Ayn Rand & Alan Greenspan

This FT piece by James Boyle reminded me of when I wanted to see what all the fuss about Ayn Rand was about and decided to read Atlas Shrugged. Ricardo Hausmann, who is one of the smartest persons I have ever met, told me: why are you reading that? The characters are very flat.

I didn't listen to him and read the book (the whole 645,000 words or 1168 pages, this is 30,000 words more than the 2nd longest book I've ever read ). Why? Well, I thought that if somebody as smart as Alan Greenspan worships her, she must have said something interesting. Of course, Ricardo was right. The book is a piece of junk. I often watch cartoons with my three-year old daughter and find that most cartoon characters are much more complex than the "all good" or "all bad" characters of Ayn Rand. So why does Greenspan like her so much? Who knows?
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Iceland

Buiter and Sibert tell us why it got in to trouble. Check out the scary conclusion: Iceland’s circumstances were extreme, but there are other countries suffering from milder versions of the same fundamental inconsistent – or at least vulnerable - quartet: (1) A small country with (2) a large, internationally exposed banking sector, (3) its own currency and (4) limited fiscal spare capacity relative to the possible size of the banking sector solvency gap: Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden
Tyler Cowen wonders if Iceland is permanently bankrupt. Do we need a HIRC (Heavily Indebted Rich Countries) Initiative?

-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Landslide?

Chris Blatmann has always the coolest graphs.
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Is this the dirtiest electoral campaign ever?

John Judis says so.
PS
I have never met Rashid Kahlidi, but he is the brother of my colleague Raja.
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Once we were rollerskaters...

... then, one of us became dr. Doom.
(Luca, Mando, Ugo, Nicola, Nouriel, Pepi. Central Park, sometimes in 2003/2004)

Stag-deflation?

Here is Nouriel. The dr. Doom name has stuck.
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

The coolest search engine

Pixolu, not yet fully functional.
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Pro-Obama video Evita style

Here, priceless. Check this out: My kid plays hockey and I am his mama but I am voting Barak Obama Thanks to Raja. K.
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Build your own X-ray machine

I had read this on the Economist, but these slides are fantastic. Found on MR
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Are you racially biased?

Try this game. Thanks to Alessandro N.
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Scary video

Here
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Left wingers: US versus Europe

Very few Europeans (Silvio Berlusconi is a notable exception) would classify the Financial Times as a left-wing newspaper. But Americans are different. Check out this letter: the FT’s slightly left-leaning slant has lost the “slightly”.
And the guy is from Northern California. Texans probably think that the FT is a hardcore communist newspaper. This is a nice paper on why Americans don't like redistribution.
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Bad econometric models...

...bad economic policies. At least this is what John N Muellbauer thinks. Check this out: European central banks, misguided by outdated econometric models, should have cut rates faster and deeper in a coordinated fashion. They should now scrap these models..
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Great maps

from Chris Blattman.
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Summers on the crisis

Here
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

The Queen of academic rankings

Anne-Wil Harzing created Publish or Perish and became the queen of academic rankings. This is her journal quality aggregator.
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Currency crises

Paul Krugman reports on the mother of all currency crises, and Guillermo and Ernesto have all the rights to say I told you so (even though the landing in the North is not so soft)!
BTW, the paper starts like this: A plane in flight is an eminently “unsustainable” object: sooner or later it has to land. Years ago, crashes were alarmingly frequent, so it was hard to fault Aunt Agatha for believing that any flying plane was an accident waiting to happen. Today, of course, her concerns are brushed off by her younger relatives with a condescending smile. Technological advances ensure that the majority of landings are smooth.
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Can you see the great wall from the moon?

No! However, it is still fun to climb it and slide down from it.
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Participants at the Wuhan training course

Click on the pictures to make them bigger

Letter to the editor

In a couple of old posts I joked about the LHC and the end of the world. Mr Barclay Price (a reader of The Economist) is pointing to another black hole: SIR – Can it really be a coincidence that within weeks of the Large Hadron Collider being switched on for the first time a financial black hole has appeared in the universe?
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

The Baseline Scenario

Simon Johnson has a website on the crisis. Here he discusses the possibility of a Euro break up.
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Great Wall

-------------------------------------------------

♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Censorship on Italian TV

The FT reports on satirists banned from Italian TV. The list includes Sabina Guzzanti, Daniele Luttazzi, and Beppe Grillo. Sad, sad, sad. The only positive thing is that Dario Fo, who was also banned from Italian TV, ended up winning the Nobel.
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Better than in "The Apprentice"

Here is Donald Trump. I am sure he would love to say "You're fired!"
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Who's the guy with the bow tie and the big S?

