Links and Asides and more Game Theory

-- DeLong on E.M. Forster, the Bank Panic of 1825 (in England), and the origins of the modern central banking system.

-- Ron Paul says we should send mercenaries and bountyhunters after the Somali pirates. I am in favor of this plan, as long as it is televised. (ht: Dittmeier)

-- Blog Wars: Thoma vs. Shadab on financial regulation; Cowen vs. DeLong on stimulus.

-- Eichengreen and O'Rourke look at falling world output and fire up the 'D'-word.

-- Joseph Nye says I'm irrelevant.

-- Kling on financial regulation as a chess game, from the new (and interesting) site dedicated to financial regulation, FinReg21. I find Kling's arguments to be pretty persuasive, and worry that the end result of this crisis is a slew of new regulations that don't actually increase systemic stability, but do incur deadweight losses. Somebody should build a game-theoretic model of regulation (if one is out there, please let me know).

-- Speaking of game theory, Tim Harford's Logic of Life Youtube series (which accompanies the book of same name) explains racial segregation using the chessboard framework of Thomas Schelling. If you want to think of an IPE application, consider attitudes towards immigration, or resource scarcity in ethnically-diverse countries. There are many others.