Let me try to keep this short and still make the point I want to make. Lately, I've seen a huge amount of people talking about an economic recovery, certainly in the US, so much so that people who disagree with that assessment are labeled "doomer" or things like that. Again. It's an easy thing to do. I'll start with a graph from this New York Fed report. It depicts the – almost – 10-year development of US household debt,
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Science? Or Religion? I’ve said this before, but just in case: I have very little appreciation and/or patience for the field of economics and its practitioners. Labeling it "the dismal science" does it far too much honor in my view, since it's not a science at all. No more than psychology is, or anthropology, or beer brewing. Nothing that can't stand the falsifiability test Karl Popper left us is a science. Falsifiability is the dividing line between the real thing
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Definition of a lie: any not entirely accurate representation of the world as we perceive it; what's not spoken can be as crucial as what is. So yeah, people lie. They, we, all do. Some of us understand the extent to which this is true better than others, but that's probably just because we haven't all spent equal time wondering when it was we first started doing it. Let alone why. Interesting questions. After the fact, it's blindingly obvious why
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Disaster and Preparedness: How Well Are We Doing? Superstorm Sandy has been a devastating experience for many, and will continue to be so for a long time to come. Much of the damage will take weeks or months to repair, and some may take years. A myriad long battles with insurance companies are a given, as the available funds are unlikely to match the damage and there will be many arguments as to what is covered. The impacts are widespread,
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Here's what may be a useful angle to explain to people what is happening in Europe right now, and what's yet to come. It's not about Greece, which shoved another "Deal" through its besieged parliament this week, a deal that itself is also still under siege. It's not about Spain either, which managed to borrow a few billon more, enough to stay alive till Christmas, but sees its bond yields enter the land of ugly (yawn) again. We all know
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Lee Angle Fort Worth Flood 1949 7th Street Theatre in Fort Worth Texas, corner of 7th Street and University, known locally as "Six Points" . First of all: the answer to the title question is, as far as I can see: no. But it's almost certainly a whole lot more than the $50 billion reported today, and that $36.5 trillion amount doesn’t come from thin air; it appears in a number of news articles about Sandy. All in all, the
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If it hadn't been in the pocket yet, Sandy cast Obama’s victory in stone (unless he really screws up Staten Island, perhaps, or Diebold goes nuts). Not that he really needed it anymore, the economic numbers are simply not bad enough. Or perhaps we should say the public perception of the numbers isn't bad enough. Not for America to go against a long running historical trend that says incumbents with relatively good numbers get re-elected, no matter how much further
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