From Decius:

Some really nice infoporn over at The Big Picture right now. The linked chart compares the assets of various nations organized into geopolitical buckets.

Notice that Asia, for all its mindshare, is still relatively tiny, and the U.S., despite her plethora of self-inflicted woes, remains globally dominant.

In other words, America can screw up an aweful lot for a long time before international competitors are really a threat to her economic position. (Although a commenter in the thread observes that U.S. asset prices may be unfairly high due to foreign currencies being pegged to the dollar.) Also worth a look is this chart which vaugely compares the GDP of various nations with various U.S. States. I'm sure you're heard before that California has roughly the GDP of France (and half the population) but I didn't know that Texas has a comparable GDP to Canada. And Georgia, oh Georgia, if only your ski slopes were as nice as your GDP...

Its worth comparing top lists for GDP between 1995 and 2005. There have been some significant changes. For example, Canada appears to be falling behind in international terms, although I don't know if that is due to failings on her part, or simply that far more populous countries are starting to get their acts together. Brazil is rocketing up, but they have 6 times the population of Canada. Canada's population is comparable to California, but it is spread out over a far wider area, which probably makes it less efficient. (I also think that weather plays a role. Snow plows cost money.)

As various countries begin to figure out how to operate effective economies and stable politics you'd think that these charts would normalize toward a reflection of population differences, with some effects due to geographic constraints such as those I mentioned for Canada. Of course, I'm describing a vision for world peace. I think we're a long way off, but it appears progress is being made.

A longer term investment in ETFs targetting countries that have moved significantly between 1995 and 2005 might be a very sound idea if coupled with a reasonable understanding of and monitoring of the political and economic stability of the countries in question. Of course, I'm not an economist, so take that with a grain of salt.

The Big Picture | How big IS the US anyway?

Milton Friedman, the Nobel-prize winning economist who helped shape and define free-market economic theory, died Thursday at the age of 94 in San Francisco.

RIP.. We owe much to Friedman.

Update: This brief article about an experience an editor had playing tennis with Friedman says much about this tact and character..

Nobel economist Milton Friedman dead at 94 - Nov. 16, 2006

Internet traffic in Zimbabwe has come close to a standstill after an international satellite firm slashed its bandwidth because the cash-starved government failed to pay the bill.

The Zimbabwe Internet Service Providers Association (ZISPA) said on its Web site that TelOne's connection had been severed, causing an "almost collapse" of the Internet in the country. It said ZISPA would lobby the government to help it pay the debt.

Chingwaru said TelOne had asked the government for permission to charge big companies in foreign currency to avoid being cut off in the future.

Truly amazing... Mugabe is running such a poor show over there, that companies want permission to charge customers in foreign currency, because the central banking system is broken. One of Stratfor's recent podcasts suggested that Mugabe's government is close to collapse, so this is not that shocking.

Zimbabwe's Net crawls due to unpaid debt | Tech News on ZDNet

Thomas Dichter has published an essay that is critical of "microfinance" -- the practice of making small loans to poor people in developing countries, the funds from which are intended to bootstrap entrepreneurial ventures, thus providing lasting means to move to self-reliance.

This is interesting. I've recently jumped on the microfinance bandwagon, in terms of thinking its a key piece of the puzzle needed to start making a dent in global poverty. I have not yet had the chance to read this article closely and think about it. I've only browsed over it. I'll probably have more to say later.

The first thing that comes to mind as a comment, is this seems to be looking at microfinance as a whole, and not putting the focus on its usage in a particular market. Not all the global poor are in the same situation. There are some key factors in the equation that must be in place in order for a microfinance strategy to work. A key one, is a non-corrupt government. If people can't trust the state, they are certainly not going to trust the bank. It also requires something along the lines of SHG communities in place. In the same way that everyone needs investment education and advice, any community that is going to adopt any form of modern banking or lending, needs to be taught and understand how it works.

These factors all limit the number of places such strategies can be crafted drastically. I'd like to see an India specific critique along these lines. Microfinance is not just a matter of going somewhere and giving out small loans. There is much that must come with it in order for it to have the desired affect.

Boing Boing: Does microcredit help the developing world

By making press freedom a condition for its loans, the World Bank would protect the media, allowing them to defend the public's right to transparency and accountable government.

It is in the World Bank's interest to have open marketplaces in the countries it gives loans to. It is arguable that an open marketplace is not possible without a free media. This makes sense.

World Bank should link loans to press freedom - Editorials & Commentary - International Herald Tribune

Gore offered encouragement to a crowd of about 1,500 people -- many of them students at business schools throughout the country -- who had gathered for a sold-out conference put on by Net Impact, an organization that promotes social change through business.

"You're on the right path," he said. "Millions of people are searching for a better way to find meaning in their lives when they routinely encounter a business environment and a marketplace that seems too frequently to clash with what they see in their personal lives as right and good and just."

