Alciphron is the title of the book by the philosopher George Berkeley that was most popular in his own time and is probably his least popular in ours. But in the Seventh Dialogue, Berkeley sketches out some very interesting ideas on human language — something that he recognised as being an absolutely central philosophical question and one that bears directly upon economics.
Read more...Yves here. I must admit to being mystified and intrigued by Eve Online, which I have to confess I’d never heard of before today. First of course is the large number of people who find it appealing to spend significant amounts of leisure time in a realm designed to be ruthless and savage. Don’t they get enough of that at their day jobs? It used to be the most common narrative of entertainment was the hero’s journey. We now see rising popularity of amusements that celebrate ruthlessness and a breakdown or lack of social norms (such as the Game of Thrones)
The second curiosity is that 500,000 people have spent real money in meaningful amounts and invested time in a pseudo-economy where the funds are stranded. And now to add insult to injury, some have taken really big losses.
Read more...In the runup to the global financial crisis, George Magnus, who was then chief economist at UBS, was one of the most insightful commentators and was early to call how bad things might get. He’s back to sound alarms about the emerging markets turmoil.
Read more...Yves here. One of the things that is bothersome about the ongoing discussion of robots (or more generally automation) taking jobs is the lack of precision as to how that takes place. And that lack may lead to overestimation.
Read more...Obama made yet another pitch in State of the Union Address for his gimmies to multinationals known as the TransPacific Partnership and the TransAtlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. Today that idea went down in flames, at least as far as getting the deals done this year are concerned.
Read more...A brief surge of optimism, in the form of a short-lived rally in the belegured Turkish Lira and South African rand after their central banks raised interest rates to try to halt the plunge in currency values, has fizzled. And the Fed reducing its dosage of market tonic, in the form of QE, only soured investors’ already bad mood.
Read more...Naked Capitalism readers have frequently called for the Post Office to offer basic banking services, as post offices long have in many countries, notably Japan. That idea has gotten an important official endorsement in the form of a detailed, extensively researched concept paper prepared by the Postal Service’s Inspector General.
Read more...Yves here. This article provide perspective on Obama’s unseemly anxiety to push through the toxic trade deal known as the TransPacific Partnership. the TPP is that it is a crucial part of Obama’s “pivot to Asia” strategy. One of its aims is to isolate China by creating a trade bloc that excludes the Middle Kingdom. The article below helps explain why non-military means of reinforcing US hegemony are particularly important now.
Read more...Journalists and laypeople tend to use stock markets at their proxy for economic and financial market conditions. The performance of US stock markets looked like an encouraging return to a semblance of normalcy after last week’s squall, until a wave of selling in the final hour, with 600 million shares of volume, pushed the major indexes solidly into negative territory. As of this writing, that barometer is still a bit wobbly. Australia was down 1.26% overnight and the Nikkei off .17%. But Chinese and the Singapore markets are up, as are European and the S&P and DJIA indices.
But some of the explanations are less persuasive than others.
Read more...Investors cry crocodile tears over subprime blight even though it helped line their pockets.
Read more...That is the question today. Let’s first ask markets.
Read more...Yves here. With this the last week of Bernanke’s tenure as Fed chairman, it will be necessary to brace yourself for a barrage of unwarranted encomiums. Steve Keen provides a useful counterpoint, that Bernanke failed even in his own terms.
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