Every Sunday morning I sit down with the NY Times and quickly move to the Business Section to read the latest from Ben Stein – we may not agree on many things, but his analysis of the current economy is usually spot to me! In the January 11, 2009 column entitled “Ordinary People vs. Extraordinary […]
If you’re half as interested as I am in how we got into our current economic mess you’ll want to read the New York Times Op-Ed piece of today’s date entitled “Where is our Ferdinand Pecora?”. “Under Pecora’s expert and often withering questioning, the Senate committee unearthed a secret financial history of the 1920s, demystifying […]
Michael Lewis and David Einhorn begin this piece “AMERICANS enter the New Year in a strange new role: financial lunatics.” The article questions how a crisis of this magnitude could happen here – to the nation where “half the planet’s college graduates seemed to want nothing more out of life than a job on Wall […]
After failing physics and thereby failing to become an undergraduate in the school of architecture, I studied economics. This was before economic modeling gained the enormous advantage of computers to extract data from multiple sources and thereby build future assumptions. This ability is now called ‘econometrics’ and adds to the art of economics a scientific […]
David Brooks in the NY Time Op-Ed section on Tuesday August 12th comments from China that: “The world can be divided in many ways – rich and poor. democratic and authoritarian – but one of the most striking is the divide between the societies with an individualistic mentality and the ones with a collectivist mentality” […]
Ben Stein, a moderate man and an economic conservative, said in the NY Sunday Times on August 10th, that he supports raising taxes on “all upper income Americans.” He goes on to say “I do wish, however, that “upper income” started just a dollar above me”. I’m sure we all feel that way. Read the […]
According to an article by Benedict Carey in the Health Section of the NY Times, Tuesday August 5th, “boredom may allow the brain to recast the world in productive ways”. “Daydreaming too can be a kind of constructive self-entertainment, psychologists say, especially if the mind is turning over a problem.” The point is – don’t […]
Christopher K. Travis uses “emotional architecture” to create a house that is a “suite of emotional experiences”. This fascinating story in the NY Times Home Section on July 17, 2008, details the method of this architectural designer to develop “an exhaustive psychological and aesthetic compatability exercise for would-be home builders”. The article mentions the auction […]
Our favorite buzz word – green – can be seen to be just one more example of form over function. I’ve changed out the for fluorescent, bought a hybrid car, composted vegetable peelings and recycled the household waste: and made just a tiny dent in an enormous landscape. Can I call myself green? Perhaps greener […]
Ben Stein writes 9 rules on the “economics of love” in the NY Times Business section of July 13, 2008 (I paraphrase): “…the returns in love .. are roughly proportional to the amount of time and devotion invested; High quality love … yields more return than junk; Research pays off; … returns are greater when […]