Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed

New Yorker:

I regard romantic comedies as a subgenre of sci-fi, in which the world operates according to different rules than my regular human world. For me, there is no difference between Ripley from “Alien” and any Katherine Heigl character. They are equally implausible.

via Mindy Kaling: “Flick Chicks” : The New Yorker.

• I somehow missed this. He was among the greatest: Walter Bonatti, Daring Italian Mountaineer, Dies at 81 – http://t.co/InNPZqia ->
• Whew! RT @TheEconomist: The effect of aging on asset prices may make the rich world’s problems worse http://t.co/zDmvMZNu ->
• Not-So-Smart Cities – http://t.co/ZLSD3rx1 /via @nraford ->
• 1,000 anagrams for Léo Apotheker – http://t.co/95IYBLaY ->

Bullish stuff from the WSJ tonight:

…across the financial markets, a sea change is taking place. Investors are abandoning the time-tested “stocks for the long run” optimism that dominated since the late 1980s. Instead, there is a widening belief that the mess left behind by the housing bubble and financial crisis will be a morass to contend with for years.

via Pivot Point: Investors Lose Faith In Stocks – WSJ.com.

Among other things in Michael Pettis’s latest, this on the Swiss situation:

The Swiss have clearly made their decision.  They do not want any more foreign capital inflow and are trying to eliminate or at least reduce it by capping the rise in the Swiss franc.  It probably won’t work.  I guess now by having converted the currency into a one-way bet I assume that we are going to see massive speculative inflows into the Swiss franc on expectations that inflows will eventually force the SNB to revalue.

via China Financial Markets » The euro once again.

I agree entirely.

Noisy hedge fund manager Hugh Hendry ends his exile and drops by BBC. Note: It is a motley collection of guests, including Hugh a software exec and an interior decorator.

New Federal Reserve RFP for social media monitoring, or … it monitoring you monitoring it. /via ZH.

Frbny Social Media Rfp

Another FQXi video from the recent conference, this time a panel with some of the main speakers. Good stuff.

• Words escape me: In Bear Attack, Hunter Killed Hunter, Autopsy Shows http://t.co/0AjgCSdv ->
• WIngsuit flyer Jeb Corliss does outrageous flight through mountain gap/crack in China today. http://t.co/jL3fewSC ->
• In Brazil, a Second Life for the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro – http://t.co/nwi9nxg3 ->
• Climate Wizard: Historic temperature and rainfall maps for the world, plus predictions – http://t.co/s9Uwu4YT ->

Earlier today in China, wingsuit flyer Jeb Corliss soars from helicopter through mountain cave/crack. Outrageous.

I get Joe Nocera’s point in his latest column that there is less scandal in the Solyndra loan affair than meets the eye, but I’m still stuck on this paragraph here, which seems key:

But if we could just stop playing gotcha for a second, we might realize that federal loan programs — especially loans for innovative energy technologies — virtually require the government to take risks the private sector won’t take. Indeed, risk-taking is what these programs are all about. Sometimes, the risks pay off. Other times, they don’t.

What does this mean? It seems to imply that federal loan programs exist to take risks that the private sector won’t, which is superficially plausible, but troubling if taken very far down that road. There are, after all, good reasons why the private sector won’t take certain commercialization risks, and it’s not obvious that the Federal government is better equipped to do so. The argument changes in basic research, of course.