hope

I hope he’s right: Second, on the question of the environment. There is no question that the internal combustion engine is at the heart of the climate cri...

in sum

Eighteen years ago I got my first introduction to the world of high finance from Michael Lewis’ awesome memoir Liar’s Poker. Lewis has just written ...

performance

I marvel at how well Barack Obama performs. For quite a few years now, the bar for American performance has been lowered in so many ways. “Heckuva job, Br...

analogy

there is a part of the u.s. government that helps control the complex machine that is the u.s. economy. that part of the u.s. government is missing. let’s...

moral hazard

Glenn Greenwald is not feeling it: What is more intrinsically corrupt than allowing people to engage in high-reward/no-risk capitalism — where they reaped...

truth & method

Nassim Nicholas Taleb channels Socrates to disparage (now obviously flawed) financial models and the abuse of statistics in general: Go to a bookstore, and look...

cartoon

this is one of the most compact representations of our financial crisis I’ve come across: it’s over a year old. i’m sorry i hadn’t seen ...

movies

In the summer of 2002, Mexico became a democracy, again. Via a peaceful transfer of power, the PRI lost control over the executive branch for the first time in ...

minding the gap

very rarely will i have the kind of nightmare i just had now. a prolonged, disinterested narrative set in a post-apocalyptic city where zombies (they sleep duri...

horticulture

While on a garden tour it occurred to me that gardens have four components: sight, smell, temperature and time. Time, because as living organisms, they look, sm...