Stewart’s Folly

Stewart's Folly is an interesting forgotten roadside attraction from the 1970s also known as the Round House of Logan, Ohio. It is located on the outskirts of town as you are entering into Logan from the west along County Road 33A. I came across the mysterious structure this winter while doing a HAER documentation on a bridge in the area.

Corporate Governance in Crisis Times

Since the apex of the economic crisis last year, American companies have been buried in an avalanche of corporate governance initiatives designed to increase the power of fund managers to dictate corporate policies to boards of directors. Unfortunately, few, if any, of the proposals focus on what must be the overriding objective of corporate governance -- encouraging long-term economic growth: the type of growth that is achieved without risking the environment or the financial system; the type of growth that creates and maintains full employment; the type of growth that creates affordable housing, healthcare and education for all.

Financial Integration, Investment, and Economic Growth

In our forthcoming The Review of Economics and Statistics paper: Financial Integration, Investment, and Economic Growth. Evidence from Two Eras of Financial Globalization, we turn to the economic history of the first era of financial globalization (1880-1914) for new insights into whether international financial integration boosts economic growth.

Insurance Companies Are All About Denying Coverage

I have health insurance that I pay for myself " more than $400 a month for an individual policy ($1,500 deductible per occurrence). I severely injured my left knee in December during a blizzard. It was so painful that I couldn't walk. I had surgery Jan. 27. My insurance company -- Golden Rule, a division of United Healthcare -- has denied covering the surgery, claiming a "pre-existing condition" because I have arthritis.

Earnings -- Who Knew?

With a slew of major companies reporting earnings so far, it's clear that expectations were severely skewed to the negative. Once again, Wall Street analysts overshot - this time to the downside.

New York Senate Race: Trippi's Weird 'Apology'

Joe Trippi, who has been working secretly for Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (NY-14) in her primary challenge to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand for more than a month, posted an odd "apology" for his deception (which occurred here, at Huffington Post and with several reporters) on his website yesterday.

House Committee Approves Kucinich Amendment

Dennis Kucinich: With your support, your phone calls, your emails, we won a major legislative victory today for a state single payer health care option in the House of Representatives in Washington, DC. The House Education and Labor Committee approved the Kucinich Amendment by a vote of 27-19, with 14 Democrats and 13 Republicans voting yes.

Amazon Caught Deleting Books on Customer Kindles

In a not very widely reported story, Amazon recently acknowledged remotely deleting books on customers Kindle e-book readers. Tom's Guidesaid it best: "In what is glaring irony, George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm were the two books that the publisher decided it no longer wanted Kindle owners to have access to."

The Big Health-Care Debate and Accounting Fraud

I'm not an economist or accountant. I'm a molecular physicist. As such, I do a sort of accounting as well: I do thermodynamics, which is basically the subject of how energy moves around. So, you'd think the accounting is pretty easy, what goes in stays in or comes out. But is it always that simple? And what does this all have to do with health care? Well, the thing about thermodynamics is that while the basic rules are quite simple, it's not actually that simple to figure out what's going on in a particular situation.

Lives Changed Forever by Tainted Food

I began my career as a food safety attorney because Lauren Beth Rudolph died on December 28, 1992 in her mother's arms, due to complications of an E. coli O157:H7 infection - Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome. She was only 6 years, 10 months, and 10 days old when she died.