What Did Goldman Sachs Do?

Some of these financial cases are very, very complicated. This one is pretty simple. Daniel Gross provides a good description of what the SEC charges against Goldman Sachs amount to. He uses one analogy, but I might try my hand at another.

Suppose I sell you a market basket of vegetables. We all know that the vegetables are going to rot sometime, but you're betting that most of the vegetables won't rot before you can sell them at a profit. What you don't know is that I have intentionally selected the vegetables that are most likely to rot quickly. So your market basket is loaded for failure. Why would I do that? Because another customer is paying me a large fee to take his bet that your vegetables will rot.

Nice, huh?

A Feel-Good Column on the Economy

Economics has been called "the dismal profession," and economists are prone to shed an atmosphere of gloom and doom. In this column, Daniel Gross is all sunshine and rosebuds. Spring is here, and so are some good signs for the economy. That is to say, for the real economy, if not for the epiphenomenal world of high finance.

I particularly liked the part about Big Belly Solar. This is a new company which makes solar trash compactors. This is great! Because it compacts the trash, each refuse can holds a lot more and doesn't have to be emptied as often. This saves the city on labor for trash pickups. And I suspect it diminishes the problem of the overflowing wastebasket surrounded by trash.

Spring is here, and it's time for some good news about America.

Optimism on the Employment Front

Daniel Gross is at it again. One could argue that Mr. Gross's reasoning is flawed: he is extrapolating from recent trends to reach his conclusions. But he's tentative enough that we can give him that one. If he is right, then the underlying trend to re-employment may be stronger than the published figures indicate. After all, the figures keep being revised upward, don't they?

I believe that I previously flagged this article over at my Facebook account; if it seems familiar, maybe you saw it there.

In any event, I hope this article provides you and yours with some Christmas cheer.