Insisto em ver Nero Wolfe

Um Cadáver de Luxo, Rex Stout
- Highlight Loc. 1138-41  | Added on Monday, November 21, 2011, 01:48 AM

— Sou o dr. Gamm. Theodore Gamm, médico. O senhor é o homem que visitou o sr. e a sra. Fleming na segunda à tarde?
Confirmei e ele continuou:
— Insisto em ver Nero Wolfe — e se eu não tivesse me afastado passaria por cima de mim.
Sem dúvida, não é assim que as coisas são feitas. Primeiro se diz alguma coisa e depois é que se insiste.

Free Banking: Theory, History and a Laissez-Faire Model (Larry J. Sechrest)

Free Banking: Theory, History and a Laissez-Faire Model (Larry J. Sechrest)
- Highlight Loc. 2046-52  | Added on Sunday, November 20, 2011, 05:33 PM

Bank failure was not common according to White. The only major bank failure during the entire period was that of the Ayr Bank in 1772. It tried to do what could not be done in this system. It attempted to expand the circulation of its notes beyond the demand. Indeed, the Ayr Bank overextended itself to the tune of about 667,000 pounds-sterling. Nevertheless, this failure did not result in a general bank panic. In fact, the Edinburgh banks experienced a perceptible increase in specie demand for only one day. The reason was that, because of the rapid note-exchange mechanism, no other major banks were caught holding large amounts of the Ayr Bank’s notes. Furthermore, because of the unlimited liability provision, all the bank’s creditors were paid in full by the bank’s 241 shareholders (White 1984a, 31–32).

Free Banking: Theory, History and a Laissez-Faire Model (Larry J. Sechrest)

Free Banking: Theory, History and a Laissez-Faire Model (Larry J. Sechrest)
- Highlight Loc. 2034-39  | Added on Sunday, November 20, 2011, 05:31 PM

An important feature of the Scottish system was the weekly note-exchange. This developed spontaneously in the late 1760s. Banks realized that in order to maximize the market for their own notes, they would need to accept their rivals’ notes at face value. That is, if consumer X is presently holding notes issued by bank A, he is unlikely to open an account with bank B unless B is willing to credit him with the face value of the banknotes he possesses. This note-exchange process involved the weekly clearing of interbank holdings of one another’s notes. It served not only to increase the marketability of banknotes relative to specie, but also to check any attempt at overissue on the part of an individual bank (White 1984a, 20–22).

ECONOMETRIA NÃO É SÓ INÚTIL: É NOCIVA

O DESEMPENHO DO MERCADO (FOCUS) E DO BACEN NA PREVISÃO DA INFLAÇÃO - COMPARAÇÃO COM MODELOS LINEARES UNIVARIADOS (rafael)
- Highlight on Page 9 | Added on Saturday, November 19, 2011, 06:37 PM

No que diz respeito às previsões do Bacen, contidas nos Relatórios de Inflação, concluímos que não superam as previsões dos modelos univariados em horizonte superior a um mês e são significativamente piores nas previsões mais do que nove meses à frente. Dessa forma, estas previsões, em horizontes superiores a um mês, devem ser tomadas como meras simulações condicionadas a cenários, não necessariamente os mais prováveis, e não devem refletir as verdadeiras expectativas do Bacen a respeito da taxa de inflação

BANCO CENTRAL HUMILHADO PELOS USUÁRIOS DE EXCEL

O DESEMPENHO DO MERCADO (FOCUS) E DO BACEN NA PREVISÃO DA INFLAÇÃO - COMPARAÇÃO COM MODELOS LINEARES UNIVARIADOS (rafael)
- Highlight on Page 9 | Added on Saturday, November 19, 2011, 06:36 PM

Em relação às previsões do mercado, concluímos que os modelos lineares superam o mercado, em habilidade preditiva, para previsões superiores a três meses à frente, e este resultado é ainda mais significativo se são consideradas apenas as Top Five (curto, médio e longo prazos).

