MetaFilter posts tagged with economics and government

a coherent platform for the grand new party?

kliuless — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 05:01:55 -0800

Keeping America's Edge (via) While the prescriptions are stock conservative boilerplate, I found the diagnosis remarkably congruent with, say, David Simon, altho I have my (not so minor) quibbles that 1) the US faces an existential threat from "those who oppose our values" -- if anything, it's the other way around -- and that 2) he doesn't properly account for regulatory capture, i.e. for libertarianism to be "roughly true in practice" we need something approaching perfect competition and there is far from a level playing field, moreover, "the political system seems incapable of addressing large-scale objective problems." BONUS -America's broken colleges -Do liberals have it wrong on inequality? -Asteroid Deflection as a Public Good -Start-up Visas Can Jump-Start the Economy [1,2,3] -Reforms to help China maintain growth [1,2,3]

George Soros on the Way Forward

kliuless — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 19:42:21 -0800

Soros lectures
You can slog through the video, but I preferred the transcripts 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 + to me, it started off rather abstract* (admittedly on his part) and slow (covered ground; note soros tag) and doesn't really get interesting until 3 -- "The event that forced me to thoroughly reconsider the concept of open society was the re-election of President Bush..." [altho he can get a bit arrogant ("even I, who discovered—or invented—reflexivity, failed to recognize...")] -- and gets better from there... so i'd skip to that if you're so inclined :P kinda previously... and btw, as a bonus, also see... - Why Do We Hate? - What Makes a Nation Rich? - How Much Is Enough? - What the U.S. Long Bond Market Is Telling Us (cf.) - The G20 in 2050 (viz.) - Rare earth: The New Great Game [1,2,3,4,5,6] --- *in fleshing out his concept of reflexivity he goes thru (among other things and in other words) descriptive vs. prescriptive (or normative) theories, instrumental rationality and empiricism, false thinking and truthiness, the law of unintended consequences, &c. so if you're into that sort of stuff... have at it!

Scrimping on the Future

kliuless — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 09:12:03 -0800

Information is stimulus, confusion is contraction.

If Paul Krugman Was So Right

kliuless — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 20:00:24 -0800

How Did Economists Get It So Wrong? - The Great Recession was the result not only of lax regulation in Washington and reckless risk-taking on Wall Street but also of faulty theorizing in academia. Can economists learn from their mistakes? (via mr & ev) bonus :P

Government as Risk Manager
Keynesian reforms could stop us falling into more economic foxholes
On the "Course" to a New Normal
"Because I Said So..."
Too much of a very good thing
U.K. Wants Bank Buffers, Not Bonuses
Making Greed Good
Greed & The Other Seven Deadly Sins
White House to Propose Big Reserves at Banks
It's not the regulators, it's the politicians
The systemic threat posed by megabanks
Shrinking banks
All Those Arrows
Fool's Gold
The Value Every Business Needs to Create Now
What good is finance?
What Is Finance, Really?
The Nature of Modern Finance
Can We Afford Health Care Reform? We Can't Afford Not to Do It.
Why Paying for Health Care Reform Is Difficult and Essential
Health Care Lie #493: Rationing
Examining the Public Option in Health Care Reform
The Divisions in the White House Over Health-Care Reform - "hinge on Sen. Olympia Snowe"
What Leverage Do Republicans Have on Olympia Snowe?
Health Insurers vs. Big Corn? - "[If] health insurers can no longer pick and choose their clients, and throw sick people out, they will develop a much stronger interest in prevention, which is to say, in changing the way America feeds itself. When health insurers realize they will make thousands more in profits for every case of type II diabetes they can prevent, they will develop a strong interest in things like corn subsidies, local food systems, farmer's markets, school lunch, public health campaigns about soda, etc."
The Rotten Core - "Late empires are known for several things: a self-obsessed, self-serving governing class, small over-reaching wars that bankrupt the Treasury, debt that balloons until retreat from global power becomes not a choice but a necessity, and a polity unable to address reasonably any of these questions - or how the increasing corruption of the media enables them all."
$9 trillion -- what, me worry?
Obama on Bernanke - "his 'bold, persistent experimentation' has brought our economy back"

that is all!

