“The Climate Crisis is Capitalism’s Waterloo” (Yanis Varoufakis) “Black Swan” is a label for highly upredictable events with extreme impacts. The concept was made popular by Nassim Nicholas Taleb with his 2007 book of the same title. Some will say the Financial Crisis in 2008 was a black swan. As Queen Elizabeth famously asked the community of Britsish Economists: “Why did nobody see this coming?” - Although some saw it coming, but not among the mainstream scholars....

The Bruegel blog of September 4, 2018 reports from the annual Jackson Hole gathering of central bankers. This year the focus was on implications for central banks of the rise of superstar firms and changing market structure. Of particular interest I found the contribution of Antoinette Schoar (MIT Sloan) - as refered by Bruegel: Antoinette Schoar looks at the financial market, argues that the rapid growth of new digital technologies has created a market dynamic, where many institutions outside the central bank system might soon have much more comprehensive, more accurate and also more timely information than the regulators....

Mainstream economics failure to ‘see the crisis coming’ in 2008 is broadly regarded as a deficiency of the theory. However, Paul Krugman now argues that the theory was - and is - ‘good enough for government’. The failure of 2008 was not in the theory, but rather in deficient data collection. Macroeconomists “overlooked” the institutional changes in the financial sector and did not record appropriate data. The “New Keynesians” - i....

The Thai districts on the Myanmar border have very mixed ethnic groups and a rough history: The Shan are not the only ethnic group living here. Ban Mae Aeb is a small village comprising five ethnic groups living togetger. Besides the Shan, the village is home to Chinese, Lahu, Akha and Lua. The “Lost Army” - the republic of China’s 93rd Division - fled into Burma after their defeat to the communist....

Yesterday I got a reminder from Mars! There is a ‘Starmus’ conference going on these days, in Trondheim, Norway. One astronaut told about returning to Earth after 43 days in Space - the message being that what you don’t use (in Space) you have lost when back (on Earth) - i.e. without gravity your sense of balance get lost - you have to retrain basic mobility capabilities upon return. So also for elderly people - without exercising mind and body capabilities get lost....