India stocks

I'm slated to be on the Gabe Wisdom Show at 7 pm ET tonight to discuss India's stock market history, and in due course the podcast should appear here. Current research for Research: Mexico's market history.

Hamilton interview...

My latest at FrumForum: "Debt Debate: What Would Hamilton Do? "To get some perspective on current political and economic debates, I attempted to contact the spirit of Alexander Hamilton by resetting the roaming function on my phone near his tombstone at Trinity Church in lower Manhattan." Whole Q&A here.

Varied & misc.

Some items I found of interest, in no particular order:

Salon interview with Barry Eichengreen on "How to Think About Tea Party Economics," particularly regarding monetary policy.

Walter Russell Mead has some ruminations on history and Easter Week: "He Plants His Footsteps on the Sea: Faith Matters."

David Frum's "Two Cheers for the Welfare State."

My debt deal

Exclusively at FrumForum, I provide the Ken Silber Plan for deficit reduction. Audience response is mixed.

Kaboom film

I'm not quite sure what to say about this movie, Kaboom. On one hand, it was hilarous and, unlike say The Sky Has Fallen, is labeled as a comedy. On the other hand, it was creepy and for significant stretches seemed more a horror movie than a comedy. On the third hand, the ending was pretty inane even by the standards of what had transpired before. So, in brief, I recommend it for some readers of this blog, and they will know who they are. Here's the trailer.

Items of interest

Back from France, where I celebrated my sister Denise Silber's Legion of Honor at the splendid venue of the U.S. Embassy's Marshall Center. Posting will likely continue to be light in the near future, though here are a couple more things that caught my attention:

Virginia Postrel takes issue with "The Fantasy of Survivalism," in what turns out to be her last WSJ column as she's moving to a soon-to-be-launched Bloomberg venture.

David Frum argues, correctly I think, that it was "A Great Week for the GOP," in part (and quite counterintuitively) because Donald Trump is gaining some traction, thus giving some absurd ideas an appropriate spokesman.

India's stock market history

My latest at Research magazine: "India's Emergence." I'm slated to discuss it on the Gabe Wisdom Show on April 26 at 7 PM ET.

Semi-hiatus

Expect some quiet times at this blog in the near term. As you can see at the post below, I've got plenty to read, among things to do. My Twitter feed may be relatively active at times, and if you know me, I can be found via Facebook.

Varied & misc.

Some items I found interesting, in no particular order:

Notices and remembrances of recently deceased Reason magazine founder Lanny Friedlander by Nick Gillespie and Bob Poole. Justin Raimondo conscripts Friedlander as antiwar pioneer, doesn't mention his Navy service.

Review copy received: The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What's Wrong with America, by Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch.

Review copy received: First Contact: Scientific Breakthroughs in the Hunt for Life Beyond Earth, by Marc Kaufman.

Review copy not requested (though I'm tempted): Tracking the Chupacabra: The Vampire Beast in Fact, Fiction, and Folklore, by Benjamin Radford.

"Creationism Makes a Comeback," by Noah Kristula-Green at FrumForum.

Welcome, Gus

On a personal note, huge congratulations to co-blogger Dan and wife Marg on the arrival of Gus!

Women's work

Some notes regarding women in the workforce:

"Mommy Track Without Shame," by Virginia Postrel, on how flexible arrangements are gaining favor.

But: "CareerBuilder: More Women Perceive Pay and Career Advancement Disparity."

Financial talent drain

A new study from the Kauffman Foundation argues, quite plausibly, that the financial sector's draw on talent is impeding entrepreneurship and economic growth. Drawing on this study, Time magazine columnist Rana Foroohar sketches out the problem. Why should a highly skilled graduate develop new technologies or life-saving drugs instead of making five times the income modeling the stock market?

I am not one to denigrate the value of an innovative financial sector (and if I did, it would be harder to explain why I continue to work at a financial magazine). I've long admired Alexander Hamilton's emphasis on developing a sophisticated financial system. But he also sought (with less success) to jump-start American industrial manufacturing with the Society for Useful Manufactures. He certainly recognized that the U.S. needed to be adept at more than just managing money.

What's the answer? Foroohar's is that we shouldn't curtail funding for the financial regulatory agencies. That's fair enough as far as it goes, but this is a subject I hope to think and write about more extensively.

Shrinking dollar?

"The dollar has lost 95 percent of its value" since the Federal Reserve began in 1913. I analyze this "damning statistic" at FrumForum.

Manhattan street grid

It's the 200th anniversary of Manhattan's street grid, and the New York Times covers it at some length while somehow omitting any mention of DeWitt Clinton, who as mayor in 1811 played a crucial role in overseeing the street grid commission. Nonetheless, the NYT items are worth reading, here, here and here. Note the beautiful "Manhattan solstice" picture in the first NYT piece; I've seen such a scene myself, and have good reason to remember it well. For my own DeWitt Clinton coverage, see here and here and the picture here.

Notes toward a future alien article

Time magazine lists as one of "10 Ideas That Will Change the World" (for the better): "Relax: You Don't Need to Worry About Meeting E.T."

Pete Worden, NASA/former Air Force official, jokes: "Conservatives worry about life on Mars killing us, liberals worry about us killing life on Mars."

SETI Institute: "Internet Rumor of Inbound 2012 Spaceships Untrue."

UPDATE 5 PM: "Mars Needs Moms" flops.

"Pathetic denial of reality"

My latest at FrumForum: "GOP Votes Against Climate Change Reality."

Financial crisis video

I interview Greg Farrell, author of Crash of the Titans: Greed, Hubris, the Fall of Merrill Lynch, and the Near-Collapse of Bank of America on some key events of the financial crisis.



UPDATE: Video is also now here.

Solar system politics

My latest at FrumForum: "NASA Budget Grounds Space Probes." Excerpt:

For decades, there was debate among space exploration proponents about the relative merits of manned versus unmanned missions. Enthusiasts of sending astronauts argued that manned missions captured the public imagination in a way that robotic probes never could, besides serving the grand purpose of building a human future in space.

Space probe proponents, including many scientists, emphasized the lower costs and far greater scientific payoff of robotic missions. They also noted the daunting difficulty of sending humans to Mars, let alone to the outer solar system where probes already travel.

The debate is now effectively over, and both sides have lost.

Whole thing here.

Radio note

My radio interview with Gabe Wisdom, on my article about anti-financial populism, "Furious at Finance," is available here.

Beleaguered space probes

I've written about the robotic space program many times in the past (eg, here and here) and hope to do so again before long. Right now, its prospects are alarmingly dim, as these posts by Alan Boyle and Lou Friedman describe. And it's a subject that barely registers on the political radar screen -- for now.

UPDATE: More here.