To read.

In which Mark Liberman does yeoman labor with the fictional character known as "David Brooks." (When the "Brooks" character "retires," the New York Times and "Brooks"'s old publishers will yell Surprise! and declare that it's all been a big joke.)

Tallying up all the financial support given to the banks. I need a drink.

Hilarious.

Well damn. It looks like I will have to add Lévi-Strauss to my to-read list (http://stevereads.com/toread).

An excellent takedown of everything that's wrong with airport security. Though I think I'd expand on one point at the very end: if another 9/11 happens, *maybe* the Dept. of Homeland Security itself will be blamed. More than likely what will happen instead is that a few particular employees will be fired very publicly, and the whole taped-together edifice will remain standing more or less as before. They'll still spend millions on ineffective equipment, because they can. If anything, the airport-security process will just grow more Draconian, again *because they can*, and because the appearance of sternness conveys the impression of security.

On the use and -- particularly -- abuse of the Coase Theorem. Excellent. Like all economic ideas, it seems to me that the Coase Theorem ought to be viewed as a constraint -- loose or tight, it's hard to say -- on the set of permissible assertions, but itself shouldn't be used to derive truthful assertions ... if that makes sense. I haven't said that clearly. I need coffee.

"I've only been following the Superfreakonomics thing with a corner of my brain; since I'm not at all interested in reading Freakonomics, I'm SUPERuninterested in reading its sequel.

But here's my question: it's *economists* who are recommending massively untested solutions to climate problems? This, from the discipline that reacts to any social-engineering effort with desperate cries of "unintended consequences"? Really? Same discipline?"

Ha!

Where epistemology and the law meet in the execution of a possibly innocent man.

This may win the award for Most Evisceration Ever Contained In a Blog Post. Tears apart Megan McArdle and Andrew Sullivan for their ideological blinders and their innumeracy.

Bravo, Brad DeLong. Wherein Brad spears the Posner book that I intend to start reading within the next few weeks.

"The idea of a balance of nature has been a dominant part of Western philosophy since before Aristotle, and it persists in the public imagination and even among some ecologists today. In this lively and thought-provoking book, John Kricher demonstrates that nature in fact is not in balance, nor has it ever been at any stage in Earth's history. He explains how and why this notion of a natural world in balance has endured for so long, and he shows why, in these times of extraordinary human influence on the planet's ecosystems, it is critical that we accept and understand that evolution is a fact of life, and that ecology is far more dynamic than we ever imagined."

Oh my. Dr. Gintis, in this book, appears to be rubbing a bit of sunshine on my heart.

To read. A quick skim suggests that we may want to apply the insurable-risk standard to things like CDSes -- i.e., you can't get a CDS to insure against default on a security you don't own. Obviously there would be problems with requiring this standard. Among such problems: the total volume of securities to which a CDS would apply is huge. If we were to regulate in this way, we'd need to provide a soft landing for a massive derivatives market.

Many mortgage loans were difficult to understand, even for quantitatively-minded folks -- some, even for the mortgage officer. Plus, many were deliberately obfuscated. So let's not be *too* quick to blame the victim here.

The Nudge fellows -- Thaler and Sunstein -- have an idea somewhere (maybe on their blog) about requiring a certain kind of chart that displays exactly how much money people will owe in each year. Seems like a good idea to me. Though it reminds me that the regulators will always be fighting an arms race against the fraudsters. Eternal vigilance, etc.

Could this be more depressing? The once-beautiful Detroit, formerly the economic engine of a nation, is a ghost.

"Uncoordinated individuals in human society pursuing their personally optimal strategies do not always achieve the social optimum, the most beneficial state to the society as a whole. Instead, strategies form Nash equilibria which are often socially suboptimal. Society, therefore, has to pay a price of anarchy for the lack of coordination among its members. Here we assess this price of anarchy by analyzing the travel times in road networks of several major cities. Our simulation shows that uncoordinated drivers possibly waste a considerable amount of their travel time. Counterintuitively,simply blocking certain streets can partially improve the traffic conditions. We analyze various complex networks and discuss the possibility of similar paradoxes in physics."

"Drawing attention to the inherent limits of economists' knowledge, they introduce a new approach to economic analysis: Imperfect Knowledge Economics (IKE). IKE rejects exact quantitative predictions of individual decisions and market outcomes in favor of mathematical models that generate only qualitative predictions of economic change." I'm putting this mentally in the same box as Sutton's models, of the kind laid out in "Marshall's Tendencies," "Sunk Costs and Market Structure," and "Technology and Market Structure." The story in those is that the modeler can't produce an exact model, but he can lay down axioms which *any* plausible model must satisfy. One such axiom might be that there exists "one smart agent," even if not all agents are smart. I wonder whether Frydman and Goldberg follow this line.

