Joel E Lewis

A great article about systemic instability, financial markets, and the the deficit.  Here is one taste:
The Obama administration tells us that the government deficit is going to be well over $1 trillion a year for at least ten years. And that does not take into account the outlier years in the 2020s when the really [...]

Time to start reading science fiction, because the future is here.  Now, eye surgeons are getting more requests to customize patient’s eyes based on their life or lifestyles.
Julian Stevens, of Moorfields Eye Hospital, is an expert on laser refractive surgery. He has, in the past, offered tailored treatment for members of the special forces. “They [...]

Is this the end of the American Dream?
Many have lived beyond their incomes simply because incomes have been outstripped by the costs of middle-class life. By the fall of 2008, most American workers were bringing home roughly the same weekly wages they had earned in 1983, after accounting for inflation.
via As Jobs Are Lost in [...]

Today more than two-thirds of Americans own their own homes. Among whites, more than 75% are homeowners today.
Yet the story of how the dream became a reality is not one of independence, self-sufficiency, and entrepreneurial pluck. It’s not the story of the inexorable march of the free market. It’s a different kind of American story, [...]

because this article about health-care actually make sense. (My comments in italics).
•Equalize the tax laws so that employer-provided health insurance and individually owned health insurance have the same tax benefits. Now employer health insurance benefits are fully tax deductible, but individual health insurance is not. This is unfair. (This IS unfair… it’s worth repeating).
•Repeal all [...]

Apparently our economy has been much slower than reported for years:
Growth: Why the Stats Are Misleading – BusinessWeek.

Auction technology has blossomed around the world, and called into existence a whole new industry, replete with firms, entrepreneurs, consultants, counter-consultants and even a few gunslingers. When the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Market Design Working Group held its first-ever meeting earlier this month, many of the stars were there, mostly economists, but a handful [...]

It seems investors might overestimate the ability of their peers to make sound decisions, a very convincing explanation for several of our recent economic crises.  In essence, I can should pay a lot for a mortgage backed security (or dot com stock, or bankrupt investment bank) because everybody else is (and everyone else should be [...]

In the aftermath of the financial crisis, the focus has been on better accounting for risk, better matching employee pay with the long term value they generate, and creating new regulations to “fix” the markets.
Arguably, better matching pay with value created is ideal, but it is also difficult to measure, which is why we rewrite [...]

Witness the birth of Google, the business giant:
Veach and Kamangar argued that all the ad slots should be auctioned off. In search, Google had already used scale, power, and clever algorithms to change the way people accessed information. By turning over its sales process entirely to an auction-based system, the company could similarly upend the [...]