Maximizing futility

One of the benefits of roughing it at the beach, is the complete isolation from electronic media, includng the internets. Cybercafes in this nearly thirld world country are long and far between, and my goal of being native assumes fans, al fresco showers and mom-and-pop stores. Four Seanons’ are nice as long as I do not live there or there are not on the island. Thus, wireless internets and other assumed luxuries of modern life do not exist. This explains the infrequent postings. This Saturday morning, I was able to hitch a ride on a truck into town to read email and get the essential groceries and other necessities – getting back to the cottage will be rather simple – and I stumbled across a small dimly lit deserted cybercafe which seemingly is related to cybercafes by having access to one slow – pre 2000 desktop with a cranck generator and an internet connection performing in bytes and not kBs. And there is enough -cheap – liquor to fuel a fraternity house for an entire year … You get the picture.

While reading trough briefly my sage booklets and all the news that I saw fit to miss, I started reading the Economist, which in this week’s issue discussess the invisible hand on the keyboad. And Brad deLong goes after it. Clearly, there is a demand for economists blogging by sharing – quality – information. My posts are not at par with DeLongs, Mankiws, Becker-Posners, and the other academic economic luminati, nor do I aspire to achieve the same status. Nevertheless, I believe that somewhere in the dissemnination of information, the easier access to ideas, analyses, and various, often contradictory opinions, leveling the playing field in the general economic and financial debate – insert your favorite overused metaphore here – there is a benefit to examine ideas.

Do I create value? Yes, I do. Using data from Technorati which is inspired by research from Tristan Louis, a week ago, my blog was valued at roughly $1,100 and not I am at roughly $1,700. Thus in less than one week, I have created $600 in value – roughly $100 per day, which would be a nice compensation for the time I spend. And I was off on this tropical paradise with my wife for half of it.

How do other economic blogs stick up to this value?

• Abnormal returns – $14,678.04
• Brad DeLong - $379,370.88
• Econbrowser - $169,926.54
• EconLog – $224,122.38
• FinanceProfessor.com - $24,839.76
• FinancialRounds – $31,049.70
• Greg Mankiw blog – $316,142.40
• MarketPsychologyBlog – $0.00
• Philip Baecker – $ 0.00
• SmartEconomist – $19,758.90
• Becker-Posener – $471,955.44
• PrudentInvestor.com – $471,955.44
• VoluntaryXchange – $26,533.38

OK, I am a bit short. But being in business for such a short time, I should be – still – optimistic. See you next week.

Tuesday news roundup

It is unbelievably hot here in Central PA and the temperature is expected to hit 100F.

• WSJ and BBC both report that Fidel Castro undergoes surgery. Castro is 79 years old and transfers power to his 75 year old younger brother, Raul. This is not surprising, he has been in bad health lately. The question now becomes, when can I smoke a Cuban legally. I am willing to take bets.
• Jomentum is cool. Both the Daily Kos and Wonkette sacrifice serious binary resources into the analysis of Joementum, or rather the lack of it. If the Colbert Report is discussing Joementum, clearly there is something to talk about. BTW, Mitt Romney is out. No link’s necessary …
• CNN is taking on www.youtube.com and allows now users to post content. The White House is updating its pressroom, which originally was built atop a filled in swimming pool. These new changes will help the pressroom to communicate more drama.
• Smut stinks. Howard Stern is not working out for Sirius. It posts wider loss, but the subscriber base is increasing. According to Sirius it added 600,460 subscribers; it has 4.7 million at the end of the quarter. The company expects to have 6.3
  million subscribers by the end of 2006. Previously it expected 6.2 million. Last week, XM posted a wider loss for Q2 and cut their subscriber estimate. XM, which has seven million subscribers, expects to end the year with between 7.7 million and 8.2 million.
• Cingular and Verizon start charging their customers with old phones a monthly service fee.

Market news

• The appeal of ETFs is shifting to Main Street. This is a positive and very interesting development, which in the long run changes the structure of both the mutual fund and the private financial advisor industries.
• The question of maturity is always relative. New web-start ups lure executives away from eBay and Yahoo. Only 7 years ago, staid old economy companies – GE, IBM, CA – lured lost people to the upstarts. Does this new development mean that eBay and Yahoo are both old economy companies now?
• And the Beirut stock market reopened for trade today. One of Beirut’s main indexes, the BLOM, closed 4.1% lower at 1,230.22.

Blogosphere

• Political Calculations discusses Greg Mankiw’s perspective on the Federal Funds Rate. Mankiw’s method is attractive in that it incorporates two of the economic factors that the Fed is chartered to influence through monetary policy: the rate of inflation (measured as 12-month change in the Consumer Price Index for Urban consumers, less food and energy) and the rate of unemployment.
• Voluntary exchange discussess the economics of World War I.  A book edited by Stephen Broadberry and Mark Harrison for specialists and folks interested in history discussess the economic factors behind the war.  The reviews are interesting here and here.

Education

• SmartEconomist talks with Stanford GSB professor Paul Oyer about management education and corporate executives. Also, an excellent review on MBAs and Investment Banking Education.

Time management

Academic and professional success is greatly aided by time management. Time management is a disciplined use of the only finite resource each of us have: time. Before the semester hits us fully, I list a few sites that offer some insight to successful time management. Even if you have excellent time management skills, reading through their suggestions adds value.

• A good, but somewhat dated, introductory treatment of time management gives the bare basics.
• Steve Pavlina has a personal development blog. Steve has an interesting writing style. He focuses on personal development and brings up examples from his own life to underline the point. This open perspective helps in explaining his view on personal development: you can change. Yet his writings are lengthy and sometimes he takes time to arrive to the point we know he tries to make. Nevertheless, his personal development web-log is an entertaining read and he often deals with the three interrelated areas of time management, productivity and goal setting.
• Merlin Mann – 43 folders – offers low tech solutions to time management problems. He and D*I*Y planner have thrown out their PDAs, Treos, and other electronic time manager gimmicks. Now, they either use 43 folders or paper based time management systems, such as the hipsterPDA and Moleskines.
• Other time management tools and ideas come from two similar sounding websites lifehack.org and lifehacker. Both sites focus on life quality improvement using small improvements in the daily grind (argh). Insert your favorite pirate joke here, because there argh. Both sites have a high geek quota, so non-geeks beware.

Enjoy!