Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed

• Inside The Deal That Made Bill Gates $350,000,000 (Source)
• States Test Mortgage Principal Write-Downs (Source)
• The Makings of a Bond Debacle (Source)
• Why Pension Fund Managers Generate Negative Alphas (Source)
• Why I am not worried about Japan’s nuclear reactors (Source)
• Search shakes to its roots (Source)
• Google to launch major new social service shortly (Source)

Barron’s cover this week, The Money Whirl, is a keeper.

• Mapping Human Vulnerability to Climate Change « GIS and Science (Source)
• Demographics: what variable best predicts a financial crisis? (Source)
• Dubai on Empty (Source)
• Brain scan: Betting on green (Source)
• In the Thick of Libya’s Brutal Fighting: Tyler Hicks Describes One of the Toughest Battles He’s Ever Photographed (Source)
• Astonishing post-quake footage of Japanese city of Minamisanriku (Source)

Fantastic visualization, from NOAA:

• Japan M8.9 quake + tsunami (Source)
• First reports of the M = 8.9 earthquake in Japan (Source)
• Geotripper: 8.9 Earthquake in Japan (Source)
• Japan Earthquake 11/03/2011 Recorded at Keele » Hypo-theses (Source)

Apropos a writing project I’m working on, this figure from JPMorgan with dueling figures on the energy intensity of the U.S. economy.

• Western civilisation: A success that looks like failure (Source)
• Largest Cities Through History (Source)
• Hide sites to find more of what you want (Source)
• Have Startups Become a Fetish? (Source)
• 1906 San Francisco Quake in Living Color (Source)
• How Gas Prices Are Eroding the American Dream (Source)
• Natural gas gets a caution flag (Source)
• Big Mac crowdsourcing: The burger bill(Source)

Interesting economy-driven visualization on Obama’s prospects in the 2012 election. What is the likelihood of being reelected given job gains/losses and/or a recession? Click to play along. [-]

I liked the cover image for this week’s cover story at the San Diego Reader. When washing machines attack!

As I said on Twitter last week, Deb Roy’s talk at this year’s TED was among my favorites ever. Its mixture of science, data, visualization and personal story touched all my hot buttons, and touched me personally. It’s now up on the TED site, and I have embedded it below.