Quotes of the day

... if a male writer wanted to “analyze” gender differences by using a combination of misleading statistics about women, unscientific snapshots of particular men who seem like real go-getters, and musings about how men are adaptive and resilient and possess greater vision, he’d rightly get slapped down for shoddy thinking and poor journalism. What say in the interest of gender equality we hold Rosin to the same standard?--Tony Woodlief

Medical care is famously immune to the usual market incentives; the patient has little reason to make a cost-benefit tradeoff. Doctors and hospitals hardly do either; indeed the opposite seems to be the case. Matters are made all the worse, ironically, by the continual improvements in medicine – improvements which often treat what was previously untreatable, and which improve on existing treatments but at a higher cost.--Rick Brookstaber

I've done several types of work over the years but I don't know another as counterintuitive as startup investing. The two most important things to understand about startup investing, as a business, are (1) that effectively all the returns are concentrated in a few big winners, and (2) that the best ideas look initially like bad ideas.--Paul Graham

In his State of the Union address earlier this year, President Obama declared, “I will not cede the wind or solar or battery industry to China . . . because we refuse to make the same commitment here.” Given what’s really happening in China, he may want to think again.--PATRICK CHOVANEC

I was asked whether the new Fed policy will enable Obama’s big spending plans for his second term.  I doubt it.  The policy initiative is too small to decisively impact growth or the deficit, but large enough to take away support for further fiscal stimulus.  Obama will be forced to adopt Simpson/Bowles-style austerity during his second term.  There’s no longer any point in even wasting keystrokes on Mitt’s plans.  He’s done—put a fork in him.--Scott Sumner