Economics

The stock market fate of Facebook has focused attention on the state of the public equity markets.

Imagine two ways of framing a financial trading choice.

The Australian and the pseudo-Australian (sorry, AFR) are engaged in an epic round of Labor-bashing, more virulent even than usual.

The Great Moderation was a phrase apparently coined by James Stock of Harvard and Mark Watson of Princeton.

The American academic Robert Shiller has taken another contrarian tack with his latest book  Finance and the good society.

It is time to leap to the defence of effective taxation.

In the context of economics there are two major things that the GFC proved to the world.

Perhaps a small warning within the lecture given by PIMCO’s Mohamed El-Erian at the St Louis Federal Reserve last night for those who think our own central bank should go down a similar road to other developed nations.

Doom sayers like to point to the problems implicit in exponential growth within a finite system.

As linked this morning,  Dr Steve Keen is getting a bit of attention from Paul Krugman after he wrote a Primer article on Minsky in which he called out Krugman, among other neo-classical economists.

Cross-posted with permission from MacroTragedy, a Greek-based macro-analyst who you can also follow on Twitter It certainly is no secret that the west is de-industrializing fast and has been doing so for some time now.

The Economist recently had an article on Ray Dalio, hedge fund manager and founder of Bridgewater.

I was recently invited to attend the launch of a new documentary called “Growthbusters” in Brisbane on Friday night but was unable to attend due to work commitments.

A little known fact about John Maynard Keynes, detailed in Jane Gleeson-White’s book “Double Entry” is that he was responsible for the development of national economic statistics and that he expected them to be aggregated only on a temporary basis.

We cannot say we were not warned.

The potentially exponential growth of IT power is having a transformative effect on industry structures, as I posted last week.

Check out the chart below.

The non-reaction of the markets to the ratings agencies downgrades of European debt underlines a persistent characteristic of the markets that is all too often forgotten.

Guest blogger Steven Spadijer, of Australian National University, continues with Part Two of his series on Direct Democracy.

Guest blogger Steven Spadijer presents a multi-part series on Direct Democracy to start off the Weekend Musing articles for 2012.

I’ve just returned from a week at the beach with my family (it was lovely, thanks for asking).

As an Australian parent in 2012, the public versus private school debate is hard to avoid.