Phantasmix Stock Blog

10 companies with the biggest current market value

(alphabetical order)
AAPL, BHP, BRK.A, CHL, GOOG, MSFT, PBR, PTR, WMT, XOM

Infotainment.

Source: GOOD

NEW YORK – Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, whose legacy has been tarnished by the global financial crisis, on Thursday laid out a scholarly defence of why Fed policy did not fuel the housing bubble.

He did offer somewhat of a mea culpa, though, noting that the regulatory system failed by not demanding financial firms hold much larger capital buffers. Mr. Greenspan, who led the U.S. central bank from 1987 to 2006, has been criticized by some analysts who argue he kept short-term, benchmark interest rates too low for too long in the early 2000s.

The former Fed chief defended the central bank’s actions, saying that the seeds of the housing boom were sown by geopolitical events that were out of the Fed’s control, an argument he has presented a number of times in the past.

The fall of the Soviet Union led to hundreds of millions of workers entering the global marketplace, he said in a paper to be presented to a Brookings Institution conference. This new market-based workforce, Mr. Greenspan said, helped push up growth in the developing world. This in turn fuelled a global savings glut that drove down long-term interest rates, leading to an “unsustainable boom” in house prices, he said.

Source: Financial Post

You can read the full article here.

I’d like to quote the part where Ray Kurzweil talks about the economy.

The Double Exponential Growth of the Economy During the 1990s Was Not a Bubble

Yet another manifestation of the law of accelerating returns as it rushes toward the Singularity can be found in the world of economics, a world vital to both the genesis of the law of accelerating returns, and to its implications. It is the economic imperative of a competitive marketplace that is driving technology forward and fueling the law of accelerating returns. In turn, the law of accelerating returns, particularly as it approaches the Singularity, is transforming economic relationships.

Virtually all of the economic models taught in economics classes, used by the Federal Reserve Board to set monetary policy, by Government agencies to set economic policy, and by economic forecasters of all kinds are fundamentally flawed because they are based on the intuitive linear view of history rather than the historically based exponential view. The reason that these linear models appear to work for a while is for the same reason that most people adopt the intuitive linear view in the first place: exponential trends appear to be linear when viewed (and experienced) for a brief period of time, particularly in the early stages of an exponential trend when not much is happening. But once the “knee of the curve” is achieved and the exponential growth explodes, the linear models break down. The exponential trends underlying productivity growth are just beginning this explosive phase……

…….None of this means that cycles of recession will disappear immediately. The economy still has some of the underlying dynamics that historically have caused cycles of recession, specifically excessive commitments such as capital intensive projects and the overstocking of inventories. However, the rapid dissemination of information, sophisticated forms of online procurement, and increasingly transparent markets in all industries have diminished the impact of this cycle. So “recessions” are likely to be shallow and short lived. The underlying long-term growth rate will continue at a double exponential rate.

There’s more information at the source, including some charts.

According to the New York Fed (via Reuters), of those laid off since the start of the recession to August 2009, 11% were males and 8.3% females. The difference of 2.8% is the most significant since WW2 period.

I’m going to be a feminist and say that it’s probably because women are usually paid less than men; and the more expensive workers are often the first to go.

This idea is now going mainstream. Away from industrial economy, toward “virtual” or “intangible” economy, “idea” economy? You get the idea.

According to a $2.2 million University of Toronto study, the world is undergoing a profound shift from an industrial economy to an idea-driven, creative one. To prosper in this new climate, the study’s authors maintain, we must boost the creative content of all work in all our industries.

Source: Reader’s Digest Canada