Is it just me, or does it feel like the market bounce after each Treasury/Fed save of the U.S. economy is getting shorter? Way back last fall we were able to get three months out of that post-save bounce, and we got two months out of Bear Stearn's rescue. Now, however, it feels like the wheels have already come off the Freddie/Fannie bailout bounce.

Bailouts just aren't what they used to be.

A quick heads-up that I am guest-hosting again tomorrow from 11am-noon EST on CNBC's "The Call". Feel free to send segment ideas, etc.

Some guy named "Paul Kedrosky" (what is that, Polish? yeesh!) popped up in the NY Times today with an uppity comment from back when Ron Insana left television and started his own hedge fund. The comment turned out to be true, sadly, with Insana now having shuttered his fund of funds and moved on.

More here at the NYT.

And to be somewhat more serious, Insana is a very smart and motivated guy, and I give him huge credit for taking a shot at running his own shop. But the hedge fund business is brutally, brutally tough -- more so now than ever.

Just finishing with a new book, Global Catastrophic Risks by Nick Bostrom. Granted, it's not the feel-good book of the summer, but it is interesting, data-rich, and comprehensive in its canvassing of the many things that (could) go bump in the economic night.

Here is a summary:

A global catastrophic risk is one with the potential to wreak death and destruction on a global scale. In human history, wars and plagues have done so on more than one occasion, and misguided ideologies and totalitarian regimes have darkened an entire era or a region. Advances in technology are adding dangers of a new kind. It could happen again.

In Global Catastrophic Risks, 26 leading experts look at the gravest risks facing humanity in the 21st century, including natural catastrophes, nuclear war, terrorism, global warming, biological weapons, totalitarianism, advanced nanotechnology, general artificial intelligence, and social collapse. The book also addresses over-arching issues - policy responses and methods for predicting and managing catastrophes.

This is invaluable reading for anyone interested in the big issues of our time; for students focusing on science, society, technology, and public policy; and for academics, policy-makers, and professionals working in these acutely important fields.

I have long been intrigued by property theorist Michael Heller's anti-commons work. He sometimes calls it "ownership congestion", and it is the idea that too much ownership in a market can block innovation, whether in drugs, music, airport runways, etc.

Check his seminal paper here, and, for those of you unfamiliar with the idea, here is the Wikipedia definition:

The tragedy of the anticommons is a hypothetical situation where rational individuals (acting separately) collectively waste a given resource by under-utilizing it. According to proponents of the theory, this would happen when so many individuals have rights of exclusion (such as property rights) of a resource that the transaction costs of coordinating those rights overwhelm any previously existing benefit. This situation (the "anticommons") is contrasted with a commons, where many individuals have privileges of use (or the right not to be excluded) in a certain resource. The tragedy of the commons is that rational individuals, acting separately, may collectively over-utilize a scarce resource.

I'm likely late to this, but he apparently has a new book out on the subject, called The Gridlock Economy. It turns out he also has an Author@Google talk, which is worth watching (so long as you can get past the Columbia University professor's initially dry presentation style).

More good reading on the subject of common interest tragedies here from Lee Anne Fennell.

Before anyone else points it out, I will race to the front and say Heller's work is really a refocusing of classic transaction cost theory. No question. And further, it's also the sort of thing that is too easily translated into politics, so you will likely see a left/right split on the issue of whether markets can contract out of under-use situations.