Back in May I mentioned that Porsche is more a hedge fund than a car company. Little did I know that Porsche is actually a hedge fund that kills. That link is to a great explanation of how Porsche acquired Volkswagen and managed to earn billions of euros playing the financial markets in the process.
Tina Fey name checked some real Internet commenters in her Golden Globe acceptance speech last night. The three people she mentioned are regulars on the LA Times entertainment forums, although another commenter claims that two of the three are actually the same person.
Since my post yesterday questioning what the realistic expectations for stimulating the economy should be, the Obama transition team has released some hard numbers about what they expect to gain through their stimulus package. Paul Krugman reacts here. It addresses my question from yesterday – the stimulus plan is aimed at closing one third of the output gap over the next two years. So the plan as designed will soften the blow somewhat, but will not compensate entirely for what has been lost. That seems realistic to me. ...
I’m not an economist, I’m not even kind of an economist. But there are a lot of other people out there who are not economists who have a lot to say about the economic stimulus, and some of what they’re saying leads me to some questions. Oh how I wish I could demand that a real economist answer them. People are saying that Obama’s stimulus plan is too small. For example, here’s John Judis: ...
What I learned today: graduating from college and entering the workforce during a recession can have a lifelong negative impact on your earnings.
These days we’re hearing a lot about John Maynard Keynes, the British economist who’s one of the few that most people know by name. He’s most commonly associated with the “broken windows” theory and the economic policy of the great depression era. Martin Wolf has a great column on the lessons Keynes offers in the current crisis. I don’t know a whole lot about Keynes, but I absolutely love this paragraph: ...
The New York Times has released a new, free Web service that developers can use to create applications that track how Congress members vote. Join me in offering kudos to the New York Times and in wondering why this service isn’t provided by the government itself. If I were named CTO of the United States government, I’d require that all new public-facing government applications expose Web services, and that internal developers use those services to build their own applications, thus insuring that those Web services remain useful and up to date. It would both improve transparency and probably increase the quality of the applications offered by the government. ...
First, ignore the fact that the BCS Championship can in no way be regarded as an actual national championship. Then go read Smart Football’s collection of posts related to the teams in the championship. If you want to understand football more deeply, it’s the best resource out there.
Marginal Revolution’s Alex Tabarrok comes out in support of the Obama stimulus plan. Depending on your own economic views, you may regard this as very good or very bad news.
New (to Foreign Policy magazine) blogger Marc Lynch makes a compelling argument that al-Qaeda stands to be the winner either way of Israel’s invasion of Gaza. Update: By the same token, it’s pretty clear who’s losing. (See this blog post for background.)