How Long Does It Take for a Brand Name to Depreciate Fully?
But I'll bet there are some old folks (like me) who still have a warm place in their hearts for Bucky Beaver and Ipana Toothpaste.
Economics and the mid-life crisis have much in common:
Both dwell on foregone opportunities
C'est la vie; c'est la guerre; c'est la pomme de terre
. . . . . . . . . . . . . email: jpalmer at uwo dot ca
Moderate drinkers make better thinkers than those who tipple too much or not at all, a new Australian study says.So, the production of mental output as a function of alcohol is quadratic with a negative second derivative, reaching a maximum at a "moderate" level of drinking. Okay, but what is considered moderate? At what quantity is the marginal physical product of alcohol equal to zero?
Verbal skills, memory and speed of thought were all faster and better in people who drank moderately compared to heavy drinkers and teetotallers, according to tests done on 7 000 Australians.
Men who consume 14-28 alcoholic drinks a week and women who imbibe 7-14 glasses a week were classed as moderate drinkers.Two to four drinks per day is moderate?????
In Leamer’s view, the housing market appears to have peaked “in California and elsewhere. It will take more than a year for this weakness to turn into job losses and to affect the economy in general.”Thanks to MA for the pointers. Also see Calculated Risk.
And, yes, he’s using the “R” word. As in “recession.”
Leamer lays the blame squarely on the Federal Reserve for leaving interest rates too low for too long. Now, he says, we’re not only heading for trouble in the housing sector, but in the auto industry — another market that got drunk on historically low rates.
Low borrowing costs accelerated future sales by enticing consumers to trade up to bigger homes and new vehicles sooner than they might have done otherwise. Instead of waiting to buy a new family car in a couple of years, folks said, “Oh, what the heck. Financing is so cheap we might as well get it today.” As a result, car dealers lose the sale they would have gotten two years from now.
As rates creep higher, consumers happily driving their new cars or living in their larger homes have no motivation to purchase additional ones. Since consumer spending drives two-thirds of our economy, when consumers close their wallets, the impact is far-reaching.
In light of Mark Steyn's disgust with the proposed motto change for New Hampshire ["You're Going to Love It Here" replaces "Live Free or Die"], Publius at The Gods of the Copybook suggests that perhaps Ontario needs a new motto.The suggestions there have been wonderful! Here are the ones posted within an hour or so after my original piece went up:
Frankly, what kind of inspirational phrase or brief sentence could we use? Here are some ideas: "Giving the Maritimes the Shaft Since 1867." "Home of the United Empire Loyalists." "Now Bigger Than Pennsylvania." "Gateway to Detroit." "The Birthplace of Bob Rae." "The Birthplace of Margaret Atwood." "Ontario: Both Progressive and Conservative." "Toronto's Hinterland." "Yours To Be Smug About."
I have also suggested "The Great Northern Vacuum", but I suspect Western Standard readers would have many more appropriate suggestions.
But keep them short. They have to fit on a license plate.
Update: be sure to check out the rest of the suggestions there. Also for some different suggestions, see here."Ontario: Yours to Despair".
"Ontario: Yours to be Disgusted".
"Ontario: Yours to be Left".
"Ontario: Live Left or Lack Canadian Values".
Post-national, post-modern Hampshire.
"The universe revolves around us 'cause we let it"
"Ontario...soon to be have nots"
"Ontario...where men are men and Liberals are nervous"
"Ontario: The Handguns are American; the Values are Canadian"."Ontario: At least the Smog comes from American Coal-fired Electricity Plants, not Ontarian (though thank God we can buy the electricity from those American plants)".
Expand the size of the license plate."Ontario: Health Care Will Still Suck When You Can't". That one I like.
Ontario: Home of the Boondoggle & Damned Proud of It.
Ontario: It Ain't Texas
Compare that average and range with the futures market, where the equilibrium prices for 2006 range between $66 and $69. [h/t to Tyler Cowen for his posting and this link]A Reuters poll of industry analysts this week showed the mean average of oil price forecasts for 2006 rising above $50 for the first time.
The findings of the survey of 28 analysts forecast U.S. crude averaging $50.49 a barrel in 2006, with Goldman having the highest forecast of $68.
