The best coverage of the crisis in East Europe

is from Edward Hugh at at Fistful of Euros.
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Where money is cheaper than TP

One more toilet post. In Zimbabwe, money is cheaper than toilet paper (but probably is not as soft).
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Beirut parking

Click picture to enlarge. Thanks to Nada.

Letture natalizie

Le Mie Cose di Marco Lazzarotto, molto divertente. Grazie a Luca M. per la segnalazione.
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Who will listen to them now?

So, you have an institution that, among other things, provides advice on macroeconomic managment. A little more than one year ago this institution implemented an expnisve and controversial downsizing program because things in the world economy were going well. And now, this.

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Mosquee-ou-salle-de-presse?

Click to enlarge (thanks to SiL Nadine)

Does economics need a scientific revolution?

This article says yes: Most of all, there is a crucial need to change the mindset of those working in economics.... They need to move away from what Richard Feynman called Cargo Cult Science: a science that follows all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, while still missing something essential.... Economic curriculums need to include more natural science.
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Misunderstood people

Tyrone on Madoff: What about that guy who set up the phony investment company? Can the Treasury make a new one of those, only bigger? He took money away from people and gave it to charities and the needy and the arts and higher education. That sounds like stimulus so why are we sending him to jail? Wasn't he ahead of the curve?
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Charity porn

Performers of the Japanese porn company Natural High's new Naked Continent series have sex with impoverished local Africans on film. The director gave about $11,000 to a Kenyan charity, distributed some corn and free T-shirts to the locals in the area and then gathered up a few local men to have sex on tape with their performers. For every DVD they sell, the company plans to give another $10 to the same charity. The whole sad story is here. I found it here.
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Post crisis corporate logos

Here, thanks to raja.
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A praise of shoe-throwing

Here , and here is the video. More here
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Exotic license plates and income distribution

I had never seen a Vanuatu license plate. So, when I saw this car in the UN parking in Geneva I had to take a picture (click on the picture to enlarge).

If you want some populist numbers, this S class Mercedes (who is likely to belong to a diplomat from Vanuatu) is worth about $100,000. The total GDP of Vanuatu is $310 million, divided by a population of 240,000, you get a GDP per capita (not PPP adjusted, but you don't buy the Mercedes using PPP dollars) of about $1300.

Assume that the owner of the car is indeed a diplomat and that he/she spent 50% of his/her annual income to buy the car. Also assume that Vanuatu has 50 diplomats of the same level of the owner of the car. You get that these 50 diplomats collect wages equal to 3% of the country's GDP and 13% of total government expenditure!

If you want to know more about long series of assumptions that lead to resonable guesses, check out the meaning of Fermi Problem (yah yah yah, the name of my high school was Enrico Fermi)

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Ph.D. Comics

A Graduate student comic strip: Here. thanks to SiL Nadine
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The crisis is increasing US financial power.

How should this new power be used? Here is Ricardo Hausmann.
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Our SOB

Here
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Found on Terence Tao's page

Mostly for math but applies to many other fields. Career advice, On writing, Most common errors in undergrad math, The cult of genius (for Feynman lovers), On hard work, On time management, Ten lessons I wish I had been taught, The Princeton companion to mathematics, Duties as scientist, Advice for the young scientist. For graduate students (1 ,2, 3 three, on negotiating, is the most important)
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How to raise and talk to smart kids

Here, here (this is highly recommended, it will challenge your ideas on the role of self-esteem), and here. (Another article on the dangers of too much praise is here.)

I've not finished reading everything, but it seems that the secret is never telling them that they are achieving a lot because they are very smart. Instead, one should tell them that they are achieving a lot because they work hard.

I've always criticized my father for being stingy with compliments (the biggest compliment I've ever heard from him is: "that was OK") . Should I tell him that he was right all along? Woulnd't this be too much praise for him?
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Math puzzles

Greg Mankiw points us to this nice math puzzle from Terence Tao. My favorite answer is that of Harald Hance Olsen.  

Down in the comments somebody pointed out than Steven Landsburg had asked the same question from an economic perspective (here). Check out the mathematician's reaction to Landsburg's article: It made me feel infinitely superior to the economists, as I could spot the problem with the benefit side of the equation the moment it was stated. (Insert your own economist joke here.).  

He's right, the only thing we are left with is higher average pay :)

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Hariri's assasination

The Atlantic has a very interesting story on the investigation. The slide-show is also recommended. Especially the picture of May Chidiac. Thanks to Paulita for sending it.

