Archives for “Economics”

stocks,bonds,ngram

Tweet I’m not sayin, I’m just sayin. When you enter phrases into the Google Books Ngram Viewer, it displays a graph showing how those phrases have occurred in a corpus of books (e.g., “British English”, “English Fiction”, “French”) over the selected years (source)


advice for entrepreneurs

Tweet So here’s my advice: If you want to become an entrepreneur… or a musician, an occupational therapist, a magician — or whatever — be certain that you know what excites you and why you want to succeed, and don’t fret over how you’ll get there. Know that when you’re driven by the right motivating [...]


Tweet “I guess I’d put it this way. Every society has to engird capitalism in a restraining value system, or else it turns nihilistic and out of control. The Germans have a Christian Democratic set of institutions, enforced by law. The Swedes have their egalitarianism. Since the days of Jonathan Edwards, we have developed a [...]


Houston Private College Loan Repayment Rates

Tweet UPDATE: The Chronicle posted a story on 9/7/10: For-profit colleges fighting proposal to cut aid, Feds’ plan to limit loans for programs with high-default rates called unfair. Which lists repayment rates as follows: Everest institute – 16% American Intercontinental University – 22 % Art Institute of Houston – 37% University of Houston Downtown – 39% HCC Central [...]


Chron Post: Bankruptcy and the Unforgiving Servants

Tweet On the 2010 rise in bankruptcy filings: my understanding is that there are three major categories of debt that “tip” people over the edge. Credit card debt, made more difficult to vacate after the 2005 BAPCPA change. Student loans, which are almost impossible to vacate, and medical debt which is still possible to vacate. With few benefits for bankruptcy [...]


Tweet When we say “the tragedy of the commons” I really think it should be stated “the TRAGEDY of the commons” to indicate that it really is an all caps TRAGEDY. Summarized on wikipedia as … (the the tragedy of the commons is) a dilemma in which multiple individuals acting independently and solely and rationally [...]


Tweet Ran into this 2004 economics paper referenced by Wayne Marr on twitter. Several quotes that jumped out at me for a variety of reasons. All economics links added by me. “The foundation blocks of standard finance were now in place, supporting one another.  Investors are rational, prices are efficient, risk is measured by beta [...]


Tweet A cross post from a guest blog post on the Houston Chronicle Commercial Real Estate Defaults Increase – A Good Thing? Several economists I heard speak recently at the GHP Growth Summit pointed out that every recession in the US ends when real estate rebounds. Real estate leads us out of recessions. So just [...]


Tweet Pontiac-GMC-Bankrupt on flickr.


Tweet “You cannot trust these guys.” – Wendell Potter (source)


PC Sales Remain in a Slump No Matter What Morgan Stanley Says

Tweet Morgan Stanley says we are near the trough in the decline of computer sales and that it’s going to be all uphill from here. But why? WHY? The article points to no particular reason for the upturn they are predicting beyond “the cycle.” This is about the same as the constant rosy predictions from [...]


Yali’s Question: why we had so little cargo of our own?

Tweet Yali’s famous question from the book Guns, Germs, and Steel: “All of those things must have been on Yali’s mind when, with yet another penetrating glance of his flashing eyes, he asked me, “Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people [...]


Tweet I run a creative agency and lighting is a frequent topic. In short, we have the people who want to live in the dark and never talk to anyone. And the people who want to “let the light shine in!”. The bottom line is if you employ both you must side with the people [...]


Tweet I just finished reading The Simple Truth About Your Business, Why Focused and Steady Beats Business at the Speed of Light. By Alex Brennan-Martin, a man I have had the privilege of meeting. And a man who has earned a good amount of my money from celebrating dinners at his Houston restaurant with my [...]


Formation of New American Group Influencers

Tweet New groups are being formed throughout the country, and nobody has noticed. These emergent groups are zero to three years old. And the organizers are not the usual suspects. If there is a connection to urban tribes it is the connecting of existing urban tribes. We meet our new friends, talking to others we [...]




Tweet last glimmer in miami Originally uploaded by eschipul We are witnessing the biggest tax increase in American history. The President is advocating a 700 Billion tax increase to be under the control of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. Rushing in fact. Urgent. Let me repeat that – the biggest [...]


I.O.USA, the Movie




The public for which masterpieces are intended


The Post American World


5 Basic Rules of Negotiation

Tweet Reading  Harvard Negotiation Project: 5 Lasting Rules For Negotiating Anything on GigaOm made me send the list of five rules of negotiation to a client. First the rules: Don’t Bargain Over Positions Separate the People From the Problem Focus on Interests Invent Options for Mutual Gain Insist on Using Objective Criteria One side effect [...]