To read.

I worry about my friends who are working toward PhDs, for exactly this reason.

Hey, awesome! Now *Cleveland* is a postapocalyptic nightmare!

This is long. I am maybe 20% of the way through it. It is a nice introduction to vaccination, and why everyone should be vaccinating their kids.

To read.

A terrific piece on the sort of life the white female author has lived because of her traditionally African-American name.

Good God. This is a parody of the worst of evolutionary psychology. I'm practically repeating myself there, because ev-psych seems to have produced not a lot of light but a great quantity of heat. I wish everyone planning to write a book about Evolutionary Psychology And Its Applications To Whatever would just stop, say to themselves "The connection between ev-psych and my field is probably indirect and tenuous," then have a nice beer and ask whether they should really be writing that book at all.

Oh, Clay Shirky, how I love thee. On why micropayments will always, always fail, and why the iTunes Music Store is actually evidence in favor of that claim.

To read.

A must-read. An absolutely terrific essay about what the New Deal actually did, whom it actually helped, and the money it actually saved. Then some thoughts on what he expects Obama to do. Hint: he doesn't expect Obama to even consider anything New Dealish. Per usual, the reactionaries are waiting in the wings -- or waiting at the very center of government -- to stop programs that help poor people.

You have to be intrigued by a book whose blurb reads as follows: "While industrial America was built by and for the urban North, rural Southerners comprised much of the labor, management, and consumers in the postwar service sector that raised the Sun Belt to national influence. These newcomers to the economic stage put down the plough to take up the bar-code scanner without ever passing through the assembly line. Industrial culture had been urban, modernist, sometimes radical, often Catholic and Jewish, and self-consciously international. Post-industrial culture, in contrast, spoke of Jesus with a drawl and of unions with a sneer, sang about Momma and the flag, and preached salvation in this world and the next."

Seems like it could be interesting. On the origins of the Milton Friedman school, essentially. The presence of Karl Popper in there is curious in its own right.

To read.

Paul Krugman's open letter to the president. Nothing that his blog's readers don't already know, but still good as a single, canonical version.

This article about the NYTimes's impending demise is exceptionally depressing. Among the most depressing parts is the impending death of the Boston Globe, which would leave Boston with only the Herald (think New York Port) as its daily paper. However, file this under "schadenfreude": "The Times has been on a steady march toward temporarily profitable lifestyle fluff. Escapes! Styles! T magazine(s)! For a time, this fluff helped underwrite the foreign bureaus, enterprise reporting, and endless five-part Pulitzer Prize aspirants. But it has gradually hollowed out journalism’s brand, by making the newspaper feel disposable. The fluff is more fun to read than the loss-leading reports about starvation in Sudan, but it isn’t the sort of thing you miss when it’s gone. Not many people would get misty-eyed over the closure of, say, “Thursday Styles,” fascinating as its weekly shopping deconstructions often are. "

To read.

Dean Baker slashes through a few tired arguments against deficit spending to get us out of the slump, and in the process makes at least a few points that I've never thought of but which are eminently sensible.

To read. A white enclave in New Orleans establishes a gang to kill black people. Lovely.

Could the economic news get any worse? Sure! How about that the auto-industry bailout won't work, because it's focusing on an industry that makes cars. "Back in 2003, Forbes magazine observed that GM was better described as a bank that happens to make cars than as an automaker."

A set of infographics, demonstrating flows of various things -- electricity and freight, primarily -- across the U.S., with an eye to identifying chokepoints. Very cool stuff.

Too damned funny.

Tasty, tasty evisceration, of a man whose idiocy I hadn't even been aware of. I've decided that by the year 2012, 96% of web content will be of the form "Isn't X an idiot?" Who am I to fight History? Hence this bookmark.

Sensible Stiglitz: "remember that there are two sides to every mortgage—the lender and the borrower. Both enter freely into the deal. One might say that both are, accordingly, equally responsible. But one side—the lender—is supposed to be financially sophisticated. In contrast, the borrowers in the subprime market consist mainly of people who are financially unsophisticated. For many, their home is their only asset, and when they lose it, they lose their life savings. Remember, too, that we already give big homeowner subsidies, through the tax system, to affluent families. With tax deductions, the government is paying in some states almost half of all mortgage interest and real-estate taxes. But many lower-income people, whose deductions are meaningless because their tax bill is too small, get no help. It makes much more sense to convert these tax deductions into cashable tax credits, so that the fraction of housing costs borne by the government for the poor and the rich is the same."

