Saturday, August 8, 2009

Points of View - August 8

Those Wild And Crazy Fords - By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. - The Wall Street Journal - "Ford is the only U.S. auto company not to land in bankruptcy and need rescue with taxpayer money. It’s also the only company in which control remains with a tight-knit founding family. Coincidence? No."

Pay and Politics - The Economist - "The boardrooms of America were ready for misery. What else could result from Congress’s fury at runaway executive pay, outrageous Wall Street bonuses and handsome rewards for failure? The bosses can breathe a little more easily. The Corporate and Financial Institution Compensation Fairness Bill that won a healthy majority in the House of Representatives on July 31st turned out to be remarkably restrained—in some ways even too restrained (see article). However, with the Senate still to look at the legislation and the practical details of its implementation to be hammered out, there is plenty of time for that to change, for better or worse."

Clinical Trials, Wrapped in Red Tape - By Sally Satel - The New York Times - "It's Christmas in August for hopeful scientists. The National Institutes of Health is now sending out its annual 'priority scores,' the indicators of whether grant requests will likely receive financing from the agency. And hearts are beating faster than ever, as the federal stimulus package has poured an additional $8.2 billion into the institutes’ budget specifically for research."

Outside Edge: Learn to Love That Statistical Feeling - By Tim Hartford - Financial Times - "I am a non-statistician who deals with statistics and statisticians frequently, and in my view statisticians are unsung heroes. Statistics are essential to understanding the world, but statisticians get little credit. We accept the numbers in the news as fact, without considering the skill in producing them from small, non-representative samples."

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