A very good article on health care economics

kliuless — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 06:40:28 -0800

How American Health Care Killed My Father After the needless death of his father, the author, a business executive, began a personal exploration of a health-care industry that for years has delivered poor service and irregular quality at astonishingly high cost. It is a system, he argues, that is not worth preserving in anything like its current form. And the health-care reform now being contemplated will not fix it. Here’s a radical solution to an agonizing problem. (via mr) BONUS -Health Care Spending and PCE -Consumer Driven Health Care Plans -4 Points on Health Care -A Public Option Isn't a Curse, or a Cure [also btw Thaler vs. Posner] -'A Plan to Swissify America' (P.Krugman) -Why We Need Health Care Reform (B.Obama) -Health 2.0 could shock the system (E.Dyson) -Mont. Clinic Aims to Deliver Top-quality Care for Less -Cleveland Clinic Chief: Lower Care Costs Must Be Focus in Reform Efforts -Healthcare lessons -The world's worst healthcare reforms

building nothing out of something? or...

kliuless — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 15:21:22 -0800

Rebuilding Something Better by Barack Obama: "this week, I'll be talking about how we give our workers the skills they need to compete... Part of this goal will be met by helping Americans better afford a college education. But part of it will also be strengthening our network of community colleges..." BONUS -Zakaria: A Capitalist Manifesto -Cowen: Vaticanomics -The X-shaped recovery -Debt, Class Warfare and Entrepreneurship -America's Fiscal Train Wreck and Cassandra's Curse -Skidelsky: Economists clash on shifting sands -Skidelsky: The World Finance Crisis & the American Mission -Skidelsky: The Lost Continent -Obama: A New Moment of Promise in Africa -Sullivan: Barack Obama keeps his cool

The Squares of the City

kliuless — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 13:11:34 -0800

Paul Romer: A Theory of History, with an Application - "His economic theory of history explains phenomena such as the constant improvement of the human standard of living by looking primarily at just two forms of innovative ideas: technology and rules." (previously, via) BONUS: UNDERSTANDING SOCIETY - What cities have in common [1,2,3,4,5] - Great structures? [1,2,3,4,5] - The new institutionalism [1,2,3,4,5] - Norms and deliberative rationality [1,2,3,4,5]

Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong

kliuless — Thu, 21 May 2009 16:44:18 -0800

Prelude to Federation - Like a neocolonial SEZ (or TAZ) Paul Romer, not to be confused with David, posits "less developed countries contract with capitalist nations to set up Hong Kong's for them... that we rethink sovereignty (respect borders, but maybe import administrative control); rethink citizenship (support residency, but maybe import voice in political affairs); and rethink scale (instead of focusing on nations, focus on cities—on city states like Hong Kong and Singapore)." cf. neocameralism [1, 2, 3] BONUS - New Urbanism - Taking Up Space

A Banking System We Can Trust

kliuless — Sun, 03 May 2009 06:03:30 -0800

Limited Purpose Banking -- for lending, investing, etc. -- Turn all financial firms into mutual funds: "All mutual funds would break the buck with one exception: cash mutual funds. These funds would strictly hold cash and be valued at $1 per share. Owners of these funds would write checks against their balances and never have to worry about a bank run. Fractional reserve banking and the FDIC would be history." [previously] also see The Credit Crisis and Cycle Proof Regulation, Raghuram Rajan (cf. 1 2 3 4) on preventing/regulating 'cyclical euphoria' among financial institutions... and btw Fixing bankrupt systems is just the beginning, viz.

