This is a facetious way of letting you all know that, as of about 5 minutes ago, there are now 1,000 users (plus yours truly) subcribed to this blog.
The average daily unique readership count is currently 5,500, which I believe implies roughly 3-5 times that many readers on a monthly basis.
I also know from feedback from journalists and other correspondents that the comments made here are read and appreciated by a very wide audience. My posts might be the fulcrum, but the contributions from you all keep the wheels well and truly spinning. I’ve also learnt a lot from what has been posted here.
Charles Mackay’s observation that people go mad in crowds, and return to their sanity one by one, surely applies in this bubble. It’s very good to know that the crowd of those who have regained their senses–or never lost them in the first place–numbers at least a thousand.
Finally, thank you one and all for the tone that has been maintained in the discussions here. Most of us know how disagreements can get out of hand on the Internet, without the benefit of body language to take the edge of words that are sometimes said in jest but interpreted as in anger. It’s been remarkable that with a total now of 4,736 comments over one and a half years, that this blog has been an exemplar of civilised debate.
All the best, Steve
Steve, I want to join the chorus of congrats and thanks. I too first “heard” of you with the CPD paper – you delivered (big time) with the emperical evidence of what I had felt in my gut for a long time. It wasn’t just the housing bubble. I can recall back in the mid 90s when my accountant wife had her first job in a small, local computer manufacturer and retailer, and they introduced the old “4 years interest free” to compete – we were talking about the bringing forward of consumption, and that some day there had to be an “adjustment”. You know it’s run it’s course when Myer introduces it – to compete – and openly expresses concerns about how much spending has been brought forward!
Anyway, sincerest thanks for your efforts in bringing the debt bubble to the attention of Aussies. I don’t know whether you will ever receive the thanks from the public, or the academic recognition, that you deserve – a lot of brilliant and deserved people are not recognised in their lifetime – but there is no doubt that your academic field and your country is the richer for your hard work.
“An nescis, quantilla sapientia mundus regatur”.
to loosley para phrase
“dont you know then, how little, wisdom rules the world”
thank you steve and all for all your insight and wisdom.
Greetings Steve, thanks for the great site, I’m also a newbie but have been following you via this site for some time.
I am a retired Risk Manager from the Agricultural sector, mainly in grains and forex. When I started my career I read alot about Beniot Mandelbrots work in the 1960s in the US cotton market. His way of thinking that markets were often irrational and the need to look past psychology and at the math, has truely been what I owe my success to. In fact I would dare say that his work has benefited thousands of grain growers across Australia for more than 30 years. As it became the basis of my risk management methodology and local market making here in Australia. Keep up the great work and always remember that the all truth passes throught three stages, first it is ridiculed, then violently opposed and then finally accepted as being self evident. If you ever want to dismiss the widely held myth that most modern economists have about “efficient market theory”, just send them a copy of Mandelbrots book “the (mis) behaviour of markets”. Its hard to agrue with a someone who came up with Choas theory and fractals. Sorry if any spelling mistakes here my eye sight is not what it once was.
Hey Steve,
just wanted to say as a non expert in economics, I found your site great from the Australian perspective. So much of what is available on the web primarily relates to USA or Europe – and its great to find comment pertaining to the Australian context.
Keep up the good work!
Your eyesight might be problematic DrewRiskManager,
But your insight was and is spot on.
However converting economists to Mandlebrot’s reasoning has been an unsuccessful endeavour. In fact, Mandlebrot did first work out chaos using the data from cotton trading, as you note, but completely failed to gain any traction with economists who were looking for equilibrium in the data (where none existed of course), and gave up and moved over to geometry and geography. The Mandlebrot Plot emanated from that work, as did the application of chaos theory to geometry in the concept of the fractal dimension.
A revised economics would certainly include Benoit’s wisdom as part of it, but it will I expect await the retirement and/or death of most of today’s (neoclassical) economists, who really are a lost cause.
Is there any way to tell where your readers are from?
I would expect the number of readers to increase as people look for those who know the truth!
Yes its a pity Steve not more people take the time to look at this great mans (Mandelbrot)work in economics. His concepts certainly help in the often very irrational grain and other commodity markets of the world.
Thank you for the reply. I must find those glasses of mine before making comments next time.
Keep up the great work..
Hi Steve,
Thank you very much for the very valuable site. I’m spreading the word hard at work. Quite a few with property are now looking into it. I think one guy may have changed his mind about buying an “investment” (is this an oxymoron or what) property.
Best of luck for the future.
Congratulations. Before too long you’ll have 10,000. The site is testament to the power of a partisan position driven by real intellectual rigor. The posts are always superbly written and I find them compulsive.
You’ve done the community a real service by stating just how overvalued real estate is today. Hopefully many prospective young home buyers will be spared much pain as a result of the messages you’ve provided through your blog site and the print and electronic media.
Thank you, Steve, for your excellent blog and your longterm commitment to a serious and undogmatic analysis of economics.
On another note: let’s have a dose of cheer in the midst of the doom and gloom that has engulfed so many societies as a result of the casino capitalism that reigned, often by stealth, for the last few decades.
Surely, in time, the current crisis will be overcome and we can all relax a bit. Until then, however, we must all strive to expose what went wrong in the financial centres of the ‘madoffs’. In doing so we will contribute to the construction of a more just and sustainable global economic system, for the common good of our world community. It will be for the benefit of us all.
Please read more on my blog at:
http://globalinsights.wordpress.com/
Steve, I think my predictions are coming true, see the brainchart I posted here earlier:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn240/carseller_02/brainchart.jpg
Then CHFNOK 6,01, now 5,58, it’s blowing up again, and there will not be debt deflation, and deflation, simply because there will be a new bubble, and resumption of old bubbles instead.
I enjoy the site.
Letting 1001 flowers bloom is a bit worrying though. 1001 schools of thought content?
Does this mean we’re going to be topped if The Party does not agree?