| Free Market = Fail |
[May. 14th, 2008|06:25 pm] |
Q: How should the government respond to record food prices and fattened margin?
A: $40,000,000,000 in subsidies of course. |
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| Who is an economist? |
[May. 7th, 2008|09:17 am] |
I've never understood what economics is really. More to the point, I've never understood what it takes to be called an economist. It's such a broad and fuzzy field, and one with a certain amount of cache in a capitalist world, that you get all kinds of wannabes and pretenders, hacks and shills, all calling themselves economists.
When it comes to reading about day to day economic activities, I generally prefer reading the insights of those who get dirty in the job of working with money to those who stayed clean. The main reason has a lot to do with credibility, markets and cost. When your job or income depend on you being right about your interpretation of economic information, you're much more likely to try and get it right. On the other hand, when there is no cost for being wrong you're more likely to just throw out random opines as if they meant something.
Consider these two contrasting posts about the current economic contraction from people who purport to know something about economics.
Greg Mankiw.
Barry Ritholtz.
The first is a guy who teaches econ 101 at Harvard, and the second is CEO of an equity research firm. The first post, like many of Mankiw's posts, is sparsely populated by words or insight. The post comes across more as a rhetorical barb or gotcha than as economic insight. Stranger still, the content of the post not only suggests that he doesn't know the definition of the word recession, but also doesn't seem to be aware that economic data is often revised. On the other side of the coin Ritholtz, a guy who actually makes money from his interpretations, goes through a lengthy analysis of historic data, and comes to a very different conclusion than the superficial non-analysis of Mankiw.
So there is this great difficulty when it comes to weighing the words of economists. Is the economist one of the ones that actually do their homework, or have they moved to a higher plane where truth is communicated to them from on high? Do they have any skin in the game, or if they are wrong will they just be on a different channel tomorrow?
In a lot of ways parsing economic information is like parsing scientific information, not only do you have to be able to assign a credibility score to the actual information, but you've also got to be able to correctly judge the messenger as well. Neither of these things are easy to do, and in the process of digesting all of this information it's very easy to confuse facts with quotes, and quotes with truth. |
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| The little bits of history you barely know + cultural pseudo-ramblings |
[May. 4th, 2008|11:19 pm] |
Aparently FM radio became the majority radio in 1978. Back then, I was in something like 2nd grade, and had just discovered radio. I remember distinctly listening to KDWB, which had a station on AM and FM. I remember thinking how cool it was that on AM they were "63 KDWB". It was an almost Seussian alphanumeric rhyme for name. Nowadays, AM is a backroads of all kinds of strangeness, kind of like short-wave was back when I was in 2nd grade.
Of course, in time I drifted towards WLOL, 99.5 "Almost Perfect Radio". This was probably in no small part due to their circa 1980 commercial of a Bo Derek look-alike running down the beach and tripping over a sandcastle. |
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| Boy Training |
[Apr. 30th, 2008|04:15 pm] |
Sometimes he throws the ball like an insane monkey.
That's ok, isn't it?
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| A rose by any other name... |
[Apr. 25th, 2008|10:15 am] |
One of my math professors used to frequently ask the rhetorical question; "If you call an elephants trunk a leg, how many legs does it have?"
In a similar vein, I present the following chart, found at the wonderous weblog The Big Picture.
Inflation is currently comparable to the rate of inflation in 1981. That is to say, if we use the methodology from 1981, the inflation number is roughly the same. Of course, the logical question is; "What did we call an elephant's trunk in 1981?" |
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| Mish Characterizes the American Electorate |
[Apr. 15th, 2008|10:02 am] |
In a fit of video posting euphoria, Mish pushes a spate of election videos. Most of them are worth watching, but as one might expect the classics are always the best:
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| National debt as a fucntion of President |
[Apr. 7th, 2008|02:58 pm] |
Administration Party Years change in debt/GDP
Roosevelt/Truman D 1945-1949 -24.30%
Harry Truman D 1949-1953 -21.90%
Dwight Eisenhower R 1953-1957 -10.80%
Dwight Eisenhower R 1957-1961 - 5.40%
Kennedy/Johnson D 1961-1965 - 8.20%
Lyndon Johnson D 1965-1969 - 8.30%
Richard Nixon R 1969-1973 - 2.90%
Nixon/Ford R 1973-1977 0.10%
Jimmy Carter D 1977-1981 - 3.20%
Ronald Reagan R 1981-1985 11.30%
Ronald Reagan R 1985-1989 9.20%
George H. W. Bush R 1989-1993 15.10%
Bill Clinton D 1993-1997 - 0.60%
Bill Clinton D 1997-2001 - 8.20%
George W. Bush R 2001-2005 6.90%
George W. Bush R 2005-2009 3.90% projection
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| Global Temperature trends |
[Apr. 4th, 2008|08:31 am] |
Today, ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) schmengie and I made a wager of $100 that the temperatures of the next five years will be warmer than those of the last five years. Some details need to be worked out, like what the years are, and which temperatures are used. I propose the following definitions:
last five years: 2003-2007
next five years: 2008-2012
temperature source: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts.txt
Book it, schmengie?
