Category: Economics

Posted on

Pretty Good for Government Work

Pretty Good for Government Work – NYTimes.com:

“So, again, Uncle Sam, thanks to you and your aides. Often you are wasteful, and sometimes you are bullying. On occasion, you are downright maddening. But in this extraordinary emergency, you came through — and the world would look far different now if you had not.”

(Via Politics : NPR.)

The Oracle of Omaha thanks the federal government for saving our bacon in 2008.  The great political irony is the bailouts in these crisis moments are what started the Tea Party.  I wonder if they knew how close they came to total economic annihilation?  Ignorance is indeed expensive!

Posted on

Is Google Guilty Of Deliberate Query Sabotage?

However, whether the results on Ben and on me are due to malevolence or the same unreliable reporting of result counts that appear to be prevalent in the other cases, the unreliability of the counts is striking. Until recently I had used counts of results reported as a rough measure of the significance of an individual or a piece of work, or at least of their popular visibility, which is not quite the same thing as significance.  Obviously I cannot use the number of results returned as a measure of anything until I understand them further. Can I use Google Scholar, or any other Google site, and assume that results have been returned with an even hand, without fear or favor, and with care for their accuracy? I suspect not.

via Is Google Guilty Of Deliberate Query Sabotage?.

This is such a biting damnation of Google’s search result count it garnered a response in less than 3 hours.  Unfortunately the response is more public relations than substantive explanation or even rebuttal.  Restricting a search should always do just that, restrict the search.  If the “estimate” goes up, these numbers are not even remotely accurate regardless of how many significant digits you care about.  Trying to hide behind the word “estimate” is simply disingenuous when a more accurate term would be “guesstimate.”  And Google has no plans to fix this bug since they don’t want to “spend the cycles on that aspect of [their] system.”  It’s only their core business.  Not very important stuff at all.

Posted on

Why Big Companies Matter in Job Creation – NYTimes.com

 

Why Big Companies Matter in Job Creation – NYTimes.com:

“The start-ups that make a outsized contribution to job generation are the ones that survive beyond five years, and begin to take off, heading toward and beyond the government-defined boundary of a small business (fewer than 500 employees).

You can read that and assume that big, older companies don’t play an important role in the job-creation game. That would be a mistake, economists say. The old-line companies may not create a lot of net new jobs in America, they say, but the big global corporations shape the environment that gives rise to entrepreneurial upstarts.”

 

 

(Via Google Reader.)

Posted on

Conservatives for Higher Taxes – Economix Blog – NYTimes.com

“I am not, in general, in favor of tax increases,” [Kevin D. Williamson] wrote on Tuesday, “but I think that … conservatives would do better to support a budget plan that combines real spending cuts with tax increases than to support a budget that does nothing to reduce spending but leaves taxes where they are or reduces them.”

via Conservatives for Higher Taxes – Economix Blog – NYTimes.com.

At some point ideology must yield to reality.

Posted on

Goldman Takes Shorts

UPDATE: I accidentally overwrote this post with an earlier draft so this version will necessarily be different from a previous posted one.  I regret the error.

Recently, as you’ve no doubt heard by now, Goldman Sachs has found itself in a bit of hot water over it’s role in the financial crisis that sparked off The Great Recession.  I firmly believe that this is due to, in no small part, the story Michael Lewis tells in his book,  The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine.  People upon hearing it are generally shocked and dismayed, including some hardcore free market Republicans.

I had the good fortune to hear a really great interview of him by NPR’s Terry Gross on her program Fresh Air. In it, Lewis lays out the basic chain of event of on how the subprime crisis started, led to financial collapse and how a few non-Wall Street professionals saw things coming months, even years in advance, by using basic investing common sense.  Lewis claimed, “If everybody had thought the way they thought and behaved the way they behaved, the crisis never would’ve happened.”

Continue reading “Goldman Takes Shorts”

Posted on

PolitiFact | A stimulus report card

“Our short answer is that the stimulus has had a big impact, and has helped bring the economy out of recession,” said Gus Faucher, director of macroeconomics at Moody’s Economy.com.

via PolitiFact | A stimulus report card.

