People who follow the politics in the USA knows host stupid the people in the system can be.
I’m watching Citizen Tube here http://www.youtube.com/citizentube?feature=ticker on the Healthcare summit. I’m seriously envious of them right now. When we have senators who are hitting each other with personal snide remarks. When most of the questions that are being asked in Presidential forums are not up to snuff, Simply put I have no Idea who has the policy-fu down pat. Who knows basic economics, basic public policy etc. Damn. and you have self styled pundit who really know nothing.
rePost::Foreign investors shunning Philippines: experts | ABS-CBN News Online Beta
If we are hard headed about this the huge remittances of Filipino overseas workers can be thought of as investment. We have a postive balance of payments, we need to marshal these resources and create a focused try at finding our comparative advantage and try to develop industries that we can be world leaders in.
Wallace said the Philippines had enjoyed low inflation and high international reserves and a stable balance of payments under Arroyo.
But he attributed this to the actions of the central bank and the huge remittances of millions of Filipinos working overseas.
He said most Asian countries, except small ones such as Cambodia and East Timor, were getting more foreign investment than the Philippines.
AYC Consultants economist Benvenuto Icamina said that, to attract more investment, the Philippines would need to revise certain “discriminatory taxation” policies that favor local companies over foreign ones.
He also said the country needed to upgrade and modernize its infrastructure while improving its governance and cutting “non-tariff barriers” such as red tape.
via Foreign investors shunning Philippines: experts | ABS-CBN News Online Beta.
rePost::Bronte Capital: Globalizing the Australian Intergenerational Report – thinking about long term sovereign solvency in Australia, the US, New Zealand, Japan and China
Read the whole thing.
This is a post about long term solvency – the things that we do now that determine whether we have an economic crisis in twenty or thirty years. In that sense this is a post about Australia, the US, New Zealand, Canada and Japan and possibly even China. The PIGS have rolled their dice. Most the rest of us are still shaking the dice in the tumbler.
via Bronte Capital: Globalizing the Australian Intergenerational Report – thinking about long term sovereign solvency in Australia, the US, New Zealand, Japan and China.
Elink Video:: "Fear the Boom and Bust" a Hayek vs. Keynes Rap Anthem
We’ve been going back and forth for a century
[Keynes] I want to steer markets,
[Hayek] I want them set free
There’s a boom and bust cycle and good reason to fear it
[Hayek] Blame low interest rates.
[Keynes] No… it’s the animal spirits
[Keynes Sings:]
John Maynard Keynes, wrote the book on modern macro
The man you need when the economy’s off track, [whoa]
Depression, recession now your question’s in session
Have a seat and I’ll school you in one simple lesson
BOOM, 1929 the big crash
We didn’t bounce back—economy’s in the trash
Persistent unemployment, the result of sticky wages
Waiting for recovery? Seriously? That’s outrageous!
I had a real plan any fool can understand
The advice, real simple—boost aggregate demand!
C, I, G, all together gets to Y
Make sure the total’s growing, watch the economy fly
We’ve been going back and forth for a century
[Keynes] I want to steer markets,
[Hayek] I want them set free
There’s a boom and bust cycle and good reason to fear it
[Hayek] Blame low interest rates.
[Keynes] No… it’s the animal spirits
You see it’s all about spending, hear the register cha-ching
Circular flow, the dough is everything
So if that flow is getting low, doesn’t matter the reason
We need more government spending, now it’s stimulus season
So forget about saving, get it straight out of your head
Like I said, in the long run—we’re all dead
Savings is destruction, that’s the paradox of thrift
Don’t keep money in your pocket, or that growth will never lift…
because…
Business is driven by the animal spirits
The bull and the bear, and there’s reason to fear its
Effects on capital investment, income and growth
That’s why the state should fill the gap with stimulus both…
The monetary and the fiscal, they’re equally correct
Public works, digging ditches, war has the same effect
Even a broken window helps the glass man have some wealth
The multiplier driving higher the economy’s health
And if the Central Bank’s interest rate policy tanks
A liquidity trap, that new money’s stuck in the banks!
