To inform, confuse, and enlighten; in economic matters as well as philosophical ones. Jørund Holterud Aarsnes and Stephan Andreas Jensen write on economics and the human condition.

Back in January my dear co-author Jørund wrote a short piece on  the future prospects of the Norwegian krone, whereby Evolution-Revolution agreed with Credit Suisse’s prediction that the krone was on its way up (while, admittedly, making ourselves guilty of blogger-journalism-commentator hedging dicussed in this post by the eminent Baruch at Ultimi Barbarorum). Since then, the Norwegian Krone has, indeed, strengthened a bit vis-a-vis both Euro, Pound, and Dollar (although as Nassim Taleb would be quick to point out, this might have been completely random). Nevertheless, the krone still has a way up to go, even more so than it did in January.

In particular, three factors underlie this prognosis: [Read more →]

The United States is not the only place where offshore drilling has been on the political agenda during the last years. In Norway, where the offshore oil and gas industry is a significant part of the economy, making Norway the third largest oil exporter in the world, there has been debate about opening up scenic coastal areas of Lofoten and Vesterålen for offshore drilling. The Northern Norwegian coastal archipelagos feature amazingly scenic nature complete with fjords and mountains, the world’s largest population of cod along with a thriving fishing industry, and whether possible drilling in the area should be allowed to commence has already been the subject of intense debate.

Still, Norway’s Labor Party led coalition government is arguably leaning towards opening up the area for oil and gas investments, in spite of vocal protests from its Socialist Left Party members. It has certainly been  [Read more →]

In connection with this year’s women’s day celebration in March, my younger sister who is a Seargeant in the Royal Norwegian Air Force was interviewed by an “investigative journalist” from NRK making a piece about women in traditionally male occupations. She recounted to me a part of the interview that did not make it past clipping. It went something like this:

Interviewer: Have you ever experienced gender discrimination?

Sunniva, female Air Force Sergeant: No, I can’t recall any situation where I have been discriminated against.

Interviewer (a little surprised): But, you must have… Eh, well, I have heard stories about women in the military…

Sunniva, female Air Force Sergeant: I can only speak for myself, but I have never experienced anything like that.

Interviewer: Well, have you ever experienced ALMOST being the victim of discrimination?

Sunniva, female Air Force Sergeant: Eh, no…

Interviewer: OK, so you don’t feel like you are being discriminated against, but do you think that some other women perhaps could feel like they were if they had your job?

…

I feel so much safer now that I know that the media is investigating hypothetical gender discrimination.

As a part of its 18-month long inquiry into the causes of the financial crisis, Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Investigations Subcommittee on Tuesday summoned Lloyd Blainkfein and several other senior Goldman executives to answer for their role in causing the financial crisis.

According to the subcommittee, it has [Read more →]

Last week we endorsed an article on collapsing business models, but having read this must-read critique of it and the journalistic style it applies, one comes to wonder how accurate the analysis really is. When reading articles that tries to make sweeping generalizations just on the basis of a few cases or examples, we must really strive not to be swayed by what is most likely pure dramaturgy and seduction from the author.

A complex system that is very difficult to describe by a single phrase – Photo Credits

Thinking further about  this problem, business books that try to coin new phrases come to mind. Malcom Gladwell is a master of this art writing books such as “The Tipping Point” and “Outliers”.  Be careful when reading this, [Read more →]

We’ve previously endorsed the Norwegian Government Pension Fund’s  (GPF) approach to enhancing global corporate governance. Recently, NBIM – the manager of the fund – was also instructed to allocate about five percent of its portfolio into unlisted real estate. I consider this  decision quite bad for the following reasons.

Property investments are notoriously illiquid. Currently the reserves of the GPF is used to cover the domestic fiscal budget deficit. As wee have recently seen, the deficit and need for fiscal expansive policy will usually be the highest when liquidity is the lowest. Illiquidity  implies below real value prices and as such NBIM will always be selling its real estate investments when prices are the worst (this is in a longer term perspective when oil revenues are actually smaller than the budget deficit)

It was the Yale endowment fund under management by David Swensen that started advocating that long term investors such as the GPF should allocate more of its investments [Read more →]

During the year and a half since Barack Obama got elected president of the United States the country has been awash in hysteric conservative paranoia. One of the last incarnations of this amongst the conservative grassroots movements are so-called “open-carry” demonstrations. That is, demonstrations where people show up carrying rifles and loaded handguns in order to show how committed they are to the United States Constitution and American democracy.

Yesterday, one of these these rallies, [Read more →]

Some recent and interesting articles, all very recommended:

An excellent article on zoophiles, animal lovers – there is more to human sexuality than I would ever have expected and somehow horses are particularly attractive

Steve Randy Waldman explains why measuring bank balance sheets (capital) is impossible

A report from Morgan Stanley on the emerging global trends of internet usage, especially mobile

Dani Rodrik on the return of industrial policy – governments can pick winners

How to make a  freestanding handstand Push-Up – my goal for the next year

Stiglitz on an agenda for reforming economics at the newly established, Soros-financed, Institute for New Economic Thinking (video)

Clay Shirky posted a very interesting article on creative destruction wrought by the emerging ICT-paradigm, in particular on the television industry. Lots of Schumpeterian economic evolution-revolution. Check it out here.

Thanks to my uncle Ashley, a loyal Evolution-Revolution reader, for sending me the link.   Picture from http://affordablehousinginstitute.org/blogs/us/2007/07/the-value-of-foreclosure.html

The following were (seriously) the top three headlines last night on the RSS feed I get from Dagens Næringsliv, Norway’s biggest business and economics newspaper:

LONG, LONG LINE OF GOOD WINES

(Lang, lang rekke med gode viner)

-

APPEALING SYRAH-WINES

(Tiltrekkende syrah-viner)

-

ABDUCTED FINANCIAL ADVISOR

(Bortførte finansrådgiver)

That last link is foreign news, of course, about a something that happened in Germany. So far, it appears we are still living the good life.

By Stephan Andreas Jensen