2010: The Economic Picture Book

David Leonhart of the NYT with 6 graphs summarizing 2010 for the US economy.

The Workforce of the Future

Some student teams in my course last semester presented HR strategies for the future. Its an area of active research and I'll be presenting on the topic in January.

One topic of special interest tends to be "What motivates Gen Y?"
1500 of them express a loud and clear opinion in the McKinsey survey from 2010 -- non-financial factors relating to identity, networks, and personal challenge. Look at the attribute rank to the right -- the financial attributes ranked in the lower half! And this after a couple years of recession with unemployment hitting recent graduates pretty hard. Will these preferences remain as Gen Y gains experience in the workforce?

2010: Higher Education News

There is significant disruption brewing in the education (particularly higher ed) sector with many technology enabled experiments establishing nascent scale. A mix of instructional technology, customer experience innovation, curriculum innovation, globalization of demand, and new financing are serving as catalysts in the education sector.  Will disruptions truly gain momentum in 2011 and hit the steep part of the S-curve? Or will inertia continue forward?

5 trend-makers in the education sector in 2010. 

#5. Wharton announces Free lifetime executive education for its graduates -- Actually a week every seven years, but that's a start! Its time we acknowledge the need for "life-long knowledge partnerships" and innovate to deliver an appropriate business model.

#4. Education Finance has been called (by Steve Eisman and others) the next sub-prime sector (similar fraud concerns).  2010 was the year "for-profit-colleges" came in conflict with their usage of government sponsored education loans.  The heat and light coming to this issue will hopefully bring the right focus and reform.  It's critical to continued progress in universal education.

#3. Short Executive Certificate Programs are combining logistical flexibility and academic rigor to create a different-in-kind experience for executives. Expect a proliferation of certificates, channels, and technologies.  My own personal favorite is the University of Maryland's miniMBA2.0 (disclosure below)

#2. Online Degree Experiences from High-Ranked Universities  are bringing technology enabled instruction, social learning, and a more engaged experience to students.  Business schools like IE (Spain), UNC (MBA@UNC) are pricing online degrees at par/premium to reflect the stronger value proposition.

#1. Open Courseware sites are achieving critical density. In the K-12 space Khan Academy has the near-complete high school math curriculum in a set of You-Tube videos.  MIT Open Courseware provides lectures, problems, exams, etc for a deep set of courses across a very wide range of disciplines.  I wish I had access to these during my MIT days, but now find them invaluable for my own teaching. There are many other great examples that should eventually allow for a "best-in-breed" curriculum for individual degrees.


Disclosure: I am affiliated with UMD and the miniMBA2.0. This is the start of an ongoing series of discussions on innovation in education -- I welcome your comments and critiques.

2010: The Financial Picture Book

A year that started with many bearish predictions (including mine) is ending with the bulls (and the politicians) firmly tossing the bears into the snow.  Loved this chart instantly -- simple time series, visual factoids across the chart, multiple years kept in perspective with inset, humorous story told across the graph!

via Phil Davis

Zoom Maps of American Demographics

The newest mapping tool from the NYT lets you explore demographics across America at any level of granularity -- pick a state, a city, a neighborhood. And being a resident of DC, the picture is fascinating, if not surprising. Click link to access tool.

via Nathan Hau

"Matthew Bloch, Shan Carter and Alan McLean apply their cartography skills to US Census data and let you explore a variety of demographics. It's like a demographic buffet. There are multiple maps across four topics: race and ethnicity, income, education, and housing and families"

End of Semester Humor!

via xkcd

Strategy Consulting for IT executives

A friend's company does good strategy work for IT Executives (CIO's, etc). They are hiring -- so this post is mostly a "public service announcement" for my students and former colleagues.

In Awe of DC's Efficiency

Even as I hear  rants about DC's services (or lack thereof) in most sectors (schools, metro, garbage/rats, libraries, etc), I am awestruck by DC's efficiency in parking/speeding enforcement. It's a stark contrast to hear story after story of hyper-efficiency : parking tickets being written within 3 minutes of an expired meter, 2 hour zone parking restrictions being coordinated across 20 city blocks, speeding tickets from automated cameras.

Does it come down to a simple instance of skill/will? The skill and capability to be efficient (at a very high level of competence) clearly exists in DC parking enforcement, so why do we not see results elsewhere? Do we simply need to introduce more monetary incentives for other city services? Maybe we need to start benchmarking DC's service efficiency across different services...

