An ode to Work?

March 22 2009: Lucy Kellaway writes in the Financial Times, "Last week the Guardian newspaper published a list of the 1,000 best pop songs ever written. There were songs about love, sex, heartbreak, protest, life and death. Yet on the subject of work there was almost nothing: Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5” got a mention, but that was about it."

If folk music was primarily work songs, modern pop music is anything but about work. How so?

A Trillion Here, A Trillion There, and After a While You are Talking Real Money!

A J. Paulson tells me:

"And I can remember when John Kennedy held the budget to $98 billion because
he was unwilling to be the first President to go over the $100 billion limit."

You know what? I can too!

Home loans in the US: the biggest racket since Al Capone?

Willem Buiter, in his Maverecon blog on the FT, has some rather nasty things to save about our fetish of protecting homeowners from foreclosures. Hmmm.

In "Home loans in the US: the biggest racket since Al Capone?" he asks: "What are the costs of foreclosure? Who bears them? Are the private costs smaller than the social costs?"

Professor Buiter is Professor of European Political Economy, London School of Economics and Political Science; former chief economist of the EBRD, former external member of the MPC; adviser to international organisations, governments, central banks and private financial institutions.