Month: February 2016

Central banks buying assets

Central banks around the world could raise rates of price inflation, and boost aggregate demand, if they were allowed to buy corporate bonds and other higher-yielding assets. Admittedly this could require changes in law and custom in many countries There is no economic theory which says central banks could not do this, as supposed liquidity traps would not apply. These are not nearly equivalent assets with nearly equivalent yields.

Atmospheric rivers

the solution to the california drought: atmospheric rivers:

Geologic evidence shows that truly massive floods, caused by rainfall alone, have occurred in California every 100 to 200 years. Such floods are likely caused by atmospheric rivers: narrow bands of water vapor 2 km above the ocean that extend for 1000s of km.

in fact, this happened in 1862

The cataclysm cut off telegraph communication with the East Coast, swamped the state’s new capital, and submerged the entire Central Valley under 4.5m of water.

2023-05-05: Also known as an Arkstorm.

Climate change is expected to increase the risk of severe flooding from a hypothetical ARkStorm, with runoff 200 to 400% above historical values for the Sierra Nevada in part due to a decrease in the portion of precipitation that falls as snow, as well as an increase in the amount of water that storms can carry. The likelihood of the event outlined in the ARkStorm scenario is now once every 25-50 years, with projected economic losses of over $1 trillion

Malheur terrorists

It was clear to me, though, that somebody would die. Such certitude as these men and women possess demands blood sacrifice to justify itself. There were too many armed people in, and circling, the occupation, with too many varying levels of sanity and too many varying motivations for being there. “You can’t not give an cm and be assured of a peaceful outcome. If it came down to a violent showdown, we’re willing to pay the price.” Walking around the refuge parking lot and buildings, I saw a lot of gray beards and “We the People” caps and camo watch caps covering thinning hair or bald pates. The weapons and the tactical vests lent a seriousness to men disappearing into the irrelevance of late middle age. Guns, for as long as we have had them, have given undue impetus to arguments that lack merit or reason, given credence to delusional rants.

Relativistic hydrodynamics

Researchers document their discovery of electrons in graphene behaving like a fluid. To make this observation, the team improved methods to create ultra-clean graphene* and developed a new way to measure its thermal conductivity. When the strongly interacting particles in graphene were driven by an electric field, they behaved not like individual particles but like a fluid that could be described by hydrodynamics. “Physics we discovered by studying black holes and string theory, we’re seeing in graphene. This is the first model system of relativistic hydrodynamics in a metal.”

Cheap oil has consequences

cheap oil, while great for crushing odious regimes, does cause some collateral damage.

The sense that falling oil is bad for stocks is mostly a matter of timing and conspicuousness. The bad parts of the oil plunge are hitting now: the credit downgrades, the defaults, the investment cutbacks, the layoffs of roughnecks. They’re making news and rattling people’s confidence. Eventually, the money freed up by cheap oil will leak into other parts of the economy.