patrick.net

Returning,

Stagflation for that period is likely. I agree with that. After that, however, couldn’t we have a recovery? That would put us in about 2013. Couldn’t the economy pick up at that point riding a wave of nanotech and biotech companies? If housing prices fell about 5% per year for much of that time (in bubble areas), wouldn’t this debt bubble be greatly reduced if not eliminated? Why does it have to take 20 years to wipe out the excess of the last 25? Couldn’t it be done in less?

I'm purposefully holding my optimism for later threads. We don't disagree that much. I am bullish on the long-term prospects for the Bay Area (and other areas, and the national economy as a whole).

also, if the ASCII code total of your post equals the first 5 digits of e to the power pi it won't go on either... just a wordpress thing...

The perfect economic storm is very near. It will soon be time to pay the piper. As the pressures from all sides are upon us to repay all our debts, and America has been brought to her knees, there will be only one solution.

An act of congress will pass a blanket bankruptcy bill, forgiving all
Americans of all of their debt.

A new currency will be established. Our new mantra will be: Save money for a rainy day.

Returning,

I agree. However, if the BA continues to be unaffordable with a soft landing scenario, the high RE prices in the BA will drive away the young research scientists/engineers in these emerging (and therefore not yet high paying) fields. The synergy that worked for computers may be lost for the future.

A soft landing scenario may ironically hurt the BA and Boston's long term prospects the worst of all.

Hey Randy,

Not sure how a commodity backed currency would intrinsically inflate. For example, one monetarist argument against a gold-backed currency is that there isn't enough gold to accomodate today's global commerce. Silly argument to be sure but it does make a point that gold cannot be created out of thin-air like today's fiat monies can.

Contractual IOUs are just fine because they carry a cost for risk/time (and ultimately settle in gold-backed dollars). Therefore you don't treat these IOUs exactly like money. You prefer dollars to IOUs, but the decision to accept IOUs instead is yours to make. This is very different than what we have in today's fiat system where you have no say and often no knowledge of the future value of the medium that you must accept - the fiat dollar.

LOL and thanks for sharing.

Re: disrupting oil supplies through the Gulf of Hormuz.

wait a sec, iran makes all its money from exporting oil and gas reserves to the west.

but you think it's going to disrupt shipping of oil supplies thru the gulf of hormuz with nuclear weapons? i don't think it takes a nuke to do damage to a shipping vessel. i think the irradiated solids might just wash back up onto their own shores also... besides which, that would be a useless act of aggression which would immediately precipitate reprisals...they could do it with conventional weapons now if they had a mind to...

further, the US and the west is spiriting increasing amounts of oil and gas away through pipelines to other friendly ports, with the routes conveniently skirting tortuously around dodgy countries...

This is very different than what we have in today’s fiat system where you have no say and often no knowledge of the future value of the medium that you must accept - the fiat dollar.

You have no idea what the future value of a commodity backed currency will be either...but some do introducing enormous moral hazard. Gold reserves are discovered, decisions to tap known reserves are made, gold consumption rates are measured, and forward looking orders for future consumption are tendered.

Inflation occurs because things like "petrodollars" when based on a commodity-backed currency cause inflation based upon fluctuations in the other side of the equation. In a liquid, interconnected, global financial market non-fiat currency would be disastrous. That is unless you want resource consumers to bear all the inflation from resource extractors.

iran makes all its money from exporting oil and gas reserves to the west.

sorry, make that west and east...

frank,

Contractual IOUs for what? Are you proposing a barter system?

(by the way)...

I study a similar economic abstraction that occurs in "virtual economies" with "virtual assets" in MMOGs and VWs (massively multiplayer online games and virtual worlds).

"You have no idea what the future value of a commodity backed currency will be either…but some do introducing enormous moral hazard"

Okay, I get it now.

I read somewhere that Alexander the Great's conquests brought so much gold back to Macedonia that it caused inflation for generations afterwards.

Ditto for Spanish gold after their conquest of the new world.

Also, a commodities based system would run into liquidity problems if the promised commodity suddenly shoots up in price, and cause cascading defaults.

