I’m surprised this move, of cell phone providers getting into the payments game, hasn’t come sooner. Visa and MaserCard charge fees vastly in excess of their costs, which is usually an invitation to competition, but payment services have high barriers to entry. But cell phone carriers already have some of the key elements of the […]
Read more...Economists really do seem to struggle with history – and sometimes geography, too. Brad DeLong needs to remember that the Financial Times is published in London. As far as most combatants were concerned, the second world war broke out in September 1939. Niall Ferguson, FT, 20th July 2010. Goodish point. On the other hand, Ferguson […]
Read more...This post first appeared on February 14, 2007 An excellent column by Martin Wolf in the Financial Times, where he is the lead economics editor. Starting with principles put forward by Ben Bernanke in his recent speech on income inequality, Wolf concludes that America cannot do without some form of a welfare state, specifically improved […]
Read more...Reader Francois T highlighted a story at Washington Monthly that I recommend highly to readers. It illustrates how the intersection of corporate pursuit of profit and regulatory backfires can produce tidy oligopolies that pursue rent-seeking behavior with impunity. From his e-mail: A well-intentioned move by Congress in 1986, followed by another one in 1996 converted […]
Read more...The Financial Times had a forward-thinking comment by Richard Florida, director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. It argues that investment in technology and better management can turn many now low end service sector jobs into better paid and higher quality work. One key aspect, which the […]
Read more...One of the odd things I observe is the way some posts or issues regularly elicit heated reactions. For instance, early in the days of euro wobbliness, some readers in Europe would go a bit off the deep end at the suggestion that the Eurozone has serious structural weaknesses. It wasn’t so much that these […]
Read more...By Glenn Stehle, an engineer who began working in the oil industry in 1974. After a two-year stint with Cities Service Oil Company, he worked for two years for Henry Engineering, a petroleum engineering consulting firm. Upon leaving Henry Engineering he worked as an independent engineering consultant in all facets of the oil and gas […]
Read more...Economists are often in the “it works in practice, but does it work in theory?” mode, but here we see a case where some are grappling with why some of their prized notions pre-crisis came a cropper. A clever post at VoxEU discusses why financial innovation isn’t what it is cracked up to be, and […]
Read more...We’ve followed the story of the slow but increasing and badly needed pushback against Monsanto’s predatory business practices, which force farmers to buy Monsanto seed annually, rather than re-use it. Worse, Monsanto seed has been genetically engineered so as to require the use of Monsanto herbicides and fertilizers. And with (until recently) the seeds patent […]
Read more...One of my friends is a biomedical engineer who gave up doing science because it involved too much drawing of lines through scatter diagrams to claim the existence of relationships in order to keep the grant money coming in. She got a law degree, and worked for the National Institutes of Health, Big Pharma, a […]
Read more...Dear readers, the headline may seem alarmist, so let’s work though the claims and counter claims: Full body scanning involves radiation. The medical profession has been pretty remiss about pointing out the dangers of radiation, even though radiation can cause cancer. That’s probably because a quite a few diagnostic tests involve the use of radiation, […]
Read more...The solar industry is already suffering from significant overcapacity, yet incumbents are adding still more manufacturing to try to secure a cost competitive position after the shakeout. This chart, prepared by Digitimes using data from The Information Network (hat tip reader Michael), sums up the yawning gap between demand and capacity: The Information Network forecasts […]
Read more...By dint of good fortune, Satyajit Das’ new post at Wilmott (which he has graciously authorized us to reproduce) is on our occasional Sunday beat, and comments on some recent books, the theme being remakes. Enjoy! From Das: Remakes are rarely as good as the original but can sometimes add something, if only a nostalgic […]
Read more...Reader Jason Pl pointed out this post from Jon Taplin, which starts with the less than cheery chart on US durable goods production courtesy Floyd Norris. As you can see, the only growth biz is military: Military contracting procedures means that work will stay with domestic players. So one could take the cynical view that […]
Read more...One of the most remarkable aspects of the success of Wall Street in subordinating the real economy to its wishes and needs is the con job implicit in the application of the word “innovation” to what might more accurately be described as tax evasion, regulatory arbitrage, and chicanery. Martin Mayer once described innovation as “using […]
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