bblockwood

Boom or Bubble?

Thu, 23 May 2013 06:30:22 -0400

Boom or Bubble?:

An argument that we are *not* in a stock bubble — useful perspective.

radioon: “Jraphics Interchange Format” I don’t think so.

Wed, 22 May 2013 19:17:37 -0400

radioon:

“Jraphics Interchange Format”

I don’t think so.

Gatsby Was Flush—Thanks to Relative Price Shifts, Parties Were Cheap in the Jazz Age

Wed, 22 May 2013 09:31:23 -0400

Gatsby Was Flush—Thanks to Relative Price Shifts, Parties Were Cheap in the Jazz Age:

I love Agatha Christie’s quote:

Over long time horizons not only does the overall price level shift but the relative price of different goods and services shifts. In particular, back in the 1920s labor-intensive services were very cheap. In her autobiography, Agatha Christie writes that when growing up she thought she’d never be wealthy enough to own a car nor ever be so poor as to be unable to afford servants.

Is Wal-Mart in Trouble?

Wed, 22 May 2013 06:30:33 -0400

Is Wal-Mart in Trouble?:

Wal-Mart is known first and foremost for its low prices and great bargains, but it’s hard to operate as a low-cost entrant into a market where the established incumbent has no profit margins. Wall Street is willing to let Amazon lose money in pursuit of growth, while Wal-Mart’s shares plummeted on falling sales even in the context of continued profits.

How Ignorant Are Americans? - 28% fail citizenship test

Tue, 21 May 2013 17:48:06 -0400

How Ignorant Are Americans? - 28% fail citizenship test:

Every economist knows how to deal with the debt: cost-saving reforms to big-ticket entitlement programs; cuts to our bloated defense budget; and (if growth remains slow) tax reforms designed to refill our depleted revenue coffers. But poll after poll shows that voters have no clue what the budget actually looks like. A 2010 World Public Opinion survey found that Americans want to tackle deficits by cutting foreign aid from what they believe is the current level (27 percent of the budget) to a more prudent 13 percent. … Even though 71 percent of voters want smaller government, vast majorities oppose cuts to Medicare (81 percent), Social Security (78 percent), and Medicaid (70 percent). Instead, they prefer to slash waste—a category that, in their fantasy world, seems to include 50 percent of spending, according to a 2009 Gallup poll.

The best thing you'll read on Yahoo buying Tumblr...

Tue, 21 May 2013 17:17:30 -0400

The best thing you'll read on Yahoo buying Tumblr...:

parislemon:

soupsoup:

comes from employee #2, practically the co-founder: Marco Arment

Well said.

Fascinating insight. And quite reassuring.

Unknown Mathematician Proves Property of Prime Numbers

Tue, 21 May 2013 08:15:00 -0400

Unknown Mathematician Proves Property of Prime Numbers:

“The main results are of the first rank,” one of the referees wrote.

= academic speak for “Fuck yeah, Math.”

Why Hospitals Set High Prices

Tue, 21 May 2013 06:30:21 -0400

Why Hospitals Set High Prices:

“Until a recent ruling by the Internal Revenue Service, for instance, a hospital could use the higher prices when calculating the amount of charity care it was providing, Gerard Anderson, director of the Center for Hospital Finance and Management at Johns Hopkins,” said in the New York Times story. ‘There is a method to the madness, though it is still madness,’ Mr. Anderson said.”

Charity care is incredibly important to facilities like Bayonne Hospital Center, which needs to demonstrate that it provides a high level of “community benefit” in order to maintain its status as a nonprofit hospital. The higher prices that a hospital charges, the bigger amount of charity care its providing.

"There is a long-standing tension in economics between belief in the advantages of the market..."

Mon, 20 May 2013 06:30:32 -0400

“There is a long-standing tension in economics between belief in the advantages of the market mechanism and awareness of its imperfections… There is a large element of Rorschach test in the way each of us responds to this tension. Some of us see the Smithian virtues as a needle in a haystack, as an island of measure zero in a sea of imperfections. Others see all the potential sources of market failure as so many fleas on the thick hide of an ox, requiring only an occasional flick of the tail to be brushed away. A hopeless eclectic without any strength of character, like me, has a terrible time of it. If I may invoke the name of two of my most awesome predecessors as President of this [American Economic] Association, I need only listen to Milton Friedman talk for a minute and my mind floods with thoughts of increasing returns to scale, ologopolistic interdependence, consumer ignorance, environmental pollution, intergenerational inequality, and on and on. There is almost no cure for it, except to listen for a minute to John Kenneth Galbraith, in which case all I can think of are the discipline of competition, the large number of substitutes for any commodity, the stupidities of regulation, the Pareto optimality of Walrasian equilibrium, the importance of decentralizing decision making to where the knowledge is, and on and on. Sometimes I think it is only my weakness of character that keeps me from making obvious errors.”

