Quotes of the day

I assumed Bruins fans and Canucks fans would be bonded by their histories of heartbreak (a little like the Cardinals and Red Sox in 2004, actually). That hasn't happened. And it hasn't happened because the Canucks revealed themselves to be flopping wusses who (a) bite the fingers of opposing players, (b) use a 15th-string defenseman to knock the other team's best forward unconscious when he's not looking, then dedicate the next game to that defenseman as if nothing ever happened, and (c) don't back any of this crap up. If this were a movie, the Bruins would be Will Hunting and the Canucks would be the condescending ponytailed guy from Harvard who won't go outside.  For a city weaned on the Big Bad Bruins of the 1970s, Vancouver's flopping/biting routine went over about as well as a Roger Clemens statue.--Bill Simmons

You mean they were Russians? We thought they were Americans. Of course you can have them.--The Taliban

If election were held today, I think Obama would win the WH, we'd lose the Senate, and win back the House.--Howard Dean

I'd bet a lot of dough that Dean will be correct on at least one of those 3 predictions.--Cav

Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.--Mark Twain

Illinois gained nationwide notoriety in January when Governor Pat Quinn signed into law a 67% hike in the personal income tax rate while lifting the corporate tax rate to 9.5%, the fourth highest in the nation. How is that working out? The good news is that corporate tax receipts in Springfield are up by about $300 million amid the economic recovery—though the state comptroller's office announced in April that the state still faces $8 billion in unpaid bills. The bad news is that, according to the state's Department of Commerce, Illinois has already shelled out some $230 million in corporate subsidies to keep more than two dozen companies from fleeing the state. And more are on the way.--WSJ Editorial Board

In our view, markets will find a way to load risk on to any government guarantor. Eventually, regulatory controls get gamed. The regulatory mechanism steers financial firms toward a common risk factor. When failure comes, it is catastrophic. ... I have been saying for quite some time that the goal of government should be to aim for a financial system that is easier to fix rather than one that is harder to break. I also believe that a large financial sector that provides a lot of "safe" assets (safe only because of a government guarantee) is not obviously better than a financial sector that is only as large as it can be using the tools of diversification and skill at managing risk.--Arnold Kling

The Liberal government under former prime minister Jean Chrétien and finance minister Paul Martin began a concerted effort to balance the budget in 1995. Between 1995 and 1998, the government cut spending by a whopping 14%. As the report’s authors note, “if the U.S. government were to cut real spending by 14% over the next three years, the budget in FY [fiscal year] 2013 would be US$473-billion (in 2010 dollars) less than the FY 2010 budget.” Most importantly, the Chrétien-era Liberals were able to balance the budget, “not with large tax increases, but with substantial cuts in government spending.” Federal spending as a percentage of GDP went from 18% in 1993 to 13% in 2009. And the Canadian economy prospered because of it. During this period, the unemployment rate fell from a high of 11.4% in 1993 to 6% in 2007, according to Statistics Canada. Moreover, as the government cut spending, more resources were freed up for the private sector. As a result, Canada experienced high growth rates of 4-5% between 1997 and 2000.--Jesse Kline

Photo links here and here.

Chart of the day: Fertility by selected nations since 1960

Source here.

Image of the day: Wiener process

Link here.

As opposed to a Weiner process:

UPDATE: Scott Adams has proposed a more robust and unifying Weiner Process.

Intrade prediction market says Rick Perry is jumping into the 2012 presidential race

The chaos in Newt Gingrich's camp seems to be the catalyst, as staffers could be ditching him for Perry.  Via Justin Wolfers.  Image link here.

I'm still trying to figure out

if David [Ortiz] got hit for something I did or if it was something ESPN stirred up.--Josh Beckett

Photo link here.

I smell a release

sooner rather than later.

Quotes of the day

Tell [Tim] Wakefield he’s got my vote [for the Hall of Fame]--Robinson Cano

Sometimes we say thank God we don't have oil. We have to use our brains instead.--Armenia's Prime Minister, Tigran Sargsyan

The United Kingdom's experiment in a strategy of 'light-touch' regulation to attract business to London from New York and Frankfurt ended tragically.--Tim Geithner

Clearly [Timothy Geithner] wasn’t referring to derivatives regulation because as far as I can recollect there wasn’t any in America at the time.--Alexander Justham

Eleven months later, in December of 2007, the recession officially began. Dimon saw it coming. The Fed didn't.--John Carney

Academics want to have it both ways, and sometimes do. They want, that is, to work in an organization and enjoy its benefits and at the same time be their own bosses. The way they rationalize this condition of privilege (who wouldn’t want to enjoy it?) is to say that they work for no one or for everyone: they work for the common good.--Stanley Fish