MODELOS ECONOMÉTRICOS DESMISTIFICADOS

O DESEMPENHO DO MERCADO (FOCUS) E DO BACEN NA PREVISÃO DA INFLAÇÃO - COMPARAÇÃO COM MODELOS LINEARES UNIVARIADOS (rafael)
- Highlight on Page 9 | Added on Saturday, November 19, 2011, 06:35 PM

Através de testes de habilidade preditiva, em que as previsões contidas na Focus e nos Relatórios de Inflação foram comparadas com as de modelos univariados lineares, concluímos que não há qualquer evidência de que o mercado (Focus) ou o Bacen, em seus relatórios, prevejam a inflação com razoável grau de acurácia em horizontes suficientemente longos para nortear a política monetária

Poesia de quem?

Um Cadáver de Luxo, Rex Stout
- Highlight Loc. 137-38  | Added on Friday, November 18, 2011, 11:49 PM

 — O compromisso é às treze horas e talvez eu não vá. O almoço deve ser bom, mas depois tem um sujeito que vai ler poesia.
— Poesia de quem?
— Dele mesmo.
— Ugh!

Um Cadáver de Luxo, Rex Stout

Um Cadáver de Luxo, Rex Stout
- Highlight Loc. 119-20  | Added on Friday, November 18, 2011, 11:47 PM

O NEW YORK TIMES sabe como escrever as coisas: “Ao que tudo indica Miss Kerr não trabalhava em lugar algum nem exercia qualquer atividade.” Não se pode colocar as coisas melhor, deixando a mente aberta a todos os tipos de pensamentos.

“Luck favors the prepared,”

The Black Swan (Nassim Nicholas Taleb)
- Highlight Loc. 3689-92  | Added on Wednesday, November 16, 2011, 07:41 PM

The biotech company seemed to follow implicitly, though not explicitly, Louis Pasteur’s adage about creating luck by sheer exposure. “Luck favors the prepared,” Pasteur said, and, like all great discoverers, he knew something about accidental discoveries. The best way to get maximal exposure is to keep researching.

A salvação do mundo tem origem no perdão

Tolkien on Power and Market
- Highlight Loc. 190-95  | Added on Monday, November 14, 2011, 05:42 PM

"At this point the ‘salvation’ of the world and Frodo’s own ‘salvation’ is achieved by his previous pity and forgiveness of injury. At any point any prudent person would have told Frodo that Gollum would certainly betray him, and could rob him in the end. To ‘pity’ him, to forbear to kill him, was a piece of folly, or a mystical belief in the ultimate value-in-itself of pity and generosity even if disastrous in the world of time. He did rob him and injure him in the end – but by a ‘grace’, that last betrayal was at a precise juncture when the final evil deed was the most beneficial thing that anyone cd. have done for Frodo! By a situation created by his ‘forgiveness’, he was saved himself, and relieved of his burden." (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, p. 234).

Tolkien on Power and Market

Tolkien on Power and Market
- Highlight Loc. 61-64  | Added on Saturday, November 12, 2011, 05:05 PM

"You can make the Ring into an allegory of our own time, if you like: and allegory of the inevitable fate that waits for all attempts to defeat evil power by power" (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, p. 121).

people did not just embark on the project of inventing the wheel

The Black Swan (Nassim Nicholas Taleb)
- Highlight Loc. 3624-25  | Added on Wednesday, November 16, 2011, 07:27 PM

No journalist was present when the wheel was invented, but I am ready to bet that people did not just embark on the project of inventing the wheel (that main engine of growth) and then complete it according to a timetable.

Inventions

The Black Swan (Nassim Nicholas Taleb)
- Highlight Loc. 3619-20  | Added on Wednesday, November 16, 2011, 07:26 PM

If you think that the inventions we see around us came from someone sitting in a cubicle and concocting them according to a timetable, think again: almost everything of the moment is the product of serendipity.

Two Structural Reasons Why Government Fails

Two Structural Reasons Why Government Fails
- Highlight Loc. 26-29  | Added on Monday, November 14, 2011, 07:54 PM

What complicates this further is that a good deal of the relevant knowledge is tacit, meaning that even those who possess it cannot specify what they know.  How do you keep your balance on a bicycle or know when to pull your foot off the clutch in a manual transmission?  You know how to do those things, but explaining in detail exactlywhat you do is impossible.