- Robert Solo

Colleges Boost Financial Aid

Sun, 19 May 2013 06:30:16 -0400

Colleges Boost Financial Aid:

The average “tuition discount rate”—the reduction off list price afforded by grants and scholarships given by these schools—hit an all-time high of 45% last fall for incoming freshmen, according to a survey being released Monday by the National Association of College and University Business Officers.

#summer

Sat, 18 May 2013 17:07:22 -0400

#summer

Mason Jar cocktail shaker is a hit - CNN

Sat, 18 May 2013 06:30:19 -0400

Mason Jar cocktail shaker is a hit - CNN:

Not sure this is as practical as the usual tin + tumbler, but very classy nonetheless.

If you read one economics piece this weekend

Fri, 17 May 2013 16:34:00 -0400

This NY Times mag feature is well worth it.

An opening highlight:

By the 1940s, [Hubbard said, basketball] had become boring, dominated by extremely tall players who planted themselves next to the rim. Then a Columbia University graduate student who also coached basketball wrote a Ph.D. dissertation arguing that the game could be saved by innovations, like the 3-point shot, which created an incentive to move action away from the hoop. It took decades for the N.B.A. to adopt the 3-pointer, but since its implementation, it has helped make basketball one of the most popular and lucrative sports on earth. The U.S. economy, in other words, desperately needs to find its own 3-point shot.

Summers’s and Hubbard’s views bring to mind the old Charles Schultze quip:

Ask an economist to use the words “long” and “short” to fill in the blanks in the following sentence: “Take care of the ____ run and the ____ run will take care of itself.” If they put “long” first they’re conservative; if they put “short” first they’re liberal.

Econosnark

Fri, 17 May 2013 06:30:32 -0400

Econosnark:

Thx Tedsvo.

Georgia Tech's New $7,000 Online CS Degree

Thu, 16 May 2013 23:22:00 -0400

Georgia Tech's New $7,000 Online CS Degree:

This seems like it has a lot of potential. The huge question here is whether a degree is more of an investment or a signal — and if the latter, how does an online version accomplish that?

Personally, I’ve learned a great deal from pre-MOOC online education offerings—Brad DeLong’s economic history lectures and Robert Shiller’s finance lectures, both available for download on iTunes.

Summer todo list.

You and Your Johnson

Thu, 16 May 2013 06:30:11 -0400

You and Your Johnson:

Well worth it.

Student Debt and the Crushing of the American Dream

Wed, 15 May 2013 06:30:37 -0400

Student Debt and the Crushing of the American Dream:

“But a real long-term solution requires rethinking how we finance higher education. Australia has designed a system of publicly provided income-contingent loans that all students must take out.” Is that formally different from free higher education plus an income tax?

Elizabeth Warren Q&A: Students “deserve the same break that big banks get”

Sun, 12 May 2013 21:57:30 -0400

Elizabeth Warren Q&A: Students “deserve the same break that big banks get”:

I’m all for more investment in human capital. But it’s not clear to me why people view low interest rates as a way to mitigate the “student loan crisis” — don’t many of them also believe low mortgage rates exacerbated the housing crisis a few years ago?

In Hours, Thieves Took $45 Million in A.T.M. Scheme

Fri, 10 May 2013 06:30:10 -0400

In Hours, Thieves Took $45 Million in A.T.M. Scheme:

The authorities said laptops and the Internet were used in more than two dozen countries to steal from A.T.M.’s, including 2,904 machines in New York City, in one day.

“Once the withdrawal limits have been eliminated, “even a few compromised bank account numbers can result in tremendous financial loss to the victim financial institution,” the indictment states. And by using prepaid cards, the thieves were able to take money without draining the bank accounts of individuals, which might have set off alarms more quickly.”

25 Photos You Need To Really Look At To Understand

Tue, 07 May 2013 06:30:38 -0400

25 Photos You Need To Really Look At To Understand