So the latest finance firm to collapse was actually in good shape, until good old investor panic lead to a run on funds took it out. The eight company since May 2006, I bet you a lot of people feel scared now. The main thing to remember is that this company was small, $19m owed […]
No right turn has a good point about what the market price of carbon will be versus what the government is pricing it at. As of May, the government is financing based on a carbon price of $13.21 per carbon ton (update CO2). This is ridiculous, when we see other New Zealand prices set between […]
That was the title of an article on Stuff. The purpose of this article was to convince people that a breaking up plan is a good idea. Now there are two reasons why I think a rational person would not choose to suggest a breaking up plan, even if it left them better off financially […]
An Otago university study that was sponsored by anti-smoking groups found that cigarette taxes should be increased. We know that an externality tax is a good thing, however 70% of the price of cigarettes is made of of taxes already. The question then is, do we need more cigarette taxes to set the social cost […]
Yves Smith think so. His argument is that, even though we didn’t fully appreciate it at the time, Greenspan really really cared about equity markets. He was scared of them, and he didn’t want to go out there and nail them as much as he should have. By being ‘hostage’ to the equity markets, Greenspan […]
I was having a discussion with my girlfriend yesterday on a blog post by Tyler Cowen. There are a lot of interesting points in the post, but the one that struck me and led to the discussion was: “The median photograph of you is probably the best approximation of your physical attractiveness ” The reason […]