Jeff Frankel solves the mistery (I think that Frankel is the one with the SF --Stanley Fischer?-- sign).

More PK material: Why he got it in his own words. Here is Dixit on PK, and here is the full name of one of his precursours.

Here is the unofficial website, full of intersting material.

PS
The picture is from a skit party in the mid 70s. Compare the techonolgy with this.
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Things on which I would have preferred to be wrong

I’m sitting in the airport in Beijing trying to catch up with the news. The world looks scarier and scarier. About one year ago I told a friend that the downsizing of the Fund was a crazy idea and that within two years there would be a crisis in East Europe (probably Hungary) and the Fund will be on the market hiring people in order to have enough bodies to send on mission. My friend told me that I was wrong and that the Fund no longer had a role to play. In fact, I was wrong. It only took one year for the crisis to come. I wonder when the Fund will start recruiting.

In September 2007, UNCTAD wrote an early report on the crisis, I think (but I am not 100% sure) that I was the one who wrote the following (thanks to Raja for digging it out): It is possible however, that the subprime crisis will become a full-blown financial market crisis cum recession. In this "perfect-storm" or crisis scenario, the US goes into a full-blown recession and, as happened in 1998, risk aversion skyrockets. Under this scenario, emerging markets would receive negative shocks on both the real (because of reduced demand for their exports) and financial sides (because of considerably higher spreads). Since most emerging market countries are now running current account surpluses, the crisis would not be as painful as the one that hit the emerging world in 1998. However, it could be painful for the small group of countries in East Europe and Central Asia, which are running large current account deficits. A perfect storm may even cause financial problems to some emerging countries that are running current account surpluses.

Last year, it looked too pessimistic, now it looks optimistic: It's painful for everybody.
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

The wise swedes

From Paul Krugman. President Bush, this morning: In the long run, the American people can have confidence that our economy will bounce back.
John Maynard Keynes: But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again.

I have a picture dated 1991 (0r 1990) with a bunch of other grad students and the famous quote. I need to dig it out. (I also have a picture of Keynes Hall in Cambridge University showing that somebody had peed on Keyenes' name, but these were the peak of the monetarist times).
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Iceland jokes

My favorite one:
What's the capital of Iceland?
About $20
What about this quote of the day (from a trader):
"This is worse than a divorce. I've lost half my net worth and I still have a wife."
Via MR.
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

I need a hero

the video is here.
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Macroeconomics porn

More often than not, I don't share the views of Arnold Kling, but this paragrah is beautiful: I have always thought that the issue of the relationship between financial markets and the "real economy" was really deep. I thought that it was a critical part of macroeconomic theory that was poorly developed. But the economics profession for the past thirty years instead focused on producing stochastic calculus porn to satisfy young men's urge for mathematical masturbation.
Found here.
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

What did Heckman say to Cochrane?

A summary of the controversy around the Milton Friedman Institute is in the David Warsh link here (maybe I shodul say something about my friend Hussein, but I don't have time now). A NYT article is here. Here is John Cochrane's summary of the controversy. BUT, the full text of the message from James Heckman to John Cochrane is here (need to go to the end of the article).

ADDENDUM
The last link may not always work. So, here it is: Heckman e-mailed Cochrane a terse response to his concerns: “Screw off, John,” he said.
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Pension funds unprivatization

In this book (joint with E Borensztein and E Levy Yeyati) I had written that pension funds could become victims of their own success. mmmmm
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Nice animation

Here. Thanks to Manu Manu.
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

On the origins of morality

Excellent TED video by Jonathan Haidt. You can also take the morality test here.

