The Fount of Useless Information
Your place for useless information that just might possibly be interesting.
A Shuffle of Aluminum, but to Banks, Pure Gold
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/business/a-shuffle-of-aluminum-but-to-banks-pure-gold.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
A very interesting read on how the great USofA now works. In addition to the direct tax payer transfer from the govt to special interests (no less than sixteen _trillion_ …
SEC lifts ban on hedge fund ads
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/07/10/hedge-fund-ads/2505463/
There appeared to be a brief period where, after costing the US economy at least $22 trillion dollars and probably no less than twice that in the global economy, where some regulation …
Federal agency spent $3 million fighting non-existent malware
http://money.cnn.com/2013/07/09/technology/security/commerce-malware/index.html?source=cnn_bin
Even more interesting than the $3 million thrown away was that the agency wanted to toss another almost $30 million after it:
…The report has a silver lining: Government watchdogs eventually
The Benefits of the Safety Net, Part 2
http://jaredbernsteinblog.com/the-benefits-of-the-safety-net-part-2/
I have talked about the “greatest good for the greatest number” before (that blog entry is more or less a link to here). It is my firm belief …
The Last Mystery of the Financial Crisis
It’s long been suspected that ratings agencies like Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s helped trigger the meltdown. A new trove of embarrassing documents shows how they did it
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-last-mystery-of-the-financial-crisis-20130619
In this case, the …
Vitamins: Too much of a not-so-good thing?
http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/19/health/vitamins-offit/index.html?hpt=hp_c4
This is an interesting issue. Much like the flu vaccine having dubious efficacy (where ‘dubious’ is being kind) over the last couple of decades mega doses of vitamins have been increasingly shown …
U.S. top court bars patents on human genes unless synthetic
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/13/us-usa-court-genes-idUSBRE95C0PW20130613
It has always stuck in my craw that the simple act of sequencing a gene could possibly be considered ‘novel, useful and non-obvious’, yet we have (had) thousands of …
Employment is still near a 30-year low
http://money.cnn.com/2013/06/06/news/economy/employment-rate/index.html?hpt=hp_t3
Using the most generous measurement of employment in the article (for workers ages 25 to 54 — those who should be in the prime of their careers) there is an employment rate …
Why Didn’t the SEC Catch Madoff? It Might Have Been Policy Not To
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/why-didnt-the-sec-catch-madoff-it-might-have-been-policy-not-to-20130531
For those non-financial types amongst my reader(s) this article might be a bit hard to follow. The gist is the SEC is basically in place to …
Potemkin Stimulus: One Way to Offset Austerity
http://jaredbernsteinblog.com/potemkin-stimulus-one-way-to-offset-austerity/
How far away are we from doing this? I doubt it is very. At the moment we rush around and spend huge dollars replacing broken things (like bridges, cities; generally with borrowed …