Ryan Avent and Karl Smith respond to Felix Salmon’s argument that QEII (and zero interest rates generally) are creating bubbles. Important stuff, well argued.
I don’t even know where to start with this story about James Frey’s fiction factory.
Aaron Bady has the best response to the current Plagiarism Fetish stuff going around, about that guy who writes papers for cash.
I presented the paper Arjun and I did about structural unemployment on a panel hosted by the IMF, part of a series of panels on unemployment and the long-term effects of the current crisis; here is the writeup by the IMF’s Prakash Loungani. I saw lots of great stuff that day, worth checking it out.
Grist has a roundtable on on the Food Bill.
Erin Polgreen reviews “Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth about Guilty Pleasure TV.”
I have to ask my audience: is the Jimmy Fallon show really funny? First there was that A History of Rap he did with Justin Timberlake, which was surprisingly fantastic. Then Jeff Goldblum and Biz Markie sang “Just a Friend.” Now he had Dana Carvey do the Derek Stevens “Chopping Broccoli” bit, a bit the 12-year-old Mike Konczal believed to be the funniest thing that ever existed. In some ways, it’s perfectly targeted nostalgia bait for a certain type of 30-year old. And that’s a pretty great way to be.
Video of the new band Wild Flag, featuring Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weiss, the Minders’ Rebecca Cole, and former Helium singer-guitarist Mary Timony is now online and compiled here. On tour now, playing San Francisco tomorrow.
If unemployment, falling particularly hard on the young, is going to be high for years to come, can we at least get some more angry and apathetic music going? Rock bands with two keyboards and/or clever world instruments are full employment music. This new video from Pissed Jeans shows promise on that front and makes me happy:
Rortybomb 