Deficits could be the cure, you been looking for
Let the spending soar, now that you know the score
My General Theory’s made quite an impression
[a revolution] I transformed the econ profession
You know me, modesty, still I’m taking a bow
Say it loud, say it proud, we’re all Keynesians now
We’ve been goin’ back n forth for a century
[Keynes] I want to steer markets,
[Hayek] I want them set free
There’s a boom and bust cycle and good reason to fear it
[Keynes] I made my case, Freddie H
Listen up , Can you hear it?
Hayek sings:
I’ll begin in broad strokes, just like my friend Keynes
His theory conceals the mechanics of change,
That simple equation, too much aggregation
Ignores human action and motivation
And yet it continues as a justification
For bailouts and payoffs by pols with machinations
You provide them with cover to sell us a free lunch
Then all that we’re left with is debt, and a bunch
If you’re living high on that cheap credit hog
Don’t look for cure from the hair of the dog
Real savings come first if you want to invest
The market coordinates time with interest
Your focus on spending is pushing on thread
In the long run, my friend, it’s your theory that’s dead
So sorry there, buddy, if that sounds like invective
Prepared to get schooled in my Austrian perspective
We’ve been going back and forth for a century
[Keynes] I want to steer markets,
[Hayek] I want them set free
There’s a boom and bust cycle and good reason to fear it
[Hayek] Blame low interest rates.
[Keynes] No… it’s the animal spirits
The place you should study isn’t the bust
It’s the boom that should make you feel leery, that’s the thrust
Of my theory, the capital structure is key.
Malinvestments wreck the economy
The boom gets started with an expansion of credit
The Fed sets rates low, are you starting to get it?
That new money is confused for real loanable funds
But it’s just inflation that’s driving the ones
Who invest in new projects like housing construction
The boom plants the seeds for its future destruction
The savings aren’t real, consumption’s up too
And the grasping for resources reveals there’s too few
So the boom turns to bust as the interest rates rise
With the costs of production, price signals were lies
The boom was a binge that’s a matter of fact
Now its devalued capital that makes up the slack.
Whether it’s the late twenties or two thousand and five
Booming bad investments, seems like they’d thrive
You must save to invest, don’t use the printing press
Or a bust will surely follow, an economy depressed
Your so-called “stimulus” will make things even worse
It’s just more of the same, more incentives perversed
And that credit crunch ain’t a liquidity trap
Just a broke banking system, I’m done, that’s a wrap.
We’ve been goin’ back n forth for a century
[Keynes] I want to steer markets,
[Hayek] I want them set free
There’s a boom and bust cycle and good reason to fear it
[Hayek] Blame low interest rates.
[Keynes] No it’s the animal spirits
“The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.”
John Maynard Keynes
The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money
“The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”
F A Hayek
The Fatal Conceit
from here : http://www.econstories.tv/home.html
[Keynes] I want to steer markets,
[Hayek] I want them set free
There’s a boom and bust cycle and good reason to fear it
[Hayek] Blame low interest rates.
[Keynes] No… it’s the animal spirits
[Keynes Sings:]
John Maynard Keynes, wrote the book on modern macro
The man you need when the economy’s off track, [whoa]
Depression, recession now your question’s in session
Have a seat and I’ll school you in one simple lesson
BOOM, 1929 the big crash
We didn’t bounce back—economy’s in the trash
Persistent unemployment, the result of sticky wages
Waiting for recovery? Seriously? That’s outrageous!
I had a real plan any fool can understand
The advice, real simple—boost aggregate demand!
C, I, G, all together gets to Y
Make sure the total’s growing, watch the economy fly
We’ve been going back and forth for a century
[Keynes] I want to steer markets,
[Hayek] I want them set free
There’s a boom and bust cycle and good reason to fear it
[Hayek] Blame low interest rates.
