Quotes of the day

In a sense, having players testing positive for performance enhancing drugs in this circumstance doesn't represent anything extraordinary. It's pretty much the result predicted from a combination of Game Theory and Human Behavior. Somewhere, John Nash is nodding patiently.--Steve Buffum

If you give someone a fish, you feed them for a day. If you teach someone to fish, you destroy another aquatic ecosystem. --Paul Romer

Obama seems unable to recognize he has pinned the fate of his presidency on two people, Geithner and Summers, who are part of the problem.--Yves Smith

Inflating your way out of debt works if you're planning to run a pretty sizeable budget surplus--big enough that you won't have to roll your debt over. Otherwise, your debt starts to march upward even faster, as old notes come due, and you have to roll them at ruinous interest rates. Hyperinflation might wipe out that debt, but also your tax base. This applies, in reverse, to the notion that it was perfectly okay for the Bush and Obama administrations to borrow any amount of money, no matter how large, because the flight-to-safety was keeping interest rates low. In a few years, the Treasury is going to have to roll over a huge chunk of that debt at newer, almost certainly higher, interest rates.--Megan McArdle