Tag Archives: US/Global Economics

Our current economic model, premised on profits and returns, consumption, and growth — on greed, has proven to be problematic for the environment, society, and governance.*   Over time, humans have inflicted grave damage to the land, forests, rivers, streams, and atmosphere. Some of this was in the interest of survival. A lot more was done in the interest of greed. Of late, we have done especially grave damage to the atmosphere by burning...

Asymptosis » Economic Origin Stories and the State of the World, Steve Roth. Origin stories and creation myths pack a pretty hefty weight of import in human understandings of the world. Examples are too numerous to mention. What I’ve noticed in the field of economics is such origin stories are often taken (mistakenly) to fully explain the current state of affairs. I’m going to discuss two examples here. 1. Why Money Has Value. The “double...

I don’t know if kids these days still use the slang, but back in the glory days of blogging, a way to mock chicken hawks was to call them keyboard warriors or the 101st chairborn. These were people convinced they were fighting terror by advocating aggressive foreign policy in the safety of their own house (or by other insulting assumption their mother’s basement). I guess an even sillier bunch were the people who felt brave and manly while playing,...

Personal income, so Personal saving, ignore a huge part of Total Return — the income-from-assets measure used by every modern portfolio investor. Guess what’s missing? Personal Saving Makes More than 40% of Property Income . . . Invisible. Think Total Return, Wealth Economics, Steve Roth Matthew Klein and Joey Politano have been singularly responsible in their discussions of “excess saving” in the covid era — not least by always putting that...

Before you go on a bender claiming it is not true. It is true. Your costs of inventory and transportation are high. Three weeks on the ocean plus one week on the dock on each side of the ocean. Transportation costs and time to the buyer. Container costs this last go around were as high as $10,000. Typically they were at $4,000 or less. Are you going to have 1 – 2 weeks of safety stock or are you going to cover the ocean in-transit time. What if?...

Just an old commentary from 2006 as written by Mark Thoma when he was writing Economist’s View. If you don’t know, Mark discontinued his writing there and retired. I see him now and then (or used to) on Facebook. Here he gives a bit of history on Adam Smith. “The Many Faces of Adam Smith“ This column by Alan Krueger from 2001 is a reminder that Adam Smith was not a “narrow, unyielding defender of unfettered free enterprise”: The many faces...

Dollar eases as Fed minutes offer few clues on rate cuts timeline, MSN, Markets Today Tags: monetary policy

“At the end of the day, remember, it is the demand that will decide and dictate what sort of energy source will help meet the growing global energy requirements.”  To end fossil fuels, “remember, it is the demand that will decide,” Carbon Upfront. Open Thread December 23 2023 Nippon Steel Purchasing U.S. Steel, Angry Bear ...

Been looking around for a few, new, and good writers to add to Angry Bear. I know we have Robert, New Deal democrat, and Joel amongst us now. I ran into Steve Roth since he posted to Tom Walker’s post. He is allowing me to poach from his new substack Wealth Economics and an older blog site Asymptosis. Happy about this as it allows me to write more freely too. Anyway, this commentary of Steves’ I like. Do We Wildly Underestimate GDP? Wealth...

Either in the beginning of our trip or at the end of the trip, we would end up in Bangkok, Thailand. Our stay was at The Landmark Hotel which to my knowledge was a Thai hotel and our plant(s) put us up there and on the Executive floor. Centrally located, it was easy to get to the plants and the airport. What you are looking at is the lobby. To the left of the picture, you can see the check in-out counter. Super polite and always smiling. If...