I find it hard to believe that encouraging long term fixed interest mortgages, as the government plans to, will really make housing more affordable. Here is why: Continue reading
Author: Graeme
Middle class revolution
One of many interesting ideas in the Ministry of Defence’s Strategic Trends study is that the middle class may become revolutionaries: taking on the role Marx expected of the proletariat. My instinctive reaction to this is that it is implausible, but, on reflection, it is more likely than it first appears. Continue reading
Sedo domain appraisal rip-off
It is not often that someone manages to sell me a rip-off, but internet companies have managed it twice in the last few months. I will write about my experience with SEO some other time, for now, I will write about the clearer cut case: getting an appraisal for domain name. Continue reading
The end of the housing affordability argument?
The Council of mortgage lenders says that yesterday’s interest rate raise “will leave more households financially stretched“, with an especially marked impact on the two million people close to coming off fixed rates. Are we hearing the end of the argument that housing remains “affordable” thanks to low interest rates, despite the high ratio of prices to incomes?
Feeding terrorism?
This evidence appears to show that the main cause of terrorism is the lack of civil liberties (as discussed in this blog post). So where does that leave governments whose “war on terror” involves getting rid of civil liberties? Continue reading
You, investor, are a sucker
You think you can out-perform the market do you? Millions of people apparently think they can: anyone who invests actively is implicitly claiming just that. Unless you are one of a tiny handful of people who have proven they can do it consistently, I do not believe you. You are just wasting money funding the huge industry that sells suckers like you financial information and advice. Continue reading
My favourite terrorists
The terrorists responsible for the London and Glasgow airport “car bombs” are my favourite kind: bumbling idiots who could not explode a jar of nitroglycerine. I feel a lot safer,knowing how incompetent they are. My main worry is that some of the suspects are doctors: if they planned this, how did they get through medical school? Continue reading
Insider trading
There is nothing surprising about this FSA study found strong evidence that about a fifth of results announcements and a third of takeovers were preceded by insider trading. My own experience, the scale of the opportunities, and the number and nature of the people involved all lead to the expectation that it happends. Continue reading
Spreading greed
According to economist Robert H Frank, economics students become more selfish as a result of spending years immersed in the study of economic theory that is based on the idea that people act selfishly (or “rationally”, as economists describe it.
What effect does living in a neo-liberal capitalist society that is based on exactly the same assumptions have on people?
Money terms update
I have done too much on Money Terms recently to list it all here, but a few high lights are worth mentioning. I learnt a lot writing the piece on the value effect: it needed a fair amount of research on the evidence for it. The same goes for the dumb money effect. This was less true for the size effect which I have been interested in for a while. Having looked at the evidence, I think now think the dumb money effect is the most interesting of these.
For begginers, I have added a few basic comments on year-on-year and sequential comparisons. Also fairly basic, but quite interesting to think about, was corporate social responsibility.