There was a time when I used to rail against lawsuits.
They're a drag on the economy, I used to say.
Then I began to sue people.

I used to say our kids will pay dearly for this.
But actually, it's our problem.

When people complained about what they read in the newspaper,
I used to say, "What do you expect for 50 cents -- the truth?"

If I wanted something, I used to say it quickly and loudly in a certain way.
Now I tap a spoon on the counter and they all know what I mean.

"I used to say, 'How can we be right and everybody else be wrong?'"

Maybe "nostalgia" isn't the right word.
It's not about fondly looking back so much as looking back in horror.

Maybe brooding isn't the right word.

I used to say that my crayon box had only two colors in it: black and white.
I guess that's why I love computer science.

Lawrence Summers:

Martin Wolf is the world's preeminent financial journalist.

Martin Wolf:

The average valuation of the US stock market corresponds to a real return of 6½-7 per cent, which implies an “equity risk premium” – a margin of return over risk-free government bonds – of about 4 percentage points. This has long seemed high. During the great bull market of the 1990s, some even argued that no such premium was justified. But if one has to ask why equity holders should be risk-averse, one need only look at history. For mortals (rather than immortal institutions), the risk of being caught in a bear market (that is, a period of below average valuations) for 15 years, as happened from 1973 to 1988, is scary. Anybody retiring today knows this.

From the recent archive, Niall Ferguson:

The motto “In God we trust” was added to the dollar bill in 1957. Since then its purchasing power, relative to the consumer price index, has declined by a staggering 87 percent. Average annual inflation during that period has been more than 4 percent. A man who decided to put his savings into gold in 1970 could have bought just over 27.8 ounces of the precious metal for $1,000. At the time of writing, with gold trading at $900 an ounce, he could have sold it for around $25,000.

Those few goldbugs who always doubted the soundness of fiat money—paper currency without a metal anchor—have in large measure been vindicated. But why were the rest of us so blinded by money illusion?

Why fairly valued stock markets are an opportunity

Astronauts ventured outside the International Space Station to do repair work, but lost a bag of tools they had taken along. It is not uncommon for the occasional bolt or single tool to be lost.

So many things these days are made to look at later. Why not just have the experience and remember it?

The Dow Jones industrial average yesterday pierced the planet’s core and reappeared hours later in the city of Xian in the Shaanxi region of central China, where it enjoyed a meal of dumplings and hacked chicken and watched a performance of traditional dances by local school children, on fears that financial news writers, having exhausted every possible metaphor to describe its endless downward trend, would simply stop writing about it.

Our current downturn will end as well someday, and, as in the ’30s, the recovery will probably come for reasons that have little to do with most policy initiatives.

The deeper question is, should we try? (That’s what unhappy people do.)

We are not living in a time that allows for incrementalism.

48 percent of dot-com companies founded since 1996 were still around in late 2004.

Mr. McFaul checks in with his psychic when he is stumped for answers about where his business, and his competition, might be headed.

“This is something that could work, though it will be tedious and expensive,” he said.

While the world has focused on the rampant piracy problem afflicting the Gulf of Aden, which saw yet another tanker held for ransom last week, the seizing of ships is only a symptom of a much more terrifying malaise.

I knew that it was getting fairly risky driving in deer country in Arkansas, but I was stunned to learn that Arkansans have a one in 108 chance of hitting a deer. That’s mind-boggling. We live in Heber Springs and Arkansas 25 to Batesville is like running a gantlet. There’s a dead deer about every 200 feet and the road is littered with truck bumpers. Can you tell me what’s going on?

Many have spoken out against the idea of teaching patois in schools. Many believe that if patois is taught it will be at the detriment to English. Why do so many have this "either-or mentality"?

“Now, more than ever, depression is running rampant and one of the best cures is to help someone who’s worse off than yourself.”

As the music industry has been beset by piracy, and the price of DVDs has dwindled, the gaming market will grow by 42 per cent this year.

"This is a different ball game we're in; this is moving into a lack-of-confidence game."

Gasoline prices seem safely tamped down.

The key is firmly pressing the pickles down into the jar and not just sticking them on top, Mrs. Pemberton said.

Scott Westerfeld looks into a future where hormonal balancers tamp down teen romances and “bioframes” obviate sleep and dreams.

(For lesbians, the issue is less about fear of damaging their partners' egos than about women's capacity for verbal intimacy and emotional relatedness, which may obviate a lesbian couple's need for sex to achieve closeness.)

Those who have indulged know these can be very messy fruits to open.

Mr. Gibbs said one of the main challenges for Mr. Obama was tamping down expectations a bit without making anyone think he was moving away from the promises of his campaign.

Obama also said "we should make sure that those immigrants have the opportunity to learn English, because we are part of a common culture with a common language, but you know what? We should also be teaching our children some Spanish and some Mandarin and some Patois."

Indeed, the patois of PowerPoint often threatens to disrupt the enjoyment of Mr. Gladwell’s newest treatise.

Virgil is, without a doubt, a hacker rock star.

Girls hang on Virgil Griffith. This is no exaggeration. At parties, they cling to the arms of the 25-year-old hacker whose reason for being, he says, is to “make the Internet a better and more interesting place.” The founder of a data-mining tool called WikiScanner, Griffith is also a visiting researcher at the mysterious Santa Fe Institute, where “complex systems” are studied. He was once charged, wide-eyed rumor has it, with sedition. No wonder girls whisper secrets in his ear and laugh merrily at his arcane jokes.

From the archive:

"I never thought I'd see the day when a laptop was better at picking up girls than a Ferrari. That's it, I'm ditching Windows."

Virgil Griffith, Internet Man of Mystery

Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital, predicts that many homeowners who have little or no equity will stop paying their mortgage and then reduce their income to get the biggest payment cut possible. They could stop working overtime or, if two spouses work, one could quit. After the modification, they could try to boost their income again.

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," Schiff says. "People are going to feel like complete morons if they don't participate. The people getting punished are the ones who never made an irresponsible decision to buy a house they couldn't afford."

You can say that again.

You Might Want To Think About Stopping Your Mortgage Payments and Reducing Your Income

The S&P 500 is headed for its biggest annual decline since the Great Depression, when it fell 47 percent in 1931.

``The final low will be much lower than this,'' and may not occur before the fourth quarter of next year, de Graaf said.

At a minimum, stocks are likely to revisit their lowest levels of 2002 and 2003, when a 51 percent slide from the March 2000 peak sent the S&P 500 as low as 768.63, said Mary Ann Bartels, chief market analyst at Merrill Lynch & Co. in New York.

The S&P 500 is likely to fall to around 680, 20 percent lower than yesterday's close, probably by the end of the year, said John Roque, senior technical analyst for New York-based brokerage Natixis Bleichroeder Inc.

This isn't the bottom

An excerpt from December 2008 edition of Harper's Index:

Percentage of Americans who say they live “paycheck to paycheck”: 47

Percentage of those making over $100,000 per year who say this: 21

Paycheck to Paycheck