Fascinating… (and well worth the 20 min)

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

I read an interesting op-ed piece in the Boston Globe a couple months ago that I keep coming back to, called The Hollywoodization of Wall Street (http://tinyurl.com/kqxl8v).
The thesis of the article is that conservative attitudes of Wall Street, honed during the depression and WWII, shifted sometime in the 70’s as the media glamorized [...]

If we could get Congress to stop screwing around maybe things would turn around.  The following is the abstract of a research paper published by two financial economists.
“We find a strong link between Congressional activity and stock market returns that persists even after controlling for known daily return anomalies. Stock returns are lower and volatility is [...]

How did President Obama do last night?  I missed the speech.  We were watching 24 from Monday night and my wife didn’t want to turn it off.
I’m interested to hear all your thoughts.  Post them in the comments.

The government has been hijacked.
As I learned in elementary school, the legislative branch is responsible for creating laws.  Given our representative system, this should mean that laws enacted reflect the will of the majority.  Let’s check the math: 4 people want the law + 1 person against the law = law passes. 
The system breaks [...]

 
Are we guilty of “confirmation bias?”  This is a built in tendency to favor evidence that supports our current beliefs and to dismiss evidence that challenges them.
I have wondered about this when researching the new stimulus proposal. As I’ve read the WSJ or the NY Times, or watched CNN, have I just listened to the [...]