Category: Economics, Finance, and Political Economy

  • ON THE DEATH OF TWINKIES BY FED POLICY “There is plenty of blame to go around, i

    http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2012/11/hostess-fires-15000-workers-twinkies.htmlMISH ON THE DEATH OF TWINKIES BY FED POLICY

    “There is plenty of blame to go around, including untenable wages and benefits, leveraged debt, untenable management salaries etc.

    However, the enabling factor behind the debt is loose monetary policy by the Fed coupled with fractional reserve lending. Factor in unions and corrupt management and there is no way the company could make it without huge concessions from the union.

    The union will likely see pension benefits slashed by 50% or more when handed over to the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (PBGC). The PBGC is of course US taxpayers who should not have to pick up any of this tab at all (but they will).”

    Read more at http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2012/11/hostess-fires-15000-workers-twinkies.html#VWB2xVMuqKHmsbxe.99


    Source date (UTC): 2012-11-23 07:44:00 UTC

  • THE ERROR IN ROTHBARDS PRAXEOLOGY TO INTRANITIVE PREFERENCES Priceless post. Pre

    http://fensel.net/2012/11/16/intransitive-preferences-and-the-money-pump-argument/TYING THE ERROR IN ROTHBARDS PRAXEOLOGY TO INTRANITIVE PREFERENCES

    Priceless post.

    Preferences are a network – a map, a graph – not a hierarchy or a stack.

    Moreover, when preferences are cleared, the network is satisfied, not the node. Even though we only have visibility into the preference exposed by the physical exchange.

    This is the fundamental problem with praxeological thought that equates the simplicity of commodities for which the network consists of little more than price, with consumer goods that at least within any price range consist largely of signals. And signals consist in no small part, of contributions both supportive and competitive to norms.

    Preferences are not linear, they are sets of values on a graph. And as such, those that appear intransitive are so only because the label that we give to them represents only one item in the (large) set. We make a logical error when we attribute linearity to the label or name, which is only a subset of the values of the set of values that constitute any preference. This confuses the convenience of the label with the inconvenient and often opaque contents of the set.


    Source date (UTC): 2012-11-16 00:46:00 UTC

  • NO ONE KNOWS WHERE THE ECONOMY IS GOING Well. Less so than usual. It’s easy to l

    NO ONE KNOWS WHERE THE ECONOMY IS GOING

    Well. Less so than usual. It’s easy to look smart during a boom. The arrow is in flight. We only need to watch its arc.

    But Europe fell back into recession and its confirmed as of today. And I don’t see why the USA won’t as well. I thought that we’d stimulate like hell but I can’t see any sings that the status quo will change in congress or the fed.

    But I’m not following the numbers. I’m following the people that follow the numbers. And they are quiet and clueless still.

    I was pretty wrong on china. Late on the euro. Early on the states. And right on housing prices. So my record is now mixed.

    But I think I’ll be proven right about structural unemployment. Every contradictory paper I can find presupposes that demand will cause us to sop up people. And I agree a bit. I just don’t agree it’s meaningful. This unemployment will be with us I think.

    When I said 2014 at the earliest followed by the demographic cliff in 2017-2020 I sounded nuts. But it looks pretty rational now. Economics in the end, all other things being equal, is reducible to demographics.

    I stopped fussing with data and started focusing exclusively on political theory about a year ago. And the reason is that I don’t see that anything interesting will occur to get us out of this scenario for a couple of years.


    Source date (UTC): 2012-11-15 20:09:00 UTC

  • SORT OF “Despite this fast growth among “catching-up” countries, the rankings of

    http://www.tutor2u.net/blog/index.php/economics/comments/unit-4-macro-looking-to-2060-a-global-vision-of-long-term-growth?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+economics_news+%28tutor2u+Economics+Blog%29#When:09:48:54ZCONVERGENCE : SORT OF

    “Despite this fast growth among “catching-up” countries, the rankings of GDP per capita in 2011 and 2060 are projected to remain very similar”

    I hate to share a link from one of the two sites that have banned me. But the article and external links are worth it.

    While progressives look for reasons to justify their one world fantasy, those of us who know better see reduced western privilege leading to resurgent nationalism, and permanent friction as large poor countries remain permanently unequal. And as such doom the western lower classes to exactly the opposite future that they and their absurd egalitarian policies fantasizes about.

    Only innovation defeats Malthus. And with innovation comes greater intellectual demand on citizens.

    The fact that we have held Malthus at bay is a temporary product of asymmetric development and the conversion of farm to industrial labor. And that is a temporary conversion since labor is just as rapidly replaced both technically through productivity and geographically through labor competition.

    We will get either a eugenic or disgenic result from our egalitarian universalist fantasy.

    What we will not get is a harmonious egalitarian world order.


    Source date (UTC): 2012-11-11 07:15:00 UTC

  • NATIONS FAIL: INSTITUTIONS I want to counter Subramanian’s criticism of Acemoglo

    http://www.the-american-interest.com/article.cfm?piece=1334WHY NATIONS FAIL: INSTITUTIONS

    I want to counter Subramanian’s criticism of Acemoglou and Robinson. In his review, he states that ” …the inability of Acemoglu and Robinson to explain the development trajectories of [India and China] is a fault not of their rich and excellent book but of the sui generis, uncooperative reality of Chinese and Indian history. “

    Their book fails to account for the difference between creating new technical advancements and ‘consuming’ them. India and china are consumers of knowledge capital created elsewhere. Their growth will run out when they have consumed those marginal differences. If they manage to ‘repair’ their cultures and governments (institutions) by using the profits from this consumed knowledge, then they might have a chance at innovating in the future. It is not hard to take risks on known methods of production of known products. But it is much harder to use fragmentary knowledge and relationships dispersed throughout an economy, and to take risks on those subjects than it is on those that are more established.

