27 Things That Mattered This Week - 10/31/2011

In this week’s installment: Keynesian mythology, Greek mythology, dreams, Freud and much more!

1. It’s ancient wisdom: A chain is only as strong as it’s weakest link. How a Few Bad Apples Ruin Everything.
2. For years, Hulk Hogan told us, “Say your prayers and eat your vitamins, brother!” Could it all have been a hoax? Is This the End of Popping Vitamins?
3. Artificially propping up the housing market via continued transfer payments likely doesn’t help the economy much at all. Restringing the Housing HARP.
4. China seems poised to reaccelerate its growth next year, easing a major investor fear from the summer. China Data Ease Fears for Activity, Small Firms.
5. Oh, the perils of doing business with the government! Fed Ties Purse Strings of Banks.
6. Haven’t been to the mall in awhile? How about a gun range to entice you? New Tricks for Old Malls.
7. The bizarreness and political intrigue tied to the ownership structure of some Italian banks can’t be understated. European Drama Engulfs the World’s Oldest Bank.
8. The new ECB chair has an uphill battle ahead: Don't Expect Mario Draghi to Save the Euro.
9. Think the US is kaput? Have a look at the rest of the developed world. World Power Swings Back to America. Just check the fertility rates. A Tale of Three Islands.
10. “Many biologists now work as part of collaborative systems, driven by high-throughput sequencing technologies, to study ‘omes‘—collections of all the parts of a system. A genome, for example, is the collection of all the DNA in a cell or organism.” One wonders: Will capital markets research happen in the same way? Data Deluge.
11. Do androids dream of electric sheep? 10 Things You Probably Didn't Know About Dreams.
12. Looks like hedge fund regulation “lite.” Rules for Hedge Funds Get Pruned.
13. Japan Signals Possible Intervention, and well, they did it a few days later!
14. “Seeking to head off a collapse in the lira and an ensuing spike in consumer prices, the Turkish central bank more than doubled the interest rates it charges banks for overnight loans...The move followed a series of failed attempts in recent weeks to intervene in currency markets to stem the decline.” Turkey Gives Interest Rates a Jolt.
15. Thai Flooding Hits Big Manufacturers: “Thailand's worsening disaster is reviving a debate over whether some companies are pushing lean supply chains too far in a search for short-term efficiency at the cost of long-term security.”
16. Internet usage? TV watching? The Next Frontier in Credit Scores.
17. EU Forges Greek Bond Deal. Yeah, but they’re not nearly out of the woods yet. And what about those pesky CDS? Dead for good? EU’s Greece Deal Has Dose of Irony.
18. Whatever happened to that wave of municipal defaults everyone expected? State Tax Haul Jumps 10.8%. And what about that imminent recession? Business Orders, Home Sales Tick Up. Recession Fears Recede as Economy Grows 2.5%.
19. The Beltway politicians can hem and haw all they want—China ain’t letting its currency rapidly appreciate any time soon. China Nixes Rapid Yuan Rise.
20. An interesting economic history of Asia: A Model for Pakistan’s Revival.
21. Politics—not shortsightedness or incompetent risk managers—drove Freddie Mac to eliminate its previous limits on no-doc lending. The Mortgage Crisis: Some Inside Views.
22. Sigmund Says: Analysts Expand Their Horizon by Going Beyond Father Freud. “To call yourself an analyst or call yourself a psychologist in 2011 and not have a pretty good familiarity with Freud is just to be uneducated. It seems to me that it’s part of anybody’s good education. That doesn’t mean that people are identified as working in a Freudian tradition. Our Freudians are adapting Freud to modern life. Nobody’s practicing the way he practiced in Vienna. It doesn’t make any sense.”
23. “During mental time travel, an experience that we’ve had in the past or that we imagine for ourselves in the future is inserted into [our] present consciousness. Similarly, in theory of mind, we insert what we believe to be someone else’s state of mind into our own.” Is Mental Time Travel What Makes Us Human?
24. Haven’t read the Iliad? Shame on you! Now, there’s no excuse: Winged Words.
25. The federal government is letting phone companies put yet another fee on Americans' monthly bills. But don't worry, officials say: It is just one small part of a plan that will help more people get high-speed Internet service. FCC Clears Subsidy-Fund Overhaul, Adds New Fee.
26. Oh, the quest for a unified unit of measurement. An epic tale! The Perfected Yardstick.
27. “Why is the economic response to increased government spending so different from the response predicted by Keynesian models? What is missing from the models that makes their forecasts so inaccurate? Those should be the questions asked by both proponents and opponents of more government spending.” Four Reasons Keynesians Keep Getting It Wrong.