[Keynes] No… it’s the animal spirits
You see it’s all about spending, hear the register cha-ching
Circular flow, the dough is everything
So if that flow is getting low, doesn’t matter the reason
We need more government spending, now it’s stimulus season
So forget about saving, get it straight out of your head
Like I said, in the long run—we’re all dead
Savings is destruction, that’s the paradox of thrift
Don’t keep money in your pocket, or that growth will never lift…
because…
Business is driven by the animal spirits
The bull and the bear, and there’s reason to fear its
Effects on capital investment, income and growth
That’s why the state should fill the gap with stimulus both…
The monetary and the fiscal, they’re equally correct
Public works, digging ditches, war has the same effect
Even a broken window helps the glass man have some wealth
The multiplier driving higher the economy’s health
And if the Central Bank’s interest rate policy tanks
A liquidity trap, that new money’s stuck in the banks!
Deficits could be the cure, you been looking for
Let the spending soar, now that you know the score
My General Theory’s made quite an impression
[a revolution] I transformed the econ profession
You know me, modesty, still I’m taking a bow
Say it loud, say it proud, we’re all Keynesians now
We’ve been goin’ back n forth for a century
[Keynes] I want to steer markets,
[Hayek] I want them set free
There’s a boom and bust cycle and good reason to fear it
[Keynes] I made my case, Freddie H
Listen up , Can you hear it?
Hayek sings:
I’ll begin in broad strokes, just like my friend Keynes
His theory conceals the mechanics of change,
That simple equation, too much aggregation
Ignores human action and motivation
And yet it continues as a justification
For bailouts and payoffs by pols with machinations
You provide them with cover to sell us a free lunch
Then all that we’re left with is debt, and a bunch
If you’re living high on that cheap credit hog
Don’t look for cure from the hair of the dog
Real savings come first if you want to invest
The market coordinates time with interest
Your focus on spending is pushing on thread
In the long run, my friend, it’s your theory that’s dead
So sorry there, buddy, if that sounds like invective
Prepared to get schooled in my Austrian perspective
We’ve been going back and forth for a century
[Keynes] I want to steer markets,
[Hayek] I want them set free
There’s a boom and bust cycle and good reason to fear it
[Hayek] Blame low interest rates.
[Keynes] No… it’s the animal spirits
The place you should study isn’t the bust
It’s the boom that should make you feel leery, that’s the thrust
Of my theory, the capital structure is key.
Malinvestments wreck the economy
The boom gets started with an expansion of credit
The Fed sets rates low, are you starting to get it?
That new money is confused for real loanable funds
But it’s just inflation that’s driving the ones
Who invest in new projects like housing construction
The boom plants the seeds for its future destruction
The savings aren’t real, consumption’s up too
And the grasping for resources reveals there’s too few
So the boom turns to bust as the interest rates rise
With the costs of production, price signals were lies
The boom was a binge that’s a matter of fact
Now its devalued capital that makes up the slack.
Whether it’s the late twenties or two thousand and five
Booming bad investments, seems like they’d thrive
You must save to invest, don’t use the printing press
Or a bust will surely follow, an economy depressed
Your so-called “stimulus” will make things even worse
It’s just more of the same, more incentives perversed
And that credit crunch ain’t a liquidity trap
Just a broke banking system, I’m done, that’s a wrap.
We’ve been goin’ back n forth for a century
[Keynes] I want to steer markets,
[Hayek] I want them set free
There’s a boom and bust cycle and good reason to fear it
[Hayek] Blame low interest rates.
[Keynes] No it’s the animal spirits
“The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.”
John Maynard Keynes
The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money
“The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”
F A Hayek
The Fatal Conceit
from here : http://www.econstories.tv/home.html
rePost::The True Secret of Female MBA’s? – Freakonomics Blog – NYTimes.com
“This is a strange twist. Many of the best and brightest women in the U.S. get an MBA so they can earn high wages, but they end up marrying the best and brightest men, who also earn high wages — which affords these women the luxury of not having to work so much. … Perhaps they never would have met such husbands if they hadn’t gone to business school.”
Would you cut us some slack? I think we are smarter than you give us credit for! Especially for two guys who are willing to go back 20-plus years to understand that the drop in crime in the 1990’s was due to the outcome of Roe v. Wade! You need a similarly long perspective on this issue because you are missing the boat.