Try it again and I'll check the spam filter. I didn't see it there earlier when I pulled the data for the above comment.

Alexander the Great’s conquests brought so much gold back to Macedonia that it caused inflation for generations afterwards

hmm, it would certainly devalue gold... gold isn't actually much use for anything, except to make jewellery and as a high quality, but expensive, electrical conductor...

Every commodity which could be used to back a currency will become an inflation risk because it gains "fiat" value because it backs the currency. Even a worthless commodity would no longer be worthless but a tool of arbitrage and reserve power.

There is no "non-fiat" currency, except for pure, direct commodity barter within small, non-interdependent economic microcosms.

Nope. The geopolitical ramifications of Iranian nukes are not based on the idea that they will nuke oil supplies.

they will nuke themselves? they will nuke US bases in iraq? they will nuke israel for invading palestine and portions of syria? hmm... they are a flighty lot, admittedly... theocracies - one nation under allah - terrible idea...

I was wondering if all the "spambot" references were just metaphorical. Obviously not.

"There is no “non-fiat” currency, except for pure, direct commodity barter within small, non-interdependent economic microcosms."

Which would run into availability and transactional cost issues of their own, especially for larger contracts.

DS,

"they will nuke themselves? they will nuke US bases in iraq? they will nuke israel for invading palestine and portions of syria?"

Oye. That might be just a wee bit OT for a BA RE blog.

(last post for the night)

Garth,

Sadly, no. SpamBots have been around a while and some are frighteningly sophisticated. What I have been metaphorically referring to is TrollBots.

I know of two (maybe only one by now) companies in the area that are working on very sophisticated artificial intelligence/natural language processor systems which are intended to "guide the message" in public blogs. There are already some incredibly sophisticated systems that read every blog and determine sentiment for products, politics, opinion-leaders, and such. The next logical step is to affect the message; something like stealth advertising.

It is my opinion that once this stuff is perfected (probably still a ways off), the great era of blogs as an alternative, uncontrolled media will see its sunset. The first to go will be commercial interests in big-ticket consumer products (probably things like automotive reviews, etc.) and political debate. Imagine a forum like this where you literally cannot tell the legitimate contributions and debates from the engineered debates.

i think the iranians are idiots, anyhow... sure, develop nuclear capability in your spare time, or switch petrocurrencies from the USD to the euro on the oil bourse, but don't do both at the same time... that's just inviting trouble...

I know of two (maybe only one by now) companies in the area that are working on very sophisticated artificial intelligence/natural language processor systems which are intended to “guide the message” in public blogs.

ah, the invisible hand of the market at work again to 'sell more stuff'... i think i'm in love...

anyway, you can control for it by requiring user registrations, or re-typing those funny little distorted codes to ascertain it's a human...

Well, good night DS.

If you see Jake Gyllenhaal or Heath Ledger on the beach, tell them to call me. :P

Kevin,

Meet Mr. Inflation and Ms. Deflation, watch them do funny things that $400,000 number.

yep, i've got to go out now anyhow to find a few more properties to redevelop, rehab or flip... then run a course at $5,000 a head to tell everyone how i did it...

heath ledger sold his bronte beach property to move to NYC recently, something to do with paparazzi, zoom lenses and night vision... i'm devastated...

nativeboy,

What do you suggest, we feed these specuvestors SOMA?

DS,

Learn from the Donald. Use other people's money to buy stuff, then put your name in the building and claim to the press that you own it. Then serially marry women and dump them before the pre-nup expires.

and do a lot with playboy magaine, miss america and other lecherous pursuits... :)

ah, the art of the deal, the art of the deal... i'm in love with markets all over again...

SQT please delete the troll post way above "waitingandwondering" same ole bullshit.

Tanks.

"You have no idea what the future value of a commodity backed currency will be either..."

Yes, but barring another Spanish conquest of a new world you know that the total quantity of gold will be constrained. The point is that having your currency backed by something other than colored inks, fancy paper and the full faith of a chronically inflationary government would hamper said government from eroding your wealth as easily as pushing a button on a printing press.

