Chart of the day: female fertility

Time sure flies.  Source here.

Easter weekend quotes

... we note that the founder of Christianity was a rule breaker. There wasn’t a PC bone in his body. He hung out with prostitutes, thieves, terrorists and collaborators with Rome.  He was notorious for shoving the rulebook aside when it got in love’s way.--Walter Russell Mead

People moving to the city have been illogical risk takers from the beginning. and the key is probably they like the sexual or mating opportunities inherent in large groups. Playing to that angle would bring in hipsters and gays. As to whether that's the key to the health of cities or our nation, I doubt it, but it won't hurt, especially because one of the best ways of making a city fun to go out in is that it's safe for young women.--Eric Falkenstein

The longer the road from sexual maturity to marriage, the more complicated the underlying cost-benefit calculus in any given relationship becomes, and the more difficult it becomes for people with fewer resources to figure out the wisest course to take. So while the new romantic landscape doesn’t offer automatic benefits to the upper class and automatic costs to everyone else, it does create a situation where the people who need the least help figuring out the wisest life course have multiple clear paths to take, and the people who would most benefit from a simple map to responsible adulthood can easily end up in a maze instead.--Ross Douthat

... all economists are, definitionally, very good at college.  Not all economists are good at marriage.  Saying that more people should go to college will make 0% of your colleagues feel bad.  Saying that more people should get married and stay married will make a significant fraction of your colleagues feel bad.  And in general, most people have an aversion to topics which are likely to trigger a personal grudge in a coworker.--Megan McArdle

History scorns the people who lived outside Auschwitz and Treblinka, with their weak protests of ignorance. How will history treat us, I wonder?--Tony Woodlief

My homeowner insurance doesn't cover the cost when my gutters need cleaning, and my car insurance doesn't cover the cost when I need to fill the tank with gas. Instead, the policies cover only catastrophic events, like my house burning down or a major accident. Now that the Obama administration has fixed the health insurance system, I trust they will soon move on to solve these other problems.--Greg Mankiw

I wonder if [Paul Krugman] (and all the others who are pushing for more controls) are not having a “Smoot-Hawley Moment”. In 1929 tariffs and other restrictions on trade were established. A global depression followed. In 2013 the tariffs and restrictions are on money, not goods. But if the result of those controls is a reduction (or even stability) of the external debt numbers, then the global economies will fall with it.--Bruce Krasting

Military and economic catastrophes are, by their nature, unpredictable. While we can’t plan on one, prudence requires that we take their possibility into account. In normal times, when we are lucky enough to enjoy peace and prosperity, the debt-to-G.D.P. ratio shouldn’t just be stable; it should be falling. That has generally been the case throughout our history, and it should become the case again as we look forward.   The bottom line is that President Obama is right that sustainability is a reasonable benchmark for evaluating long-run fiscal policy. But the standard he applies when evaluating it appears too easy. It will leave us too vulnerable when the next catastrophe strikes.--Greg Mankiw

Bitcoin isn’t tied to any commodity—besides trust. As a statement on the global economy, Bitcoin is hilarious. As a currency for the disenfranchised and distrustful, it’s as serious as can be.--Paul Ford

... a firm basis for religious freedom would be found in the Bible, supremely in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. "I did not come to judge the world," Jesus told his followers, "but to save it." Here is an Easter story—a message of the grace of God toward every human soul—for believers and doubters alike.--Joseph Loconte

Quotes of the day

Today's young women make $1.17 for every $1 their moms earned back in 1980. Young men, however, are earning 10 cents per dollar less than their fathers did 30 years ago, new research shows.--Annalyn Censky

Big losers had to have been small losers first. You have to be down 2% before you can be down 5% before you can get down 10% and so on. Cut your losers at the knees before they cut your throat.--Michael Martin

It's a cliche to say risk management is the combination of art and science. You need to know something about history, statistics, and programming to be useful as a risk manager. You also need common sense, and that is best informed by experience ...--Eric Falkenstein

... now it’s looking increasingly as though Corzine demonstrated virtually all of the pathologies of the rogue trader more generally. Lots of financial firms make big bets and blow up. But what we saw at MF Global was much more than that. In fact, as Corzine detailed at great length in his prepared testimony last week, his big sovereign-debt bet didn’t actually lose money at all. But MF Global died all the same, because the bet was so large and risky that it caused a fatal cascade of downgrades and margin calls.--Felix Salmon

In a democracy people are free to express and debate their opinions. This is valuable in itself. But it has also been held to be instrumentally important because it is claimed that through open free debate true ideas will conquer false ones by their merit. Democracy thus has an epistemic value as a kind of truth machine. In a democracy therefore there should be no dogma, no knowledge that cannot be questioned. Not only is this view mistaken, but it is so obviously wrong that it is astonishing that it has ever been taken seriously.--Philosopher's Beard

“Public choice” economics explores the problems of concentrated interests. There are fewer corn farmers than taxpayers, and the gains from ethanol subsidies are large for each corn farmer, while the costs per taxpayer are quite small. The costs of coordination and the financial incentives mean the farmers will get their way so long as the government has the power to subsidize or penalize. This simple dynamic explains much of how our government allocates resources.

...

And, unlike Marx or Citizens United, it is something the Tea Party and Occupy can agree upon. Although it may seem far-fetched at first glance, if Occupy found common ground with the Tea Party or the sentiments behind it, much could be done politically. After all, there are many 99 percents. But so far, Occupy has absorbed or been co-opted by various one percents.

...

For example, in education policy, teachers are the one percent, while students and parents are the 99 percent. But it is generally the power of the concentrated teachers’ unions that drives decisions about education spending and policy. The fact that teachers unions support Occupy undermines its power. A true movement of the 99 percents would be on the side of students, not teachers.

...

Examples abound that cut across typical ideological lines. For instance, military contractors are the one percent, while soldiers and the citizens they defend are the 99 percent. It is for this reason that in the recent census, 7 out of the 10 richest counties surround Washington, D.C.--M. Todd Henderson

Any time someone gets fired, a manager has failed. He or she hired the wrong person, moved someone into the wrong job, or screwed up in some other way. When it’s necessary to show an employee the door, it’s going to be because we’ve tried and failed to fix whatever in the relationship and the structure wasn’t working. It’s never going to be because the person fits a category that someone has outlined for us. That, in fact, is the opposite of leadership.--Liz Ryan

Fail a lot before you are paying for the failure….I got fired or asked to leave from all my jobs.--Mark Pincus, CEO of Zynga

In 2002, a schoolteacher with previously normal sexual desire began experiencing sexual desires that he was not used to. He began looking at child pornography and engaging in sexual activity that was not common to him before this point. Little did he know, he had an egg-shaped tumor in the orb frontal cortex of his brain, and when he had the tumor removed his sexual desires stopped. A little while later the desires reappeared, so he went back to the doctor’s office. Lo and behold, the tumor had returned to the same region of his brain.--Mike Friesen