BTW, NotionsCapital has a post on new parking enforcement via cameras that is arriving in DC shortly. Investment to increase efficiency! Has anyone looked at the growth in revenue from parking enforcement in the last couple years?

“I do not see Japan and the United States as in a monetary easing competition”

It seems like we are entering a new regime of international financial diplomacy -- one where policy makers are compelled to test likely policy interventions by stating them in the negative and watching for market reactions.  My favorite examples of the last 2 weeks -- courtesy of the US and Japan are below!

Get your decoders ready for next week's G20 meetings. Or maybe the (relatively straight speaking) German and Brazilian contingents will translate for us!

Getting a New Smartphone

I'm thinking about getting a new smartphone. Here's a cute graphic that is of absolutely no help in making the choice :-) Suggestions welcome!

Happy Halloween!

Source: http://flowingdata.com/2010/10/29/data-underload-24-my-candy/

Returning to the blogosphere

Most of the summer/early fall has gone to vacation, launching new education products, and trips to NYC. I'm back to helping diminish your productivity with some blogging :-)

Euphoria and Despair in Spain

My first impressions in Spain last week were of a people in anticipation – full of hope, excitement, and nervous energy.  In other words, eager to discover what providence has in store.  And this energy erupted into celebration with the Spanish victory at the 2010 World Cup.  Thousands of people streaming into plazas in every town in Spain, waving flags and shirts, blowing whistles and car horns, evading the police to climb atop the statue in the middle of the plaza, and (most inexplicably for me) to jump in to bathe in the fountain.  Thousands of people chanting “Yo soy espagnol, espagnol.. “  (I am Spanish, Spanish…) – an identity  frequently negated in many regions of Spain. The sweet taste of victory.

Yet, by the end of my week, the celebratory oasis was covered by the whirling sands.  Celebration after celebration was organized to keep the euphoric mood, but the reality of unemployment tearing through the joyous banners.  The themes I heard talked off most often –

• ·         20-24.5% unemployment (depending on whose numbers you use)
• ·         7+% paycut recently implemented for various civil servants
• ·         reduction in some pension benefits
• ·         30-40% fall in real-estate prices in some parts of Spain

And I could hear the real emotion in people’s voice (from taxi driver, to museum guide, to homeowners on the coast, to private sector friends) as they expressed uncertainty and despair for the future.  Real estate prices, people say, are no longer falling because nobody is cutting prices when nobody is buying anyway.  One taxi driver estimated his revenues have fallen by 30% since 2008, his effective wage rate fallen by 40-45% since he works much longer hours now. And thinks it will be 5+ years before things get better. And the stories go on and on..

As I asked about government and policy the near-unanimous answer is that the government does not get it and has been engaged in denial and crony capitalism for several years.  People would “short the Zapatero government” if it were a financially traded stock.  And they are all girding for deeper austerity than public policy discourse would suggest.

I hope “La Roja” (the name for the soccer team) has a few more moments of euphoria to give to the country. Maybe they need to go on the year-long tour across Spain with the World Cup trophy as some are requesting….

Dispatches from Spain..

I've been in Europe for the last 2 weeks observing realities on the ground. I'm still going to need some days to get my writings posted.. but in the meantime here's what i am using as inspiration (NOT)!

Debtor Prisons? Is using leeches for treatment next?

The first great novel of modern Western literature - Don Quixote - was written by Cervantes in debtors prison. Debtors prisons were quite common in Europe of the age -- others like Moliere had also cooled their heels in the slammer. A surge of good new literature is the silver lining in the cloud from a quote reported in a nice post by Tim Iacono:

“Fannie wants to lock people up in a jail of negative net worth for much of the rest of their lives. They’re bringing back the debtor’s prison.”

Fannie Mae announced their intent to punish strategic default by homeowners who are underwater. Details are still scarce. Its nice to see Fannie attempting to manage its losses, but its hard to see how this aligns with US Government bailouts ($140 Billion + at this point, and growing) of Fannie, Freddie, etc to provide relief to struggling homeowners.

