There are two countries that are always going to be linked in the Southeast Asia region due to their similarities, and the key choices that turned one into an economic powerhouse. Brunei and Singapore are the two smallest and wealthiest Southeast Asian nations, and have a currency interchange agreement. Sixty years ago, both set out to diversify their economies and become leaders in the region. The result is a real-world model lesson for developing nations. Continue reading
economics
15 posts
Game theory is in the news lately. For some, this may be the first they’ve ever heard of the field. For others, game theory might be part of an economics class they took back in college that they can barely remember. Luckily, I have unprecedented access to an economics professor who teaches game theory and who agreed to sit with me and answer some questions about using it to get a raise, get out of doing the dishes, and to (maybe) get laid.
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Roughly four years ago, Zimbabwe experienced one of the worst cases of hyper-inflation in the history of the world. The country was experiencing 165,000% inflation in April of 2008. That’s an insane number. Typically, hyperinflation is said to occur when the monthly inflation rate exceeds 50%. We’re talking about 3300 times that amount. Say the USA was experiencing that rate of inflation. If you went to buy a pack of Marlboros for $7 today, tomorrow it would be worth $39, then next week it would be $221 dollars. A year later, that same pack of cigarettes would cost $11,557. Continue reading
Headlines from The Economist aren’t normally the sort to make you spit out your coffee, but every once in a while they still manage to surprise me with a masterpiece of political absurdity that stands in sharp contrast to their well-sourced (if nevertheless biased) economics and foreign policy coverage. This week’s edition opens with the amazing claim that Mitt Romney has, throughout his primary campaign, been pandering not only to the far right, but to the left as well.
If this left you scratching your head and wondering if perhaps you had blacked out on Ambien for a couple of weeks and missed the part where the “severely conservative” plutocrat showed up at an Occupy camp with a bongo drum, you’re not alone. But no: The Economist claims, with what I can only assume is a straight face, that Romney has been pandering to the left by criticizing China for alleged currency manipulation. Continue reading
The other day I had a debate with a math student. He defended the mathematical soundness of the Laffer Curve and, by extension, the efficiency of supply side economics. Maybe the Laffer Curve has theoretical soundness, but it’s never been shown to work at levels of taxation like ours. Furthermore, there’s a real human cost when attempts have been made to try to make it work here. That’s even provided that the people keeping so much money in lower taxation actually keep it in the same curve. If we’ve learned anything from Mitt Romney and his Cayman residing millions, it’s the one glaring human reason as to why the Laffer Curve will never work anywhere. As for “efficiency”; let’s just say that my friend had a limited understanding of what that word means in the field of economics. These points were all lost in the morass of my friend’s Math Chat. Continue reading
So. It has come to this.
Plan after plan after plan has gone by the wayside, as has a Prime Minister, and there has been no resolution to Greece’s massive sovereign debt problem. Now Greece is quite simply out of time. After months of hysteria, we have quietly reached the edge. It’s not the end of the Eurozone, but you can see it from here. Continue reading
Why doesn’t The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson get more attention? I rarely see his stuff linked from other big economics-oriented liberal bloggers and he seems to always be overshadowed by the other writers at his own publication — folks like James Fallows, Ta-Nahesi Coates and (barf) Megan McCardle.
Consider if you will a small country mired in conflict, with the barbarians (the International Monetary Fund) storming the gate. Tempers are high, the old guard leadership model fails, leaving its citizenry to forge for themselves buffeted by the winds of international pressures. Join us as we explore the lives of that citizenry who now find themselves living in a New World Order of their own design.
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The image at the top of this article is a Nike product, the “swoosh” clearly visible. I’m sure most of our readers would remember the savaging dealt to Nike in the 90s in the media, in the classroom, in the university cafeteria, and anywhere where people regarded themselves as socially aware. These days, the popular target is Apple, partly as a result of the well-publicised suicides at the Hon Hai factories in China which churn out Apple’s bestselling and stylish industrial designs. Regardless, “sweatshops” have been getting a bad name for a very long time: the name was coined in the 19th century, and then as now the clothing industry has been a major culprit in their use.
The recession has gone on long enough that it’s likely to have a long-term effect on people’s buying and spending behaviors. We may find that when we are old and gray (if we’re not already), that we are just as frugal as our grandparents used to be. I used to have lots of fun laughing at my crazy Depression-era grandparents who had 13 toasters in the garage because they saved everything for parts. However, considering the budgeting I’m doing these days, my grandchildren are probably going to have some good laughs at Grandma BBQ’s expense. By then, they’ll probably make disposable computers and they’ll all make fun of me for hoarding laptops. Continue reading