Michael Foody

There are many lessons to learn from the credit crisis and its causes are complex and varied. That said, one thing that I think we can take away from the credit crisis is the danger of viewing risk manipulation as risk mitigation. What I mean is that, in many cases, it is easier to manipulate [...]

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The title of this post is really hifalutin, that’s just for fun. OK. Older people are more conservative than younger people. Partially this phenomenon is due to individuals maintaining their outlook overtime as new people are born and the average outlook changes. In this sense people aren’t becoming more conservative so much as the world around them [...]

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There’s a big move to replace incandescent bulbs with compact florescent bulbs. Compact fluorescents require much less energy than traditional incandescents. Which means that they’re much more efficient. Yes, they’re much more efficient at converting electricity to light. Compact florescent bulbs are probably going to be more efficient as a rule, but the truth isn’t [...]

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Most economists agree that a seriously big stimulus plan is needed for the economy. The question then becomes how can you spend money quickly enough to help without spending it on things that aren’t completely useless.
Infrastructure takes time: High speed rail, high speed broadband, a modern energy grid, alternative energy sources, these things are worth [...]

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This seems to me like an obviously great idea. Not many people get sued for piracy, those that do get sued face fees fare out of proportion with the actual crime a company could offer insurance at a low monthly premium and be profitable even when you take selection bias into account.  See also: insurance [...]

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I’ve heard people complain that ebooks on the amazon kindle are too expensive considering the fact that the marginal cost of an ebook is pretty much zero. The problem with this analysis is that by far the greatest cost of reading an ebook is not the monetary cost of purchasing but the opportunity cost of [...]

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Ebay was one of the first big internet businesses to be profitable. It was a natural fit for the internet, it allowed people to make really specific connections that allowed both parties to profit from an exchange that would otherwise be impossible. It was such a perfect business for the medium that its success seems, [...]

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