1. Joanne McNeil on science fiction and glamour
2. Taiwan tries to break the liquidity trap
3. The Midwest has the safest weather in the U.S.
4. German woman now the editor of the Michelin Guide; if you are into breaking stereotypes, there was also an article (gated) in today’s WSJ entitled "France Credits Deregulation for Cushioning its Economy."
If you exclude the Sierra mountain ranges… California is incredibly tame. I live in the Bay Area and the worst it gets is an occasional lightning storm every few years.
Adam, you raise an interesting point. Do you have more data on that?
Hailing from the Midwest, I could have told you that it’s the safest place to live, weather-wise. The worst natural disaster we get out here is an occasional tornado, and I’ve never seen a single one in my life.
I’m surprised that California is considered so safe. I guess nobody dies in all of their annual summer forest fires.
Midwest has the safest weather in the U.S.
They are missing something. Snow and ice increase car crashes, people have heart attacks from shoveling snow, old people fall on snow and ice and break hips and then decline etc.
Behavioral economists have long suggested that a purchase voucher is a better stimulus than a rebate check or a reduced withholding, even though these should all be neo-classically equivilent. Kudos to Taiwan for giving it a try. I do which they had structured it to be a slightly better-controlled test, e.g. by randomly assigning different stimulus metnods to different households or regions.
I’m not economist, but I’m interested in seeing the outcome of Taiwan’s “experiment.” Logically, it seems as sound as bailing out irresponsible and reckless banks or backward thinking automobile companies.
…and there’s the fact that California has some very large cities sitting on top of faults that will eventually, with certainty, produce very large earthquakes (the only uncertainty is when). One of those will make Katrina look like a gentle breeze.
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