Saturday, January 12, 2008

Fifty Cents On The Dollar: The Empire State Building Story

Vulture investors are putting together syndicates to purchase US real estate, crowing that they are getting it for fifty cents on the dollar, focusing particularly in "carrion-infested" states like Florida. And Bank of America is buying the whole of Countrywide Financial at a deep discount after its initial $2 billion investment went very sour, very quickly.

A little history may serve as a warning to overzealous buzzards.

The Empire State Building was completed in record time (one year!) in 1931, costing a total of $41 million ($25 million for the building plus $17 million for the land). Construction costs were half the original estimates because the Great Depression quickly and dramatically cut prices and wages. The owners were John Raskob and a group of wealthy investors from the du Pont, Kaufman and Earl families - hardly unwashed hoi polloi. I imagine they, too, thought they were getting a bargain at fifty cents on the dollar.

Things did not work out as expected. The building could not find tenants and was called the Empty State Building for years; it was eventually sold by the Raskob estate in 1951 for a total of $34 million. Not only did the original investors suffer a loss in absolute terms, but in the meantime inflation had cut the value of the dollar down to 67 cents. In real terms their loss was 45% and they had to wait twenty years to get even that.

But... this time is different - right?




________________________________________

P.S. Yesterday's post created a not-unexpected storm of comments, both pro and con, particularly about the "targeted jobs program". Let me clarify a few points:

1. I'm not calling for the government itself to go out and employ millions of people, but to create the conditions where private industry will do so. Just look at what Germany is doing with mandatory renewable energy legislation.

2. Building a new energy infrastructure is completely different from building a "bridges to nowhere", as happened in Japan. We are actually in dire need of such infrastructure, for economic, environmental and national security reasons.

3. Funding/incentives will necessarily have to come from a variety of sources: carbon taxes, cutting defence spending (less needed to guard oil), a more graduated income tax scale, etc. The amount needed is proportional to the energy balance between fossil fuels and cleaner sources, i.e. the ratio of EROEI's will provide a rough idea of the money needed.

4. Government action is absolutely essential because entrenched fossil fuel interests are not going to do it by themselves. Their combined profits are in the trillions annually.

5. The most serious challenge is not technological choice but geopolitical economic balance. If, as I expect, the new energy regime is distributed vs. central (think Internet vs. mainframe) the thorniest question is how we transit from Dollar Hegemony to Sustainable Growth. The current global socio-economic model is Perma-Growth fueled by oil and gas. The US is center stage because the dollars it issues at will contain oil-purchase value (i.e. oil producers accept them in exchange for oil). The mind boggles at the challenge of changing this structure, but it MUST be done.

For those not quite sure how oil, money, growth and the environment are connected please look at the following books at the Amazon sidebar:
  • The Prize
  • Resource Wars
  • Blood and Oil
  • Something New Under The Sun

39 comments:

  1. I am an American citizen.
    I live in Europe.
    When I moved away, the cacophony of dissenting voices disappeared; I was no longer inundated with advertising. I freed myself from the chains of the traditional media. And as the voices competing for attention grew less numerous, the central problem ailing the States stood out.

    I read Hellasious' blog because he gives me a foundation upon which I can make more informed decisions. I don't believe he is pushing an agenda (one of the good things about advertising is that it can teach you how to recognize ulterior motives... IF you listen to its lessons). I don't have a background in Economics- far from it- but Hellasious speaks to me in a way that I understand.

    This is what is missing in America- understandable, unbiased information- and the lack of such quality information is the central problem ailing her today.

    Everyone commenting yesterday seemed to agree that the creation of an energy infrastructure based on renewables was a good idea. But how many years of progress have we lost because energy companies suppressed information the general public needed in order to come to a reasoned decision about the future of the Country's energy policy?

    If the necessary information had been allowed to circulate in years past, would we be where we are today, or would we have solar panels attached to streetlights?

    In 1990, (I was nine and thus my memory doesn't extend farther back), I had a gradeschool teacher who preached conservation and energy independence. If she had the information, the information must have been out there. Why did the Political Right deny and wage war against that information?

    To make money? To maintain power?

    fix the communication problems (Americans don't have time to FIND it. They are busy multitasking in order to take care of their families. It needs to be given). Educate the public honestly (and painfully if need be). Cultural consciousness will change, and the will of the people will bring about change.

    This is why America's environmental/energy policy is changing, slooooowly! There is no other way. People resist change they aren't willing to accept.

