bidness
mikethemadbiologist | April 13, 2011Last week, Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism posted a satirical letter by 'Outis Philalithopoulos' (Outis means 'nobody' in Greek) about another problem facing the economics profession--corruption of its practioners. Outis/Yves writes (italics mine):
Soon after receiving tenure, it occurred to me that we were being profoundly inconsistent. While we had correctly criticized the previous mainstream view that politics involved benevolent efforts to serve the common good, we had failed to apply the same rigor to the community of academic economists. As a result, we were modeling both economic and…
mikethemadbiologist | April 12, 2011Because people can be bamboozled by the simplest schemes. I observed this at my local CVS drugstore:
You'll notice on the left that two bottles of mouthwash can be had ON SALE!!! for $6.98. On the right, one bottle of the same mouthwash costs $5.79.
The one large bottle of mouthwash is the same size (16.9 oz) as the two smaller bottles (8.4 oz each).
What a bargain.
mikethemadbiologist | March 27, 2011Republican Massachusetts senator Scott Brown is such a disgrace, he can't even beg for money correctly:
At the public dedication of MIT's David H. Koch Integrative Cancer Institute last Friday, Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) effusively thanked conservative billionaire David Koch for supporting his election in 2010 and made a plea for help in his re-election campaign next year....
BROWN: Your support during the election, it meant a, it meant a ton. It made a, it made a difference and I can certainly use it again. Obviously, the uh . . .
KOCH: When are you running, uh, for the next term?
BROWN: '12.…
mikethemadbiologist | March 27, 2011The whole CDO binge (aka Big Shitpile) led to a whole slew of perverse incentives to not help a borrower who is having difficultly paying the mortgage, even though, in the era before mortgages were treated as commodities to be sold, banks routinely went out of their way to avoid foreclosure--usually the costs were too great to make foreclosure a routine act. I've argued that if banks aren't willing to work with homeowners due to financial reasons, then homeowners should also act in their best interests: if that means walking away ('strategic default'), so be it.
Nicholas Carroll runs the…
mikethemadbiologist | March 23, 2011A recent evaluation of M.I.T.'s efforts to redress the underrepresentation of women on its faculty has been discussed widely on the bloggysphere. I don't have much to add, except that this section from the NY Times' coverage leapt out at me:
Because it has now become all but the rule that every committee must include a woman, and there are still relatively few women on the faculty, female professors say they are losing up to half of their research time, as well as the outside consultancies that earn their male colleagues a lot of money.
I guess we will have finally reached gender equality…
mikethemadbiologist | March 17, 2011I think a lot of people misunderstand what the real corrupting force in federal politics is. It's not campaign contributions, but the desire to have a cushy retirement--something I pointed out two years ago:
It's simple: it's about life after politics. One of the dirty secrets about many, if not most, congressmen and senators is that they like Washington, D.C., rhetoric notwithstanding. They want to stay in town after they leave (or lose) office. Once you've tasted the Capital of the Free World, do you really want to go back to Pierre, South Dakota? (Tom Daschle comes to mind...). It's…
mikethemadbiologist | March 12, 2011Ok, so it's not real. But this is an awesome proposal and post by a teacher:
I have used a bank many times. I have a checking account and a savings account (although I do admit I haven't added anything to my savings account for the past fifteen years since my pay has been frozen.) Nevertheless, the fact that I have made deposits, written checks, and I understand in theory the concept of a savings account makes me uniquely qualified to reorganize your operations.
I love that. Anyway, the proposal:
In a program I will call NDLB (No Depositor Left Behind) all banks will from this day on be…
mikethemadbiologist | March 11, 2011I haven't been able to track down the specific bill, but, if this report about legislation in Michigan is true, this is essentially a corporate coup d'état (italics mine):
NAOMI KLEIN: Well, I just found out about this last night, and like I said, there's so much going on that these extraordinary measures are just getting lost in the shuffle. But in Michigan, there is a bill that's already passed the House. It's on the verge of passing the Senate. And I'll just read you some excerpts from it. It says that in the case of an economic crisis, that the governor has the authority to authorize the…
mikethemadbiologist | March 11, 2011What a fabulous combination. This week, Congress has held hearings on the direct-to-customer ('DTC') genetic testing industry. It appears, based on previous statements by FDA officials, that they have publicly contradicted themselves--or been willfully ignorant--about the larger scientific benefits from DTC testing. This week's hearings also seem to have attracted some serious hyperbolic anti-DTC testimony, even by my standards (these companies are "raping the human genome project"? The HGP was made public domain so everyone, including those who work at companies, could have access to the…
mikethemadbiologist | February 27, 2011One of the few advantages of getting older is that, as long as the memory remains good, you know where all the bodies are buried. This is sometimes called wisdom. A couple of weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal reported that 401(k) plans wouldn't provide many soon-to-be retirees the income they needed for retirement:
The median household headed by a person aged 60 to 62 with a 401(k) account has less than one-quarter of what is needed in that account to maintain its standard of living in retirement, according to data compiled by the Federal Reserve and analyzed by the Center for Retirement…
mikethemadbiologist | February 24, 2011There's a lot money to be made providing aid to needy people. And where there's money to be madeextracted, there will be an investment bank, in this case JPMorgan:
In these hard times, some 43 million American families rely on food stamps. To the surprise of many, JPMorgan Chase is the largest processor of food stamp benefits in the United States. The bank is contracted to provide food stamp debit cards in 26 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.
