Politics: November 2008 Archives
Bloomberg.com: Worldwide: Taleb's `Black Swan' Investors Post Gains as Markets Take Dive
"Universa Investments LP, the Santa Monica, California-based firm where Taleb is an adviser, has about $1 billion in accounts managed to hedge clients against big moves in financial markets. Returns for the year through Oct. 10 ranged as high as 110 percent, according to investor documents. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index lost 39 percent in the same period.... 'The Black Swan Protection Protocol is designed to break even 90 to 95 percent of the time,' Spitznagel said. 'We happen to be in that other 5 to 10 percent environment.'"
Washington Times - BLANKLEY: Obama's health-care czar
Ousted Sen. Tom Daschle, expected to be appointed as Secretary of Health and Human Services, has written a book on how to nationalize health care stealthily. He also thinks medical technology is bad because it reveals health problems early enough that doctors can do something about it. And doing something about it is expensive. "Of course, for Mr. Daschle, the problem with such high-tech diagnostics is that it leads to treatment. He cites a study approving the proposition that there are too many angiograms being performed.... Cardiologists might think they were carrying out their responsibilities. But under the Daschle/Obama plan, political hacks appointed to the health board will decide whether your cardiologist is allowed to image your arteries, and if they find blockage, try to successfully treat it."
reason.tv - Videos > Where's Sock Puppet's Bailout?
Sock Puppet (mascot of Pets.com, a victim of the tech bubble popping eight years ago) testifies before a congressional committee. "Why are you talking about bailing out the auto companies, when you let all us tech companies crash and burn?"
"In 22 states, including Arkansas, it is illegal to call yourself an interior designer without going through an arduous and expensive certification process. Like many states, Arkansas has an Interior Design Board. The sole purpose of this board is to register interior designers. The IJ paper notes that 'consumer complaints about interior designers to state regulatory boards are extremely rare. Since 1998 an average of one designer out of every 289 has received a complaint for any reason. Nearly all of those complaints, 94.7 percent, concern whether designers are properly licensed--not the quality of their service.'"
Clayton Cramer's BLOG: Applying The Fairness Doctrine To Public Schools
"If you are a biology teacher, and you teach about evolution, then this question of fairness gets even more interesting. The Young Earthers will demand equal time (and in geology class, too!); the Old Earth Creationists will insist that the Intelligent Design crowd really aren't on the same side (and this is true), so they will demand equal time. And the Intelligent Design crowd will demand equal time. Can you see why the biology teacher might decide just to skip the whole evolution unit?
"And this is exactly what the Democrats are trying to do. The Fairness Doctrine would require that for every hour of conservative talk radio which makes money selling advertising space, the radio stations would need to run an hour of left-wing talk radio--and lose piles of money. In practice, it would make conservative talk radio so unprofitable that talk radio would largely disappear. And that's the goal: to shut down what has become the only significant counterweight to the left's domination of broadcast radio and television."
Washingtonian Magazine - Bob Novak, "What I've Learned"
The "Prince of Darkness" talks about self-confidence, how to cultivate sources, partisanship, the best of the politicians he covered over the course of a half century, the future of the Republican Party, his cancer, and his faith. Great, wide-ranging interview. (Via Club for Growth.)
