The End began in the Eighties

Vivid and insightful account of the housing finance Boom from Michael Lewis.Read it all, he has a fine sense of the absurd. Here he is on Credit Default Swaps:

The arrangement bore the same relation to actual finance as fantasy football bears to the N.F.L. Eisman was perplexed in particular about why Wall Street firms would be coming to him and asking him to sell short. “What Lippman did, to his credit, was he came around several times to me and said, ‘Short this market,’ ” Eisman says. “In my entire life, I never saw a sell-side guy come in and say, ‘Short my market.’ ”

Interesting MIT class

Todays link is from Guntis, and features a class that has technology and business planning.

An MIT coursework assignment is to build an application for Google's Android phone:

http://www.technologyreview.com/Wire/20765/?nlid=1069

Irelande Douze Pointe

I'm sure the turkey haters will gleefully point out how poor this rehearsal is. Hat tip to Pat for this.

Cross of Neon

In a pithy comment EconoSpeak discovers that Obama needs more than a flag pin on his lapel.

I have just discovered the EconoSpeak blog, which has lucid posts on both arcane and familiar issues.

The FT has a related and depressing quote from a West Virginia Voter, Mr Simpson - "I hear that Obama is a Muslim and his wife's an atheist". This raises a number of interesting questions such as; Why not write 'Atheist' with a capital A, if is it is to be 'Muslim' or 'Christian'?.

Here is a link to the FT article mentioned - you may have to register and the link may be short lived.