>Whatever Kurgman says, it is good to keep in mind that he is an economist turned partisan-politics hack.
Funny thing,I called MG Seigler a hack, and was attacked. Even PG came out of the word works to say he was "embarrassed" by the comment. Now we are calling Nobel prize winning economists hacks and asses?
The economic illiteracy of this place is what is embarrassing.
>In the mean time most people in Western Europe suffer far less from the economic crisis than most Americans
I was with you until this. Europe is suffering because of their austerity choices. Unemployment reached, like, 25% in Spain, FAR worse than the US. But I agree, "collapse" is ridiculous. Europe will chug along, albeit at a lower rate of growth.
I learned from living through this crisis (my first as an adult) that people over react like crazy in these situations. So much doomspeak, still.
I'm from Spain but I acknowledge you shouldn't count us on "Europe". Our government is plain incapable of handling an economic crisis and it's getting worse over time.
We're Africa.
EDIT: to add some more to my comment in case someone's interested.
Spain's just an olygarchy whose population is (purposely) undereducated about politics. Not long ago you could hear people saying "I don't care about politics!" but still complaining about the effects that political decisions brought to their lives.
I'm not trying to solely blame politicians: after all they've been massively voted in the last elections (People's Party got absolute majority!) although to be honest it was out of despair of uneducated population.
The current right-wing goverment acts as if they were following Hayek's advice but spending is being cut only in middle/low-class services. Their own salaries and benefits are still higher than ever, and preferential treatment to "frienly" corporations is daily news. Money's still not flowing, and medium/low-class smothering is getting it worse because most people spend money in surviving rather than buying products and reactivating the economy.
The previous "left"-wing goverment acted as if they were following Keynes' advice, but the best they could come up with was a plan for pavement replacement where most money went through the toilet. Everyone agreed on their inability to rule a country (even their own voters) which led us to current situation.
This is economic hell and NOBODY can save us.
I expect a hot climate this spring. I'm not sure what's going to happen, but something's going to happen again on the streets.
Not long ago you could hear people saying "I don't care about politics..." but still complaining about the effects that political decisions brought to their lives.
I'm not an economist, but based on my reading and (limited) understanding of the situation, the most likely outcome is the destruction of the Euro as a currency, or at least a vast shrinking of the currency zone. Devaluation would help many of the problems Spain, Greece, Cyprus, and others have. It has other well-known problems but the situation is one in which there are no good options.
Great blog post, although I meant less "economic illiteracy" and more "actively refusing politics" (though I guess they're related.)
> Devaluation would help many of the problems Spain, Greece, Cyprus, and others have.
That's true, but top-tier economies in the euro zone can't afford devaluation, that's why the European Commission imposes devaluation in wage and services.
What they fail to realize is that they're killing their own exports as they suffocate peripheral economies.
Yeah, austerity may be the most proximate thing, but that misses the chronic condition of depressed economic growth. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot help the wage-earner by pulling down the wage-payer.
But they try. Lots of European nations punish capitalists sufficiently that they just do their capitalism elsewhere, so any economic growth due to capital investments is happening elsewhere. Half of Europe's problems come from things like...
Okay, take this guy in Greece, who tried to set up an Internet-based olive-oil business (which you'd think would be a natural fit) and had to submit... stool samples... and faced other inane red tape... http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/19/world/europe/in-greece-bus...
to say nothing of insanely rigid diversity and disability hiring quotas which serve more as hoops to jump through than anything equitable and which depress average Greek wages to the tune of... what was it, 25% or so? need to find that article...
Except arbitration requires more than just money + information, people doing arbitration must have low fees / latency for example so it's not available to all players in the market. Net result real world markets are not efficient due to various access levels.
Also: Empirical analyses have consistently found problems with the efficient-market hypothesis, the most consistent being that stocks with low price to earnings (and similarly, low price to cash-flow or book value) outperform other stocks. Which is presumably due to cognitive bias. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-market_hypothesis
PS: It's a reasonable simplification that's useful for the average investor, but not policy makers for example.