These are my scores (green it's me, blue is the average for liberals and red for conservatives, I am more loyal and less pure than the average liberal)

Thanks to Kristine F.
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

UFOs

Here
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Romani

Qui. Grazie a FR.
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

How to close a hedge fund in style

Andrew Lahde managed a hedge fund which made huge returns betting on the subprime collapse. This is his good bye letter (it even includes some reflections on hemp) and note the newly created "wise people category" Thanks to Raja K.
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Osama doesn't like Obama

The two biggest dangers for Barack Obama are the Bradley Effect and OBL.

This is Joseph Nye on OBL: On October 29 2004, four days before the last election, Al Jazeera aired an 18 minute video tape in which Osama bin Laden addressed the American people and threatened further retaliation ...... In the first poll after that tape was released, President George W. Bush opened up a six point lead over Senator John Kerry. The deputy director of the CIA commented that “Bin Laden certainly did a nice favour today for the president”.

From the al-Qaeda leader’s point of view, Mr Bush’s policies were more useful for his efforts to recruit supporters than Mr Kerry’s might have been. Mr bin Laden is involved in a civil war within Islam. He wants the US to pursue policies that create the appearance of a clash of civilisations. Anything that polarises the mainstream of Muslim opinion helps his recruiting. As the deputy director for analysis at the CIA commented at the time: “Certainly, he would want Bush to keep doing what he’s doing for a few more years.” From that point of view, Barack Obama must be unsettling for Mr bin Laden. ...... Mr Obama has the edge as reflected in the global polls and that must be giving Mr bin Laden a headache. In the next few weeks .... Mr bin Laden may again be tempted to enter the fray. Given the scale of the financial crisis, it might take more than a video tape to refocus the attention of the American electorate this year ...
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

4-star toilet in the Forbidden City

♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

An animated film about one of Lebanon's darkest moments

I just saw a report on CNN on Waltz with Bashir (and also the Lemon Tree). Among other things, the CNN report mentioned that the two movies were acclaimed around the world but did not make much moeny in Israel (in fact Waltz with Bashir was not even screened by the main movie theater chains). Too close to home says director Eran Riklis.
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Again????

A friend sent me an email asking if the fringe benefits of the top managment of the BWIs include a large supply of blue pills. If you don't know what I'm refering to, check this out.
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Things you should not do..

...when you go to the beach in the Gulf: Here. Luckily they were not in this country, but they should have gone to Rimini, nobody would have bothered them. Other stories from the Gulf are here.
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Art and banking crises

My Chilean friends told me that the Central Bank of Chile has an amazing art collection which was built when bankrupt banks gave their art to the central bank as collateral (some of these paintings are on the cover of this series of books). What’s going to happen with Lehman’s huge art collection?
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Dafen and mass production of art

My painting was probably made in Dafen where an artist can make up to 30 paintings a day! Here are some very nice pictures. Other stories about Dafen are here and here.
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Tiananmen Square and Chinese scams

This morning I went to Tiananmen Square. It’s HUGE! I knew that it was the largest square in the world, but until you are standing in the middle of it, it’s hard to realize how big it is (you can fit 5 places de la Concorde in it).

Soon after my arrival I also got scammed (well, I kind of knew I was getting scammed but I went along). The scam works like this: a young English speaking clean-faced person approaches you an tells you that he/she is an art student (it could also be an older guy/woman who tells you that he/she is an art teacher) and invites you to see the art exhibit of her school. When you see a painting you like, the student tells you that the one you like was not made by a student but a by a famous artist who donated it to the school and that the proceeds from the sale of the painting will be used to fund a scholarship. So, I got suckered into it. I do like the painting, but I probably paid 10 times its true price (the original price was $400, I eventually paid $140, but I am sure could have paid $20, or even less). Oh well, the girl who sold me the painting worked very hard for it.
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Another communist magazine

When The Economist and the Financial Times wrote unfavorable articles about him, our prime minister accused them to be communist newspapers. Nature just joined the group of communist journals. Grazie Pask.
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Playmates!

Should I use these data data in my econometrics class?
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt!   ♦Add to del.icio.us   ♦Share on Facebook  

Wu what?

