Archive for November, 2009

Who Adjusts?

Now that things have slowed down a bit, regular posting should resume. There's been a lot going on in the past few weeks, but I'm going to let most of it pass since I'm late to the party. In a recent e-mail, Dr. Oatley mentioned that he thought that my regular postings on financial regulation were somewhat missing the point: the real blame for the economic crisis lies with the large external imbalances that have been building over the past decade. Even though I think that regulatory regimes are interesting and important, I think Dr. Oatley is exactly right to emphasize macroeconomic factors. So I was interested to read ECB Executive Board member Lorenzo Bini Smaghi's recent take on the same topic: A strengthening of the IMF was agreed after the Asian crisis in the 1990’s, and the G-7 summit in Cologne in 1999 mandated the Fund to play a strong surveillance role to ensure greater transparency and encourage early adjustment by countries with unsustainable balance-of-payments positions. But, over the last decade, the expectations raised by this mandate have not been met. Some emerging economies did not let their currencies float but, instead, continued to peg them at undervalued exchange rates in order to promote their exports and build up reserves as a form of insurance in case of crisis.

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Dell brings Chrome OS to its Netbook

With an experimental project, Dell has adapted Google's browser-based operating system to its Mini 10v Netbook.

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mortgage calculator,mortgage rates refinancing: Paying the mortgage

How to pay your mortgage ?

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Refinance Mortgage Savings Calculator | MORTGAGECALCULATO-R.COM

Have a look at the figures for monthly payment , term, and the breakeven date. See if the mortgage calculators come anywhere near agreeing. Like the scoring in the old Olympics, throw out the high and low numbers and average the rest to ...

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The World According to Americans

From Barry Ritholtz , via The Faculty Lounge :

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Self Employed Mortgage Calculators 1.0.0 self-employed-mortgage …

Tags: additional payment calculator, appearance, apr calculator, bankruptcy, calculator, calculators, finance, home loan, home loan calculators, loan calculator, mortgage, mortgage calculators , novice, scripts, self employed mortgage, ...

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Happy Thanksgiving

A few years back, after being saved from death by a medical procedure, Daniel Dennett gave thanks for goodness : Yes, I did have an epiphany. I saw with greater clarity than ever before in my life that when I say "Thank goodness!" this is not merely a euphemism for "Thank God!" (We atheists don't believe that there is any God to thank.) I really do mean thank goodness! There is a lot of goodness in this world, and more goodness every day, and this fantastic human-made fabric of excellence is genuinely responsible for the fact that I am alive today. It is a worthy recipient of the gratitude I feel today, and I want to celebrate that fact here and now. To whom, then, do I owe a debt of gratitude? To the cardiologist who has kept me alive and ticking for years, and who swiftly and confidently rejected the original diagnosis of nothing worse than pneumonia. To the surgeons, neurologists, anesthesiologists, and the perfusionist, who kept my systems going for many hours under daunting circumstances. To the dozen or so physician assistants, and to nurses and physical therapists and x-ray technicians and a small army of phlebotomists so deft that you hardly know they are drawing your blood, and the people who brought the meals, kept my room clean, did the mountains of laundry generated by such a messy case, wheel-chaired me to x-ray, and so forth. These people came from Uganda, Kenya, Liberia, Haiti, the Philippines, Croatia, Russia, China, Korea, India—and the United States, of course—and I have never seen more impressive mutual respect, as they helped each other out and checked each other's work. But for all their teamwork, this local gang could not have done their jobs without the huge background of contributions from others. I remember with gratitude my late friend and Tufts colleague, physicist Allan Cormack, who shared the Nobel Prize for his invention of the c-t scanner

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Calculate a mortgage monthly payment to get the best deal | The …

Mortgage calculators can help you immensely when you calculate a mortgage monthly payment . What are the factors that you need to consider when you calculate a mortgage? Take the monthly principal as well as interest payment into account ...

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Tips for Conveying How Busy and Important you are to Your Colleagues

Feminist Law Profs Blog and The Faculty Lounge put up two great and funny posts on ways to look productive to your colleagues.