"Inflation occurs because things like “petrodollars” when based on a commodity-backed currency cause inflation based upon fluctuations in the other side of the equation"

Let's not confuse price inflation with monetary inflation. The term "inflation" once simply meant an increase in the monetary base (e.g. more money in circulation). Today it is often also used to describe an increase in prices (price inflation), which is actually a consequence of monetary inflation. Fluctuations in prices caused by supply and demand (of resouces for example) are normal and desired. These fluctuations are the market's natural response and remedy to scarcity or oversupply. Monetary inflation, made possible by today's fiat currencies, is not desirable. It often results in misallocation of resources that lead to asset bubbles like the one we have now.

"Contractual IOUs for what? Are you proposing a barter system?" - astrid

No, Randy brought up IOUs to make a point. I propose a currency that cannot depreciate 90% within the course of a lifetime as the US dollar has done. Randy points out that all monies are fiat so perhaps "non-fiat" is not an accurate definition, but I propose anything that will prevent or hinder that kind of devaluation of your savings.

Economic models in MMOGs and VWs - now that's very interesting.

"...liquidity problems if the promised commodity suddenly shoots up in price" - astrid

You mean like when the bank prints more bank certificates than what it actually holds in gold, for example? Yes, big liqudity problems like the ones leading up to the Great Depression happen. That event was an example of monetary inflation even in the presence of the gold standard. And when the bubble popped the government, determined to maintain price levels, stepped in and enforced minimum price levels thereby causing what would have been a painful but short period of adjustment to mushroom into the prolonged great depression.

But they learned their lesson - they eventually eliminated the gold standard so that the next time they got in trouble for trying to steal your money, they could get out of it gracefully and get away with it.

"There is no “non-fiat” currency, except for pure, direct commodity barter within small, non-interdependent economic microcosms."

Semantics aside then, I'll just say that a currency backed by a commodity like gold (call it what you like) is a much better alternative to what we have today.

Different Sean Says:

Let’s keep separate issues separate:
US likes IRANIAN OIL
US does not like IRAN

Sounds good, but why don't you make that into a Haiku,
in the spirit of the prior thread?

Here's let's try to zazz it up a bit:

Let's keep separate
issues separate: US
likes RANIAN OIL...

I had to drop the "I" in IRANIAN in the last stanza, along the last line "US does not like IRAN." But hey, fashion, form and style over content is the Haiku way!

hmm, dunno, I didn't write that one, just quoted it... the US actually doesn't buy oil from Iran, but does some 'swaps' with Caspian Sea oil...

DS,

anyway, you can control for it by requiring user registrations, or re-typing those funny little distorted codes to ascertain it’s a human…

Registrations are almost completely ineffective at stopping 'bots. Remember that the 'bots can collude, so they can create a database of registrations and cycle through them in a hard-to-detect manner. SpamBots already do this.

The distorted little numbers are Turing Numbers (or sometimes called other things). This is pretty good for now. There are two big problems with Turing Numbers. 1) Many people cannot read them. If they aren't black and white, they can affect color blind people. If they are two "distorted" people with certain cognitive disorders (even minor ones) will have trouble. I bet that most everyone here has run into at least one Turing Numbers Test which they had to really try hard to read. This leads to 2) people hate them. Putting Turing Numbers on a registration/validation page dramatically reduces the participation rate. Blogger has a Turing Test and I read somewhere that, when activated, it can cut a blog's (legitimate) traffic by over 60%.

Finally, Turing Tests are easy to beat. It's just a computing power and technique problem. A computer recognizing letters and numbers that people can also recognize is a *much* easier problem than recognizing faces, which is already widely deployed. I suspect some enterprising type will create a functional Turing Number reader soon enough; I'd love to do it if I had the time or motivation because it's a neat problem to solve with a real social benefit -- help people who can't read the damned numbers. The SpamBot guys will probably just rip that off soon after.

btw, this is the theoretical problem with "automating" Turing Tests. Any test sufficient enough to filter out non-humans will also filter out lots of real-humans. This problem increases as computers become more powerful, techniques get better, and people get dumber.