Of the 44 U.S. presidents, all but a handful have been affiliated with a relatively narrow list of traditional Protestant denominations. Eleven were Episcopalians (12 if you count Thomas Jefferson, whose adult beliefs are a subject of debate), eight were Presbyterians, four were Methodists and four were Baptists. Others included Congregationalists, Dutch Reformed and Disciples of Christ. President Obama attended Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, a congregation with traditional Protestant roots despite its untraditional pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. In Washington, Obama has attended services at mostly black Protestant churches. The only chief executive whose roots were clearly outside that mainstream tradition was John F. Kennedy, a Roman Catholic. But among the leading candidates for this year's Republican presidential nomination, not one is a member of the Protestant denominations that for so long have dominated American political culture. Two of the potential candidates are Mormons (former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.); one is a member of an interdenominational evangelical church (former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty); two others are Catholics (former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Sen. Rick Santorum). Rep. Michele Bachmann, who says she's considering the race, worships at an evangelical Lutheran church; if elected, she'd be the first Lutheran president. But no matter who wins from this list, it won't be an Episcopalian, a Presbyterian or a Methodist.--Doyle McManus

Well, you can call yourself a Baptist and not be born again
A Presbyterian or a Methodist and still die in your sin
You can even be Charismatic shout and dance and jump a few
But if you hate your brother you wont be one of The Chosen Few.
Cause it won't be a Baptist that's sitting on The Throne
A Presbyterian or a Methodist that's calling us Home
And it won't be a Charismatic that plays that trumpet tune.--Imperials

Traditional economics would argue that illegal or immoral behavior should be most attractive to people who have little to lose. And yet successful people who have very high opportunity costs are still engaging in royally dumb activities. In fact, some researchers have argued that people with more to lose may be more likely to engage in risky, socially unacceptable and self-destructive behavior.--Catherine Rampell

... it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.--Immanuel

Photo links here, here and here.

Quotes of the Dodd-Frank Era

Now we're told there are going to be even higher capital requirements, and we know there are 300 rules coming, has anyone bothered to study the cumulative effect of these things? And do you have a fea—like I do—that when we look back and look at them all, that they will be the reason that it took so long for our banks, our credit, our businesses, and most importantly, our job creation, to start going again? Is this holding us back at this point?--Jamie Dimon, to Ben Bernanke

Nobody has looked at it in all detail ...  Has anybody done a comprehensive analysis of the impact on credit? i can’t pretend that anybody really has. You know, it’s just too complicated. We don’t really have the quantitative tools to do that.--Ben Bernanke

Sounds like a 'I have no clue' to me.--Cav

CNBC video here.

Photo links here and here.

Quotes of the day

Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised or a little mistaken.—Jane Austen, Emma

This is why I like reading about science and epistemology in general because it's all well and good to say science is all about the evidence and people being 'reality based', and only idiots or bigots are prejudiced. Everyone only sees what they believe, and beliefs are not easily moved by contrary data: observations are theory-laden.--Eric Falkenstein

There is no way around phenomenology one way or the other; it is the necessary connection between theory and experiment.--Sabine Hossenfelder

Google’s frame is the browser window. Apple’s frame is the screen. That’s what we’ll remember about [yesterday's Steve Jobs] keynote ten years from now.--John Gruber

... under the likely scenario that healthcare spending keeps rising faster than GDP, the Center for American Progress would give government the power to prohibit people from buying expensive health plans with their own money. That is not my idea of progress.--Greg Mankiw

I have concluded at my late age that, sadly enough, women are no better than men. Different, to be sure, but no better. Men, consider your opinion of what men are like. A sobering reflection. Then consider that that's what women are as good as too. Appalling, but there it is. Many men are creeps and many women like those creeps. Look at the garden of Eden. Eve was talked into eating the apple by a snake, so she was stupid enough to believe a snake. But then Adam was stupid enough to believe Eve. What if Eve had not been there? I'm no theologian, but I believe Adam would have tried to have sex with the snake. It's that bad. The only innocent in this whole mess is that poor housekeeper in Manhattan who fled to New York from whatever African hellhole it was, not any, please observe, primitive paradise, only to be attacked by Le Scumbaguette, the very pinnacle of French Civilization. The Calvinists have this doctrine called total depravity which avers that well, we're all just totally depraved, unless saved (I think). As a Catholic, I do not subscribe to this doctrine but I admit they have the makings of a pretty strong case.--Tom Smith

Paul Ryan's proposed "premium support" structure is in some ways similar to the plan put in place under President Obama's healthcare reform law. In both cases, an individual would shop among competing private insurers, on an exchange overseen by the government regulators. In both cases, the government would provide financial support for the "needy" (low-income households in the case of Obamacare, the elderly in the case of Ryancare). Why don't we see this parallel pointed out more often? The left wants to demonize Ryan, and the right wants to demonize Obama. Pointing out the similarities of their plans might make each of them seem, well, reasonable.--Greg Mankiw