"Market fundamentalism . . . has denigrated our abilities as free citizens to make decisions together about the deepest values that we hold," Gore said. "We need to reaffirm that we have a right to assert values even if a supply and demand equation says, 'That's not efficient.'"

Part of the problem, he said, is that the marketplace is obsessively focused on improving quarterly profits. This routinely forces business leaders to push deeper values aside.

"Managers face pressures from their institutional investors to make sure they hit those projections," he said. "The quality of our lives get excluded if the time frame is so impossibly short and the focus is so impossibly narrow."

Gore closed by encouraging the young audience to put more conscience in business. He suggested they model themselves on a perhaps unlikely group, the Texas Rangers, the band of lawmen who brought order to the Wild West: "One of their principles was, right is still right even if nobody's doing it, and wrong is still wrong even if everybody's doing it."

I like the title of one of the talks: "Living Your Values and Effecting Change through Tempered Radicalism"

It seems that people often forget that they vote with their dollars. That goes for spending as well as investing. Business is a battle field for ideas as much as the media. Gore seems to be focusing on both in recent times.

Gore's 'generation' seeks true values in business

The drama of Tiger Leaping Gorge is not as easy to follow as a single man standing in front of a tank in Tiananmen. It involves the complex interactions among the Chinese countryside, the N.G.O.'s and local organizations working there, the developers looking to build there, and a still heavy-handed Communist Party.

But somewhere in this swirl of forces is where China's future stability is going to be shaped - or not. No wonder China's leaders have made building a "harmonious society" central to their next five-year plan. Wish them well, because how they do will affect everything from the air you breathe to the clothes you wear and the interest on your mortgage.

The full text is available via The Peking Duck, as well as several other of Friedman columns on China.

Thomas Friedman: How to Look at China

The Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded Monday to a pair of American and Israeli researchers who defined chess-like strategies in politics and business that can be applied to arms races, price wars and actual warfare.

Game Theorists Win Nobel Prize for Economics

Wall Street shuddered yesterday after Alan Greenspan, the United States’ central banker, warned American homebuyers that they risk a crash if they continue to drive property prices higher.

Greenspan: You are on the way to destruction.
Greenspan: You have no chance to refinance, make your time.
Greenspan: All your house are belong to bank.
Consumer: Take off all interest-only loan!
Consumer: For great equity!

The meme that keeps on giving...

US heading for house price crash, Greenspan tells buyers

Friedman checks in on the Energy Bill:

Sorry to be so cynical, but an energy bill that doesn't enjoin our auto companies to sharply improve their mileage standards is just not serious. This bill is what the energy expert Gal Luft calls "the sum of all lobbies." While it contains some useful provisions, it also contains massive pork slabs dished out to the vested interests who need them least - like oil companies - and has no overarching strategy to deal with the new world.

The White House? It blocked an amendment that would have required the president to find ways to cut oil use by one million barrels a day by 2015 - on the grounds that it might have required imposing better fuel economy on our carmakers.

Many technologies that could make a difference are already here - from hybrid engines to ethanol. All that is needed is a gasoline tax of $2 a gallon to get consumers and Detroit to change their behavior and adopt them. As Representative Edward Markey noted, auto fuel economy peaked at 26.5 miles per gallon in 1986, and "we've been going backward every since" - even though we have the technology to change that right now. "This is not rocket science," he rightly noted. "It's auto mechanics."

We do need to hold the auto manufactures' asses to the fire to get any change in this area. I can easily demonstrate why:

I am a typical American. I want a black Dodge Charger SRT8 with a 6.1L Hemi V-8 and all its massive crushing horsepower and torque. I want to pass traffic at 125-Mph in the right lane. I want people to hear the lyrics to Hang on St. Christopher, Highway Chile, Crosstown Traffic, Bad Habit, Novacane, and Search and Destroy spiking through their minds as my rumbling jet black road warrior speed machine glides by them at a pace all men both fear and lust after deep inside. When I hit the highway, I am the American Mad Max, and you best obey the golden rule of the highway, "Get the fuck out of the way".

I am more than willing to admit that I am part of "the problem" as I leave a trail of earth polluting fumes, shattered nerves, and glowing asphalt along the many links of the most wonderful Eisenhower Highway System. On this highway system, I am the worlds forgotten boy, the run away son of the nuclear a-bomb. The one who has already decided where they are going to be in 45 seconds and exactly how they are going to get there. Somebody has got to save my soul.

So look out honey, we best start using technology. My road-warror tendency is not a thing that can be defeated. It must be met head on and subverted with something other than high gas prices and speeding tickets. Where the hell is the HEV I'll settle for? Given gas prices and insurance costs, its clear a battle is already being waged against me, specifically. I must be pacified, I cannot be defeated. The United States must negotiate with my kind of terrorist. Its up to the auto industry to do it. With the right kind of economic concession, I might be willing to change my ways.

Too Much Pork and Too Little Sugar - New York Times