... changing your offense makes all your seniors freshmen.--unattributed

In the same way that there are people who never thought they'd see a black American president, there are also people who never thought they'd see a black basketball star dressed like a nerd.  ... If you happen to be someone who looks at Durant, James, or Amar'e Stoudemire's Foot Locker commercials — in which he stalks along a perilously lit basketball court wearing a letterman's cardigan, a skinny tie, and giant black glasses (his are prescription) — and wonders how the NBA got this way, how it turned into Happy Days, you're really wondering the same thing about the rest of mainstream black culture. When did everything turn upside down? Who relaxed the rules? Is it really safe to look like Carlton Banks?--Wesley Morris

On Dec. 12, 1991, [Paul] Kunz set up a Web interface based on a Web server to search a popular database of particle physics literature at Stanford, and sent an email to Tim Berners-Lee about it. It was the first Web site in North America and one of the first dozen in the world.--Liz Gannes

The smartest worriers are learning to code or marrying a developer.--Howard Lindzon

By virtue of its size, business model and popularity, Facebook is the rare company that doesn't need Wall Street to go public. It should press home the advantage and blaze a trail for others to follow.

...

Mr. Zuckerberg's has two options: a traditional IPO, in which banks distribute shares to investors in exchange for a percentage of total proceeds; and the little-used "Dutch auction" that cuts out the Wall Street middlemen by making the allocation of shares dependent on prices bid by each investor.

...

The biggest difference between the two systems, apart from the lower fees paid by companies in auctions, is that when IPOs go Dutch, banks don't choose who gets shares, giving all investors a fair shake and avoiding potential conflicts of interests.

...

This is particularly important for "hot" IPOs, like Facebook. Since these deals often record sharp rises in the first days of trading, there is a temptation for banks to dole out shares to their favorite investor clients, who stand to profit if they get in early.

...

Wall Street's penchant for being both poacher and gamekeeper has left banks with conflicted loyalties; they take companies public while at the same time trying to keep hedge funds and other high-paying customers satisfied.--FRANCESCO GUERRERA

Image links here, here, here, here and here.

Don Surber points out that NOW feminists treat Bill Clinton differently than Herman Cain

here.

Situational ethics usually hurts a cause.

Quotes of the day

If Men’s Health magazine was true, you would never need to buy more than one issue. If the articles that promised flat abs and less stress and better sex really worked as promised, you’d never need to have a subscription because every issue is the exact same thing.--Jon Acuff

You can't stop Tebowmania. You can only hope to contain it.--Peter King

In four starts, Tebow now has two fourth-quarter comebacks from at least 13 points down. In John Elway's career, guess how many he had. Two.--Kerry Byrne

I.B.M. named Virginia Rometty as its new chief executive, certifying her status as one of the most powerful women in technology. She joins a list that includes Meg Whitman, the newly installed chief executive of Hewlett-Packard; Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook; and Safra Catz, the chief financial officer of Oracle.--Michael De La Merced

According to the British lexicographer John Ayto, 'cool' has become an “all-purpose term of approval.” Indeed, the term is so widely used that this might, at first glance, appear to be a valid definition. But I beg to differ: cool is more precise and complex, and an elusively moving target. It’s cool to be clever, but it’s uncool to be a know-it-all. Sometimes cool stuff is expensive – but sometimes it comes cheap, and the expensive stuff is uncool. Sometimes it’s cool to break the law; at other times it isn’t. Communism used to be cool, but not so much any more. Brooklyn didn’t use to be cool, but now it is. And of course people can be (or not be) cool. Steve McQueen was very cool. Clint Eastwood? – not really: he’s too edgy and tightly wound. Collectively, the Beatles could be cool, but viewed individually, John Lennon was cooler than the other three put together. The Dalai Lama is cool (or, at least, admiring him is), but it’s hard to imagine anyone seeing a pope as cool. Barack Obama is sort of cool, for a politician – although the word on the street says he’s failed to live up to his full cool potential. Tony Blair tried very hard to be cool, and for a while he seemed to enjoy some success. But you can’t fool all the people all the time.--Colin Eatock

No, life cannot be understood flat on a page. It has to be lived; a person has to get out of his head, has to fall in love, has to memorize poems, has to jump off bridges into rivers, has to stand in an empty desert and whisper sonnets under his breath. ... It’s a living book, this life; it folds out in a million settings, cast with a billion beautiful characters, and it is almost over for you. It doesn’t matter how old you are; it is coming to a close quickly, and soon the credits will roll and all your friends will fold out of your funeral and drive back to their homes in cold and still and silence. And they will make a fire and pour some wine and think about how you once were . . . and feel a kind of sickness at the idea you never again will be. So soon you will be in that part of the book where you are holding the bulk of the pages in your left hand, and only a thin wisp of the story in your right.--Don Miller

I write about this mostly anonymous man because players like [Kent] Hull are the bedrock of so many good teams, past and present. Hull did his job and never sought glory. If glory came, as it did in the form of three Pro Bowl nods and two All-Pro selections, he would deflect it. He was the perfect Bill Polian/Marv Levy player. Do your job, be responsible, lead when needed, care only about winning -- and be smart. I am confident in saying he was one of the five or six most valuable players on those four Buffalo Super Bowl teams, because of what he meant to the team in making the line calls on the fastest-moving offense in football, and for what he meant as the last guy out of the locker room ... after every game, after every practice. If a problem needed to be solved, he'd help. If someone just wanted to talk, he'd talk. Part of his football life included being there if anyone needed him; someone usually did. I remember lots of big-talking (rightfully so), boisterous players on those Bills teams, on and off the field, and I remember Hull, with a dip between his lip and gum, accommodating teammates, reporters, fans, and never being too big for any of it. He'd do it quietly. He loved Levy's trademark, "Where would you rather be than right here, right now?'' He lived that. Being a cog in the wheel was his thing.--Peter King

I owe a lot of that stitching in my Hall of Fame jacket to Kent Hull.--Thurman Thomas

Image link here.