Knowledge is never a “given”

Free Banking: Theory, History and a Laissez-Faire Model (Larry J. Sechrest)
- Highlight Loc. 1875-79  | Added on Friday, November 11, 2011, 11:44 PM

the knowledge of prices is “of temporary and fleeting significance” and tends to be profitable precisely to the extent that and only so long as “others do not also know it” (O’Driscoll and Rizzo 1985, 103). That is to say, useful economic knowledge is essentially a private knowledge of disequilibrium conditions. Knowledge is never a “given” for any economic agent except in the Walrasian world of eternal general equilibrium, and in that context, such “knowledge” is not really economic in nature, but merely engineering knowledge about physical production relations.

Humans act upon their interpretations of data

Free Banking: Theory, History and a Laissez-Faire Model (Larry J. Sechrest)
- Highlight Loc. 1857-61  | Added on Friday, November 11, 2011, 11:42 PM

Not only is knowledge widely dispersed, but it is also resistant to aggregation. Objective data, such as changes in specific prices, are not the basis for human action. Humans act upon their interpretations of those data, and each interpretation may be different. “A rise in the price of a given commodity, for example, will have different meanings depending on the ‘elasticity of expectations’ of the receiver. A price rise may signal higher or lower future prices when the subjective context of the data is taken into account” (O’Driscoll and Rizzo 1985, 41).

The absolute ruler

The Return of the King by Jørn K. Baltzersen
- Highlight Loc. 62-64  | Added on Friday, November 11, 2011, 01:33 AM

In this respect the accident of birth is perhaps not such a bad idea as political correctness would have us believe. Rivarol once said "The absolute ruler may be a Nero, but he is sometimes Titus or Marcus Aurelius; the people is often Nero, and never Marcus Aurelius." (Liberty or Equality, E.M.R. von Kuehnelt-Leddihn).

Majority is never right

The Return of the King by Jørn K. Baltzersen
- Highlight Loc. 47-50  | Added on Friday, November 11, 2011, 01:32 AM

The majority never has what is right on its side, I say! That is one of these society lies which a free, thinking man must rebel against. Who constitutes the majority of the inhabitants of a country? Is it the wise, or the stupid? I think we can agree that stupid people are present in a very terrible majority around the whole wide earth. But it cannot, damnit, ever be right that the stupid shall rule over the wise!

Right to vote

The Return of the King by Jørn K. Baltzersen
- Highlight Loc. 19-22  | Added on Friday, November 11, 2011, 01:28 AM

Von Kuehnelt-Leddihn himself wrote in Leftism Revisited that "[s]ometime in the coming century, people will rack their brains pondering how nations with tremendous scientific and intellectual achievements could have given uninstructed and untrained men and women the right to vote equally uninstructed and untrained people into responsible positions."

Middle Earth

The Return of the King by Jørn K. Baltzersen
- Highlight Loc. 10-12  | Added on Friday, November 11, 2011, 01:28 AM

It is commonly believed that democracy is the sound alternative to tyranny. However, it is not democracy that returns in Middle Earth. It is monarchy.

A Note On Mathematical Economics

A Note On Mathematical Economics
- Highlight Loc. 74-79  | Added on Friday, November 11, 2011, 01:22 AM

I have grave philosophic doubts as to whether the concept of cause can really be expunged from physics. But whether or not it can, it certainly cannot be from economics. For in economics, the cause is known from the beginning — human action using means directed towards ends. From this we can deduce singly determined effects, not mutually determined equations. This is another reason that mathematics is uniquely unsuited to economics.

A Note On Mathematical Economics

A Note On Mathematical Economics
- Highlight Loc. 68-74  | Added on Friday, November 11, 2011, 01:22 AM

Since knowledge in physics is never certain and absolute, positivists can never understand how economists can arrive at certain truths; therefore they accuse economists of being "a priori" and "dogmatic." Similarly, cause in physics tends to be fragile, and positivists have tended to replace the concept of cause by one of "mutual determination." Mathematical equations are uniquely suited to depicting a state of mutual determination of factors, rather than singly determined cause and effect relations. Hence, again, mathematics are singularly suitable for physics.

