Archive for the 'Economics' Category
Competitive
Saturday, April 20th, 2013
Costs and management issues aside, the biggest shock to most marijuana growers has been pot prices. As the industry becomes more competitive and there is more pot available, the price for a pound of high-quality weed in Denver has slid from $2,900 at the beginning of April in 2011 to $2,400 in the same period in 2012 to $2,000 this year, according to Roberto’s MMJ List, a service that connects wholesale sellers and buyers. At the height of summer demand in 2011, a pound sold for as much as $3,900.
$125 for an ounce, $15 for an eighth. That’s the right way to bring an end to illegal drug trade.
Household debt
Wednesday, October 10th, 2012
Sideline Seats
Wednesday, November 9th, 2011
Historic events playing out right in front of us – most generations only have the chance to read about this stuff. Pretty incredible.
Timmeh!
Sunday, April 5th, 2009
“I have not taken anybody’s vane, and dead people can’t sue.”
Busted Citi
Monday, February 23rd, 2009
“Not only is Citigroup a black hole from which no taxpayer dollars can escape, but Geithner’s brain is a black hole from which no intelligent thought can escape.”
That’s some pretty cold sh*t.
Hooverville
Friday, February 13th, 2009
Having defaulting on it’s debt to taxpayers, California is finally readying it’s 40 billion shortfall solution, they’re raising taxes. (chuckles)
- State sales tax to increase one cent from roughly 8 percent to 9 percent, depending upon the area, almost 10 percent in some areas
- State income taxes to rise either 2.5 or 5 percent across the board via a “surcharge”, depending upon the amount of Federal assistance, boosting the effective marginal tax rate to either 9.5 or 9.8 percent for amounts over $40K
- Gasoline tax to increase 12 cents to 39 cents a gallon for a total tax of 76 cents per gallon
- Vehicle license fees to almost double, from the current 0.65 percent of a vehicle’s value to 1.15 percent
Good luck with that. Leaving California eight years ago was, without a doubt, one of the smartest decisions I’ve ever made. It really wasn’t that hard to pull off, you just have to take the leap.
Pragmatism is Good
Friday, January 9th, 2009
At present, I see very little in the way of Keynesian pyramid building. Nor do I see an attempt to grab the revolutionary moment by the horns and push the U.S. in a new direction. Thus, thankfully, No (new) New Deal. There is plenty of uncertainty in the economy but it’s not regime uncertainty.
‘Sourpusses’
Tuesday, January 6th, 2009
The problem presented by an artificial credit boom to the whole economy is akin to this master builder problem. In this case, the artificially low interest rate is what creates a fata morgana – i.e. a crucial piece of misinformation – that leads businessmen astray, namely the illusion that more savings are available than there really are.
It is the conceptual difference between money and real resources that trips up Krugman. He thinks if only someone – preferably, in his view, the state – were to spend money in the teeth of the bust, everything would be alright again. This ignores what has happened in the boom – scarce resources were misallocated due to false information on the true state of savings, and thus capital ended up being malinvested and consumed.
If we look at the policies enacted since the bust began, we see that they are all geared to keeping the disinformation that the boom was based on alive.
Once again, interest rates are being suppressed to an artificially low level. The state meanwhile is set to spend more money than at any time before in such a brief time span in peace time, on the idea that more spending is going to cure what too much spending has wrought.
However, the state can not add one iota to the pool of scarce economic resources that need to be optimally allocated if the economy is to recover.
We must always come back the the fact that the state does not have any economic resources of its own – it does not produce any. Instead, it must take them from those who do produce them.
Listening to Krugman, you’d think Austrians were a bunch of sourpusses begrudging everyone the good times of the boom, and then making things worse by being especially dour party-poopers with regards to the remedies thought to be necessary ‘fix’ the bust.
However, it is just realism and rigorous a priori reasoning that leads to their conclusions. Once the economy’s pool of real funding has been damaged on account of an artificial credit boom, the priority must be to allow the production structure to readjust to reality, and that process, while painful, is also necessary.
FIV
Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008
“Scientists in 33 countries studying the disease have uncovered similar patterns in the DNA of every victim. To date, every person afflicted with FIV has been found to have one of two distinct Marker Chromosomes now identified as the K-Marker (Keynesian-Marker), or the M-Marker (Monetarist-Marker). No one with the recently discovered A-Marker (Austrian-Marker) has yet to contract FIV.”
Fiscal Insanity Virus Rapidly Spreading The Globe, Part 1 and Part 2.
Fiscal Policy
Thursday, December 18th, 2008
The bottom line is this: we are being asked to believe that a big, trillion or even multi-trillion fiscal stimulus can boost the current macroeconomy. If you look at history, there isn’t good reason to believe that. Any single example, such as the Nazis, can be knocked down for lack of relevance or lack of correspondence to current conditions. Fair enough. But the burden of proof isn’t on the skeptics. It’s up to the advocates of the trillion dollar expenditure to come up with the convincing examples of a fiscal-led recovery. Right now we’re mostly at “It wasn’t really tried.” And then a mental retreat back into the notion that surely good public sector project opportunities are out there.
So what you have is the possibility of faith — or lack thereof — that our government will spend this money well.
And that is under “emergency” conditions, with great haste (“use it or lose it”), with a Congress eager to flex its muscle, and with more or less one-party rule.
For me, that’s not enough.
