Month: January 2008

Fertility Control

People in poor countries are now able to exert more control over their own fertility, and hence over the size of their families. A generation ago the biggest worry about poor countries was over-population. Books such as “The Population Bomb” (1968) and “The Limits to Growth” (1972) predicted Malthusian crises in countries where women were having 5 children or more. Since then the fertility rate (the average number of children a woman can expect during her lifetime) in low- and middle-income countries has crashed. In East Asia and the Pacific, the rate was 5.4 in 1970. Now it is 2.1. In South Asia, the fertility rate halved (from 6.0 to 3.1). In the world as a whole, fertility has fallen from 4.8 to 2.6 in a generation (25 years).

gini coefficient rises with technological progress

Virtual Assistants

My new Virtual Assistant is Tina with Get Friday. Last week I assigned Tina her first task – find me a temporary office worker who can come to my office and clean, sort, and file nearly 2 years worth of back mail including all my bank and credit card statements. It’s too early to judge the overall success of Tina and Get Friday, but this first task result shows great promise. For $25 I avoided all the hassle of dealing with phone tag and I found a new (potential) source of office help. Fantastic.

a get friday testimonial

Bank Consolidation

Expect consolidation to start now. The real winners on Wall Street will be the ones with huge stockpiles of capital who listen to the market, and who are fleet of foot enough to smell out and deploy their capital creating instruments that global growth companies need, rather than false profits from eating their own sausage. The Big 5?: Goldman CitiSachs, House of Morgan, Bear of America, Fortress Lehman Lynch and Blackstone Suisse.

how about finally getting rid of all those useless and costly branches?

Where to Eat 2008

We analyze these curious dining trends, plus many more, in this, our annual compendium of all that’s stylish, fabulous, and new in the fickle galaxy of New York restaurants. In the following pages, you’ll find our recommendations for an entire year’s worth of serious eating, broken down, as usual, into categories reflecting the most notable culinary happenings of the moment. We will tell you where to procure the most lethal absinthe cocktails in town, instruct you on where to find a good duck egg for brunch, and provide a list of the most lavishly expensive haute cuisine establishments in which to blow the remnants of your year-end bonus. Consider it a kind of road map to take with you on your culinary ramblings. Oh, and if you’re looking for the finest Chinese grub in Brooklyn, we’ve got that, too, along with our yearly summation of New York’s best new restaurants, the best up-and-coming chefs, and, last but not least, the best venues, in this age of rampant culinary correctness, for a sinfully delicious, hormone-saturated, nonorganic feast.