My whole economic worldview changed when I read the works of Hernando de Soto Polar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hernando_de_Soto_Polar). He demonstrated that a huge free market economy of honest, legitimate work (like private buses) exists completely outside the law, technically illegal, all over the world. The more restrictive the regulations, the more free enterprise pops up. There are two problems with this. First, those entrepreneurs lack protection of the law, so they are vulnerable to losing their livelihoods due to crime or motion of power. Second, this shadow economy is simply not measured by mainstream economics, so in countries where the shadow economy is large, our perception of their relative economic status is skewed.
I knew there was I reason I always liked your posts.
If you're ever in Austin drop me a line and we can have a chat. The CA community is pretty strong down here and growing thanks to people like Cody Wilson and Defense Distributed.
To be fair, he never said the US supplied a majority of weapons in Mexico. Only that we were a 'prime source' of weapons, which if the range is 20 - 40%, would be completely accurate.
I agree completely. I studied Finance but had a work study with an econ professor and was amazed at how much hand waving existed in their economic models.
I felt like I was charting very simple things(gdp, oil prices, ect) and he would come up with his own suspect analysis off that limited info.
The worst part was that this guy had had a high ranking position in the presidents cabinet!
I don't really see the problem with that. The only problem I have is with people who do this and go around pretending that their numbers are neutral and speaking for themselves. From my standpoint Econ & Finance are social sciences where "reality" is always complexer than just the numbers.
I have yet to test this, since it looks like early days yet.
Wakari is a cloud service and somewhat expensive for my needs. Though its hard to say how big an instance my data would actually require. If my Pandas experimentations don't pan out, I might have to give it a whirl.
I'm just curious as how a relatively small group of people can be responsible for affecting the price of gold? By all accounts libertarians are a small section of the populace yet you suggest they are driving up the price and causing a bubble in the trillion gold dollar market.
It's hard to find solid data but this old article[1] states that $15,200bn worth of gold was traded in one quarter alone. I find it impossible that any one group of people can cause a bubble when that amount of gold is being moved around, much less the tiny slice of americans who consider themselves Austrians/libertarians.
My second issue is with the idea that gold is in a bubble at all. Despite a couple of spikes the price has been about $1600 an ounce for the past 2 years.
The trader/investor in me suggests that it was rising steadily for a decade until it reached a fair market price. Everyone from Goldman Sacs[2] to leftist George Soros[3] to libertarian Kyle Bass[3] suggest gold is getting boring and are bearish.
So I'm not sure where you are getting this info that gold is in bubble territory?
EDIT: I love the downvotes from people who can't answer how Austrians are causing non-existent gold bubbles. Not like central banks bought more gold in 2012 than any other year since 1964[1]... it has to be those pesky libertarians and their love of this barbaric relic.
It's important to note that California is just as bad or worse in a lot of those areas.
All the things you mentioned are pretty bad in California. Public education is terrible, traffic is outrageous, there is a huge immigration 'problem', and the forest fires are pretty bad. To each his own but Californian leadership isn't really that great.
Nyc also had a pretty bad immigration problem. Those pesky italians and their mafia. The Irish were no better. And on top of that Mexicans are no arriving in droves. When will it ever end? When?
For example, public transport and housing is terrible in the Bay so private buses are all over SF now.