The long-standing myth of a wildly activist, reactionary Supreme Court imposing a grossly unpopular laissez-faire ideology on the American people on behalf of large corporate interests—with little concern for precedent, constitutional text, or individual or minority rights—is far removed from historical reality. The academics who invented the prevalent mythology likely sought, consciously or not, to justify their preferred political outcomes.--David Bernstein

George Orwell wrote that to control the past was to control the present, and the future. The false narrative of Lochner has controlled the past for decades, but Bernstein’s clear and incisive work may wrest that control away and move us back to the truth. And if readers recognize that much of what they have been told about Lochner is wrong, perhaps they will employ an informed skepticism toward many other things in constitutional law that “everyone knows.” Such skepticism, it seems, is entirely warranted.--Glenn Reynolds

But while some Democrats are touting the ethics probe as a bold and significant step, one Republican source calls it "hollow." The GOP source said it is noteworthy that Pelosi called for an investigation but did not demand Weiner step down -- as happened with former Rep. Chris Lee. The married Republican from western New York resigned in February, following a report that he had tried to meet a woman on Craigslist.--CNN Wire Staff

Unlike Maddow, many journalists, including the politically liberal, were not surprised at all. They had gradually become skeptical of Weiner’s innocence as the days passed because they could recognize the fluttering of a politician in trouble. It was Weiner’s bizarre response that led them to suspect the truth. When the moment of confession came it did not come as total shock to everyone except the true believers. Those journalists were cumulating the facts. Whatever their political inclinations were, these had not yet completely overwhelmed their logical faculties. Whether they were willing to admit it or not, they knew which way the story was tending. The one person who had more facts than anyone else except Weiner — was Andrew Breitbart — and he used it to great advantage. He selectively timed the release of information in his possession in order to force his opponent into terrible dilemmas. His Big Government site provided a Chinese water torture of gradual disclosure, each more tantalizing than the last. The problem Weiner’s defenders faced was simple: how much did Breitbart ultimately know? When it became clear that Breitbart knew enough to show that the tweets had been sent by Weiner, then the confession was forced to create a stop line. Weiner held a defense line until it was obvious that Breitbart could flank him. Then he fell back to the next position. The trouble is, Breitbart may not yet be done. But that’s for Andrew to know and for Anthony to find out.--Richard Fernandez

Maybe taking full responsibility is, in the end, about making amends. While Weiner's constituents were certainly ill-served by all this, what amends can be made to them? Never lie again? Does choosing not to lie when you weren't supposed to do it in the first place constitute making amends? For Weiner, full responsibility seemed to mean apologizing profusely, declining to qualify his regret or explain away his behavior, and answering the same questions until the press finally began to tire of asking them. But really being fully responsible is difficult. It's not as if Weiner can redirect the consequences to himself, like a criminal who takes the fall so the innocent man can go free. Responsibility and consequences are severed here: His wife, his family, and his staff have no responsibility at all, but there are consequences for all of them anyway. This won't change that. Maybe "I take full responsibility" is ultimately something that's said simply because it must be said. Maybe it's an incantation. Maybe it's a vow to do better. Maybe it just means: I'm sorry, and when I say I'm sorry, I don't mean I'm sorry if you were offended. I don't mean I'm sorry but someone drove me to it. I don't mean I'm sorry but I was in pain, but I was drunk, but I was angry, but I was taken out of context. Maybe "I take full responsibility for my actions" is an add-on we only need because of the poor-quality apologies we so often get in public that have transformed the concept of contrition into something that can be used to subtly deflect attention away from yourself. Maybe if public apologizers were better at just being sorry, we wouldn't need "I take full responsibility for my actions" in the first place.--Linda Holmes

If there is one thing that confuses me the most about scandal coverage, it’s how the media pretend that there are only like three sins in the world and the chief one is hypocrisy. Come on, people.--Mollie Hemingway

According to The Washington Post article on the Bush loan, the incoming president called Bush’s action a “necessary step . . . to help avoid a collapse of our auto industry that would have had devastating consequences for our economy and our workers.” Under the administration’s math, the U.S. government will receive $11.2 billion back from Chrysler, far more than the $8.5 billion Obama extended. Through this sleight-of-hand accounting, the White House can conveniently ignore Bush’s loan, but even the Treasury Department admits that U.S. taxpayers will not recoup about $1.3 billion of the entire $12.5 billion investment when all is said and done. The White House justifies not counting the Bush money because, it says, that money was completely spent when Obama was making a tough political decision on whether to extend another loan. In other words, a decision to do nothing at the time would have resulted in the immediate loss of the $4 billion that Bush had extended. This is chicanery. Under the president’s math, Chrysler paid back 100 percent of Obama’s loan and less than 70 percent of Bush’s loan. A more honest presentation would combine the two figures to say U.S. taxpayers got back 90 percent of what they invested. In fact, that is how the Treasury and other administration officials frequently portray it; it is just when Obama speaks that the numbers get so squishy.--Glenn Kessler

Image links here, here and here.

