A Programmer's Confession

How I helped build the bomb that blew up Wall Street by Michael Osinski.
Quite an interesting story.

General Theory

Here is the ebook - The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money by John Maynard Keynes.

Economics Is the 'Just Right' Liberal-Arts

See here by David Colander, chair of the economics department at Middlebury College.

Quantitative Easing Explained

A good explanation of unconventional monetary policy, which the Fed is using now - Quantitative Easing.

AIG Bonus

Here is the interesting news of the reaction of AIG $165 million bonus.
Of course these AIG leaders will not take a deep bow and then commit suicide.
I think 100% tax on the 2008 bonuses paid by those firms who accepted government money is a very good idea.

Bernake on 60 Minutes

The Fed Chairman is on the TV interview for the first time.
The interview is about the Fed, financial crisis, Ben's personal life.
Click Part 1 and Part 2.

US Household Wealth

WSJ had a nice graph and an article for the US household wealth.

Charlie Rose Interview With Tim Geithner

See here (53 mins).

Immigration Explorer

NYT has a very nice graphical presentation of immigration groups in the US.

Chistina Romer Makes It Clear

Lessons from the Great Depression for Economic Recovery in 2009 by Christina Romer, current CEA chairman.

Articles about Financial Crisis

• Seeds of its own destruction by Martin Wolf
• Why banks failed the stress test? by Andrew Haldane
• A failure to control the animal spirits by Robert Shiller

Stress Tests on Banks

Treasury announced the details of stress tests.

Willem Buiter on Macroeconomics

The unfortunate uselessness of most ’state of the art’ academic monetary economics.

New Era of Responsibility

Since President Obama announced his ambitious 2010 deficit budget (titled: the New Era of Responsibility), the landscape shaped by President Regan of macroeconomic policy and government's role for 30 yeasrs had changed significantly.

Foreign Portfolio Holdings of U.S. Securities

Treasury just released the survey data for foreign portfolio holdings of the US securities: equity and debts up to June 30, 2008.

Passive Management

Finance masters teach us a golden rule of finance, which few people believe and follow.
What do they mean for "passive management"? I think they mean index fund.

The Formula That Killed Wall Street

A very good article about Gaussian copula function by David X. Li and its impact on financial meltdown. Li's paper is here.
Is it another reason to blame China for the financial crisis?

How China Helped Create the Financial Crisis

Here by Moritz Schularick.

Brooks on Obama

David Brooks had a good piece on Obama in NYT.
Update: After watching President Obama's speech to Congress tonight, I think Obama is really willing to do all these ambitious reforms and will have a chance to be successful for many of the plans in the long run. Why? Becuase I think he understands the current core problems of the US and he really can talk!

Is America's Banking Cisis Worse Than Japan?

Economist.com had a good analysis.

Obama Signed the Stimulus Bill

As I predicted in December and in January, the stimulus plan was passed and signed into law today. In this website, we can see and track the detials of the plan.

Interview with Simon Johnson

PBS Bill Moyers interviews with Simon Johnson, MIT professor.
I agree with his suggestions, one of which is the anti-trust law on big banks.

Capitalism 3.0

Dani Rodrik said that Capitalism 3.0 will be coming soon.

Job Market for Economics PhD

WSJ had a very detailed intorduction and this year is not good.

A Revolution in Eonomic Thought

Here.

Rogoff on China

Rogoff had an insightful piece about Chinese economy. One interesting sentence caught my eyes in particular:

.... men in China today feel compelled to save in order to find a bride. The same week, a former student of mine who lost his lucrative financial-sector job explained that he had no savings because it was so expensive to date in New York!

An example of cultural difference about savings.

Interview with Paul Samuelson

Paul Samuelson, the first Ameican who won the Nobel prize in Economics (1970), was not happy with President Bush. His view is very similar with Paul Krugman, the latest Nobel prize winner.

Outrageous?

President Barack Obama believes the multi-billion dollar bonuses that Wall Street banks awarded themselves for 2008 are "outrageous." Read here.

I have two questions. First is that how dare they are. Second is how could the government let this happan again. If you read WSJ everyday, you could exactly know they are doing it. On the one hand, we have greedy private sectors; on the other hand, we have a sleepy government. And the financial crisis in September didn't change this nature.

Updated: Another angry man about Wall Street.
My third question: Do you trust Wall Street now?

Who Gets What from Stimulus Package

Here.

Update: Here is some information about states budget shortfall.

A War on Fiscal Stimulus

There is a war on fiscal stimulus plan in academy. Here is the log.

• 11/25 Taylor
• 11/25 Krugman
• 1/4 Krugman
• 1/10 Mankiw
• 1/11 Becker
• 1/13 Fama
• 1/19 Krugman
• 1/19 Krugman
• 1/19 Mankiw
• 1/22 Barro
• 1/25 Krugman
• 1/26 Cochrane
• 1/26 Delong
• 1/27 Feldstein
• 1/27 Sachs
• 1/27 Shiller
• 1/27 Krugman
• 1/27 Mankiw
• 1/27 Thoma
• 1/27 Delong
• 1/28 Krugman
• 1/28 Krugman
• 1/28 Fama