Econlinks

• "First -- Chill -- then Stupor -- then the letting go": a historical perspective on the market, starting with the Great Crash

• What would Milton Friedman say about the current financial crisis? And he wouldn't be wrong.

• Here's an excellent answer if you ever wondered why people are interested in finding prime numbers with tens of millions of digits. And a nice exposition of the Lucas-Lehmer test for Mersenne primes by Terry Tao, to whom I owe also the previous link.

• "If Krugman were not too valuable to the profession for his own work, we should appoint him to a permanent position as the translator of economics journals into English." This is from Avinash Dixit's appraisal of Paul Krugman's work many years ago, when Krugman won the John Bates Clark medal. Very actual also as motivation for Krugman's winning the Nobel this year. And here's somebody who has actually bet on Krugman winning in 2008.

• Bill Easterly excellent on the dangers of developping countries learning the wrong lessons from this crisis.