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. I invite all readers to share their comments, whether on-point or tangential, precise or poetic.