Here is some wise text Tarbell rejected that view. [John Rockefeller's] importance lies not so much in the fact that he is the richest individual in the world, with the control of the property that it entails; it lies in the fact that his wealth, and the power springing from it, appeal to the most …
Amazing to me how peole fail to disaggregate numbers. In this case, apportioning university costs across undergradtaues fails to recognize that the faculty are paid by research grants and very little of what a university does is directly related to undergraduate costs. At 50k per year four undergrads could hire a nobel laureeate to really …
Yes What Good Is Modern Finance? by Brad DeLong Modern finance exists to (i) channel purchasing power from households with savings to businesses with investment projects, (ii) improve corporate governance, and (iii) diversify risks. It has been a bust as far as (ii) and (iii) are concerned. And do we really need more than stocks and …
This shows a new opening inthe financial discussions, brining in culture and tradition. From Baseline.. I don’t know Tim Geithner. But I have no reason to believe he is corrupt. Instead, the simplest explanation of the Times article is that he has internalized a worldview in which Wall Street is the central pillar of the American …
This whole post is worth reading. The present situation, in which the government has assumed defacto ownership, through a combination of equity injections, bond guarantees, and asset purchases and guarantees, but refuses to take control, is extremely dangerous. via Economists View: Paul Krugman: Money for Nothing.
The need for conversation.. For more than a year, David Bradley, the Atlantic’s soft-spoken owner, has hosted these off-the-record dinners at a specially built table in his glass-enclosed office overlooking the Potomac. And the guests, from Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke to Jordan’s King Abdullah II, are as A-list as they …
This video is full of simple thinking that gets us in trouble. For exaple, confuses per capita averages with implication that all is well. via Alex Tabarrok on how ideas trump crises | Video on TED.com.
More Krugman speaking sense. So what’s going on here? Why are paychecks heading for the stratosphere again? Claims that firms have to pay these salaries to retain their best people aren’t plausible: with employment in the financial sector plunging, where are those people going to go? No, the real reason financial firms are paying big …
I think he is channeling common sense. Krugman spoke about this in Cincinnati: “I’m in the camp that really worries about the L-shaped recession. We level off but we don’t get the recovery. We hope it isn’t, but it has all the markings of it. This looks like the kind of slump that has all the …