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I'm beginning to think the economic crisis is worse than I thought---meaning it won't just hit Wall Street. I'm coming around for a couple of reasons: An awful lot of economists agree there's a bad problem. Most of them also think the bailout was not the solution. There's anecdotal evidence that the crisis is breaking out of the financial sector and starting to affect the real … [Read more...] about Signs That I May Have Underestimated the Badness of Our Economy

The greatest noir video game of all time is coming to the silver screen. And Max Payne is going to relive his long vengeful night once again. Based on the 2001 video game from Remedy Entertainment, the Max Payne movie opens on October 17th and stars Mark Wahlberg in the title role as a cop out to avenge the murder of his wife and child. IMDB tells me that Vladimir Lem and … [Read more...] about “…dreams have a nasty habit of going bad …”

To a free-market economist, greed (as commonly defined) is not a bad thing. There's nothing wrong with wanting to earn as much money as possible. Free markets work well when everyone is trying to do exactly that. Only when some market player tries to earn a lot of money by manipulating non-market forces do economists become enraged and hurl swear words. Economists being dreary … [Read more...] about The Road To Hell Is Paved With Rent-Seeking

A few days ago I wrote a post about one of the uncomfortable truths about drunk driving: As with most things, the more times you do it, the better you get. The psychology professor who explained this to me said that a lot of the impairment of mild drunkenness comes not from drunkenness per se, but from the unfamiliarity of performing certain tasks while drunk. The first few … [Read more...] about Safer Drunk Driving?

Inspired by the work of Ken Lammers and Kip Esquire, I've decided to try some video blogging. My first effort is a combination of a technology test and an explanation of what might be coming in the future. Watching it, I can't help but notice that I somehow manage to mumble and fast-talk the viewer at the same time. The sound is pretty bad. I look much more like my father … [Read more...] about Five Minutes Of Your Life That You’ll Never Get Back