The Next 10 Years: Three Drivers of Economic Change beta 2

[goadam1]

Re: The Next 10 Years: Three Drivers of Economic Change beta 2

There is a fire bubble: chinese ipos.

[EJ]

Re: The Next 10 Years: Three Drivers of Economic Change beta 2

Sensible debate will never offend.

Alvaro brings into the discussion a very important point from which we can all learn; All of us here are in a debate and as such, we are talking to a very wide audience. It is too easy to describe something WE understand, that another, from an entirely different background, cannot relate to in any way.

May I suggest EJ you try and remember the well used maxim in engineering. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Fair point, but unfortunately not possible under the circumstances.

To readers who are not also analysts, it may appear that the forecasting process involves thinking up ideas then writing them down, and thinking up data relationships then displaying them on a chart, but that's not how it works. The opposite is the case.

Writing is problem solving. You begin with a question and the answer leads to other questions. Writing is a journey of discovery. That's why iTulip articles are typically quite long and appear infrequently. Some questions can be answered in a few thousands words and a half dozen charts, others in tens of thousands and dozens of charts. Some inquiries lead nowhere and are discarded, but valuable lessons and principles are always learned in the exercise.

I'm well aware that this is not how 99.99% of analysts on the Internet operate, so it's understandable that the output of my process is confused with the output of other analysis that may appear to be similar. The usual approach I come across is for the analyst to start with a premise, such as "Gold is a bubble." Then the analyst locates evidence to support the premise. Alternatively the premise might be that "Gold fiat money is doomed." My objective is to understand what's really going on, because I want to make investment decisions based on the analysis; if there is any ideological or emotional bias in the analysis, accuracy will suffer. My approach to gold in 1999 was to ask, Why is gold so cheap? Why did the price fall for 20 years? Will it continue to fall? Why? Why not? This led me to wait until 2001 to buy and to not sell over the following ten years.

The richest veins of inquiry are found in anomalies and contradictions. For example, in 2001 I noted that central bankers say gold has no role in the monetary system. Why then did central banks hold as a reserve asset 25% of all of the gold ever mined?

Some questions are impossible to answer by charting data. You need to model critical processes and "see" the relationships. That is the reasoning behind the recent animations. Even if we never showed them to members we'd still create them. The models answer old questions and raise new questions. It is the process of creating the animation that matters, that produces understanding, not the animation that results. Adding music and titles to the animations is intended to make the animations informative and entertaining for members who are curious to know how the sausages are made.

The article on 2011 that I plan to publish today is primarily text and charts. It will include video specifically for the purpose of explaining charts, to make their meaning more clear. For example:



Hope that helps to clarify the purpose of the animations and simulations.

[Chris Coles]

Re: The Next 10 Years: Three Drivers of Economic Change beta 2

Fair point, but unfortunately not possible under the circumstances.

To readers who are not also analysts, it may appear that the forecasting process involves thinking up ideas then writing them down, and thinking up data relationships then displaying them on a chart, but that's not how it works. The opposite is the case.

Writing is problem solving. You begin with a question and the answer leads to other questions. Writing is a journey of discovery. That's why iTulip articles are typically quite long and appear infrequently. Some questions can be answered in a few thousands words and a half dozen charts, others in tens of thousands and dozens of charts. Some inquiries lead nowhere and are discarded, but valuable lessons and principles are always learned in the exercise.

EJ, this is a perfect example, I did not make my own point clearly and yet you have confirmed it; please let me explain.

No one will argue that iTulip has become a great success built upon several separate aspects.

1. You created the conditions where, under your watchful eye and careful control, you brought together what has turned out to be a very varied and widely experienced group of individuals from all walks of life who share a common enjoyment of a constructive debate about the underlying economy of every nation on the planet.

2. Perhaps without realising it, perhaps by sheer luck, (and why not a little luck?), you chanced upon a web page system that gave all of us the ability to construct, as I am doing my best to do now, (hopefully) a well presented dialogue; the tools to do the best job in hand.

3. But most importantly, right from the outset, your own presentations were meaningful, understandable, enjoyable to read and assimilate. You held the attention of your audience by the quality, and the understandability; of what you were presenting to us.

Now we all of us here, I am sure, have gleaned from a variety of inputs, that you have become unhappy that others have been using your material and have set out to create a more "controllable" (from the IP sense), presentation.

Well, to be quite honest, you are wrong to try and do so.

When I said "when it ain't broke don't fix it" it was to try and tell you not to change the very thing that has brought you so much success; the very long term high quality and understandability of your presentations. Your audience absolutely love them; including finding the odd spelling and grammatical error. Indeed, the small errors are what made the overall deal so presentable as you always come across as a classic human being, warts and all; imperfect but totally understandable.

Why do you think so many have stayed the course?

