Yearly Archives: 2013

Wolf Richter: French Megabank – “Germany Should Leave The Eurozone”

France’s government is struggling to stay relevant….and Groupe BPCE may have provided an answer by telling Germany to pay up or exit the Eurozone.

How a British Carbon Credit Pusher Got a Listing on a Danish Stock Exchange, Brokered by a New Zealand Financial Company Run by an Australian Residing in Switzerland

How a British Carbon Credit Pusher Got a Listing on a Danish Stock Exchange, Brokered by a New Zealand Financial Company Run by an Australian Residing in Switzerland

Pettis: When Are Markets “Rational”?

By Michael Pettis. Cross posted from Michael Pettis’ China Financial Markets Lambert here: Always, of course. What’s wrong with this guy? * * * Last month’s award of the Nobel Price in economics set off a great deal of chortling because one of the three recipients, Eugene Fama, received the award for saying that markets […]

Links 11/24/13

Fantasy Stocks for a Fantasy Market

By Doug French, Casey Research. Originally published at Testosterone Pit.

They don’t ring bells at the top, but when a company called Fantex Holdings plans to sell shares in professional athletes and possibly actors and musicians, a chill should race up the spine of investors.

Bill Moyers with Henry Giroux on Zombie Politics (and Debate!)

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Here’s a little something to go with your morning coffee:

Links 11/23/12

Why Should Banks be the Only Ones with Accounts at the Fed?

Should everyone with a Social Security number have an account at the Fed?

Yanis Varoufakis: The Emerald Isle Remains in Chains

A conversation with Phil Pilkington on Europe’s disgraceful triumphalism regarding Ireland’s ‘exit’ from its ‘bailout’

Links 11/22/13

ObamaCare, TINA, Medical Ethics, and the Health Care Economist

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

I probably shouldn’t even tangle with David Cutler; he’s from Harvard, and he’s wicked smart. Anyhow. Also too, he advised the 2008 Obama Campaign on health care. But there were some things he said in this recent interview with PBS (and in his now famous 2010 letter to Larry Summers) that really ticked me off, and so I want to lay down a few markers. First, let’s look at two charts:

Growing Out of Corruption

By Jie Bai, Applied Economics Doctoral Student at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Seema Jayachandran, Associate Professor of Economics, Northwestern University, Edmund J. Malesky, Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science, Duke University, and Benjamin Olken, Associate Professor of Economics in the MIT Department of Economics and CEPR Research Affiliate. Originally published at VoxEu.

Eliminating corruption is a central policy goal of policymakers around the globe. It is known that corruption is a barrier to economic development because it increases the costs and risk of business activity, and deters investment. This column discusses a new study analysing the opposite causal relationship – the effect of economic growth on corruption. Both theoretical and empirical evidence show that economic growth causes the amount of corruption to fall.

Bob Goodwin: What Can Be Done About the Software Engineering Crisis?

Inside the software engineering field there are several huge paradigms with cult-like followers that continue to evolve in parallel with each other. Each seeks to master the process of developing software, as words like agile have been promoted in the English language from an adjective to a value system. But are any of these approaches adequate?

The Skunk Party Manifesto

The best political system that money can buy is doing a great job for its customers and a lousy job for the rest of us.