Fascinating… (and well worth the 20 min)

If you are not familiar with Nassim Taleb, definitely Google him.

If you haven’t watched this yet, you need to:

Here is a map of US unemployment per county. I found it interesting to see where the high spots are. (For instance, is it any wonder why the California government is out of money when you look at what’s going on in the state? Umm…way to lead by example, Arnold.) For an even better idea [...]

Late night commercials are the best!  Natural remedy healing, sell us your gold, sell us your ten-year settlement payout for a lump sum NOW, and the Snuggie (shout-out to Jason and Elise)!
The settlement payout commercials always get me thinking, which is not very productive that late at night:

I wonder what rate they use to discount [...]

Let’s talk about what its like to do business with the government versus the private market.

Example 1:
The WSJ today (non-Op-ed for once ) discusses recent government involvement in the management of GM.  For example, as part of the plan to cut costs, GM proposed to close and cut ties with 1,300 under-performing dealerships.  But [...]

As Fannie, Freddie, and the FHA all go bankrupt one day, I anticipate the debates about who caused the problem.  Was it:

the Fed for keeping rates so low and causing a bubble?
Congress for requiring and pushing the lenders to make loans to people who could not afford them?
the banks for their “predatory” pricing and foreclosure [...]

A couple paragraphs from a WSJ op-ed summarizes my issue with the public-sector (bold added):
“Meantime, the city’s [New York's] fixed pension obligations to its workers—which Albany hikes in good times and bad—have hit a projected $6.6 billion at last count, up from $1.6 billion in 2003. Barring a sharp recovery, the city’s tax-funded pension contributions [...]

You have probably heard about Obama arguing that the individual mandate is not a tax.  Well, this is just one more example of why Obama has no real clue about what is in the bill.  Here is what the Baucus bill actually says about the penalty for not complying with the mandate.  See it for [...]

In the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal was a memorium for Irving Kristol.  The memorium took excerpts from several of Kristol’s famous articles, and I liked this one the best:
“Income Inequality Without Class Conflict, Dec. 18, 1997
It is often said that capitalism—that is, a market economy—is morally obnoxious because its “trickle-down economics” inevitably [...]

I watched Sicko last week and, like all his other films, Michael Moore had some good points and some terrible points.  When trying to refute obvious counters to his arguments, he would use the weakest anecdotal evidence possible.  But that is his formula, so I accepted it and watched the whole thing.  But this isn’t a post [...]