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Marketplace Scratch Pad

Morning Reading

Scott Jagow Nov 10, 2009

Good morning. Here’s what has me contemplating and chuckling:

The government chose wrong (Hard Assets Investor):

We have a choice between allowing a deflationary bust, allowing asset prices to collapse, allowing businesses to fail and allowing the recession to worsen in the short run; or we can try and postpone some of that pain by creating inflation, and deal with the inflation pain down the line. The latter is what the government has chosen. Unfortunately, they chose wrong, from the point of view of the American consumer, the American worker, the American saver. The American economy is going to pay dearly for the price of re-electing some of these incumbent politicians.

CEOs are paid 130 times too much, according to thermodynamics (Just a Theory)

According to the lognormal distribution, CEOs should be paid a little over 8 times more than the average employee. Looking at the salaries of 35 CEOs from top Fortune 500 companies, Venkatasubramanian discovered that their pay was on average 1,057 times what a regular employee earns – around 129 times the ideal value.

Will Tamiflu shortage drive US to India’s version? (NPR)

Mac is better, but I don’t care (The Sydney Morning Herald) Hilarious:

Recently I sat in a room trying to write something on a Sony Vaio PC laptop which seemed to be running a special slow-motion edition of Windows Vista specifically designed to infuriate human beings as much as possible…

At one point I punched a table.

This drew the attention of two nearby Mac owners. They hovered over and stood beside me, like placid monks.

“Ah: the delights of Vista,” said one.

“It really is time you got a Mac,” said the other.

“They’re just better,” sang the first monk.

“You won’t regret it,” whispered the second.

Leave me alone, I thought. I don’t care if you’re right. I just want you to die.

Having fun with the Google suggestion box (Slate)

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