Is the end of that poster child of capitalism, the public company, near? Hard to believe.

a kind of two-tiered market system – in which most of the real action takes place inside an unregulated black-box network of connected insiders who don’t disclose their relationships or their interests, while everyone else, i.e. the regular suckers, live in the more tightly-policed world of prospectuses and quarterly reporting and so on.

"The various durations of government around the world are linked to the various durations and productivities of farming that was the prerequisite for the rise of governments. For example, Europe began to acquire highly productive agriculture 9,000 years ago and state government by at least 4,000 years ago, but subequatorial Africa acquired less productive agriculture only between 2,000 and 1,800 years ago and state government even more recently. Those historical differences prove to have huge effects on the modern distribution of wealth."

"For all its innovation, the financial industry of today is less efficient than it was in the age of the railway, according to research by Thomas Philippon at New York University. That is, it charges the rest of society more for financial intermediation than it did 130 years ago. Considering the evidence, regulators could at the very least remove the taxpayer subsidy that has paved the road for banks to become so big."

via https://twitter.com/bryce/status/205314556099178497

The Youth Wage Subsidy: Mixing Farce with Force. http://t.co/VKetY2iM ..brilliant summary #za #economics #YouthWageSubsidy