The Adaptive Value of Human Institutions:* Building a Better (Secular) 'Religion'

kliuless — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 11:42:14 -0800

Keynes & Marx thought "that productivity would grow sufficiently to allow our needs to be met with very little labour," and that humankind's biggest preoccupation in the future would be leading lives of comfortable (or comparative) leisure. Obviously, that has not yet come to pass. But why?** Yochai Benkler (previously), for one, is working on it... *just saw jared diamond on the evolution of religion (and was inspired ;) **e.g., one could say the social utility of the enclosure movement has reached its limit (or a local logical maximum) and that the means of (re)production might now be (self-)organised not by the state and/or market per se, but (at long last!) by a conscious collective cultural aesthetic :P

alternative currencies

kliuless — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 08:32:36 -0800

Hard up for cash? Roll your own :P just like Walmart and Amazon coexist with Costco and Craigslist, or like closed and open source software and operating (eco)systems often feed off of one another (and keep each other 'honest') to make a more vibrant market (and community), I think having various kinds of 'complementary' currency systems and transaction mechanisms alongside fiat central banking would help encourage and enable a greater multitude of economic activity than is currently the case. like having the right tool (or program) for the right job, I think it only makes sense that some currency systems are better suited for certain applications and activities than others, and people would therefore benefit from having a choice (freedom to choose!) of currency to use and conduct business in... along with, for that matter, what laws and accounting frameworks they are governed by and where they reside (freedom to move ;) [incidentally as it stands, (some) privileged people, corporations and 'capital' already enjoy these freedoms and benefit from practising regulatory arbitrage; I do not see why this cannot be extended to everyone] btw, post inspired by pharm, thanks!

Obama FAIL?

kliuless — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 04:33:04 -0800

The Bad Bank Assets Proposal: Even Worse Than You Imagined -- the administration appears intent on building another black swan. This is political capitalism. [v i a]

Deals of the Day

SeizeTheDay — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 17:39:09 -0800

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank gave a bank, whose capital ratio equaled only 1.88% of assets at the bank, versus a desired level of about 6%, TARP money after heavy lobbying. Frank inserted into the bill a provision to give special consideration to banks that had less than $1 billion of assets, had been well-capitalized as of June 30, served low- and moderate-income areas, and had taken a capital hit in the federal seizure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. (WSJ link) In other news, Merrill disclosed compensation and benefits expenses of $15 billion for 2008, down 6 percent from 2007. That number includes salaries, benefits, retirement payments, commissions for financial advisers and severance for laid-off employees. Bank of America, which has four times as many employees, reported $18.4 billion in personnel expenses in 2008, down slightly from 2007. ~ Charlotte Observer Merrill, through John Thain, former CEO of Merrill and who recently resigned from BofA (this morning), paid this bonus to his employees in December as opposed to January (a highly unorthodox move), just prior to the deal's consummation (as he was still CEO). Meanwhile, BofA, in a memo earlier this month, Lewis said the bank has “significantly reduced the targets for yearend compensation,” with higher-ranking employees taking the bigger reductions. Lewis has recommended that he and his top reports not receive bonuses for 2008. In other news, regional banks, once thought to be spared from the worst credit losses, have shown mixed results.

ARR! "dramatic action" ahoy :P

kliuless — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 09:41:28 -0800

President Obama's plan for American Recovery and Reinvestment [pdf] might be thought of as TARP round two [1,2] -- instead of hiding the bodies, this one's preparing the ground for a big tent or the economic equivalent of war. There are critics and detractors (cramdown nation ;) left and right, natch, but also conservative supporters and progressive defenders to save or create ~~three~~ four million jobs; hooray! ...then there's the question of how to pay for it all [entitlements, ORLY?] -- of course it pays for itself thru the (one) wonders of self-financing! like a key difference in my mind between the current situation and depression-era US or 'lost decade' Japan is reliance on external creditors to finance deficits; the dog isn't barking yet, so to speak... [personally i'm eagerly awaiting the obama corps and a (borked, esp if jerked) military/civil space elevator :]

Can We Cure the Health Care Crisis?

kliuless — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 20:43:26 -0800

Search for an Rx - We asked Johns Hopkins administrators, physicians, and researchers about the health of a system Americans rely on to keep them healthy. Afterall, an ounce of prevention...

Can we improve quality while driving costs down? As contradictory as the notion might seem, there is a precedent for doing better work at a lower cost. "The thing that is so hard for people to understand, but that was proven in the auto industry, is that when you focus on cutting costs, you automatically reduce quality. But when you focus on increasing quality, as we've done with safety measures here at Hopkins, you almost always reduce cost. It's counterintuitive," Brody says.

and in addition to finance (and the auto industry) it's probably also applicable to education as well...

