A good analogy Of hurricanes and economic equilibrium.

Wild and woolly couple of weeks in tech world ‘out with the old, in with the new.’

With the S&P down 13% since July 7, and the 10-year rate down a point to barely over 2%, markets are discounting the double dip. They might be doing a great job of early warning, sensitive to faint aromas in complex crosscurrents of data. Or they might be wrong.

Tucked away in the neglected items in the ‘Tools’ menu above, you might have noticed the metaphorical ‘Cat Food Calculator’.

There’s a disingenuous meme being perpetuated by the grossly misinformed and cynical, that 50% of Americans get government benefits, but pay no taxes (the ‘lucky duckies‘, here and there and everywhere).

We have been going through the stages of coming to terms with GOP berzerkers. 1. Denial: “They’re just posturing.” 2. Astonishment: “Wow, some of them are dumb enough to believe their own BS.” 3. Facepalm: “I can’t believe they’re actually going to do this.”

Once again, people are debating here and here and here whether the GSEs like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac caused the financial crisis.

Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious. - George Orwell

The greater the institution, the greater the chances of abuse. - Mohandas K. Gandhi

Bitcoin is a fascinating experiment: digital currency that doesn’t depend on a central authority.

A math/probability problem I think is awesome and counterintuitive, and may be instructive about financial markets: A hedge fund manager puts 100 traders in a room and instructs them: “On the trading desk, there are 100 boxes. Each box has one of your names. You can go [one at a time] onto the trading desk and open any 50 boxes you choose, to try to find your name. If every one of the 100 traders in this room finds his or her name, you will each get a $1,000,000 bonus. If anyone fails, I will crush all your $100,000 BMWs to create my modern art masterpiece. You can devise a strategy before anyone leaves the room, but once a trader has opened the boxes, you must leave the trading desk exactly as it was before you entered and cannot communicate with anyone else.”

You didn’t change the game, the game changed you. Niko Bellic, Grand Theft Auto IV

‘Black swan’ is a term which is overused and under-understood.

*As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. - Albert Einstein

The Chinese government has taken insecurity and paranoia up a notch in the wake of the Jasmine uprisings in the Arab world. They have ‘disappeared’ dissident artist Ai Weiwei and cracked down hard on human rights activists, meddlesome lawyers, and dissidents.

A question for Ben Bernanke at today’s press conference:

*The S&P rating downgrade was deservedly greeted as a big joke. *

The brilliant, provocative, and slightly mad GMU economist and blogger Tyler Cowen wrote his New York Times column about why the Euro zone is headed for breakup.

</a> I have been reading the poor reviews of Atlas Shrugged. I feel almost disappointed that it is by collective consensus a steaming turd. I would welcome a thoughtful movie about an interesting thought experiment, and I think the country could use a rare substantive debate about the size and role of government.

A lot of cool videos from INET’s Bretton Woods conference last week. Kind of like TED talks for econ supergeeks.