Finance and Investment

There are numerous books written ostensibly to guide, advise and enlighten us on how to invest or get wealthy – and yes I am guilty! One Ken Fisher, a practical and rich man who obviously loves simplicity wrote a book called ‘The Only Three Questions That Count: Investing by Knowing What Others Don’t.’In these uncertain times it may pay you to ask yourself the following, in relation to your investments:1. What do I believe that is actually false?...

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Who’s Counting

House sales are down 30 per cent compared with a year ago, with prices expected to fall 5 per cent this year and remain flat for the next five years.That's the grim prediction from Westpac's economists who say residential property prices have "screeched to a halt, with essentially zero price movement in the past eight months". Prices stopped dead in April last year, they say, after rising by $8000 a month. Had it not been for New Zealand's strong...

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Everyday Money

University of Chicago economists Kerwin Kofi Charles and Erik Hurst along with Nikolai Roussanov of the University of Pennsylvania, have challenged common assumptions about luxury. Conspicuous consumption, this research suggests, is not an unambiguous signal of personal affluence. It’s a sign of belonging to a relatively poor group. Visible luxury thus serves less to establish the owner’s positive status as affluent than to fend off the negative...

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Womenomics

A recent article in the Economist asks is the European Union at heart a female project? Margot Wallstrom, a vice-president and thus the most senior woman in the European Commission, rather thinks so. She points to the EU's fondness for compromise and listening, and its rejection of horrid things like conflict. Ms Wallstrom, who is charged with selling the EU project to the public, suggests that this is a good reason for giving women a bigger share...

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Musings and Amusings

You probably didn’t know this (nor did I!) but the world’s top eight economists (including five Nobelists) were asked to prioritise 30 different solutions to ten of the world’s biggest problems. I thought it made fascinating reading given some of media obsessions.Supplying the micronutrients vitamin A and zinc to 80 percent of the 140 million children who lack them in developing countries is ranked as the highest priority. The cost is $60 million...

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Why?

I have recently read and enjoyed Kluge (Subtitled 'The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind') by Gary Marcus. Kluge means ‘a clumsy or inelegant solution to a problem.’ His book explains why, despite the fact that humans have been known to be eaten by bears, sharks and assorted other carnivores, we love to place ourselves at the top of the food chain. And, despite our unwavering conviction that we are smarter than the computers we invented, members...

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