Kenneth Brower, son of Sierra Club transformer David Brower, and onetime friend of Freeman Dyson, has been writing about Dyson and climate change. As is usual with books by writers who are not scientists, the scientific issues are not addressed. Those are settled. Instead the purpose of the article is to find out why...
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Interviews with low-income single moms show that they are not hostile to marriage as an institution or as a life goal. In fact, they dream of having a husband, children, a minivan, and a house in the suburbs "with a white picket fence," but nobody tells them they will probably always...
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There is ambiguous news about unemployment. The Democrat supporters in the press are spinning it as good news, in that things aren’t getting worse quite so fast as had been projected. Republican press supporters say yes, but it’s still getting worse, not better. It’s pretty clear that good news or bad news, the job...
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Investors are challenged these days to know where to put their money. Everyone wants to know which asset class will perform the best and help them meet their retirement goals. We use six different asset classes: three for stability and three for appreciation. In the stable asset classes, you loan a company money to...
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“You want me to do what?†The look on Jerome’s face was bewildered, angry. “It’s like I said,†I replied. “For the next 28 days you have to live at this facility. You have to go into groups of people you don’t know and tell them all you are a drug addict. You have to...
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It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the bewildering array of economic data, statistics, charts, and graphs floating around. Often, we economists can’t see the forest for the trees. It’s hard to figure out what is truly significant and what is background noise. Having made that disclaimer, I offer some data that merit your contemplation....
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With that level of insight you can now go out and make major decisions for your own future, such as, whether or not to buy a house, upgrade your car, perhaps even fly to Europe on the wings of hope. No?
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Obama announced that between $50 billion and $100 billion will be spent on making mortgage payments affordable, as part of the giant gamble he and Congress are making, under the title of “stimulus.†No help will be provided for those who made rational decisions on purchases, but ample support will be provided to those...
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In the search for solutions to the global economic turmoil, there is a disconnect between the objective of bankers and financial institutions, and the objective of government (read: people). The global crisis presents an evolving pathology beyond the reach of Paulson, Bernanke or any other imposition. That is the great mystery and abstruse nature...
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Alliance & Leicester (A&L), a major UK bank, has agreed to a deal regarding its sale to Banco Santander, a banking company based in Spain. The deal, which is worth £1.2 billion, means that shareholders will receive one share in Santander for every three shares they hold in A&L. Santander said in a statement...
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