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Megan McArdle

Megan McArdle - Megan McArdle is a senior editor for The Atlantic who writes about business and economics. She has worked at three start-ups, a consulting firm, an investment bank, a disaster recovery firm at Ground Zero, and The Economist. More

Megan was born and raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and yes, she does enjoy her lattes, as well as the occasional extra-dry skim-milk cappuccino. Her checkered work history includes three start-ups, four years as a technology project manager for a boutique consulting firm, a summer as an associate at an investment bank, and a year spent as sort of an executive copy girl for one of the disaster-recovery firms at Ground Zero … all before the age of 30.

While working at Ground Zero, Megan started Live From the WTC, a blog focused on economics, business, and cooking. She may or may not have been the first major economics blogger, depending on whether we are allowed to throw outlying variables such as Brad Delong out of the set. From there it was but a few steps down the slippery slope to freelance journalism. She has worked in various capacities for The Economist, where she wrote about economics and oversaw the founding of Free Exchange, the magazine's economics blog. She has also maintained her own blog, Asymmetrical Information, which moved to The Atlantic, along with its owner, in August 2007.

Megan holds a bachelor's degree in English literature from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago. After a lifetime as a New Yorker, she now resides in northwest Washington, D.C., where she is still trying to figure out what one does with an apartment larger than 400 square feet.

Mitt-tastic

By Megan McArdle
Jan 29 2008, 9:38 PM ET Comment

Mitt Romney's concession speech is actually pretty good, except for when he starts talking about the Federal government teaching girls to get married before they have babies. Let me channel P.J. O'Rourke for a moment: they can't even deliver my mail, and it's got my name right on it and everything. I misdoubt that the Department of Education has the mojo to keep impulsive 15 year olds on the straight and narrow.

Nonetheless, this is a better effort than I've so far seen. For the first time, Romney seems to be more dynamic than his hair. This is probably a little late to break out the dynamism, though.

Favorite line: "the source of America's greatness is the American people." One can only imagine what a campaign issue this would be for the Democrats if we'd already shifted the production of American greatness to China . . .

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