Classes are going to be such a bore, and it’s unfortunate I’ve ran out of course choices in the summer.

Strange - years and years later, I no longer feel emotions upon losing a friend.

http://nyti.ms/ch68f3 -> Graphical debt woes, this is awfully neat.

“Greek public sector workers begin a 48-hour strike in protest at austerity measures including wage and pension cuts.”

“Already, the government’s proposals for deep spending cuts have stoked strong resentments in a country where one out of three people is employed in the civil service that, until now, has guaranteed jobs for life.”

• Bank runs – banks runs were ended by deposit insurance, yet the main cause of the most recent economic downturn, repurchase agreements (repos), are not insured. Should repos also be insured? Should all financial securities be insured? This will mitigate risk as well as profit.
• There has been a change in the form and quantity of bank liabilities in the last 25 years. Loan-selling between banks has been developed to capture more profits due to the shrinking role of traditional banking.
• The problem lies in the structure of private transaction securities that are created by banks. Historical bank panics have included bank notes, demand deposits, and now, repos. Hence, banking liabilities have vulnerability. In order to subvert bank runs, this vulnerability must be mitigated no matter what form of banking it develops into following.
• A financial crisis is a disturbance to financial markets that disrupts the market’s capacity to allocate capital – financial intermediation and hence investments come to a halt.
• The 1997 Asian financial crisis started with a banking crisis in Thailand and evolved into primarily private sector problems with debt deflation and bursting of asset bubbles; massive bank failures led to the Great Depression; the Russian crises had to do with fiscal imbalances.
• Initial capital flows (which may be profitable at that time), if unsustainable, can create this kind of crisis. Better information, early warning, and preventive measures, theoretically speaking, will improve our chances of dealing with financial crises.
• Financial crises occur as a result of: fundamentals, banks and securitized debt, private and sovereign debt, exchange rate regimes, and underlying structure and dynamics. We see: speculative attacks on exchange rates, financial panic, collapse of asset price bubbles, crises induced by moral hazard, and debt overhang. Of course, these forms of crises-inducing situations are not standalone, and often time, become closely linked to the occurrences of one another. “There is no uni-causal story”.

It is somewhat difficult, however, to envisage that Antony Flew would suddenly turn believer from atheist (I don’t think he was even on his deathbed yet) simply because life is intricate and must have been created by higher intelligence. Even if it was, it doesn’t have to be the Christian God, does it?

I have come across testimonies stating that reading the Bible calmed their hearts, and while I do admit the Psalms are beautiful, most parts of the Old Testament scared the crap out of me. If there was a God, I imagine he’d be a fairly reasonable being and not the angry old man so described in the Old Testament.

In fact, I think that God probably wouldn’t be opposed to having some sort of regular open dialogue with us, you know, “Sunday Night Cafe Talk with God”, or something?

Of course, all this God business does not alter my respect for Sir Issac Newton (did you know he was Master of the Mint, and partly responsible for the pre-WWI gold standard as well?).

I think that twentieth century economic history, despite its lack of requirements other than memorizing history, and game theory, despite the amount of brain activity it attempts to stir up within my lazy self - are my favourite two courses.

One of my favourite people has been playing computer games for the last four months, probably fifteen hours a day on average or something like that. When will my life be so blissfully inactive?