Hiding information
Standard & Poor’s New Policy: Concealing the S&P 500 P/E Ratio from the General Public
“Some high-level decision-maker at Standard & Poor’s has decided that the public should no longer be allowed easy access to this crucial number: the Price/Earnings ratio of the S&P 500.
That number went above 140 on September 30, 2009 — the highest ever recorded. It had continued upward all year.
I went to the old page late last week. The page has been totally redesigned. The P/E ratio was missing.”
A very disturbing event.
A huge error by Congress
Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000
Only 4 “Nay” votes in the House…
Minsky on economic instability
SSRN-The Financial Instability Hypothesis by Hyman Minsky
“Minsky identifies hedge, speculative, and Ponzi finance as distinct income-debt relations for economic units. He asserts that if hedge financing dominates, then the economy may well be an equilibrium-seeking and containing system: conversely, the greater the weight of speculative and Ponzi finance, the greater the likelihood that the economy is a “deviation-amplifying” system. Thus, the FIH suggests that over periods of prolonged prosperity, capitalist economies tend to move from a financial structure dominated by hedge finance (stable) to a structure that increasingly emphasizes speculative and Ponzi finance (unstable)”
Amazon’s CreateSpace: potential revolution in publishing
According to Amazon’s site, a would-be author can:
Self-publish and distribute your book
Make your book available to customers on Amazon.com and your own eStore. Set your book’s list price and earn royalties. Upload completed book files or use our free tools to prepare your content for publication. On-demand production of your book means you’ll never worry about inventory or minimum orders.
This seems to eliminate a lot of cost from the traditional book publishing route. The key to success would seem to be having a good editor, as that is a function that can’t really be automated in any meaningful way.
Calculated Risk makes a strong statement
The Failure of Regulatory Oversight
should be read by anyone, and the associated comment thread here contains excellent discussion.
Education inflation
“A University of California Board of Regents committee today approved a series of controversial increases in student fees that, if passed by the full board, will raise UC undergraduate education costs by more than $2,500, or 32%, in two steps by fall 2010.”
Ouch…I guess the UC figures that prospective students will just increase the amounts on their federal student loan applications.
Demographic outlook for Florida: negative
“for the first time since World War II, Florida’s population will actually shrink — by about 60,000 residents, state demographers estimate…”Florida’s population is shrinking — a disturbing trend for a state that has built its economy, and structured its state budget, on the assumption that throngs of new residents will move to its sunny shores each year”"
and an anecdote related here:
“When I lived in Florida everyone under thirty had either decamped, was in the process of leaving or had a two year plan to “get out”. It was depressing. Young people flee because life there sucks. The older senile generations of TV addicts and drive-thru pill heads have built lushly landscaped lockdown towns and concentration camp golf clubs.
All the entry level jobs are filled with old people. No way to work through college and only a retail, construction or real estate job out of college. The old people live in active fear of the young and organize the local governments such that anything that would appeal to a person under 30 gets banned or severely restricted.”
Zip codes linked to MSA
can be found at this link at the Census site:
Novel low cost rocket engine
“The Atea-1 is designed (to) travel to an altitude of 120 kilometres – space starts at 100 kilometres – then return to earth in a sub-orbital ballistic curve, to be recovered from a splashdown at sea. It has a payload of just two kilograms…The Atea-1 is almost entirely constructed from lightweight carbon fibre composites…The rocket generates the equivalent of 3200 horsepower from a rocket engine weighing just 13kg…Rocket Lab’s key development is its unique fuel formulation that took two years to develop. The fuel is polymer based and suspended in a solid form. It only burns in the presence of an oxidiser – liquid nitrous oxide”
This launch vehicle has been designed and created in New Zealand by a company called Rocket Lab.
leave a comment