Admire Greg Mankiw's sense of humor

Check out Mankiw's blog. http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/

At the top is a parody by Harvard Econ students complaining about Stephen Colbert's mocking of Mankiw. About four posts down is Colbert's takedown of Mankiw. I suggest you watch the Colbert Report first (which Mankiw was classy enough to post on his blog) and then the econ students' parody in which Greg participated.

Rich people have hormone to live longer?

Check this out: ">http://www.myfoxdc.com/dpp/health/hormone-found-in-rich-people-linked-to-longer-life-ncx-102110

It seems to me that long life by itself leads to wealth accumulation -- at least in a stable society where compounding of interest comes into play. A wealthy widow dying at age 75, would leave an estate to children in their 40s who would likely spend it on education for their children and perhaps a summer cottage. But if she lives to 94, surviving through the 1980s and 1990's with a bunch of pharmaceutical stocks, a thrifty, Depression-bred attitude and small financial needs she has accumulated a significant estate, even while helping fund grandchildrens' educations.

The theoretical wonders of compounding have been available for a long time. But very few societies have been stable enough ( until 1930, I suspect that bank failures affected most rich people in the world at some point in their lives) for people to realize them. Today, long life is likely to fuel financial accumulation.

Obama blows an environmental issue

I'm disappointed that Obama sold out African children, U.S. auto owners and the world environment to placate Archer Daniels Midland and the corn lobby. http://bit.ly/a9er5i
Boosting ethanol demand when corn supplies are tight will force up food costs in poor countries. Growing corn requires more carbon emissions than it saves. And car makers say it will shorten engine life. I'd hoped that Obama's EPA would be better than this.

How paper ads still drive the newspaper business

When I read David Carr's piece in the NY Times yesterday, I thought he made some smart points about Howard Kurtz, media brands and his core question: "if news is wherever the public finds it, what really is the value of creating a complicated, labor-intensive print product? " Carr's answer was that it made the writer of a fine piece (like his story revealing the crassness of Tribune management) feel good. I know how he feels. Having a story run on the front page of the WSJ was even better than being "most e-mailed".
But I was surprised to note that his entire story did not include the "A" word -- advertising. Carr is terrific reporter and fine writer. But it's pretty clear he never spent a moment working as a business reporter. If he had, he would have followed the money.
The answer to his question is this: the value of creating a print product is that advertisers will pay for it. Newspapers could probably get all their valuable readers -- the ones with money, smarts and willingness to switch brands -- to read on line. But they can't make a credible argument that those readers will buy as a result of seeing banner ads or pop-ups on line. So advertisers won't spend anywhere near as much for a banner on NYTimes.com as they will for a full page ad in the paper NY Times front section.
Nobody in charge of the Times -- or my old employer, the Wall Street Journal-- really wants to produce news on newsprint. It's environmentally offensive (which bothers the Times). It gives unions representing people like truck drivers and typographers control (which bothers the Journal). But the only way they can persuade advertisers to spend $200,000 on a full page color ad is by letting them do it in print. The paper Times or Journal is perceived by advertisers to have value while the digital version isn't.

Historically, advertising has paid up to 80% of the bills at most newspapers. That's fallen because classified advertising is dying, but ads still account for well over half of newspaper revenue. Until that changes, there's value in creating a complicated, labor-intensive product. Moreover, those complications are a huge barrier to entry. The Times, like most newspapers, has a monopoly on daily access to readers through its print edition. That means it can charge monopoly prices for ad pages. Online, readers surf numerous places for news, making banner ads on any of them a commodity that is priced competitively.

If you don't look into the continuing reliance on revenue from print advertising, you can't understand the new newspaper business.

Milbank's new book on Glenn Beck

I know what book I'm buying next -- Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank's book "Tears of a Clown" -- a bio of Glenn Beck. I just read an excerpt at Daily Beast.
Dana is one of the funniest writers in the press, and a former colleague of mine in the WSJ's Boston bureau. Beck doesn't deserve treatment by such a talent, but this book looks like a lighthearted romp across Beck's bizarre body of opinion.

Wonderful money quote from Dana: "Beck can do this because he is not constrained by the fact/fiction divide that governs the rest of the news business. "

Dana goes on: "Beck calls his unique hybrid of fact and fiction “faction.” “Faction,” Beck explained, is a “completely fictional” account that somehow still has a plot “rooted in fact.” That is what Beck wrote in the foreword to his thriller, The Overton Window, which came out in mid-June. After providing a “fictional” account of world government taking over America, he offered a 30-page afterword full of citations of “factual” events that supposedly support the fictional story."
"Tears of a Clown" be a good read, but I suspect it won't become a best-seller on the strength of a Glenn Beck plug.