links from today - dolphins are awesome

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/opinion/04wed2.html?ref=opinion
The idea that an audit is too much work for small public companies is really stupid. Being a public company is not a right of any small business... if you want public capital, you should have to be accountable to the public. Otherwise, stick to private equity.

 

 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703574604574499592392782438.html

In a surprise only to unions, charter schools work. (one point they don't bring up - in addition to fostering competition between schools, high-achievers who leave for charter schools leave fewer students behind of a more uniform academic nature, leaving smaller student:teacher ratios and the ability to focus more on catching kids up instead of juggling a one-size-fits-all curriculum for both high and low achievers)

 

 

 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703932904574511253478190682.html

A poll of women didn't support healthcare reform.

 

http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2009/11/dolphin-markets-in-everything-greshams-law-edition.html

Dolphins are freaking AWESOME- "

Kelly has taken this task one step further. When people drop paper into the water she hides it under a rock at the bottom of the pool. The next time a trainer passes, she goes down to the rock and tears off a piece of paper to give to the trainer. After a fish reward, she goes back down, tears off another piece of paper, gets another fish, and so on. This behaviour is interesting because it shows that Kelly has a sense of the future and delays gratification. She has realised that a big piece of paper gets the same reward as a small piece and so delivers only small pieces to keep the extra food coming. She has, in effect, trained the humans.

Her cunning has not stopped there. One day, when a gull flew into her pool, she grabbed it, waited for the trainers and then gave it to them. It was a large bird and so the trainers gave her lots of fish. This seemed to give Kelly a new idea. The next time she was fed, instead of eating the last fish, she took it to the bottom of the pool and hid it under the rock where she had been hiding the paper. When no trainers were present, she brought the fish to the surface and used it to lure the gulls, which she would catch to get even more fish. After mastering this lucrative strategy, she taught her calf, who taught other calves, and so gull-baiting has become a hot game among the dolphins. "

 

 

http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2009/11/the-rising-fortunes-of-john-geanakoplos.html

In a 2000 academic paper, Mr. Geanakoplos offered a theory. He said that when banks set margins very low, lending more against a given amount of collateral, they have a powerful effect on a specific group of investors. These are buyers, whether hedge funds or aspiring homeowners, who for various reasons place a higher value on a given type of collateral. He called them "natural buyers."

Using large amounts of borrowed money, or leverage, these buyers push up prices to extreme levels. Because those prices are far above what would make sense for investors using less borrowed money, they violate the idea of efficient markets. But if a jolt of bad news makes lenders uncertain about the immediate future, they raise margins, forcing the leveraged optimists to sell. That triggers a downward spiral as falling prices and rising margins reinforce one another. Banks can stifle the economy as they become wary of lending under any circumstances.