“You can’t trust bankers†says Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable†Taleb is an econometrician and trader – meaning he makes his money betting on financial instruments, like a professional poker player.
Category: economics
real inflation
There is precision, and there is accuracy. It is unwise to attain more precision than accuracy, for one is apt to fool oneself, and worse still to attain precision at the cost of accuracy. You cannot measure inflation on goods that are changing, without making questionable subjective judgements. Goods that are not changing are stuff like food and fuel. An accurate measure of inflation would not include goods that apt …
billion prices inflation estimate
The billion prices project spiders prices off the internet, and gets results broadly similar to the BLS, about thee percent per year, which surprises me, since over the last three years the BLS has been applying “hedonic adjustments†to all manner of goods where hedonic adjustment is impossible or implausible. Today’s supposedly three percent inflation as measured by the BLS is a lot higher rate of inflation than what the …
Philips curve, stimulus
If stimulus works, if Keynesianism is a good enough approximation to the modern American economy, there should be a relationship between unemployment and inflation, the Philips curve. Higher unemployment should lead to lower inflation, and vice versa. There is no relationship.
McConnell tells Obama he can stick it in a little bit
House Republican leader McConnell tells Obama he can stick it into the Republicans just a little bit, but not all the way, and must stop if it starts to hurt.
Actual Greek riots
Last year the riots were entirely fake, astroturf government rioters theatrically engaging in pretend conflict with government police. This time, there was some fake violence, and some quite real violence.
Entryism goes public
The SEIU is a far left organization, far far further to the left than any elected Democrat will admit to being.  It is the voice of the state organized as political interest group. It has always been a major force backing “moderate†Republicans.
Probability of fiat collapse
I observe that people are still buying and selling long term corporate bonds at prices that indicate low inflationary expectations. On the other hand, total value of world gold is about fifteen trillion dollars, which indicates a lot of people expecting partial or total collapse of fiat money
What would have happened if no bailout in 2008?
Steven Horwitz has the experiment.
A golden oldie on the minority mortgage meltdown
Ann Coulter rarely gives links, and frequently employs hyperbole and humorous exaggeration, so when she reports entirely ridiculous real events, it is difficult to be sure whether she is engaging in humorous hyperbole, or things really are that outrageous. Vdare has helpfully annotated one of her posts with links, and I have added a little more annotation. And yes, Ann Coulter was not making this up. The government really is …