The Manchild Chronicles

Some people think blogging with 10 dollar words makes it ok:

Think word sushi: delicately-prepared high-quality content that’s easy to consume.

When I think of sushi, I don’t think of fancy phrases -I think of Kate Beckinsale:

You told an interviewer you’d rather eat a vagina than sushi. When stuff you say makes headlines, what’s the reaction of your publicity team? I have to say, sushi freaks me out more than almost anything. At least a vagina would be warm. [laughs] My publicist has literally turned a funny color and is going to go have a lie-down. He’s throwing up now, as well. I find a lot of things kind of funny and I often say what’s on my mind, and then get nine texts from all my friends going, “What’s the matter with you?” But I haven’t ever made a big attempt to have any particular image. And I don’t really worry about it.

We would like to take this opportunity to remind the readers to stop blogging.

After the recent upheaval in the prostitution industry that the Eliot Spitzer scandal has caused there has been more of a focus on what you get for your money.

I found this article in New York magazine very enlightening. So, I guess when you pay $2,000 an hour for a hooker, one expects a vagina that will shoot rainbows and possibly sing your favorite tune from the musical Chicago.

Victoria and I, we did a lot of doubles. You do a double, sometimes guys want to, you know, watch. As soon as I saw her coochie, I told Jason, this is special.

Additional Reading: Kate Beckinsale Loves Her Lady Parts, That’s Because They Haven’t Seen MY Vag, The Politics of (Vagina) Style

Now that Ben Bernanke is getting some tentative plaudits for his rate cuts and Bear Stearns bailout, is this different than what was expected? A look back at the time of his nomination:

Marginal Revolution on BB’s academic history from late 2005:

The credit channel for monetary policy; here are the papers, most of all the 1992 piece with Alan Blinder. Bernanke took an old Keynesian idea and gave it empirical rigor. During upturns and downturns, does money or credit play the leading role? Bernanke showed that credit has greater importance. Bernanke’s work in particular helped combat the Litterman and Weiss paper of 1983; L&W had showed that once you put the nominal interest rate in a Vector Autoregression (a relatively atheoretical statistic technique), money didn’t seem to matter. Bernanke rescued the relevance of money but showed it mattered through the associated channel of credit. This work stands among the most important contributions in macroeconomics in the last twenty years. It also suggests that Bernanke, as Fed chair, will look closely at credit indicators. Here is a Bernanke speech on money and the stock market.

Daniel Drezner linked to a number of comments

Brad Delong, note the housing bubble mentions in the comments

Economist’s View has links to most other 2005 reviews

New Economist confirmed the glowing predictions

Bernanke predicts house bubble could cool in Washington Post, but to be fair:

That view mirrors Greenspan’s .He and Bernanke have both said it is unrealistic to expect the Fed to identify a bubble in stock or real estate prices as it is inflating, or to be able to pop it without hurting the economy. Instead, the Fed should stand ready to mop up the economic aftermath of a bubble.