a one sentence argument against the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba
We don’t believe our own rhetoric: that free markets promote freedom.
Category: ideas
epistemology, philosophy, theology, religion
don’t we have some PAC money left over for this?
Josh Marshall: But there also shouldn’t be much question why Republicans are having such a field day spreading disinformation and simple nonsense about th...
self-serve nation
We would do well to print out this brilliant comment on MetaFilter and keep a copy handy at all times given the faddish resurgence of doomsday cults: In Katrina...
building things
How, exactly, did this game lead to a more efficient product or marketplace? Along with many seasoned investors, he was snared in a “short squeeze” after bettin...
the irrational logic of hate
Every few months, I find myself citing this study: Group Loyalty and the Taste for Redistribution by Harvard economist Erzo F.P. Luttmer. It proves with empiric...
the emptier the cave, the stronger the echo
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...
secular religions
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...
the gift-wrapping department at Harrods
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...
photographs about social movements
Similar to Denis Darzacq, the photographic art of Li Wei.
a movie about photographs of movements
Documenting Denis Darzacq‘s process.
time travel
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...
the economy of the sign
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...
scary thought
Imagine if the financial meltdown had happened last summer, with the election a year away.
birds chirping
This is how it’s done: relaxed, conversational, outdoors. We can imagine another world.
the relationship between information and confidence
Paul Krugman in the New York Review of Books: “The true scarcity in Keynes’s world—and ours—was therefore not of resources, or even of virtue, but o...
the observer effect
I want to be skeptical, but Soros’ reflexivity argument is elegant. And this is delightful dishing of the “oh-no-he-didn’t” variety: Ala...