    Thank you Hellasious. Keep it coming!

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  2. Hellasious,

    If you reread your original post carefully, you pretty much laid out this "targeted jobs program" as the optimal means to overcome the impending liquidity trap and "rapidly raise real earned incomes for the "bottom" 95% of Americans that have not substantially benefited from the 2003-07 expansion and who are feeling unsure of their future."

    Exactly how do you intend to rapidly raise real earned incomes for the bottom 95% of Americans without the government employing millions of people? If not then how can what you are proposing possibly prevent the oncoming spiral into a liquidity trap? The simple fact is it cannot.

    To say that technological choice is not the primary issue but rather "geopolitical economic balance" is simply nonsense. Then you conclude that the "new energy regime" should be distributed rather than centralized. How can you possibly know that? Such statements are merely empty abstractions without any underlying substance.

    Setting aside for the moment the question of whether such things are in fact desirables, what evidence do you have to indicate that a govt. sponsored targeted jobs program would be the best means to achieve these objectives?

    Perhaps FEMA, NASA or the military industrial complex can provide the strong govt-private sector partnership model upon which to base such a program.

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  3. Response to I am an American citizen.


    How can you say Hellasious is not pushing an agenda? He clearly is. At the top of his web site, he has an advertisement for An Inconvenient Truth, the biggest piece of claptrap pseudo-scientific demagoguery disseminated in modern times. And soon to be yet another excuse for more wasteful government boondoggles.

    If Gore and the rest of the "climate change" (just in case we begin to get unseasonably cold weather) crowd don't have an agenda then I don't know who does. They and the rest of their central planner friends think they know what is best for all those poor benighted common folk. I'm not sure which is worse the Hollywood do-gooder crowd or the neo-conservative war mongerers. As far as I can see they seem to be two sides of the same coin.

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  4. I am a Singapore citizen.
    I live in Singapore.
    My government has spent chunks of her people's savings in buying significant stakes in your banks.

    If it is like you said, then our lifetime savings are going to disappear.

    At least you get to spend your way to misery and depression. We may not live to see a cent.

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  5. Hellasious-

    I decided to join the list so's not to be confused with particular "Anonymous" doofus' who think their posts are remembered past the minute they click "Publish Your Comment".

    Another great post - the "Empty State Building" as well as your further comments on the 1/11 post.

    With regard to your further comments-

    Humans' total effect on Global Warming is still up for debate even among scientists and meterologists themselves (I recall a recent interview on the radio in which the guy who began The Weather Channel said that Global Warming was a hoax - regardless what Al Gore said - and he was only one of many experts raising similar questions).

    Along the line of your Green energy ideas, as you know, many of these energies are only on the market now because they are subsidized already by the government. They have not really proven to be cost-efficient or a-better-alternative themselves without out this current gov't support (again - money we don't have to support something that, without that debt, can't stand by itself as the better alternative). But even if we continue to support the Green industry in the hope it one day becomes both practical and self-sufficient we still need to deal with the current Energy problem which is we need more oil supply (for the coming year, at the very least for example, we will need much more much more oil than ethanol - so how will we help our situation more by spending money/resources on developing energy alternatives for future consumption rather than what we need now?). Because of this I think we should start your "targeted jobs program" drilling for oil in ANWAR and sending workers out onto the tundra to ensure it remains pristine and the reindeer have a safe place to romp, how's that ? 8-)

    On another note "a more graduated income tax scale" ? Oh my - what does that mean?

    Enjoy Saturday Hellasious.

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  6. 1st Anon, there is no such thing as an unbiased viewpoint, I don't necessarily agree with second Anon's An Inconveinient Truth comment, but I agree with his point generally.

    Blanket, I apologize for my countrymen's fraud... Sadly you do have to remember that is a Caveat emptor world we live in. As P.T. Barnum used to say "there is a sucker born every minute..."

    Hell, I also agree with third Anon's comment (doesn't anyone use their name anymore?) than yesterday's posting did sound a little more extreme that it is sounding today.

    Lastly I do not buy the 'blame the energy companies' argument. Sure, these companies will never change their behavior, who would in their shoes? The real fault lies within each of us consumers; we just like to make it easier on ourselves and deny our guilt by displacing it elsewhere.

    One of your posters really hit the nail on the head several days ago: 'it is all about character/integrity'.

    It always was.

