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Showing posts from June, 2015

Airport Economics: A Demonstration of Self-Governance

Lines to the gate are governed by not a single force of institutionalized law but rather by the sum forces of self-regulating personal discretion. There needn't exist a single law enumerating the appropriate dimensions of these lines or the velocity thereof. Personal perceptions and adaptations suffice to operate these lines, and while some people may criticize these lines while they remain standing in them, some passengers have learned to maximize their relaxation and minimize their standing wait time by remaining seated at the gate, while their counterparts recognize an opportunity to invest their time in securing their respective advantages in line. When government regulates the markets, it assumes a ubiquity of preferences irrespective of extenuating circumstances or priorities.  One might sensibly advocate on behalf of "efficiency" by suggesting a method of expedited line formation and processing. In order to accomplish this end, force or protracted conditioning, t...

From Gold Standard to Petrodollar: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire

Since Roosevelt's administration installed the designs of the New Deal era in the United States, the role of government in the lives of the American people has transformed.  Over the course of World War II and the ensuing intra-Cold War conflicts, the War on Poverty, the War on Drugs, the space race, and the arms race, the United States accrued a tremendous pool of liabilities in order to fund these extravagant projects.  Following World War II, the United States and the major market powers agreed to Bretton Woods, which established the United States dollar as the benchmark for the rest of the world's currencies.  The United States dollar was then denominated in units of gold, redeemable at the request of the bearer of those reserves on the international scene.  By this time, President Franklin Roosevelt had already issued Executive Order 6102 outlawing personal ownership of gold as money or hoarding thereof, but the United States dollar still operate...

Are U.S. Banks Safe?

Nothing in the market can ever resemble anything more than  asymptotal  accuracy. Moody's has recently demonstrated a brilliant capacity to employ econometrics in its downgrade of Chicago GO bonds to "junk" status. However, just as every enterprise and sector which comprises the market is vulnerable to market shifts, rating agencies are not impervious to their own downgrades, and Moody's record over the past decade certainly remains suspect at best. However, just as Governor Rick Snyder issued his platitudinous response to today's Supreme Court ruling, defending the importance of  "respect[ing] the judicial process and the decision today from the U.S. Supreme Court," chief market strategist David  Zervos  must be expected to similarly defend his status quo: "They like to be noisy, and this is a way to be noisy. I don't think the effects are big in the end." Just as Janet  Yellen  at the Federal Reserve feels pressured to remain dovish on...