Many of us — here’s the surprise — got our MBAs precisely because we wanted to have children and work, and we knew we wouldn’t be able to recover from the economic hit nearly as well unless we had an MBA to accelerate us back up the speed ramp when we re-entered the workforce post-child-raising! In fact, one could argue that having an MBA helps on the pregnancy end too, with presumably higher skills and therefore occasionally higher leverage to negotiate a better childcare leave than we might have otherwise.
via The True Secret of Female MBA’s? – Freakonomics Blog – NYTimes.com.
ROTD::Do Working Men Rebel? Insurgency and Unemployment
Do Working Men Rebel? Insurgency and Unemployment in Iraq and the Philippines
Most aid spending by governments seeking to rebuild social and political order is based on an opportunity-cost theory of distracting potential recruits. The logic is that gainfully employed young men are less likely to participate in political violence, implying a positive correlation between unemployment and violence in places with active insurgencies. We test that prediction on insurgencies in Iraq and the Philippines, using survey data on unemployment and two newly- available measures of insurgency: (1) attacks against government and allied forces; and (2) violence that kills civilians. Contrary to the opportunity-cost theory, we find a robust negative correlation between unemployment and attacks against government and allied forces and no significant relationship between unemployment and the rate of insurgent attacks that kill civilians. [Emphasis mine]
via Do Working Men Rebel? Insurgency and Unemployment.
This is discouraging. Please remember that GMA is still an economist and in some accounts a sharp person. Does this mean that keeping people in poverty a viable strategy in minimizing rebellion? It seems to be what the warlords and government are actually doing.
Petron and the Healthcare Debate::The public option as a signal – Paul Krugman Blog – NYTimes.com
When petron was a government owned company, they were able to distort the supply curves because they were in essence the regulatory arm of the government. If the outcry was large enough shell and caltex may increase their prices but petron’s price does not move. What’s interesting in the case of the philippines is that petron was sold to foreign interests and afterwards the oil industry was deregulated. Double whammy to the Filipino people. Our government does not have the balls and probably the manpower to effectively police what is in effect price collusions of oil industry players. The solution is string institutions but I guess that is near impossible for us right now. Buy back petron would be second best with the least amount of complications, although where we are going to get the money, I don’t know. Maybe a few of Pres GMA’s entourage could chip in!
The public option as a signal
Look, it is possible to have universal care without a public option; Switzerland does. But there are some good reasons for the prominence of the public option in our debate.
One is substantive: to have a workable system without the public option, you need to have effective regulation of the insurers. Given the realities of our money-dominated politics, you really have to worry whether that can be done — which is a reason to have a more or less automatic mechanism for disciplining the industry.
via The public option as a signal – Paul Krugman Blog – NYTimes.com.
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Learned Today: Popularity~Success:The Economic Value of Popularity – Freakonomics Blog – NYTimes.com
- Image by peterjaena via Flickr
Thanks to Tyler Cowen of Marginal revolutions for the pointer here, I think his points are interesting and quite valid.
AS for my views.; There is a certain rhythm to interacting with people. There is a certain rhythm in being friends with people. Honestly I had to learn that whole thing in college. Compare the highschool me and the me now, I was socially inept and something of jerk. Now I’m still a jerk, less socially inept , but this is mainly because I learned the types of people that I can interact well with.
And that is I think the thing, Because I am less scared with social interactions now I tend to meet more people now than I used to. I have to credit the understanding that people tend to be good. This knowledge help me to be less afraid of going to situations where interactions were totally not in my control.
How did I gradually become less socially inept?
-Striking up conversations with random people. Helped overcome this fear of talking with people. For me this is easier because I can make myself believe that even if I say something stupid, we are not going to see each other again.
-Striking up conversations with people not really part of your circle of friends but you see relatively often. After having a feel for small talk try talking with people you normally encounter, this may include the office security, custodians, or office mates from different departments.
-Going to clubs(not night clubs, hobby clubs etc)/meetups/organization. This might mean volunteering for something, or doing something together like hobbyist events. You get to meet like minded people, and chances are good that you have at least one topic of common interest!