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  7. blanket -

    Thanks for posting the viewpoint - but your investments might actually generate a profit down the road (especially if the U.S. recovers and we start gobbling-up everything the Pacific Rim produces again).

    If we can all get confidence back in our fiat currencies it will be just like old times ... ("?") ... or maybe we should all buy gold just to be safe!

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  8. Folks,

    Whether the author of this blog has a personal agenda is irrelevant. What matters is that his comments should set you thinking - presumably laterally and not vertically!

    Also, please try to distinguish between statements and judgements based on observable facts, ie., Knowledge Claims, and statements based on sentiment, Value Claims. You can confirm/refute the former, but the latter are personal and contentious.

    The sub-text of this blog (I will be correctd if I am mistaken) is that modern economic, fiscal and monetary policies are under significant stress and may fail.

    We do have some knowledge of economic failures during the last 100-odd years, and the actions of the authorities and private businesses that either made the situation worse or corrected it. But this time the situation IS different - seriously!, and continuing to think and behave according to our currently held beliefs is flawed.

    Some of you have mentioned the paradigm of economic evolution - and very interesting it is too. But please reflect on some unpleasant historical facts. A number of Native American 'civilisations' are known to have existed in North, Central and South America. They left quite interesting ruins and artifacts. I also mention the Easter Islanders' - for balance, you understand. These peoples became extinct because they abused their environment.; their sources of food, fuel and water. Mind you, starvation and disease would have promoted the progress of extinction

    One of our, (western, Anglo-Saxon), resources is our 'financial' environment, and we are abusing it. Hence, according to economic evolution theory we will experience serious stress (or is it strain?) and perhaps become extinct also!!

    For US citizens: Take a short vacation to 'That Island' about 90 miles South-East of Florida. Observe how the human population of that island have adapted to financial and energy deprivation.

    Disclosure: I have no financial or political interests in the aformentioned territory.

    Brian P

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  9. Two comments on today / yesterday’s blogs:

    1) With regard to the Global Warming issues, let us consider two models. One, for want of a better name, we will call "ECONOMY". In this model, we understand the interaction of supply and demand; we understand the pricing mechanism; we understand how countries trade with each other; we understand how employment is created and how those employees are paid; we understand how the owners of the trading corporations achieve wealth by floating on the stockmarket. The second model, again for want of a better name, we will call “CLIMATE”. In this model, we do not understand the interactions of the various elements that may create changes in weather / climate; we believe that El Nino, the Gulf Stream and various Arctic and Antarctic sea currents have significant local effects, but we do not know their wider effects, we state that man-made pollution creates impacts, but we have never quantified this in a rigorous scientific manner; and we seem to ignore the effects of previous centuries of “natural” pollution from volcanic activity.

    Now if anyone were to say to me that with the FIRST model they were going to make a forecast of developments 20 or more years ahead - I would laugh at them. If anyone were to say to me that they were going to do that with the SECOND model, I would ………. well, let me say that I would doubt their scientific credentials.

    Please can we have more scientific analysis in the Global Warming space and less screaming, shouting and panicking.


    2) Your description of the finances of the Empire State Building reminded me of the old story that a market fall of 90% is actually a market fall of 80%, after which the market halves in value.

    Dome

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  10. M3anon, I sympathize with your viewpoint to make blanket feel better. And though my comments may sound insensitive to her fears of national savings loss, I do not mean to be. I do not approve of what we are doing.

    But one has to be a realist. In my line of work, I deal with human psychology/behavior a lot. One thing I have clearly learned is that when it comes to relationships, it is the person who wants less that has all the power.

    What will makes us Americans (consumers of all wealthy nations really) change our behavior? A polite request to be sensitive with others money/our planet's resources? Or simply pulling the funding and forcing change?

    Go back and read some of the postings on this blog... statements like "I resent the notion we do not save enough" followed by a slew of 'lets increase income taxes (i.e. lets tax someone/anyone? else, in this case the rich)). People do not want to change.

    Consumerism, spending is an addiction we have bad, and we will do anything to continue it.

    M3anon, you are being kind, I kudo you sentiment. And you may eeven be correct, and this financial house of cards will not implode in the near future.

    But remember this, we human primates have a predilection (a heuristic)towards optimism that can be VERY costly when it comes to savings and investing. I refer you to a recent study of Google's internal predicion Market if you are not aware of this bias. The results of this study are no different than what earned Daniel Kahnemana noble prize.

