Robert Love: Graphs without Explanations
It’s things like this that make me so excited to be entering the workforce right now. Oh well, back to homework.
After three years and 400 pages, I have finally finished writing the first draft of a novel. Now I'm collecting all kinds of advice about writing and editing. Do you have some? I also like books, science fiction, and many other things.
-
"How odd that the rich should so often be able to shield themselves from the ravages of events. It’s almost as if they have some advantage over poor people, although off the top of my head what it might be escapes me."
-
"This secondary scam isn’t run to defraud money from banks, it’s run by banks to defraud money from their customers. The name of this racket is “Identity Theft Protection.” In this scam, Warren Buffet’s bank tells Mr. B. that they are liable, at any moment, to hand over all of his money to the next person who walks into their lobby wearing glasses and fake bushy eyebrows. The bank, they explain, would be helpless to prevent such an occurence. However, for a small fee — say $20 or $30 a month — the bank would be willing to offer him Identity Theft Protection. In exchange for this fee, the bank explains, they won’t give Warren Buffet’s money to anyone who can’t prove he really is Warren Buffet. Otherwise, it seems, they can’t be expected to distrust or doublecheck anyone who makes such a claim. So the bank is trying to charge an additional $240 or $360 a year to do what it’s supposed to be doing anyway."
-
Free Gas Becoming a Prize in State Lotteries →
Yeah, I’m sure prices will be going down soon…
-
Bankruptcy bill? What bankruptcy bill? →
Fred Clark on Joe Biden’s role in helping to create the housing meltdown — and economic downturn — that we all know and love.
-
Root causes
The problems Wall Street is having right now — problems whose technical aspects I don’t begin to understand fully, since among other things my grasp of economics is pretty weak — has journalists everywhere scrambling for something to say about it. I suspect that many of them (even, or especially, the ones whose job it is to cover investments and such things) don’t really understand the current panic either, but that hasn’t stopped them and our intelligent politicians from agreeing that there are two root causes at work here:
- The Fed neglecting to exercise proper oversight.
- Head of firms making flat-out bad/stupid investment decisions.
So that’s it. If we just calm down and let market forces to their work, this will all work out, right? Except that the Fed has been keeping tabs on this situation, thus calling into question the whole purpose of regulatory oversight in the first place. And these stupid investment decisions weren’t made by a few isolated individuals — experienced, senior investors have been making them for a long time, and congratulating each other on making them, and encouraging other investors to make them, too.
So what is the root cause here? Really, it all comes down to greed. That’s the one thing that the Fed is not going to regulate, since after all it’s pretty much the foundation for market capitalism in the first place. And since the root cause of this particular crisis falls within the blind spot of our economic system, it’s unlikely that we’re going to learn anything from it. After all, greed — this base human impulse — lies at the heart of our banking system, and thus our economy, and thus (really) our whole society. $85 billion is a lot for the government to swallow, but it’s small fry compared to changing the underpinnings of our culture.
-
Suggest Some Books For the Holidays →
John Scalzi encourages his readers to recommend books as gifts this holiday season. I couldn’t agree more. Not only are books awesome Christmas gifts, but the publishing industry as a whole is in dire straights right now and could use a little extra help. (He particularly recommends Nick Harkaway’s The Gone-Away World, which I’m going to have to add to my Amazon wish list.)
-
Still Fragile, Haiti Makes Sales Pitch →
International businesses are becoming more interested in investing in Haiti, whose unemployment rate hovers around 70%. The poor country seems to be caught in a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem: it needs investment and jobs to create societal stability, but companies are unwilling to set up shop in an unstable country. President Clinton, the United Nations special envoy to Haiti, is trying to help get things moving.
Theme: Linear by Peter Vidani
