Archive for the 'economics' Category
He imagined that satellite broadcasting might help a hundred Indian villages save two cows a year and understood what an impact that might have. Says a commenter at PZ Myers’ place, on the occasion of Arthur C. Clarke’s death. Two cows a year; now that’s genius. I can’t presume to say whether this came [...]
Last week: Two-thirds of Israelis want talks with Hamas. Not just that, but former secret-service chiefs were in the press arguing for it. Here’s Efraim Halevy talking to old-school TYR ally Laura Rozen. And here’s the data: ;not only did 64 per cent of Israelis support direct talks, and a majority of Labour and Kadima [...]
John Band has some thoughts about Northern Rock. So do I; more precisely, I have some thoughts about the Tories’ performance in the crisis. It’s been appallingly silly, irresponsible, and sometimes plain ignorant.
For example, last autumn the Tories seem to have thought that the Bank of England’s loan to the Rock was taxpayers’ money. This [...]
I thought it was Felix Salmon who made a very good argument for a carbon dioxide tax rather than a cap-and-trade system, referring to British Columbia’s decision to introduce a progressively increasing levy on fossil fuels and make a matching cut in general taxation. But it wasn’t; anyway here goes.
If you read this blog you’re [...]
It appears that the defence procurement stories we’ve been tracking are coming to a head. Recently, it emerged that the Astute SSN, Nimrod MRA4, and T-45 destroyer projects are going significantly overbudget again; the first two of these are, of course, the ones that were already £800 million over budget and several years later. The [...]
This PPRuNE thread reminds me of something from the archives.
During a meeting we had not long ago, the increasing sophistication and cost of the Unpersonned Aircraft was raised - because by becoming too sophisticated and HVAA in nature, they were in some danger of becoming too valuable to risk in certain scenarios. Rather defeating their [...]
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 [...]
According 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 [...]
What 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 [...]
Strange 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 is [...]
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