links for 2010-07-30

• Politics Isn't War – Conor Friedersdorf
  if you spend time talking politics with people who identify as hard core progressives or movement conservatives, you'll find that a significant percentage believe their ideology would prevail more often if only their partisans were more angry, their attacks more pointed, their operatives more ruthless. This is most often expressed via the use of metaphors that draw on the language of war and fighting. Usually it doesn't make any sense. In war, the victor kills as many folks as possible on the opposing side. Political winners persuade more people to join their coalition.
  (tags: extremism politics partisanship argument election policy conservative breitbart hate)

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links for 2010-07-29

• Media Focus: Truth vs. Propaganda – On Point
  The Shirley Sherrod story turns a spotlight on big problems in the quality of our national information flow. We ask what’s news, what’s propaganda?
  (tags: recommended propaganda conservative lying racism fox_news media society news radio breitbart truth reality fear politics partisanship hate journalism extremism)

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links for 2010-07-27

• Ten Stock-Market Myths That Just Won't Die – WSJ.com
  There are standard calming phrases you will hear over and over again. But how true are they? Here are 10 that need extra scrutiny.
  (tags: wsj investment stocks market advice finance myths)

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links for 2010-07-26

• The political genius of supply-side economics | Martin Wolf
  To understand modern Republican thinking on fiscal policy, we need to go back to perhaps the most politically brilliant (albeit economically unconvincing) idea in the history of fiscal policy: “supply-side economics”. Supply-side economics liberated conservatives from any need to insist on fiscal rectitude and balanced budgets. Supply-side economics said that one could cut taxes and balance budgets, because incentive effects would generate new activity and so higher revenue.

  The political genius of this idea is evident. Supply-side economics transformed Republicans from a minority party into a majority party. It allowed them to promise lower taxes, lower deficits and, in effect, unchanged spending. Why should people not like this combination? Who does not like a free lunch?

  (tags: martin_wolf economics tax budget supply_side politics ideology greed recommended conservative crisis fiscal policy government debt deficit usa)

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links for 2010-07-22

• What The Financial Bill Did And Didn't Do : NPR
  "There were two ways the government could have proceeded in the aftermath of the financial crisis," he tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "One was to constrain the banking industry — to tell them that they could no longer engage in certain types of activities. … That's what we decided not to do. The bill leaves the financial industry substantially intact. It allows [the financial industry] to do almost everything that they were doing in the run-up to the crisis. The difference that this bill makes is that we're hiring more lifeguards, in essence. We're putting more federal regulators around the pool, we're giving them more money, more power, more resources and hoping that they'll produce better results."
  (tags: radio finance recommended interview banking regulation government reform legislation power)

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links for 2010-07-19

• Beware those Black Swans – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
  My dream is to have a true "epistemocracy"; that is, a society robust against expert errors, forecasting errors and hubris, one that can be resistant to the incompetence of politicians, regulators, economists, central bankers, bank ers, policy wonks and epidemiologists.Here are ten principles for a Black Swan-robust society.
  (tags: taleb black_swan risk rules society finance banking bailout crisis incentives redundancy economics prediction policy)

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links for 2010-07-18

• Million Dollar Idea | This American Life
  Back in the 1980s Michael Larson made the most money ever on the game show Press Your Luck. And it was no accident—Larson had a plan to get rich that surprised everyone: the home viewers, the show's producers and mostly Larson himself. This and other stories of million dollar ideas, including some from our listeners.
  (tags: this_american_life radio funny phillip_morris cigarettes smoking game_show)

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links for 2010-07-17

• The food bubble: How Wall Street starved millions and got away with it Harper's Magazine
  The history of food took an ominous turn in 1991, at a time when no one was paying much attention. That was the year Goldman Sachs decided our daily bread might make an excellent investment.
  (tags: to_read harpers food wheat goldman_sachs speculation investment finance banking commodities derivatives regulation markets wall_street)

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links for 2010-07-16

• Charlie Munger : THE PSYCHOLOGY OF HUMAN MISJUDGMENT
  Speech at Harvard Law School (1995).
  (tags: charlie_munger psychology business irrationality bias management human cognitive_science errors success)

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links for 2010-07-14

• Barney Frank and Ron Paul: Cut Military Spending – On Point
  Barney Frank, Democratic Congressman representing the 4th district of Massachusetts since 1980. He is Chairman of the Financial Services Committee.  Frank, along with Ron Paul (R-TX), Walter Jones (R-NC), and Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) are calling for more than $1 trillion in cuts in the military budget over the next ten years.

  Ron Paul, Republican Congressman representing the 14th district of Texas since 1997, which includes Galveston. He has run for president twice, once in 1988 as the nominee for the Libertarian Party and again in 2008 as a candidate for the Republican Party.

  (tags: barney_frank ron_paul politics foreign_policy war defense military spending budget fiscal usa government recommended)

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