Quotes of the day

Nature, like an enemy, seemed intent on concealing from us its master plan. At the same time, we did have a valuable key to nature’s secrets. The laws of nature evidently obeyed certain principles of symmetry, whose consequences we could work out and compare with observation, even without a detailed theory of particles and forces. There were symmetries that dictated that certain distinct processes all go at the same rate, and that also dictated the existence of families of distinct particles that all have the same mass. Once we observed such equalities of rates or of masses, we could infer the existence of a symmetry, and this we thought would give us a clearer idea of the further observations that should be made, and of the sort of underlying theories that might or might not be possible. It was like having a spy in the enemy’s high command.--Steven Weinberg

What my mother could envision was a future in which I made my own choices. I don’t think either of us could have predicted what happens when you multiply that sense of agency by an entire generation. But what transpired next lay well beyond the powers of everybody’s imagination: as women have climbed ever higher, men have been falling behind. We’ve arrived at the top of the staircase, finally ready to start our lives, only to discover a cavernous room at the tail end of a party, most of the men gone already, some having never shown up—and those who remain are leering by the cheese table, or are, you know, the ones you don’t want to go out with. ... Just as I am fully aware that with each passing year, I become less attractive to the men in my peer group, who have plenty of younger, more fertile women to pick from. But what can I possibly do about that? Sure, my stance here could be read as a feint, or even self-deception. By blithely deeming biology a nonissue, I’m conveniently removing myself from arguably the most significant decision a woman has to make. ... When Gloria Steinem said, in the 1970s, “We’re becoming the men we wanted to marry,” I doubt even she realized the prescience of her words. ... Increasingly, the new dating gap—where women are forced to choose between deadbeats and players—trumps all else, in all socioeconomic brackets. ... It appears that the erotic promises of the 1960s sexual revolution have run aground on the shoals of changing sex ratios, where young women and men come together in fumbling, drunken couplings fueled less by lust than by a vague sense of social conformity.--Kate Bolick

Roubini Global Economics, the economics research firm begun by noted economist Nouriel Roubini, is for sale, according to sources who have been approached by an investment bank conducting an auction for the firm. RGE, as it's known, has grown quickly since its founding by Roubini, who is its chairman. It has over 85 employees, and is still losing money.--David Faber

The top 1% of New Yorkers pay over 40% of all income taxes, providing huge benefits to everyone in our city and state. Paulson & Co. and its employees have paid hundreds of millions of dollars in New York City and New York State taxes in recent years and have created over 100 high paying jobs in New York City since its formation. New York currently has the highest income taxes of any state in the country and thousands of businesses have fled New York to states with no income taxes such as Florida, Texas and Nevada, or moved offshore. Instead of vilifying our most successful businesses, we should be supporting them and encouraging them to remain in New York City and continue to grow.--Paulson & Co.

We are legion ... for we are many.--Occupy Wall Street protestor

We are legion for we are many.--possessive demons begging Jesus not to deport them

Top female reasons for sex

Source here (which also ranks top male reasons, ranking 100 reasons in all for each gender), via Robin Hanson:

1. I was attracted to the person
2. I wanted to experience the physical pleasure
3. It feels good
4. I wanted to show my affection to the person
5. I wanted to express my love for the person
6. I was sexually aroused and wanted the release
7. I was ‘‘horny’’
8. It’s fun
9. I realized I was in love
10. I was ‘‘in the heat of the moment’’
11. I wanted to please my partner
12. I desired emotional closeness (i.e., intimacy)
13. I wanted the pure pleasure
14. I wanted to achieve an orgasm
15. It’s exciting, adventurous

Quotes of the day

Apple couldn’t have killed Flash if HTML 5 hadn’t recently been adopted by major browsers. HTML 5 offers alternatives to most of the key features of Flash. And no one controls it the way Adobe controls Flash. Since no software company wants to build its products on a standard it doesn’t control, every company other than Adobe has a natural incentive to adopt HTML 5 over Flash.  This brings to mind Jonathan Zittrain’s book The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It. Zittrain warned that the success of the proprietary iPhone threatened to undermine the decentralized, bottom-up structure of the Internet. The Flash story is a useful counterexample to Zittrain’s thesis. On the one hand, iOS is a proprietary standard controlled by Apple, so its ascendancy looks like a threat to open standards. Yet the rise of the iPad was a major factor in the decline of another proprietary standard, Flash.  ... for at least two decades, it has looked like proprietary technologies were on the verge of taking over the software industry. Yet open standards have grown more and more dominant. This hasn’t been a lucky fluke, it’s a matter of basic economics. Proprietary software is central planning. And in the long run, central planning doesn’t work as well as bottom-up organization.--Timothy B. Lee

Trading is about being self-aware to obtain profits in excess of losses. Gambling is about the emotional payoff. ... When a trader lacks emotional intelligence and has no inner voice to listen to, he is more of a philanthropist than a trader. He’s giving money away, so it doesn’t matter who is on the other side of the trade ... [rogue traders] didn’t deliberately trade a Martingale system, but this is what their emotions led them to do, whether they knew it or not. That’s how vicious a cycle it is if you don’t learn to take small losses and flush your ego. Traders don’t think it can happen to them, and then all of a sudden they’re emotionally invested in the outcome of a trade. A trader must detach emotionally from the outcome of any particular trade.--Joshua Brown

You [men] don’t have to take the pill, wear a patch, insert messy rings or go through the hassle of making an appointment with your doctor to change and refill your prescription for said pills, patches, rings and paraphernalia. As for the potential short and long-term health consequences such as nausea, decreased libido, blood clotting, cancer, and infertility? On us. Cervix with a smile. If I didn’t know better, I would say that it’s like men invented birth control. But, of course, that’s just the woman in me talking crazy.--Clare Halpine

... if your blogger was good at forecasting market movements, he would be running a hedge fund, not enduring the daily sardine-like commute on the Piccadilly line. It is that the nature of financial journalism is in assembling evidence from published sources, analysts, fund managers that other people know as well. By the time the evidence of a trend is convincing enough for an article, the trend may well be over.--Buttonwood

[Jamie] Dimon, a lifelong Democrat who was rumored to be on Obama’s short list for treasury secretary before he settled on Tim Geithner, met privately with Romney on Tuesday morning before a fund-raiser at Brasserie 8¹/2 hosted by Highbridge Capital, a JPMorgan-owned hedge fund. Dimon, who was spotted “in a discreet one-on-one” discussion with Romney, cannot publicly endorse a candidate because he sits on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. But he donated to Democratic candidates in 2008 and privately supported Obama. ... Political insiders are buzzing that a defection would signal further Wall Street hostility toward Obama, who famously called them “fat cat” bankers in 2009. Dimon responded, “I don’t think the president of the United States should paint everyone with the same brush.” One insider said, “There is not a person on Wall Street, with the exception of the genetic Democrats, who would get anywhere near supporting Obama. The hostility to the administration is huge. Dimon will continue to look bipartisan, then work behind the scenes to get a Republican elected.” There were few big Wall Street names openly linked to Obama’s fund-raisers in New York. And we’re told ticket sales for Obama’s Friday event with Warren Buffett have been slower than expected, with staffers calling and e-mailing supporters to shift tickets at up to $35,800.--Page 6

High-frequency traders—often seen as the destabilizing villains of the currency markets—may in fact be helping it to run smoothly, a study by the Bank for International Settlements suggested Tuesday. Many traditional market players blame secretive high-speed traders for "predatory" or "unfair" practices, bemoaning the superfast computers they use to pick out trade signals and exploit banks' often slower machines. Some banks have even toyed with the idea of setting up closed trading systems, where they can trade with one another and avoid these accounts. But in a report based on research by officials at 14 central banks, the BIS said high-frequency traders help to make trading cheaper for everyone by squashing so-called spreads—the gap between where banks buy and sell currencies. High-frequency traders also support liquidity, and don't tend to flee the market in tough times any more often than banks.--EVA SZALAY And JACOB BUNGE

A good corporate board should be characterized by constant tension, with non-executive directors respectfully questioning the decisions of management. This can make board meetings very uncomfortable, especially for young people. Chelsea’s background makes her very well suited to dealing with this situation. So stop your hating, kids.--John Carney

Sometimes, frankly, it seems the Jets organization is afraid of Namath.--Mike Freeman

Photo links here and here.

