Betting sites, Specifically Barack Obama to be re-elected

Intrade - Barack Obama to be re-elected President in 2012 

•  2012/02/20 -- 59%

The IEM (Iowa Electronic Markets) is an online futures market where contract payoffs are based on real-world events such as political outcomes, companies' earnings per share (EPS), and stock price returns.

• 2012/02/20 -- 60%

Discussion of betting sites:

• c/net -- President Obama? Web sites bet it's a done deal, by Declan McCullagh November 4, 2008  
• Overcoming Bias -- Fixing Election Markets, (Math) By Robin Hanson · November 4, 2011
• American public’s untrammeled betting on elections and victories has been reborn as prediction markets. By Gwern
       (See:  YourMorals.org, where you can learn about your own morality, ethics, and/or values, while also contributing to scientific research)

Economic Indexes

CPI [core] -- Consumer Price Index, the best known measure of inflation (which is the overall inflation rate excluding Food and Energy). The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) divides all expenditures into eight categories and assigns a relative size to each. (This also shows the growth of the CPI components as well as the core and extended CPI growth)

 Inflation Deflation- New York Times (Econmix.blogs) Aug, 2011

"John Williams’ Shadow Government Statistics"

An electronic newsletter service that exposes and analyzes flaws in current U.S. government economic data and reporting, as well as in certain private-sector numbers, and provides an assessment of underlying economic and financial conditions, net of financial-market and political hype.

dshort Updates and Featured Commentaries,  Indexes

INFLATION

• Consumer Price Index (1955-Now)
• Inside the Consumer Price Index
• Inflation: A Monthly X-Ray View
• A Long-Term Look at Inflation, 1872 to Present
• PCE Price Index
• Two Measures of Inflation: CPI & PCE
• Producer Price Index Update

GDP -- Goss Domestic Product.

• Latest GDP Update
• Real GDP Per Capita (1960-Now)
• Calculating "Real" GDP (deflators)
• Visualizing GDP (components)

The S&P Composite (CPI adjusted) stretching back to 1871

GDP (growth) correlated with 28 other factors (filipspagnol.../stats-on-human-rights)

 

Items Feb 2012

The course 'Model Thinking' will go live very shortly. When it does go live, we'll be asking you to officially register and agree to some standard terms and conditions. In the interim, you can now go to the site ... and watch the first two sets of lectures. [See mail]

• The first set of lectures covers the benefits of modeling and provides a framework for the course. 
• The second set covers Thomas Schelling's seminar model of segregation as well as a model of standing ovations that I developed with John Miller of Carnegie Mellon University.

Why Is America's Government Dysfunctional? -- Francis Fukuyama blames populism:

     I’m beginning a new project at Stanford/CDDRL called “The Governance Project.” The intention is to focus on conceptualizing and measuring governance, and applying those measures to two specific countries, China and the United States....

     I discuss these issues at greater length in a paper on authoritarian government in Asia for the Journal of Democracy, and a draft discussion paper on how to define and measure governance (pdf) for The Governance Project.

Gov 2.0 year in review ... A look at the Gov 2.0 themes, moments and achievements that made an impact in 2011.

Coming Apart: The State of White America

David Frum recently reviewed .... "Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010".
     [by Charles  Murray] -- Feb 9, 2012

Charles Murray [perhaps] does a Tucker Carlson, provoking me to unleash the usual torrent of graphs
      -- 8 February 2012,

Citizens Untied

The Media’s Shameful, Inexcusable Distortion Of The Supreme Court’s Citizens United Decision
     by Dan Abrams  -- February 8th, 2012

Corporate Leveraging of Campaign Contributions Under Citizens United
     Posted by Beverly Mann | 2/10/2012

WWS 594, Economics of the Welfare State,  [Paul Krugman]

Class #1 -- Feb. 8: Introduction,Class #2, February 15,

Berin Szoka: "Privacy, Analytics & the First Amendment" at GSM Workshop
November 11, 2011, 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM

 Political Polarization (VoteView)

Obama the Moderate (a plot of the last 11 presidential positions Liberal/Conservative) [Forwarded to: Edward G. Carmines] carmines@indiana.edu 

An Update on Political Polarization (through 2011) -- Posted on January 30, 2012 by voteview

Obama's Economic Speech

President Obama's speech in Oklahoma

The Most Important Economic Speech of His Presidency [Robert Reich]

• Examining the big lie: How the facts of the economic crisis stack up
• The Absurd Zombie Lie About the Economy Right-Wingers Desperately Cling To -- And Why It's Totally Wrong ... Home loans didn't bring on the recession; gimmicky financial instruments bloated to 100 times their value are what caused all this pain.
• U.S. is now facing and must manage a similar shift in the “real” economy, from industry to service, or risk a tragic replay of 80 years ago. [as during] the Great Depression—the revolution in agriculture that threw millions out of work // By Joseph E. Stiglitz
• Playboy interview with Paul Krugman

HealthCare

The Options for Payment Reform in U.S. Health Care // By UWE E. REINHARDT, February 17, 2012

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Wow: Larry Lessig Interviews Jack Abramoff

‘Repeal’ of Glass-Steagall Irrelevant to Financial Crisis by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.

Social Security: The Elevator Pitch, Posted by Steve Roth | 1/29/2012 

Nick Kristof and the School Reform Straw Man 01/23/2012 by Peter Hart

The Best App Discovery App for iPhone ... , Discovr Apps makes it easy to find what you're looking for by mapping apps you like (or any app at all) to related options you may enjoy as well.

Create a Bootable Linux Flash Drive in Three Easy Steps By Rick Broida, PCWorld    Feb 13, 2012

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