Off to China, a couple of days in Beijing (my hotel is next to this food market, but I may not eat here, both links are from MR) and then Wuhan. Yes, before going there I had never heard of it either (it only has 9 million inhabitants).
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

I had forgotten about

this. It was indeed a great essay.
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Nouriel's (not so) secret life

Here (I used to tell him that he should put little flags inside those plaster vulvas). See, economists can be cool.
(found on MR)
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

The Richmond Fed about economists and econ-bloggers

The link is here. Thanks to MR.
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Francis Fukuyama on the crisis

From the end of history to the end of the Reagan era (thanks to Raja K.). Another article about the overshooting of ideas is here.

Funny anecdote: in February 2006 (or 2005, I don't remember) I got stuck with Fukuyama and Mauricio Cardenas in a semideserted street of St. Petersburg (we took the wrong tram at the Hermitage). It was about -25 C and we were not properly dressed. We would have probably frozen if Mauricio had not jumped in the middle of the street stopped a car and asked the driver to take us to our hotel for a fee (he had read in the Lonely Planet that this was a standard procedure). The guys in the car asked us for 15 euro. They had no idea about our (at least mine) willingness to pay.
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Good news on the governance of the IFIs

Francesca R. just sent me this. So, the next president of the WB may not be American, but I bet that the US will still appoint a first deputy Managing Director/Vice President with de facto veto power (look at the Fund and the IDB).
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Dani Rodrik on John Williamson

This is a very nice post and I fully agree with it. Not only John is a very pragmatic and balanced thinker, he is also a very nice guy (in a seminar at the IIE where everybody was insulting me, John defended me). It’s terrible that he got stuck with the label of “bad Washington Consensus guy.” Moreover, in order to understand the roots of the Washington consensus one should also think about the crazy economic policies that preceeded it and brought hyperinflation and decade-long contractions in several Latin American countries.
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

State owned banks

A few years ago I wrote a paper (with Eduardo Levy Yeyati and Alejandro Micco) on state owned banks. The paper argued that public ownership of banks may not be as bad as people think (the message was more nuanced than that) and that, under certain conditions, may even be good. When we submitted the paper to the World Bank Economic Review*, one of the referees laughed (literally) at us. The paper was eventually published in Economia (an earlier and ungated version is here). I wonder if that referee would take the paper more seriously now.
I have other two public banks papers: here and here.

Guillermo Calvo, who used to be my boss at the IDB, once told me that in the end all banks are public (because when they go bust the Government takes them over). As usual, he was right.

*Until recently, the World Bank's view on state owned banks was that: "…whatever its original objectives, state ownership of banks tends to stunt financial sector development, thereby contributing to slower growth." (World Bank, 2001, P. 123). This is funny, if you think that the World Bank IS a state owned bank!
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Rightwingnuts...

...are not happy about the Nobel. Cool! Here is Brad DeLong compiling some material from the wingnuts.
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Econ Nobel prize, who is the loser?

In this very nice post about Krugman, Tyler Cowen says: Who are the big losers? Avinash Dixit and Elhanan Helpman and Maurice Obstfeld have to feel their chances for the prize went down significantly.

But what about this? Also, check Dani Rodrik.
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Excellent choice in Stockholm

From the man himself!
Here is Tyler Cowen on Krugman.
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Favorite things Lebanon

I just landed in Geneva (it’s 12 degrees here, it was 28 in Beirut) and this will be the last Lebanon post (for the moment, at least). Tyler Cowen (who is the greatest blogger on earth) has a nice “My favorite things XXX” series. I checked and he does not have a “My favorite things Lebanon” post. So, I tried to build my own (with some help from sista in law Nadine) Favorite things Lebanon.

Favorite food and restaurants. I love fried sultan Ibrahim (red mullet). However, I don’t particularly love the trendy Sultan Ibrahim restaurant. The best fish I had in Lebanon was at Chez Sami in Keserwan. But there are many good choices in Beirut. La Plage in Ain el-Mreisseh has good food (a bit pricey) in a beautiful setting. A long time ago (probably in 1999) I ate at Pepe's Fishing Club in Byblos (I don’t know if the place still exists). The food was average, but the old photos of Lebanon’s golden days were fantastic. I went to a very nice Armenian restaurant in Gemmayze called Mayrig. My Armenian friends (and da wife) told me that one should try Varouge in Bourj Hammoud.