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

The Napoleon of Notting Hill (G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton and W. Graham (Walford Graham) Robertson)
- Highlight on Page 23 | Loc. 343-50  | Added on Friday, November 11, 2011, 01:14 AM

To avoid the possible chance of hereditary diseases or such things, we have abandoned hereditary monarchy. The King of England is chosen like a juryman upon an official rotation list. Beyond that the whole system is quietly despotic, and we have not found it raise a murmur." "Do you really mean," asked the President, incredulously, "that you choose any ordinary man that comes to hand and make him despot—that you trust to the chance of some alphabetical list...." "And why not?" cried Barker. "Did not half the historical nations trust to the chance of the eldest sons of eldest sons, and did not half of them get on tolerably well? To have a perfect system is impossible; to have a system is indispensable. All hereditary monarchies were a matter of luck: so are alphabetical monarchies. Can you find a deep philosophical meaning in the difference between the Stuarts and the Hanoverians? Believe me, I will undertake to find a deep philosophical meaning in the contrast between the dark tragedy of the A's, and the solid success of the B's."

A Note On Mathematical Economics

A Note On Mathematical Economics
- Highlight Loc. 60-63  | Added on Friday, November 11, 2011, 01:21 AM

verbal logic permits each law to be meaningful as it is deduced. The laws of economics are already known to be meaningfully true; they do not have to borrow their meaning from "operational" testing. The most that mathematics could possibly do, therefore, is to laboriously translate verbal symbols into meaningless formal symbols and then, at each step, retranslate them into words.

A Note On Mathematical Economics

A Note On Mathematical Economics
- Highlight Loc. 42-49  | Added on Friday, November 11, 2011, 01:19 AM

Why is mathematics so useful in physics? Precisely because the axioms themselves, and the laws deduced from them, are unknown and in fact meaningless. Their meaning is only "operational," since they are meaningful only insofar as they can explain given facts. Thus, the equation of the law of gravitation is in itself meaningless; it is only meaningful to us in relation to the facts that we humans observe and that the law can explain. Consequently, mathematics, which performs deductive operations on meaningless symbols, is perfectly suited for the methods of physics.

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

The Napoleon of Notting Hill (G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton and W. Graham (Walford Graham) Robertson)
- Highlight on Page 23 | Loc. 341-43  | Added on Friday, November 11, 2011, 01:12 AM

We have established now in England, the thing towards which all systems have dimly groped, the dull popular despotism without illusions. We want one man at the head of our State, not because he is brilliant or virtuous, but because he is one man and not a chattering crowd.

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

The Napoleon of Notting Hill (G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton and W. Graham (Walford Graham) Robertson)
- Highlight on Page 15 | Loc. 176-78  | Added on Thursday, November 10, 2011, 09:42 AM

He discovered the fact that all romantics know—that adventures happen on dull days, and not on sunny ones. When the chord of monotony is stretched most tight, then it breaks with a sound like song.

Prophets of the 20th century

The Napoleon of Notting Hill (G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton and W. Graham (Walford Graham) Robertson)
- Highlight on Page 10 | Loc. 96-104  | Added on Thursday, November 10, 2011, 01:59 AM

Then there was the opposite school. There was Mr. Edward Carpenter, who thought we should in a very short time return to Nature, and live simply and slowly as the animals do. And Edward Carpenter was followed by James Pickie, D.D. (of Pocohontas College), who said that men were immensely improved by grazing, or taking their food slowly and continuously, after the manner of cows. And he said that he had, with the most encouraging results, turned city men out on all fours in a field covered with veal cutlets. Then Tolstoy and the Humanitarians said that the world was growing more merciful, and therefore no one would ever desire to kill. And Mr. Mick not only became a vegetarian, but at length declared vegetarianism doomed ("shedding," as he called it finely, "the green blood of the silent animals"), and predicted that men in a better age would live on nothing but salt. And then came the pamphlet from Oregon (where the thing was tried), the pamphlet called "Why should Salt suffer?" and there was more trouble.