James Surowiecki:

Soon enough, we’re going to start getting what we pay for, and we may find out just how little that is.

Oh, but James!

What was the problem? And what should be done?

Is more what we really need?

In my opinion not.

But more is what Congress is ready to support and fund, more is what the President wants, and more is what we are going to get.

Also:

First of all, we have said that whatever we do ... will be legal.

We're having a debate in America on whether or not we ought to be listening to terrorists making phone calls in the United States. And the answer is darn right we ought to be.

News You Can Lose

Jim Rogers, one of the world's most prominent international investors, on Thursday called most of the largest U.S. banks "totally bankrupt," and said government efforts to fix the sector are wrongheaded.

"Without giving specific names, most of the significant American banks, the larger banks, are bankrupt, totally bankrupt," said Rogers, who is now a private investor.

"What is outrageous economically and is outrageous morally is that normally in times like this, people who are competent and who saw it coming and who kept their powder dry go and take over the assets from the incompetent," he said. "What's happening this time is that the government is taking the assets from the competent people and giving them to the incompetent people and saying, now you can compete with the competent people. It is horrible economics."

From the archive:

Today I write not to gloat. Given the pain that nearly everyone is experiencing, that would be entirely inappropriate. Nor am I writing to make further predictions, as most of my forecasts in previous letters have unfolded or are in the process of unfolding. Instead, I am writing to say goodbye.

Also:

We need a serious recession in this country, and the government needs to get out of the way, and let it happen.

See Schiff:

The only thing that the U.S. government did right was to let Lehman Brothers fail. Everything else they did wrong.

Jim Rogers calls most big US banks bankrupt

Your parents might have worried when you chose Philosophy or International Relations as a major. But a year-long survey of 1.2 million people with only a bachelor's degree by PayScale Inc. shows that graduates in these subjects earned 103.5% and 97.8% more, respectively, about 10 years post-commencement. Majors that didn't show as much salary growth include Nursing and Information Technology.

From earlier this year:

It will always suck to work for large organizations, and the larger the organization, the more it will suck.

It's not so much that there's something special about founders as that there's something missing in the lives of employees.

From last year:

The big law firms have to pay you $150,000, because a third of it is going to pay off your loans, and the rest of it is the minimum you'd really expect someone with that level of responsibility to be paid.

Salary Increase By Major | WSJ

Seth Stevenson:

Why is this anecdote-laden style so popular with business authors, and so successful (to the tune of best-selling books and huge speaking fees)?

I think it comes down to two things:

1) Fascinating anecdotes can, just by themselves, make you feel like you've really learned something. ("Hey, now I know what an Apgar score is, and where it came from! Who cares if this knowledge has zero application to my business?")
2) A skillful anecdote-wielder can trick us into thinking the anecdote is prescriptive. In fact, what's being sold is success by association.

Recently:

We enjoyed Late Bloomers tremendously because it concerned two of our favorite subjects—artistic and literary excellence—but we also wanted to throw things at it, because the sound core of truth it contained was coated with an obscuring layer of inaccuracy and inexpertise.

Mildly irritating though all of this may be, it is Gladwell’s forthcoming book, Outliers, that truly threatens to exasperate.

Demystifying greatness can be as dangerous as romanticizing it.

From the archive:

I would create, if not true bumper stickers, then the rumor of bumper stickers.

Does advertising actually work?

Lynda Gratton:

If the crowd is indeed wise, why do we put our faith in the decisions and knowledge of a tiny fraction of people? I expect to see over the coming years a growing realisation that distributed decision-making and leadership to a wider group of diverse people results in better decisions. This will have profound implications for the selection and development of leaders.

Recessions give space for new ideas to flourish

Gabriel Sherman, in New York:

In the bleakest stock market of the past 70 years, when hedge funds and 401(k)s alike have cratered, few people are smiling. But short-seller Jim Chanos, whose fund is up 50 percent, is having the time of his life.

How Short-Seller Jim Chanos Is Profiting From the Suffering Stock Market

Is Lehman CEO Dick Fuld the true villain in the collapse of Wall Street, or is he being sacrificed for the sins of his peers?

From way back, via earlier this year:

He was a relentless boozer, a sucker puncher and a chippy chaser, and the sum of his personal ugliness overwhelmed whatever good he did ...

From the campaign archive:

In all his speeches, John McCain urges Americans to make sacrifices for a country that is both “an idea and a cause”.

He is not asking them to suffer anything he would not suffer himself.

But many voters would rather not suffer at all.

Burning Down His House

Next year will be the Year Zero for the global economy.

Recently, Peter Schiff:

"We need a serious recession in this country, and the government needs to get out of the way, and let it happen."

Bound for Zero

The report details an online underground economy that has matured into an efficient, global marketplace in which stolen goods and fraud-related services are regularly bought and sold, and where the estimated value of goods offered by individual traders is measured in millions of dollars. The report is derived from data gathered by Symantec’s Security Technology and Response (STAR) organization, from underground economy servers between July 1, 2007 and June 30, 2008.

The potential value of total advertised goods observed by Symantec was more than $276 million for the reporting period. This value was determined using the advertised prices of the goods and services and measured how much advertisers would make if they liquidated their inventory.

From a year ago:

This paper studies an active underground economy which specializes in the commoditization of activities such as credit card fraud, identity theft, spamming, phishing, online credential theft, and the sale of compromised hosts. Using a seven month trace of logs collected from an active underground market operating on public Internet chat networks, we measure how the shift from “hacking for fun” to “hacking for profit” has given birth to a societal substrate mature enough to steal wealth into the millions of dollars in less than one year.

New Symantec Report Reveals Booming Underground Economy

I need two system programmers ...

The Job