Your recent dislike of others using your material reminded me of a new football team manager here in the UK who decided to ban photographers from using photographs taken during matches as backup for newspaper stories about the team in the local newspapers. The manager forgot that the additional publicity was viral and vital for the success of the team.

Other web sites copying your excellent work tells us here that your work is exceptional and widely regarded as the best available. You should smile, perhaps, from time to time, drop an odd comment here and there to tell others on such sites that what they are looking at came from iTulip, but nothing more.

Take a look at the success of the photographs of girls in glossy magazines; they bring on a much wider audience. Guys pin them up and in the same sense, others taking and using your work is just the same thing; an admiring audience.

Your original concept for your presentations, combining sometimes quite lengthy verbal description with simple to understand graphs and the simplicity of your more graphic presentations; has set into place the solid foundations for your great success.

Please ......... If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: The Next 10 Years: Three Drivers of Economic Change beta 2

Hope that helps to clarify the purpose of the animations and simulations.

Yes, it does clarify. The Greek debt video and audio was clear (in thought, sound and chart) and enjoyed. Thanks.

[ou812]

Re: The Next 10 Years: Three Drivers of Economic Change beta 2

Several layers to this onion...

This thread has the potential to evolve into the ‘iTulip Introductory Guide’. As a new member/subscriber (this being my maiden posting) I will share that this thread in particular has filled in a lot of gaps for me and is greatly bringing me up to speed. Not just the thesis for the next decade, but as EJ points out “to know how the sausages are made”.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then what is a well crafted animation worth?

Illustrating the independent but interdependent cycles with varying frequencies, durations and subsequent overlaps has saved me countless hours of trying to wade through the forum trying to connect the dots.

Which leads to my next point. You really do have to expend a lot of energy to mine this forum in the hopes of uncovering a nugget of information or the occasional gem. Again, I seem to really have hit a tremendous vein with this thread but overall share xPat’s comments regarding the navigability. I fear that I won’t stumble across some vital piece of the puzzle.

Speaking of xPat’s comments, I thoroughly enjoyed the post where he admits that after viewing the animation a few times that he ‘gets it’, provides a wonderful summary/description of the animation and almost seems to appreciate the brilliance in conveying the complexity of the theory yet still thinks “it's not clearly communicating the desired message”.

I haven’t yet mined the forum long enough to know how that comment will be received or how the community hierarchy works. It’s too early for me to know who’s a quack, who I should heed, and who I should not quarrel with, who is bovine and who makes up part of the sausage that is FRED...

EJ, thank you for the subsequent comments in this thread. They are very enlightening in conjunction with the animations. The presentation on the Greek bond yields was very instructive. The overlaid highlighting in that video is excellent communication and I look forward to seeing how you develop similar techniques with more complex ideas and presentation methods. The real value of the work that I see here is the communication of the analysis and the ideas, whatever the format.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: The Next 10 Years: Three Drivers of Economic Change beta 2

Which leads to my next point. You really do have to expend a lot of energy to mine this forum in the hopes of uncovering a nugget of information or the occasional gem. Again, I seem to really have hit a tremendous vein with this thread but overall share xPat’s comments regarding the navigability. I fear that I won’t stumble across some vital piece of the puzzle.

In my experience, this problem is somewhat inevitable.

From what I can tell, there is always a bit of tension between "well organized" and "leading edge."

who is bovine

That much should be easy to discern (grin).

[rjwjr]

Re: The Next 10 Years: Three Drivers of Economic Change beta 2

For example, in 2001 I noted that central bankers say gold has no role in the monetary system. Why then did central banks hold as a reserve asset 25% of all of the gold ever mined?

EJ,

You have made reference to this central bank gold reserve contradiction before, but I never thought to ask if you ever had a moment of pause about this thesis knowing that Gordon Brown had sold half of England's gold in 1999?

rjwjr

[FrankL]

Re: The Next 10 Years: Three Drivers of Economic Change beta 2

EJ,

You have made reference to this central bank gold reserve contradiction before, but I never thought to ask if you ever had a moment of pause about this thesis knowing that Gordon Brown had sold half of England's gold in 1999?

rjwjr

Question is whether the selling of gold by many European national central banks in this period was onto the open market, or to the ECB as a requirement for EU member states. That's what is implied here, although I cannot verify how accurate the source is.

[Ghent12]

Re: The Next 10 Years: Three Drivers of Economic Change beta 2

EJ,
Thank you for staying on top of things as well as possible.

I think I noticed something that was not intentional in the video. The chart appears to analyze Greek 10-Year Bond Yields from March 1998 to December 2010, but the title and the audio both describe it as starting in March 1989.

The article on 2011 that I plan to publish today is primarily text and charts. It will include video specifically for the purpose of explaining charts, to make their meaning more clear. For example:



Hope that helps to clarify the purpose of the animations and simulations.