bidness
mikethemadbiologist | November 8, 2009One of the things I can't stand about non-open access publishers is that federally-funded scientific results (federally subsidized in multiple ways) are locked behind a publisher's for-profit firewall. Given the high prices of journals and universities' need to cut expenditures, library budgets are getting slashed.
So what's a scientist to do? Have a colleague whose institution has a subscription send her the pdf of the article.
Needless to say, this upsets the non-open access publishers greatly. UR STEALIN TEH SCIENTISMZ!! Over at Ars Technica, John Timmer makes a good analogy to…
mikethemadbiologist | November 3, 2009It's not a failure of monetary policy, but fiscal policy.
Over at The Quantum Pontiff, ScienceBlogling Dave Bacon asks if college tuition is a bubble:
But what I find interesting, and what I've never been able to figure out, is the larger trend (ignore the last two years, please). Why are tuition prices increasing at such a fast rate for four year colleges? For example, see slide 5 of this presentation where one sees that over the last three decades, the inflation adjusted price of college has more than tripled at public four year universities and gone up nearly as much a private four year…
mikethemadbiologist | October 26, 2009Because people who pay what they owe on time hate America. Or something. Several banks--notably the ones whose asses we bailed out--plan on charging fees to cardholders who either pay off their balances on time or who don't use them very often:
You may believe that your exemplary behavior shields you from unexpected credit card fees. Sadly, that is no longer the case.
Starting next year, Bank of America will charge a small number of customers an annual fee, ranging from $29 to $99. The bank has characterized the fee as experimental. But card holders who have never carried a balance or paid…
mikethemadbiologist | October 24, 2009...Big Shitpile is looking more and more shitty. Last week, I wrote about how the dissolution of the bond between lenders and borrowers could lead to a home owner debtors' revolt. One of the key issues is that, when mortgages are bundled and sold to other parties, such as investment banks, the mortgage assignments are often made illegally--or perhaps more accurately, extralegally, since they are often not registered with the appropriate government authorities.
This makes a recent decision from the Massachusetts Land Court very interesting:
The blank mortgage assignments they possessed…
mikethemadbiologist | October 18, 2009...drug stores, hardware stores, and supermarkets.. By way of ScienceBlogling Dr. Isis, we learn of The Great Brooklyn Tampon Shortage:
You see, in Brooklyn, we have to deal with the problem of tampon scarcity. How, you may be wondering, can a product be scarce when it is a necessity of approximately half the population in any given area? Why wouldn't a commodity always be readily available when it is something that this large consumer base will never NOT need -- barring a Village-of-the-Damned style mass impregnation of women??
...In Brooklyn, there are no Walmart Superstores. No Targets,…
mikethemadbiologist | October 17, 2009One problem stemming from the collapse of housing prices is that many households, even if they can still make their overpriced mortgages, are going to be paying far more for their houses than they should. That means less money for other things, from the frivolous to the important. So I've always wondered if we'll ever get a flood of walkaways--people who let the bank foreclose on the house. I realize some people will want to stay in their homes--maybe they don't want to pull their kids out of a school they like, or it's just the wrong time to think about a move. But for many, the rational…
mikethemadbiologist | October 11, 2009A while ago, I discussed how 'fiscal conservatism'--that is, radical deficit reductionism--is an extremist ideology, not a moderate one, and that radical deficit reductionism has real-world consequences for people's lives. Steve Rhodes generalizes the problem by describing the discussion we are not allowed to have:
We are not allowed to discuss an economic structure that keeps those on the bottom at the bottom - on purpose.
When the unemployment rate, for example, gets "too low," the Federal Reserve raises interest rates to slow down the economy.
In other words, the Federal Reserve - at the…
mikethemadbiologist | October 1, 2009I know I've posted about the misuse of the concept of irrationality before, but a recent Robert Frank NY Times column is a ridiculous exercise in irrationality storytelling. Frank writes:
A second problematic assumption of standard economic models is that people are properly attentive to all relevant costs and benefits, even those that are uncertain, or that occur in the distant future. In fact, most people focus on penalties and rewards that are both immediate and certain. Delayed or uncertain payoffs often get short shrift.
Given the conditions under which human nervous systems evolved,…
mikethemadbiologist | September 28, 2009Last week, you might have read about the stagnation of wages. If you didn't, here's Felix Salmon:
There's no good news in today's data from the Census bureau. Unless you're the kind of person who worries about inflation, that is: in that case you're probably reassured that real median household income fell 3.6% between 2007 and 2008, from $52,163 to $50,303. That's a drop of over $1,800: real money.
David Leonhardt puts this in a broader context:
The typical American household made less money last year than the typical household made a full decade ago.
To me, that's the big news from the…
mikethemadbiologist | September 27, 2009...it takes a lot of money to buy his vote. Somewhere in the neighborhood of $1 million, give or take:
Arkansas Rep. Mike Ross -- a Blue Dog Democrat playing a key role in the health care debate -- sold a piece of commercial property in 2007 for substantially more than a county assessment and an independent appraisal say it was worth.
The buyer: an Arkansas-based pharmacy chain with a keen interest in how the debate plays out.
