Akkam’s Razor

A couple of semesters ago, I read a Businessweek article on Home Depot then-CEO Bob Nardelli’s plan to turn around Home Depot.  BW glowingly reported on Nardelli’s personnel changes and differing style, with his strong preference for hiring former-military persons in key rolls.  Anecdotally speaking, a masters program classmate who was also a Naval Academy graduate mentioned that Home Depot had indeed made a push for hiring employees who were formerly Officer Grade to run their stores, casting the opportunity as entrepreneurial.  Businessweek gave several hints as to what was coming in their description of Nardelli’s style:

• The Decline of the $20 Wage - Blue Collar Workers - Middle Class - New York Times
  The $20 hourly wage, introduced on a huge scale in the middle of the last century, allowed masses of Americans with no more than a high school education to rise to the middle class. It was a marker, of sorts. And it is on its way to extinction.
  (tags: activism life todo)
• Graduates Versus Oligarchs - New York Times
  The idea that we have a rising oligarchy is much more disturbing. It suggests that the growth of inequality may have as much to do with power relations as it does with market forces. Unfortunately, that’s the real story.
  (tags: oligarchy inequality income wages democracy)

Seems like some of the econoblogs (and non-econ blogs and other sources) that I subscribe to such as Econobrowser, the NYTimes, Paul Krugman, Population Statistic, Jon Taplin, the Wall Street Journal, and the Big Picture are talking stagflation.

stagflation [wiki]: a portmanteau of the words stagnation and inflation, is a term in macroeconomics used to describe a period of high price inflation combined with slow output growth, high unemployment, or recession.

You may recall that both I and Google Trends forecast that trend some time ago. Running the same query again gives a different picture, especially across different countries and cities (for example, Europe is Googling ‘deflation‘ while the US searches for ‘stagflation‘).

Strangely enough, it appears that the extreme reactions in the overnight trades in Europe and Asia were not due to their fears over our (legitimately) precarious economy, but rather the moves of a single trader at Societe Generale SA was responsible for a $7 billion dollar loss [WSJ via Marc Andreson]:

Early details, including accounts from executives at the French bank, paint a picture of an ordinary trader (Jérôme Kerviel) who used extraordinary means to game the bank’s own system and hide massive unauthorized trades on stock indexes. Even as bank executives were scrambling to deal with the trail of destruction, they were at a loss to describe his motivations. Société Générale executives said that the early investigation indicated the trader didn’t earn a dime on his actions. They also said he appeared to be acting alone.

• blog.pmarca.com: OK, you’re right, it IS a bubble
  OK. You’re right. It’s a bubble. A huge, massive, inflating bubble. We’re all doomed. Doomed, I say!
  (tags: web2.0 bubble entrepreneurship geek web business Fun satire)
• Books Q&A: The Real Charles Schulz - Newsweek Entertainment - MSNBC.com
  ‘Peanuts’ creator Charles Schulz emerges as insecure and an emotionally distant father and husband in a new biography and documentary.
  (tags: comics newsweek charliebrown charlesschulz)

• Reporters with a twist or how reporters use Twitter
  We designed our formula so that reporTwitter stories have a high probability of reaching (the) critical mass come what may; be it through making it to the newspapers or by organic development right on this platform.
  (tags: twitter)
• 26econ.com Aaron Schiff’s website » Building interactive economic models with Excel
  (tags: Economics Excel Visualization Howto)
• Retro MacOS Theme » Blog Archive » Mac OS Theme
  Not an Apple guy. But this is cool.
  (tags: Wordpress mac theme template apple art templates)

• Machiavelli and the context in which he wrote The Prince
  A summary of Machiavelli’s Prince…
  (tags: philosophy politics writer writing)
• Tons and Tons of Design Inspiration: Concert Posters | BittBox
  Via MeFi.
  (tags: design posters inspiration art illustration music concert)
• Chinese sedan for Europe - uh-oh!
  I hope they’re not ready to bring this here?!?
  (tags: Automobiles, China, brilliance, crash test, NHTA)
• Pollmapr: Free site that allows for geographic polling.
  What’s interesting is that the service includes the ability record the result of the locations where pollsters came from using the IP address to look up city/country locations.
  (tags: Google Earth Polls Surveys KML maps)

All emphasis below (bolded) are mine.