Found the book via Megan McArdle’s recent post – “Should We Just Call a ‘Do-Over’ on the Mortgage Market?“. (The answer is a resounding “no” BTW… There are other more painful, but more effective ways to solve the problem.) Benjamin Roth was a lawyer in Youngstown, OH through the Great Depression and kept a running… [Read more…]
October 14, 2010
Came across a very good journal article today for those interested in the evolution of entrepreneurship – William Baumol’s “Entrepreneurship: Productive, Unproductive, and Destructive.” Published back in 1990, it’s an interesting read given the current unemployment levels and post-housing bust economic doldrums we’re experiencing. Baumol write that “…at time the entrepreneur may even lead a… [Read more…]
October 3, 2010
Came across this post on Marc Hedlund’s blog – “Why Wesabe Lost to Mint.” I’ve never heard of until reading his post this week. It’s a look at why his company – Wesabe – failed to beat out Mint.com for market supremacy. Wesabe shut down earlier this summer, while Mint.com was acquired for $170 mln… [Read more…]
October 1, 2010
Walmart is setting it sights on San Francisco and other urban markets to open smaller stores to service these areas. Walmart has long had a tough battle in the Bay Area. As recently as July 2010, the city of Antioch voted down expansion plans for an existing store. Back in 2006, the city of Hercules… [Read more…]
September 27, 2010
About a year ago, I picked up a copy of Andrew Ross Sorkin’s “Too Big to Fail” and wrote about it here. Sorkin was back on the Charlie Rose show a couple weeks ago discussing more concepts on debt, but how it applies to public debt – are countries too big too fail? Given the… [Read more…]
August 27, 2010
The headlines and theme were what they needed to be - “Bernanke: Fed will take action if economy falters.” (from Yahoo.com) “Bernanke Says Fed Stands Ready to Support Recovery.” (from the Wall Street Journal) “Bernanke outlines three options for additional economic stimulus.” (from HousingWire) The result is a nice little boost in the trading markets… [Read more…]
July 29, 2010
Good news – monkeys would have taken option ARM and pay-as-you go mortgages too: http://www.ted.com/talks/laurie_santos.html For more about Human Irrationality, check out Dan Ariely’s blog and his book – Predictably Irrational.
July 27, 2010
Many thanks to Greg Mankiw for posting the link on his blog to Robert Solow’s prepared statement to the House Committee on Science and Technology Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight – “Building a Science of Economics for the Real World.” I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was introduced to the field of… [Read more…]
July 21, 2010
Interesting article on Wired today – 5 Things That Could Topple Facebook’s Empire. It’s fun and easy to create this lists – 5 things that…, 10 things that… – but thought-provoking nonetheless. Terms on a patent are 20 years, but businesses of the Facebook sort are difficult to make patentable, let alone enforce any legal… [Read more…]
July 19, 2010
How humans’ ability to conceptualize and capitalize on gains from trade leads to economic and societal progress: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/matt_ridley_when_ideas_have_sex.html Ridley references one of my favorite economics lessons from Uncle Milty – The Story of the Pencil – though he fails to cite Milton Friedman on the idea… Found that rather disappointing. (Thanks to Paul Kedrosky’s blog… [Read more…]
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October 19, 2010
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