Angus' Revenant Review

Alls I can say is that this is pretty intense.

Ok, here's a bit more:

The French are from hell, Alejandro González Iñárritu really hates Leo, Family is very important.

The two stars of the movie are (a) nature, the film is brutally gorgeous and (b) Tom Hardy, he is amazing. If I had to pick a third star, I'd go with fire.

The Hateful 8 was more fun, but The Revenant is a better film.

Gavan Duffy Plays the "Red House"

My Texas colleague, and now Syracuse prof., Gavan Duffy.

If you knew Gavan, you would know why having him play "The Red House" is pretty funny.  Still, the hot redhead with the red shoes playing harpoon is a nice touch.


Gavan Duffy Plays the Red House from Matt Bonham on Vimeo.

Decorate My Beard

Loren Lomasky decorates his beard this way.  If you've ever seen him after lunch, I mean.

But this is particularly appalling:

(PHOTO CREDIT)

What do the European elections mean for the Euro?

People, it's another beard vs. beard situation as Lebron takes the pessimistic view while PK says the results may be good news for the Euro.

The bottom line is that electorates in the PIGS (so far Ireland is resolute in taking its medicine) are unwilling to tolerate the Troika policies. Their only unilateral alternative is to exit the Euro, and they all seem unwilling to take this step.

So, I guess the "optimistic"view is that these results scare Germany enough to get them to pay more for their southern neighbors and to throw their weight behind the ECB significantly raising the Eurozone inflation rate.

Bait & Switch

Here's some early footage of Lebron in action:


 


Hat tip to Mrs. Lebron.

Quotes of the week

Great article by David Roodman on getting to the bottom of conflicting econometric results.

Money quote:

The process is standard in econometrics and is called Maximum Likelihood. It is analogous to a blind ant searching for the highest point in the Himalayas. The ant starts somewhere. It explores the immediate neighborhood. It determines which nearby point is highest and goes there. And it repeats, maybe millions of times, until it gets stuck at place where all neighboring points are downhill. Then the ant assumes it is at the highest point.

Hat tip to Roving Bandit

Jon Chait on Krugman's impact on the NY Times Editorial page.

Money Quote:

The most remarkable attribute Krugman has brought to the Times is rudeness.


Article on the Lakers' travails showing the wit and wisdom of Andrew Bynum.

Money Quote:

Lakers center Andrew Bynum isn't fretting the failed trade at all. In fact, he thinks the Lakers are better off with it falling through. "I'm happy we didn't do it," Bynum said. "I don't think you trade two 7-footers for a point guard. Ever."

Hat tip to LeBron

Privateerization

Overseas Trade and the Decline of Privateering

Henning Hillmann & Christina Gathmann
Journal of Economic History, September 2011, Pages 730-761

Abstract: Using a novel data set on 2,483 British privateering cruises, we show that state-licensed raiding of commercial vessels was a popular and flourishing business among merchants that took a serious toll on enemy trade from 1689 to 1815. Why, then, did privateering merchants gradually turn away from these profitable endeavors? We show that the expansion of overseas trade increased the opportunity costs for merchants and resulted in the decline of privateering. Our findings document that the decline of privateering had as much to do with an expanding maritime economy as with the rising naval power of the British state.

Nod to Kevin Lewis

I guess Paul Krugman shops at the Gap...

....because he doesn't know much about Banana Republic!

Paul says trying to link spending cuts to raising the debt ceiling makes America more likely to be seen as a Banana Republic, because it will show that "crazy extremists" have so much "blocking power" that we can't "get our house in order".

I would venture the view that the opposite is more likely to be true. Unconditionally raising the debt ceiling (again) without changes to path of future spending is likely to re-confirm the view that America is well on the road to becoming the mother of all Banana Republics.

Historically, Banana Republics were not run by "crazy extremists", they were run by corrupt plutocrats who governed in favor of foreign companies that controlled the export of the country's primary product (Wow, is Goldman Sachs the USA's United Fruit??).

How to succeed in economics

This is from the NY Magazine Krugman profile recommended by LeBron:

In December, Krugman and five other liberal economic thinkers (Joseph Stiglitz, Robert Reich, Jeffrey Sachs, Alan Blinder, and Larry Mishel) were invited to the Oval Office for a 90-minute off-the-record audience with the president. It was a month after the midterms, and many progressives were worried that even the modified liberalism of the administration’s first two years would dissolve in a new spirit of conciliation with the ascendant right. The economists present understood the meeting, one of them says, as the moment when Obama “talked to the left."

The economists sat ringing Obama: two Nobelists, a former Labor secretary, and a former vice-chairman of the Fed. Not a Gentile among them, Krugman noticed, but an amazingly high proportion of beards.

You have the blueprint, people, what you do with it is up to you!