    Who knows, maybe The Singularity will save us all?

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  11. I will not speak again as I do not want to Hijak but I had to respond once to what Brian Woods said... "Some of you have mentioned the paradigm of economic evolution" followed by references to the collapse of the cultures of the American Anasazi and Easter Islanders. I assume you are referring to Jarred Diamon's collapse?

    He was a professor of mine at UCLA

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  12. One of the Anons. said...

    "To say that technological choice is not the primary issue but rather "geopolitical economic balance" is simply nonsense. Then you conclude that the "new energy regime" should be distributed rather than centralized. How can you possibly know that? Such statements are merely empty abstractions without any underlying substance."

    1. I am afraid you are not familiar with what backs the dollar and what it means for a country to be able to print THE global reserve currency at will. Changing the energy regime from a technological standpoint is child's play compared to the dangers inherent in changing the entire geopolitical structure built after WWII.

    2. Barring some enormous new discovery on cold fusion etc. the only clean energy we have on Earth is solar, i.e. a very "diffuse" type of energy that necessitates a distributed system, or to be more accurate, a more distributed regime than currently. I recommend serious study of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Nuclear is also a possibility but fuel shortages will arise again and we already have a thorny nuclear waste disposal problem.

    Do I have an agenda? YOU BET. Here it is:

    I want my children to live in a better world. PERIOD.

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  13. Hellascious et al
    I would like to urge you all to think outside the box regarding oil consumption in particular and American over-consumption in general. Oil consumption is largely (65-70%)a function of automobile use. Car use is being driven not primarily by low gasoline prices, but by a wide variety of hidden subsidies. These subsidies consist largely of externalities, i.e. costs that are not reflected in the price paid by the consumer. These external costs of driving instead are paid by other drivers, the public in general, or the environment. These externalities are much more extensive than appears at first glance. As Todd Litman at Victoria Transport Policy Intitute has shown, giving drivers an accurate price signal by incorporating ALL costs (congestion, pollution, road wear, parking and insurance are the largest) into the price of driving would reduce driving by about half-voluntarily. Other countries currently achieve roughly the same outcome with heavy gas taxes and subsidies to transit alternatives. Regarding consumption in general, maybe Americans consume excessively and don't save enough because they face perverse incentives in the tax code. All other countries in the world raise a significant proportion of public revenues with consumption taxes, whether on gasoline or Value Added. Robert Frank in Luxury Fever proposes to increase savings and reduce consumption by means of a PROGRESSIVE consumption tax. Combined with a tax on externalities of all kinds (which would have the effect of raising the price of consumption), the resulting revenues would allow us to reduce the taxes on labor. This would raise the wages of the 95% of the population who work for a living without the govt. directly hiring people or picking which technologies are winners.
    A few direct government mandates can be justified where price signals cannot be corrected, but in general, 1930's-style programs in the current circumstances are likely to be wasteful and result in a lot of unintended consequences (like the economic and environmental damage from giant dams)

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  14. Hell and Green marketeer...

    OK, I Lied, one more.

    Amen to both of you.

    Greenmarketer, you are identifying one of the biggest problems with income taxes vs. consumption taxes (VATs, Carbon Taxes, etc...): They creates the illusion that 'things are free'. No one is as generous as they are with 'someone else's money'.

    Also, you need to think even more out of the box yourself. The issue is carbon, not oil. It would be just as easy to build lots of coal plants to power electric cars (coal is even cheaper per BTU than oil)-- that COULD be a disaster for the planet.

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  15. Hellasious,

    Hi, my first post here.

    One of the difficulties with analyzing some your arguments on this blog is their interdisciplinary nature. For example, in “The Bernanke Paradox and how to solve it” you recommended an economic solution (really a political solutions with intended economic benefits) and then used arguments from the geopolitical sphere (point 5 in your PS in “50 cents on the dollar”), the economic sphere (from Bernanke Paradox “To be effective, economic policy must rapidly raise real earned incomes...”) , and the Technological/Environmental sphere (“The US needs official policies that will create high value-added jobs in energy and environmental mitigation, to name my two favorite fields that are also the most pressing problems facing our world.” also from Bernanke Paradox). Many (dare I say most) of your US readership would need much persuasion to accept even one of these positions as valid. The fact that you wish your readership to take on board 3 positions, from very (ok, somewhat) different fields of study, is more than one could hope for. Many of your earlier posts/arguments were of a much less ambitious nature, remained largely in the economic sphere, and relied heavily on Data to back up your claims. Your arguments were thus irrefutable to the layman (notice that I'm not saying that they were necessarily 100% correct or that no other plausible arguments might help explain things, but for the record you had me convinced). In “Bernanke Paradox”, you reached a little. For this you were rewarded with 40+ comments. For the record I hope you aren't too encouraged to post too many controversial, multi-faceted arguments, I kinda like your terse, bullet proof economic stuff myself.

