Category Archives: economics

Should penalty shoot outs be before extra time or after?

Given that the football world cup is over, I may have missed the window on this one, but it still is interesting! The relevant current rules in football (that’s ‘soccer’ in Yankeeism  ) as as follows: teams play during 90 minutes. If, at the end of regular time, teams are tied (an event which, contrary

Dance Monkey Dance

I assume that you are all familiar with Ernest Cline’s famous spoken word piece “Dance Monkey Dance.” If you are not, just click on this link and you will be. :) In this piece Cline asserts that we are nothing more than monkeys in denial who figured out language and other neat stuff. Before you

The United States of socialism

The nationalization of Freddie Mac and Fanny May marks a major shift in the US policy of free-market, deregulated economy (to a more socialist policy), or does it? With my rant against the the bailout out of the way, lets see if this really is something different that the US government has had to do

Paying for someone else’s mortgage

Last week, the US government took control over Freddie Mac and Fanny May, the financial gaints of the US martage industry (and the crisis). Now this puts the US government in control of nearly half of the $12tn mortgage debt in the US (The two companies have lent or underwritten about $5.3 trillion mortgage debt