Europe must focus on growth as well as cutting spending to reduce national deficits, US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has told the BBC
Who would have thought of that?!
What an insightful advice!
June 25th, 2010The most important profession
June 23rd, 2010I have overheard two PhD students discussing what is the most important profession. It’s a no-brainer: They have concluded that historians are the most important and powerful people in the world. Their reasoning was: Historians are more important than Obama, because everything Obama does will ultimately be judge by historians, and their interpretation will define how Obama will be remembered fifty, hundred, or thousand years later.
The problem is that contemporary historians will become more important than the contemporary US president only fifty, hundred, or thousand years from now. When people won’t remember the beginning of the twenty-first century anymore, and will need to read books by contemporary historians to understand it. By that time both the contemporary US president, and contemporary historians will likely be long deceased.
The importance of history is very elusive, same as the concept of importance…
Talk about a selection bias II
May 27th, 2010Bulgarian phone muber 888 888 888 is suspended, because every user assigned to it dies. In other words, the Bulgarian phone company thinks that the number is cursed.
What they have forgotten about is that correlation does not imply causality:
Why were the owners of the number dying then? Owner of such a phone number is likely to be a rich businessman, politician, or most likely of all (especially in Bulgaria) a mafia boss. Mafia bosses do tend to die prematurely because of the nature of their business (think of Santino Corleone), rather than because they have a nice phone number. So what makes people die, is not the number, but the occupation associated with it…
Innovations in the communist economies
May 24th, 2010I have participated in a debate on innovations in capitalist versus communist economies. All I had to say about it is summarize in this picture:
Talk about a selection bias…
May 21st, 2010The elections are due next week in The Czech Republic. Election polls, which are supposed to give unbiased estimates of voting intentions, give the center-right parties about half of the seats in the parliament, and the left wingers the other half.
What strikes me is that online poll at idnes.cz, widely popular centrist online newspaper, gave 100 percent of the seats in parliament to the right wing parties, that is all left wing parties fell short of the 5 percent threshold, which is required to enter the parliament.
I did not think an average internet user is so UNREPRESENTATIVE of an average citizen…
p.s. Of course the wealthier (more developed) a country is, the less different an average citizen and an average internet user is.
New Economist Debate – Is fair trade more important than free trade?
May 4th, 2010The Economist has started a new debate earlier today. The importance of the freeness vs. fairness of the world trading system is to be discussed. Bhagwati is against the motion, arguing that free trade is more important than fair trade.
Clearly free trade is more important than fair trade. Fair trading system with no free trade (complete protectionism) is clearly inferior to free, but unfair trade.
On the other hand, fairness and freeness of the trading system are complementary. Given the present situation, of relatively free but not so fair world trade, making it fairer would make more sense than making it freer.
So I disagree with the motion that fair trade more important than free trade, but agree that making trade fairer is more important than making it freer.
Iceland, Country in the Middle of Attention
April 18th, 2010
Earlier this year, Iceland decided not to reimburse UK for insuring the UK citizens’ accounts held with Icelandic banks. Leading to (in my opinion justified) threats by UK to block Iceland’s potential accession to the EU.
Now, Icelandic volcano is churning out thousands of tons of ashes, paralyzing the air-traffic throughout Europe. It looks as if even the nature was on the side of the proud (though currently shipwrecked) vikings of finance, fighting the evil, outside world.
I understand that some (the guy in a You Tube video) have very strong negative feelings about Iceland.
The Biggest Mistake Investors Make
April 16th, 2010“Advice is the only commodity on the market where the supply always exceeds the demand.” - Unknown
This is particularly true about Investment Advice. Not only there is too much of it, but 99 pct. of it is pure garbage (see my previous post on disinformation). The best advice an individual investor can ever get is never to follow the advice of ”investment gurus”, self-proclaimed analysts, and other noise traders…
Soros warns about Eurozone break-up
April 13th, 2010Soros warned in a recent FT interview that the Eurozone will likely break up if the EU won’t bail-out Greece.
Is it really so? I doubt it…
I just think Mr. Soros holds a lot of Greek debt (making a nice profit on the high spreads) and is using his political clout to make sure that Greece is not going to default on that debt…
Shame on you George…
Chief economist at Goldman Sachs says China is not a currency manipulator
April 2nd, 2010
Chief Economist of GS claims that the renminbi is not undervalued. The statement should be taken with a pinch of salt.
Has he an incentive to reveal “the truth”? NO, he couldn’t care less about the truth.
Even if he wanted to reveal the truth why didn’t he do it before? Why did he publish the statement right when America’s Treasury Department’s is expected to release a publication on currency manipulators? Crazy coincident?
Has he an incentive to lobby in a way that positively affect his investments? YES
I don’t know whether renminbi is undervalue, but I know the GS guy will claim it, if it’s in line with his interests. FYI Goldman-Sachs invested heavily in China in the past few years. So the incentive to lobby is clearly there.
I’m not judging; everyone is lobbying, why not Goldman Sachs then. All I’m saying is that I don’t trust him.