I'm just a guy with a deep and abiding fascination with economics and public policy. One so deep I recently picked up a graduate degree on the subject. One so deep that my current startup is based entirely on my desire to help individuals better understand the financial possibilities that lie before them.
But you've read a blog and some things on reddit, so clearly you understand it better than me.
I'm sick of arguing with people like you... people who base their economic beliefs not on solid econometric analysis, but rather on mostly inaccurate blog posts... and yet you still mistake yourself for an expert.
You win. I'm out of here too. I'm deleting my posts that are available for deletion, because the combined arrogance and ignorance of your response here makes clear that I was foolish for thinking that this could be a venue for informed discussion. I won't waste another second of my life "debating" well established knowledge with an idiot like you.
You complain about me being "arrogant" and "ignorant" and then you make entirely false statements about my own background (a subject of which you know absolutely nothing). You then complain about the quality of this forum, and then are the first person in two years of commenting on Hacker News that has ever attacked me ad hominem. I suspect that you are reasonable person that is just especially frustrated by the generally low quality of internet commentary about economics ( I too no longer visit reddit, but that doesn't mean the people there are wrong about everything). But if that kind of language is common with you, I do hope that you leave Hacker News.
I have had also had a long and deep fascination with economics and public policy. I've read dozens of books on finance and economics, from the original classics to more modern research. I've read hundreds of articles, I used to browse through social science libraries and download NBER papers for fun. I've had long and productive discussions with academic economists, people who work in finance and people who have worked in central banking. I don't claim to be omniscient about economics. But I have formed judgments, I state them plainly, and I welcome debate and hearing new arguments. I do not disagree with Keynesians or other mainstream folks because I am ignorant of their arguments. I disagree because I have evaluated them very carefully, read everything I could on the subject, and found their theories unconvincing.
I would be happy to debate or back up either of the two claims I made ( "The CPI is not a good measure of inflation" and "The mainstream economists led the economy off a cliff"). If you want to read comments where I elaborate more, you can read a few I made elsewhere: http://www.newmogul.com/item?id=15334 or http://www.newmogul.com/item?id=12274 I would actually really like to debate them with a worthy opponent. I too find good economic debate very hard to find on the web.
I greatly doubt "dozens of books", but I wouldn't be surprised if you've read a couple books and some articles that generally all agree with your preconceived ideas and your austrian leanings.
That is false. I read books from all sides, and the results of my reading greatly changed my views.
After all, you're clearly a person who think that he can point to the sky and understand economics, which is typical for armchair austrians... whereas actual economists and intelligent people generally prefer econometric data.
I have no problem with data. Because I respect data and math, I care a lot about when it is used properly and when it is not. In particular, regressions are almost always abused in econometrics, because there are far too many variables to control for, all the variables are imprecisely defined, and there is no easy to way to check the author's assumptions for a sensitivity analysis.
The federal reserve failed to be an effective arbiter of systemic risk. (something which was not even remotely in its mission statement.)
- "supervising and regulating banking institutions to ensure the safety and soundness of the nation's banking and financial system and to protect the credit rights of consumers"
- "maintaining the stability of the financial system and containing systemic risk that may arise in financial markets"
That's just nonsense. Most economists have nothing to do with the economy.
A great number of prominent economists work in official positions ( CEA, FED, the various agencies and bureaus). These economists play very major roles in regulating the economy.
Non-hedonically adjusted metrics have been studied at length and are generally be be more flawed than the hedonically adjusted metrics.
I never said straight up hedonically adjusted numbers are better. You have to use the right number for the job. For the purposes of monetary policy or investing, I would look mainly at national income statistics, asset prices, credit growth, and broad money supply growth. Maybe the Fed wasn't watching these, or maybe were and just ignored them. But all four measures were showing huge warnings as early as 2004, and had they been paid attention to, a lot of bad things could have been avoided.
That said, it's ludicrously arrogant and nonsensical to simply claim it's pure fabrications,
Calling it a "pure fabrication" is inaccurate, and a word I did not use. The CPI is the result of lots of honest hard working people, who long hours trying to boil down the economy into one number using the most accurate methodology they can. But the economists calculating the CPI do exist in a political world, and there is a selection effect for a methodology that has more generous assumptions.
But when you pile a ton of subjective assumptions together and then apply a bunch of math, the result is subjective. There are multiple semi-plausible ways to do hedonics and there is no right answer. How can you objectively measure how much percent better a 2004 Toyota is than a 1998 Toyota? The CPI does indeed have a consistent, thought out methodology. Unfortunately, it's actually in part measuring the Toyota new model roll out strategy. The Toyota model roll out strategy has nothing to do with monetary economics or investment strategy.
To you, economics is a religion, and as such there is no point in arguing with you... you point at the sky, not at the ground.
Well, I have changed my mind on many issues. I am very responsive to good arguments. In fact, I used to have exactly your position on CPI, with exactly the arguments you made. But I studied the issue further and was convinced otherwise.