Dutch auctions, sex, and the Bible

Most interesting comments section I've wandered into lately.

Image link here.

Quotes of the day: Bill Simmons NFL edition

Important note: I am never, ever right.--Bill Simmons

Remove my homersexuality from the equation.--Bill Simmons

And for some of his bold predictions:

1. New England, Green Bay, Pittsburgh and New Orleans will win 48 regular-season games combined.
2. Tampa makes the playoffs, Atlanta and Detroit do not.
3. By April 2012, Todd Haley will be the offensive coordinator for the New York Jets.
4. Tennessee vaults Indy, wins 10 games and takes the AFC South.
5. The Browns will be one of our two 2011 sleepers and sneak out a wild card ahead of Baltimore.
6. The Rams go on to win the NFC West.
7. The Redskins will win more games than the New York Football Giants.
8. Everyone who bet Phil Rivers at 12-to-1 as MVP cashes in.
9. Everyone who bet Dallas to win the NFC East at +300 cashes in.
10. Tony Sparano is the first 2011 coach to be fired.
11. a Packers-Steelers Superbowl rematch that Pittsburgh wins in a shootout, 37-34. Yes, even Super Bowl XLVI will have continuity.

Quotes of the day

Many ask whether high-income countries are at risk of a “double dip” recession. My answer is: no, because the first one did not end. The question is, rather, how much deeper and longer this recession or “contraction” might become.--Martin Wolf

Money, it turns out, is incredibly hard to reason about in a systematic and rational way (even for highly educated individuals). Risk is even harder.--Dan Ariely

In poker, volatility is a weapon. It can be an especially powerful weapon in the hands of the deranged. The ones who wield it most effectively either 1) have a very large stack relative to yours, or 2) have minimal personal regard for their own financial well being. To wit, if your opponent doesn’t care about fragging his own chip stack in pursuit of yours, he can use that as an advantage. Even insanity can be an edge — temporarily at least.--Jack "Mercenary Trader" Sparrow

A massive refinancing effort is likely to have little impact on the economy or foreclosures or housing prices. What it would do, however, is hurt our government’s already precarious balance sheet by reducing the payments on its vast mortgage portfolio. Fannie and Freddie should focus on reducing public losses with sensible, limited mortgage modifications and by selling foreclosed homes reasonably slowly.--Edward Glaeser

... Obama and his advisors predicted the economy would do better — much better — than it has, and those predictions were wrong. The president blames events: the European debt crisis, the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, the political tsunami of the 2010 elections. Some of that is plausible, but the two years of anemic job and economic growth that preceded those events can hardly be blamed on them. And it's that economic performance that has scuttled Obama's plans for an easy reelection in 2012. That sluggish growth seemed to catch a lot of people by surprise. ... prediction is hard. Experts — in politics, economics, climate — are very, very bad at telling people what will happen tomorrow, let alone next year or the next century. How many of the economists who tell us what to do now failed to see the mortgage debt crisis coming? Nearly all of them. ... The cult of experts has acolytes in all ideological camps, but its most institutionalized following is on the left. The left needs to believe in the authority of experts because without that authority, almost no economic intervention can be justified. If you concede that you have no idea whether your remedy will work, it's going to be hard to sell it to the patient. Market-based ideologies don't have that problem because markets expect events in ways experts never can. No president since Woodrow Wilson or Franklin Roosevelt has been more enamored with the cult of expertise than Obama. That none of his economic predictions have panned out is not surprising. What is surprising is that so many people are surprised.--Jonah Goldberg

The context is Eric Cantor’s demand that any federal disaster relief in the wake of Irene be offset by spending cuts elsewhere. Krugman thinks this is silly, and proves his point with an appeal to the standard Ricardian theory of public finance. According to that theory, which all economists understand and accept, if you’ve got to bear a cost, it’s best to spread that cost out over as many activities as possible. So ideally, you’d pay for disaster relief partly through spending cuts, partly through (current) tax increases, and partly through an increase in the deficit. Therefore says Krugman, “the bottom line is that basic, regular economics says that Cantor isn’t making sense.” ... Unless you believe that everything is perfect to begin with, the Ricardian argument fails, leaving you with no reason to believe that the cost of new spending should be spread widely. Instead, you should start by cutting back on your least wise activities. Cantor and Krugman probably have some legitimate disagreement about what those least wise activities are, but neither of them has any reason that I know of to believe that all activities are currently equally wise at the margin. I’m guessing that if Cantor had proposed paying for disaster relief entirely through an tax increase on the very rich, that Krugman would not have been so quick to dissent with an appeal to Ricardian public finance. (Come to think of it, if Krugman took his own point seriously, he’d be forced to conclude that every tax increase should be spread across all income groups, and accompanied by cuts in all expenditure categories. This would mark yet another radical change in several of his previous positions.) Then there’s the separate point that comes from public choice: Sometimes it’s a good idea to constrain people from doing things they want to do until they improve their behavior elsewhere. Even if you approve of the Congress’s intention to provide disaster relief, it can still make sense to hamstring that intention until they get some other stuff right — just like with the kid whose prom plans you approve, but who is still required to finish his chores first.--Steve Landsburg

A recent abortion kerfuffle occurred when Virginia's Department of Health proposed regulations for abortion clinics that consistent with the construction of new hospitals and all the sudden liberals realized how insanely onerous these regulations are. The bottom line is that regulations are very costly, and they are growing, as Obama is pushing for more EPA regulations based on fanciful savings to health care costs. Unfortunately, for Keynesians there's no interest in the effects of regulations on aggregate demand.--Eric Falkenstein

It’s not clear what we’ve “won” in Libya. But it is clear what we’ve lost: whatever’s left of the quaint notions that America should wage war only in defense of our vital interests and that presidential uses of military force can and should be constrained by law.--Gene Healy

