August 2nd, 2013 → 5:56 am
“Something wicked this way comes.” – Macbeth
I just read about the conviction of Wall Street insider “Fabulous Fab” Fabrice Tourre, for fraud in market activities related to mortgage-backed securities. Congrats SEC for getting a conviction on someone, anyone! However, I also learned that Tourre is now an economics student in the PhD program at Chicago. My reaction? “Nooooooo!” We economists have a bad enough reputation as it is (mostly from an ill-informed understanding of what we do, in my opinion, but still), like we need him as part of our gang too? “Nooooooo!”
Filed under: Blog & Economics/Money
July 21st, 2013 → 7:12 am
“I can get no remedy against this consumption of the purse;
borrowing only lingers and lingers it out,
but the disease is incurable.” – Henry IV, Part II
Detroit has been sick for a long, long time. I grew up in Detroit. Lived in the very heart of it until I was about 9 years old. It breaks my heart to see how much things have fallen apart. Hopefully this bankruptcy declaration is the bottom, and from these ashes Detroit can start to rise again.
Filed under: Blog & Economics/Money
May 20th, 2013 → 6:12 am
“The giddy round of Fortune’s wheel.” – The Rape of Lucrece
I don’t normally follow lotteries, but I have to admit, I was hoping no one would win yesterday’s Powerball, just so that the pot could ratchet up to $1 billion. A $1 billion lottery prize; that would have been cool! As it happens, someone in Florida did apparently win. Good luck, mystery winner, figuring out what to do with all that money. History (and academic research) has shown that not everyone actually knows how to handle it.
Filed under: Blog & Economics/Money
May 9th, 2013 → 6:39 am
“[They] who
With half the bulk o’th’ world played as [they] pleased,
Making and marring fortunes.” – Antony and Cleopatra
Here’s Shakespeare’s version of Keynes’ famous quote about defunct economists influencing the world. And unfortunately, perhaps, sometimes it is true. The discredited study by Reinhart-Rogoff on debt limits really got too much currency; even had it been empirically correct it got too much attention – it was just one study! Theory advances by repeated results over time. Having said that, I came across an academic study last week whose purpose was to repeat the empirical results of a rather famous health care study from the 1980s. And it was beautiful! No cheating uncovered, empirical results repeated and advanced upon, conclusions and updates made. Now this is what academic research is about.
Filed under: Blog & Economics/Money
May 7th, 2013 → 6:24 am
“If it be a man’s work, I’ll do it.” – King Lear
My heart breaks when I read stories of people in their fifties who have been unemployed for six months or more. They are too young to retire, but old enough to suffer from ageism. And the longer they stay out of the job market, the harder it gets. I’m glad the recent unemployment report was better than expected, but my heart goes out to the millions still who have been without a job for months on end.
Filed under: Blog & Economics/Money & Other
March 20th, 2013 → 6:03 am
“Commit
The oldest sins the newest kind of ways.” – Henry IV, Part II
I don’t know how the EU is going to fix its currency and banking mess, but suddenly and indiscriminately reaching into citizen accounts and taking money from people’s hard earned savings seems more like theft than public policy to me. There has got to be a better way.
Filed under: Blog & Economics/Money
February 1st, 2013 → 7:00 am
Lear: “Dost thou call me fool, boy?”
Fool: “All thy other titles thou has given away; that thou wast born with.” – King Lear
I came across an old academic article by Jack Hirshleifer the other day (“Shakespeare vs. Becker on Altruism: The Importance of Having the Last Word,” Journal of Economic Literature 15(2):500-502) where Jack begins the article with this Shakespeare quote, and then uses it throughout the piece. I won’t bother to explain the economics of it here, but it was fun to read. Let’s just say that Jack wasn’t calling Nobel Prize winner Gary Becker a fool himself, but he was arguing a non-foolhardy point in Becker’s analysis.
Filed under: Blog & Economics/Money
December 23rd, 2012 → 6:03 am
“Lord, what fools these mortals be!” – A Midsummer Night’s Dream
I’m reading Grand Pursuit by Sylvia Nasar right now. It’s not nearly as good as A Beautiful Mind, but that isn’t actually the point. The point is that I just read the passage (p. 245) where the British Prime Minister Lloyd George called the famous economist John Maynard Keynes “the Puck of economics” for being such a mischief maker during the Peace Conference in Paris after WWI. If only PM George had listened to Keynes, more than mocked him, history might have been so different!
Filed under: Blog & Economics/Money & Politics/Politicians
September 1st, 2012 → 9:23 am
The quote today is not from Shakespeare, but about Shakespeare. The British Museum in London is staging a major exhibition of Shakespeare and his world right now – if I were wealthy, the trips I’d take! As I am not independently wealthy, however, and can’t just hop on over to London for a random weekend of fun, I did the next best thing and ordered the books published in conjunction with the exhibition. One of which is called Angels & Ducats: Shakespeare’s Money & Medals. It is from there that the following quote is taken. It claims that Shakespeare wrote his plays for the reward of gold. I never really thought of that as Shakespeare’s motivation before, which I guess is ironic since I am an economist after all.
(Note when reading below that Will Summers was Henry VIII’s jester.)
“Did not Will Summers break his wind for thee?
And Shakespeare therefore write his comedy?
All things acknowledge thy vast power divine
(Great God of Money) whose most powerful shine
Gives motion, life.” – Thomas Randolph, Hey for Honesty, 1627
Filed under: Blog & Economics/Money & Literature/Theatre/Art
August 24th, 2012 → 6:00 am
“We have seen the best of our time.” – King Lear
A friend emailed me the other day asking if I thought the world was on the decline; if morals had been abandoned by politicians, if the current generation was excessively lazy, if entrepreneurs and businesspeople were unconscionably conniving. I don’t know, but the fear that we are on the decline appears to be a repeated one throughout history. Every generation seems to think the next one is lazier, the politicians even worse, etc. I know they are from his plays, but Shakespeare repeatedly has characters saying that this is it, but was it? We have a lot of problems in this world, don’t get me wrong, but I’m not so narcissistic to think MY time is the pinnacle.
Filed under: Blog & Economics/Money & Politics/Politicians & Stupid/Evil People