3 quick notes and a graph

Ahem, so three random posts cuz I've gots the freetime and markets are sorta laughing off the PPI data.
1) The prices for online currencies for MMORPG's (look it up) such as World of Warcraft or Second Life (the one where all the politicians are setting up virtual versions of themselves to hold digital town hall meetings...or were a year ago atleast) have secondary markets on the internets and it has graphs!
2) Anyone heard of the book Global Trade and Conflicting National Interests? I was reading an old article and thought it was up our alley.

If the firm is locating low-skilled industrial production in a very poor country, Americans get cheaper goods, trade expands for both sides and the result is "mutual gain." But the trading partners enter a "zone of conflict" if the poor nation develops greater capabilities and assumes the production of more advanced goods. Then, the authors explain, "the newly developing partner becomes harmful to the more industrialized country." The firm's self-interested success "can constitute an actual loss of national income for the company's home country."

American multinationals, as principal actors in this transfer of wealth-generating productive capacity, are distinctively free to make the decisions for themselves without interference from government. They want profit and future consumer markets. Their home country wants to maintain a highly productive high-wage economy. Without recognizing it, the two are pulling in opposite directions--the "divergence of interests" most US politicians ignore, evidently believing church doctrine over visible reality.

3) This is random, but who wants to help me speculate on where this graph is going...with the recent 10-yr note fluctuations and all that jazz. If any influence at all there is. (tribute yoda). Mortgage rates are popping, and there's a growing whine from the rest of the country as we begin to see some bank failures popping up here and there. (graph below is from wsj article pulled from proquest or here if anyone actually has WSJ access)

It's 97 at home, time to go grab some ice coffee!

Washington Consensus, IMF, and Stegosaurus...anything in common?

Dancing with extinction? Might be behind the times in suggesting this, but just going off of today's Post article about how Latin America has many lending options and its own ideas of how to utilize them for its development...and that the US and IMF don't exactly have many brownie points to cash in when they want to keep participating.

Read it here:
IMF, World Bank Face Irrelvance
Marcela Sanchez, Washington Post, May 11th 2007.

Temporal-Caloric Capital - A Methodology?

I was explaining this to Maricar the other day and before I explained it to another person, I thought I would try writing it out. I'm sure someone had this idea before me; I'm going to be stalking them shortly.

The idea is that we could measure economic behavior in animals, especially higher order mammals, specifically exchange or market activity (for whatever reason some beconomist* might want to do this), by measuring time and calories as capital and seeing how they exchange it. For instance, if animal A brings animal B a piece of food that would have taken 100 calories for B to get itself, causing A to also expect 50 calories, how does B reciprocate?

This idea comes from the axiom that time is money, that you can either walk somewhere and pay in time or take a cab and pay in money. If we take the next step and make time itself a form of capital, then we can measure exchanges of time for time in the natural world. To be comprehensive, we have to include energy (you could walk and use up time or run and use up energy). If B saves A 50 calories or 30 minutes, will A do something similar for B? If not, why did B do it? Is this activity mirrored in human behavior?

Ear muffs, creationists. The first application of Temporal-Caloric Capital that comes to mind is to examine whether something like innate or learned impulses to reciprocate in the wild preceded conscious market exchange and whether those impulses still exist in people and influence our activity. Consider this post a draft until I can get to the article I just read and cite it; the article suggests that something like this has indeed occured but does not propose a method of documenting the process. To use the running example, it is well documented that animals have emotional responses such as reciprocation, namely so called social animals. To observe how such a response causes A to respond to B's 50 calorie gift, and what we can learn from the "transaction," is the focus of inquiry here. Much could follow from it. (Is B giving a gift or have expectations become established to the point that B is buying something with the calories? Could B be buying a service, like protection? A service industry in the natural world? Are animals divided by comparative advantage - animal B "earns" time-calorie capital with its superior individual ability to gather/hunt while A, an alpha protector and rule setter, has Douglas North's "comparative advantage in violence" supposedly common to all governments?)

As I said, it is certain that these questions have been raised before, likely investigated by someone who, If you'll excuse me, I realy do have to go stalk now.


*behavioral economis, ha

Test post numba' 2!

Alright guys, so i'm copying some of this from another e-mail I just wrote off to harrass a former econ prof most of us have had, but I think you'll find it interesting as well.
So this report that came out a few days ago from The Center for Economic and Policy Research where the authors looked into how our massive defense spending binge will likely affect the macro economy in the years to come (long story short, ceteris paribus---you don't wanna be an auto industry or construction worker in the near future).

The authors go so far as to state:

"It is often believed that wars and military spending increases are good for the economy," said Baker. "In fact, most economic models show that military spending diverts resources from productive uses, such as consumption and investment, and ultimately slows economic growth and reduces employment."

Good old CEPR, guess I'll have to go subscribe to another mailing list so I don't miss tidbits such as this.

And that's my long overdue post for the week from about a month ago, mas despues de la ultimo final exam wednesday-ish?

Pertinent Questions

1. Do we want to research autonomously (including current events) then post, read others (discuss in person?)

2. Do we want to research piecemeal and post components of a question? (Like a WIKI??)

3. Do we want to research together then post singularly?

4. All of the above (ha! Maricar thought she was done multiple choice)

5. Do we only want to post any kind of copied (ahem cited) or original material and then discuss it IN PERSON regularly?

test submission via e-mail

testing
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are we live?