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Good cartoons

Here. Thanks to Nada C.

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Buiter on Steinbrueck

Here

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The ski season is officially open

Legs are bad, but today the snow was amazing and Tito's old pocket rockets (one of the best presents ever, thanks Tito!) really enjoyed the powder (see pic).

Bad news on all fronts

• Investors shunned one of the most liquid and safest assets in the world yesterday as a German bond auction came close to failing in a warning sign for governments attempting to raise record amounts of debt to boost their slowing economies. here
• Harvard, the wealthiest university in the world, .. [it] would also postpone nearly all searches for tenure-track professors. here
• The world economy is in a terrifying nosedive, visible everywhere. Yet Mr. Steinbrueck is standing firm against any extraordinary fiscal measures, and denounces Gordon Brown for his “crass Keynesianism.” here

The costs of default

My work with Eduardo Borensztein on the costs of sovereign default (also here and here) has generated some interest in the blogsphere (here and here). However, I am afraid that some readers are misinterpreting our finding of the presence of a limited cost of default. Traditional economic models base on the seminal paper of Eaton and Gersovitz assume the presence of strategic defaults (i.e., countries default when they could easily pay). We argue that countries don't default strategically but default in the middle of deep crises when paying the debt would imply huge economic and social costs. It is in the presence of such non-strategic (or justifiable) defaults that we observe limited costs of default. We don't know what would happen in the presence of a strategic default. Our conjecture is that the cost of such a strategic default could be huge, and this is why we don't observe strategic defaults (note that our understanding of the literature may soon change as there is now a country which might be on the verge of a strategic default).

A new super cool paper on everything you want to know on sovereign debt and sovereign default will soon be coming. I will post it when it's ready.
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Chris Blatmman has the best graphs

Cotton 150 years ago and voting today. Check out this strange maps website.
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Escher architecture

Here
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Parmigiano-bailout-related posts from Italian economists

Here and here.
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Invisible hand

Here

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Two nice posts from Greg Mankiw

Parmigiano bailout (this affects me negatively both as an Italian taxpayer and Parmigiano consumer)

The real impact factor

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Stink and perfume!

In Japan

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An ad for the Big 3 bailout

Here

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Links

The year of exceptionally low returns
New Economics Blogs Woodward and Hall and Andy Harless. Both found here
Krugman's Nobel lecture: here and here and misreporting
Double whammy. This is really bad news. Those who need them don't use the drug and those who smoke them get high and get infected!
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Probably the best website, ever

Any music video, any time! Here
Addendum:
OK, Raja is right, No Sex Pistols either. MTV, for the moment you still suck
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It's all Disney's fault

If you ask my 3-year old daughter to describe herself she will answer with one of the following 4 words: principessa, princess, amira, princesse (the answer will only depend on the language in which the question was asked). Until yesterday, I thought that it was our fault and that we should stop spoiling her and treating her like royalty, but after reading this, I realized that it is all Disney's fault.

But it gets worse. This piece suggests that Disney's redesign of the eyes and mouths of its female characters could be linked a recent increase in teen pregnancy (what was Sarah Palin's daughter watching?).

Maybe, I should only let her watch Disney's evil characters. Check this out.
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The crisis in one chart

From Jeff Frankel
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Job market horror story

Chris Blattman tells one and asks for more. I posted my own which is: The department head invited me to dinner to his house after the talk, his wife got drunk and hit on me.
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Keynesian arithmetic

Unpleasant, indeed.
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Weird & Interesting

Floating tits.
Somali pirates buy Citi
Real pirates
Krugman's verdict and what he was really thinking when he met Bush

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We

Big endowment big losses

Read this: The Harvard endowment, the biggest of any university, stood at $36.9 billion as of June 30, meaning the loss amounts to about $8 billion.
8 billion is about half the GDP of Lebanon.
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Scientology

Here.
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Bagels

I laways thought that they suck, but da wife and my friends love them (I think that Luca is the the only one who agrees with me). So, here it goes.
Friends in DC, check this out: there's a great, relatively new bagelry in Rockville, called Goldberg's. Their bagels are the only bagels I've ever had in the D.C. area that are worthy of the name.
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End of the World?

In Geneva, we have been waiting for the end of the World since September (here and here). Angel just sent me this nice book review. The key sentence is: How many times does the end of the world as we know it need to arrive before we realise that it’s not the end of the world as we know it?
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