a la Diderot

Banks will never be profitable until the last DCM banker is strangled with the entrails of the last hedge fund salesman.

Take it to the Limit

Well, you know that this song's by the Eagles
So it starts at the end of the day
With some thinkin', 'bout a woman, who somehow
Would never put out

So it's time for introspection
(Such a romantic guy)
Melancholy in direction
(Can't even try to try)
But that's not despair you're feelin'
It's really just
The feelin's just
It's really just you're bored

It was guitars and tequila
Now it's CDs and wine
So play me
That sweet bullshit
One more time

The Mask Becomes the Face

Over at Mother Jones, Kevin Drum is now pretending to be an idiot. Perhaps he can explain how the Big Scary Monsters are not receiving a massive bailout, or how it is not expensive to taxpayers.

Understanding Starbucks

Megan McArdle doesn't. Their target audience are people with the right combination of ignorance and insecurity to imagine that, because this unpleasantly charred stuff is different, it must be somehow better.

My House Is Too Big

And too new: it's part of the unfortunate pattern of rising real wealth, which has increased the supply of goods like homes. [The word good here is itself a kind of hint...] Fortunately, Holman Jenkins offers a solution. Let them eat cake, and live in trailer parks: that's where they belong anyway.

[Via Steve Sailer.]

How To Safeguard Your Privacy

I don't know if people have really recognized that the number of output values in this tacky test is not much smaller than the number of possible input combinations; and thus all their inputs, including but not limited to penis size, can be backed out with fair accuracy.

Aren't computers great?

Tyler Cowen underestimates hedgies...

They can write naked calls too!