-two "distorted"
+too distorted

"The next (enormous) source of gold, platinum, nickel and other juicy stuff is in the asteroid belt " - Bork

That might be very likely. And if mining gold on an asteroid belt were to become easier and cheaper than flipping the On switch on the proverbial printing press, you may even have a valid argument against a gold standard for currency. :-).

frank,

Fair enough on calling me for semantics. I remain unmoved by anti-fiat currency arguments, nonetheless. Even the minor commodity fluctuations would create massive volatility and arbitrage in the modern capital system. Liquidity would be manipulable less transparently than it is in the current system.

Inflation is inflation mathematically. Price inflation, monetary inflation, it all reduces to the quantity of money theory. Whether we use gold bars, worthless green dead presidents, or warm fuzzies for currency it must abide by QTM. I rather fancy keeping the printing press contained to one source, one which we can measure expected inflation against in a reasonably accurate manner. This is the main problem we see in MMOGs and VWs, no central control of "inflation-producing production".

Registrations are almost completely ineffective at stopping ‘bots. Remember that the ‘bots can collude, so they can create a database of registrations and cycle through them in a hard-to-detect manner. SpamBots already do this. Finally, Turing Tests are easy to beat.

so [gasp] we're beaten then... the machines have [choke] won... the... market... has won... the advertisers [sob] have tracked us down, wherever we may hide...

first it was spam, then it was blogbots, then the machines came for us in our own homes, mindlessly programmed with capitalist algorithms, unaware of what they were even doing, just carrying out the design of the market - making us buy things we didn't even want or need, until our wallets were empty... them more robots came to repossess the goods we had just bought... the only things left was the big plasma screen on the wall with ... Big Brother Dubya's face on it, telling us in soothing tones that everything was alright, that Big Dubya loved us...

if housing stayed high, there would be upwards pressure on salaries and wages to compensate. the petit bourgeoisie who are not employees can simply put up their asking prices, whatever it is they're selling, to compensate... all this in turn would cause inflation in the economy, where housing was the cause and the first inflationary component, followed by everything else

if housing collapsed, then there would be less likelihood of (as much) inflation, i don't tihnk prices would go up, because they wouldn't need to.

the end.

Registrations are almost completely ineffective at stopping ‘bots. Remember that the ‘bots can collude, so they can create a database of registrations and cycle through them in a hard-to-detect manner. SpamBots already do this. Finally, Turing Tests are easy to beat.

HARM should write a novel, or perhaps a screenplay on this, and make a colossal fortune. I see a sort of Will Smith in 'I, Robot' scenario, combined with a sort of 'Attack of the Clones' idea, combined with '1984' combined with 'The Truman Show' combined with 'Valley of the Dolls' combined with 'Desperate Housewives' combined with... - where robots in the near future exploit people to keep 1, maybe 2, (human) capitalists at the top happy, by being forced to consume stuff against their will... housing, plasma tvs, etc... all programmed with the capitalist dream instead of whatever it was Asimov's robots were programmed with - and it's all to fund ...MINING THE ASTEROIDS... for more metals to make more whitegoods with... then the robots will invent a hyperdrive and colonise the stars with the capitalist message of consumption, to bring back riches from other solar systems to keep the system going... and they won't even have true consciousness - not like us, the clever sheeple who invented them...

hang on, i think there was an episode of Dr Who that did all that...

Randy,

Government manipulation of liquidity is what we want to avoid. Gold has been used as money for centuries because it's value is deemed relatively stable. Governments cannot make gold out of thin air. In that sense there is no equivalent of a printing press for gold - zero sources of that type of inflationary manipulation and no need to measure it.

Monetary inflation is vastly different than price inflation, even though the former manifests itself as the later. Debasement of money by the government can in no way be confused with the effect of the free market on prices due to supply and demand of goods. Monetary inflation results from an increase in the supply of the currency itself.

I'm curious as to exactly where/how inflation enters the picture in your MMOGs and VWs.