... outside the academy, theory encounters a little something called the marketplace, where it turns out that courses like “Queering the Alamo,” say, can’t compete with “Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition.” ... the educational market works very differently inside the academy and outside it, and the consumers of university education are largely to blame. Almost no one comparison-shops for colleges based on curricula. Parents and children select the school that will deliver the most prestigious credentials and social connections. Presumably, some of those parents are Great Courses customers themselves—discerning buyers regarding their own continuing education, but passive check writers when it comes to their children’s. Employers, too, ignore universities’ curricula when they decide where to send recruiters, focusing only on the degree of IQ-sorting that each college exercises sub rosa. Universities are certainly doing very well for themselves, despite ignoring their students’ latent demand for traditional learning. But they would better fulfill their mission if they took note of the Great Courses’ wild success in teaching the classics. “I wasn’t trying to fix something that was broken in starting the company,” Rollins says. “I was just trying to create something beautiful.” Colleges should replicate that impulse.--Heather MacDonald

If there is indeed a market in sexual favors—where sex is exchanged for economic support, emotional commitment, and the like—then it is by definition a two-way market. Assume, for a minute, that women are the “producers” in this market, and men are the “consumers.” (We all know what the product is.) Assume, as well, with Ms Hakim that there is an artificially restricted supply of this product. In aggregate, demand exceeds supply. To whose benefit does this market imbalance accrue? Cui bono?   Why, the producers, of course. Women. Duh.  To whose benefit would a removal of these restrictions accrue? The consumers. Men. A complete liberalization of the market for erotic capital—deregulation, in other words—would lower the scarcity, price, and value of sexual favors across the entire market. Men could presumably purchase or acquire by other means all the sexual satisfaction they desired at a going rate likely to be well below the standard price exacted today. At the margin (and perhaps well beyond that), marriage, committed fatherhood, and men’s financial and emotional support to their women and children would likely decline materially. Is that what women want? Really?   I will presume to speak for the fairer sex now: Of course not.   This is why the argument that sexual repression of women arises solely from patriarchy makes no sense to me.  ... consciously or not, I believe most women understand [that women’s erotic capital depreciates over time] extremely well. In fact, it has been my experience that women are the primary carriers of cultural and social values in this sphere. You don’t usually hear men or fathers making a big deal about loose women, adultery, prostitution, and the like; it is the wives and mothers. Why? Because it affects them directly. Patriarchal socioeconomic structures or not, it is usually women who set, monitor, and enforce basic social and sexual mores and expectations.  It’s in their own self interest. --TED

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.  ... Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.--Steve Jobs


... suicide is more than twice as common as homicide.--Stephen Dubner

New York fails to crack the Top 10 list

of most promiscuous cities in America.

Via Dealbreaker.  Photo link here.

Quotes of the day

Risk is like sex because its payoff depends more on context than quantity.--Eric Falkenstein

Life isn’t a Taylor Swift song, with all the hardship left out. It works more like a Normal Mailer novel, with all the gritty garbage left in. Stop falling for the romantic version of life, and start realizing that a romantic story is told with an enormous amount of pain, sacrifice, suffering and patience.--Don Miller

It seems the journalist profession has forgotten all about the ethics of journalists. It would be inappropriate for Rupert and James Murdoch to be told the source if the journalist wanted it protected and it would be inappropriate for Rupert and James Murdoch to ask. Of course a large slab of the journalist profession has forgotten all about journalist ethics and just assumed that the proprietor should and does know. Of course they have. These journalists are themselves non-ethical. They have forgotten journalist ethics. When you talk to a journalist off-the-record you have - in the past - had a reasonable basis for presuming that the off-the-record conversation will be respected. You can't assume that anymore. Journalists have forgotten the basic ethics of the profession.--John Hempton

Like many a Banana Republic, we may one day be invoking the Lord’s Prayer, pleading – “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors,” yet at the same time looking towards the heavens á la Saint Augustine with a fervent “let me be chaste, but let it be tomorrow.” ... The press and most professional investors are accustomed to measuring “paper” debt as opposed to walking/living liabilities in the form of people. I call these liabilities “debt men walking” because as long as 330 million living Americans require promised entitlements – the $66 trillion that wear shoes are as much of a liability as the $10 trillion on paper.--Bill Gross

Three percent per year in real GDP is the long-term growth rate of the American economy since 1880. This is considerably below the usual growth rate of GDP in a decade after a major recession. This is why I believe three percent growth is achievable with tax reform (that would include some tax increases), and with major controls over the growth of spending. Keeping real federal spending growth to 1% per year will be a huge challenge since entitlements, like Medicare, will grow much faster than that over the next decade without sizable entitlement reforms that greatly cut their cost to the government. Still, the spending growth rate is doable. A major start would be to cut back some of the sizable expansion of federal spending since 2007. That combined with serious reforms that cut government spending on Medicare, especially for the elderly with decent financial means, would go a long way toward keeping the real growth of federal spending in the range of 1% per year for a decade.--Gary Becker

I have no clue if Randy Moss reached his potential as a wide receiver. Could he have caught 183 TD passes instead of 153? Maybe. Could Mickey Mantle have hit 650 home runs if he had skipped Toots Shor’s and gone home to Marylin and the kids? I guess. Who knows? In 1985 it sure seemed possible that starting pitchers would someday be competing for the Dwight Gooden Award. Stuff happens. ... Randy Moss did not play every snap as if it was his last. Randy Moss had some off-the-field issues that were (and remain) troubling. Randy Moss was sometimes a good teammate, but very often a lousy one. Randy Moss was selfish. Randy Moss had an act that wore thin, and he burned bridge after bridge in his career. All those things are very true, and all those aren’t nearly enough to convince me that a Hall of Fame that has a spot for O.J. Simpson and Lawrence Taylor has to make Randy Moss wait a year or two before giving him the keys. Was he perfect? Nope. Does he leave a mixed legacy? He sure does. But Randy Moss is the very definition of a first-ballot Hall of Famer.--Kirk Minihane

It's going to be scary, scary for other teams. ... I went to the Pro Bowl with Vince and the funny thing is, I said 'What if we were on the same team?' He was like, 'That would be crazy, there's no way that's going to happen.' But 2, 3 years later, here we are.--Albert Haynesworth

All the reasons I hide behind my pseudonym remain in full force and effect; I will only forgo the pretense once Steve Schwarzman and Henry Kravis drop theirs and marry in public on the steps of City Hall. In the meantime, just don't confuse the man behind the curtain with the Wizard of Oz. I have many valuable things in my gift, but yacht rides on the Mediterranean are not one of them. ... [Coach Belichick]'s very detail-oriented and he demands perfection every single time. I've been with some really good teams, with a lot of great players, but I've never been in a situation where it's like perfection every time -- not for a person, but for a team.--TED

I wish I had wrote that.--Cav

Photo links here and here.

