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Assorted links, second dose
1. Air Genius Gary Leff is hailed by CNN.
2. Good post on interest rates (though I am not sure I agree with it). Brad DeLong comments. Critically important stuff and two of the best recent economics blog posts, in some time.
3. The world's first native Klingon speaker?
5. Via Yana, France's hamster hotel, and here.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on November 20, 2009 at 01:11 PM in Web/Tech | Permalink
Comments
Ok, I had a hard time believing it but Krugman convinced me that the establishment is really that dumb. Rates are going to stay at zero and I am selling all bonds and going all in on the natural resource funds...cash is trash.
Posted by: Gabe at Nov 20, 2009 1:41:29 PM
3. I followed the link and the mother and others spoke English to the child, so it is really more like bring the child up bilingually. But still, I don't like it. I'll happily defer to an alpha-geek on this, but doesn't Klingon lack a word for 'love'?
Posted by: Justin Martyr at Nov 20, 2009 2:07:25 PM
2. PK is such a politician. Anyway, I hope these people being employed are honing real skills.
Posted by: Andrew at Nov 20, 2009 2:30:39 PM
So people are still into speaking a fictional language from a tv show? Wow...that seems so 1990s.
As in when our biggest concerns were getting a bigger house to hold all of our stuff, ditching the Civic for a monster SUV, and what's gonna happen between Ross and Rachel anyway?
Posted by: JackTrade at Nov 20, 2009 3:26:49 PM
I have read about the father who tries to raise his son as speaking Klingon before and as I recall the practical problem was that Klingon's lexicon was inadequate, which isn't surprising as it was created by one man over a finite span rather than many people interacting with one another over millennia. It's probably a harmless curiosity as the child would surely acquire English through socialization with his peers. The child will probably rebel against the use of Klingon at some point after he begins to realize that nobody else around him speaks it. It would be mildly interesting to know what Klingon-accented English might sound like, but I doubt that we'll have the chance.
The spider's-silk tapestry is remarkable and I would love to have the rare chance to feel it. I wonder if spider's silk has any future in purposes other than such curiosities. I have sometimes heard of efforts to synthesize it, but really wonder if there might be some niche market for luxury goods made of it.
Posted by: Paludicola at Nov 20, 2009 4:50:08 PM
A non-economist (well, not -grad school- economist; I've got my B.A.) has some questions about PK's post.
"Despite large deficits, the Federal government is able to borrow cheaply,"
Do we know this for sure, given the Fed's quantitative easing? Wouldn't rates be higher without that?
"Underlying these low rates is, in turn, the fact that overall borrowing by the nonfinancial sector hasn’t risen"
Isn't that good though? The problem in the 00s (as far as I can tell) was too much borrowing. Isn't "less borrowing" corrective and healthy, rather than problematic?
Which brings me to: "Meanwhile, the public sector is sustaining demand with deficit spending, financed by long-term debt."
What does "sustaining demand with deficit spending" mean for our national debt in a long term context? It sounds to me like this means "employing people at professions there is no demand for", which sounds like "economic waste" to me. We might as well have them dig holes and then fill them in. Or, you know, not.
Shouldn't the focus be on moving people out of real estate and finance (the two oversized sectors) and into more sustainable (and demanded) industries?
Posted by: Brock at Nov 20, 2009 5:23:20 PM
@brock
from a non economist at every level:
isnt the point that if you can finance stimulative spending with really cheap long term debt, the resulting gain in economic activity (gdp) will end up bring in more revenues over the long term and prevent real long term damage being done to the economy?
Posted by: luke at Nov 21, 2009 12:18:55 AM
@ Luke: but spending on what? Japan spent ridiculous amounts of money on "stimulus", but it lost two decades of growth because the money was spent on highways and bridges no one needed. Growth comes from investing in assets that satisfy a demand (aka, people will pay for), like Google search engines and netbook computers. Spending money on trying to achieve the (broken and crappy) status quo ante seems wasteful to me.
Posted by: Brock at Nov 21, 2009 4:08:35 AM
#1 airline miles – did anyone notice that Charles Witt acquired his millions of free air miles “on business” as a “US government employee”? Business? I bet public service explains a good % of the bonanza. Of course this is something that even leftist academics remain totally silent about. 2nd bet – I bet most academics would secretly admit that if it were not for the way in which utterly useless informal networking norms influence job promotions and publication promotions they would not *really* need to go to international conferences and have lots of fun at taxpayer expense. Academe spawned the internet, but it also spawned a huge travel industry. Doth not a contradiction lie therein? You can ‘travel’ perfectly well by internet. Do you really need to eyeball your intellectual peers? For years I had an academic job that demanded travel twice a year to Latin America from Australia to chat personally with aussie students on exchange. It was strange and unnecessary. I dreamed of adventure – I would rescue a few from the clutches of secret service police in a fascist dictatorship or drug traffickers in Bolivia. No, it was often just 30 minutes each in a cafeteria of downtown Mexico City. Santiago, Buenos Aires, etc. But check the map... there is hardly a *longer* journey in the world. I clocked up mucho miles. The worst thing about the frequent flyer thing is that when the bonanza finally peters out the airline – of course – downgrades you. One day they chopped my ‘silver’ luggage label before my eyes, as though it was a disowned credit card! I was grief stricken.
Posted by: michael heller at Nov 21, 2009 6:01:38 AM
#5 In Peru they have guinea pig hotels. You go down to the comedor for supper. A guinea pig runs across the floor. You shout "cuy" (it's like selecting your fish in a Chinese restaurant). Chief chef chops said cuy into frying pan. Back upstairs in hotel room, alas, it's not hamsters but rats, and guest cartwheels the walls ...
Posted by: michael heller at Nov 21, 2009 6:22:14 AM
Now we face the prospect of a prolonged period of near-zero short-term rates — I don’t see any reason for the Fed funds rate to rise for at least a year, and probably two — which should mean substantially lower long rates even if you expect yields eventually to rise back to 2005 levels. And if we’re facing a Japanese-type lost decade, which seems all too possible, long rates are in fact still unreasonably high.
But what if we don't get a prolonged period of near-zero interest rates? The reason can be whatever you like -- inflation, economic recovery, some other government issuing cheaper short term debt, or people just getting tired of zero returns. That puts you right back in the original problem of offering more debt than people want to buy.
And one last point: I just don’t think the inner circle gets how much danger we’re in from another vicious circle, one that’s real, not hypothetical. The longer high unemployment drags on, the greater the odds that crazy people will win big in the midterm elections — dooming us to economic policy failure on a truly grand scale.
What if the problem is that the crazy people won the last election, and people are battening down the hatches until they see a return to sanity? You can play this game of politics thinly disguised as economic analysis forever.
Posted by: Zach at Nov 21, 2009 6:43:27 AM
Krugman called cash "short term debt." What the hell is wrong with him? That's the most egregious bit of switcho-changeo I've ever seen.
Posted by: Ryan at Nov 21, 2009 12:00:15 PM
