My Life, Economics, and Finance

Bulgarian 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…

I have participated in a debate on innovations in capitalist versus communist economies. All I had to say about it is summarize in this picture:

Taken from the Amazon.com review of The New Era of Wealth (Brian Wesbury, 2002):

First, the good news: smart investors will continue to get rich. Brian S. Wesbury, an economist and respected economic forecaster, believes the trends that led to so much wealth creation in the last two decades of the 20th century–a boom in productivity from technological innovation, smaller government, and anti-inflationary U.S. Federal Reserve policies–will continue in the first two decades of the 21st century. As Wesbury sees it, people who worry about the soaring stock market leading to a repeat of 1929 are looking for the wrong bogeyman.

It’s ironic, that in 2004 he was named by USA Today one of the top 10 economic forecasters. (By the way, when they say an economist, they mean he has a BA in economics…). Anyway, I am not judging the book as such, (I haven’t read it yet -  but in general I am a “bit” sceptical about investor’s handbooks), I just think the review is funny or maybe ironic?

p.s. has anyone read it?