Peter Bromberg's UnBlog

In business, friendship, and in Love.

1) Observe their behavior. Look at the way they act. How do they treat others? Are they inconsiderate and/or rude? Are they quick to join in on gossip? Are they quick to judge people? Do they continuously concern themselves with what other people are doing? There's a difference between someone who wants to be helpful and someone who's just being nosy and wants something to gossip about. However, that alone is not enough to determine whether someone is trustworthy. Someone that seems to be involved in a lot of drama is someone that you need to be cautious of - there is a reason why they don't get along with so many people. 2) Listen to them, communication is important. When they talk to you, do they redirect their conversation towards other people - and if they do, are they saying negative things about them? If this person is telling you things about other people's private lives for the sake of having an "interesting conversation", you should take that into c...

When our great nation was started, Americans had a high degree of trust in their government. They felt that it genuinely represented the interests of the people. Government policy in developed countries is relatively stable and predictable, and, for the most part (at least relative to less developed countries), promises made are promises kept. Governments keep their promises despite the fact that policymakers face a well-known time-consistency problem. That is, it is seldom in the short-run best interest of a government to keep capital taxes low, honor its debt obligations, or inflate the currency only by the expected amount. Much of the theory on credible government policy concerns itself precisely with accounting for this ability of governments to make and keep promises. In these good scenarios, households trust the government and the government does not betray this trust because a deviation by the government causes a reversion to a worse equilibrium. Depending on your point of vi...