-Reconnecting with peole form the past. This may mean a simple poke in facebook, or a private message in one of the tens of hundreds of social networks now existing. From personal experience this is best done when combined with actual face to face time. Like if you saw someone at a mall or a grocery but you can’t talk for some reason, or its his/her birthday. From the experience of a friend you may freak out some people if you suggest meeting up to catch up on old times, so this I believe is best done when there is an excuse, like homecoming etc.
-Face to Face meetups are important to personalise increasingly mobile/online connections. This must be done with care because as I stated earlier you may freak out some people. If you are meeting people you used to know well but has since lost touch with; best if you leave you old impressions of him or her ot turn your filter down a little. Remember that change is constant and some people reinvent themselves constantly. If you are meeting someone for the first time my advice would be leave your prejudice or what I call isms at home. Don’t judge people automatically or if you can’t do that at least try to act friendly towards everyone, Its easy to cutoff connections with people Its hard to create connections so don’t let superficial things get in the way of a possible real (not just online) friendship.
hope the few notes help my imaginary reader! have any more advice for people who are socially inept???
They find that each extra close friend in high school is associated with earnings that are 2 percent higher later in life after controlling for other factors. While not a huge effect, it does suggest that either that a) the same factors that make you popular in high school help you in a job setting, or b) that high-school friends can do you favors later in life that will earn you higher wages.
The Economic Value of Popularity – Freakonomics Blog – NYTimes.com.
rePost: Excellent Ranty Advice from Paul Wilmott:Paul Wilmott's Blog: Copulas and Cults
- Image via Wikipedia
Can’t say I blame him. People generally hate being different in a real way. The way I observe things, it seems most people just want to stand-out in the center of attention kind of way and not in the different trailblazing kind of way that I admire!
What you think of as just you job consumes probably from 2-10 hours of a 24 hour day. If you add in all the stuff you do because of work like commuting/preparing reports outside office hours/even shopping for office clothes/stuff etc . You can’t deny that what you call as just your job consists of the majority of your usable waking hours.
We need to take charge of our lives and have pride in what we do, and as human beings we have the capacity to think and analyze complex stuff. Why are we not doing exactly that?
As for the picture, for somer strange reason Zemanta thinks it’s relevant!
But that’s only part of the problem. Far more serious, because it extends to all of finance not just to a single model, is the poor education that people get in university financial engineering programs and also the blind-following-the-blind behaviour that is so common throughout the industry.
The copula model is not robust to changes in model assumptions. Black-Scholes is. Did you know that? Or maybe I’m wrong. Would you like to know the truth?
Yes, I could tell you. I could spoonfeed you. You’ve got used to being spoonfed, haven’t you? But you’re passing the buck there, putting an awful lot of responsibility on my shoulders. I can cope, as I’m sure David Li can cope. But you’re a big boy/girl now, you should be able to think for yourself. Isn’t that part of your job description?
It’s getting quite tedious me telling people to get off their backsides and test the models for themselves. Don’t believe anything I say, don’t believe anything Nassim, also quoted in the Salmon article, says. Question everything. Switch your brains back on.
Paul Wilmott’s Blog: Copulas and Cults.
-rePost-Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed: Y2K, the Credit Crisis, and the Rosencrantz Fallacy
- Image by rymix via Flickr
I think one big thing that is different here is that in most of those systems the snowball effect is less than in the financial system. But I have to say that I feel for the sentiment and hope that the small individual actions of each company/individual/Government end up to be enough to fix things!
But then it didn’t happen. January 1st 2000 went by, and pretty much nothing happened. While some people then pronounced that the whole Y2K thing had been a fraud, the truth was much more interesting and important. It hadn’t been a fraud; there had been real and consequential risks in important and complex systems. If those problems hadn’t have been addressed, many of the consequences imagined by the apocalypticists might well have happened. We could, in the limit, have been facing real breakdowns in societal fabric.
So, why didn’t the worst happen? In part what happened is this: People acted. While they were late, slow, stupid, and error-prone, they did what people do when a big enough alarm bell is rung loudly and long enough: They tried to figure out what they could do in the time they had to reduce their risk, and they did those things. They didn’t think other people would get there, but they knew they would.
Paul Kedrosky’s Infectious Greed.