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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.

Whalin' on Palin

By Megan McArdle
Sep 11 2008, 8:00 PM ET Comment

Katha Pollitt has some questions for Sarah Palin.  Fair enough, but I can pick out at least two that I bet, before writing this article, Katha Pollitt could not have answered to my satisfaction.  Heck, five gets you ten that neither Joe Biden nor Barack Obama can correctly describe the Fed's main activities.  And the first question seems to indicate that Ms. Pollitt is not only unable to reason clearly from some fairly simple first principles, but literally incapable of imagining anyone else doing same.  Halfway through I found myself halfway seriously wondering when Ms. Pollitt had started writing for McCain/Palin '08.

I haven't watched the interview yet, but my understanding is that, as I have been predicting (privately to friends, unfortunately, rather than in public where I could take credit), she came out looking like a moron on foreign policy.  Her lack of knowledge worries me rather less than most people, since if McCain dies in office she'll probably have had at least as long to bone up on crucial foreign policy issues as Barack Obama has had.  But I don't see how you can vote for a candidate without being able to assess their foreign policy reasoning, which is a tad difficult if they have no facts to reason from.

Update  A commenter on Marginal Revolution complains that she thought Fannie and Freddie were government entities.  I think we have to give her a pass on this, given how many of the world's central bankers made the same mistake.


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