Anyone else care to book it? I have the "warming" side, of course. :) |
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| Nature vs. Nurture? Nature wins again! |
[Mar. 31st, 2008|08:16 am] |
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| You Tube Rabbit Hole |
[Mar. 30th, 2008|11:10 am] |
Watched some contact juggling on patrissimo's journal, and found my way to a great "anti-drug" message:
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| Econoblog sniping |
[Mar. 30th, 2008|09:59 am] |
I'm not much for grand statement of partisan wibbly-wobbley. But I do find this little sniper shot quite amusing.
In one corner, we have Tanta, a relativly anonymous nuts and bolts economics nerd of the pratcial and practiced variety.
In the other corner, we have Megan McArdle, an armchair pontificator of the highest degree.
Needless to say, the lady who's actually been around the block dozens of times on her own two feet does a much better job of parsing reality.
summary adendum: In a world where idiots make bad loans to idiots, no one should be surprised when any number of things go wrong. There is no place for sympathy (or lack thereof) for either idiot in the discussion of how to clean up the mess. |
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| Mottos to live by |
[Mar. 28th, 2008|07:21 pm] |
You can pick your nose,
You can pick your baby's nose,
But you can't pick your baby. |
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| I honestly can't believe people watch CNN, MSNBC, FOX et al |
[Mar. 28th, 2008|09:21 am] |
When you can watch The Newshour and Frontline instead.
It just boggles the mind.
Just started watching Bush's War.
So much better than yammering heads babbling about their talking points. And to think, the NYT recently suggested that PBS was irrelevant. |
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| Bottom feeders time to wake up |
[Mar. 26th, 2008|04:18 pm] |
And so it begins, housing prices have deteriorated to a sustainable level for the first time in over a decade. It's difficult to see because the dollar is worth shit, and we price houses in dollars, not loaves of bread. Of course, there's talk of a commodity bubble as well so what looks like the beginning of the end may only be the end of the beginning.
Regardless, it's time to stop lamenting how we can't afford houses and start to look for steals generated by exerting pressure on motivated sellers. This summer should be the best time for lowballing broken souls. Of course, there's probably not much point in buying if you can't get at least 10% off the value (not asking price) of the home.
Happy hunting! |
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| I just realized |
[Mar. 23rd, 2008|12:03 am] |
It's no accident that all games of Civilization start at 4000 BC.
Happy Zombie Day. |
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| The Law Of Unintended Consequences |
[Mar. 20th, 2008|06:44 pm] |
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peak oil + biofuels = expensive bread |
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| Sans-a-cat |
[Mar. 20th, 2008|02:55 pm] |
timprov posted a link to Garfield Minus a while back. Usually, Jon looks like your regular psychotic recluse, but soemtimes I actually laugh out loud:
[Boring personal backstory: In sixth grade I became a huge Garfield fan, collecting books posters mugs, stuffed animals. I dunno if that makes these strips more or less funny to me.] |
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| What I learned in Threshold 2008 |
[Mar. 17th, 2008|10:47 am] |
So marknau and gunga_galunga asked what came out of Threshold 2008.
The most important thing I learned is that cities and counties in California get more revenue from commercial use of land than residential use of land. Because of this, there has been disproportionate investment rates leading to an imbalance. So if you want to solve the problem on a smaller region basis, the imbalance needs to be corrected. Ways to solve the problem include:
1) drive out business
2) build more housing
3) a combination of the two
4) or push the solution out to the broader
But until the underlying incentive bias is corrected, the problem will persist. There seemed to be very little political will to correct this revenue bias. Ergo, there will be no solution until the system collapses under it's own weight. |
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