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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. She is currently on leave.
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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.

But seriously, folks

By Megan McArdle
Feb 11 2009, 7:13 PM ET Comment

I sat here in front of my television and laughed at Maxine Waters, because her apparently random ramblings are a true spectacle.  One laughs because one can't cry.  But this woman is sitting on the House Financial Services Committee.  She is supposed to help craft the bills that govern our financial system.  And she clearly doesn't have the first shred of an inkling of a clue of how said financial system works.  Her questions had the air of someone who couldn't quite wrap her mind around the complexities of the E-Z Reader consumer activist pamphlets from which she had presumably cribbed them.

That's not really funny.  This is the crack talent that's supposed to reform the banking system into something more robust?  Imagine how you'd feel if any of the folks who didn't seem to grasp the distinction between Bank of America and State Street showed up to represent you at your closing.  Save everyone a lot of time and aggravation, and declare bankruptcy on the spot, hmmm?


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