I truly and honestly hope that at some point in time you'll pull your head out of your ass for long enough to realize the difference in the level of effort required to become a true expert in a field, and the level of effort required to simply become dangerous.
So what would you advocate I do if I wanted to become an expert? What defines an expert?
Personally, I take the approach advocated by Benjamin Graham. I have separate accounts for investing, and speculation/trading.
I just view them as fundamentally different activities, with different risk profiles, and different sorts of analysis required prior to taking or selling any given position.
I read the 'snowball' book about Buffet, and it seemed to me like the advantage Graham had was that they went over information in a way that would only take a few minutes with a computer, but that wasn't done so systematically at the time, by most people. So, 'fundamentals', yes, but fundamentals driven by data. In this day and age, when everyone can comb out the same stocks in a matter of minutes, does that approach work?
Frankly, reddit is a truly horrible source of information about business and the economy. The loudest commenters on those topics tend to be educated primarily via blogs.
Personally, I'd advocate a subscription to the Financial Times, which is brief and factual in nature, with opinions kept to the opinion page.
Keep in mind that the mainstream, professional economists did in fact lead the economy of the cliff. So mainstream views of economics are not exactly error-free. Blogs, reddit, etc. are full of populist myths. But the blind squirrel occaisionally finds some nuts. Or an elephant. The CPI is the elephant.
The economists at the Fed set the rules of the game (too big to fail, lender of last resort, Greenspan put) that rewarded increasing levels of irresponsibility over the last two decades. Firms have one directive: make money. The Fed has the directive of setting the rules so that financial firms make money from being productive, rather than living off the taxpayer. The Fed failed at this.
> I think it is important that every business have a good impression of what they do, and what they do not do.
If this is the case, they should ditch the banner ads. On my laptop, with a vertically maximized browser window I can see three ads (EyeQ, LifeLock, and a google text ad that promises to let me know a shocking secret about coffee), but I can't see the legend.
That seems like the model for a site that is trying to make money by having a large volume of visitors clicking ads, not the model for a site that wants serious, important people who have some reason to care about weather.
We are freemium--so if you care that much, you can pay.
We also get a large volume of traffic, so it doesn't make much sense not to monetize it.
By the way, the eyeQ ad is a direct sale to someone that cares a lot about severe weather. I agree it would be great if all three were severe-weather-related, but we're not there yet.
For what it's worth, I'm running 10.6 on one of my Macs, and I still have some Ports that don't work on it.
In particular, I've had issues with ghc and R. Most other software (both common and uncommon) has been okay, but I'd recommend most people wait another month or so, unless 10.6 fixes something important to you, or is otherwise significant.
ghc is one of a handful of MacPorts which does not work with Snow Leopard, although this should be fixed soon (32-bit only, though): http://trac.macports.org/ticket/20132
I have a friend who's been fighting through installing it from source because he's sick of waiting (apparently cabal was having trouble... not really sure). Hope macports gets things sorted out soon.
The article is right for the same reason that horoscopes seem right, because it doesn't really say anything. To my knowledge, nobody intelligent was seriously suggesting that a sharp recovery was likely. His article then discounts that relatively absurd possibility and then states his belief that the market will either be U-shaped, flat, or decline with a double-dip recession.
Given that at that point a serious depression was pretty much ruled out as well, he basically said that all possible responses were, in his opinion, possible... and then people read it and thought "wow, that horoscope was totally correct."
Part of the problem is likely that some menu items are simply far worse for you than you'd guess, if you don't check the nutrition information.
As an example, I was on the road recently and I stopped by a Burger King drive-thru to get a quick lunch. I knew that a Spicy Chicken Sandwich is 450 calories, which isn't wholly unreasonable.
Sadly, they were out of those, but they asked if I'd like an "angry tendercrisp sandwich' instead. It sounded similar, so I said yes.
The angry tendercrisp sandwich: 1030 calories, 61g of fat, 15g of fat, and 2670mg of sodium.
But I'm sure there are some people who order them, thinking they're healthier than a burger.
They came down, but now there are EV SSL certs that are still a couple hundred dollars/yr for a non-wildcard cert.
As a business owner, I feel a bit like it's a big con game, as I have trouble understanding what it is that EV SSL certs solve that wasn't supposed to be solved with the original SSL certs. It could just be my ignorance, but I still find $400/yr to file some papers and then do some math a bit absurd.
I'm just a guy with a deep and abiding fascination with economics and public policy. One so deep I recently picked up a graduate degree on the subject. One so deep that my current startup is based entirely on my desire to help individuals better understand the financial possibilities that lie before them.
But you've read a blog and some things on reddit, so clearly you understand it better than me.
I'm sick of arguing with people like you... people who base their economic beliefs not on solid econometric analysis, but rather on mostly inaccurate blog posts... and yet you still mistake yourself for an expert.
You win. I'm out of here too. I'm deleting my posts that are available for deletion, because the combined arrogance and ignorance of your response here makes clear that I was foolish for thinking that this could be a venue for informed discussion. I won't waste another second of my life "debating" well established knowledge with an idiot like you.