By any honest assessment, it has indeed worked.  I think it was oversold by Obama and criticized all too often disingenuously by opponents, but on the whole, it did what Keynesian economics says this kind of spending is supposed to do.

Posted on

Google Asks N.S.A. to Investigate Cyberattacks – NYTimes.com

Google Asks N.S.A. to Investigate Cyberattacks – NYTimes.com:

“By turning to the N.S.A., which has no statutory authority to investigate domestic criminal acts, instead of the Department of Homeland Security, which does have such authority, Google is clearly seeking to avoid having its search engine, e-mail and other Web services regulated as part of the nation’s ‘critical infrastructure.’”

(Via NY Times.)

I think anti-trust litigation is closer to their minds.

Posted on

Can You Trust Census Data? – Freakonomics Blog – NYTimes.com

Can You Trust Census Data? – Freakonomics Blog – NYTimes.com:

“The problem is that until the Census Bureau does something about these widespread problems, we can’t even begin this process of cleaning up problematic research findings. Right now, the authors warn that: ‘The resulting errors in the public use data are severe, and… should not be used to study people aged 65 and over.’ Given the long list of afflicted datasets, up-to-date credible research on seniors is virtually impossible.”

(Via Freakonomics Blog.)

Recipe for mass “resignations.”

Posted on

Buying Some Times

New York Times to Charge Nonsubscribers For Unlimited Use of Its Site – NYTimes.com:

“Executives of The New York Times Company said they wanted to create a system that would have little effect on the millions of occasional visitors to the site, while trying to cash in on the loyalty of more devoted readers. But fundamental features of the plan have not yet been decided, including how much the paper will charge for online subscriptions or how many articles a reader will be allowed to see without paying.

‘This announcement allows us to begin the thought process that’s going to answer so many of the questions that we all care about,’ Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the Times Company chairman and publisher of the newspaper, said in an interview. ‘We can’t get this halfway right or three-quarters of the way right. We have to get this really, really right.’”

(Via The New York Times.)

This is a risky move fraught with danger, but I think it was basically the only move really open to them. A wholesale revamping of their business model to one without advertising would be unfeasible and fatal. The cruise ship simply can’t turn that fast. And the status quo, we know, is killing the paper. As others wiser than I have noted, advertising online is on its way out as a viable funding source for businesses. So this transitional solution is probably the way they have to go.

As Valuable as Air and Costs Just as Much

A large, professional news gathering organization is a huge cost center to pay for and it is of enormous social value. The two direct beneficiaries are an informed general public and the blogosphere where the public reflects on the news. Yet, it is something few that benefit are willing to pay for just like the air we breathe. Unless it’s in a SCUBA tank. Then those of us who desire breathing underwater do, hence the pay wall for committed Times readers.

This all begs the question: Exactly how many of us want to go deep sea diving? I hope enough. If the price is right, I would be one of them. I pay for NPR as a member and I paid for access to the Wall Street Journal Online before the paper became a tainted news property. [Editors should have opinions: the stronger, the better. They should not, however, be propagandists.] If the Times gets the pricing right, they will stabilize a hemorrhaging income source.

Critical But Stable Condition

But this, at best, is a temporary solution. The secular trend in advertising revenue will continue to fall because the underlying reasons for this are not addressed by a pay wall:

  • People don’t trust ads.
  • People ignore ads.
  • People have other sources for the information ads convey.

So if this “solution” works, it will only buy some time for the Times. Pun intended. A real, long term solution is still a ways away.

An Apple a Day

I am certain that this announcement was made at this time for two reasons: 1) to test the waters and acclimate the public to a damaged web product, and 2) to see as print media technology will change over the next year where the opportunities are. We are now in the world of ePaper: Kindles, Nooks, and iPads (or whatever Apple is going to call their tablet). If the Times can create a solid revenue stream in these media for the paper, it may well be the long term solution they are looking for. There are many scenarios for success if ereaders become to print what iPods are to music. We shall see.