Street food. This is not really street food, but the other great thing about Lebanese food are the sandwiches. In this trip I discovered (thanks to sista in law Nadine) Kabab-ji. WOW!

Favorite writer. Here the choice should be easy, the country worships Khalil Gibran. However I find the guy sooooo boring and pompous. Sista in law Nadine suggests reading “I, the Divine,” by Rabih Alameddine.

Favorite place to hang out at night. This is easy: Gemmayze (they even have free golf-cart shuttles to take you around). Nadine highly recommends Joe Pena, but the new hot spot is Myu (could not find a link). Here is a map of the bar/restaurants/clubs in the area.

Favorite place to hang out during the day. Also easy: Corniche al Manara

Favorite archeological site. Here competition is tough, but Baalbek remains one of the most spectacular places I have ever seen.

Favorite singer. This should also be easy, Lebanese worship Fairuz as much as they worship Gibran. Like Gibran, I find her boring. One of the sista in law suggests Haifa Wehbe and Ali el Deek. I don’t particularly like the former and I don’t know the latter. So I will vote for a half Lebanese: Shakira (her father is Lebanese and she grew up in Barranquilla. Nightlife in the Caribbean coast of Colombia is not so different from nightlife in Beirut, just substitute aguardiente with arak). Her early work (especially Pies Descalzos) is really good but I also ike the more recent and more commercial stuff.

Favorite movie. The recent sensation was Caramel, but I have not seen it (and people who have seen it did not say great things about it). I liked a lot West Beirut (one of the main actors used to be a student of da wife in AUB).

Favorite university. AUB, of course

Favorite actress. Let’s go again for a half Lebanese: Salma Hayek. Not really for her acting skills (even though I liked her in Frida), but because I can link to this guy who compares her to Von Hayek (but, in my ranking, Salma would win).

ADDENDUM
Pask says that I'm not the best qualified person to talk about food. Whoever knows my eating habits will agree with him. In fact, even I agree with him.
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Where's hummus from?

FP reports that the president of the Lebanese Industrialists Association announced that Lebanon plans to charge Israel with violating a food copyright by marketing hummus and falafel as Israeli products.

This reminds me of when I first moved to the US and people started telling me that pizza was from Chicago (or New York). My answer was: go to Da Michele in Naples and then to Pizzeria Uno. If after that you still have doubts on who invented pizza, you should have your taste buds checked.

So, I have no clue about the origin of hummus and falafel. However, I tried them in most Middle Eastern countries and there is no doubt that the Lebanese variety is by far far far far far the best (and the best hummus is the one homemade by my mother in law) and this should settle the issue.
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

A picture from Beirut

It’s a “maid” agency. Like in many other developing countries, middle class Lebanese families often have live-in maids. However, in most developing countries, maids are either local or from neighboring countries (for instance, in Chile and Argentina you find many maids from Bolivia and Peru), but in Lebanon (and Jordan, I don’t know about other developing countries in the Middle East) maids come from far-away places (mostly Sri Lanka, Philippines, and Ethiopia). The agencies charge fat fees, the government gets big tax revenues on the residency, work, and immigration permits, and the maids get little (the average monthly salary of a maid from Sri Lanka with a two year contract is $180, agency fees are $62 per month, and government fees are $42 per month). For a short documentary, see here and here (the second link has the breakdown of the fees).

-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

How much do economists earn?

Daniel Hamermesh has the data. Another interesting post on the subject is here.
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Chileans are taking other currencies...

...and Dany wonders why. I have no clue, maybe we should ask our friend Kevin.
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Lebanon, still defying gravity

In 2001, I left Lebanon thinking that a huge crisis was about to hit the country. The economy was not growing, the public deficit to GDP ratio was double digit, debt was 140% of GDP (if I remember well), and the currency was seriously overvalued. Two wars after, the dollar depreciation took care of the last factor (the Lebanese lira is fixed to the dollar) and the economy started growing at about 6% a year (in nominal terms). But the fiscal numbers are as screwed up as ever. The deficit is “only” 6% of GDP (GDP is about $22 billion), but debt reached 200% of GDP and may go to 220% in 2009.

