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Assorted links
1. What could $700 billion buy in the developing world?
2. Nobel predictions, via Greg Mankiw
3. The crisis in pictures, via Chris F. Masse
4. Critique of Hubbard and Mayer
Posted by Tyler Cowen on October 2, 2008 at 12:11 PM in Web/Tech | Permalink
Comments
A $1B endowment for each of the top 700 US universities? It might be enough to kick-start free colleges in the US.
Posted by: odograph at Oct 2, 2008 12:27:38 PM
nope paulson wouldn't lie...none of this compares to the crisis that would occur if we don't pass something similar to his bailout.
If Goldman Sachs goes out of business and loans stop being made it means no more colleges or cars in this country and we all sleep in tents as our houses sit empty and rot. professors and factory workers will refuse to go to work anymore unless their customers are borrowing money created by the federal reserve and fractional reserve banks. If prices go any lower then nobody will be able to afod anything.
Posted by: pragmatic thinker at Oct 2, 2008 12:43:47 PM
I'll take that as pragmatic parody. The real point (I think) is that $700B dumped anywhere is a stimulus. $700B dumped as endowments would go immediately to investments, of various sorts. I really don't know where a $700B dump would have the best short and long term events ... but spending it "only" to get back to the same place seems disappointing. It's like spending $700 to fix your car's transmission ... and getting back a car that only works as well as it used to.
Posted by: odogrph at Oct 2, 2008 12:48:17 PM
But we are not consuming 700B we are investing 700B. Supposedly, we will get some most or more of that back.
If you think allowing JP Morgan, Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley fail would have absolutely disastrous effects on the country and the world, your ignorant.
Talk to any small business owner, big buisness owner, etc. People are having huge problems getting the financing they need. If the economy is a car then the financial markets are the oil, and we all know what happens when a car runs with no oil.
Posted by: Jason at Oct 2, 2008 1:07:36 PM
odogrph,
"but spending it "only" to get back to the same place seems disappointing."
I agree. isn't it then logical to ask if it is possible that maybe some benefit more than others...like perhaps those who are using scare tactics and the entire media establishment to push this?
and if those questions lead to certain people then shouldn't we then decrease our trust in those certain people and perhaps all participate in public humiliation of these people?
Posted by: gabe at Oct 2, 2008 1:09:17 PM
Jason,
I am excited about all the money us taxpayers might make after this is all over. On MSNBC I heard Warren Buffet say that he would love to have 1% of this deal if the government would let him in on it...I'm glad our leaders have stood up to Warren and told him that we don't want any wiseguys trying to scoop up all the good investments before the taxpayers get a chance to buy them up.
Posted by: pragmatic thinker at Oct 2, 2008 1:19:49 PM
We know that investors hold a lot of Asset Backed Securities (ABS) out there. Some are probably diamonds and some are probably turnips. People who talk about us making back a lot of money (more than we would make investing in education, say) probably have a perception that well get a healthy mix of diamonds in with the turnips.
But just stop and think about it ... assuming that ABS holders know what they hold ... which are they going to off-load? Will the government have as much visibility into or control over what they are getting?
(The mainstream, barely up on what ABS are in the first place, still too much consider them equal, interchangeable, fungible.)
Posted by: odograph at Oct 2, 2008 1:47:06 PM
I'm glad our leaders have stood up to Warren and told him that we don't want any wiseguys trying to scoop up all the good investments before the taxpayers get a chance to buy them up.
I, too, am especially glad our leaders have stood up to all the wiseguys.
What I especially enjoyed was that the site hosting "The crisis in pictures" is the affordablehousinginstitute.org. Wow, the Affordable Housing Institute. And a dot org to boot. They MUST be good guys (who have my best interests at heart). Really!
You couldn't make this stuff up....
Posted by: at Oct 2, 2008 2:48:19 PM
Tyler,
A question I'd love to see you address: Who do you think is the most "underrated" economist in the profession?
I know that term is vague, but it's perhaps better that way, as I'm also interested which concepts/ideas/methods in economics you believe are undervalued.
Posted by: Jonathan Bydlak at Oct 2, 2008 2:58:40 PM
"But we are not consuming 700B we are investing 700B. Supposedly, we will get some most or more of that back."
Same thing with a stimulous. As long as it's done in an area Amercians have a large stake and there's real resulting growth, we'll get a good chunk of it back.
Posted by: aaron at Oct 2, 2008 4:48:31 PM
Shiller and Roubini? I'm pretty sure Feldstein and Fama have to wait another year.
Posted by: ogmb at Oct 2, 2008 5:37:07 PM
"Nobel predictions, via Greg Mankiw": wouldn't Truth in Advertising require these to be referred to as pseudo-Nobels?
Posted by: dearieme at Oct 2, 2008 8:49:37 PM
Back from two weeks out of the country. Posted on possible
Nobels before then on Econospeak. Mankiw focuses on heavily
cited and is usually wrong. One of his picks for this year
would be an outrage.
My picks (five groups):
1) Bhagwati and Dixit, probably with another (many possible
choices on that) for the long overlooked internationla trade
in the year that the Doha Round finally collapsed.
2) Baumol, for lots of things
3) Tullock and Krueger, possibly with a third (Kornai?), for
rent seeking (a perennial, but the time may have arrived)
4) Easterlin for fathering happiness studies, if not happiness
5) A combo of Fama-Thaler-Mandelbrot for finance. Fama alone,
or with somebody else equally wrong of his ilk such as French,
would be nearly as bad as the extremely undeserving individual
selected by Mankiw. Mandelbrot does not get on many lists, but
he was the first to point out the very salient this year stylized
fact of fat tails in financial markets (power law distributions),
not to mention volatility clustering. A lot more important than
all the junk Fama has done. Putting the three I mentioned together
would cover the ball park pretty well, with Thaler bringing in the
clearly also very relevant now behavioral finance stuff.
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