Your Suspicions Are True

Those annoying searches at the airport only slow you down and dont do much to secure the flights ... now confirmed by research.

And You May Ask Yourself ...

David Byrne of Talking Heads has a great article in Wired about (at least) six models for producing music today. Among other things, what jumped out at me was the metric that about $7 of each CD goes towards Label Overhead and Retail Overhead. If online distribution can eliminate that, then a whole new market segment opens up. iTunes gets us partially there, but currently they take a 30% cut - that should rapidly drop to zero if another company could break the monopoly. Hello, Amazon?

Housing Futures Point to Trouble

The futures market says that SF housing is expected to be down 6% in 2008 - great information for bargaining house prices. As Greg Mankiw is fond of saying - arent markets great?

Why is copyright expanding like a pufferfish?

Prof Netanel has written a paper on it.

Red Meat and Cancer

According to research published by Public Library of Science, eating habits are correlated with cancer as much as smoking is. In particular, the red and processed meats seem to have the most carcinogenic compounds, and risk of certain kinds of cancer increases more than 20% for individuals who eat substantial amounts.

Foreclosure Drivers

Interesting research paper from the Federal Bank of Boston - finds that the prime driver of foreclosure is depreciating housing prices, rather than recession in the economy. Havent read the whole thing yet...

Tom Friedman's Been Watching Jon Stewart Apparently ...

So he's written an op-ed thats so funny that it wants to make you cry, like any good satire piece should. Who knew Tom Friedman had it in him?

A Young and Prescient Jon Stewart

Conflict of Interest at Goldman Sachs?

Ben Stein questions the ethics at GS. Customers of investment banks, check to make sure they are putting their money where their mouth is.

The Drug War Tragedy

Of all magazines, Rolling Stone has a surprisingly comprehensive overview of the war on drugs. Very good companion piece to the movie Traffic, and the excellent BBC miniseries it was based on.

Against Expert Advice

Heartwarming story from Malawi. No doubt that left wing will look at this as evidence that free markets do not work in many situations. But my opinion is that this actually is a case of markets actually working, as long as you consider the government as part of the market. Academics usually tend to consider government as an entity that operates outside the market, but the reality is that the goverment IS an inherent stakeholder in the market. In this case the government considered an investment case where if they invested in the fertilizer, the returns to the whole economy increased. So like any rational actor in the market, they invested. The simpleton in this story is the western advisor who looked up his textbook - saw the maxim that government subsidies are bad - and repeated it without looking at the overall return to the economy. Dont attribute to market failure what you can attribute to stupidity. All governments (free market or otherwise) undertake projects that generate returns for the economy as a whole. The problem with planned economies is that they frequently tend to invest in projects that have poor returns to the economy. And the problem with naive academics is that they tend to put theory over pragmatism.

Macroeconomic Insanity

Nobel laureate Paul Samuelson argues for more credit infusion into the market, as well as regulation changes to help out the mortgage borrowers. However there are others (Ben Stein et al) who argue that the problem is relatively tiny when compared to the size of the entire real estate market. And congressman Ron Paul has of course thrashed Ben Bernanke that credit infusion will lead to higher inflation and further devaluation of the dollar. Paul Krugman thinks higher saving rate leads to a weaker dollar. And if you are not confused enough, then there are the conspiracy theories that link it all to elite puppeteers, war, finance, and religion. Fun times.

Michael Lewis on Investing

Lewis outlines the story of Dimensional Fund Advisors, which advises its clients to not churn stocks unlike other firms that actively trade. Interesting quotes:

"If you wake up in the morning and see Warren Buffett's face in the bathroom mirror, go ahead and buy some stocks. If you see anyone else’s face, diversify.”



"If you put a thousand people in barrels and push them over Niagara Falls, some of them will survive. And if you take those guys and push them over again, some of them will survive. And they’ll write books about how to survive being pushed over Niagara Falls in a barrel."

Whether the efficient market hypothesis is right or wrong is beside the point - what is really important is that there is absolutely no information in the past stock price data. Without insider information, everybody is better off buying low cost index funds or ETFs.

The Consequences of Mr Bush

Joseph Stiglitz lays out the case why Bush's policies have devastated the economic landscape of the country. Very substantial indictment - goes well with Ron Paul's public spanking of Ben Bernanke.

CIA and the Iranian Coup

Interesting feature from the NYT summarizing the involvement of the CIA in the 1953 Iranian coup. Quite interesting to note how CIA's efforts in curbing communism, the evil du jour, led to the rise of islamic fundamentalism in Iran - just like it did in Afghanistan (detailed marvelously in pulitzer winning book Ghost Wars by Steve Coll)

Ron Paul Surging

The Iowa electronic markets [graph] has the gynecologist towering over John McCain and Fred Thompson. And this is right on the heels of the bookies in london upgrading his odds of winning. This could get very interesting very soon - I hope he hangs around for a while.

Gene Simmons versus Terry Gross

This has to be one of the strangest interviews (12MB Mp3) NPR has ever aired. Gene starts off using a lot of bookish words but the conversation quickly degenerates (or gets fascinating, depending on your outlook). He is at various points in the conversation - sexist, delusional, funny, sincere, enlightened - I'm just not sure where he switches from one to the other. Well done Terry persevering through this interview. Probably diagonal opposite of the NPR Sigur Ros interview.

Frontline

The show's 2007 season kicks off with an excellent episode. Available to view online. Fits in very well with Naomi Klein's contention that governments use catastrophic events to expand their powers that could not have been achieved through normal procedures. Eminently watchable.

On Swearing

Steven Pinker on cussing - overview of linguistics, psychology, history, and the current attitude.

Tips for Healthy Eating

Five tips from across the continents - fairly simple and intuitive.