Category Archives: Financial
Growing the economy the easy way, change the way things are counted
On Monday, we had Dr. Steven Sheffrin here to talk about our national government’s debt and our annual deficits that add to that debt. He mentioned that other countries seem to get in trouble with creditors when their debt to GDP ratio gets to about 90%. Well, after listening to this little story on NPR’s [...]
A St. Patrick’s Day Farewell to Intrade
This past November, 26th, I posted the following short piece to this blog. For several years, I and others have pointed to Intrade.com as a premier forecasting tool, a betting market or prediction market. Take a look at this blog’s archives in the category “Prediction Markets.” Intrade has been far more accurate at predicting elections [...]
Anakin Greenspan’s turn to the Dark Side
Before Alan Greenspan’s almost 19-year reign as Federal Reserve Chairman (economic sith?), and before his appointment by Nixon as Chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors, Greenspan was a private sector economic consultant and a critic of fiat money or a government manipulated monetary system. In fact, he penned ”Gold and Economic Freedom” (a short [...]
Romer, new theory of economic growth theory, and patent wars
One contender for this year’s Nobel Prize in Economics is Stanford economist Paul Romer, son of a Colorado governor. You should note that Romer is the developer of “Aplia,” a homework, quizzing, and practice software system that he sold a few years ago to Cengage. Aplia is the homework and quizzing software that is currently [...]
The rich leaving France in the face of a huge tax hike–who would have seen this coming?
If you take a look at this recent article from France24.com, you will see that many French businessmen are puting their houses on the market to leave France, trying to avoid being hit with a stinging 75% marginal tax rate (the rate on their highest earnings, their “marginal” earnings). Leaving a high tax region was [...]
Baptists and Bootleggers, Damon and the UAE
Matt Damon has proven over and over to be a talented actor and screenwriter. In December, he will be coming out with a pro-environmental movie about fracking to extract natural gas and petroleum from certain rock structures, a movie titled Promised Land. No doubt, Matt Damon is an environmentalist–he believes in this new project. A [...]
UN considers global taxation
Yesterday I posted a comment on the World Health Organization’s attempts to place a global tax on cigarettes here. Today, I read here that the UN is attempting to tax billionaires, carbon, airline flights, minerals, currency trading in dominant currencies (the dollar, the pound, the euro, the yen), and in financial transactions. In yesterday’s posted [...]
The Wrath of Grapes—The Dust Bowl Era Migration to California Has Been Reversing
When a seller of a product competes, an increase in that seller’s market share indicates that that seller is doing a better job, relative to its competitors, of producing net value, or benefits to buyers minus price, something economists call “consumer surplus.” Marketing professionals use the term value for this idea, which is a bit [...]
Profit, loss, bailout and fiat
Take a look at this story about the bailout of Chrysler Motors. Notice that Chrysler will not be able to pay back the federal government. While the authors seem to make a big thing about this company now being foreign owned, I do not think that is such a big deal, that is not the [...]
The French exodus continues
The evidence of France’s wealthy and their wealth fleeing that country is mounting. Take a look at this article from Britain’s The Telegraph. Could it be time to invest in real estate in Ontario and Montreal? -MC