My ordinally-numbered mental list ranking exes by their craziness needs to be reordered. But the nice thing about a post like this is that the craziest ones will suffer from the Carly Simon effect. ("Why do you say that? Have you done anything recently that should change my perception of your relative craziness?")

In a glum twelve months of investing where my portfolio dropped in value over 40% from its peak at one point (up nearly 25% since then, but you can do the math and see that isn't even half of what I lost), I thought I was a genius for buying Bear Stearns at $4.10 and flipping at $5.70. Apparently, I could have been even geniusier.

Here, if only as a block quote of the earlier inaccurate Rosen piece. Twenty years ago, my New Republic subscription had me aspiring to be one of the people with bylines in the magazine. Of course, since then, TNR has zigged left, and I've zagged right as I've gotten more educated and well-read, so that precise instantiation of the aspiration isn't going to happen, but it has a lot to do with the pay cut I've taken.