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Assorted links
1. What makes people give?, by David Leonardt
2. Richard Sandor's Climate Exchange
3. Will there be a big intervention to support the dollar?
4. Watch old Star Treks on-line
Posted by Tyler Cowen on March 14, 2008 at 11:25 AM in Web/Tech | Permalink
Comments
NBC also started showing "classic shows" online. Buck Rogers and original Battlestar Galactica are available now.
Posted by: Rich B. at Mar 14, 2008 2:35:24 PM
Who would have both the ability and the incentive to carry out an effective intervention to support the dollar? I'm not saying it's impossible, but it looks to me like someone would have to be willing to buy up an awful lot of USD in order to support the price (assuming the intervention is carried out in a market context). Who's going to volunteer for such a risky bet when the Fed is expanding M3 so rapidly? Some of the major players (like China) have already taken a bath on their dollar reserves - I would think they are much more likely to be looking for a way to unwind their position, not to accumulate more...
Posted by: bbartlog at Mar 14, 2008 4:19:55 PM
Thanks for the link on charity. This is an informative article. You seem to have been ahead of the curve calling List an important superstar in economics over a year ago.
Why didn't we hear of him before?
Was he always so productive and the Chicago machine is now working in his favor? Or, maybe he has just caught fire recently.
Posted by: chappy at Mar 14, 2008 4:31:26 PM
Re: the charity link.
When Spike Lee was making X (i.e. the movie version of "The Autobiography of Malcom X"), he started to run out of money and in order to complete the movie the way he wanted it to be, he approached several wealthy and famous African Americans for money.
The story goes that he approached Michael Jordan and he donated $Y to the cause. He then approached Magic Johnson and told him how much Michael had donated (or maybe the names are reversed here, sorry), thus ensuring that for competitive reasons that Magic would likely donate even more than Michael.
Spike still tells that story in tv interviews, and he always cracks himself up with how sneaky he was.
I find this technique similar to the concept of "anchoring" that B-Sschools teach in negotiation, namely that one ought to mention a high but plausible figure first when negotiating, thus eliciting a higher actual offer from the counterparty than they might have otherwise given.
Anchoring also plays a part in an investment folly, or follies. For example people like to tell themselves that when a position they own is underwater, they will get out "when it gets back to even". This is dumb of course, if the position is wrong, simply get out, and if the position is right, it has nothing to do with your entry point.
Another investment folly centering around "anchoring" is when people think that stocks (or whatever) are cheap because they are down from their highs. They say "oh, look at all the bargains", without seeming to pause and wonder if perhaps that stocks were previously too expensive, and perhaps even still too expensive.
Anchoring is a powerful concept everyone ought to be familiar with.
Posted by: happyjuggler0 at Mar 15, 2008 12:51:31 PM
I don't think intervention is necessary, just less government spending and intervention. Intervention got us into this mess.
Posted by: jorod at Mar 15, 2008 3:56:53 PM
