Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed

Jeb Corliss Flies Wingsuit Through Cave
Nocera on Solyndra
Smil on Yergin: Coal Over Oil?
Gold, Technology and the Death of Currencies

Jeb Corliss Flies Wingsuit Through Cave

Posted: 24 Sep 2011 11:35 AM PDT

Earlier today in China, wingsuit flyer Jeb Corliss soars from helicopter through mountain cave/crack. Outrageous.

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Nocera on Solyndra

Posted: 24 Sep 2011 11:24 AM PDT

I get Joe Nocera’s point in his latest column that there is less scandal in the Solyndra loan affair than meets the eye, but I’m still stuck on this paragraph here, which seems key:

But if we could just stop playing gotcha for a second, we might realize that federal loan programs — especially loans for innovative energy technologies — virtually require the government to take risks the private sector won't take. Indeed, risk-taking is what these programs are all about. Sometimes, the risks pay off. Other times, they don't.

What does this mean? It seems to imply that federal loan programs exist to take risks that the private sector won’t, which is superficially plausible, but troubling if taken very far down that road. There are, after all, good reasons why the private sector won’t take certain commercialization risks, and it’s not obvious that the Federal government is better equipped to do so. The argument changes in basic research, of course.

Smil on Yergin: Coal Over Oil?

Posted: 24 Sep 2011 09:33 AM PDT

Good point by Vaclav Smil in his review of Dan Yergin’s latest:

The book, which is sliced into more than 400 short sections, covers policy and economics more than science and technology. Its analysis of energy sources is uneven. Coal, for example, warrants a single page. Yet during the twentieth century, coal supplied the world with more energy than did oil. In 2010, coal combustion accounted for 30% of all global commercial energy (compared with nearly 34% for oil) and 40% of electricity generation.

via Energy: Burning desires : Nature : Nature Publishing Group.

Gold, Technology and the Death of Currencies

Posted: 24 Sep 2011 09:30 AM PDT

Interesting insight from a guest writer at Baseline Scenario:

But I do know that in the year 2160 (give or take a century) gold will no longer be viewed as money. Why? For the same reason that all commodity based money systems have collapsed—technology made their production too cheap. Gold bugs like to talk about how every paper based money has failed (or will fail), but they ignore the equally miserable track record of commodity based money systems. For example, the cowry shell, which was used in ancient China and India, a weight of barley (the shekel), copper, cigarettes, or that most insidious of monopolistic money systems—salt.

So how did these money systems fail? Did their cultures implode? Did their governments fail? Quite the contrary, all commodity based money systems were destroyed by one simple factor—technology. At some point, technology enabled low cost production of the commodity, and the currency collapsed.

via The Price of Gold in the Year 2160 « The Baseline Scenario.