PIIG’s

An interesting graphic from The Economist depicting who is picking up the bill for bailout of Portugal, Ireland and Greece. The price of having a government that cannot run a hot bath is very high…for others.    

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I Love a Good Chart

This is from Chart of the Day who occasionally produce some interesting charts – although most of the time they are obscure things such as measuring GDP in gherkins The chart below is the  long term inflation adjusted median price of US housing. Not only did housing prices increase at a rapid rate from 1991…

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Freeloaders

I enjoy capitalism and capitalism via trading because it gives you almost immediate feedback as to your success or failure – there is no need to wait a round to see how things went. The one thing that does give me a chronic case of the squirts is corporate welfare, we have already had the…

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Remarkable Data

I have mentioned before the lack of data regarding real estate which is one of the reasons why it is hard to take any short term pronouncement about real estate seriously. There simply isnt enough quality data to make these sorts of judgments and this situation would obviously be of benefit to land rats since…

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India

Having watched the energetic expansion of the Indian economy over the past few years I have often wondered whether the inherent racism of the caste system and the inefficiencies of a colonial bureaucracy would eventual lead to structural problems that might bring the entire expansion phase undone.   Apparently it is –   BANGALORE, India—Call-center…

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