    Just to keep things interesting I'm going to explore a different side of the common American's resistance to your proposal in “Bernanke Paradox”, a psychological/political side that you might not be entirely aware of (assuming perhaps wrongly that you aren't American). Within the US constitution, powers are (mostly) explicitly granted to the federal government. Amendment 10 of the constitution says: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Although most US citizens aren't aware of the text of amendment 10, it explains much of American's resistance to “Big government”. Federal powers and responsibilities that aren't explicitly laid out in the constitution, such as issues of national defense, are implicitly to be handled by the states. I'd say even the federal highway system and the Apollo program were unusual large infrastructural undertakings that just happened to be constructive and beneficial, they too were almost certainly developed under the federal prerogative of “National Defense”. (I just wiki'd this, and it seems to be the case). What I'm trying to say is that the reason Americans are so resistant to “Big Government” programs is that they have rarely been on the receiving end of a Federal government program that was designed to benefit them. They have no experience with National health care, a national education system with a national tax base and national standards, etc. Not only that, but the simple act of suggesting that the federal government should legislate such things is considered heresy on a gut level, and may be construed as unconstitutional (although “promote the general welfare” seems like as good a place to start as any regarding any social program's constitutionality).

    I spent 3 ½ years living in Ireland, and I have traveled extensively. Even when I was a teenager I was impressed by the English “10 minute drinking up act of 1967” (Later extended to 20 minutes!). The fact that the British parliament passed a law mandating its citizens 10 minutes to drink their drinks struck me as highly civilized. I knew instinctively even then that the American Federal government could nor would ever do such a thing. In the American's popular imagination, the Federal government should legislate as little as is feasible, leaving most of the day to day affairs of government (such as, you know, capital punishment) up to the states to decide. Another part of this myth is that the Federal government should tax you as little as possible, so you can decide (best) how to spend your money with unregulated, laissez-faire capitalism to maximize your purchasing power and options... but now we stray to an economic argument, which I will leave for another time...

    Have an excellent (rest) of the weekend,

    Sky Guy

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  16. Thai
    Thank you for your response. Did you mean income taxes "create the illusion that things are free"? I am aware that carbon is an issue (if not THE issue) Coal is cheaper per BTU than oil only if you don't internalize the environmental costs. Once these are included coal is much less attractive, maybe even cost prohibitive. Hell seems to think solar is the way to go, but given the fact that a lot of electricity gets consumed at night, you have to store it somehow. I'm inclined to think conservation/efficiency is the ultimate answer, but the only way to know for sure is to get the price right (by including all externalized costs) and let the market decide.

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  17. There was an interesting documentary a year or two ago called Who Killed the Electric Car. Well worth a look to see just how sustainable technologies are actively supressed by the status quo -- even to it's long term detriment in the case of car makers. We've had available technology for a viable 0 emissions vehicle to meet the needs of 90% of the population for over a decade. Guess who bought the company with the battery technology patents: Chevron. But hey, there's still a trillion dollars worth of business in the ground, god forbid we leave it there.

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  18. Re: Sky Guy
    As a Brit I would add a footnote to your excellent comment. ‘Even when I was a teenager I was impressed by the English “10 minute drinking up act of 1967” (Later extended to 20 minutes!). The fact that the British parliament passed a law mandating its citizens 10 minutes to drink their drinks struck me as highly civilized.’
    Not to drive American readers to distraction, the so-called Drinking Up Act, 1967 made it an imperative that 10 minutes prior to the bar closing for either the midday or evening opening the call of “Last orders gentlemen, please.” meant in effect: “Please finish your drinks and push off, I got be out of here myself in half an hour.”
    Later extended to 20 minutes it simply took into account the unlikelihood of getting any pub goer to down his beer in half that time without a scrap. No, it did not mean you had to pour booze down your gullet within 10 minutes (later 20 minutes) of it being handed across the bar to your waiting hand! and to my knowledge, as a lawyer, it was never tested in a court of law.

