The recession and the crisis and banking are the least of the reasons for thinking that we need reforms. the crisis of capitalism goes much deeper: the influence big business has on governments (and the warped policies this leads to), increasing central control of the economy and the general move away from free markets.. I have some modest proposals on how to fix capitalism.
A working paper that is nicely summarised on the Empirical Finance Research Blog shows how markets react to information rapidly, that they are not perfectly efficient, and how those setting the efficient market price are rewarded.
I came across two interesting quotes from two famous economists of the 18th and 19th centuries:
I am hardly the first person to recommend switching to growth investing. There has recently been crop of strategists arguing that we are at the point in the cycle where growth is likely to out-perform, as economic growth returns.
As I have said before, I do not like the way in which schools teach maths, so what do I do instead? Do stuff that is fun, that encourages the underlying skills rather than focusing on arithmetic.
The value effect, does not cast doubt on the efficient market hypothesis (as Richard Beddard suggests), but on CAPM. Nonetheless, I still think investors should use CAPM, or something very like it.
The FT has the best mainstream media take I have seen on something I have been saying for a long time.
As promised in my post on how we taught my daughter to read, here is why I think children should be taught to read as young as possible. There are three good reasons, and the first one is more than enough.
its true. Research shows that the higher people’s IQ:
The media seems to have reached a consensus that the efficient markets hypothesis (EMH) has been discredited by the financial crises. I have been somewhat bemused by this, as I could not see the connection.
I strongly believe in teaching children to read young, and our experience with Lucy so far has been confirmed that belief. We largely used the methods my mother used, because I knew they had worked for me and my sisters.
The idea that what should be a beautiful and fun subject is being destroyed by schools is not mine: a mathematician has expressed it much better. Personal experience seems to confirm it.
I can be nice about a journalist for once, because Sarah Boseley at The Guardian has shot down the misinterpretation (once again, spin to back up government advice) of a study on the safety of allowing babies to sleep in their parents bed.
It is not the first e-book I have read (no by a long way), but it is the first I have bought. It is (of course) DRM free. It is also a book (actually two books ) I would never have bought if the previous books in the series had not been free downloads.
A quick summary of things that came up in a discussion that I was surprised was not evident to most people:
I assume that everyone who is interested knows by now that the headlines claiming that a Food Standards Agency study showed that “organic food was not healthier” were grossly inaccurate. I want to know why journalists did not even read the first paragraph of the report itself, let alone any real analysis of the report itself, before reproducing the Food Standard Agency’s spin.
According to The Observer, the army has a problem with soldiers who do not get a minimum of two hours of physical exercise a week. I know accountants who get more than that. What exactly do the army do with their time?
The recent stories about the man claiming to suffer from an “allergy” to wi-fi were not just, as I initially thought, someone with a psychosomatic problem; it was a publicity stunt that cleverly exploited journalists’ inability to check facts.
Yet more examples of the wonderful fact checking that we can rely on journalists to do, the LA Times has a story that relies entirely on the authority of “someone’s blog said so”, accusing Facebook of using user’s photos in ads without permission. It was soon convincingly re-butted by Facebook.
I had not intended to blog about the National Portrait Gallery threatening to sue Wikipedia over the latter’s publication of copies of paintings in the gallery, as I thought it would be obvious to anyone that this is a blatant attempt to use physical possession of a work to get around the expirations of copyrights. Tactics like this can effectively extend copyright indefinitely.