Great op-ed by Paul Krugman today pointing out that economic assumptions the privatize Social Security use in forecasting doom and crisis are at odds with the economic assumptions they use to project high returns from the equities market. The argument has been circulating by others for a while, but it’s put well here and in […]
It’s hard not to have fun with this quote from last week’s Economist story on presidential futures markets.
Relying on such markets makes sense in many ways. An opinion poll gauges sentiment on the day it is taken; the betting exchanges are trying to predict a future event, so are often less prone to over-react to […]
Some few weeks ago, I mentioned the Iowa Electronic Markets‘ trading in futures predicting the Presidential race. I thought today might be a good occasion to visit the site to see where the (presumably) smart money lay. Kerry has gotten a slight push by the Super Tuesday wins and now edges Bush slightly, $.486 to […]
From today’s The Note:
Leave it to PBS to go and try to keep the nomination fight interesting. Take a look at the just-launched Presidential Futures Market and track whether a candidate’s stock is up or down, and buy or sell shares in the contenders. The winner, with the highest-valued portfolio, gets a trip to the […]
Daniel Gross’s profile of Wall Street’s war bullishness in Slate raises an interesting issue: to what extent is this week’s bull run a vote that this war is good for the U.S. economy? Gross argues that essentially, it’s 90s-style herd mentality returning:
In this odd time - war declared but not yet started - the first […]
Today the dollar has risen in the currency markets. The ‘psychological boost” of Bush’s tax plan is given as the reason. Before the boosters say that a strong dollar is a vote of confidence in America’s economy, we should consider the more important and immediate message of the rise: that all other things being equal, […]