Quotes of the day

Private equity firms do create value, albeit with a heavy assist from financial engineering. Mr. Lee himself marveled on his blog at the ultimately successful restructuring Silver Lake undertook at Skype.  The perception is otherwise. Imagine if Lawrence H. Summers had joined Blackstone or Carlyle instead of recently becoming an adviser to the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He would be called a sellout akin to Peter Orszag, who left government service to become a vice chairman at Citigroup.  This brings us back to l’affaire Skype. Mr. Lee can be blamed, but instead it is Silver Lake that is vilified. The reason is that Silver Lake is not playing by venture capital rules.  Yet the private equity firm is being blamed for doing exactly what private equity firms do and what is expected of them. In this light, Silver Lake is not “evil. “ Silver Lake is not even acting illegally or immorally. If Mr. Lee had hired a lawyer for an hour, he would have learned of his dilemma.  Name-calling aside, this is all about all about what people think of the industries and venture capital’s innate fear of private equity methods. V.C. and P.E. just may not be right for each other.--Steven Davidoff

It can be cathartic to witness somebody powerful throw a big tantrum, but it's also deeply embarrassing. It becomes even more embarrassing when that person is no longer powerful.--Molly Lambert

You should go work for a real bank.--Jamie Dimon, to a Citigroup banker at the World Economic Forum in Davos

In a post-industrial economy, drug dealing is not the only occupation where wages disproportionally skew towards the top 1%. The odds are stacked against Millenials, whether they strive to be football players or lawyers. Admittance into a top-14 law school, like a scholarship from a top-10 college football program, is the culmination of a lifetime of striving. Of the over 100,000 high school seniors who play football, fewer than 3,000 sign Division I letters of intent. Similarly, the top 25% in Harvard Law’s 2009 class had an average GPA of 3.95 and a LSAT score of 175, which puts them in the 99th percentile of the over 100,000 test takers each year. Yet, despite overcoming nearly impossible odds, each group still has the toughest test of their lives ahead of them — each other. NFL teams rarely draft players not at the top of the depth chart, even at powerhouses like Texas or Oklahoma. And even at Harvard or Columbia Law, “Big Law” firms — those with the coveted $160,000 starting salaries — don’t reach too far below the median class rank when selecting first-year associate. As you go down the ranks, the odds only decrease. NFL players from non-BCS conferences were usually top-tier starters in college, while top-50 law schools typically send only 10-25% of each class to “Big Law”. And just as there are always a few DII and DIII players in the draft each year, students from tier 2 and tier 3 law schools occasionally beat out graduates of elite schools for jobs. But “small school” success stories are the best of the best — collegiate All-Americans, the top 1% of their class in law review.--Jonathan Tjarks

There are almost no Americans left who have either the painfully developed musculature or the painstakingly acquired knowledge to rapidly harvest a field without damaging the crop. To my mind, that's a good thing: Americans don't have these skills because they have better alternatives. But really, it doesn't matter whether it's good or not. The people who blithely assert that we could always get Americans to do this job by paying a higher way are wildly underestimating what's involved in becoming a skilled picker. It is not something you learn to do of an afternoon. If we shut out the immigrants, we will see a lot more ruined crops.--Megan McArdle

Andrew Gelman, a statistics professor at Columbia and an amateur name-ologist, argues that many parents want their boys to seem mature and so pick classic names. William, David, Joseph and James, all longtime stalwarts, remain in the Top 20. With girls, Gelman says, parents are attracted to names that convey youth even into adulthood and choose names that seem to be on the upswing.--DAVID LEONHARDT

... [Chris Mooney] spun the survey to focus on the fact that the disagreement polarized the hierarchical-individualists and communitarian-egalitarians alone, and concludes that 'a little knowledge is a dangerous thing'. Yes, Mr. tendentious English major without an understanding of standard errors, it is.--Eric Falkenstein

Across Atlanta Public Schools, staff worked feverishly in secret to transform testing failures into successes. Teachers and principals erased and corrected mistakes on students’ answer sheets. Area superintendents silenced whistle-blowers and rewarded subordinates who met academic goals by any means possible. Superintendent Beverly Hall and her top aides ignored, buried, destroyed or altered complaints about misconduct, claimed ignorance of wrongdoing and accused naysayers of failing to believe in poor children’s ability to learn. For years — as long as a decade — this was how the Atlanta school district produced gains on state curriculum tests. The scores soared so dramatically they brought national acclaim to Hall and the district, according to an investigative report released Tuesday by Gov. Nathan Deal.--Heather Vogell

The story of the person who kills for love is almost always more compelling than the person who kills for money. I didn't write about the Mafioso in [Popular Crime: Reflections on the Celebration of Violence] because that's a different phenomenon. Those are people who entered a lifestyle where killing people is just a necessary part of what they do. ... "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth" is very, very interesting. It's false, and extremely arrogant, and very dangerous. That's not a real way to think about the world. This concept of eliminating the impossible — we could never do that. The whole idea of Sherlock Holmes is dangerous because it encourages people to think that — if they're intelligent enough — they could put all the pieces together in absolute terms. But the human mind is not sophisticated enough to do that. People are not that smart. It's not that Sherlock Holmes would need to be twice as smart as the average person; he'd have to be a billion times as smart as the average person. ... We continually become less tolerant of actions that lead to death. The human race has been in a long struggle to eliminate murder. And we will succeed. ... There will always be occasional exceptions, but we're involved in a long struggle against murder, war, famine, disease — and we move forward more than we move back. And you can only understand this if you look over the sweep of centuries.--Bill James

President Lyndon Johnson and the “best and the brightest” who staffed his administration led this country into three quagmires. By far the most famous, but perhaps not the most expensive and dangerous resulted from LBJ’s escalation of the Vietnam War. More than 50,000 Americans and many more Vietnamese died as a result of that policy; our country was bitterly divided in ways that still weaken us today, and the economic cost of the war was immense. It contributed to the wave of inflation that shook the country in the 1970s and in addition to the interest on the debt from this ill-starred venture we are still paying (as we certainly should) pensions and medical costs for the vets and their spouses. The Second Great Johnson Quagmire now destroying the nation is the Medicare/Medicaid complex. These entitlement programs are the biggest single financial problem we face. They dwarf all the Bush-Obama wars; they make TARP look like small change. They not only cost money we don’t have — and are scheduled to cost inexorably more until they literally ruin the nation — they have distorted our entire health system into the world’s most bloated and expensive monstrosity. Thanks to these programs, we have a health system that marries the greed of the private sector to the ineptitude of government, and unless we can somehow tame these beasts America and everything it stands for could be lost. (Note, please, that by comparison Social Security can be relatively easily reformed to be solvent for the next 75 years. The New Deal, whatever its shortcomings, was almost infinitely more realistic and sustainable than the Great Society.)--Walter Russell Mead

