there is a certain kind of freedom in knowing that in the short run, you only have a year to take a tilt at things. you don't have to be afraid of burnout.

went hillwalking 2 weekends ago at the trossachs, because it's probably the only long weekend i would have had the whole year. i don't see myself having many more free weekends anytime soon.

last week! spent a bit on time on my personal web page, and was also getting used to typesetting. i am glad that typesetting mathematical equations no longer involves complex lines of code in LaTex and Scientific Workplace has made things a lot more easier. LaTex does strike me as being very last generation. But who knows, I may need it when I start desiring a certain degree of flexibility (which i'm glad I don't need for now)

Anyway, it also means that my documents are starting to look very homogenous and very much like your average JSTOR article.

Graphs are still a pain though. Not data plots, I mean those graphs that you draw because you want to make some conceptual point. These things handle data plots well but not concepts.

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i wanted to write about current account imbalances. will just jot down main points
- why do east asian countries save so much?
- bernanke thinks that this is a "savings shock". there is also a thinking that "cultural factors" have a lot to do with saving.
- high saving = prudence. not optimal. but who can blame asian economies? when they run out of money something like the AFC happens and the suffer a loss of a certain degree of economic independence.
- could this be the reason for high S in E Asia? true, artificially depreciated currencies may be a cause but I think that this is a result of a fear of 1997 happening again.
- why is so much of our K locked up in low-yielding treasuries? K could be deployed elsewhere.
infrastructure, and shouldn't domestic return on K be higher than foreign return on K in a less-developed economy. unless we have already over-accumulated and what we really need is TFP growth.
- to be fair, asian swfs were changing their asset portfolio. but then this risk environment arrives again.
- are we over-accumulating capital?

- history: debate on sources of east asian growth : krugman article in foreign affairs (who refers to this )

i wouldn't be surprised if people started sitting down again to discuss a real Bretton Woods ii soon. there are some huge imbalances on the global scale.