The Fount of Useless Information
Your place for useless information that just might possibly be interesting.
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 …
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 …
Biometric Database of All Adult Americans Hidden in Immigration Reform
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/05/immigration-reform-dossiers/
I think what bothers many people is that 1984 was in the past and they expected it to stay that way. However, Big Brother just needed some more time …
Washington gets explicit: its ‘war on terror’ is permanent
Senior Obama officials tell the US Senate: the ‘war’, in limitless form, will continue for ‘at least’ another decade – or two
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/17/endless-war-on-terror-obama
I almost didn’t blog on this, it is …
Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever
The Illuminati were amateurs. The second huge financial scandal of the year reveals the real international conspiracy: There’s no price the big banks can’t fix
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/everything-is-rigged-the-biggest-financial-scandal-yet-20130425
Somehow I missed this article and …
Student Debt and the Crushing of the American Dream
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/12/student-debt-and-the-crushing-of-the-american-dream/
I have waxed on the subject of student loans a number of times (see here, here, here and here for just a few examples). When the student loan …
Crime and Privacy
http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/crime_and_privacy/
I got to admit that Scott makes an interesting argument for more == less. For those too lazy to read the article, here is his summary:
…In general, whenever privacy is lost in a democracy, it