Cube of the day: Physical theories

Source here.

Chart of the day: Career success vs. number of films

Source here, via Catherine Rampell.

More evidence that programmers might not be great risk managers

Source here.

Quotes of the scandal: Anthony Weiner edition

You do the questions, I do the answers and this jackass interrupts me?--Anthony Weiner

I was the victim of a prank.--Anthony Weiner

I did not send that tweet. My system was hacked. I was pranked. It's a fairly common one. People make fun of my name all the time. When you're named 'Weiner', you kind of get that. I've asked firms to take a look at this. They're hiring an Internet security operation. We want to make sure it doesn't happen again. We're also asking for their advice about what, if any, agency should be called in on this. ... It was a hoax ... I am a victim of this ...--Anthony Weiner

Weiner's camp is now seeking legal action to investigate who hacked the account.--NBC New York

In real life, my memory is this cat had a lot more Anthony and a lot less weiner.--Jon Stewart

Weiner was framed.--The Daily Kos

And to be honest he’s never been a crusader on social issues so you can’t argue he’s been a hypocrite here, you know a morality hypocrite.--Jessica Yellin

I am well aware of Andrew Breitbart, his chasing around with microphones in my face, his distortions [of] ACORN and Shirley Sherrod ... he has in my view no credibility whatsoever. I have no belief that there's anything going on with Anthony Weiner, who also happens to be a happy, pretty lucky newlywed.--Rep. Jan Schakowsky

Meanwhile over the last couple of days, while everyone in the media had their hair on fire about this story, the talented and very smart people who live in the world of the Internets--they were trying to figure out what happened. How it could have happened. If the congressman was hacked like he said he was, if he was pranked, how would that work? How could a person do that? What would that look like? How would you even begin to get away with something like that? Here are a few of those theories.--Rachel Maddow

Congressman Weiner was stalked and set up by a Christian Infowar Militia cell based largely in Oklahoma City.--Daily Kos

It all adds up. If you have any ability to follow a moderately technical argument, only one conclusion is possible. We know that Congressman Weiner was framed, and we know the name of the framer. The framer did not hack into Weiner's account. There was no need for hacking. The framer used a much simpler, more ingenious scheme, involving a design flaw in the architecture of the application.--Joseph Cannon

... the behavior of much of the media toward Weiner is inexcusable. ... Weiner has declared himself a victim of Twitter invasion, and certainly, he’s a victim of an outrageous invasion of privacy. If someone (His wife? An old girlfriend? Himself?) took a photo of him in his skivvies, that’s his private business. And if a woman had been violated in such a way, her underwear photo sent to a Twitter follower, she would rightly be afforded sympathy, accompanied by outrage for the person who humiliated her. Weiner deserves the same consideration.--Susan Milligan

As Rep. Anthony Weiner’s alleged crotch-shot dominates the news, information on possible motives to deface Weiner’s credibility are surfacing under the radar. And as it appears, Weinergate just might be a smear campaign executed by  conservative activists looking to defend Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.--Johan Thomas

[several, several tweets]--Eric Boehlert

Andrew Brietbart’s status as the Right’s Fraudster-in-Chief is a result of what is becoming an encyclopedia of modern right-wing hoaxs that make Nixon’s Watergate burglaries look like dilettantes. Breitbart was at the center of the fake ACORN scandal, the phony Planned Parenthood videos from Lila Rose, the Shirley Sherrod smears, his sites regularly featured birther conspiracies, Breitbart was part of the gang of right-wing Republicans who created the campaign to smear Department of Education staffer Kevin Jennings and also claimed some White House conspiracy in a dust-up between a couple of participants at one of those crazy health care reform town hall meetings. This is the guy we’re all supposed to believe in what appears to be a manufactured scandal over an apparently doctored picture and without a shred of proof that Congressman Weiner was involved.--the long goodbye

Photo links here, here and here.

