Economics

Money isn't real: it's just a mutual agreement to keep track of what we've promised to each other.  Frequent Flyer Miles are even less real.  But trading the two, until today, could get you travel around the world at no cost.

Michael Moore has a new movie coming out Friday called "Capitalism: A Love Story."  NPR's Neal Conan interviews Moore on "Talk of the Nation."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113308531

Moore has a definite point of view and usually makes some points that catch my attention.  I'll pull two quotes from this interview.

First, Moore suggests things in the US started getting difficult "around the time of Ronald Reagan."  Here's one piece of supporting evidence.…

Talk about nervous.  Assistant Treasury Secretary Phillip Swagel seems to have been the only guy in town the other day after the latest bad employment report came out.  So he had to give the press conference.  Watch the video associated with the Washington Post column by Dana Milbank.  Couldn't have been more nervous if he was 16 at his first job interview.

A Washington Post article today anticipates Bush will call for a balanced budget by 2012 in his upcoming State of the Union address. Many are called but few are balanced.

Stephen Colbert: “Do they give a Noble Prize for throwing your own feces?”

Dr. Peter Agre: “That's the Economics prize.”

- Oct. 19, 2006 episode of the Colbert Report

The NY Times ran an article the other day on the home value bubble, the gist being that home prices really are way up: 

http://kenlayisalive.org/

The website byline speaks for itself: "A website devoted to tracking the whereabouts of the former Enron CEO."