"Let me tell you the basics of risk communication, and then I want to apply them, a little bit, to bird flu. The fundamental principle of risk communication can be summarized in a number, [which] is the correlation between how much harm a risk does and how upset people get about it. If you look at a long list of risks, and you rank them in order of how upset people get [about them], then you rank them again in order of how much harm they do, then you correlate the two, you get a glorious 0.2.
Those of you who remember your statistics know you can square a correlation coefficient to get the percentage of variance accounted for: If you square 0.2, you get 0.04, or 4% of the variance.
That is, the risks that kill people and the risks that upset people are completely different. If you know that a risk kills people, you have no idea whether it upsets them or not. If you know it upsets them, you have no idea whether it kills them or not."

1. Bank lending to nonfinancial corporations and individuals has declined sharply.
2. Interbank lending is essentially nonexistent.
3. Commercial paper issuance by nonfinancial corporations has declined sharply and rates have risen to unprecedented levels.
4. Banks play a large role in channeling funds from savers to borrowers.

A funny but perhaps true flowchart from 235.com.

“The race for president between Barack Obama and John McCain has been going on for close to 17 years now, and yet still—still!—there are some voters who haven’t made up their minds about whom to vote for. Who are these undecideds, and what could possibly be going on in their tiny, tiny brains?”

A nice summary on voter irrationality from Larry Bartels:

“While voters are busy meting out myopic, ­simple-­minded rewards and punishments, political observers are often busy exaggerating the policy content of the voters’ verdicts. The prime example in American political history may be the watershed New Deal election of 1936. Having swept into office on a strong tide of economic discontent in 1932, Franklin Roosevelt initiated a series of wide-ranging new policies to cope with the Great Depression. According to the most authoritative political scholar of the era, V. O. Key, “The voters responded with a resounding ratification of the new thrust of governmental policy”—a stunning 46-state landslide that ushered in an era of Democratic electoral ­dominance.24

The 1936 election has become the most celebrated textbook case of ideological realignment in American history. However, a careful look at ­state-­by-­state voting patterns suggests that this resounding ratification of Roosevelt’s policies was strongly concentrated in the states that happened to enjoy robust income growth in the months leading up to the vote. Indeed, the apparent impact of ­short-­term economic conditions was so powerful that, if the recession of 1938 had occurred in 1936, Roosevelt probably would have been a ­one-­term ­president.25

It’s not only in the United States that the ­Depression-­era tendency to “throw the bums out” looks like something less than a rational policy judgment. In the United States, voters replaced Republicans with Democrats in 1932 and the economy improved. In Britain and Australia, voters replaced Labor governments with conservatives and the economy im­proved. In Sweden, voters replaced Conservatives with Liberals, then with Social Democrats, and the economy improved. In the Canadian agricultural province of Saskatchewan, voters replaced Conservatives with Socialists and the economy improved. In the adjacent agricultural province of Alberta, voters replaced a socialist party with a right-leaning party created from scratch by a charismatic radio preacher peddling a flighty ­share-­the-­wealth scheme, and the economy improved. In Weimar Germany, where economic distress was deeper and ­longer ­lasting, voters rejected all of the mainstream parties, the Nazis seized power, and the economy improved. In every case, the party that happened to be in power when the Depression eased went on to dominate politics for a decade or more thereafter. It seems far-fetched to imagine that all these contradictory shifts represented ­well-­considered ideological conversions. A more parsimonious interpretation is that voters ­simply—­and ­simple-­mindedly—­rewarded whoever happened to be in power when things got ­better.

Stupid? No, just human. And ­thus—­to borrow the title of another current ­best­seller, by behavioral economist Dan ­Ariely—­“predictably irrational.” That may be bad ­enough.”

Via realclearpolitics–This is what the the Washington Post wrote on Sunday:

Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign intends to avoid a (2004) repeat by building an
organization modeled in part on what Karl Rove used to engineer Bush’s victory:
a heavy reliance on local volunteers to pitch to their own neighbors,
micro-targeting techniques to identify persuadable independents and Republicans
using consumer data, and a focus on exurban and rural areas. But in scale and
ambition, the Obama organization goes beyond even what Rove built. The campaign
has used its record-breaking fundraising to open more than 700 offices in more
than a dozen battleground states, pay several thousand organizers and manage
tens of thousands more volunteers.

And this is what Gallup has to say regarding how this get out the vote strategy may affect its survey-weighting methods:

Likely Voter Estimates
“Obama’s current advantage is slightly less when estimating the preferences of likely voters, which Gallup will begin reporting on a regular basis between now and the election. Gallup is providing two likely voter estimates to take into account different turnout scenarios.
The first likely voter model is based on Gallup’s traditional likely voter assumptions,which determine respondents’ likelihood to vote based on how they answer questions about their current voting intention and past voting behavior. According to this model, Obama’s advantage over McCain is 50% to 46% in Oct. 9-11 tracking data.
The second likely voter estimate is a variation on the traditional model, but is only based on respondents’ current voting intention. This model would take into account increased voter registration this year and possibly higher turnout among groups that are traditionally less likely to vote, such as young adults and racial minorities (Gallup will continue to monitor and report on turnout indicators by subgroup between now and the election). According to this second likely voter model, Obama has a 51% to 45% lead over McCain. “
(Click here to see how the race currently breaks down by demographic subgroup.)

And for the “registered voters” sample, the figures are 50% Obama, 43% McCain. This means that the different weighting method leads to three different forecasts, with margins of victory ranging from a 4 to 7 percent lead in favor of Obama. With sampling errors of roughly 2%, the weighting method will be crucial in predicting heavily contested states such as Virginia.