Re: EmEc's last point. In Canada, we have not resolved the major conflicts (Quebec; oil revenues in Nfld and Alberta; trade stances; etc.). So far a stronger central gubmnt has not done very well at helping to resolve them, either. And I really doubt that Alberta Premier, Ralph Klein, will want (himself or to allow the federal gubmnt) to use Alberta oil revenues "as a carrot and stick to defuse conflict". See this from the Globe and Mail (reg. req'd):Some parallels between the sources of success of the federal system in the UAE and the USA can be made. For example,
- The USA was formed by the voluntary association of the 13 colonial states; the UAE was formed by the voluntary association of 7 independent emirates.
- In both countries the individual states/emirates saw there was a political and economic gain to unifying and ceding control to a central government for joint protection from foreign intervention, and to reign in destructive barriers to trade between states/emirates.
- The USA had George Washington; the UAE had Sheik Zayed. Both founding leaders were highly respected by large majorities of their citizens.
- The USA and the UAE both experienced huge immigration -- the difference here being that in the UAE few of these immigrants have gained citizenship.
- In the USA and the UAE the ethnic and sectarian diversity within each state/emirate was not dissimilar to the diversity between the states/emirates.
- In the USA and the UAE states/emirates were delegated considerable discretion to handle local affairs locally.
- The US left some questions of major conflict unresolved. Less than 100 years after its founding a very bloody civil war was fought over those issues. When that war ended the central government gained considerable power, including a greatly expanded ability to tax (and thereby redistribute). In the UAE the oil wealth centralized in Abu Dhabi has been used for the same redistributive purposes to as a carrot and stick to defuse conflict.
"We are doing more than our fair share, so keep your hands off," Mr. Klein said, later adding that other provinces could keep up to Alberta by becoming more economically competitive.
His warning was partly brought on by Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty's recent musing that Alberta's wealth is becoming "the elephant in the room" and that the growing regional economic disparity needs to be addressed.
Area police have had their fleet of vehicles trimmed from two to one due to budget cuts, and have repeatedly had to ring a taxi when needing another car to respond to a call, NRK (Norwegian Broadcasting) reports.
The mayor is so exasperated that he is considering donating a kick-sled to the force for the winter.
The auto industry is preparing for the day when oil wells run dry by investing billions of dollars to develop clean and efficient hydrogen-powered vehicles.Technologies will change and develop over the next 45 years. But surely speculators are including the possibly immense demand for platinum in their calculations. If you don't think they are, just Google "platinum + hydrogen cells". If, after reading the material there, you still think there is discovery value that has not been capitalized by the market, there is always the futures market...
But the new fuel comes with its own built-in commodity crisis. Today’s experimental hydrogen fuel cells use so much platinum that there is not enough of the precious metal to replace all the world’s gasoline engines.
As Kazuo Okamoto, head of research and development at Toyota Motor Corp., Japan’s biggest automaker, says: “With the current type of technology we know already that [platinum supplies] will not be sufficient.” And the problem cannot be solved by just digging up more of the metal in South Africa, which has the bulk of the world’s reserves.
The possibility of a platinum shortage is already a critical issue for manufacturers spending vast sums on hydrogen research. More pressingly, it is also a major cost issue as 60g of platinum adds almost US$2,000 to the cost of a fuel cell. The only way to make the new technology competitive with traditional US$5,000 gasoline engines is to cut precious metal use.
[O]nce fuel cells take off, the price of platinum could lead to short-term price spikes before new mine investment increases output, according to the U.S. study.
Any shortage is likely to be eased by recycling. Already more platinum each year comes from exhaust catalysts in old cars and other industrial uses than from any single mine, and recycling rates remain low.
THE CHIEF RABBI, Dr Jonathan Sacks, stated three years ago that: "Anti-Semitism exists . . . whenever two contradictory factors appear in combination: the belief that Jews are so powerful that they are responsible for the evils of the world, and the knowledge that they are so powerless that they can be attacked with impunity" (lecture to the Inter-Parliamentary Committee against Anti-Semitism, 28 February 2002).That is how the posting begins. It is a very powerful, pithy statement about anti-Semitism in particular and about racism in general. The article points to recent events in the UK that indicate these conditions seem prevalent there. It continues with a quotation from Joanne Green:
"[A]s an active member of the Council of Christians and Jews, I feel betrayed by the Anglican Church. All those receptions at St James’s Palace and earnest tributes from church leaders regretting their millennia-long persecution of the Jews don’t mean anything any more. When Jews need real recognition of the danger they are in, where is the Church? Aligning themselves with those who want to wipe Israel from the face of the earth, after it was they who were responsible for the Holocaust. Forgive them, Lord, for they probably do know exactly what they do. How dare the Church lecture Jews on morality."
