Category: ideas

What were intersections like before traffic lights? Consider the paradox of thrift: everyone should save money but not all at once. The state could signal ̶...

As movie allusions go, Decade at Bernie’s is near-perfect: partying at a dead man’s house while literally propping him up so that everyone will think he&#...

the best way to hide something is to leave it out in the open. It’s counter-intuitive but true, again and again. so it is that “fiscal conservatism&...

We don’t believe our own rhetoric: that free markets promote freedom.

A funny analogy from a thrilling book: To assume…that derivatives cannot be influential because they exist in virtual space and therefore do not produce anythin...

Martin Wolf via Paul Krugman: The third and most important lesson is that one should not treat the economy as a morality tale. In the 1930s, two opposing ideolo...

A Financial Times editorial: The humbling of the financial sector should put an end to a bonus culture that rewards recklessness. It should also bring to a clos...

Josh Marshall speculates on the Republican senators’ tactical reasoning: Senate Republicans are following this course for three key reasons — first ...

Apropos of “people…heavily discount the future relative to the present,” I am reminded of all the ways in which this limitation impairs our decision...

From the same 1988 essay I keep citing, a statement that could have been written this summer in reference to the wealth that is being destroyed: “The tran...

A few months ago I made the not very original observation that the era we are leaving (from Reagan to Bush II, from junk bonds to synthetic cdo’s) was par...

Imagine if the financial meltdown had happened last summer, with the election a year away.

Music I have been listening to a great deal lately: Not in love (as suggested by Nightvision) Hello it’s me

This is how it’s done: relaxed, conversational, outdoors. We can imagine another world.