Monthly Archives: March 2008

Keynes: The End of Laissez-Faire

I just came across this essay in an article on Salon.com. It’s a very interesting essay by John Maynard Keynes called The End of Laissez-Faire and in my view it is a must read. Anybody who is not familiar with Keynesian Economics and how it fundamentally differs from the current Austrian School as championed by the likes of Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan would do well to read Keynes if only to see that there are other options. I find Keynes’ writing style awkward and a bit hard to read, but his theories are undoubtedly interesting and his intellect is impressive.

When I was in school, I’m sure I never imagined I’d be reading economics papers for my own amusement. I’m getting old.

JPMorgan to buy Bear Stearns

The BBC is reporting that JPMorgan is not only bailing Bear Stearns out using money from the New York Federal Reserve, but before the markets even open on Monday, they’re poised to buy Bear Stearns for $2/share. On Thursday Bear Stearns closed at $57/share. This is, by any measure, a complete collapse of one of Wall Street’s biggest banks/investment firms. I wonder if this is an isolated situation or a harbinger of things to come.

I just finished reading The Party’s Over. I must say I’m not feeling overly optimistic about either the short or long term tonight…

Migrating to pobox.com

I’ve been using Pobox’s mail forwarding service for a couple of days in an attempt to wrestle my e-mail situation to the ground. The basic idea is that I’m going to eventually only publish my pobox.com address as a primary mail address and other than personal contacts I will deprecate my other e-mail accounts.

The reasons are twofold. First I am subscribed to a large number of fairly active mailing lists which I find beneficial in both my private and professional life, rather than maintain multiple accounts on each mailing list service I find it easier to simply send this mail to one address and then filter and munge it there as appropriate. The second reason is that I don’t need to expose my “real” identity anywhere and if I ultimately need to move to a new final delivery address this simplifies the situation. I know I can deal with this 10 ways from Sunday using procmail or crazy MTA-fu (which are still in place) but for various reasons I find that less than optimal.

In any event I am posting this simply to let people know about pobox.com which is a reasonably high quality service at a reasonably good price.