This NFL lockout is so much fun!--Bryan Allain

The way I see it, if the fans vote for Charlie Sheen to start in the outfield, Michele Bachmann at short and Rupaul at first base, then baseball should do its best to make that happen. I think the game is for the fans, completely and entirely, and I wish they would have fans vote DURING THE GAME on who to pinch-hit, who to bring in from the pen, when to hit and run and so on. The complaint I've heard that the fans should have voted Jhonny Peralta over Derek Jeter at shortstop because he had a much better first half feels to me like arguing that a kid should serve broccoli at a birthday party instead of cake because broccoli is s better for you. Jhonny Peralta has been a mostly dreadful player for three years. It's wonderful he had a great 76 games this year. But why does that obligate me to vote him into the All-Star game? Arguing that fans were somehow misguided for choosing the most popular player of the generation to start at shortstop over Jhonny Peralta seems to me like an anti-argument, like arguing that the All-Star Game should not be fun at all. ... Andrew McCutchen isn't in the All-Star Game and I can't even say why. Michael says it best: It feels like a clerical error or something. Clerical errors are no fun at all ... which gets us back to the All-Star Game problem in the first place.--Joe Posnanski

Photo link here and here.

Quotes of the day

I had always believed in the analytic self; I was rational, calculating, and tried to make smart decisions. Of course real people don’t use math, but I figured that we’re still weighing costs and benefits just as our models say. Or at least that was my understanding of the world. Today, I’m not so sure. ... My feelings toward my daughter Matilda aren’t easily expressed in analytic terms. I struggle to express it, just as I struggle to understand it. I think about my daughter, and I smile. Her laugh is the greatest joy, and it thrills me that she shares it with me. ...There’s something new and strange about all this. Today, I feel the powerful force of biology. It’s visceral; it’s real; it’s hormonal, and it’s not in our economic models. I’m helpless in the face of feelings that overwhelm me.--Justin Wolfers

When my mother showed the cops her plastic bag full of crack vials that we picked up off the sidewalks around Washington Square, the cops looked at the residue and deduced that it couldn’t be cocaine. Addicts would never leave that much behind. Thwarted in their efforts to get police attention, my mother and a neighbor, Diane Whelton, did what came naturally to children of the ’60s: they organized. My mother became the head of Mothers and Children of Washington Square [Park]. ... By the end of 1987, the crack dealers had been driven from the park. The neighborhood got so nice that eventually we were driven out, too. I’m in Brooklyn, and my mom and dad moved to Westchester. That park, however, will always feel like ours.--John Carney

Praying is hard sometimes but it’s nowhere near as difficult as flossing regularly.--Sammy Adebiyi

There's a lot of (justifiable) chest beating over Android at Google these days -- a corporate development VP has called the Android acquisition Google's "best deal ever" -- but in hindsight the overwhelming success of Android is kind of a miracle. Big tech companies screw up many if not most of their acquisitions, letting them wither from corporate neglect or driving out founders and other talent with their inflexible cultures and protocols. (Skype buyer Microsoft (MSFT), are you listening?) Even Google can be guilty of this too (dMarc, Dodgeball), but its management of Android is a textbook example of a deal gone terribly right: Rubin and his team thrived in Google's engineering-driven culture, which encouraged innovation by letting Android release less-than-perfect versions that it would continually upgrade. Google also embraced Rubin's vision of giving the operating system away -- a gambit, enabled by Google's broader ad-based business model, that stoked adoption of the platform. But Android ultimately triumphed thanks in large part to its corporate benefactors: Google co-founders Page and Brin saw the broader potential of Android almost from the outset. For the young entrepreneurs Android was more than just another software acquisition. It was the centerpiece of their grand vision to transform the telecommunications industry and make it more open and accessible -- in short, more like the Internet.--Beth Kowitt

You can still see the contrast between American idealism about companionate marriage and French “sophistication.” In France, we now know thanks to Dominique Strauss-Kahn, men were not only allowed to stray, they earned praise for doing so. As DSK’s wife Anne Sinclair once said, “It’s important to seduce, for a politician.” Male attraction to women, particularly younger women, has been considered both natural and virile, and no one seemed especially troubled by the possible suffering of the cast aside and frequently aging wife. What did Mme. Mitterrand, wife of Francois, think of la Presidente’s mistress and child? No one asked and no one cared. That is not the case in the United States. The public humiliation of Anthony Weiner, like that of his predecessors in sexual malfeasance—John Edwards, Chris Lee, Eliot Spitzer, Mark Sanford, and so many others—has the effect of a moral crusade against those who violate both the companionate ideal and his wife’s dignity. We subject him to weeks of derision, we debate his uncertain future, we pick apart the poor man’s psyche, we insist on public penitence, otherwise known as the press conference, and we may, as in the recent case of Chris Lee and now Anthony Weiner, take away the powerful position that he used to lure women.--Kay Hymowitz

We're all trying to appeal to totally different (sometimes conflicting) demographics simultaneously, which is why Katy Perry and Rihanna wear vinyl nurse outfits for audiences of 12-year-old girls.--Molly Lambert

Should we replace machines that produce light bulbs with human glass blowers, to bring back those jobs? Should we replace machines that produce cigarettes with human cigarette rollers to bring back those jobs? Should we go back to the manufacturing processes of the 1950s in steel, automobiles, and durable goods in order to bring back those jobs? I would gladly support a tax-financed program to subsidize manufacturing jobs provided that those jobs were filled by every politician who calls for a return of manufacturing jobs.--Arnold Kling

Under Basel II in December 2009, Greek government bonds, rated A-/A2, had the same 20 percent risk weight as AA/AAA asset-backed securities in the United States. It seemed like easy money, and banks levered it up. As usual, regulations did not alleviate the problem, rather, they encouraged it.--Eric Falkenstein

The oddest aspect of Green Lantern—and I wonder if the filmmakers were even aware of it—is its frankly fascist sci-fi philosophy. The green rings and lanterns are charged with the Power of Will, the various counterpoised yellow thingies with the Power of Fear. At one point, Sinestro (who would trust a guy with a name like that?) says, “Fear is the enemy of Will. Fear is what stops you and makes you weak.” At which point I wondered what kind of movie Leni Riefenstahl might have made from this material. Possibly a more interesting one.--Kurt Loder

