Readers & Thinkers: Ronald Coase Dies.

Posted by on Sep 4, 2013 in Anything Goes | Comments Off on Readers & Thinkers: Ronald Coase Dies. Dear Readers & Thinkers,  As most of you know, Ronald Coase, passed away this week on September 2, 2013.  I still remember my undergraduate Law & Economics class and the wide application of the Coase Theorem.  Some thoughts about Coase: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/04/the-coase-theorem-is-widely-cited-in-economics-ronald-coase-hated-it/...
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Readers & Thinkers: The Paul Samuelson Memorial

Posted by on Aug 6, 2013 in Anything Goes | Comments Off on Readers & Thinkers: The Paul Samuelson Memorial Dear All- This past weekend, I flew to Boston to go to Paul Samuelson’s memorial.  Here is a brief summary of the events. First, there were lots of cool characters there, like Solow, Larry Summers, Paul Krugman, Jim Poterba, Larry Samuelson, Ed Phelps, Stan Fischer, Ricardo Cabellero, Amarta Sen, Olivier Blanchard, Robert Merton, Richard Zeckhauser, Stephen Ross, Greg Mankiw, Robert Mundell, and...
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Readers & Thinkers: The 1970 Nobel Dies

Posted by on Sep 19, 2012 in Anything Goes | Comments Off on Readers & Thinkers: The 1970 Nobel Dies Dear All- On December 13, 2009, Paul Samuelson died in Massachusetts. Paul was the second Nobel Laureate in economics and a giant in the field. I knew something was not quite right when his secretary told me last week that the interview that we had planned could not be held. This made me sad. I had planned to interview Paul at MIT this semester, but I waited too long. I wanted to ask Paul so...
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Readers & Thinkers: A Nobel Knight Dies

Posted by on Sep 19, 2012 in Anything Goes | Comments Off on Readers & Thinkers: A Nobel Knight Dies  Dear All- Sir Clive Granger died this week at the age of 74. He was known as an econometrician and wrote many wonderful papers to help economists understand the world better. One of his most important pieces was the “Granger-Causality” test. This was very useful to help economists determine if one variable that was correlated with another variable might also cause this variable to...
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Readers & Thinkers: Say It Isn’t So!

Posted by on Sep 19, 2012 in Anything Goes | Comments Off on Readers & Thinkers: Say It Isn’t So! Dear All, Looks like after all that fuss over the bill, it didn’t do much for our financial markets. In my last email on September 19, 2008, I said the best thing you could do is get your kids a short in consumer stocks for Christmas and so far had you short something like XLY (an ETF you can short, but actually is long the consumer retail stocks), you would have made 17% through today. How has...
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Readers & Thinkers: 228 Wasted Resources

Posted by on Sep 10, 2012 in Anything Goes | Comments Off on Readers & Thinkers: 228 Wasted Resources Dear All- On Monday, I was shocked and appalled by the House rejection of a bill to support America’s financial system. These people do virtually nothing all year round and the one time they have to do something useful, they blow it. Here are the names of 228 people that you should consider not reelecting...
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