- Larry Summers on the state of the US economy, a 19th of Dec speech (PDF, 8 pages). The gist is that he recommends fast and aggresive monetary and fiscal stimulus (the latter, mainly through tax cuts), just like (but more detailed than) Martin Feldstein, see my previous post on that. There are some very good ideas in Summers’s proposal, though a few of his recommendations are falling too far on the ‘leftist’ side, to try a catch-all term (and I bet that many US economists would also agree). An example of the latter is for instance a proposal to increase the portfolio limit of the government sponsored enterprises, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
- L’embarras du choix: Romanian ‘manelists’ might have to choose between hot women and hot cars 🙂
- Since tomorrow is the Global Orgasm Day (see also my last year’s posts about that, here and here), I’ll pick an assorted topic among the more exotic entrepreneurship cases discussed in Tyler Cowen’s book, ‘Discover your inner economist” (last one was in this post). Today about the hymen re-attachment hype:
For her 17th wedding anniversary Jeanette Yarborough wanted to do something special for her husband. In addition to planning a hotel getaway for the weekend, Ms. Yarborough paid a surgeon $5000 to reattach her hymen, making her appear to be a virgin again. “It’s the ultimate gift for a man who has everything” says Ms. Yarborough.
This is reported to be one of the plastic-surgery industry’s fastest growing segments, and yes, that is in the United States.
- An excellent article by Aaron Edlin on Microsoft’s latest OS.
- I think Szekelys should indeed follow Andy’s free advice on marketing Dracula. Somehow connected, see also an older post of mine touching on Stoker’s book (including a link to the whole book online).