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  19. yes, though I should qualify this and say I really mean 'progressive' income tax systems.

    As most of us are not rich (at least we don't think we are), we view government spending as 'a good deal'. All the while the 'Progressive' nature of the income tax system encourages an unsustainable cycle of spending paraphrased as "let's spend as much as we can but get someone else to pay for it" (in this case the rich)".

    No one is ever as generous as they are with 'someone else's money'. So we repeat this cycle over and over asking for more 'free' spending-- all the while forgetting the symbiotc relationships with each of us and our economy.

    It ends up encouraging far more consumption than we would otherwise permit.

    And while this point can be 'overstated', the general gist I am trying to make is clearly present.

    We live in a fractal world-economy, only most of us either don't see it or refuse to see it since it threatens so many of our hard formed illusions.

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  20. "Do I have an agenda? YOU BET. Here it is:

    I want my children to live in a better world. PERIOD."

    Then teach them not to look for top-down government fixes and solutions to every problem.

    I am sure if you queried Bush and Cheney about the justifications for the war in Iraq, they would make similar arguments re: how they are making the world safer for democracy and future generations. And probably really believe they have succeeded.

    I respect your analysis of the current problems facing the US and global financial markets. But can't you see that it was the FED's attempt to tinker with interest rates, in an effort to fulfill its dual mandate of price stability and full employment, that largely created the liquidity trap we are now facing.

    By signaling market participants that they would and could insure a particular level of stability in the economy and the financial markets, the FED, along with the federal govt. vis a vis stimulus packages, have created an artificial and ultimately unsustainable economic environment. By apparently eliminating the possibility of major financial catastrophes, the FED has unwittingly driven down the pricing of risk such that it now threatens the very survival of global financial markets.

    The way out of this mess is through less not more government intervention.

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  21. Spyware,

    Thanks for the complement RE the post.

    As for the very respectable 10 min drinking up act of 1967...

    I have read this thing off of the plaque of a pub wall on more than one bleary-eyed occasion. What I understood it to mean was you had 10 min from the END of pub hours to “Please finish your drinks and push off, I got be out of here myself in half an hour.” As I suspect you well know, in practice last orders means you order another round or 2 of drinks and you finish them off as slowly as the pub staff has patience for because you don't want to face the prospect of a) the end of the evening, or worse b) going to an after hours place that will be hard to find, harder to get into and will likely charge you both a cover charge and an arm and a leg for drinks.

    My point in bringing it up was to demonstrate that as an American, the idea that the Federal government could have any meaningful input into matters as trivial as drinking up time seemed one part strange, one part quaint, and one part oddly heartwarming. That is simply not the way our national politics in this country works. I've got more to say on the subject, but it seems that this comments thread is already going in a lot of different directions...

    Perhaps you can give me some background on the abortion act of 1967 (gee, what a great year for the legalization of vice in the UK!)...

    Cheers,

    sky guy

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  22. Sky Guy:

    Not only that, but the simple act of suggesting that the federal government should legislate such things is considered heresy on a gut level, and may be construed as unconstitutional (although “promote the general welfare” seems like as good a place to start as any regarding any social program's constitutionality).

    I am too tired this evening to respond in detail to your post; but I'll interject a couple of things:

    1) There was an early U.S. Supreme Court decision that said that the Preamble to the Constitution (where General Welfare exists) is not part of the Constitution.

    2) As long as Congress can tie any spending to "interstate commerce" they can do pretty much as they please as spending measures are subjected to the "Rational Basis Test" which is the easiest one to justify.

    I'll try to interject more later.

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  23. As I see it, "solar power" includes not only direct photovoltaic power, but also includes wave power, growing plants, wind power, etc.

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  24. If as much research and investment as went into nuclear power had gone into solar, than we would all be getting our energy from the sun. But how do you put a meter on sunlight - there is no private for-profit incentive for solar. It is clearly a job for the federal government to push for solar, as they step in where there is no private incentive to do the right thing. But the oil lobby and business interests hold too much influence in government. Look at how the US military is used to secure oil interests around the world. If the oil companies had to foot the bill for security (ie have a rapid reaction force, an occupying force and a navy) Oil would be an unprofitable business model. So the cost is socialized and the profit privatized. The oil business would have to be crazy to give up such a system. And they're not. They are very intelligent, well organized, and well connected at the highest levels of bower and influence.

