Fri, 10/23/2009 - 4:38pm

On Tuesday, March 11th, 2008, somebody — nobody knows who — made one of the craziest bets Wall Street has ever seen. The mystery figure spent $1.7 million on a series of options, gambling that shares in the venerable investment bank Bear Stearns would lose more than half their value in nine days or less. It was madness — "like buying 1.7 million lottery tickets," according to one financial analyst.

But what's even crazier is that the bet paid.

Frontline: The Warning

Submitted by JimV on Wed, 10/21/2009 - 8:16pm

Do yourself a favor and watch this. Why hasn't Big Media caught on to this story?

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