Re-elect Clinton (Bill) in 2008

These segments are two of the best pieces of television journalism that I have ever seen. In the first clip Clinton absolutely destroys Fox News reporter Chris Wallace

In the second clip Keith Olberman, MSNBC commentator, has a great reaction to the Clinton interview. I almost never watch the news on TV, relying primarily on print media and the Internet, but these two segments have breathed new life into my possible future interest in TV journalism.


Clinton (Bill) 2008!

Microloans for Katrina Victims

A day after learning he had won the Nobel Peace Prize, Muhammed Yunus wrote an op-ed piece for the wall street journal explaining why extending micro credit to victims of hurricane katrina would have been far more effective than the action taken by our friends at FEMA. Here is an excerpt from the article.

Microlending has already helped millions reach a better life through their own initiative. It has also given them valuable skills as well as crucial financial back-up in case they ever face a natural disaster like Katrina. So it might be time to think about another type of support for Katrina's victims: the microloan. As our small, flood-battered country has learned, giving someone a hand up doesn't always require a handout. The most important thing is to help people get back to work while letting them hold on to their self-respect. Microloans can do just that.

Even more interesting than Mr. Yunnus's article is the Iqbal Quadir TED talk about GrameenPhone playing on the notion that connectivity is productivity. It is a really cool first hand account about bringing cellphone access to businesses funded by the Grameen Bank.

Show Me What You Got

A song expected to be on Jay's new album, Kingdom Come, was leaked earlier this week. Check it out.

And the winner is......

Cameron T. Morris for his work on estimating the effects that legalizing the coca leaf in Bolivia have on personal and national savings. Well, not yet. But here's the real news. From the FT

The 2006 Nobel prize for economics has been awarded to Professor Edmund Phelps of Columbia University for his work in the late 1960s overturning the conventional wisdom on the trade-off between inflation and unemployment.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said it had awarded the economics prize in memory of Alfred Nobel to Prof Phelps “for his analysis of the intertemporal trade-offs in macroeconomic policy”.

Stay tuned. Look for me in 2050, if we haven't all killed ourselves by then.

Sympathetic Hippo

The Origins of the Leisure Class

We're all doing it wrong. I'm going to stop blogging and retreat to the woods.

"Far from scrabbling endlessly and desperately for food, hunter-gatherers are among the best-fed people on earth, and they manage this with only two or three hours a day of what you would call work -- which makes them among the most leisured people on earth as well. In his book on stone age economics, Marshall Sahlins described them as 'the original affluent society'."

-Quinn, Daniel, Ishmael, pg 220

Mr. Clinton

Good article on Bill Clinton. here

Million Dollar Mistake?

Here is an excerpt from an article in the current issue of Fortune Magazine. Can anyone guess what the million dollar mistake Sheryl Sandberg made was?

Take the case of Sheryl Sandberg, a 37-year-old vice president whose fiefdom includes the company's automated advertising system. Sandberg recently committed an error that cost Google several million dollars -- "Bad decision, moved too quickly, no controls in place, wasted some money," is all she'll say about it -- and when she realized the magnitude of her mistake, she walked across the street to inform Larry Page, Google's co-founder and unofficial thought leader. "God, I feel really bad about this," Sandberg told Page, who accepted her apology. But as she turned to leave, Page said something that surprised her. "I'm so glad you made this mistake," he said. "Because I want to run a company where we are moving too quickly and doing too much, not being too cautious and doing too little. If we don't have any of these mistakes, we're just not taking enough risk."

If you need a hint please read this previous post: Retired and Back.