    I don’t really think Subraminian has much of a criticism here. I disagree with Acemoglu and Robinson’s argument that representative democracy is superior to alternatives. I agree that institutions can establish the norms needed for a high trust society. I also agree that it is difficult to establish those institutions if there is not support for the norms that they would impose in the population.


    Source date (UTC): 2012-11-05 18:46:00 UTC

  • STRATEGY ON WALL STREET Conservatives and republicans seek to protect wall stree

    http://www.nextnewdeal.net/rortybomb/what-explains-wall-streets-shift-away-obama-fat-cat-comments-or-dodd-frankCONSERVATIVE STRATEGY ON WALL STREET

    Conservatives and republicans seek to protect wall street as a defense against the socialist state.

    It is the only defense they have. They rely upon: small business, family conservatives, evangelicals, the military, and the financial sector.

    This is another example of how people will pay very high costs to punish ‘cheaters’.

    And it at least appears that the republicans have been successful in recruiting wall street.

    If this hypothesis is true, it will mean a watershed moment has occurred.


    Source date (UTC): 2012-11-02 03:37:00 UTC

  • EXPERIMENT: MEDIUMS OF ACCOUNT AND EXCHANGE

    http://worthwhile.typepad.com/worthwhile_canadian_initi/2012/10/medium-of-account-vs-medium-of-exchange.htmlTHOUGHT EXPERIMENT: MEDIUMS OF ACCOUNT AND EXCHANGE


    Source date (UTC): 2012-11-01 13:15:00 UTC

  • EMPLOYMENT TO POPULATION RATIO

    EMPLOYMENT TO POPULATION RATIO


    Source date (UTC): 2012-11-01 13:06:00 UTC

  • Untitled

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/reason-why-unemployment-rate-dropped-labor-participation-rate-fresh-31-year-lows


    Source date (UTC): 2012-10-13 02:06:00 UTC

  • Why Should A Person Believe In Austrian Economics?

    It is not a question of ‘belief’. There are five or six different strategic economic biases in favor of a different set of levers for encouraging an economy. These different levers vary from the fastest and most redistributive and distorting to the slowest, least redistributive and distorting.   They are loosely Modern Monetary (fastest), Monetarism, Fiscal Policy, Industrial policy, and Human Capital policy (slowest – austrianism).

    The other criticisms of the ideas of these schools as consisting of ‘true’ or ‘false’ propositions are absurd. All schools are merely utilitarian, and reward one or more sectors of an economy and one or more social classes, asymmetrically. All have side effects that are positive or negative.   Austrianism trades slower growth for greater personal freedom, greater innovation, smaller boom and bust cycles, with greater development of a natural aristocracy, and natural intertemporal increases in the rate of expansion of the economy between the classes.

    The competition between the schools is merely a preference for one set of EXTERNALITIES over another set of externalities.  With austrianism preferring to cause the lowest redistribution of capital, and the greatest reward, and greatest incentive for entrepreneurship, and the least incentive for political actors, and the greatest diversity of wealth (inequality), in exchange for greater relative wealth for all.  It also has the best system of feedback for the expansion of positive norms – which conservatives feel (correctly) are more important for the expansion of an economy than any other property.

    Claims that austiranism is apodeicitcally certain are specious.  Any system so certain must be substantially complete, and praxeology as it is currently constructed is incomplete enough that it cannot render judgements of certainty except in the most reductio (absurd) cases. (I am trying to fix this problem but it will take me another year or so.)   Instead, praxeological analysis simply exposes the the incentives of individuals and illustrates their rational actions,  IN effect allowing us to judge whether our ascertations about human behavior are true or false.   This leads to exceptional insights about human nature in an economy.  However, a) this does not invalidate the other schools only opens the door for discussions of trade offs.  b) we have been wrong on a number of topics that appear to be rational to individual actors but in practice are false (stickiness of prices, and irrationality of actions.)  

    The central tenet of austiranism, is the business cycle theory, which states that any  intervention in an economy will pervert incentives and information and causes worse busts and booms.  This argument appears to be correct. It is just questionably useful in a democracy where voters will demand action from government.

    A wise man would say, that each of these sets of levers and externalities has value to moving an economy.  But that it appears to be impossible in our democratically structured politcal system, to use each lever for the purposes to which it is suited, and for the benefit of all.  Politics in democracy is a means of obtaining power to conduct rents.   And since each of the different schools and their levers allows a different kind of rent to be sought for a different class of citizens, we merely fight over the control of these levers for our sects.

    You will not likely hear this explanation elsewhere. You may not understand this explanation.  Because I cannot take the time, sitting in my hotel room, to write a twenty page essay on the topic.  However, it is most likely the only correct analysis of the different economic schools currently available.

    Cheers.
    Curt
    (Thank you for asking me to answer this question. Although I think only the most sophisticated of students will understand it.)

    https://www.quora.com/Why-should-a-person-believe-in-Austrian-economics