Quotes of the day

We are a democracy, and as such do not generally elect our best people to office. How could we? They weren’t running.--David Mamet

... we get both more, and less out of a work than the author intended, and we are never actually getting the author themselves. They are always hiding some piece of themselves from us, the piece they can't bear for us to know. Trying to judge a book by an author, or an author by their book, is like trying to judge a glass of milk by looking at the cow. ... But there's another reason I do not think that we should reject books because their authors have terrible opinions, which is that virtually all authors have some terrible opinions. Maybe you don't know about them, or maybe you share their terrible opinions, but you cannot improve your library by purging all the authors with terrible ideas; you can only empty it. ... if you wanted to pick a group of people to model your life on, it's hard to think of a less likely group than successful writers. ... Writers, especially, spend the bulk of their workday not interacting with other people. They are people who have in large part dealt with the hardest human question--how do I live with all these difficult people around me?--by escaping into a world where the people are puppets. Why would we expect that they have some sort of special insight into how to be just and good?--Megan McArdle

I often joke that my main qualification for cancer research is that I am unencumbered by any prior knowledge of the subject.--Paul Davies, physicist

Difference between reporting on business and politics: if I get an interview scheduled with a businessman, he keeps the appointment.--Megan McArdle

[Bill] Simmons is what you might call the Peter Pan of sports fandom. He still has good days when his teams win and rough ones when they lose. He wouldn’t go to the old Yankee Stadium — “just too many bad memories there” — and he doesn’t travel on football Sundays, when he spends 12 hours in the Neverland of his four-flat-screen “man cave.” As a cultural phenomenon, Simmons is a member of the new class of man-boys, defined most famously by Judd Apatow and Todd Phillips, who make movies about men who can’t or won’t grow up. They got rich staying true to their 17-year-old selves and, along the way, helped make losers sort of cool. Simmons knows that the only people his age who obsess about sports the way he does are geeks — in his columns, he refers to his fantasy-baseball league as “the League of Dorks” — and he recognizes the quasi-pathetic nature of a grown man living and dying for his teams. But at the same time he’s unapologetic about it. “I always thought that by the time I turned 40 I wouldn’t care about sports so much,” Simmons told me. “I’d seen it happen to so many other people. But it hasn’t happened to me.” Simmons is not a literary sportswriter. You can’t capture his resonance with lyrical quotes from his oeuvre, because they don’t really exist.--Jonathan Mahler

... the truth is that when they are both right, Federer cannot beat Nadal. It has been talked about time and again: Federer is the greatest player of all time. And he's not the greatest player of his own time. ... Federer's game is scissors. Nadal's game is stone.--Joe Posnanski

Photo links here, here and here.

Chart of the day: Unemployment duration at an all time high

Source here.

Quotes of the day

Moody’s is skeptical about the No Bailout promises of Dodd-Frank. In particular, Moody’s doesn’t buy the FDIC’s claim that it can “resolve” large, complex financial institutions without risking a disorderly disruption in the marketplace. Which means that regulators would likely resort to a bailout when the chips are down. The higher credit ratings make it cheaper for the banks to borrow—which means that the US taxpayer is essentially subsidizing them with an implicit guarantee. This is worth billions to the banks.  It also means that the banks are likely less financially sound than their credit costs would make them appear to be—because bond buyers don’t have to be as vigilant about risks. In short, they’re our new Fannie Maes and Freddie Macs.--John Carney

Scott Sumner has made a big splash with his idea to “target the forecast of nominal gdp.” You can think of Scott as proposing what is currently a missing prediction market. The deeper way of understanding Scott’s proposal is to see money as missing a price and wanting to create a new way of pricing money, namely in terms of nominal gdp forecasts. Until money has the correct price, we won’t know the correct quantity of money or the correct time path for monetary policy. Scott of course was one of the early contributors to the NME literature and he and I once had a published exchange on related matters, way back when. We are now paying interest on reserves. Is Fischer Black’s claim true that, under these circumstances, the central bank cannot control the price level and the price level will be whatever people want it to be? Optimistic expectations will lead to lots of borrowing and rising prices, while pessimistic forecasts will lead to lower levels of borrowing and weaker inflationary pressures. I’m not so sure of this claim, but at the very least a) it is worth thinking about, b) it now gets debated a lot, and c) it really matters.--Tyler Cowen

So what would Q1 GDP have looked like if the government had used the government's own estimate of inflation for Q1 (5.7%), instead of 1.9%? Q1 GDP would have been -1.82%.--Henry Blodget

[Margaret Thatcher] took science subjects at school; she studied chemistry at Oxford, arriving during World War II and coming under the influence (and comment) of two excellent women scientists, Janet Vaughan and Dorothy Hodgkin. She did a fourth-year dissertation on X-ray crystallography of gramicidin just after the war. She then gathered four years' experience as a working industrial chemist, at British Xylonite Plastics and at Lyons. Second, my argument is that, having lived the life of a working research scientist, she had a quite different view of science from that of any other minister responsible for science. This is crucial in understanding her reaction to the proposals—associated with the Rothschild reforms of the early 1970s—to reinterpret aspects of science policy in market terms. Although she was strongly pressured by bodies such as the Royal Society to reaffirm the established place of science as a different kind of entity—one, at least at core, that was unsuitable to marketization—Thatcher took a different line.--Jon Agar

