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Vijay Narayanan on February 25th, 2009

In an interesting article in the FT, Nassim Nicholas Taleb points out that while the rewards system on Wall Street incentivizes bankers who take risk, it does not have adequate disincentives to discourage a trader whose annual bonuses depends just on the returns he brought in during that period. So while the punt might prove [...]

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Vijay Narayanan on December 30th, 2008

Three days and 350+ casualties later, it is still hard to find an opinion piece in a major newspaper that is anything but praise for Israel’s pounding of Gaza. But those selfsame media outlets employ selective (and grossly untrue) reporting when covering the India-Pakistan conflict; reports on India are about a bellicose nation that is [...]

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Vijay Narayanan on December 19th, 2008

First a video clip from Times Now. You know what irks me? It is not that she (whose only real calling card is that she is somewhat remotely related to Aishwarya Rai) is dating him or anything. But that this report calls her a “popular South Indian actress“. Reminds me of Koundamani yet again: “மூணு [...]

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Vijay Narayanan on October 13th, 2008

Paul Krugman, who writes a bi-weekly column in The Hindu The New York Times, has won the Nobel Prize for Economics. Mr. Krugman is a Professor of Economics at Princeton University. Mr. Krugman received the award for his work on international trade and economic geography. In particular, the prize committee lauded his work for “having [...]

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Vijay Narayanan on June 19th, 2008

Yesterday, President Bush issued a statement that Congress should lift the ban on offshore oil drilling off the US coastline. The best reason he could think of for this was the 4-dollar-a-gallon gas. Immediately, Senator McCain, who is increasingly looking like George Dubya Bush the Third, concurred with the President and thought offshore drilling is [...]

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