Ross sold Holly's Health Mart in Prescott, Ark., to USA Drug for $420,000 -- an eye-popping price for real estate in a tiny train and lumber town about 100 miles…
mikethemadbiologist | September 20, 2009...you should go out of business. I've meant to get to this, so in Internet years, this news is like a gajillion years ago. Anyway, one of the galling things about the bank bailout is that, even though in many cases the taxpayers basically own the banks, nothing is being done about various forms of usury, one which is banks' effort to maximize overdraft fees. Here's an example of what I mean:
Naturally, banks are trying to push back:
Some experts warn that a sharp reduction in overdraft fees could put weakened financial institutions out of business.
Michael Moebs, an economist who…
mikethemadbiologist | September 6, 2009I bet you didn't think life insurance policies could be securitized. You would be very wrong:
The bankers plan to buy "life settlements," life insurance policies that ill and elderly people sell for cash -- $400,000 for a $1 million policy, say, depending on the life expectancy of the insured person. Then they plan to "securitize" these policies, in Wall Street jargon, by packaging hundreds or thousands together into bonds. They will then resell those bonds to investors, like big pension funds, who will receive the payouts when people with the insurance die.
The earlier the policyholder dies…
mikethemadbiologist | September 4, 2009Part of me sympathizes with ScienceBlogling Bora when he writes about the publishing bidness:
I am excited about the way the Web is transforming society and all they care is how to save their jobs! I get it - they should care. The new media ecosystem can support a much smaller number of professional journalists than the old one. So many (though not all) will lose their jobs. I don't have an interest in that aspect of the media business at all. If they have any other expertise besides scribbling, they will find other jobs once their media houses lock the doors. If not, tough. But I am really…
mikethemadbiologist | September 3, 2009Or at least until the next bestest legal opinion comes along. In the NY Times, there's a story about Judge Arthur M. Schack of New York State Supreme Court who has the crazy notion a bank shouldn't be allowed to foreclose on someone's home unless it can prove that it actually holds the mortgage. Nuts, I tell ya! As one observer noted, "His rulings are hardly revolutionary; it's unusual only because we so rarely hold large corporations to the rules."
So, in the vast multitude of suck that has become the U.S. political system, occasionally someone does right by people who happen to not be…
mikethemadbiologist | August 17, 2009What's $24 billion of potential losses among friends? If you want to know what a zombie bank is, the foreclosure situation in California is textbook:
Later on they add, "The increase appears to be primarily due to the fact that lenders are willingly postponing foreclosure sales." Why postpone? Keep reading, and the answer pops out: "The average California foreclosure has a total loan balance of $425,134 on a home that is now worth $236,739."
If the bank sells these homes now, at these prices, the bank will have to book the difference between the loan balance and the home sales price as a…
mikethemadbiologist | August 14, 2009...shitty. I don't see how the economy will substantively improve without getting rid of the zombie banks--those banks that are insolvent, that have more debts than assets. Since they are unable to make loans, they're essentially non-functioning banks. The federal government for the first time since the banking crisis erupted has decided to make banks report on a quarterly basis how much their loan portfolios are actually worth. Not the original value of the loans, but how much the underlying properties could be sold for:
Check out the footnotes to Regions Financial Corp.'s latest…
mikethemadbiologist | July 27, 2009Dr. Mom raises an interesting point about the amount of time she spends working as a scientist:
I work about 40 hours a week every week. I rarely work at home.
It seems like most of my colleagues (women and men) work crazy 10, 12+ hour days. Often you hear people comparing the academic version of war stories almost as if it is a contest to see who has worked the longest day. But I have never been like that.
At my Midwestern R1U I am considered fairly successful [Mad Biologist: I'll stipulate that she seems very successful]....
Dr. Mrs. Supersuccesful asked to talk to me and we discussed…
Corruption Is Integral to the 'Intellects' of the Conservative Movement: Why This Matters to Science
mikethemadbiologist | July 20, 2009One of the advantages the conservative movement has is that it can be very lucrative to be a professional conservative, whereas being a professional liberal is rather difficult. There isn't the tight integration of think tanks, conservative magazines, cozy book deals, and the occasional faculty sinecure (e.g., torturer John Yoo) on the left. What keeps this beast fed is money. Last week, Politico described the fickle ideological allegiance of one conservative think tank:
The American Conservative Union asked FedEx for a check for $2 million to $3 million in return for the group's support…
mikethemadbiologist | June 23, 2009I'm wary of criticizing Paul Krugman. I'm a firm believer in the DeLong Rules of Krugman, which can be paraphrased very simply:
Don't disagree with Paul Krugman.
Re-read rule #1, you fucking moron.
Nonetheless, I think Krugman, in an otherwise excellent column, misstates the motivations behind the 'centrist' Democrats opposition to the public option for healthcare:
Yes, some of the balking senators receive large campaign contributions from the medical-industrial complex -- but who in politics doesn't? If I had to guess, I'd say that what's really going on is that relatively conservative…
mikethemadbiologist | May 23, 2009By way of David Sirota, I came across this Wall Street Journal article about the latest corporate sleaze--collecting insurance when your employees die:
Banks are using a little-known tactic to help pay bonuses, deferred pay and pensions they owe executives: They're holding life-insurance policies on hundreds of thousands of their workers, with themselves as the beneficiaries.
The insurance policies essentially are informal pension funds for executives: Companies deposit money into the contracts, which are like big, nondeductible IRAs, and allocate the cash among investments that grow tax-free…