I recently read Robert Shiller’s book, “The Subprime Solution.” I wasn’t disappointed, even if I took issue with some of his arguments.

Shiller’s prognosis of the crisis is that no one expected to see home prices decline, which led to a massive bubble in home prices. This led to people doing all sorts of silly things, like taking out mortgages that they couldn’t pay off or creating financial products that were riskier than they appeared.

So far, so good, but let’s get to the rest of the book…

Most of us probably think--either from our finance classes or through received wisdom--that publicly traded corporations should maximize shareholder value, almost to the exclusion of all else.

But is this a good idea? Is the obsessive focus on quarterly stock price increases a good thing for investors, managers, and other stakeholders?

An article that from the New York Times suggests that maximizing shareholder value--or, focusing on the short term stock price--actually has pernicious effects on a firm's stakeholders.

A few posts on layoffs got me thinking of my unemployment spell a couple of years back, and I think that now would be a good time to go over lessons that I learned to keep myself sane and productive while searching for a new job.

The big key is to look at this as an opportunity for growth rather than as an obstacle. For most of you monkeys, this is going to be a difficult view to internalize: we all place a great deal of importance on our career, otherwise we wouldn't post here.

Leaving your job may suck, but lets face it, working can suck too. So let's just jump into it: here are 6 things to keep in mind that will let you come out of this in a better state than you were in when you were beforehand.

Bill Gross, the famous bond manager who founded PIMCO, has a new article out where he argues that we shouldn't expect much in the way of equity returns over the next few decades.

Although you might think that he would use this as a chance to plug bond investing, you'd be wrong: he doesn't think that bonds will fare much better, and we'll instead see central banks try to inflate their way out of the problem going forward.

This article really got me thinking about the broader implications of living in a world where the premium for investing in equities is very uncertain. We (people in our 20's-30's) won't have the pensions and stable, 30 year jobs that our "Greatest Generation" grandparents did, and it's far from certain that we'll have the explosive equity returns that our "Baby Boomer" parents did. In spite of this, however, I'm very optimistic about our generation's ability to find meaningful, substantive work even if it means less assurance of a conventional career path.

I’ve worked in economic consulting at one of the major firms for a few years. In that time, I’ve gotten a number of private messages from people asking me about what to expect in the interview process, what the work is like, and so on. I decided that it would make sense to assemble as much of that knowledge in one place, especially given that economic consulting is not always an active topic of discussion. So here it is. I’m going to later copy this info onto the consulting firm once this thread leaves the top page. See answers to questions I've already received below, and feel free to ask more.

Anyone who has taken a finance course should come away with a basic knowledge of asset pricing models such as the CAPM and concepts such as Beta, which examines investment risk as a function of the standard deviation of historical returns.

Although many of the details of these pricing models are empirically very shaky, it's taken for granted by most people that it's very difficult to beat the market, and that most investors are better off investing in index funds.

One of the more interesting papers I've read recently that calls these topics into question is called Is Modern Portfolio Theory Harming Your Portfolio? by hedge fund manager Scott Vincent.

In it, the author claims that it's not as rare to find managers that beat the market as academic research would suggest, and that modern academia has defined risk in a way that loads the dice in favor of the academic standard of index fund investing.

I'm an analyst at an economic consulting firm that has been actively searching for a new job. Anyone who has been in this position will know that looking for a new job can almost be a full time job in itself, given how much time it can take to network, look for good job postings, and get your resume out there.

In one of the more interesting books I’ve read recently, the author managed to do just this. He worked as a research assistant for a few years after receiving a PhD in physics, and claims that anyone can retire early after investing 75% of one’s income in stocks, bonds, and other assets after just a few years of work and then living a radically limited lifestyle.