Are people worried? Of course not! Clubs are cooler and more crowded than in New York, property prices are sky-high, and sovereign spreads remain low. Why? The standard answer is that “Lebanon is different.”

Yesterday I bought a wireless router. My sister in law told me that there is no way I will be able to set it up. I told her that I set similar routers up in the US, Italy, and Switzerland. She gave me the standard answer: “Lebanon is different.” Well, after 10 hours of trying I gave up. Lebanon IS different!
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

And the Nobel goes to...

...a view from Geneva
Thanks to Marco F.
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Do you believe in models?

fundamentalist, realists, and the crisis. As usual, Paul Romer has interesting things to say. I found this on Gregory Mankiw's blog.
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

The costs of default

...still hanging out in Lebanon and not reading much. However, I don't need to read this new IMF WP to know that it is absolutely great. :)
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Hanging out in Beirut...

...eating too much, enjoying the sun (it's getting cold in Geneva), watching old series on TV, and not reading too much. However, I did read this nice post on property rights by Dani Rodrik. It also has a great sentence by Avinash Dixit: everything is 'second-best' at best.
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

101st Post

Not bad for my baby blog
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Stinking money

It may be true that pecunia non olet, but what happens when you start using mackerel instead of cash? Thanks to MR!
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

A new hedge fund!

Check out StrategeryCapital Management LLC. Their philosophy is: Putting your money where our mouth is.
They describe themselves as the largest [hedge fund] in the world, with expected initial capital of $700 billion. It has a free and unlimited credit line should it need more. It has no fixed mandate, though it is expected to initially focus on mortgage-backed securities. And it is the only fund backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. Government.

The job applicants are great. Check out this guy:
I wud like to bid on help to manage big giant fund. I haz backround in housez and mortgaged papers. I wuz able to finannce and default 0n 5 houses in 3 yrs. I cleaned 320K outa the deal wit no outa pocket cash. Im am buziness paper trader man.
I will be a large asset for big giant fund. I got skillz jack!
My fee is on on total assets is only .0005 of assets. Nobody with my skillz works that cheap. Most clowns lose cash charging .02 of assets!
Thanks to Max!
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Nobel predictions

Reuters says: Hansen/Sargent/Sims, or Feldstein, or Alchian/Demstez. All great economists on the conservative side.
Among the 3 groups, I would vote for Hansen/Sargent/Sims. I haven't read much Hansen (too difficult) but Sargent's papers are beautiful (even if I often feel like, so what?) and Sim's "Macroeconomics and Reality" is a true classic.
However, why is Sargent with Sims and not Lucas? Check out what Lucas said about Sims' relationship with Sargent: After Bob Lucas read Sargent (1984), he wrote me [Sargent] that "With friends like you, Chris [Sims] doesn't need enemies."
Of course, I would vote again, and again, and again for Akerlof, but Sargent does not think much of Berkeley economists.
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Sex workers and the credit crunch

Apparently, they are the only ones still supplying liquidity: It is quite common for sex workers at the high end to take men "on credit," giving them freebies for a few months or longer until they can get back on their feet. The article is here
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Palin videos

The real thing
SNL
SNL with Hillary
The movie (Disney version)
The other Palin
Thanks to Max&Raja
More real thing
They say she is not goood in foreign policy, but check out how she charmed the president of Pakistan.
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook

Economists and computers

Sadly, the academic economics profession remains reluctant to embrace this new computational approach (and stubbornly wedded to the traditional equilibrium picture). This seems decidedly peculiar given that every other branch of science from physics to molecular biology has embraced computational modeling as an invaluable tool for gaining insight into complex systems of many interacting parts, where the links between causes and effect can be tortuously convoluted.

Something of the attitude of economic traditionalists spilled out a number of years ago at a conference .... a prominent economist objected that the use of computational models amounted to “cheating” or “peeping behind the curtain,” and that respectable economics, by contrast, had to be pursued through the proof of infallible mathematical theorems. The whole NYT article is here.
Thanks to Alessandro N.
-------------------------------------------------
♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Share on Facebook