A different extreme for dealing with debt is being adopted by Iceland. Felix Salmon submits:

How many times can Iceland’s banks fail? More than once, it would seem, in the wake of an important ruling by Iceland’s Supreme Court. It regards loans which were disbursed in Icelandic kronur but linked to either Swiss francs or the Japanese yen; the court has now ruled that the indexing is illegal, and that the borrowers need only to repay the loans at their initial interest rate in kronur.

Effectively the Icelandic court has "stuck it to the banks" -- a very popular decision given the recent crisis in Iceland. 

What other mechanisms for debt management will we see in the coming months and years given the extreme indebtedness (private and public) in many advanced economies?

The Debt Crisis (in 2 pictures)

Getting ready to do a presentation on Global macroeconomic trends and forecasts. National debt across countries will be a significant theme -- so sharing a couple of powerful charts I will be using. The first one is easier to read; the second one highlights the problem areas visually -- and quickly shows the debt problem that advanced economies are facing. Only a couple decades ago we heard about Latin American debt crisis, the Asian crisis, etc -- how quickly the world has changed.

I have another post coming on dissecting the debt situation -- we don't quite need the knee-jerk austerity programs that some countries are advocating, but we do need to spend more time understanding why we are increasing debt in the first place? Is it to help the temporarily displaced? to build infrastructure? or simply to bailout politically important constituencies. Stay tuned..

In Touch with Voters

Note: The jedi light saber has entered the mainstream weapons category :-)

Return on ECB's $1 Trillion shrinking?

In only 3 weeks some of the PIIGS countries are finding their yields pushed up at levels higher than BEFORE the ECB intervened via quantitative easing. And for the first time -- in a long time -- demand for German bonds barely exceeded the supply. If Germany is having trouble, can PIIGS fly?

Various sources are reporting attempts at brokering a big quantitative easing plan for the Eurozone -- to be announced before the end of June G20 meetings. US Treasury Secretary Geithner suggested that European countries need a further stimulus plan, greater easing, and generally more measures that raised debt. The Atlantic Ocean is starting to represent a big ocean between the economic philosophy of the allies. Stay tuned.

Graph via he FT: 

What can you get for One Trillion Dollars? The European Central Bank's Shopping Basket

A nice graphic in the NYTimes on who stands to loose from defaults in European debt. Its no longer surprising that much of the (ECB) bailout is about preventing losses for banks. What perhaps is surprising -- 3 weeks after Le TARP, is how little $1Trillion buys you any more. US (and global) markets got a big bounce from the US TARP; every successive bailout from around the globe will have much less impact.

A New Greater Fool?

US news is abuzz with Q2 2010 earnings season. The asset bubble has been re-inflated. The policy makers Faustian deal needed to achieve the re-inflation has 2 critical levers:

1.       The Savings Tax – Drop interest rates to near zero. Given a horrible choice - consume despite your fears or find some way of saving for tomorrow at ~0%, individuals have chosen to invest in risky assets.  Find an asset, any asset – stocks, junk bonds, gold, commodities - and buy.

2.       The Greater Fool – And the confidence to buy was provided by ensuring a greater fool was available. The history of bubbles shows rational individuals continuing to trade in the belief that a greater fool will pay a higher price. In 2009-2010 that greater fool was the US taxpayer (and some others around the world). The Fed bought MBS > $1 Trillion, recently released AIG documents show other assets purchases at 50-1000% inflated prices, etc.

But, two significant events happened last week. First, March 31 was the official end of the Fed’s trash (MBS) buy back policy.  Second, Germany and the rest of the Europeans are hesitating on whether to fully support the greater fool charade – at least as far as Greek debt is concerned.  They will likely cave-in, but the unwavering solidarity of the global bankers is now in question.

So how do we get to a next jump up in asset prices?

From here forward, for all intensive purposes, we are back to looking for other fools to propel asset prices higher. Higher earnings are already priced in (Firing 5% of the country - and US government stimulus growing corporate revenue by 5+% of GDP - has to show up somewhere in profits!). Accounting mark-to-fantasy and other rules (Repo 105 is fascinating) will continue to let us sweep debt problems under the rug – but we don’t have any new accounting rules to count on.

My candidate: China. The US Treasury Secretary has taken the confidence game to China this week, pushing for currency devaluation.  The real question is whether the Chinese use their savings to buy up US (and other) assets -- as the Japanese did a couple decades ago--, since their economy is already over-heating. Will it be wisdom or folly?

Inspiration for my students!

