Past Articles by David Kestenbaum
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Lady Gaga Writing A New Song Is Like A Factory Investing In A New Machine The government is about to change the way it accounts for the economic value of music and movies. |
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Lady Gaga Writing A New Song Is Like A Factory Investing In A New Machine The government is about to change the way it accounts for the economic value of music and movies. |
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When A Famous Hospital Didn't Want An Expensive New Drug It's remarkably rare for leading research hospitals to reject new drugs because of cost. |
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When A Famous Hospital Didn't Want An Expensive New Drug It's remarkably rare for leading research hospitals to reject new drugs because of cost. |
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When A Famous Hospital Didn't Want An Expensive New Drug It's remarkably rare for leading research hospitals to reject new drugs because of cost. |
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Three Ways To Totally Transform U.S. Immigration Policy Economists dream big: open borders, visa auctions or preferential access for high-skilled workers. |
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Three Ways To Totally Transform U.S. Immigration Policy Economists dream big: open borders, visa auctions or preferential access for high-skilled workers. |
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'Give Me The Money Or I'll Shoot The Trees' A pristine rainforest in Ecuador sits on top of the equivalent of millions of barrels of oil. Ecuador has offered a deal to the rich countries of the world: Pay us billions of dollars, and we'll leave the rainforest untouched. |
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'Give Me The Money Or I'll Shoot The Trees' A pristine rainforest in Ecuador sits on top of the equivalent of millions of barrels of oil. Ecuador has offered a deal to the rich countries of the world: Pay us billions of dollars, and we'll leave the rainforest untouched. |
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'Give Me The Money Or I'll Shoot The Trees' A pristine rainforest in Ecuador sits on top of the equivalent of millions of barrels of oil. Ecuador has offered a deal to the rich countries of the world: Pay us billions of dollars, and we'll leave the rainforest untouched. |
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An International Battle Over One Of The Most Boring Things In Finance The years-long, multi-billion-dollar battle just ended. |
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An International Battle Over One Of The Most Boring Things In Finance The years-long, multi-billion-dollar battle just ended. |
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An International Battle Over One Of The Most Boring Things In Finance The years-long, multi-billion-dollar battle just ended. |
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Why Is The Government In The Flood Insurance Business? Hurricanes are a tricky risk for insurers to cover. |
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The North Dakota Town Where A One-Bedroom Apartment Rents For $2,100 A Month The strange troubles of a small town where an oil boom has driven unemployment below 1 percent. |
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The 'Fiscal Cliff' And The Art Of Negotiating The tortuous negotiations involved in the "fiscal cliff" talks are like a chess game. The opponents follow rules and techniques. Negotiating is part science, part art, and everyone does it in their daily lives. |
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UBS To Pay $1.5 Billion In Fines Over Libor Scandal The Swiss bank UBS has agreed to pay $1.5 billion in fines in multiple countries to settle allegations of manipulating the London interbank offered rate and other benchmark interest rates. |
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UBS To Pay $1.5 Billion In Fines Over Libor Scandal The Swiss bank UBS has agreed to pay $1.5 billion in fines in multiple countries to settle allegations of manipulating the London interbank offered rate and other benchmark interest rates. |
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Why A Principal Created His Own Currency He created incentives that 11-year-olds could relate to. (Somehow, "Come to school and you'll be better off in 20 years," just wasn't working.) |
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Why Mexico Is The World's Biggest Exporter Of Flat-Screen TVs There's more to Mexico than drug-related violence. The country's economy is actually doing well, due in part to solid exports to the U.S. |
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Why Mexico Is The World's Biggest Exporter Of Flat-Screen TVs There's more to Mexico than drug-related violence. The country's economy is actually doing well, due in part to solid exports to the U.S. |
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How The Government Set Up A Fake Bank To Launder Drug Money In the early 1990s, Colombian drug cartels had a problem: They had more money than they knew what to do with. So a pair of federal agents created an offshore bank. |
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How The Government Set Up A Fake Bank To Launder Drug Money In the early 1990s, Colombian drug cartels had a problem: They had more money than they knew what to do with. So a pair of federal agents created an offshore bank. |
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A Sequester Is A 'Jelly-Like Mass,' And Other Notes On Fiscal-Cliff Jargon Here's a quick overview of three of the most impenetrable terms related to the fiscal cliff. |
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Why Coke Cost A Nickel For 70 Years All prices change. So why did the price of a Coke stay the same for decades? The answer includes a 7.5-cent coin and a company president who wanted to get a couple of lawyers out of his office. |
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Why Coke Cost A Nickel For 70 Years All prices change. So why did the price of a Coke stay the same for decades? The answer includes a 7.5-cent coin and a company president who wanted to get a couple of lawyers out of his office. |
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Energy Independence Wouldn't Make Gasoline Any Cheaper If you don't believe me, just ask Canada. They produce more oil than they can use — and they pay just as much as we do. |
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He Won't Tell You His Name, But He'll Help You Hide Your Money A trip into the world of "asset protection" - a fancy way to say "hiding money." |
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Insurance Companies Send Out Rebate Checks; Economists Get Nervous Nearly 13 million Americans are getting rebate checks from their health insurance companies. But as is sometimes the case, what is popular with the people is not so popular with economists. |
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Even If You're All-Powerful, It's Hard To Fix The Economy What happens if you slash the price of oil, save Europe and force Congress to make a grand bargain? Not as much as you might think. |
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Losing With LIBOR: One Trader's Story The scandal over interest-rate manipulation seems dry until you consider what happened to Dan Sullivan. He may have lost a million dollars as a result - and he's just one of many who say they've been harmed |
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The Farmer And The Commerce Clause Even as it upheld most of the health care law last week, the Supreme Court limited federal power under the Constitution's Commerce Clause. Seventy years ago, an Ohio farmer sought to do the same - and lost. |
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From Abe Lincoln To Donald Duck: History Of The Income Tax   The story of how the U.S. wound up with the income tax is the story of two wars, a Supreme Court justice on his death bed, and Donald Duck. |
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People Want More Coins, That's A Good Sign For The Economy The United States Mint says demand for quarter, dimes, nickels, and pennies was up this year. During the financial crisis, demand for coins hit record lows as people dug into their piggy banks and coin jars for extra cash. |
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Why A New York Cheese Buyer Hangs On The Euro's Fate Most of the cheese at Murray's Cheese Shop comes from Europe. And the cheese buyer's bonus hinges on the future of the euro. |
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A Big Bridge In The Wrong Place Why was New York state's Tappan Zee Bridge built at one of the widest spots on the Hudson River when it would have been much cheaper and easier to build it a few miles south? Newspaper clippings from the 1940s and '50s revealed something suspicious. |
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Legislation Aimed At Killing Dollar Coin Program A bill has been introduced in Congress to kill the troubled dollar coin program. Unwanted dollar coins are piling up in Federal Reserve vaults around the country, costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. The program was designed to whet the public's appetite for dollar coins. But it's been a flop. |
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Dollar Coin Loophole Closes For Frequent Fliers The U.S Mint said today it will no longer accept credit-card payments for dollar coins purchased from its Web site. Too many people were using the program just to get frequent-flier miles. |
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Spaceflight Is Getting Cheaper. But It's Still Not Cheap Enough. Elon Musk wants us to live in other planets. First he has to make space flight affordable. So he took the fortune he made in Internet start-ups and started his own rocket company. |
