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Schwarzenegger to nation: Let’s drag out the recession as long as possible, ok?
The central cause of the current recession (or maybe depression) was the overextension of credit, especially in the housing sector. So, how do you get out of that kind of jam? Foreclosures and time. Those that can’t afford their homes will have to lose them, and the banks will get back as much as they can, […]
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The famous L. Tureaud recommends going short equities
 I envision Bernanke in a headlock in one arm, screaming “Ok, ok, we over inflated!” with Paulson in the other, choking “Let go, can’t breathe! Ack. Fine! We lied about TARP! Ok?”
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Gold will not necessarily go up during deflation
Many financial commentators, including the usually on-the-spot Mish Shedlock, have been saying for quite some time that gold will go up in a deflationary environment. Their argument is that gold is money and money does well in deflation. I would be willing to wager that Mish has more understanding of economics while half asleep than I […]
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The bailout, part II
Did I say bailout? I meant rescue. Here is an excerpt from one of the smartest financial writers I know of, Mish Shedlock: To stimulate lending, the bailout plan will attempt to recapitalize banks. The method of recapitalization is best described as robbing Taxpayer Pete to pay Wall Street Paul. In essence, money is taken […]
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Taxing the poor to bail out Wall Street
It has been assumed that the cost of the putative bailout will be born by taxpayers. However, since that the Fed and Treasury will pay for it with debt and by printing money, the people who will pay for it are anyone who holds dollars. Given that the final cost could end up in the […]
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Apple’s iPhone 2.1 software: Lipstick on a pig
Among the myriad problems the 2.1 firmware was supposed to solve was poor 3G reception. How did Apple achieve this? Apparently by simply artificially displaying more bars, at least in part: In their release notes for the update, they list “improved accuracy of the 3G signal strength display.” That’s just corporate speak for “we can’t […]
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More news from the iPhone public beta: Don’t count on the alarm!
I had plenty of time to write this, because I missed class today. The reason I missed class was that my iPhone’s alarm never went off. When I woke up this morning, my first thought was “You know, I feel way too good for a guy who’s only gotten four hours of sleep.” I then […]
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Text messages cost more than sending postcards!
The going rate for a text message is now $0.20, up from $0.05 a year or so ago, a puzzling increase given that every underlying component of communications technology has become cheaper over that time. Given that a text message is billed both for sending and receiving (which should be criminal) this means that it […]
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Functional Programming and F#: Newton Basin Fractal Example Code
NB: The recent release of the F# CTP breaks much of this code. I will update this page as soon as I get a chance, but please be aware that if you copy the code in as-is, it will not work. I think the best way to appreciate how efficient F# is, especially for numerical […]
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Functional programming and F#: Introduction
Computer programmers sometimes mistake brevity for elegance, especially when discussing the relative merits of programming languages. Haskel partisans, for example, love to show how one can implement QuickSort in one line of inscrutable gibberish that looks like somebody had an epileptic seizure with the caps lock on. Haskell is a great language, but not because […]