Apologies for thin links, I am supposed to be having a holiday and need to be up early to drive from Bailey Island, Maine, to Camden. HIGHEST-PAID ATHLETE HAILED FROM ANCIENT ROME Discovery (hat tip reader John M) The Medicare Headline You Didn’t...

By William C. Black, Associate Professor of Economics and Law, University of Missouri-Kansas City, and the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One On February 6, 2010 I wrote an open letter to Dr. Walter E. Massey, who was then Chairman of...

This post first appeared on March 13, 2008 Never expect a group with members ideologically opposed to regulation to come up with a wide ranging reform program, no matter how badly one is needed. An individual can have a Nixon-goes-to-China moment, but...

I’ve got my hands full aping Mum: Orangutan cradles lion cubs in unlikely babysitter role Daily Mail (hat tip reader dearieme) Strong earthquake rocks New Zealand’s South Island BBC Viking Experiment May Have Found Life’s Building Blocks on...

This post first appeared on March 11, 2008 Oooh, the week has barely started and we’ve already had an overdose of adrenaline-generating news. Thornburg Mortgage and Carlyle Capital, both twisting in the wind, battered by margin calls, look unlikely...

By Yeon-Koo Che, Professor of Economic Theory at Columbia University, and Rajiv Sethi, Professor of Economics, Barnard College, Columbia University, cross posted from VoxEU The role of naked credit default swaps in the global crisis is an ongoing source...

Rare Roman lantern found in field near Sudbury BBC (hat tip reader John M) One Lump Or Two? James Howard Kunstler (hat tip reader Michael T) The Effects of Fiscal Stimulus: Evidence from the 2009 ‘Cash for Clunkers’ Program Atif R. Mian and Amir Sufi...

Is a stealth shift in policy afoot, to find the bottom in the housing market by getting banks to start clearing out their foreclosed and “ought to be foreclosed” exposures? On Tuesday, Fannie Mae announced that it was not longer giving servicers...

Via Bloomberg: View the segment here.

As much as this blog was a persistent critic of the US version of the stress tests, I must hand it to the folks at the Treasury: they did an impressive job of dressing up and selling a garbage barge. The combination of consistent cheerleading, extend...