This Brad DeLong post summarises criticisms of the Stern report on the economics of climate change and criticisms of the criticisms. Mostly, it’s concerned with the role of uncertainty; as the tail of the distribution includes some really horrible possibilities, it’s not sensible to assume that we’ll be OK because the middle of the distribution…
Read More A Fundamental ProblemAccording to Felix “Fishy” Salmon, the volume of lending in the London interbank market has gone from £640bn to £249bn since the credit furt hit in September. Say a 60 per cent cut. What percentage of that book of business does the City take as its turn? How much of that is spent or retained…
Read More Finance, mainstay of our economyWhat do the two halves of the Control Party – its Scottish and Northern wing, and its Southern and Posh wing, both – think should have no price in our society? Recap: a price is a measure of something’s value in terms of the alternatives you forgo by choosing it. Prices are a constraint; they…
Read More PricelessStrange signs and wonders are visible in the sky. Catalans Dragons beat Wigan. And Felix Salmon becomes an autogestionniste, in the auto industry to boot. Now the VEBA, according to the WSJ, is a union-run trust – which means that the UAW now controls more than enough money to buy GM. Of course, the VEBA…
Read More 2007: the subversion beginsWhat a weekend, eh? That’s the first run on the bank I’ve ever seen, so in the future I’ll be able to say “Well, I remember back in the Panic of ’07…what, you don’t remember the Northern Rock? What do they teach these people today? Yes, they had branches then; and cash!” “You’re not my…
Read More Build upon the Rock and not upon the…whoopsIn my last “there will be no war with Iran” post, I asked if there were any other indicators I ought to be watching. Having given it some thought, I have indeed been looking at some others; for a start, I would expect that before such a strike the US Government’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve would…
Read More Any Other IndicatorsJohn Redwood has a secret plan to solve the pensions crisis and boost the economy; change the fire regulations so you can cram more codgers per square foot into your “care home” (Orwellian of the decade; they don’t and it’s not). Given a brief to banish Teh Curse of Regulation, this is what he comes…
Read More Still crazy after all these yearsAges ago, during a comments thread discussion here about British nuclear weapons and Trident replacement, Chris Lightfoot (peace and blessings be upon him) suggested the option of “virtual” nuclear capability; that is, maintaining all the necessary technology, keeping the plans on the books, but not actually making a bomb. The canonical example is Japan, which…
Read More Fear of a Swedish BombRob Farley has reviewed a book I’ve just been rereading, Marc Levinson’s The Box. It’s a history of containerisation and how it had a massive impact on the economy – Levinson argues that port and cargo handling costs were so great pre-containers that containerisation itself was enough to bring about a huge reorganisation of world…
Read More Big Big Steel Boxes!Cognitive neuroscientists staged an experiment in which subjects were asked to make decisions on whether or not to invest money. It was the classic set-up that demonstrates risk-aversion bias: on each round, the subject could choose between keeping $1 and taking a 50 per cent chance of getting $2.50. Theoretically, you should always take the…
Read More I am the message centre and I am in control