.[embedded content] Absolutely lovely! Comedian and television host Jon Stewart turns out to know much more about real-world economics than mainstream Harvard economist Larry Summers. Don’t know why, but watching this interview/debate makes yours truly come to think about a famous H. C. Andersen tale …

Greatest intro in pop history .[embedded content] Norman Whitfield’s instrumental arrangement to this 1972 ‘psychedelic soul’ hit is still unparalleled.

Physics envy — a sure way to make economics useless In the 1930s, Lionel Robbins laid down the basic commandments of the discipline when he said that the premises on which economics was founded followed from ‘deduction from simple assumptions reflecting very elementary facts of general experience’, and as such were ‘as universal as the laws of mathematics or mechanics, and as little capable of “suspension”. Ah yes, general experience. What did Albert...

An early attempt as to explaining the drug market. It is a start and I have to program myself to understand what is said. Brief and down to earth with pictures too! Much of this is a C&P with some editing. Much credit to the authors for giving us this opportunity to understand. Welcoming a New Year with new drug prices, 46brooklyn Research This year has proven to be little different from past years. In keeping with tradition (for as long...

Housing construction: good news and bad news  – by New Deal democrat This morning’s report on housing construction contained both good news and bad news. First, the good news. Both permits (gold in the graph below) and starts (blue) increased, the former by 185,000 on an annualized rate, the latter by 129,000: It is very possible that January’s rate of 1.339 million permits annualized and 1.321 starts will be the low for this cycle....

This is conversation between Summers and Frank are from March 13th. In this conversation, Barney could be right. He is refusing to agree that raising the limit for banks was a bad idea. If so, then how do you protect the public and the bank from bank managers doing stupid things? Gambling again with other people’s money is something they seem to be accustom to doing. JUANA SUMMERS, HOST: Two banks have failed in the last few days. The federal...

from Lars Syll The theory is a vending machine: you feed it input in certain prescribed forms for the desired output; it gurgitates for a while; then it drops out the sought-for representation, plonk, on the tray, fully formed, as Athena from the brain of Zeus. This image of the relation of theory to the models we use to represent the world is hard to fit with what we know of how science works. When applying deductivist thinking to economics, economists usually set up ‘as if” models...