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Review

Planes, Plays, & Baseball Tix

One Size Doesn’t Fit All More than four years after it opened, I finally got to the “new” Guthrie Theatre near the Mississippi River — just in time to see the closing performance of Tennessee Williams’ “A Street Car Named Desire” (thanks for the tix, David and Shana!) The performances were indelible and wrenching; I...
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Michael Lewis’ “The Big Short”: Diabolical Castles in the Sky

Voiding Credit Default Swaps In a book stuffed with scathing insights and blockbuster revelations, here’s perhaps the biggest one (courtesy of Michael Lewis, writing in The Big Short): The reason Citigroup (amongst others) is considered “Too Big Too Fail” isn’t because it holds over $1 trillion in ordinary Americans’ savings in their vaults. It’s not...
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SuperFreakonomics on Realtors

Still Casting Stones . . . But Now With (Lots of) Caveats An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn’t happen today. “Laurence J. Peter [Editor’s note: to see my rebuttal to Freakonomics, the predecessor to SuperFreakonomics, click here] So, I finally finished off the (surprisingly short)...
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The West End in St. Louis Park

Retail Roll Out Continues As the West End in St. Louis Park nears completion, the grand openings of various tenants are proceeding on a staggered schedule. The development, formally called “The Shops at West End,” is being marketed as a “lifestyle center” — think, one-stop shopping — and is located just southwest of 394 and...
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Coen Bros’ "A Serious Man"

The Hebrew School Connection [Editor’s Note: ‘A Serious Man’ isn’t a mystery, so revealing the ending isn’t exactly ruining it. However, if you plan to see it and would rather be surprised . . . stop reading here. Regular blog readers may recall that I ran a post, “Economic Stimulus –Local Version” commenting on the...
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Taking Trulia for a Spin

Trulia.com Hits — and (Mostly) Misses Like Zillow.com, Trulia.com promises to arm prospective home buyers with reams of data about homes for sale. Buyers can search by property type, price, square footage, zip code, etc.; get information about schools and other community info; and even pose questions to the Trulia. com “community” that generate email...
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