How much we value the objects we buy...

Beware of Monte Carlo simulations In some fields—physics, geophysics, climate science, sensitivity analysis, and uncertainty quantification in particular—there is a popular impression that probabilities can be estimated in a ‘neutral’ or ‘automatic’ way by doing Monte Carlo simulations: just let the computer reveal the distribution … Setting aside other issues in numerical modeling, Monte Carlo simulation is a way to substitute computing for hand...

I find that I summarized the Ellsberg paradox back in 2009. I have also commented on who in the United States was prosecuted for leaking classified information to the press. Eric Loomis has an obituary. The Pentagon Papers are now unclassified and available from the National Archives. As I understand it, Ellsberg copied each page personally - no downloading to a thumb drive in his day. David Halberstam's book, The Best and the Brighest is a well-known work of journalism (the first draft of...

Industrial production continues to falter in May  – by New Deal democrat My final update this morning is for industrial production, the King of Coincident Indicators, which has most frequently corresponded with peaks and troughs in economic activity as determined by the NBER. The news for total production was not good, as it declined -0.2% in May, and March and April were revised -0.2% lower each. It remains -0.5% below its recent peak last...

National Health Expenditure Projections, 2022–31: Growth To Stabilize Once The COVID-19 Public Health Emergency Ends, Health Affairs, National health expenditures are projected to have grown 4.3 percent in 2022, slower than nominal gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 9.2 percent, leading to a decrease in the projected health spending share of GDP from 18.3 percent in 2021 to 17.4 percent in 2022.1 However, over the course of the full...

Maybe you have been unaware of it, the repayment of student loans is to begin again come September 2023. President Biden had stopped all payments and interest accruing early on during the Covid Pandemic. Offering up reductions of ten to twenty thousand in reductions for outstanding loan was apart of the president’s plan. For many this would be adequate. However, there is a sizeable number of borrowers who owe far more than this amount. In many...

Daniel Ellsberg, a military analyst who after experiencing a sobbing antiwar epiphany on a bathroom floor made the momentous decision in 1971 to disclose a secret history of American lies and deceit in Vietnam, what came to be known as the Pentagon Papers, died on Friday at his home in Kensington, Calif., in the Bay Area. He was 92 … The disclosure of the Pentagon Papers plunged a nation that was already wounded and divided by the war deeper into angry controversy. It...

THE BIGGEST LIE EVER TOLD TO US

$48 bln drain Thursday. More coming.

Kindle $4.99  Paperback  $11.99  “No one does more than Lars Syll to identify and communicate the limitations of modern economics. An impassioned call and compelling sustained argument for economists to stop dwelling on the intricacies of irrelevant models and concern themselves with rest of the social reality.” –  Tony Lawson, Cambridge University “Lars Syll’s new book gets to the heart of what’s methodologically wrong with mainstream economics and maps out foundations for a critical...