There is more estimation and analysis (i.e Math!) in my class than some came ready for.. but I hope the practical applications -- and the humor below -- give you some pride and joy in your effort!

Reframing the Debate: In 3 minutes!

Communication was the topic for my management consulting class this week.  We've been spending time on problem solving, framing, elevator pitches, pyramid principles, etc. 

Here is a wonderful example of reframing a big question (What is the appropriate focus for Math education in high school?) in 3 minutes or less! He makes it punchy by giving you the answer right up front, systematically diagnoses the current situation and challenge, and builds  the structure for his desired approach. Enjoy!

Snow!

Most snow DC has seen in a 100 years!

Table on my deck is the before (last night) and after (this morning) picture for today's storm. As you can see -- saturation. It won't hold any more snow, even though the pretty white stuff keeps coming!

Snow day?

Cultural relativity on temperature:

+20° Greeks put on sweaters (if they can find them).

+15° Hawaiians turn on the heaters (if they have any).

+10° Americans shake, Russians are planting cucumbers.

+5° You can see your own breathing. Italian cars don't start. Norwegians take a bath. Russians drive with lowered windows.

0° Water freezes in America , in Russia it thickens.

-5° French cars don't start.

-10° You're planning a vacation to Australia .

-15° Your cat insists to sleep in your bed. Norwegians put on sweaters.

-18° New York landlords turn on the heaters. Russians make their last seasonal picnic.

-20° American cars don't start. People in Alaska start wearing long-sleeves.

-25° German cars don't start. Hawaiians are dead.

-30° Politicians start talking about homeless people. Your cat prefers to sleep in your pajamas.

-35° Too cold to think. Japanese cars don't start.

-40° You're planning a 2-week hot tub bath. Swedish cars don't start.

-42° Transportation stops in Europe . Russians eat ice cream on the street.

-45° All Greeks are dead. Politicians really start doing something for the homeless.

-50° Your eyelids start sticking when you blink. In Alaska , people close the window in the bathroom.

-60° White bears start moving south.

-70° Hell freezes over.

-73° Finnish special services evacuate Santa Claus from Lapland . Russians wear earmuff hats.

-80° Lawyers put their hands in their own pockets.

-114° Ethyl alcohol is freezing. Russians are unhappy.

-273° Absolute zero, atomic movement stops. Russians wear boots.
-295° Russian soccer team becomes the world champion.

The New Blackbox: Comic Interlude

I was in a Bunuel-esque moment this weekend. Getting a car tire replace they issued a 88% refund on the original price. I was repeatedly told 88% of $197 was $157.  Just because the cash register says so. The "impenetrable mysteries" of arithmetic have now been replaced by the "blackbox" of the cash register!

I'm right back to the theme of my first post!

Inviting Asst. US Treasury Secretary to MBA Estimation Class

Every semester I teach my Smith MBA students basic estimation techniques -- with back of the envelope math -- to build intuition and problem-solving skills. Estimating market size for a new product, the ridership of the DC metro, the size of the IT budget at a firm, etc.

Neel Kashkari, Asst. Treasury Secretary to Hank Paulson during the financial crisis, had the ultimate in high-profile estimation moments in 2008:

Mr Kashkari admitted that he plucked “a number out of the air” when deciding with Mr Paulson how much funding to request from Congress for the Tarp.  He told The Washington Post that he used his BlackBerry to calculate the bailout figures: “We have $11 trillion residential mortgages, $3 trillion commercial mortgages. Total $14 trillion. Five per cent of that is $700 billion. A nice round number.”

[Complete article]

To my former (and future) students -- Good estimation approaches show clarity, numerical fluency, appropriate nuance and complexity, and well substantiated assumptions. The approach for the bailout calculations leaves a lot to be desired (even if Congress approved $700B of taxpayer dollars) - so lets write up a better solution at the next estimation lecture!

Of State Budget Gaps, Elections, and Unemployment

The CBO has a new report out : Policies for Increasing Economic Growth and Employment

18 states are projected to have budget gaps >20% and 3 (including California, the largest economy in the US) have gaps >40%. See the nice chart above for the detailed, depressing forecasts.

The report finds that most states are near-maxing out their borrowing capabilities (the positive impact of monetary policy is nearly tapped out).  Is there aid forthcoming to states with the Republicans winning their 41st Senate seat? More likely its local tax increases and lots of service cuts!