Robert Caro is a national treasure, as are the four books he's written. "The Power Broker" should be on everyone's to-read list, as should be at least "Master of the Senate."

Toread. "A groundbreaking work based on detailed and sensitive readings of travel accounts in Persian, dealing with India, Iran, and Central Asia between about 1400 and 1800. This is the first comprehensive treatment of this neglected genre of literature (safar nama) that links the Mughals, Safavids and Central Asia in a crucial period of transformation and cultural contact. The authors’ close reading of these travel-accounts help us enter the mental and moral worlds of the Muslim and non-Muslim literati who produced these valuable narratives. These accounts are presented in a comparative framework, which sets them side by side with other Asian accounts, as well as early modern European travel-narratives, and opens up a rich and unsuspected vista of cultural and material history. This book can be read for a better understanding of the nature of early modern encounters, but also for the sheer pleasure of entering a new world."

Toread.

'To replace the simple recipes of the past, Tilly proposes three master processes that shape democracy: the suppression of independent powers, the elimination categorical inequality, and the integration of trust networks into the polity.'

Toread.

Full scanned text of an out-of-print book by the author of "A User's Guide To Measure-Theoretic Probability." Toread.

Toread.

On the early history of the above-named region. Toread.

Toread.

Noted. Toread.

I couldn't be more happy that I just read this. It counts as the single authoritative denunciation of McCain, unmasking the fakir behind the Straight-Talk Express. If the media allow the sham to continue, they officially now have no excuse.

Nice explanation of why you should read "Which Side Are You On?" and Geoghegan's other books. Those other two go on the queue.

Toread

Toread.

Terrifying and sad and funny (as befits Taibbi): McCain's candidacy is just the reawakening of the same beast of hatred that has propelled every Republican campaign for 50 years and more.

Looks great. Put it on the queue.

Doug Feith's and Ricardo Sanchez's books about the Iraq War -- eviscerated.

Global-scale corporations lie at the root of offensive child-directed consumer behavior in the Oakland Airport, goddamnit.

Excellent rebuttal to Hayek, whilst revisiting many of his writings.

What's most charming about this piece to me is the number of little details of book-reading that ring true -- like his ability to remember where on a page a quote is, or the fact that you often CAN tell a book by its cover. Bravo, Luc Sante.

"achieving a world in which there is less systemic injustice, more freedom, ... rests in significant part on the kind of populations that developed capitalist economies increasingly put in place ... populations educated, increasingly aware, competent..."

Toread.

Toread.

Full text of the Ken Arrow book. This is HAWT.

Shorter Doug Henwood on "Shock Doctrine" (whose name only appears in the HTML source; is he the sole author of Left Business Observer articles?): What's true is not new ... and that's about it. I'd read Henwood's books on the basis of this review.

An alternative to the patent system, namely an auction for patentable inventions, where the government buys the patented invention and puts it in the public domain immediately.

Two good points, at least, in here: 1) If we want to choose a portfolio based on negatively correlated assets, we need to know *why* they're negatively correlated, not just *that* they are, and 2) Things start to fail when everyone uses the same models.

Wonderful: Berkeley needs to say *something* about employing John Yoo, whether or not they fire him. They offer some possible statements from Boalt.

Beautiful photos from inside the NYPL. Drool drool drool.

Awesome. A cartoon guide to the mortgage crisis. Also happens to be a cartoon guide to "The Smartest Guys In The Room" (aka The Enron Story). I wonder when the major media will pick up on the thread connecting Bush 2001 to Bush 2008.

I like articles that confront the underlying cause of a market failure head-on. This one does just that for the recent Bear Stearns bailout.

Cops in WA are now monitoring passing cars for "dirty bombs." They pulled over one recently containing a cat that had undergone radiation therapy three days previous. At the very least, they need to ratchet down the sensitivity of their test.

Toread about half. This is apparently the second in the Big Obama Speeches series.

As Cosma says, Mark has far more patience than I would. One conclusion from the whole mess is that actual scientific research, done carefully, is likely to defuse tempers, whereas politically-motivated glosses on the science only inflame.

Toread