VK is my hero

Seriously. Vaclav Klaus, the president of the Czech Republic, probably the best economist ever, is my secret hero. I would not dream of revealing this to the public, but one has to be courageous.
He is my hero because he is not only able to say something very popular and "populistic" in Czech Republic, but to position himself so that he cannot be wrong!
There are the following options: First, there might be no climate change and no need to protect the environment (and climate). In this case VK is a winner, because he told us so.
Second, the climate change is coming, but it will be manageable. In this case, VK is also right, because current suggestions are mere first attempts that will almost surely be replaced by some other, more effective, mechanisms. In that case, he wins, because he criticizes current mechanisms as expensive and inefficient.
Third, he is wrong, and humans will fail and our mighty civilization will fall. In that case, who cares who was VK.
There is also the sweet cherry on the top - he is against most people, against "media" and other "conspirators".
Honestly, I don't believe how he could possibly loose. I have to admire him. You should too.

Mud cookies and biofuels

I though that behind the increase in prices of food was primarily bad season (in several countries), but it is certainly possible that botched attempts to save the planet by 5-10% of biofuel caused it.
In any case, the consequences are terrible:
"It was lunchtime in one of Haiti's worst slums, and Charlene Dumas was eating mud. With food prices rising, Haiti's poorest can't afford even a daily plate of rice, and some take desperate measures to fill their bellies. Charlene, 16 with a 1-month-old son, has come to rely on a traditional Haitian remedy for hunger pangs: cookies made of dried yellow dirt from the country's central plateau.

The mud has long been prized by pregnant women and children here as an antacid and source of calcium. But in places like Cite Soleil, the oceanside slum where Charlene shares a two-room house with her baby, five siblings and two unemployed parents, cookies made of dirt, salt and vegetable shortening have become a regular meal.
"

Needless to say, this is happening while 32% of Americans are obese.

Progress

If you really believe that our modern civilization has made a significant progress in terms of law & justice, read this.

Slow progress and multitasking

At the beginning of my PhD, and especially after I clarified my research ideas, I was hoping for fast progress. As usual, it did not realize. I had a couple of alternative explanations (topic is bad, research is difficult, I'm not smart enough, I'm not working hard enough).
After some thinking, I found out that the problem is concentration and multitasking. I'm not talking about working on one idea in the morning and on the other in the afternoon (and writing a blog in the evening), but about solving a model and say, talking to your friends over IM and reading a newspaper. The multitasking killed my ability to focus, to remember and to work hard.
There is a research why, but I'm still looking for how to reverse the process.

Democracy - the American way

If half of this is true, then George O. was off probably by a few decades, not centuries.
Or, as The Simpons put it: "Will anybody think of children?".

Big Bubbles

It is always a disaster when a bubble bursts. After what happen today, I'm really scared. I'm afraid that the next bubble is close and this time, it will be huge.
[Yes, I think that FED might be able to prevent the burst of this bubble from lasting long and from being too painful, but at a significant costs. These could be either much bigger next bubble, or as Paul Krugman thinks, inflation, or both. Be scared, be prepared.]

US. Election

Everybody talks about it, everybody thinks about it, so am I. Anyway, just for future record, my prediction is that Democrats will loose (yeah, again) and the new president will be Republican.

Presidential Economics

Our current and probably also future president considers himself a professor of economics. Yet, he does not really have any significant publication. His first attempt in recent issue of "Politicka ekonomie (Policial Economics)" gives you some idea how a presidential economics looks like.
P.S.I do not mean to criticize the fact that our president is not a good economists - many presidents are not. I'm making fun of the difference between his self-perception and reality.

Why Czech Blogs suck 2 - an answer

I asked the question why so many well-known Czech Blogs suck (IMHO), especially in contrast to English language blogs.I did not have an answer that time, but I think I might now. It came to me while reading this post.
Some background first. The author is one of the IT businessman in Czech Republic. He did not create anything really interesting, but he was first to enter the market with IT literature, created couple of magazines (see, for example Zive.cz ) and probably made a fortune on that. It does not matter that the quality of products is not appalling (I was working in his firm for a short time, so I have pretty much good idea why). Anyway, the point is that he is a guy who knows IT and made some money.
So he thinks he is smart and understands everything. And he is arrogant (maybe this is necessary for the success, who knows?). In some cases, he is right, his posts are informed (and informative) - when he write about IT. Since he worked in that area for long time, he is likely to know much more than his readers. This is the good part.
The bad part is that he (and other Czech bloggers) think that they understand much more than just IT. Take the post I referred to above. For example, he claims that the governmental revenues are fixed. He clearly has no idea how volatile governmental revenues are, he most likely never saw any statistics. Probably from the fact that taxes are known and fixed, it somewhat magically follows that revenues are fixed, while in fact, they are not. I'm not sure how recent losses at Citi and other banks fit into his mental model - they probably were expected (haha).
Moreover, he criticizes contract he never read. He confuses one-shot bonus for a mutli-year contract with yearly bonuses. I could go on...
The point is not that he makes mistakes - we all do. The point is that he writes arrogantly about something he has no idea about. The reason probably is that most Czech bloggers are coming from IT field. Their advantage is probable longer presence on the "market", which allowed them to establish reputation others have yet to reach (see, for example, usually much better informed blog from Pavel Kohout, unfortunately not working anymore). I hope that in the future, one will have a choice from blogs written by experts (or at least informed enthusiasts in the field), not by random guys who offer interesting insight into their field mixed with pure nonsense.

Real world...

Steven Levitt is a big star. Among his famous articles are those analyzing gang members selling drugs and cheating among Sumo wrestlers. See his list of papers for much more.
One would expect that you cannot get more astounding. Well, you would be wrong. His latest paper analyzes prostitution in Chicago. Results are, as usual, surprising. Condoms are rarely used (25%), yearly wage is about $20,000 (I guess they should have a union to reduce supply) and pimps are, in fact, a good thing for the prostitutes. Police seems to look away if you give them a freebie. But the craziest part is at the very end. I have to quote, because this is just unbelievable.
Last client's report "revenue $200, father & son; inside client's house while mother watched and masturbated".
Well, Levitt may be a superstar, but I have serious doubts about his data. Or about this world.