>"However, BTC China is still trading at above $275! That's the beauty of bitcoin, it isn't restricted to just one region in the world."
This is a flaw, not a benefit. I want to know what the value of my BTC are. Not what they are here, vs China, vs Canada, vs Australia...
>"Buying and selling an Indian Rupee for example is quite heavily restricted. "
What do you mean, "quite heavily restricted"? It's far harder for me to buy BTC, especially with these ongoing issues, than it is to buy Rupees in my forex account.
The Indian rupee is not a free float currency. That means that the reserve bank of India tries to make sure it doesn't fluctuate too much in value. While India is trying to move the currency towards free float, it isn't done yet. Basically, if anyone tries to speculate large amounts in rupees, the reserve bank will try to prevent fluctuations by speculating as well, or placing some sort of controls. This happened last year when the rupee started crashing and lost about 20%.
In that respect BTC is similar to the USD/Euro/etc.
Also, Indian citizens are pretty heavily restricted from selling large amounts of rupees for dollars, etc. You need a lot of permissions and clearances for large amounts. (>$1M equivalent, earlier the limit used to be $1000!!)
Free floating has nothing to do with whether or not I can buy Rupees on the open market. If I choose to buy a ton, it could cause problems with their central bank who will have to produce supply in order to maintain the exchange peg.
My point is simply that it's pretty easy buy international currencies on the forex. IMHO easier than buying bit coins.
>"service designed to help accounting and bookkeeping service providers manage the payroll for multiple companies."
The last time ZenPayroll made the front page, I (and others) were skeptical about the ability to usurp some of the bigger players. Targeting second party payroll providers is a superb idea. In fact, as someone who dabbled in low-key book keeping services to help me pay for school, something like this would have been wonderful. This is how business becomes more efficient. Waiting on Canada...
Thanks for the support! We're excited to empower these service providers who play an important role in helping small businesses. There's a growing shift toward outsourcing the back-office, given how busy a small business owner is. Independent accountants & bookkeepers can provide a compelling service by leveraging modern SaaS tools, and in doing so, they're able to streamline their business and help more clients. It's a win-win all around.
What is going on with Wave! I hadn't used Wave for a while but referred a friend to the service last spring when they needed to start keeping their books rather than just piling up receipts. Fast forward to this spring when I logged in to pull financial statements for their tax preparation, the Wave interface seems to have become less usable.
The date entry when creating a report is slightly strange and difficult to quickly enter the desired date (maybe this is a Canadian vs. American thing?).
When you view an account activity statement (a cash account for example) there is no total for the account as of the chosen date, just a running tally of debits and credits. I had to rerun a new balance sheet each time I wanted to see the cash account balance at a different date.
A quick "last fiscal year" report option or a few different common date ranges like in QB would also be helpful as it was tedious to click through the date calendar and select Jan 1 and Dec 31 every time I wanted a full year report.
I apologize if I missed some options and this is a misguided rant. I was only in the software for a couple of hours but it seemed rather difficult to obtain basic data.
>"The grants generally come with a lot of reporting and strings attached, and generally require very large investments to be worthwhile.
We can get R&D tax concessions"
I have a bit of experience with SRED in Ontario, and quite a bit with the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.
Grants are nicer for you (me), but tax credits are doing it right as far as the government is concerned. Canada wants you to create employment. If you have a business that is generating revenue and creating jobs, they'll "give back" money that equates to, sometimes, paying wages at 50 cents on the dollar.
Tax credits are an economically efficient way to distribute government funds.
It's the merchant's duty to ensure that the person who is charging the purchase owns the credit card, which is why they'll often ask for ID along with the CC.
Your problem is with YC supporting a company that violates the privacy of dangerous criminals, and not with YC supporting a company that provides a marketplace for selling illegal hazardous products?
Funny thing,I called MG Seigler a hack, and was attacked. Even PG came out of the word works to say he was "embarrassed" by the comment. Now we are calling Nobel prize winning economists hacks and asses?
The economic illiteracy of this place is what is embarrassing.