AI and Geoeconomics

          Famous Samurai in Battle - Hideyo A Zero-Sum Game “Currency war” is ministerial parlance for lowering the value of your nation’s currency so your exports are cheaper and your imports more expensive. That helps domestic growth. It can also drive up inflation—which in the case of deflationary Japan is not such a bad thing. Critics call it a beggar-thy-neighbor policy because trade is a zero-sum game : If one country racks up bigger surpluses, another must run bigger deficits. Competitive devaluation is even blamed by some economists for contributing to the Great Depression. Quantitative Easing in Japan The recently-elected Japanese government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is trying to end years of chronic deflation and recession by putting the Bank of Japan under pressure to weaken the yen as a way to boost exports. Japan's new government is pressing the Bank of Japan to set a 2% inflation target, doubl...

Drawing of the Eiffel Tower by Maurice Koechlin Science Classics Robust Statistics , 1981, New York, Wiley by Peter J. Huber. Peter J. Huber Peter J. Huber was born on March 25, 1934, in Wohlen, a small town in the Swiss countryside. He obtained a diploma in mathematics in 1958 and a Ph.D. in mathematics in 1961, both from ETH Zurich. His thesis was in pure mathematics, but he then decided to go into statistics. He spent 1961–1963 as a postdoc at the statistics department in Berkeley where he wrote his first and most famous paper on robust statistics, “Robust Estimation of a Location Parameter.” After a position as a visiting professor at Cornell University, he became a full professor at ETH Zurich. He worked at ETH until 1978, interspersed by visiting positions at Cornell, Yale, Princeton and Harvard. After leaving ETH, he held professor positions at Harvard University 1978–1988, at MIT 1988–1992, and finally at the University of Bayreuth from 1992 unti...

Barack Obama, Timothy Geithner and Jack Lew Slate.com Friday, Jan. 11, 2013 Geithner outlasted Summers and Romer, along with three chiefs of staff and two defense secretaries. He became not just the head of a major government agency but a real adviser to the president—part of the inner circle of decision-makers. In his world view, there are inevitably financial and political crises, and the chief mission of the policymaker to put out the fires so people can go on with their lives. Business Insider, Jan 10, 2013 Tim Geithner had an amazing run, and it can be shown in one chart, which shows the pace of jobs recoveries of various financial crisis throughout the globe and history. The chart comes from Oregon economist Josh Lehner , and as you can see, the US has had a remarkable jobs comeback compared to almost every other financial crisis. Despite the weak economy, the red line (the US jobs recovery) has gone faster than just about any other country...

First Branch of the White River, Vermont, Edward Hopper 1938 Willem Hendrik Buiter , Chief Economist at Citigroup, proposed in December 2008 in a post on its Financial Times Blog (he was at that time Professor at the London School of Economics), a terminology to distinguish quantitative easing , or an expansion of a central bank's balance sheet, from what he terms qualitative easing , or the process of a central bank adding riskier assets onto its balance sheet: Quantitative easing is an increase in the size of the balance sheet of the central bank through an increase in its monetary liabilities (base money), holding constant the composition of its assets. Asset composition can be defined as the proportional shares of the different financial instruments held by the central bank in the total value of its assets. An almost equivalent definition would be that quantitative easing is an increase in the size of the balance sheet of the central bank through an increa...