The Cranky Finance Prof Spouts Off

This is a mixed bag of economics, finance, and political philosophy.
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  • Jeff Oxman

On the Pursuit of Happiness Dec 14, 2014

Don't try to be happy. While the freedom to pursue happiness is guaranteed by the Declaration of Independence, the goal of actually being happy is a destructive end. There are two reasons pursuing happiness is destructive: a. As humans, we overweight the short-run and underweight the long-run. This can lead us to clearly destructive behavior like overindulgence in alcohol, drugs, food, and other vices. b. It can cause us to think that we should be happy all the time. That means we discount the value of pain, discomfort, assorted difficulties, and even periods of calmness where we aren't really happy...

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Self-reliance Dec 7, 2014

I'm guilty. I am a thief. I stole this title from Ralph W. Emerson. I am going to dwell on what his main theme in the essay "Self-reliance" means in today's American culture. I read the essay as part of a seven-year plan to read the Gateway to the Great Books (of the Western World) and The Great Books of Western World. I'm following the plan laid out here, by Dr. J of Faulkner University. I'm about 2.5 years behind, so I just read Self-reliance this past week. The theme, as I understand the essay, is that a person should...

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Not if but when investing Nov 29, 2014

Predicting the timing of a financial crisis, be it stock, bond, or currency, is a mug's game. The best neoclassical models available show more false positives than Keynesian economists have wrong policies. Using ABCT doesn't really help us with timing, either. What's good about ABCT, more than real business cycle models and their ilk, is that it tells us when conditions are ripe for a crisis. Low central bank rates for a while now? Check. Lots of monetary 'stimulus?' Check. But we've had these conditions for a few years now. It's hard to know when the crisis & crash will...

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