How is Wall Street able to make so much money and pay such huge bonuses this year? IPOs aren't hot. Investment banking is slow. Managing rich people's money is less profitable, as rich people are less rich. So where are the profits coming from? It's coming from The Carry Trade . Befo ... Re ... Read more

From McSweeney's . Sample: Horatio thinks he saw a ghost. Hamlet thinks it's annoying when your uncle marries your mother right after your dad dies. The king thinks Hamlet's annoying. Laertes thinks Ophelia can do better. Hamlet's father is now a zombie. ... Read th ... Read more

I think most of these predictions will be off by least a few years, but we'll see. ... Read the full post ... Read more

I asked a programming question on stackoverflow.com for the first time today. I was pleasantly surprised to get an answer in 9 minutes. My question was about how revision-control systems do repeated merging between two branches. I understand that the first merge is a 3-way merge between two file ... Read more

Making fun of earmarked Congressional spending is easy, feel-good entertainment. In this regard Sen. John McCain’s Twitter feed, in which he reels off outrageous examples of pork-barrel spending (we especially liked “$300,000 for Texas A&M for ‘Texas Height Modernization’“) is a laugh fact ... Read more

A transformer blowout has closed the Financial Center, World Headquarters for Roth & Company and the Tax Update Blog. We apologize for the inconvenience. ... Read the full post ... Read more

That's right! Politics trumps tax and economic policy yet again! Obama put pen to paper this morning and signed the Worker, Homeownership, and Business Assistance Bill of 2009 into law. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy for folks who can use this to buy a house. ... Read the full pos ... Read more

Yale Book of Quotations editor Fred solicits your nominations for most notable quote of 2009. ... Read the full post ... Read more

A transformer blowout in our building has closed our office for the day. We apologize for the inconvenience. I hope you can enjoy the 70-degree November day with us. ... Read the full post ... Read more

Who gets bumped to the front of UCLA medical center's liver-transplant line? The godfather of the Japanese mafia, according to this 60 Minutes video... ... Read the full post ... Read more