economy
ben bernanke was asked recently why the economy isn't doing what we want it to do. he didn't know. okay here's a clue. i googled for world dpd 1900 to 2010. turns out it's called gwp. which makes sense. and i googled for world energy production for the same time. and i plotted them in a graph in open office. actually i plotted energy consumption. which i assume is more/less the same. ie we don't produce energy if we don't consume it. gwp grew faster than energy. there are two reasons for this. first, we're more efficient now than before. ie we can make stuff with less energy than we could 20 years ago. and second, gwp includes financial services. like 40% of the us gdp. now, clearly *some* financial services should contribute to gdp. matching up lenders with borrowers is a useful service. but 40%? come on. common sense suggests that's a wee bit excessive. most of our financial "services" is speculatively moving money from one person to another. ie it's a poker game. a **HUGE** poker game. with a $5 trillion pot. where the winners are taxed at 15%. or not taxed at all. gee ben. what's wrong with the economy? heh. not enough energy. too much financial "services".