    It just won't happen, at least for the forseeable future.

    Jason B

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  25. thai,

    In response to your question about J Diamond. Actually I have not read this particular book - though I had seen it advertised. I had recently being reading about the Olmec and Maya, and had seen a TV documentary about the rise-and-fall of some ancient peoples in Asia and America. The common theme was the abuse of their resources and environment and/or significant climatic change.

    I got to thinking about us 'moderns' and supposed that we had an additional resource called 'finance', and some of us in positions of power and influence, were abusing this resource. Hence my comment. Thanks again.

    Brian P

    ps; - to H. V Good agenda! Mine is my grandkids - encouraging them to be engineers like their great-great grandfather and great-grandfather - I'm a scientist! So far, so good!

    BPW

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  26. Hellasious:

    Good thinking, good post. I see you've made the leap from "uh-oh, we're gonna have a recession because we got careless with debt" to "uh-oh, the basis of our economy is now obsolete, and we have some fundamental re-thinking to do".

    A few points for the rest of the gang:

    a. The "government" is us. If the "market" doesn't move the general situation in the proper direction, for whatever reason, it's perfectly appropriate for "us", using "government" as the instrument, to move the situation. The market is a tool, not a religion.

    b. Cheap, centralized energy is over. The "suburban" model is history, the commute, the internal combustion engine, are all history. The question remaining is only the speed and effectiveness of the transition.

    Here I quote Charles Darwin:

    "It's not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change".

    Hellasious demonstrated in his post that he can connect the dots between economics, thermodynamics, and government policy.

    Then someone said "hey, that's too much to take on-board at once". If that's really true, Darwin has a seat for you on the bus to oblivion. I, for one, am eagerly awaiting the next transitional step from Hellasious.

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  27. Hellasious, I noticed you put Bernstein's 'Against the Gods' in your recommended reading list.

    While I respect the author a lot, Benoit Mandelbrot has already proven Bernstein's book is lovely but fundamentally wrong and that risk almost by definition 'uncontrollable'... a central view of most econphysics/evolutionary economoics.

    Why do you continue to recommend the book? Even if unintentional, it is 'misleading'?

    ReplyDelete
  28. I'd recommend adding to your booklist Twilight in the Desert, the best account of dwindling Saudi oil reserves.

    ReplyDelete
  29. Once again I thank you all for your comments. The laudatory ones make me blush, the other ones make me think.

    By the way, both books: Against The Gods and Twilight In The Desert have been on the Hellasious Recommends list since I started the Amazon sidebar.

    I can't comment on Mandelbrot's book,I haven't read it. Bernstein provides an excellent historical summary of probability and risk developments, all the way back when Romans played dice and did not understand the difference between "come 7" and "snake eyes" - odds wise. It's not a math book.

    Regards

    ReplyDelete
  30. Hmmm,

    I'm waiting for more input from Okielawyer, I think we he was heading in an interesting direction with his comments that I'd like to pursue.

    To the second most recent Anon poster who said “Then someone said "hey, that's too much to take on-board at once". If that's really true, Darwin has a seat for you on the bus to oblivion.” I'm assuming this comment is a swipe at me/my post. Hellasious is the one who proposed a sweeping US federal jobs program, to be implemented in a timely fashion, that would be “...on a scale several times bigger than the Manhattan or Apollo projects...”, and which challenges the geopolitical world order. That's a tall order, and he has to sell that at least 51% of the American electorate, most of whom are going to balk at the validity of premise #1 (whichever unlucky premise that happened to be). As Ricky Ricardo might say, “Lucy, you got some 'splaining to do.”

    He knows this, he's trying to 'splain. I'm sure he finds some of these comments disheartening, because he realizes he has a lot more 'splaining to do. I just hope he and others like him succeed, because if they don't, it could well be that “...Darwin has a seat for ALL of us on the bus to oblivion”

    Now, where's that OkieLawyer at...

    Cheers,

    Sky Guy

    ReplyDelete
  31. Hel,

    Last week, I read one of Mandelbrot's papers written in 1963. In that paper, Mandelbrot stated how risk assessment was heavily based on tossing out data to make the remaining data fit Gaussian probability distributions (it's easier to compute probabilities of events with Gaussian distributions.) The "rocket scientists" say that events such as the 1987 crash, near-realization of counterparty risk from a potential LTCM failure, the recent spikes in junk spreads etc. were not anticipated because their calculated probabilities were extremely low, one in a billion, trillion, quadrillion. Pick your exponent.

