"[T]he broad impact of the recession is clear in hundreds of thousands of new cases across the judicial system, including people challenging their real estate taxes, home foreclosures, contract disputes and family offenses."

"There’s a kind of perverse joy that comes from watching a truly awful movie musical."

"Looking at these, you would hope to achieve a low lefthand starting point (low cost), a high righthand point (high longevity), and a thick line (lots of doctor visits.)

The USA line looks like it was drawn by someone who got the instructions backwards — a very high lefthand starting point (huge cost), a mediocre righthand point (middlin' longevity), and a hairlike line thickness (scanty doctor visits, less than 4 per year.)"

"There are a number of ways to “solve” mazes but there’s a wide scope for you to be as straightforward or as clever as you like with this challenge (tip: I’d love to see some clever/silly solutions!). Your “solvable?” and “steps” methods could share algorithms or you might come up with alternate ways to be more efficient in each case. Good luck!"

"This “highly sophisticated investor” argument has been used by Goldman, other banks and a remarkably high number of journalists (in my opinion just repeating the crap they have been fed by their sources) as a way of getting the banks off the hook. But it is a fundamentally flawed argument. The CDO bonds that AIG insured were rated AAA. If you have to be a rocket scientist to understand the investment and if anything short of perfect analysis of the bonds means you will be blown up – then by definition the bonds are not AAA."

"The point is that there was indeed a huge CA bubble in the 80s, which burst painfully. Nor was this an obscure bit of knowledge: in fact, people like Calculated Risk and yours truly were quite explicitly using the great California bubble of the 80s as a model for what was going to happen nationally.

This whole episode makes me think considerably worse of my former department head."

"Yet this apparently uneventful transfer of power concealed profound alterations in the relationship between the English crown and its subjects, and set into motion the formation of a new kind of modern state, whose characteristics – vigorous promotion of economic development, broad religious tolerance, and free competition among political interests – still define liberal democracies today.

In his magisterial new book (for once, this overused adjective is warranted), the historian Steve Pincus takes aim at the traditional narrative of the Glorious Revolution, and sets out to prove, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that it was more than worthy of the name: a revolution that was contentious, sometimes violent and even bloody, that pitted two radical factions against one another and transformed England."

"Of course, it’s not uncommon to see the term “rank hubris” applied in the general vicinity of Larry Summers. But let’s be clear, here: what Summers did could in no way be considered a hedge, under any common definition of the term. He was indulging in interest-rate speculation, just like Robert Citron. I think it’s fair to say that no previous Harvard president would ever have considered himself qualified to do such a thing, but Summers never let such considerations stop him. And his alma mater is now paying the 10-digit price."

"The use of Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) in scientific computing is becoming increasingly common. GPUs are low cost parallel processors that can readily be exploited for many types of general purpose computation. Recently, the computational intelligence community has started to develop for the GPU platform. This web page is primarily dedicated to the use of GPUs as a platform for Genetic Programming. "

"The economic elite have launched an attack on the U.S. public and society is unraveling at an increased rate. You may have missed it in the mainstream news media, but statistical societal indicators are reading red across the board. Let’s look at the top 15 statistics that prove we are under attack."

"In fact, there has been only one top nation that ever avoided the habit, and that was the United States. Upon finding itself the dominant power at the end of World War II., the United States had the opportunity to impose its own vision of international trade. And it did.
At this crucial moment, something special happened. At the behest of Marshall and his advisers, America became the first power in history to deliberately establish countermercantilist commerce flows. Nations crippled by war or mismanagement were allowed to maintain tariffs, keeping out American goods, while sending shiploads from their factories to the United States. Each administration since Marshall's time, regardless of political party, has abided by this compact—to such a degree that the world's peoples now simply take it for granted!"

"It doesn’t have to be science, though that is where I found these refugees from the aristocracy, most often. It might also be the arts, or starting a new company from scratch, in a completely different field. Any way you look at it, this trend has to be viewed with admiration.

Alas, it may also be one of the principal reasons that American capitalism is going down the toilet. Because… who is left behind, minding the store? Oh. Yeah. I already answered that question. "

"Perhaps by coincidence, three new papers in this week’s issue of the NEP-DGE report deal with forecasting. Kolasa, Rubaszek and Skrzypczyński says that DSGE models perform remarkably well. Bache, Jore, Mitchell and Vahey claim that VAR models with structural breaks do better, but of course structural breaks cannot be predicted with a VAR. Gupta, Kabundi and Miller show that DSGE models of real estate markets are better with turning points, which are the most difficult statistic to forecast."

"Last month 52,000 temps were added, greater than the number of new workers in any other category. Not even health care and government, stalwarts through the long recession, did better.

“Sometimes we’re asked by a company to bring back ex-employees as temps,” said Joanie Ruge, a senior vice president of Adecco. Some are even ex-employees who have been laid off. “That does happen,” she said."