Turns out that celebrities, while possibly good at singing and entertaining—or possibly good simply at being famous—aren’t naturals with needle, thread, and design. Who would have guessed?
Why is it news that Ben Bernanke thinks the recession is over?
Example #389 of why I’m never going to make it in the news business: Yesterday afternoon, TIME.com’s business editor, John Curran, recommended that I take a look at Ben Bernanke’s speech at the Brookings Institution. I glanced at the text, saw that it was an exact repeat of the speech he’d given at Jackson Hole in August, and thought, …
Health Insurance Premiums Up 131% in Last Ten Years
Today, the average cost of a family health insurance offered by an employer is $13,375. That’s up 131% over the last decade—a period in which inflation rose only 28%. And one estimate says that if costs continue on their current trajectory, premiums will go up another 166% in the decade ahead.
Income inequality will keep getting worse until we do something about it
Bruce Judson doesn’t buy the argument, made on the front page of the WSJ last week, that “the deepest downturn in the U.S. economy since the Great Depression may finally shrink the gap between the very best-off Americans and everyone else.” Yes, the highest incomes do tend to drop sharply during market downturns, thus reducing income …
It’s a Deal: Southwest Airline Flights from $49
Nearly every route is on sale from Southwest Airlines, with flights starting at $49 each way on routes such as Boston to Baltimore, $89 between Denver and Los Angeles, and $129 between Houston and Detroit. Tickets must be purchase by September 17. More details here.
Warren Buffett might have saved Lehman (if he knew how to work his cell phone)
Karen Tumulty has the story of the year:
As you can imagine, Buffett was hearing from a lot of people on that crazy weekend exactly a year ago, when the financial world was falling apart. AIG, desperate to come up with $18 billion, begged him for help. “Don’t waste your time on me,” he told them. “I’m not going to be able to do anything
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Recession-Era Word of the Day: What’s a Putpocket?
We all know what a pickpocket is. A putpocket, on the other hand, is a pickpocket who has changed his ways. When a putpocket has his hand in your pants, it’s actually a good thing.
So What Do You Really Need When Baby Comes?
OK, so we’ve got a post that names 11 useless baby products. What are the things that parents actually do find useful when they have a baby?
Toy Store Showdown: The Battle for Christmas Shoppers Is Already On
Today, Toys R Us is announcing that it is opening 80 new temporary toy stores and 260 mini-toy shops within Babies R U locations to gear up for holiday-season shopping. Retailers like Sears, Wal-Mart, and Target are also ramping up efforts to get toys moving off of their shelves in what’s expected to be a wild, super-competitive, …
Hyman Minsky didn’t have all the answers
Economist Hyman Minsky, who never got much attention while he was alive, has become one of the big celebrities of this financial crisis. In Sunday’s Boston Globe, Stephen Mihm has the best account of Minsky’s life and significance that I’ve seen so far. A sample:
Today most economists, it’s safe to say, are probably reading Minsky for
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New article: Lessons from Lehman
I’ve got a Lehman Day piece up on TIME.com about what the heck we’ve learned over the past year. Meanwhile, I’m still working this morning on a longer version for the magazine. So if there’s anything egregiously wrong with the online article, please let me know so I can fix it.
What Is the Most Useless Baby Product of All?
Not long after starting to raise a child (or three), you begin to realize that you don’t need a lot of the stuff baby stores try to convince parents to buy.