The cyber-warfare operation [Operation Cupcake] was launched by MI6 and GCHQ in an attempt to disrupt efforts by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsular to recruit “lone-wolf” terrorists with a new English-language magazine, the Daily Telegraph understands. When followers tried to download the 67-page colour magazine, instead of instructions about how to “Make a bomb in the Kitchen of your Mom” by “The AQ Chef” they were greeted with garbled computer code. The code, which had been inserted into the original magazine by the British intelligence hackers, was actually a web page of recipes for “The Best Cupcakes in America” published by the Ellen DeGeneres chat show.--Duncan Gardham

IPOs are not all alike. In the lingo, they are sometimes “financing events” and they are sometimes “pricing events”. When IPOs are financing events, insiders are selling substantial fractions of their firms, trying to to divest their holdings or raise large sums for corporate purposes. When they are “pricing events” insiders are selling a small fraction of their shares in order to gain various benefits that come with being a public firm. In a “financing event”, when insiders are selling a lot of stock, the money left on the table from an IPO pop might amount to a substantial fraction of total equity value, too much money to be treated as a transaction cost. But in a “pricing event”, the money left on the table in a pop — the “opportunity cost of issuance” — may not be so large.--Steve Randy Waldman

Koreans still dominate the small-grocery business in New York; the Korean Produce Association estimates that they own 70 percent of the city’s stores. But their ranks are thinning as they face the same forces that threaten all sorts of mom-and-pop businesses: rising rents, increased competition from online and corporate rivals, and more scrutiny from city agencies that impose fines.--SAM DOLNICK

150 years ago today Stephen Douglas, the emanate Northern politician, died.  ... Douglas was called Little Giant, because although he was short, he was very important in politics. He was one of the most important senators in the 1850s, and was responsible for the passage of several important bills. Even though he was defeated by Lincoln, he later encouraged his supporters to support him. But Douglas died of typhoid today at the age of only 48. If Douglas had defeated Lincoln in the election, history would have taken a different term. The South probably would not have seceded, and if they did, Herschel V. Johnson, a Georgian who would have became president after Douglas's death, probably would have let them. There would have been no Civil War, and America would have been allowed to split in peace.--Joshua Horn

Photo links here and here.

Marc Faber never pulls punches

Too bad for President Obama:

He is by far one of the worst Presidents the US has had. I’m very upset that none of what he said he would do, mainly change, has actually occurred. So I think he’s certainly intellectually dishonest. And he’s probably made the geopolitical situation worse and also the economic situation worse. And he’s actually vote-buying through handing out money and through increased transfer payments. [I don't think he has his priorities straight], because the priority would be to essentially make the US competitive, and by pursuing expansionary fiscal policies that enlarge the government, you atrophied the private sector. In other words, the private sector is hurt by too much government involvement. Like my friends, they say, we have to pay more and more tax for government officials to harass us more and more and implement more and more regulation. And that of course is not a way to create prosperity. If you have a large corporation or a corporation, you are more likely to hire people outside the US than in the US.

I predict we will have more Boomers clinging bitterly to their grandchildren's employment and wealth opportunities. Why be afraid of China when we have the AARP?

Photo link here.

I'm John Taylor

and I approve these calculations suggesting a Fed Funds increase to 1%.

Weiner follows only a select 198 ... Twitter fans

and a surprising number of them are total babes:

Additional photos here:

The data will fit whatever worldview you bring to it

Here is a clever test from Scott Adams:

Boston Consulting Group reports that millionaires own 39% of global wealth. That is up from 37% in 2009. When you see that statistic, which way do you interpret it?

1.       The rich have transferred more wealth from the non-rich to themselves.

2.       The rich have created more wealth and kept it all.

3.       The rich have created more wealth for everyone and kept most of it.

4.       More people have achieved millionaire status.

5.       There is not enough information to form an opinion.

6.       Asset values went up as the economy improved. Rich people own most assets.

Call it what you will; just not 'science'.

Chart of the sesquicentennial: US Tornado fatatilities

Source here, via Don Boudreaux.

Being too literal-minded

If genius is being comical and melancholic simultaneously, Tim Harford defines:

“Dad, we need a savings account paying more than 25 per cent interest. Is there one?”

“Not at the moment, dear.”

“Anything close?”

“No. Actually, the banks are grumbling that they can’t begin to compete with the 0.5 per cent interest, after tax and inflation, on offer from the government.”

“I’m not sure what your demonstration of compound interest is supposed to be teaching me, Dad. Is there any way to get a 10 per cent return?”

“You can take more risks. But the thing about this savings bond is it’s backed by the government and is therefore completely safe.”

“I see. Is that because governments always pay back their debts?”