Building a real financial system

kliuless — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 08:50:12 -0800

The origins of central banking or, perhaps, central planning[1,2] and a defense of fiat currency[3] in the information age. "[T]he Federal Reserve erred catastrophically in the Depression not just by failing to stem the decline in those bank deposits necessary to fuel consumer spending but also by allowing banks to fail. In so doing, the Fed destroyed the organization[4] and knowledge base that made banks trusted intermediaries between the myriads of savers with no knowledge of business prospects and the thousands of businesses with no direct ability to draw on individual savers' resources."

There Could Be Blood

kliuless — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 18:36:53 -0800

Andy Grove on Our Electric Future - "Energy independence [viz.] is the wrong goal. Here is a plan Americans can stick to." Perhaps some infrastructure spending^1,2 is in order? [etc., &c., cf.] also see :P - "Tesla Motors Is Delivering Cars" - "Superconducting Power Grid Launches In New York" - "New heights reached in polymer based solar cell efficiency"

[S]pray a sheet of glass with a mixture of dyes combined with a substance called tris(8-hydroxyquinoline) aluminium. In combination, the dyes and the glass act as the waveguide, preventing light from escaping. Meanwhile, the interaction between the different dye molecules and those of the tris(8-hydroxyquinoline) aluminium allows a quantum-mechanical phenomenon, called Förster energy transfer, to come into play. This eliminates the reabsorption loss by ensuring that light is re-emitted at a frequency which the dye molecules cannot then reabsorb. On top of this—literally—Dr Currie and Dr Mapel have come up with another trick: placing a second sandwich of dye and glass over the first. The upper layer of dye intercepts high-energy light, such as ultraviolet. The lower one captures longer wavelengths that have passed unperturbed through the upper, and also any lower-energy light that has been re-emitted within the top layer and somehow escaped. The upshot is a device that, even as a prototype, converts ten times more of the incident light into electricity than a conventional solar cell. [and btw]

cheers!

Brok en Pip e l ine

Gyan — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 03:46:32 -0800

An unprecedented five consecutive years of stagnant funding for the National Institutes of Health is putting America at risk - a few prominent research institutions get together to voice their concern over flat funding of the National Institutes of Health over the past 5 years, in their report The Broken Pipeline (pdf). Bloggers comment [1, 2, 3].

limits

kliuless — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 14:09:35 -0800

The dangers of living in a zero-sum world economy - naked capitalism reprints (with added commentary) an FT article by Martin Wolf on why it's vital for (civilised) society to sustain a 'positive-sum' world, otherwise: "A zero-sum economy leads, inevitably, to repression at home and plunder abroad." Wolf's solution? "The condition for success is successful investment in human ingenuity." Of course! Some are calling for more socialism, while others would press on to build more megaprojects. For me, at least part of the solution lies in environmental accounting and natural capitalism :P

We’re too sophisticated to allow bioregional commerce.

ZachsMind — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 13:22:05 -0800

Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal by Joel Salatin. This Saturday will mark this article's four year anniversary. Frankly, I was mildly surprised not to have found it mentioned before in MeFi. It's a good read about a sad state of affairs; how our government is turning its own people into outlaws, because freedom has been traded in for an illusion of security. ...but then we already knew that. Don't we?

Nudge instead of a push?

Gyan — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 07:41:02 -0800

The avuncular state - "A smarter, softer kind of paternalism is coming into style"

Burn, Onitsha, burn

klangklangston — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 16:56:31 -0800

The other religious riots. While much of the world's press has covered the Muslim cartoon riots, not nearly as much ink has been spilled over the continuing violence in Nigeria. A good analysis of underlying factors here. A Shell report points to oil as a proximate cause of violence as well. For oil companies, this may not be a bad thing. (If I was more interested in trolling, I'd have framed this as "Christian Leaders Fail to Condemn Religious Violence." The real world's a little more complex).

Of matrícula accounts and ITIN loans

kliuless — Mon, 11 Jul 2005 22:49:11 -0800

Embracing Illegals: Companies are getting hooked on the buying power of 11 million undocumented immigrants - The Underground Labor Force Is Rising To The Surface [pdf]