en-us http://www.gongol.com Research on market solutions to today's problems, along with economics and technology news. It's like Fark for capitalists. Mon, 08 Feb 2010 04:33:02 CST http://www.gongol.com/fft/2010/02/07/ 1250.5 It's a massive collection of data on the most-visited (and least-visited) websites about business and economics. The evidence suggests that a "long tail" effect persists among these sites just as it is thought to exist everywhere else on the Internet. Mon, 08 Feb 2010 04:33:01 CST http://www.gongol.com/fft/2010/02/06/ 1250.4 Mon, 08 Feb 2010 04:33:01 CST http://www.gongol.com/fft/2010/02/06/ 1250.3 Mon, 08 Feb 2010 04:33:01 CST http://www.gongol.com/fft/2010/02/06/ 1250.2 Mon, 08 Feb 2010 04:33:01 CST http://www.gongol.com/fft/2010/02/06/ 1250.1 Sun, 07 Feb 2010 15:32:01 CST http://www.gongol.com/fft/2010/02/05/ 1249.5 It started in Wabash, Indiana, and it would likely be difficult to overstate just how significant a development electric streetlights really were. Today, we take streetlights utterly for granted. Yet they really were a revolution. We should acknowledge just how exciting are many of the developments we're witnessing today: Terrible diseases are being cured, human lifespans are growing significantly, we're producing more food with fewer inputs than ever, new tools for energy production are being developed at a rapid clip, and we're aggregating the world's knowledge via the Internet. This is the most exciting time in all of human history, and it contains the greatest amount of potential for good. Pessimists be damned; these are awesome times. Problems abound, but so do the tools to fix them. Sun, 07 Feb 2010 15:32:01 CST http://www.gongol.com/fft/2010/02/05/ 1249.4 Some prominent economists are starting to speak up about the really awful degree to which the United States, in the public, private, and household sectors alike, has been racking up a debt burden that is difficult to sustain. Whether there's really a "tipping point" at a certain ratio of debt to national income may be in debate (some say we're approaching just such a tipping point, where the national government's debts are equal to 90% of gross domestic product), but there's no question that borrowing on the scale we've seen (again, across all three sectors) has to be slowed and at least partially reversed. Some people think that we're in the middle of a circular firing squad of debt bombs that are ready to start a cascading trigger effect. That's probably a little too pessimistic; after all, if the debtors go into a rage of self-destruction, the lenders go into crisis as well...and we're all sharing the same global economy. But practical individuals today ought to be looking to deleverage themselves from debt, and probably ought to be seeking investments that are similarly independent of debt. The highly-leveraged are going to be in a world of trouble sooner or later. Probably sooner. Sun, 07 Feb 2010 15:32:01 CST http://www.gongol.com/fft/2010/02/05/ 1249.3 Sun, 07 Feb 2010 15:32:01 CST http://www.gongol.com/fft/2010/02/05/ 1249.2 Sun, 07 Feb 2010 15:32:01 CST http://www.gongol.com/fft/2010/02/05/ 1249.1 Sun, 07 Feb 2010 00:58:01 CST http://www.gongol.com/fft/2010/02/04/ 1248.5 A nearly-overnight devaluation of the currency -- by a factor of 100. The closing of private markets for food. Draconian restrictions on the use of foreign currency and imported goods. It's probably the most gut-wrenching display of economic evil on display in the world today. Sun, 07 Feb 2010 00:58:01 CST http://www.gongol.com/fft/2010/02/04/ 1248.4 A hospital in London used a sort of backdoor method to give people the ability to answer "yes" or "no" to basic questions. They found that almost half of the people they thought were in a vegetative state were capable of communicating those "yes" and "no" answers, just like people with normally-functioning brains. A binary means of communication might not seem like much, but "yes" and "no" can mean quite a lot when one needs to tell doctors whether to do things like increasing pain medication or end life support. And, of course, it signals that we might be able to figure out a lot more about brain function that could overcome traumatic brain injury altogether Sun, 07 Feb 2010 00:58:01 CST http://www.gongol.com/fft/2010/02/04/ 1248.3 The debt ceiling isn't the problem; it's the debt itself. Raising the ceiling is a necessary consequence to prevent default, but the spending is what really has to be reined in. And even though it looks like pay-as-you-go budgeting may be reinstated along with the higher debt ceiling, the real Sword of Damocles hanging over our heads is that our unfunded future liabilities are going to escalate without any sense of control or proportion, thanks to the "promises" made by Social Security and Medicare. We keep putting off real reform, and the consequences keep getting more expensive. Sovereign-debt problems around the world are starting to earn some real (and deserved) attention. Something has to be done before it's too late. The only thing that's likely to work (considering how hostile the American public is going to be towards either benefit cuts or tax hikes) is a massive, prolonged rise in productivity. The latest figures (showing a 6.2% annualized rate of increase in the fourth quarter of 2009) might be enough -- though, unfortunately, it's quite unlikely that we'll be able to sustain that rate of increase for any serious length of time. Sun, 07 Feb 2010 00:58:01 CST http://www.gongol.com/fft/2010/02/04/ 1248.2 It turns out that humans respond more rapidly to the appearance of a threat than we are capable of creating the same threat -- that is, we're faster at being the "white hat" cowboy than at being the "black hat" who shoots first. It probably has to do with the wiring of the brain that likely evolved to favor rapid reactions more than the creation of trouble. http://www.gongol.com http://www.gongol.com/assets/top/invisiblehand/logo120x60.png