    Roger Lowenstein also referred this in his book "When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long Term Capital Mangement".

    Why does it surprise people that the risk models are so useless? They were, and possibly still are, constructed by tossing data that are inconvenient for the risk modelers.

    I also read Bernstein's "Against the Gods" and was somewhat disappointed. Bernstein and Lowenstein have written for wider public audiences. I understand why you recommend Bernstein (say, as opposed to Mandelbrot). However, I would also strongly recommend Roger Lowenstein's book.

    I read this in March, before the credit crunch started and wondered to myself how little has changed. Even though the events occurred 10 years ago, there is a timeless quality to Lowenstein's writing.

    ReplyDelete
  32. I knew it the very first day I saw you posting solutions - you are a commie. Will you keep pushing for alternate energy if crude prices fall below $40/gallon?

    I worked for NASA and know how much money gets wasted by government employees. I work very closely with scientists in NIH cancer research projects, as well as plant biologists on alternate energy. If you think a government program can bring you alternate energy paradise, good luck to you.

    Your comparisons with Erie canal and Apollo are stupid, and shows that you know nothing about scientific discovery process. Building those canals were engineering projects, not scientific discoveries. A better comparison would be either government-funded cancer research, or high-Tc superconductors.

    BTW, I was an electrical engineer and used to think like you, when I was young.

    ReplyDelete
  33. While Mandelbrot is a mathematician, his book is not a math book.

    I assume you have read Nassim Nicholas Taleb's two books Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan? Taleb dedicates The Black Swan to Mandelbrot-- "A Greek among Romans".

    The Misbehavior of Markets tries to explain to everyday readers the difference between the two major types of risk/statistics that exist in the world:
    1. Gaussian risk/statistics (which give 'The Bell Shaped Curve')
    2. Cauchy or Lorentz risk/statistics (which give Fractals, Chaos Theory and Power Laws)

    Most people understand Gaussian statistics intutively-- we use them everyday to analyze things like casino gambling, coin tossing, etc...

    Most people DO NOT understand Cauchy statistics intuitively. Most people therefore incorrectly misapply Gaussian statistics to problems they fundamentally do not apply to (Daniel Kahneman would call this another example of a flawed heuristic)

    Gaussian analysis works fine for things of 'small variation'-- height, IQ, weight, 'Six Sigma' manufacaturing quality control programs, etc...(just like Newtonian physics 'works fine' when applied at 'slow speeds').

    However Gaussian analysis is fundamentally incorrectly applied to things of 'tremendous variation'-- things like wealth, knowledge, names, language, the internet, etc...

    ... and interestingly enough, things of tremendous variation just happen to be most of the things people find meaningful/willing to go to war over-- wealth, love, hapiness, social justice, fairness and income distributions, etc...

    When you get into suggesting solutions to our major economic problems, you get into issues of 'fairness' and 'social cooperation'. If you apply Gaussian analysis to fairness or social cooperation, you will come up with inaccurate results. You are using the wrong statistical tool.

    It was just these issues that Joshua Epstein and Robert Axtell of The Brookings Institution accidentally stumbled upon when working on a project called SugarScape.

    Sugarscape has profound implications to anyone interested in 'solving' our economic problems.

    As and addendum, it has profound implications for anyone who takes the libertarian vs. big governement debate too seriously.

    ReplyDelete
  34. Sky Guy:

    If you want to read more of my thoughts in this area, I have done a search of my own blog based on portability. The three blog posts also deal with the Commerce Clause, economies of scale, the effect of corporate bankruptcies on workers, health care and other economic principles and social justice which all tie in with each other.

    ReplyDelete
  35. > 4. Government action is absolutely
    > essential because entrenched fossil
    > fuel interests are not going to do it
    > by themselves. Their combined profits
    > are in the trillions annually.

    You lost me (and your credibility) there.
    Oil companies certainly do NOT have
    annual profits in the trillions. With
    world GDP about $45T, I would estimate
    ALL company profits at about $2T, with
    oil companies certainly not more than
    twenty percent of that figure.

    ReplyDelete
  36. Fossil fuel companies are not just oil companies. Consider the entire fossil fuel regime:

    Oil, gas, coal, transportation, centralized power generation...

    Regards,
    H.

    ReplyDelete
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