Do you note that the average wall street cycle is, according to Mike Hollingshead, 56 years. Cycles for the Aztecs were 52 years even without a capital market. 10 cycles of 52 years ago on the Solstice in 2012 was 1492.
REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ed Weick Sent: Monday, December 31, 2012 10:34 AM To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION' Subject: [Futurework] Hey, you gotta watch dem economists... I guess we'll just have to leave Krugman aside for the time being. I do read him partly as an economist but largely as a person who thinks deeply about the evolving world. I have one of Rogoff's books on my shelves (Reinhart & Rogoff, This Time is Different, Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, Princeton and Oxford, 2009) and I have read parts of it. It appears to be a carefully researched book, but you don't have to read much of it to appreciate what the authors are getting at. Economic patterns are similar over the centuries. Economies can grow very quickly with people much better off for a time, but then they contract and difficult, even miserable, conditions return. Economists have been taught to think in terms of cycles, but I wonder if they shouldn't think more in terms of bubbles - e.g. the recent sub-prime mortgage crisis and the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s or, going way way back, the South Sea bubble and the Dutch tulip bubble. Maybe I'd better take another look at Reinhart & Rogoff. Ed I didn't play much chess, but I had a game with the guy who was recognized as the best player at UBC when I was student there and hey! I beat him. Not wanting to ruin a good thing, I quit playing then and there. ----- Original Message ----- From: Keith Hudson <mailto:[email protected]> To: Futurework , Ed Weick <mailto:[email protected]> Sent: Monday, December 31, 2012 9:29 AM Subject: Re: [Futurework] Nobel Prize -- was Re: [Ottawadissenters] Hey, you gotta watch dem machines... At 11:53 31/12/2012, Ed wrote: (EW) Not sure of why people on this list are going after Krugman. Personally, I think he writes a very good, very readable column on a diverse range of topics. (KH) I think I'm the only one who goes after Krugman fairly frequently. But I only do so because his NYT op-eds are constantly flaunted at us, as though there were no other economists around. It's not as though he has anything significantly new to say each time. He hasn't. About 80% of his pieces are exactly the same -- pushing Keynesianism as the only economic elixir. And as much of it as possible. I've often been tempted not to spend time giving arguments in detail why Krugman is, at best devious, and, at worst perilous. It would be easier for me to put up an article by several economists, such as Kenneth Rogoff, who think he is wrong. (Rogoff once described one of Krugman's pieces as "ridiculous" Rogoff is not only one of the most reputed US economists but he also plays chess at world championship standard. Incidentally, my eldest son drew against Karpov in the 1970s when he was world champion and giving exhibition matches all round the world. This was not a straight fight, of course. My son, then aged 14 was a member of a Coventry City team of 20 players who sat in a ring while Karpov went from board to board. He beat 18 of them fairly quickly but my son and another player hung on grimly, refusing to be tricked into making an error. Anyway, perhaps because Karpov wanted to get to the drinks party afterwards, the two Coventry players were offered a draw. Needless to say, they snatched at it straight away!) (EW) In today's column, he deals with a very relevant topic, the hidden influence of big money on politics, a very important but largely ignored topic. OK, so he got the Nobel prize because he pointed something in an academic field that Henry Ford already knew as a practical person and the Japanese already knew as well. However, what he said wasn't recognized in the field of economics until he said it. I did my undergrad work back in the 1950s, and the Ricardian idea of comparative and absolute advantage is what we had to learn and how we had to view the economic world. I did a graduate degree in the late 1960s and things were still very much the same. What Krugman did to get his Nobel was open economics up and make us see that while Ricardian theory may still apply to growing grapes and oranges, it may only very partially apply to the modern industrial and increasingly cybernetic economy, if it applies there at all. I for one will continue to read Krugman's columns not because he is an economist but because I find him an interesting liberal thinker. (KH) Fair enough! I prefer to pick and choose quite carefully where I choose my liberal ideas (certainly not from the LibDems of the UK!) and my socialist ideas (far to the left of the Labour Party of the UK). (The Labour Party in the UK, still reacting with horror from the irresponsible welfare spending of George Brown until two years ago, are presently like a weak form of the Tory Party.) Keith Ed ----- Original Message ----- From: Keith Hudson <mailto:[email protected]> To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION <mailto:[email protected]> ; Ed Weick <mailto:[email protected]> Sent: Monday, December 31, 2012 3:38 AM Subject: Re: [Futurework] Nobel Prize -- was Re: [Ottawadissenters] Hey, you gotta watch dem machines... At 16:26 30/12/2012, you wrote: (EW) Not sure of where all of this is going. Prior to Krugman, the theory of international trade was based on the Ricardian notion of comparative advantage. Countries would produce those products in which in which they had an advantage, given their resources, and then trade with each other. >From what little I know, Krugman brought in the idea that, given a certain level of technological development, resource advantage didn't really matter very much. (KH) But that idea didn't need Krugman! Or anyone else for that matter. The Japanese had been importing resources ('cos they had none of their own) for decades before Krugman was even born. I believe those who say that Krugman got a Nobel for the same reason as Paul Samuelson (who only copied Marshall's ideas of Sale and Demand curves) -- that he was an economist very much in the public's eye. (EW) Any advanced country could, and would, produce cars and, given consumer willingness to buy, these cars would be shipped to markets all over the world. As others have pointed out, economies of scale were very important in this. The more cars that could be produced, the lower the unit costs; the more cars that could be shipped, the lower the costs of shipment. (KH) And Henry Ford had known that decades before Krugman was born! _____ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
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