Free Republic

River of data decodes Nile cycles The Old Testament may seem like an unlikely source from which to draw inspiration for a modern-day climatology study. But a story from the book of Genesis — in which Joseph predicts seven years of abundant crops, followed by seven years of famine for Egypt — drove researchers to scour centuries of water-level data for the Nile River to determine if such a cycle actually exists, and if so, what causes it. This Byzantine-period mosaic from northern Israel shows a man carving on a “nilometer” the highest level the Nile reached in that year....

The Law of Unintended Consequences "There has been widespread denial that there could be anything like a real estate 'bubble,' even given recent activity. Yet, anyone with a pulse can see wild speculation taking place all around them." --William F. Hague, President, W.F. Hague Investments Question: Why has the Fed allowed a housing bubble to develop? Answer: Because they didn't have any choice. The past several years of low interest rates have allowed households to extract cash from inflated property via cash-out refis, home equity loans, and sales; and to use lower interest rates to reduce monthly mortgage payments and...

Today was the 2nd Annual Support the Troops Rally at Public Square in Cleveland. It was sponsored by the Blue Knights Motorcycle Group, (Cleveland, and Ohio area Police Departments), and it couldn't have been a better day for it.Sunny, temps in the middle 70's, clear skies, and between 5000 and 10,000 people.Patrick Henry Chapter of the Free Republic was represented by Neefer, Las Vegas Dave, Las Vegas Dave's FReeper widow Ann Marie, GOP Lady, DollyCali, Oliver the Wonder Dog, (and a pretty good dancer),Bill the Almost FReeper, and your's truly.Not having been there last year, I thought it was going...

Based on a theory of cooperative herding and imitation working both in bullish as well as in bearish regimes, we have detected the existence of a clear signature of herding in the decay of the US S&P500 index since August 2000 with high statistical significance, in the form of strong log- periodic components. Please refer to the following paper for a detailed description: D. Sornette and W.-X. Zhou, The US 2000-2002 Market Descent: How Much Longer and Deeper? Quantitative Finance 2 (6), 468-481 (2002) (e-print at http://arXiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0209065). For a general presentation of the underlying concepts, theory, empirical tests and concrete...

Watching the global economy over the past few years has been like sitting through a rather complicated play. It's been a story of several acts - the characters established in the mid 1990s, the spectacular rise of the star (the United States), the hubris, the fall. Our emotions have been jolted as the plot develops. Now, however, as a spectator of this drama, one can't help but feel this darn play is going on a bit long. 'Too much stuff' The economic news was meant to be getting better around now, not worse. We were meant to be coming out...