For decades SNOOTS have been hunting down whiches and replacing them with thats. Whenever a SNOOT discovers the relative pronoun which introducing a restrictive clause, the writer responsible will drop several notches in her esteem. Read more »

I wish I had more time to look at all this stuff, which is very suggestive of interesting things.  I have a proposal for you, micro-economic reform has been basically right in trying to make markets more competitive, but it’s done some serious damage along the way, and one way of making the point is that as information flows and risk sharing become more important, as they have been becoming, things like intrinsic motivation, the minimisation of invidious arrangements which can undermine basic notions of doing the right thing come at a huge cost. Read more »

From Rory’s newsletter

I was in Canberra yesterday, presenting at the Federal Treasury and the Parliamentary Library. Over the past year, I’ve often been the most pessimistic person in the room. My second presentation yesterday, however, followed one by Dr Steve Keen (google, if you are keen), whose high-profile forecast of a 40% drop in Australian home prices has put the wind up many homebuyers and potential home-buyers, not to mention some offshore investors.

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Panic seized markets this week. Just one asset class is deemed safe: the liabilities of highly-rated governments.

The price of a barrel of oil is below $50. The dividend yield on the S&P 500 is higher than the yield on US 10-year treasuries. The yield on short-dated US inflation-indexed bonds is higher than on their conventional equivalents. The yield on ten-year government bonds is now 3.2 per cent in the US and 3.8 per cent in the UK.

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