Three years ago, Iceland forced its over-leveraged financial sector into a painful debt restructuring instead of bailing out its banks. The government had no other choice: Icelandic banks' assets totalled roughly 1,000% of GDP, and in the world's smallest currency area, no less. The central bank could not take on the role of lender of last resort without igniting a currency crisis. Critics dubbed this response disastrous, and Iceland served as the cautionary tale of an "Icarus economy" whose banks had grown too big to save. Today, though Iceland's banking system defaulted, its government remains solvent, with debt levels close to the European average of between 80% and 90% of GDP. Iceland's luck was that it did not qualify for a bailout. ... There may be no better contrast between restructuring versus bailouts than to compare Iceland to Ireland. Dublin faced the same predicament as Reykjavik in 2008, but it responded with a blanket guarantee that turned Irish taxpayers' money into collateral for Irish bank debts. Rating agencies and so-called experts hailed the move at the time, in part because Dublin had the euro and the mighty German state vouching for its credibility. But Iceland's experience of botched government takeovers and private-capital flight has also played out in Ireland—only much more slowly and, arguably, more painfully. The crucial difference between Iceland and Ireland is that Icelandic taxpayers relinquished responsibility for their banks' bondholders, while their Irish counterparts are on the hook for their banks' crushing debts. Even worse, we may not have seen the full scale of the Irish banking system's losses, given that it remains on government life support. It is becoming clearer by the day that too many of Europe's banking crises were initially misdiagnosed as liquidity, rather than solvency, problems. For some countries, most notably Ireland, the policies prescribed for that misdiagnosis have transformed banking crises into sovereign-debt crises. --ÁSGEIR JóNSSON

Photo links here, here, here, here, here and here.

Quotes of the day

If your world view depends on believing everyone you disagree with is either corrupt or incompetent, you are not clever.  You are a fool.--Epicurean Dealmaker

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose.--Dr. Seuss

Faith is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted in spite of your changing moods.--C.S. Lewis

[Kanye West] is unsatisfied with Miss Albania even though he's spent his entire career working to a place where he could have sex with Miss Albania. A woman whose only talent is being beautiful bores him because he wants a woman he can talk to and feel comfortable with, the way he felt around his mother. That he channels this into a song that vaguely suggests a desire to have sex with his mom is extremely Portnoy's Complaint of him. And then, of course, he sees himself in his mom's boyfriends. In the various boyfriends who mistreated his mother, men who lied to her when she was obviously smart enough to know when they were lying. And he wonders how he could have hated these men so much as a boy, only to turn out exactly like them.--Molly Lambert

Like Obama, Hoover was the child of a broken home with an unconventional background. He was far more widely traveled than most Americans in his day, and his time overseas made him a globalist in his thinking in many ways. His wife (Lou Henry Hoover) was unusually well educated and assertive — at a time when few women went to college, she graduated from coeducational Stanford with a degree in geology. Hoover was an unconventional candidate who came into office on a tidal wave of support. ... President Hoover brought some convictions with him to office about how the economy worked, how government worked, and what his role as President should be. As the Depression deepened, he did the best he could within those limits, but nothing seems to have made him reconsider the mix of progressive ideas that he brought with him to the White House. As months of failure and disappointment grew into years, he doesn’t seem to have questioned those core ideas or to think about ways in which the economic emergency might require steps that in normal times would not be taken. He not only failed to end the Depression; he failed to give people a sense that he understood what was happening. Over-optimistic forecasts issued in part to build confidence came back to haunt him. To the public he seemed fuddled and doctrinaire, endlessly recycling stale platitudes in the face of radically new economic problems. That’s beginning to sound a little like the current President’s predicament. ... Lincoln, Clinton, Carter, Hoover: that is a trajectory no President should want — nor will the country benefit from 18 more months of Presidential subsidence. One hopes the White House realizes just how much trouble it, and we, are in.--Walter Russell Mead

Krugman writes as if the volatility of stock prices alone disproves market efficiency, and believers in efficient marketers [sic] have just ignored it all these years. This is a canard that Krugman should know better than to pass on, no matter how rhetorically convenient. There is nothing about ‘efficiency’ that promises ‘stability’. Stable price growth would in fact be a major violation of efficiency as it would imply easy profits.--John Cochrane

... we must stop telling foreign entrepreneurs to build their companies in other countries--Michael Bloomberg

Women in large swaths of the U.S. are dying younger than they were a generation ago, reversing nearly a century of progress in public health and underscoring the rising toll of smoking and record obesity.--Noam Levey

... at the highest level, poker isn't even gambling at all. It's a gunfight, with both sides exactly equal in weaponry and numbers; over time, only strategy, courage, and execution separate winner from loser.--Brian Koppelman

[Meredith] Whitney has become known for exaggerating a bit in her predictions. That’s probably true this time, at least for the moment as localities scramble to balance their budgets and the worst of the debt crisis is still overseas.  But just as her calls for 100 muni defaults may be off the mark, so is the notion that all is well in the state of government debt.--Jeff Cox

Photo links here, here and here.

Animal Matrix

Scott Adams view at a non-violent, non-shameful, and celibate future:

Long term, I think science will come up with a drug that keeps men chemically castrated for as long as they are on it. It sounds bad, but I suspect that if a man loses his urge for sex, he also doesn’t miss it. Men and women would also need a second drug that increases oxytocin levels in couples who want to bond. Copulation will become extinct. Men who want to reproduce will stop taking the castration drug for a week, fill a few jars with sperm for artificial insemination, and go back on the castration pill.

That might sound to you like a horrible world. But the oxytocin would make us a society of huggers, and no one would be treated as a sex object. You’d have no rape, fewer divorces, stronger friendships, and a lot of other advantages. I think that’s where we’re headed in a few generations.

Photo link here.

Dummkopfs

First DSK, now Ahnuld. What's going on?

I think a Darwinist would have to conclude everything is as it should be; nothing new or surprising to see here.

Gloria Steinem would probably complain about whoever she did not have influence over, and give guys who owed her (e.g. Bill Clinton) a pass.

Maybe its time to bring Jesus back into the conversation. He'd say adultery is not cool.  I'm thinking a lot of kids caught in the middle of their parents' conflict would agree.

Photo links here and here.

UPDATE: France has their situational feminists, too. Apparently, they stop advocating for women when the perp is a Socialist party star:

... the real national embarrassment for France is the response of its elites.

First came the two-faced appeals to the sacred "presumption of innocence" by French politicians on both sides of the aisle. DSK rival and self-proclaimed women's advocate Ségolène Royal extended her thoughts to DSK and his family for going through a very hard time, but did not have a word for the maid, for whom one suspects the past few days haven't been all roses.

The "presumption of innocence" was turned into a presumption of culpability of the accuser. Much ink was poured over how awful it is for DSK. And since DSK must be presumed innocent, not a word was spared to worry about the maid and her family, who are going through a hard time.

To the rescue came repeated fraudster and Roman Polanski defender Bernard-Henri Lévy (with friends like these, who needs enemies, Dominique?) who was shocked, shocked that in America "anyone can come along and accuse another fellow of any crime" (mon Dieu!), and suggests that DSK shouldn't be treated that way because, well, he's a very important man.