Category Archives: Economics

GOOD ENTRY JOBS.

GOOD ENTRY JOBS. A couple years ago when I was posting about the need to deal with troubled mortgages “one mortgage at a time” I thought that a mitigating circumstance was that there would be lots of jobs created by … Continue reading

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“ROBO-LENDING.”

“ROBO-LENDING.” Amar Bhide had a valuable article in the weekend Wall Street Journal (November 13) which uses the useful word “robo-lending” to describe the process that led to the current foreclosure difficulties. He contrasts the old way of mortgage lending, … Continue reading

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AVOIDING RECORDING FEES.

AVOIDING RECORDING FEES. One of the ways that banks had sought to avoid dealing with one mortgage at a time was an attempt to avoid recording on the title records of each transfer of a mortgage. As described in this … Continue reading

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AVOIDING DOING ONE MORTGAGE AT A TIME.

AVOIDING DOING ONE MORTGAGE AT A TIME. I have posted a number of times on the need to clean up toxic assets and bad mortgages “one mortgage at a time.” In March, 2009, I said in this post: “The assets … Continue reading

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WHY IS COMMERCIAL ART NOT ELIGIBLE FOR THE ART MARKET?

WHY IS COMMERCIAL ART NOT ELIGIBLE FOR THE ART MARKET? John Gapper posed the question in the Financial Times (October 23-24) of why Annie Leibovitz, despite her success as a photographer, has had little success in the art market. Barry … Continue reading

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ECONOMIC REGULATION AND HELMET HITS.

ECONOMIC REGULATION AND HELMET HITS. I posted three years ago that I thought helmet-to-helmet hits were dangerous, but when I posted a couple weeks ago about the NFL’s newly announced policy on helmet-to-helmet hits, I was taking a narrow lawyer’s … Continue reading

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CONFIDENCE PERSUADES—AND SO DOES OVERCONFIDENCE.

CONFIDENCE PERSUADES—AND SO DOES OVERCONFIDENCE. The Dunning-Kruger effect is troubling because it shows that confident people may well be incompetent. Worse, confidence is a great persuader. Lecturers on trial advocacy will point out the importance in a trial of an … Continue reading

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EXPERTS PREDICTING WHERE THERE ARE A THOUSAND VARIABLES.

EXPERTS PREDICTING WHERE THERE ARE A THOUSAND VARIABLES. I have posted, for example here, on Philip Tetlock’s studies of expert predictions. They don’t do better than anybody else. Tetlock urges that forecasts by experts be made in testable forms and … Continue reading

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OVERCONFIDENCE AMONG THE EXPERTS.

OVERCONFIDENCE AMONG THE EXPERTS. Experts can also be overconfident, and it seems to me that this is a different issue from being to clueless to realize that one is bad at something (the Dunning-Kruger effect). The wikipedia article I linked … Continue reading

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SAINT VINCENT’S HOSPITAL CLOSES.

SAINT VINCENT’S HOSPITAL CLOSES. Saint Vincent’s Hospital was a landmark in Greenwich Villlage while we lived there. This New York magazine article by Mark Levine says that it had been there for over 160 years. St. Vincent’s recently closed. The … Continue reading

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