10 Tuesday AM Reads

June 23, 2015 8:00am by

My two-for-Tuesday morning train reads:

• The Long Expansion (Dr. Ed Yardeni)
• Why IBM Moved To Index Investing (Rebalance IRA) but see Active Managers Are Beating the Market By Taking On More Risk. (TRB)
• New Amazon algorithm to shake up product reviews (Econsultancy) see also Amazon looks to improve customer-reviews system with machine learning (C/Net)
• The Saudis Go Solar: The fate of one of the biggest fossil-fuel producers may now depend on its investment in renewable energy. (The Atlantic)
• Why gun control is doomed (The Economist) see also ‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens (The Onion)

Continues here

 

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  2. rd commented on Jun 23

    Hopefully The Onion won’t retire like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. That would virtually eliminate the serious editorial commentaries in the country.

  3. rd commented on Jun 23

    How is it possible to write an article about a new economic discovery that booms may cause busts without a single mention of Hyram Minsky?

    • rd commented on Jun 23

      Thanks for the first name correction.

      I think this is a major problem in economics compared to real sciences like physics and chemistry. In these sciences, the major figures who came up with ideas, even if controversial at the time, are generally revered by future generations who want to figure out how to improve on their work as new data shows flaws (often not discoverable at the time of the original work). Most scientists would love to do what Newton or Einstein did, coming up with theories that were very workable, even today, for most problems, and require a century or more for the next generations to understand the flaws and come up with new theory expansions to address them.

      In economics, it seems like the objective is to ignore the previous work, especially if the people are dead. Or just cherry-pick one or two that match your philosophical bent. Or just ascribe something bad to it that was not originally represented in the person’s work. This is how religion addressed science for many centuries. In the end, old time religion lost (except in a few US states and some Islamic countries) – just ask the current pope.

    • intlacct commented on Jun 24

      There are a lot of ‘goodies’ at stake and it helps mightily to curry favor with one side or another. Or be the fool on the hill in a hair shirt spouting an outlier prediction that comes true every 20 years (stopped clock phenomenon).

      It would have been nice to try the 1930s/1940s solutions (not the war part) on the economy back in 2008…

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