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My latest in Slate, on a new Democratic mutual fund.
Posted by dan at 09:59 AM
My latest in Slate, on pick-your-own farms.
Of course, it can't hold a candle to what is likely the best writing about apple picking. Take it away, Robert Frost:
Robert Frost (1874–1963). North of Boston. 1915.
10. After Apple-picking
MY long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap 35
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it’s like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.
Posted by dan at 08:31 AM
Old conventional wisdom: Hong Kong is the new New York/.
New conventional wisdom: Hong Kong is the new Gary, Indiana.
Jane Spencer reports in the Wall Street Journal:
During the past five years he spent in Time Warner Inc.'s office here, Todd Hodgson watched the city's skyline disappear under a gray cloud of smog.As the pollution worsened, Mr. Hodgson, a vice president at the company, began suffering from coughs and sore throats. His children, three and six years old, were constantly at the doctor's office with asthma and chest infections.
Last summer, Mr. Hodgson decided he'd had enough. "The money and the perks just weren't enough to keep us there anymore," says Mr. Hodgson, who relocated his family to Australia in August. "You can drink bottled water. But with the air -- you have to breathe it."
Three years after an outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome battered Hong Kong's economy, the city is facing a new challenge. Senior executives at companies including Morgan Stanley and Marriott International Inc. are increasingly vocal about the negative impact of pollution on business. Like Mr. Hodgson, a growing number of foreign executives -- and even some companies -- are leaving the city, citing the air pollution.
There is good reason for their concern. Last week, the World Health Organization released new air-quality guidelines and issued a warning about the health consequences of urban air pollution. WHO says levels of particulate matter -- the tiny flakes of soot, dust and ash that are considered the most dangerous form of air pollution -- shouldn't exceed 20 micrograms per cubic meter. Roadside particulate levels in Hong Kong averaged 75 micrograms per cubic meter last year, according to Civic Exchange, a local think tank.
Hong Kong's overall air quality has been declining for the past six years as booming industry in mainland China sends clouds of soot and toxic gases wafting across the harbor into the city. In addition, local power plants and diesel-fueled traffic fill the narrow streets with foul air that gets trapped at street level by the city's skyscrapers. Some residents walk about wearing surgical face masks. Researchers at Hong Kong University say local air pollution contributes to at least 2,000 premature deaths a year.
While Hong Kong still has better air quality than many other cities in Asia, including Beijing, it lags far behind most cities in the developed world with equally sophisticated economies. Levels of particulate matter are roughly 40% higher in Hong Kong than in Los Angeles, the most polluted city in the U.S.
Posted by dan at 02:52 PM
Justin Lahart looks at the small, illiquid market in housing futures contracts in today's Wall Street Journal.
Think the housing market is a mess, now? Take a look at what home-price futures say is coming down Main Street.In May, futures contracts based on home prices began trading on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. You buy a contract for, say, $50,000. If prices go up or down by 10%, it's worth $5,000 more or less. Investors buy or sell such contracts based on where they think prices are going.
The contracts suggest price drops by next summer for average single-family homes will range from 5.9% in the Chicago area to 8.5% in San Diego and Miami areas. A contract based on 10 regions suggests a 7.2% decline.
Because they represent the best guesses of informed people with skin in the game, futures markets are often pretty good at predicting, well, the future. Washington types have closely followed the political futures market run by the University of Iowa ever since it called the 1992 presidential tally more accurately than major polls.
But given that housing-price declines usually take awhile to unfold, even housing skeptics are surprised by the futures' predictions. "I would have expected slower [declines] than that," says Yale University professor Robert Shiller, a well-known housing bear who created the market's underlying home-price indexes with Wellesley College professor Karl Case.
The market currently has about 1,500 outstanding contracts. Mr. Shiller thinks it's possible that there are so few traders that investors are unwilling to buy the illiquid contracts unless they get a substantial discount -- a discount that translates into a prediction of lower prices.
Posted by dan at 08:43 AM
From the Wall Street Journal's editorial today.
Getting out of the statistical weeds, the news here is that the U.S. has a very tight labor market -- which is now translating into significant wage gains. Over the past 12 months wages have climbed by 4%, which is the biggest gain since 2001 and which economist Brian Wesbury points out is higher than the 3.3% average annual wage growth of the last 25 years.
Once again, the absurdity of talking only of nominal wage gains in a period of elevated inflation should be evident to anybody purporting to write about economic issues for an educated audience. So, too, should the absurdity of comparing nominal wage gains in today's period of elevated inflation to nominal wage gains in a recent period of depressed inflation. Four percent growth in wages in 12 months is indeed somewhat impressive, but not when inflation is up 3.8 percent in those same 12 months. If we all were paid in nominal dollars but paid bills only in real dollars, we'd all be really rich by now.
Posted by dan at 08:39 AM
France bans public smoking. What's next, bans on public displays of existentialism?
Posted by dan at 08:36 AM
My latest column in the New York Times.
Posted by dan at 08:03 AM