Dave's Economic Knowledge Goes Out the Window . . .

I had to read every paragraph twice, but I finished David Smick's The World is Curved: Hidden dangers to the Global Economy (The Mortgage Crisis was Only the Beginning) and for two hours after I completed the book, I understood securitized mortgage assets and the value of hedge funds and the trillion American dollars China has hoarded and the importance of transparency and an investment system that encourages entrepreneurial risk and a whole lot of other economic information, but no one had the common sense or curiosity to ask me about it during my "window" of knowledge, and I wasn't able to bring it up in conversation-- my wife doesn't fall for that ploy (hey honey, while I was taking out the trash I started thinking about what would happen if Japanese housewives tied up their savings in illiquid investments . . . did you ever wonder how that would affect the global economy?) so now the knowledge is gone, it has floated into the ether, along with other useless things I have read like the history of the Vikings and the mathematics of island geography.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

although I have allowed you to retain the lyrics to "Last Train to Clarksville"

rob said...

two words, dave: book reports

as in, dave's book report of the day.

your knowledge gets the benefit of immortality, and we all get thismuch smarter.

Anonymous said...

Unrelated to today's very important and relevant blog posting, I have a grammar issue that only you (and your constituents) can answer. It's about comma usage and the rules governing same.

Can the following sentence be written as: I took milk, eggs, and water to the dying sheep on the side of the road.

And as: I took milk, eggs and water to the dying sheep on the side of the road.

Ideally my question is about that last comma.

Help me, Obi-Wan. You're my only hope.

Anonymous said...

i heard that Americans do it the first way and Brits the second and both are standard for the respective folk, but both are also acceptable. some people like to hate on Americans of course and say they do it "all wrong."

Dave said...

american newspapers got rid of that last comma to save ink and space (i think) so both are acceptable, unless it distorts meaning-- read "eats shoots and leaves" for examples of this (eats, shoots, and leaves-- very different than the first)

Anonymous said...

What about eats, shits and leaves?

Whitney said...

It's called an "Oxford Comma" and Vampire Weekend sings about it without much resolution.

A New Sentence Every Day, Hand Crafted from the Finest Corinthian Leather.