Brian Gongol

That's a pretty unusual combination

The social news site was once valued by some investors at $175,000,000. Now it's been sold for scrap parts, in essence.

It's shameful how badly the economy is covered in the news. There's the rate of economic growth, and then there's the rate of change in that rate of growth. It's not good that the economy's rate of growth is starting to slow down -- but at least it's still growing. That's not quite the same as "flatlining". Imprecision of language leads to imprecision of thought in things like this, and if there's one subject about which people should be smarter (and eager to become smarter), it's economics.

How should people really feel, though, about the fact that it's on rented public land and is operated by a nonprofit group? At the very least, it's an uncomfortable arrangement in which the county government gets subsidized by gamblers. It's been suggested (only a little bit tongue-in-cheek) that the profits from casinos should be funneled directly to the teaching of math, probability, and statistics in schools.

Warren Buffett thinks so. There's no question, though, that people have gone a little bit daft: As Buffett also points out, people are accepting zero and even negative rates of return on Federal bonds -- for periods out to 20 years. That's just plain nuts.

