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On Sat, Feb 09, 2008 at 07:52:01PM -0200, Gerhard Fiedler wrote:
> William "Chops" Westfield wrote:
> 
> > Really?  Wasn't the duration of "The Cold War" pretty much concurrent
> > with the period of the largest economic, technological, and scientific
> > growth anywhere, ever?  
> 
> Without going into much detail, I think "anywhere, ever" is a pretty strong
> statement. How much do you know about economic development in China 2000
> years ago? Probably not much more than I do :)
> 
> Besides, how measure each of the three (economic, technological, and
> scientific growth), in a form that can be compared with everywhere else, at
> all times? And once (if) you find those indicators -- do they really
> indicate growth, or do we just "cook the books" and use numbers that rise
> because we're so hooked on "growth"?

Not to mention the really tricky game of to what extent are the economic
indicators measuring current conditions or expected conditions? If a
risky event is on the horizon the indicators, like the mentioned dow
jones average, should go *down* to account for the increased risk even
though present conditions haven't changed a bit. Similarly technological
growth might not help a bit if the impact of those advances aren't
generally known yet, or haven't solidified.

At least the nice thing about market based indicators is that they will
take into account perceived risk of governments and corporations cooking
the books. 'Can't say I've actually looked into it, but I bet you could
find examples of that in various communist countries around the world
with the markets discounting for corruption. But, that's only percieved
risk, not actual... Enron was only "discounted" once the scandal came to
light, and then whole sections of the economy got "discounted"

- -- 
http://petertodd.org
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