David Steven › Comments

China’s rise confounds economic history, but not necessarily economic theory. At the heart of growth is a focus on capital investment in infrastructure, designed to create more productive lives, funded by a government which may bear losses but is capable of capturing the still positive side-effects (externalities) from rising tax revenues. In addition, the government is more removed from activity in the consumer sector where it promotes a competitive industrial landscape designed to lower the cost of living for households. These foundations seem brittle to western investors used to judging the health of an economy through the returns on capital. But the Chinese are comfortable with low capital returns if the pay-off is a stronger economy. This has been the case. - David Steven

China’s rise confounds economic history, but not necessarily economic theory. At the heart of growth is a focus on capital investment in infrastructure, designed to create more productive lives, funded by a government which may bear losses but is capable of capturing the still positive side-effects (externalities) from rising tax revenues. In addition, the government is more removed from activity in the consumer sector where it promotes a competitive industrial landscape designed to lower the cost of living for households. These foundations seem brittle to western investors used to judging the health of an economy through the returns on capital. But the Chinese are comfortable with low capital returns if the pay-off is a stronger economy. This has been the case. - David Steven

Drum's gloss on the Pew research into mobility - claims that incomes have risen, but wealth has not. - David Steven

Excellent research into mobility. - David Steven

IRI's methodology for their Pakistan survey. - David Steven

When violence shatters a child's world, the torment can continue into their sleep, according to researchers in Cleveland. The impact is measurable and affected by the severity of the violence, and the effects can last over time. - David Steven

Interesting arguments on what it means to be middle class. - David Steven

Open source database of terrorist attacks. - David Steven

The entry levels in the quest to become a rich country are the hardest.  The basic problem is that any government strong enough to stop people from stealing from each other, deceiving each other, and threatening each other with violence, is itself strong enough to steal, deceive, and threaten with violence. - David Steven

The task on emissions is twofold — to bend the curve of gas releases using regulations, incentives, education and standards, but (more importantly, to me) also to build the intellectual infrastructure and innovative, globally-collaborative culture that will be required for the next generation to take that curve down toward zero even as humanity’s energy needs continue to rise. My emphasis on the second component derives from all the biases toward the quick fix that are built into the human brain, political institutions and culture. I’ll be filing a related batch of new input next week on California’s greenhouse-gas emissions plan, which I hope will help convey why both advancing today’s cleaner energy technologies and practices and boosting basic science and inquiry are essential to building an energy menu that works for the long haul. Click here for a foretaste from Nate Lewis of Caltech (video), who heads the Energy Department “innovation hub” on artificial photosynthesis. - David Steven

Imagine [...] an institution with the analytic resources of Wall Street players, the reach of Google, and the openness of Wikipedia. Such an observatory would leverage the capacities of cyberspace to become a global (and cost-effective) clearinghouse for economic information. Its scope would extend far beyond the data collected by established entities today, for example probing deep into the world’s illicit economies and exploring the market implications of rapidly spreading social media. And unlike those institutions, it would serve a purely informational role with no policy responsibilities. - David Steven

European finance officials have discussed as a worst-case scenario limiting the size of withdrawals from ATM machines, imposing border checks and introducing capital controls in at least Greece should Athens decide to leave the euro. - David Steven

Scientists have given a new name to the deaths that occur in surgery after something goes wrong—whether it is an infection or some bizarre twist of the stomach. They call them a “failure to rescue.” More than anything, this is what distinguished the great from the mediocre. They didn’t fail less. They rescued more. - David Steven

Financial crises make political systems more extreme and fragmented, and weaker. - David Steven

Arguing that the US's troubles are structural, not cyclical, does not necessarily lead to inaction. - David Steven

Writing in a blog posting, Kevin Turner, chief operating officer for Microsoft, also revealed that every business unit in more than 100 countries would be required to pay a fee for any carbon emissions they generate. The price per tonne will be based on the market price for the renewable energy and carbon offsets the company will have to purchase to attain its new "carbon neutral" status. - David Steven

Resistance to being "placed in a lower order, made subject". - David Steven

Innovation versus optimization. - David Steven

Trouble in India - maybe in the other Brics... - David Steven

Pakistan's middle class may be 70 million people. - David Steven

Banks are global in life, national in death," Mervyn King - David Steven

Something interesting about the last para - the importance of duty/passion/emotions in any civilization. - David Steven

As somebody who has long trafficked in explanatory financial journalism, I stand somewhat in awe. Haldane is a Bank of England lifer who presumably already has his hands full executive-directing financial stability in the UK. Yet his speeches amount to possibly the best account out there of where modern financial capitalism stands and where it ought to go. - David Steven

As demonstrated by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami-triggered blackouts in Japan, electricity shortfalls can happen anytime and anywhere. Countries can minimise the negative economic, social and environmental impacts of such electricity shortfalls by developing emergency energy-saving strategies before a crisis occurs. - David Steven

Saudi Arabia has a little-known weapon to fight against a disruption in Iranian oil supplies: millions of barrels of stocks strategically located around the world. Riyadh appears to be filling up its network of storage tanks, gaining flexibility to respond to any disruption. - David Steven

Laughter is one of the most powerful tactical weapons of memewar … it signals supremacy and loss of fear - David Steven

America's broken government. - David Steven

Finally - a coherent strategy for combating Chinese dominance of Africa. - David Steven

unlike the easy oil run Russia had throughout the 2000s, Putin now needs to play a far smarter hydrocarbon game if Moscow is to get beyond commodity booms and breakneck busts. - David Steven

Saudi Arabia is beginning an oil exploration push that it says is expected to turn up 100 billion barrels of new oil in existing fields in the Kingdom and in unexplored regions including in the Red Sea. The effort is also expected to increase the company's natural gas production by 40 percent by 2014. Saudi Arabia has 267 billion of so-called proven reserves, about one-fifth of the world's total. "Proven reserves" is an industry term that means oil or gas that has been discovered and could be produced with today's technology. - David Steven