The firm is paid per customer. This means that when the number of food stamp recipients goes up, so do JPMorgan profits. Talk about perverse…
mikethemadbiologist | February 18, 2011If you haven't heard, Democrats in Wisconsin have refused to allow Republican governor Rick Walker to eliminate the right of public sector employees to collectively bargain. One of the key issues is the cost of public sector pensions. But what's interesting is this little tidbit from David Cay Johnston (italics mine):
Well, Dylan, I think this is a very revealing move. You know, Aristotle taught us the tyrants first surround themselves with bodyguards who will go after anybody who challenges what they do. We shouldn't forget that historical lesson. You know, the pensions they want to go…
mikethemadbiologist | February 17, 2011One of the justifications for outsourcing (firing productive U.S. workers and shipping the jobs overseas) is that it will lower costs. Then there's reality, in which firing productive U.S. workers and shipping the jobs overseas actually costs more. Consider this from the CEO of Boeing about their new plane, the 787:
One bracing lesson that Albaugh was unusually candid about: the 787's global outsourcing strategy -- specifically intended to slash Boeing's costs -- backfired completely.
"We spent a lot more money in trying to recover than we ever would have spent if we'd tried to keep the key…
mikethemadbiologist | January 12, 2011Obama has finally gotten around to choosing a replacement for Larry Summers, and named Gene Sperling director of the National Economic Council (why he didn't prioritize this with nearly 10% U3 unemployment is puzzling). This has been controversial since Gene Sperling, like many of Obama's closest advisors, has ties to Wall Street. David Corn describes those ties:
At some point, according to a source familiar with the episode, Goldman Sachs approached Sperling for advice on globalization. He took this opportunity to pitch the company an idea in sync with his nonprofit work: the firm ought to…
mikethemadbiologist | January 9, 2011Marshall Auerback comments on the new 'creative' economy (italics mine):
Finally, there is the odious problem of political corruption, which manifests itself in many forms, but most recently through the cynical revolving door policy between Wall Street and government. Peter Orszag's move to Citi after spending months launching broadsides against Social Security from his perch at OMB and then the NYTimes goes beyond cynicism. Nobody expects a former government official to live like a monk after spending time in public service. But the idea that someone would help plan, advocate, and carry out…
mikethemadbiologist | December 23, 2010It's safe to say that Thomas Watson Sr., the first chairman of IBM (International Business Machines), truly revolutionized computing. While I'm sure Sam Palmisano, the current chairman of IBM, is a smart guy and has done some good things, I haven't heard anyone claim he's a technological revolutionary. So I found this post about Watson's and Palmisano's compensation and taxes very interesting (italics mine):
The newly released 1943 data make for absolutely stunning reading. We have simply never had clearer evidence of just how much America used to expect out of individual wealthy Americans…
mikethemadbiologist | December 21, 2010Education 'reformers' constantly talk about how schools need to be run more like businesses. Now, like Comrade PhysioProf, I do think good management is important. But what does good management have to do with business? So asks David Carr (italics mine):
On Wall Street and on Silicon Valley office campuses, in hedge fund boardrooms and at year-end Christmas parties, it seems you can't have a conversation without someone talking about the movie that finally lays bare America's public education crisis.
"Waiting for 'Superman' " is one thing that Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg…
mikethemadbiologist | December 16, 2010I've written before about the municipal and state level fiscal crises that are occurring across the U.S. (and, yes, this was not only predictable, it was predicted). Well, now we have a new crisis: no more BABs. BABs is short for Build America Bonds program, and there are two types of BABs:
1) BABs that give the recipient (i.e., the bond purchaser) a federal tax credit--this subsidizes the purchase of the bond, making it cheaper.
2) BABs that give the issuer (the state or local government) a subsidy of 35% of the interest. This lowers the amount the state or local government has to pay…
mikethemadbiologist | December 12, 2010Now if former head of the OMB Peter Orszag were only so charitable when it came to disability benefits. From AMERICAblog, here's the timeline:
2005 Peter Orszag, already at the Brookings Institute, proposes the Diamond-Orszag Plan, "Saving Social Security" (pdf; intro here; comment here). He wants (surprise) benefit cuts. The Diamond-Orszag Plan is now incorporated into the Bowles-Simpson (Mr. 310-Million Tits) Deficit Commission Proposal. 2006 Orszag is picked to direct The Hamilton Project, created by Robert Rubin "to think about what a future Democratic administration would do" in the…
mikethemadbiologist | December 11, 2010I like this guy because he makes me sound calm:
Seriously, I still think our economic, media, and political betters have no idea how angry many people are about this. If a mob were to lynch a couple of these guys (note: this is evil), I think many juries would be hung.