Hello World! and welcome to Bye Bye Blue Smoke, a blog that will most likely be about the new era economics and culture that began, roughly, on Monday, Sept. 15th, 2008–the end of the Second Gilded Age.
About me: I, your humble blogger Blue Throat, am, as of October, a financial analyst/economist for a small hedge fund in Philadelphia and, prior to that, was a research assistant at the New York Fed. What does this experience I’ve garnered mean? It means that, 1) like everyone else, I have no idea what’s going on in the current crisis, 2) I’m sufficiently close to the financial industry and it’s regulator to have compromised judgment, and 3) I was dumb enough to leave a comfortable government job and enter the most volatile sector of the financial economy at precisely the moment that economy was collapsing (imagine my self-loathing). Contrary to that piece of stupidity, it also means that 4) I was wise enough to leave New York as it was going down!
So my opinions must count for something. Nevertheless, I’m on the young side, so I’m trying to figure out relatively more than your average finance blogger (and thus my opinions count for very little), so a lot of this blog will display my stumblings and bafflements over and at various economic phenomena. I encourage all readers to share their comments, whether on-point or tangential, precise or poetic. If you have any comments that aren’t mean, or concerns, or you just want to chat, you can email neel@darkcomedyhour.com.