Many people mention the Church’s apparent silence in the face of the growing attacks on the British Jewish community. For one seasoned American journalist and Episcopalian cleric: "In Britain, there is a degree of open anti-Semitism that would be unthinkable in the USA. The C of E has been complicit in this, both by keeping silent, and by not cracking down on its members who cross the line in their advocacy of the Palestinian cause, and fall into Jew-baiting."
...remember that biblical Judea was severely capital-constrained. Anyone lucky enough to have investment capital had a great choice of projects and 100 per cent returns were not uncommon. A comparable present-day return on your money might be 10 per cent, or £1. Had Jesus wished to tell a parable about extraordinary investment savvy, he’d have said that the slaves quintupled the money.
Second, a “talent” was worth £550 or more in today’s money, the kind of sum that would fund participation in a significant venture. And third, household slaves were experienced money-managers. In contrast, your church is dishing out peanuts to monkeys.
Most serious of all, the parable of the talents has a master entrusting money to slaves who could not run away. You, on the other hand, are a free agent.
I usually hesitate to proffer investment advice but, since you ask, there is nothing to constrain you from investing your £10 in a round of drinks.
On the one hand, if rising oil prices lead to an economic slow down, there would be pressure for the central bankers to inflate the money supply and hold down interest rates.
On the other hand, if real output were to shrink, inflating the money supply would cause serious inflation and have little impact on output, growth and unemployment.
Our experiments suggest that delaying further increases in the funds rate could help the economy through any potential “soft patch” caused by recent oil price hikes—without increasing the chance of inflation—but that the gains from such a change may be short-lived. Our anticipated-policy experiment demonstrates the downside of such a policy choice. The only reason that holding the funds rate constant substantially mitigated the output decline is that the public didn’t expect the Fed to do it. It might work once, but if the same response to oil price increases is given every time, it will eventually be anticipated by the public and do nothing to mitigate the output decline.Nice how the effect of expectations is integrated into their analysis.
While a single currency [Asian] is too ambitious a goal in the short term, exchange rate stability across East Asia is not hard too imagine. Given the depth of the reserves held by central banks across the region, as well as the general predilection over there for state-led development, why shouldn’t we expect future decisions regarding international monetary regimes to be made in smoky back rooms filled with Asian central bankers?As much as I like Cynic's Delight, I'm not sure I agree with Ben Carliner on this one.
Moreover, there is a big prize to be had at the end of the day. Any solution to the so-called global savings glut is likely to include the creation of a mechanism for all those Asian savers to intermediate their savings and investments. In other words, a deep, liquid bond market in East Asia. All those savings would be much better spent on infrastructure projects and other investments in Asia itself, and not on buying US Treasuries that are likely to lose much of their value in the long term.
But I may have missed something, so read the whole piece.
This is a terrific example of the opportunity costs of time and how people respond to incentives.Time spent riding the 1726.88 miles from New York City to Sturgis (and back!) is time not spent doing something else. And while the enjoyment of travelling by bike is certainly there, sometimes that time spent doing something else is much more valuable. So the biker goes against tradition and has his/her hog shipped in separately. The average motorcyclist, according to one study presented by the New York Times, had a much higher income in 2003 than 1998:
Riding is becoming more of an investment than a hobby. According to The New York Times, the average motorcycle owner earned $44,000 a year in 1998; by 2003, the figure had risen by 28 percent to $56,000.
I imagine those figures are not adjusted for inflation. In any case, traditionalists scoff at the notion:
"Some of them make a big deal about, 'I rode my bike to Sturgis, and these wussies had their bikes shipped,' " he says. "I don't want to spend six days on the highways. That's boring."
Instead, he would rather spend his riding time travelling around the Rocky Mountains.
Gas prices in Hawaii are the highest in the country. The statewide average of the retail price of a gallon of regular unleaded Wednesday reached a record-high of $2.84. The AAA said that's 4 cents higher than in California.I.e., go after the "big" distributors and producers but not the owners or managers of the gasoline stations, who are still free to charge a demand-determined price. What if the wholesale price ceiling actually leads to a reduction in supply? If retailers are free to charge whatever price they choose, won't this lead to even higher gasoline prices in Hawaii?
... The law doesn't put a cap on retail prices.
Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle said she's poised to repeal the gas cap if it somehow ends up costing motorists more. The governor said she would be checking gas price points to see if there are any gas shortages before she makes up her mind about repealing it.Gasoline is expensive in Hawaii because transportation and refining costs are higher there. This setting of a price ceiling will cause nothing but confusion, anger, and inefficiencies.
