We’re back in the Eastern time zone (in Indiana), and I’ll be back at work in a couple of days. But here, while we’re still on the road, are a few more contributions from the photo album—most of them the work of Mrs. Curious Capitalist. First, the Kit Carson Museum in Las Animas Colorado, where one learns almost nothing about Kit Carson:
I took this photo (in Fallon, Nev.) in honor of Felix Salmon. I didn’t realize that Tim “King Fish” Salmon was a semi-legendary Angels player. Because I’m an A’s fan, and we A’s fans aren’t entirely clear that the Angels exist. So let’s just say it’s baseball great Felix Salmon and leave it that.
The Curious Capitalist family will be spending most of the next two weeks driving across the country, left to right. We may post some travel photos, and Barbara will post from time to time. But overall production will slow dramatically. Which seems appropriate for the second half of August.
After last weekend I couldn’t resist. Here’s Suarez, from the town of Mons:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrTnREljSNU]
Don’t know a whole lot about them, except what I read in this article. I can’t really read French, but it appears to tell of a Belgian of Spanish and Italian descent uniting with three guys (two brothers and …
I’ve got a new column online and in the issue of TIME with Less Vegas on the cover. The Vegas story, by Joel Stein, is pretty great, by the way.
My column is an attempt to put the high frequency trading brouhaha in some historical context. And part of my historical context is Bernie Madoff. As so often happens, there were a couple of …
Bloomberg has broken the news that the FDIC is about to take over Alabama-based Colonial Bancgroup and sell its branches and deposits to those objectivists at BB&T. This is the biggest bank failure of the year, although not on the scale of last year’s Wamu takeover—Colonial has $26 billion in assets. But for anybody who has lived in …
The July inflation report, released this morning, will likely go down as something of a landmark: the Consumer Price Index fell 2.1% over the previous 12 months, the biggest year-over-year drop since 1950. This was entirely due to a 28.1% drop in energy prices over that period, and as energy prices began falling in August 2008, the …
The Bureau of Labor Statistics has a new report (pdf) out comparing employment in the Silicon Valley tech sector in 2001 and 2008. The gist: Employment is down by a lot (17%), but wages are up by even more (36%). I’ll let Tom Abate of the SF Chronicle explain:
The report documents a stunning shift in the region’s high-tech workforce, as
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Andrew J. Hall, Citigroup’s $100 million man, is considering a compromise to please pay czar Kenneth Feinberg. Reports the WSJ:
The discussions include converting a substantial chunk of Mr. Hall’s compensation for 2010 to equity from cash, these people said. A deal wouldn’t affect the head of Citigroup energy-trading unit Phibro LLC’s
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Emanuel Derman writes (via Felix):
[T]he EMH, if you don’t take it too literally and get carried away about axiomatically defining strong, weak and other kinds of efficiency as though you were dealing with axiomatic quantum field theory, does recognize one true thing: that it’s #$&^ing difficult or well-nigh impossible to systematically
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My Authors@Google talk is behind me, as is—sadly—my excellent free Google cafeteria lunch (tandoori sturgeon, lentil cakes, roasted potatoes, kale, some sort of coconut-tofu curry, rice and salad). Now I’m sitting in the lobby of Google’s SF office using the guest wifi network to check on the Federal Open Market Committee’s statement …
Right after the Federal Open Market Committee makes its post-meeting announcement this afternoon, I’m going to walk into Google’s San Francisco office to jabber about my book (as part of the Authors@Google program). This means it would be very convenient for me if the FOMC’s announcement weren’t particularly newsworthy. So you may want …
