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James Kwak

James Kwak is a former McKinsey consultant, a co-founder of Guidewire Software, and currently a student at the Yale Law School. He is a co-founder of The Baseline Scenario.

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James Kwak's Latest Articles | 133

U.S. Health Care Spending

Jan 13, 2010| 

The vast discrepancy between what we spend on health care and what every other prosperous (or not-so-prosperous) country spends on health care–and the little good... Read »

My Last Post on Ben Bernanke

Jan 11, 2010| 

His confirmation, that is. I summarized most of my position in Foreign Policy, which asked me to lay out the anti-confirmation argument. My reasons overlap with... Read »

Obama and FDR

Jan 10, 2010| 

Kevin Drum found a great quotation from FDR and what he thought of bankers, monopolists, and speculators. It’s so good he deserves to have you go there and read... Read »

When a 79.9% APR is Good?

Jan 8, 2010| 

Adam Levitin wrote an informative post on Credit Slips a couple of weeks ago; I missed it but it looks like no one in my RSS reader has mentioned it, so here goes.... Read »

The Costs of “Extend and Pretend”

Jan 8, 2010| 

For months now, Calculated Risk has been criticizing the policy of “extend and pretend”–the practice of pretending that real estate loans are still worth their... Read »

Bankers and Athletes

Jan 7, 2010| 

Bill George, a director of Goldman Sachs, defending the bank’s compensation practices, said this: “The shareholder value is made up in people and you need the... Read »

Another Approach to Compensation

Jan 4, 2010| 

The problems with the traditional model of banker compensation are well known. To simplify, if a trader (or CEO) is paid a year-end cash bonus based on his performance... Read »

No to Bernanke

Jan 3, 2010| 

The American Economics Association is meeting in Atlanta, where Simon says it is frigid. I went to an early-January conference in Atlanta once. There was a quarter-inch... Read »

What’s in Your Wallet?

Dec 30, 2009| 

Felix Salmon points us to Arianna Huffington’s campaign to get people to move money out of the big four banks: JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, and... Read »

The Power of Conventional Wisdom

Dec 29, 2009| 

The week between Christmas and New Year’s is probably a good time to throw out half-baked ideas on topics I don’t know much about. First, there’s been a lot... Read »

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