An interprovincial panel has determined that Quebec must open its borders to butter-coloured margarine by Sept. 1, a ruling that will apparently end one of Canada's most enduring ... internal trade disputes.While I applaud the decision, I am not impressed with this basis given for it. I care far less about injury to Unilever and vegetable oil farmers and producers than I do about the true winners in the battles, the consumers. But of course the Glob and Mail does not even hint that consumers are the real winners. Instead, it says,
.... The June 23 ruling made public Monday, found Quebec's ban on butter-coloured margarine “impaired and caused injury to margarine producers and their upstream suppliers,” and is expected to end a trade dispute traceable to the 19th century, when margarine was banned entirely in Canada.
The margarine ruling, made by a dispute resolution panel of the provinces' Agreement on Internal Trade, is a win for canola producers in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, and Ontario soybean farmers, whose crops are used in the vegetable-based butter substitute.The only reason farmers and producers benefit from this decision is that consumers in Quebec wanted ready access to butter-coloured margarine. They are the winners in this decision.
It is quite obvious here that Islam adopts a gradual approach starting with verbal admonishment of the wife, then seeks a period of refraining from conjugal relations and, finally, if the husband finds the situation very serious, he may strike his disobedient wife....
A rebellious woman who is not moved by kind works, persuasion and admonition is a woman of no feeling and must therefore be punished by beating. Psychiatrists tell us of people, including women, for whom a cure lies in beating.
Hmmm. You're attempting to defend Islam here, aren't you?
According to the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Commission, 74 per cent of millionaire winners share the jackpot with family members and 65 per cent buy a car.So why buy the tickets? Why not just give your kids two or three bucks a week (or a hundred or two hundred dollars a year) instead of buying a lottery ticket each week? Is it the old Friedman-Savage hypothesis that small losses of income cause very little lost utility but big gains in income create huge gains in utility [i.e., the marginal utility of wealth is increasing]? Maybe.....
... [T]he Israelis could have held it without much difficulty for many years to come. Instead, in the short term, Gaza will decay even further into a terrorist squat fought over by Hamas and Islamic Jihad.But these are excerpts. Read the whole thing.
... A continuation of the status quo – whereby the Palestinians are preserved in perpetuity as “deserving” a state without ever having to earn one – would only see further remorseless deterioration for Israel in the world. In that sense, any change in the situation would be for the better – especially a change that makes Gaza not Israel’s problem but everybody’s problem.
Thus, the Egyptians have just deployed their own troops to the strip to replace the evacuated Israeli Defence Force. Why would they do this now the Zionist oppressor has fled and Arab lands are rightfully back in Arab hands? Well, for a very obvious reason: an Islamist squat in Gaza is a far greater threat to the Mubarak regime than it is to Israel.
Despite the current investigations into his brother, his son, his son's best friend, his predecessor's cousin, his former chief of staff, his procurement officer and the executive director of the UN's biggest ever program, the secretary-general insists he remains committed to staying on and tackling the important work of "reforming" the UN.
Unfortunately, his executive co-ordinator for United Nations reform has also had to resign.... We only know [about the extent of the corruption] because the US invaded Iraq and the Ba'athists skedaddled out of town, leaving copious amounts of paperwork relating to the Baghdad end of Oil-for-Fraud, since when Claudia Rosett and a few other dogged journalists have been systematically unstitching the intricate web of family and business relationships around the UN's operations.
YOU'D THINK that by now respect for the UN would be plummeting faster than Benon Sevan's auntie down that elevator shaft. After all, these aren't peripheral figures or minor departments. They reach right into the heart of UN policy on two of the critical issues of the day – Iraq and North Korea...
"Let bygones be bygones."
"Don't cry over spilled milk."
Or the New Testament admonition, "Leave the dead to bury the dead."
"We owe them something. We will finish the task that they gave their lives for."PRESIDENT BUSH, on the American soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.Can dead soldiers be viewed as a sunk cost? Can a politician rationally say, "We have had many deaths, but looking forward, we believe the expected costs of this operation outweigh the expected benefits, so we're wrapping it up now."?
return to regularly scheduled programming as soon as possible.Nonsense. If they wanted to return us to "regularly scheduled programming as soon as possible," they would agree to whatever the union wants. Clearly their idea of what is possible has additional constraints, involving a different feasible set than most of us imagine when we use that phrase.
They need to have their budget halved and let them concentrate on what they do best, which is.....uhh....umm.....
