MERITOCRACY REDUX: THIS IS NOT WHAT IT MEANS

Short post, again.

Through my good friend Hussein Kanji, I got made aware of an article in the NY Post written by a tutor about admission madness for the kids of the wealthy.

And the point that tutor makes - rich, over-protective parents should learn to sit back, relax and let their kids live a little - is not entirely unimportant but that's not what interested me most in this article.

What I took from this article is that this tough admission process - and the fact that a few kids with "everything" somehow fail to get in one of these elite universities - probably re-enforces wealthy people delusional belief that they deserved their good fortune and position in life - they've always worked hard, after all. They worked hard at school, got the right internships with the right companies, got all the extra-curricular activities one has to have to show 'leadership', got into a top university and managed to get a good diploma, got the right kind of first job...

NOAHPINION'S LATEST ON LOVING INFLATION

This will be a short post in reply to Noah Smith's latest blog-post about loving (moderate) inflation.

The various advantages he enumerates about moderate inflation are well-known and I don't think anyone seriously contest that inflation helps past borrowers, be they private or public.

But I've got to disagree with him on his supposedly debunking the two inflation 'myths' he sees as the political arguments against inflation.

FEDERAL RESERVE: YELLEN versus SUMMERS

I will state up-front that I do not like Larry Summers. 

But, given that I've never met the man in the flesh, you'll have to trust me when I say that that this dislike is not personal and entirely based of what is known of Summers. 

Very recently, Obama, seemingly unhappy with the search for a new Federal Reserve Chairman turning into a rather nasty match between Summers and Yellen supporters (thanks in no small part to Ezra Klein's "Larry Summers is the Front-Runner"), has mentioned a former Fed Vice Chairman, Donald Kohn as a possible, an example of someone he is considering and who was not even on the short-list often mentioned...