Skjellifetti

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    • Wed May 7th 13:20 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Sun Still Clings to Java Dominance Pitch
      The growing arenas of SOA, Web 2.0, cloud computing, webby applications design/delivery, OSGi container flexibility, PHP, Ruby on Rails, Adobe (ADBE) and Silverlight RIA/cross-browser development/deployment -- all are moving beyond the Java orbit.

      I've been architecting/developin... applications for Fortune500 && Gov't clients for nearly 20 years and I have yet to see a single request for an app built using either PHP or Ruby. The TIOBE index puts Java programmers (~20%) at about twice the demand of PHP (~10% ) and Ruby is distant with (<3%). See www.tiobe.com/index.ph... Note that the TIOBE index can't be used to infer the relative scale of projects using given languages.

      IT Pundit + Buzzwords = 1.0, Sun = 0.1
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    • Sun May 4th 23:49 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Buffett's Advice to the Berkshire Faithful: Buy Index Funds
      I'll bet bearfund has never beaten the indexes over, say, any given 10 year period in the past 50 years, especially after paying for all the expenses he has incured trying to figure out what might be likely (but is just as likely not to) outperform.

      Bogleheads rule!
      View article »
    • Sun May 4th 21:25 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Buffett's Advice to the Berkshire Faithful: Buy Index Funds
      Vanguard Total Bond Market Index Fund -- https://personal.vangu...

      Vanguard Total Market Index Fund -- https://personal.vangu...

      Vanguard Total International Stock Index -- https://personal.vangu...

      And maybe a bit of

      Vanguard REIT Index Fund -- https://personal.vangu...

      You'll do fine.
      View article »
    • Fri May 2nd 16:41 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Another Month, Another Misreported Consumer Spending Number
      Maybe I'm atypical, but the increased cost of gasoline has barely made a blip in our budget. It has been something on the order of an extra $15/mo. We have been buying organic food from mainstream groceries for the past couple of years and the costs are actually starting to drop. I suspect that this is because there are more farmers entering the organic market. From my perspective, the CPI numbers are pretty accurate.

      And that is the problem with articles like this. Since there is no such thing as a typical consumer, it is very difficult to create a market basket of goods and prices that can represent the price changes that are affecting all consumers. Superficial articles like this one that make claims about "we consumers" should be ignored.
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    • Thu May 1st 16:17 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Commodity Conundrum Solved: The Hidden Parameter in Interest Rates
      This just looks like a restatement of the classical economic theory used to explain finite resource extraction rates. If you are the owner of a finite amount of a resource sitting in the ground, at what rate should you mine the resource in order to maximize your long-run discounted profits? If you sell a marginal unit today, you can put the proceeds in a bank and earn an interest rate r. If you hold the unit in the ground, and sell it tomorrow, you have lost r unless the price of the unit increases by the same amount. All that the author is saying is that interest rates have a powerful effect on the owner's decision to sell the marginal unit today or tomorrow. Polaris and Georealist are quite correct in that the demand curve is the other half of the equation and is necessary for understanding why tomorrow's price may not be the same as today's. Shalom is correct, too, in that extraction costs change through time as does demand since higher prices are a powerful incentive for developing substitutes for any product.
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    • Mon Apr 28th 14:48 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Let's Think Long and Hard About Extending Those Bush Tax Cuts
      Matt Blackman clearly shows that he is one of those who does not consider a study to be credible unless it reaches conclusions that he has previously decided should be the correct conclusions.

      Why is it that proponents of the Laffer Curve always assume we are at a point in our tax system where decreased tax rates must necessarily lead to increases in revenues (the right half of the Laffer Curve)? Remember, the Laffer Curev has two sides. Maybe we are closer to the left half where decreases in tax rates actually decrease revenues because the additional work incentive is simply not enough to make up for the initial lost revenue?
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    • Mon Apr 28th 12:48 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Let's Think Long and Hard About Extending Those Bush Tax Cuts
      Several people have commented that reduced tax rates lead to higher tax revenues. Unfortunately, the well documented record of both the Reagan and Bush tax cuts demonstrates that the revenue growth from increased economic activity that such cuts stimulate does not make up for the initial revenue loss from the cuts themselves. Note that this effect has nothing to do with government expenditures. It is purely a revenue phenomena. The result is that unless there is a large reduction in government expenditures to match the overall loss in tax revenues, there will be a long period of increasing government deficits. This is exactly what the US saw under both Reagan and Bush. The Clinton tax increase had exactly the opposite effect: a large revenue enhancement which was almost, but not quite, large enough to reduce the total deficit (current tax revenue + current SS revenue - current expenditure - current SS payments) to zero.

