Rare are the moments when I regret living in northeastern Romania. The sun is shining, the sheep are out grazing again, and there are fat buds growing on every little branch in sight. Really, one of the only drawbacks to living here is the inability to order books. The complete lack of infrastructure, and my fear of interacting with postal clerks, limits me to things I can find as audiobo…

Кто кого? — В. И. Ленин

There are two ways you can look at the current banking crisis.

The first is that we are in the middle of a panic, and that this panic has frozen the markets for various complex assets. As a result, the few of these assets that do sell get sold for far less than their actual value. This seems to be…

Today's New York Times features a fascinating front-page article by Andrew Ross Sorkin, entitled "The Case for Paying Out Bonuses at A.I.G.". Sorkin argues that if we do not pay $165 million in performance bonuses to executives at the failed insurer, we risk chipping at the very foundations of the rule o…

Unnoticed among the financial headlines last October was the scariest news story of 2008:

Carbon Is Building Up in Atmosphere Faster Than Predicted

The gist of the article is that carbon dioxide …