Lance and Diane White share 70 percent of the blame for the 2003 attack on Casey Hilmer, the Hamilton County jury found Friday. Their son Benjamin, who was 17 at the time, bears the rest.It should not take long for parents of such children in the future to
... Court records indicate that the Whites' son had a history of aggressive attacks on classmates and drug abuse, and that his parents knew he carried a knife. In Ohio, parents can be held liable if they negligently entrust a weapon to their child.
The jury foreman... said jurors held the parents responsible because they found no evidence that they had disciplined their son.
It won't stop the children from obtaining knives, but it will make it less likely they will have the knives with them as often. The only question is about the size of this incentive effect. I expect it will be larger in the long run than in the short run.
Do you see a difference between suicide attacks by Palestinian fundamentalists against buses and civilian targets in Israel and the same kind of attacks in London?He answered:
"I am against all attacks upon civilians everywhere. It is as much a crime for an Israeli soldier to use a rifle or a missile to kill or maim a child as it is for a suicide bomber to do so."There was no reason for him to say this. And it is devious and false. The two are very different.
"I welcome you as an honored guest."The intensity of this man's anti-semitism is appalling. You can read much more here.
-- Addressing Sheikh Yusuf al Qaradawi at a London conference, July 7, 2004. With Livingstone present, Qaradawi went on to explain that Palestinian suicide bombings are permitted "within the rules of Islam."
Remember, though, that the apparent bubble has been MUCH larger in some markets than in others. I would guess that the house-price index in that piece is very heavily weighted toward the large metro areas and doesn't consider other areas nearly as much. But if that's where most people want to live and are driving up prices, perhaps it is well-founded.What the index shows is that real house prices have remained stable over the past 100 years. The contrary impression is driven by inflation and as noted above, changes in what is being measured. Stability, however, is what we should expect. The United States remains a relatively unpopulated country. When house prices in current population centers increase, suburbs and smaller cities expand. People move to less populated areas and in so doing alleviate the press on house prices. In the long run, the supply of housing is very elastic.
The glaring exception to stability is the last 6 or 7 years when house prices have skyrocketed far beyond where they have ever been before. Can you hear the pop coming?
Those living at odd-numbered addresses may water our lawns and gardens between 8pm and 11pm on MWF and Sundays. Those living at even-numbered addresses may water between 8pm and 11pm TuThSa and Sundays.This is an open challenge to these municipalities and towns:
If you think the reservoirs are likely to run dangerously low on water, please raise the price of water, a lot, during dry summer periods. People respond to price incentives, and will cut back on their use of water. And if you think they won't respond enough, raise the price some more. At higher prices, some people will choose to water their lawns and gardens less, wash their cars less, take shorter showers, etc.
And don't tell me you will not raise water prices because you are concerned about whether poor people who "need" water will be able to afford it. Of course they will have to make some choices, but so will everyone else. And it is mainly wealthier folks with bigger houses and bigger lawns who use more water. Raising the price of water will surely have a much bigger dollar effect on the rich.
I can assure you, though, that using the market to allocate water is unlikely to happen in towns and jurisdictions where petty bureaucrats have an anal retentive fixation on such powers as water rationing.
This is especially true if they took courses in so-called "urban planning" which seem primarily to be intellectually arrogant justifications for bureaucratic meddling with the market mechanism.
A VICTORIAN widow has been refused the right to impregnate herself with her dead husband's sperm because she did not have his written consent to do so.
The landmark decision, handed down by Victorian Supreme Court judge Kim Hargrave, was the first time an Australian judge has had to make a finding on the issue of whether a woman can use her dead partner's sperm to have his child.
The 36-year-old woman had been married to her husband for more than eight years when he was killed in a car accident in July 1998.The moral of this story is that this court decided the risk of a partner's death is a foreseeable event, and if the partners want post-mortem progeny, they must consent to it in advance in writing. The decision penalizes those who do not anticipate their own deaths and do not plan accordingly.
Within 24 hours of his death, the woman, who can only be identified as AB, received permission from the Victorian Supreme Court - and the consent of the dead man's parents - to have his sperm taken and stored at a Melbourne hospital.
... Justice Hargrave said the law did not allow the taking of sperm or ova from the dead for the purpose of reproduction if the person had not consented in writing to the procedure before their death.
Do your ears hang low?
Do they wobble to and fro?
Can you tie 'em in knot?
Can you tie 'em in a bow?
Can you throw 'em over your shoulder
Like a continental soldier?
Do your ears hang low?