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Monthly Mortgage Payment Ideas With An Interest Calculator

You should always keep an eye on the fixed interest rates because refinancing your mortgage could be a very good option if rates have gone down. Use a mortgage calculator to see how much your payment will drop and then figure out how ...

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Mortgage Calculator Canada - Www.Mortgagecalculatorcanada.com …

Well, a Mortgage calculator is an interactive tool. To provide you an idea about how much you can borrow and schedule your loan payment , Mortgage Calculator provides information like interest rate and loan term. ...

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The Perils of Debt

Very interesting column in the New Yorker by UNC-Chapel Hill graduate James Surowiecki on the American tax code and the incentives built into the tax code for individuals and businesses to take on increasing amounts of debt. He runs a blog over at the New Yorker called " The Balance Sheet ."Here is an excerpt from the column: The government doesn’t make people go into debt, of course. It just nudges them in that direction. Individuals are able to write off all their mortgage interest, up to a million dollars, and companies can write off all the interest on their debt, but not things like dividend payments. This gives the system what economists call a “debt bias.” It encourages people to make smaller down payments and to borrow more money than they otherwise would, and to tie up more of their wealth in housing than in other investments. Likewise, the system skews the decisions that companies make about how to fund themselves. Companies can raise money by reinvesting profits, raising equity (selling shares), or borrowing

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Mortgage Payment Calculator | home refinancing calculator

A mortgage payment calculator is the first thing most people looking for when considering refinancing a mortgage , or buying a new home. Using a calculator , you can apply today's interest rates to an amount of a mortgage again, ...

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I Have Two Words…

... for Emmanuel : 1937 .

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The Return of "When Walloons and Flemings Collide"?

Ingrid Robeyns says that the selection of Belgium PM Herman Van Rompuy as the first president of the E.U. is very good news for the E.U. but very bad news for Belgium : I n the last years I’ve blogged here, once in a while, on the political instability of Belgian politics, indeed perhaps even the instability of the very future of Belgium; and Van Rompuy seemed to have been the only one able to bring calm back, and at least lead a more-or-less functioning government. His professional skills and talents in making compromises in extremely difficult situations will certainly be very useful in Babylonian Europe; but who will rescue Belgium? How long will it take for the Belgian government to have a new PM, and is there anyone to be found with the same authority that Van Rompuy has been able to command? Tonight Belgium will celebrate that this little country has been able to achieve something powerful, but tomorrow it will wake up with headackes… My previous post , also motivated by Robeyns, is here. Robeyns' previous writings here . This remains one of my favorite civil controversies

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PSA

The annual meeting of the Peace Science Society begins today (Friday) in Chapel Hill at the Franklin Hotel. It's not too late to register, and registration is free for those with institutional memberships (i.e. for those whose universities pay a blanket fee covering all faculty and students). The web site, including list of presentations, is here . There are many presentations of interest to IPE students, conflict students, and others as well. And IPE@UNC will be well-represented.

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Asus packs an Eee PC Netbook with Nvidia Ion and a dual-core Intel Atom

Hot on the heels of the well-regarded HP Mini 311, Asus has moved the Netbook bar forward by taking a 12-inch Netbooks chassis and including both Nvidia's Ion graphics and a dual-core version of Intel's Atom processor.

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Use a Mortgage Calculator To Determine Monthly Payment Before …

When a person is looking to purchase a new home, one of the most common questions these people have is what is the amount of the monthly mortgage payments? It.

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Lessons in Bad Governance

Brad DeLong says "Electricity shortages in a country whose sole export is energy are truly a miraculous thing. It takes a very special government to produce them." Which government do you think he's referring to? It could only be one : This country may be an energy colossus, with the largest conventional oil reserves outside the Middle East and one of the world’s mightiest hydroelectric systems, but that has not prevented it from enduring serious electricity and water shortages that seem only to be getting worse. ... “We’re paying for the mistakes of this president and his incompetent managers,” said Aixa López, 39, president of the Committee of Blackout Victims, which has organized protests in several cities. In some cities, protesters have left household appliances on the steps of state electricity companies

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Great Moments in History

So the Velvet Revolution began with a lie . The fall of the Berlin Wall was just a misunderstanding .

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