Gridlock at the Federal level with Republican votes to filibuster may bring us to budget balance sooner that otherwise, but that will be poor consolation at ~20% unemployment.

My Reading Recommendations

Thanks for the comments and suggestions across the last days for additional posts. Given multiple requests and my passion for book recommendations -- I'm starting with my must-read list (see disclosure below).

Fiction
The Shadow of the Wind - favorite in last 5 years.
The Book of Embraces (Norton Paperback) - Galeano will make you laugh and cry with his 1 page vignettes and poignant images from the far corners of Latin America
Samarkand (Interlink World Fiction) - Maalouf's historical fiction takes us on a 1000 year journey across the Middle East and Europe with poetry and forceful characters.
Sea of Poppies - Historical fiction in India


Non-Fiction (Business/Economics/Management)

Ascent of Money -- central to understanding the current financial environment

The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance - my current reading. Downright eerie how many elements of the current financial crisis have been seen in history. Follows the history of JPMorgan Co. -- and the Fed/US Govt that played along with JPM.

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us -- must read for managers

The Craftsman - Scale and specialization drove productivity for the last 200 years. We seem poised for another era where the individual and his/her craft will be the source of productivity. Sennett's historical take inspires some forward-looking thought.

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions - we're not as rational as neo-classical economic models. Great stories and experiments on the predictable biases in our decisions and actions.

Non-Fiction (Philosophy, General)

Mans Search for Meaning - Title says it all!
Siddharth - Hesse's classic. Good companion to previous title.
In Light of India - India seen from the eyes of a latin-american, catholic, western philosopher. Octavio Paz analyzes the difference in perception of time, motivation, goals from his time as Mexican ambassador to India.
A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present (P.S.) - Zinn is wonderful. Perfect reading for current political times.

Full Disclosure:  If you enter Amazon through my site and purchase a recommendation, I get a small commission, and their price does not change at all. A win-win situation for me and my readers.  Such a deal. But, buy only what you plan to read -- I don’t want my readers to waste their money just to reward me.

More Mortgage Pain: Moody's revises sub-prime losses downward

Research Recap reports:

Ratings agency now expecting significantly higher losses than previously projected as foreclosures take their toll.

Moody’s has revised its loss projections for US subprime residential mortgage backed securities (RMBS) issued between 2005 and 2007. On average, Moody’s is now projecting cumulative losses of 18.7% for 2005 securitizations, 38.4% for 2006, and 48.1% for 2007, as a percentage of the original balance. As a result of the revision, Moody’s has now placed 5,698 tranches of subprime RMBS with an original balance of $584 billion and outstanding balance of $319 billion, on review for possible downgrade.

Moody’s last revised its loss projections in March 2009, to 13%, 30%, and 36% of original balances on 2005, 2006 and 2007 vintages, respectively.

Nearly 50% of original balances loss projections for the 2007 vintage. And Moody's consistently (still) underestimating the losses.  The raters (as expected) are slow and coy about  projecting anything but the most optimistic scenarios.

Should we still keep believing those who say that banks who hold real-estate instruments (and of course, also the Fed) will not see further losses?

2010 Predictions: Political

In the past I've not ventured into political arena predictions. The events of 2009 make it too tempting to stay out. So here are a rookie's predictions on some political themes-

1. US Government Gridlock in Dec 2010: "Yes,we can" voters increasingly acknowledge that this slogan only applies to lobby groups and withdraw from the electoral process. Nov 2010 will leave the US government in deadlock -- the preferred outcome of an electorate that increasingly cannot distinguish one party from the other. Even as the use of web2.0 tools for campaigning and fundraising will reach unprecedented levels, real engagement will remain limited.

2. Early 2010 will result in political pork of unprecedented proportions: Current appointed and elected officials can already predict the outcome of Nov 2010. They have limited time to cash-in their votes for future gain. Appointed officials (particularly Fed, Treasury) will make "brave, even if unpopular" choices to prop up systemic failures.  Expect more FUD (Fear, uncertainty, doubt) regarding the housing market, terrorism, and credit.
3. China, India, Brazil, and South Africa (World Cup 2010 host) -- will opportunistically seize the global bully pulpit. Realizing that "Victors, not the vanquished, write history" is a reflexive thought, they will engage in establishing a winning narrative for 2020.
4. China will face increasing rebellion, especially in the interior. A combination of carrots and sticks will allow the central government to delay change for another year.