Quotes of the day

Nothing is easier than self deceit.--Demosthenes

So apparently authorities believe that spreading knowingly false information with the intent of manipulating asset prices is acceptable behavior, when it is done by the authorities and the matter is deemed serious. Seriously!--David Einhorn

Potomac fever is contagious and incurable. I know one economist who deliberately hired an undocumented nanny as a commitment device to avoid the temptation of government.--Bob Hall

... clinging to a failed monetary peg causes problems that can drag on for years. Look at Argentina in the 1990s, or the entire developed world during the Great Depression: the longer a country clung to the gold standard, the longer and deeper the economic suffering. I think the chances of the euro zone surviving intact are now less than 50%. They're not 0%. But they do seem to be shrinking every day.--Megan McArdle

You do [have more Twitter followers] these days, that’s for sure. You’ve got to give me your tips.--Paul Ryan, to Anthony Weiner

... bankers have always been greedy, what they didn't have was government not merely telling them that they should lower their underwriting standards, but that if they didn't they would be sued for disparate impact. Any CEO seeing this trend, and asking 'well, what have our losses been on these riskier home loans government wants us to make?', would have been told 'not much', because historically the collateral had always risen. That is, while default may have been high, recoveries were higher, and defaults were also masked by the higher collateral that made refinancing easier. In this environment, it is easy to see how banks slowly eliminated their previous lending criteria.--Eric Falkenstein

It’s well known that analysts rarely put sell ratings on the stocks they cover. Typically, the explanation for this is that banks don’t want to jeopardize their investment banking business.  The reality is much more complicated. Skeptics and whistle-blowers risk huge career costs that go beyond conflicts of interest. Investors think they want unvarnished advice, but many don’t truly appreciate it. Most banks don’t want employees to play detective. Regulators abandon whistle-blowers, acting tardily and ineffectually.--Jesse Eisinger

Heaven presses into hell, and this is why you get up and breathe again when you’d rather not, because even when you are in hell, grace comes to you. Especially in hell.--Tony Woodlief

A few years ago, I spoke here and had Carl Icahn speaking after me, and that didn’t go too well. And then last year, I’m told that I had the worst choices in the whole thing. And so I wondered if I should come back this year, and I realized that the conference gets bigger every year. They’ve expanded the speaker list. So it’s going to be harder for me to have the worst ideas this year.--David Einhorn

The next best thing to being wise oneself is to live in a circle of those who are.--C.S. Lewis

We take for granted many intuitions, but its important to remember what intuitions are truly universal, and which are the function of explicit training. For example, speech is hard-wired into our brains, and children exposed to people talking will naturally learn to talk. In contrast, kids won't learn to write or read without years of instruction. Empathy and appreciating motive are innate (mirror neurons), but understanding that evil is usually the result of ignorance, is not.  ... even geniuses don't 'get' certain things that seem like pure logic, but really require a non-intuitive way of looking at things. It's like the story of Paulos Erdos not understanding the Monte Hall problem.--Eric Falkenstein

It may well be that many US workers have been hurt by the forces of globalisation. But the iPhone and iPod show why the whole business is complex. Products that are made in China may actually be rewarding producers in Japan and California, and, of course, consumers across the world. It’s a curious paradox: the more pervasive globalisation becomes, the less we understand it by looking at trade statistics.--Tim Harford

... we know of one culture that's very, very good at helping people build wealth: academia. Of course, academics start with a solid base: if you're a tenured professor, you are definitionally good at delaying gratification. But one thing you learn from financial reporting is that the ability to delay gratification in your career does not always translate into wise financial stewardship; there are lots and lots of doctors, lawyers, and MBAs who clearly had what it took to go through a long initiation process, and nonetheless manage to end up with no savings and a lifestyle that can't survive more than a few weeks of job loss or other financial distress. Academia pays modestly, and yet on average, tenured professors have quite a lot of wealth built up by the time they retire. ... So while the material people have to work with might be genetic, that doesn't mean that a more frugal culture couldn't produce better results.--Megan McArdle

Yesterday I went to Walmart and demanded that they give me a cartload of merchandise for free. This demand was not well-received, so I didn’t get to the second part of my plan which would have involved criticizing the job performance of the people who were giving me free stuff. Okay, I didn’t really go to Walmart and demand free stuff. You probably knew that because it sounded ridiculous on face value. We all understand that no entity can survive for long if it gives away its resources while asking nothing in return. And this leads me to my point: In the United States, 51% of adults pay zero federal income tax, and yet they have the right to vote. That’s the very definition of a system that can’t last.--Scott Adams

Photo links here, here, here, and here.

Chart of the day: college graduate employment crashing

Source here, via John Carney.

Take heart, even Triple Crown Winners hit into double plays

Aaron Ross Sorkin interviews David Rubenstein on his biggest whiff.

Let's just not make a habit of it.  We just need to get on base a little more than most other guys.