      Read this NYTimes piece on Douglas Holtz-Eakin for details: www.nytimes.com/2008/0...

      Dr. Holtz-Eakin served as the Director of the Congressional Budget Office and also served for 18 months as Chief Economist for the President’s Council of Economic Advisors under President George W. Bush and for two years as Senior Staff Economist for President George H. W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors. He is now an advisor for Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain.
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    • Mon Apr 7th 14:16 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Central Banks Have Become Dangerous
      This article is full of half-baked nonsense.

      In no particular order:

      "Private, profit-seeking actors would not have generated the corrosive financial flows that have characterized this millennium."

      Then why did those same profit-seeking actors so happily provide mortgages to households with fairy tale incomes?

      "Less politically-independen... monetary authorities could have leaned against unsustainable financing."

      Greenspan happily agreed with the Bush tax cuts which have given us some of the largest budget deficits in U.S. history and you want the Fed more politically dependent?

      "We may yet escape, but we have been drawn very close to something very dangerous, to a genuine crisis of scarcity in the United States... This is serious stuff. And central banks are largely to blame."

      Scarcity of what? Oil? Oil has always been scarce. Same with every other resource. That scarcity, coupled with demand, generates a market price that reflects that scarcity. To claim that Central Banks are to blame for that scarcity is to ignore the complete unwillingness of the American public and the politicians they elect to do anything to at all to move us toward alternatives. Jimmy Carter warned us about our dependence on foreign oil 30 years ago. Since then, no administration or Congress (D or R) has made any attempt to do anything about it. This isn't the fault of the Central Banks. The politicians did exactly what their constituents wanted them to do: nothing.

      "But what the US economy produces is no longer well matched to what Americans consume, and we are structurally unprepared to generate tradables, goods or services, in quantity adequate to cover the difference."

      Ohio has a serious shortage of qualified machinists even though the state has lost 200K manufacturing jobs in the past decade. Anyone with an engineering degree has a nearly instant ticket into the top ranks of the middle class because those are the skills demanded in today's economy. Globalization has not destroyed the middle class. But a failure to educate our citizens for the kinds of jobs that an open economy demands might be doing the job.
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    • Fri Mar 28th 15:29 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Smart Regulation vs. Dumb Regulation Is The Real Issue
      Why, then, are Martin Wolf and David Wessel with their Krell-like brains surprised at the fact that the Federal Reserve is composed of men (and women) willing to "assume a grave responsibility for the purpose of meeting" a financial crisis?

      Because they expected the Great Machine of laissez-faire capitalism to free them from the Fed's instrumentality. That the Great Machine would also give physical form to all of its creator's baser instincts and commit genocide against its creators was about as expected to Wolf and Wessel as Monty Python's Spanish Inquisition.
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    • Wed Mar 26th 14:43 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Today's Lesson: Why the Fed Raised Its Rates in 1931
      China is sterilizing the dollars by issuing enough bonds to soak up the yuan they are printing to buy the dollars that are flooding into their economy through their trade imbalance with the U.S.

      While Herbert Stein has reminded us that things that cannot go on forever, don't, it is not clear to me why China is importing inflation given the sterilization policy and the fact that they have been (too!) slowly re-valuing the yuan in recent years.
      View article »
    • Thu Mar 20th 15:10 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      The End of U.S. Investing as We Know It?
      Perma Bull vs Perma Bear? Who cares? With 20 years to go before I retire, I'll just keep maxing out my 401(k) and my IRA and each month buy a little of whatever no-load index fund is currently cheapest relative to my long-term asset allocation plan. The financial services industry hates people like me.

      But I do enjoy reading the doom and gloom scenarios on blogs like this. They provide the same kind of thrills, chills, and adrenalin rush of a B grade horror film. That reminds me - Gotta pick up some popcorn on the way home tonight.
      View article »
    • Fri Mar 14th 14:49 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Global 'Oil Shock' Rattles World Stock Markets
      It was James Carville who wanted to be reincarnated as the bond market, not Robert Rubin. It is a notoriously well known quote. When an author can't be bothered to fact check the attribution of simple quotes, it throws all the rest of the analysis into doubt.
      View article »
    • Mon Sep 24th 13:11 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Fears of Dollar Collapse?
      If the Chinese are going to pull the plug, don't they have to sell the bonds they hold? Just who are they going to sell them to?
      View article »
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