The bonus claw, why doing nice things is apparently bad, recycling things as lecture notes

So, most people are pretty cheerful about this? I like the phrase "claw"; reminds me of those games in the old penny (quarter?) arcades where you tried to steer the metal grabbing thing to pick up prizes like puppets and gold watches. Of course, if bankers do leave London its not entirely bad news; it is a bit crowded here anyway. So, who says the government doesn't try to make people happy?

Trying to introduce related current stuff into my lecture notes; we are still recovering from a big financial crisis to that economist didn't do much to prevent, and economists did help justify a lot of the loosened regulations. Actually, a certain flavor of economists are keen to justify this garbage Of course "the crisis of 2008 is best described as a crisis of regulation—not a crisis of capitalism." The market is always right of course, except when people try to do something nice like buy Christmas presents or buy a cup of Fair Trade coffee. This latter individual overpriced cup of coffee seems to have been cited everywhere as ironclad "proof" that Fair Trade is just another way they try to rip you off.

Shameful personal research promotion time: for a different (i.e., better) view, see my paper with Joon, see p 21 for a range of markup comparisons. Also tried to turn that paper into lecture notes. And this week I present "the case against education." As for the justification for the Christmas presents; well, that's an upcoming paper I hope.

Please, let flow any comments on how I got it wrong in these lecture slides, or my slides on the health care debate or any of them.