It seems to me that this failure of the economists to guide policy more successfully is closely connected with their propensity to imitate as closely as possible the procedures of the brilliantly successful physical sciences.--Friedrich Hayek, from the introduction to his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in 1974.
There's water on moons. The Galileo mission to Jupiter discovered Europa's global subsurface ocean of liquid water and indications of Ganymede's interior seas. At Saturn, the Cassini probe detected erupting fountains of water ice from Enceladus indicating warmer subsurface water on even that small moon, while finding surface lakes of frigid but still liquid hydrocarbons beneath the dense atmosphere of large moon Titan.
There is a Scotland-like independence movement in Catalonia against the greater Spain and a referendum is planned. Unlike the UK, the Spanish government considers Catalonia's referendum illegal.
There's water on moons. The Galileo mission to Jupiter discovered Europa's global subsurface ocean of liquid water and indications of Ganymede's interior seas. At Saturn, the Cassini probe detected erupting fountains of water ice from Enceladus indicating warmer subsurface water on even that small moon, while finding surface lakes of frigid but still liquid hydrocarbons beneath the dense atmosphere of large moon Titan.
There is a Scotland-like independence movement in Catalonia against the greater Spain and a referendum is planned. Unlike the UK, the Spanish government considers Catalonia's referendum illegal.
New home sales are 10% of all home sales.
There are no cases in modern history where an economy has managed to avoid an outright bust after experiencing rapid lending growth anywhere in the neighborhood of China’s ongoing credit boom. (MF economists Giovanni Dell’Ariccia, Deniz Igan, and Luc Laeven)
Who was....David John Moore Cornwall?
According a Politico article by E. Dovere, the tension between Obama and Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Wasserman Schultz got bad enough that his inner circle considered replacing her as head of the DNC. Dovere said this plan was abandoned because "there was nervousness about the optics of Obama dropping a woman from the party leadership." Those pesky optics again.
There is a new battle over the economy: What constitutes it? Adam Smith said production, Keynes said consumption, in defiance of Say's law that the failure of demand could not cause an economic slump. Now there is a lot of talk about "gross output" which includes investment. Although consumer spending accounts for about 70% of GDP, if you use gross output as a broader measure of total sales or spending, it represents less than 40% of the economy. The reality is that business outlays – adding capital investment and all business spending in intermediate stages of the supply chain – are substantially larger than consumer spending in the economy. They make up more than 50% of economic activity.
George Lauer invented the bar code. A Wrigley Gum pack was the first item ever scanned.
Throughout West Africa and in Guinea, specifically, some villagers have reacted negatively to health workers because they doubt Ebola is real. Some evidence of this might be that eight Ebola health officials in Guinea—five health workers and three journalists—were found dead recently in a village latrine. Damantang Camara, a spokesman for Guinea's government, told Reuters, "Three of them had their throats slit." Helping people against their will is difficult and may be proof enough that it should not be done.
Golden oldie:
The wife of the late writer Tom Clancy is in a dispute with his children from a former marriage over who should pay taxes on his estate. The Wall Street Journal notes that his $83 million estate includes a 12 percent stake in the Baltimore Orioles and a World War II tank.
This is casually discussed but is quite shocking. MIT Professor Robert Solow's work on the US economy explains that innovation has accounted for more than 80% of the long-term growth in US per capita income, with capital investments accounting for only 20% of per capita income growth. In other words, the United States and the rest of the post-industrial, developed world owe their epic rise in living standards to the underlying “social capital” that properly incentivized innovation, entrepreneurship, and thus technological transformation over the last two centuries.
This idea is being used to analyze the China economy as a danger in the world economy, not a support. But it also means something in the "gross output" discussion mentioned above.
Nocebo (no-SEE-bo): noun: A substance producing harmful effects in someone because it is believed to be harmful, but which in reality is harmless.[From Latin nocebo (I will harm), from nocere (to harm).
Modeled after placebo (I will please).]
Mysterious “interceptor” cellphone towers that can listen in someone’s phone call despite not being part of any phone networks have turned up near the White House and Senate.
“It’s highly unlikely that federal law enforcement would be using mobile interceptors near the Senate,” ESD America CEO Les Goldsmith told the technology website Venture Beat on Thursday. “My suspicion is that it is a foreign entity,” he said. You would think this would be a bigger story.
There are 23.7 Trillion dollars in retirement plans.
The Swedish Armed Forces confirmed on Friday afternoon that two Russian SU24 fighter-bombers had been detected flying over the country. This is the kind of threatening, bullying behavior that presupposes civilized and measured behavior on the part of the victim. It is the classic behavior of bad guys. Nuclear chicken is the worst, though.
One of the arguments that QE has been a failure is the bond-buying strategy that was part of QE known as “Operation Twist.” The Fed traditionally expands the monetary base by buying short-term Treasuries from financial institutions. Banks then turn around and make short-term loans to those businesses that are the economy’s main job creators. But QE’s Operation Twist focused on buying long-term Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities. This meant that instead of going to the entrepreneurial job creators, loans went primarily to large corporations and to the government itself.
One of the arguments that QE has been a failure is the bond-buying strategy that was part of QE known as “Operation Twist.” The Fed traditionally expands the monetary base by buying short-term Treasuries from financial institutions. Banks then turn around and make short-term loans to those businesses that are the economy’s main job creators. But QE’s Operation Twist focused on buying long-term Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities. This meant that instead of going to the entrepreneurial job creators, loans went primarily to large corporations and to the government itself.
What lobby group has been the most tenacious opposition to lowering estate taxes? The insurance industry.
I wish I could understand what we are doing in the Middle East. ISIS is said to be made up of 30,000 or so people, a good baseball crowd. Their fight is primarily with their competitors in the wacko market. The beheading videos are gruesome and nuts but should they determine national policy? A few weeks before Obama took the position that ISIS was worth focusing on he called them "the JV." Now they are the main target. How is that?
AAAAAaaaannnnndddddd......heeeeerrreee's Gaia!
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