It was a compelling idea: In the digitized world, there’s more money to be made in niche offerings than in blockbusters. The data tell a different story.

See also the reply from Chris Anderson.

Should You Invest in the Long Tail?

This is a data-heavy presentation from two economists at CIBC World Markets. You'll have to make your own soundtrack. See how China dominates the growth in demand for natural resources. See how much is accomplished by Americans' purchase of hybrid vehicles, in the face of massive market growth in Russia and China. Watch how gasoline hits US$7/gallon by 2012. Watch ethanol peter out and energy capacity fall short. Watch the Case/Shiller HPI continue to plummet as delinquencies soar. And so much more!

The Age of Scarcity

Ouch.

DIY Yahoo! Resignation Letter

Paul Kedrosky:

Eye-popping chart up over at The Oil Drum showing the extent of China's current cement fixation. Amazing stuff.

China's Cement Fixation

Is Keith Olbermann changing TV news?

One Angry Man

The U.S. sheep industry is complex, multifaceted, and rooted in history and tradition. The dominant feature of sheep production in the United States, and, thus, the focus of much producer and policy concern, has been the steady decline in sheep and lamb inventories since the mid-1940s. Although often described as an industry in decline, this report concludes that a better description of the current U.S. sheep industry is an industry in transition.

Changes in the Sheep Industry in the United States: Making the Transition from Tradition

"It was the peak. It was the embodiment of business success," Connelly said. "We underestimated the bubble, even though deep down, we knew it couldn't last forever."

Seen in the best possible light, the housing bubble that began inflating in the mid-1990s was "a great national experiment," as one prominent economist put it -- a way to harness the inventiveness of the capitalist system to give low-income families, minorities and immigrants a chance to own their homes. But it also is a classic story of boom, excess and bust, of homeowners, speculators and Wall Street dealmakers happy to ride the wave of easy money even though many knew a crash was inevitable.

From the archive:

The bubble cycle has replaced the business cycle.

And also:

If Schnabel is a surfer in the sense of knowing how to skim existence for its wonders, he is also a surfer in the more challenging sense of wanting to see where something bigger than himself, or the unknown, will take him, even with the knowledge that he might not come back from the trip.

Finally:

What the company is trying to do is prevent the passengers who can pay the second-class fare from traveling third class; it hits the poor, not because it wants to hurt them, but to frighten the rich ...

The Bubble

Ken Auletta interviews Eric Schmidt, the chairman and C.E.O. of Google, in San Francisco on June 11, 2008.

Eric Schmidt: The New Yorker

Money, money prices, market transactions, and economic calculation based upon them are the main targets of criticism. Loquacious sermonizers disparage Western civilization as a mean system of mongering and peddling. Complacency, self-righteousness, and hypocrisy exult in scorning the “dollar-philosophy” of our age. Neurotic reformers, mentally unbalanced literati, and ambitious demagogues take pleasure in indicting “rationality” and in preaching the gospel of the “irrational.” In the eyes of these babblers money and calculation are the source of the most serious evils. However, the fact that men have developed a method of ascertaining as far as possible the expediency of their actions and of removing uneasiness in the most practical and economic way does not prevent anybody from arranging his conduct according to the principle he considers to be right. The “materialism” of the stock exchange and of business accountancy does not hinder anybody from living up to the standards of Thomas a Kempis or from dying for a noble cause. The fact that the masses prefer detective stories to poetry and that it therefore pays better to write the former than the latter, is not caused by the use of money and monetary accounting. It is not the fault of money that there are gangsters, thieves, murderers, prostitutes, corruptible officials and judges. It is not true that honesty does not “pay.” It pays for those who prefer fidelity to what they consider to be right to the advantages which they could derive from a different attitude.

That’s Ludwig von Mises, writing on pp. 215-16 of Human Action (4th edition). Oh, how I love that man. I hereby pledge to use the phrase “mentally unbalanced literati” at least once per year.

That's Peter Klein, writing on his blog. I like to collect words and phrases.

Best "Best Paragraph I Read Today" I Read Today

For months, economic Pollyannas have looked beyond the dismal headlines and promised a quick recovery in the second half. They're dead wrong.

The Economy: Why It’s Worse Than You Think