5. India will be forced to deal with domestic separatist challenges in 2010. The dangerous policy of creating new states within the union will fuel further movements for splintering. The positive momentum of the economy will largely roll forward.
6. China will risk trade war with the US, India will wait it out.  The battle for economic supremacy is entering an interesting stretch. China is (or soon will overtake Japan to be) the second largest economy in the world with a much faster growth rate than the largest economy (the US).  The currency battles of recent month and trade skirmishes will threaten to escalate into a full trade war. 2010 will see sharper saber-rattling than ever before, but we likely have to wait till 2011 and beyond to actually see full trade war.  India will meantime -- for once -- sit out this round not force the issue.

What Makes Good Information Design?

Excellent post at  http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2009/interesting-easy-beautiful-true/
David's new visualization work is very compelling.

2010 Predictions: Financial

1. Global Markets will continue to resemble casinos, more than mechanisms to allocate capital and manage inter-temporal savings and consumption.
2. Non-market forces will continue to be the biggest determinants of market outcomes for the first 3 quarters of 2010.
3. 2010 will be a stock-pickers market. Global markets will rise and fall 20+% in 2010. US (and other) markets will see an unprecedented number of +-2% days. Many equity markets will close lower in 2010 than 2009.  The critical question for the average person is how significant the role of inside information will be in getting returns -- and can you find such a stock picker?

4. Gold will hit $1400 in 2010. It will also hit $900. These 2 events will happen in successive quarters.

5. Don't be greedy about yield: With rates for savers at historical lows the temptation is to chase a few points of yield -- don't yield to that temptation (unless you have a high risk tolerance, insider information, or are too big to fail).
6. Continuing (near-term) high-correlations across asset classes.  The US Federal Reserve's balance sheet is a horrible mix of risk classes (MBS, Maiden Lane, Treasuries) masquerading as a risk-free rating (remember the real estate market!). In such an environment high-correlations are likely to remain across asset classes.  However, diversification remains a valuable strategy, even if buy-and-hold will increasingly be under attack.

2010 Predictions: Economy

1. Global Economic Growth Stalls -- Emerging Market bright spots (China, India, Brazil) will remain, but overall growth sputters as worldwide stimulus fades. Ex-stimulus growth rates in most of the developed economies will be < 2%.

2. The Mythical Consumption Re-balancing assumption of the IMF will not be seen in 2010. China's growth continues to be driven by production and asset purchases, not consumption. Chinese policy has, and will continue to be, driven by a different objective function than the western "Washington consensus".
3. (Measured) Inflation remains tame -- continued technology absorption, excess capacity, outsourcing, and growth in the global work-force will keep downward pressures on prices. CPI (ex-energy) will continue to be tame. Asset price inflation (from global liquidity) will continue to put pressure on broader measures of inflation, but will continue to be ignored by policy makers in official decision statements.

4. US Unemployment to remain ~20% (U6).  The census will add ~800,000 workers as will other parts of the US government. However, the average employer will remain conservative on hiring. Corrections in global stock markets by the second half of 2010 will further reduce risk appetite for real (i.e. non-financial asset) decisions.

5. Acceleration in US banking failures as the impact of the real estate bubble finally hits the balance sheets. The prospect of further (big and small) banking bailouts in 2009 will be one of the fascinating political stories of the year. Can massive rent-seeking continue even in an election year?

6. Service Sector innovation will flourish -- increasing self-employment and free agent behaviors will lead to service sector productivity gains. Emerging markets with abundant labor will lead introduction of new in kind service sector models.

7. The Global Rollup of Excess Capacity Industries gains momentum -- from steel to auto to durable goods manufacturing. As global demand recedes inventory and excess capacity management will be the critical capabilities.

8. Excess capacity in non-tradeable sectors, such as real estate, will remain unresolved. Pricing mechanisms will continue to be distorted sending (small) expansionary signals for capacity. Expect both rent-seeking and innovative behaviors in the non-tradeables sector.

Restart Button

After a fiction-writing hiatus I'm back to blogging. Consolidating the blogs that proliferated across 2008/9 to this primary blog.  I'm starting the year with some predictions for 2010 -- economic, financial, political, and technology related.

Look forward to engaging with you -- online and offline.