Quotes of the day

Put a frog in a kettle of boiling water and he’ll jump out faster and further than any of those blue ribbon winners at the Calaveras County jumping frog contest. Put him in a pot at room temperature, however, slowly turn up the temperature to boiling, and you’ll have frog legs for dinner. This latter, more unfortunate toad temporarily adapted to his external environment, which seemed like a practical thing to do, until – well, until he reached 212° at which point he was cooked. Today’s bond investors are experiencing a similar fate with nary a “ribbet” of complaint. ... There was this other frog who instead of being tossed into a pot of hot water was left to cool its heels in a pitcher of cold milk. Unable to jump out, he churned and churned those frog legs until eventually the milk turned into butter and the hardened butter allowed him the platform to leap to froggy freedom! Well, let’s get churnin’, fellow frogs. If the U.S. or the U.K. or any other government is going to attempt to boil us alive, let’s make butter! Butter in this instance is what PIMCO characterizes as “cheap bonds.” ... Journalists, financial advisors, and perhaps even some clients marvel at how PIMCO can be doing so well in 2011 while being underweight the Treasury/durational component of the bond market. Folks – we’re making butter. If you’re being repressed, our strategy is to churn those legs, get out of the pitcher, and above all stay away from boiling pots of water.--Bill Gross

Immigration is a boon to American science and math, a new report asserts, noting that 70 percent of the finalists in a recent prestigious science competition are the children of immigrants. ... children of immigrants took 70 percent of the finalist slots in the 2011 Intel Science Talent Search Competition, an original-research competition for high school seniors. Of the 40 finalists, 28 had parents born in other countries: 16 from China, 10 from India, one from South Korea and one from Iran. ... Still, children of immigrants face barriers outside of the education system. According to the Georgetown report, racial disparities in pay persist even within science fields. Whites with an undergraduate major in engineering out-earn Asians with the same degree by about $8,000 a year. African-American and Hispanic engineering graduates fare worse, making about $60,000 and $56,000 per year, respectively, compared with whites' $80,000. Asians out-earn whites in the fields of health, law and public policy; psychology and social work; and biology and life sciences.--Stephanie Pappas

When less legal work is available, more illegal "work" takes place. The economist Gary Becker of the University of Chicago, a Nobel laureate, gave the standard view its classic formulation in the 1960s. He argued that crime is a rational act, committed when the criminal's "expected utility" exceeds that of using his time and other resources in pursuit of alternative activities, such as leisure or legitimate work. Observation may appear to bear this theory out. After all, neighborhoods with elevated crime rates tend to be those where poverty and unemployment are high as well. But there have long been difficulties with the notion that unemployment causes crime. For one thing, the 1960s, a period of rising crime, had essentially the same unemployment rate as the late 1990s and early 2000s, a period when crime fell. And during the Great Depression, when unemployment hit 25%, the crime rate in many cities went down. ... Culture creates a problem for social scientists like me, however. We do not know how to study it in a way that produces hard numbers and testable theories. Culture is the realm of novelists and biographers, not of data-driven social scientists. But we can take some comfort, perhaps, in reflecting that identifying the likely causes of the crime decline is even more important than precisely measuring it.--JAMES Q. WILSON

The current National Football League labor dispute is sometimes characterized as a battle between billionaire team owners and millionaire players. What's often left out, however, is the role that the American taxpayer is playing in this dispute. Through rich stadium subsidies and cartel powers granted to professional football by our representatives in Congress, we have helped to bankroll the gains in revenues that are now at issue in this clash. ... if these telecasts don't interest you much, then the next time some member of Congress complains about spiraling cable TV fees and vows to hold hearings on the subject, you might shoot him an e-mail asking if he plans to introduce legislation repealing the 1961 Sports Broadcasting Act. While you are at it, you might raise questions about the tax-free status of municipal debt that governments often float to build stadiums for professional teams, stadiums that might be empty this fall.--Steven Malanga

If the Chinese economy is really so strong, why are Chinese regulators preparing a bailout of bad loans made to local governments that may amount to almost a half trillion dollars?--John Carney

In the wake of the Dominique Strauss-Kahn scandal, as more Frenchwomen venture sexual harassment charges against elite men, the capital of seduction is reeling at the abrupt shift from can-can to can’t-can’t.--Maureen Dowd

I just quoted Maureen Dowd. Hell freezes over.--Cav

Photo links here, here, here and here.

Wall Street's money might never sleep, but the auto business shreds it

Your money, if you're a taxpayer:

The Treasury Department said in a May 10 report that its estimate of auto bailout losses as of March 31 is $13.9 billion. The Congressional Budget Office also estimates a $14 billion loss. The CBO has written off $8 billion of the government's auto bailout as an unrecoverable loss.

Photo link here.

Before and after FOXnewsification photos

Source here, via John Carney.