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See, that idea there, "national interest," is 'xactly the nub 'round which I'm twisting the Treasury article I promised you ;) I'm collecting my thoughts and links, yo, in order to spare the casual reader my incoherence.

Aren't too many 'Mericans (and others) with practical business experience outside corporate training: The "is,is" of capital structure and strategy. Ha.

As for "business cycle": May I recommend James Hamilton, "What is real about the business cycle." (St Louie Fed, 2005) I lost the link, sorry, but it's brief and is nicely illustrated with polynomial functions, graphed. His conclusion cracks me up every time.

"If an accurate statistical description of the dynamic behavior of key economic magnitudes is a time-invariant linear model such as equation (4), the the correct answer is,there is no such thing as a business cycle."

That's not the funny part. The funny part, to me, is NBER assignments of "recession" to periods 1857-1912.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

by Cat on Thu Oct 16th, 2008 at 12:21:35 PM EST
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Aren't too many 'Mericans (and others) with practical business experience outside corporate training: The "is,is" of capital structure and strategy. Ha.
Too true, sadly.  It seems as though ET is a refuge for Capitalism's discontents.  Those who enter the field with degrees in business, especially MBAs, often have large college loans to pay off and need the kinds of salaries that are mostly confined to large corporations in order to pay off their loans.  I would imagine it is a lot easier to survive in that world if one is a true believer.  If you have doubts, best keep them to yourself.

I for one greatly appreciate your contributions, even though I struggle to understand your posts.  I suspect that much of what you convey requires the context from which you abstract to be fully comprehendable.  I lack the direct experience required.  

The rap on me has always been that if you ask me what time it is I will tell you how the watch works prior to telling you the time.  This is because part of my education is technical.  I don't expect non-technical people to understand much of what I want to convey.  I try to resolve this by providing deft, (to me!) sketches of background information as a preface.  If one wants to learn something complex, intricate and technical, one should not expect it to be easy.  Best if one is not too concerned about appearing ignorant or foolish when asking questions as well.  My philosophy is that we are all fools.  Part of the human condition.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Thu Oct 16th, 2008 at 03:00:27 PM EST
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The rap on me has always been that if you ask me what time it is I will tell you how the watch works prior to telling you the time.

LOL. I second that. I have half of "formal" education, informed by 20 years hard knocks, and a personal prediliction to be cryptic! Good Lord, my child is exasperated by my long, windy digressions.

Fools though we may be, the willing find the way.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

by Cat on Thu Oct 16th, 2008 at 04:39:46 PM EST
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For James Hamilton, the St Louis Fed article you reference is here (pdf).

Hamilton blogs on Econbrowser.

Strangely, Gogol was incapable of returning the article reference (yet your title is exact). It found only one ref on the Web, your comment here.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Fri Oct 17th, 2008 at 02:07:14 AM EST
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LOL. "Gogol". Now that is some good poetry!

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.
by Cat on Fri Oct 17th, 2008 at 04:05:01 PM EST
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This is the gogol I know

You can't be me, I'm taken
by Sven Triloqvist on Fri Oct 17th, 2008 at 04:10:05 PM EST
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DOOD!!! Nicolai. LOL. I was forced to read this and Pushkin <reckless eyeballing> in highschool!!!

You know Pushkin was a "black" man, right? LOL.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

by Cat on Fri Oct 17th, 2008 at 04:16:34 PM EST
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The Tale of how Ivan Ivanovich Quarrelled with Ivan Nikiforovich is the funniest thing ever written in the history of everything ever written.  

"Pretending that you already know the answer when you don't is not actually very helpful." ~Migeru.
by poemless on Fri Oct 17th, 2008 at 04:33:23 PM EST
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I know you read poetry. You can't play me.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.
by Cat on Fri Oct 17th, 2008 at 05:34:59 PM EST
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It's not poetry.


"Pretending that you already know the answer when you don't is not actually very helpful." ~Migeru.
by poemless on Fri Oct 17th, 2008 at 05:43:20 PM EST
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Yes, it is. All "fiction" is poetry.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.
by Cat on Fri Oct 17th, 2008 at 06:10:56 PM EST
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Futhermore, mathematics is poetry. The definition of poetry is intepretation of language.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.
by Cat on Fri Oct 17th, 2008 at 06:14:11 PM EST
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and FTP. Inquiries welcomed.

Your GOOG mining reminded me of some reconn I did a few months ago on the topic "participatory realism," i.e. "magical thinking." I used to quote Piaget extensively from books that I own. I found that my comment here ranks in top ten.

Inquiries welcomed.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

by Cat on Fri Oct 17th, 2008 at 04:12:39 PM EST
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I think I saw ThatBritGuy use it. Also my eight-year-old granddaughter who picked up the name from overheard conversations (in French, where Google may be pronounced closer to Gogol), and turned it into her favourite insult. In her language, it applies to anyone who is pushing her around or being generally annoying, so, quite often, her elder sister, who gets called espèce de Gogol!

Nikolai is a great story-teller.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Sat Oct 18th, 2008 at 02:59:35 AM EST
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