Compared to the worldwide value of commodities, stocks are nothing. Consider the underutilized “Earth Market,” the trading of values which in aggregate are as vast as the earth itself. Consider tradeable rights to emit pollution, to mine ore, to take stocks of fisheries; financial futures pegged to the value of specific forests, forest [...]

Compared to the worldwide value of commodities, stocks are nothing. Consider the underutilized “Earth Market,” the trading of values which in aggregate are as vast as the earth itself. Consider tradeable rights to emit pollution, to mine ore, to take stocks of fisheries; financial futures pegged to the value of specific forests, forest index futures, [...]

Paleontology. A sense of cyclicity, a hyperopic perspective. A perspective from which to speculate about mass extinctions. Side by side with the long boom, the mass extinction? There have been plenty of mass extinctions before, at least half a dozen big ones in the last 600 million years, where anywhere from [...]

There is a lot of talk of the Y2K problem, that is, “The Year 2000 Bug,” which, as we approach January 1st, 2000, will render a significant portion of the computers and computer networks of the planet paralysed. A recent issue of the prestigious international magazine “The Economist” featured on the cover a cartoon of [...]

In the hills of central Honduras, about 20 miles west of Tegucigalpa, there lies an abandoned city.
It sits along the eastern bank of the Guacerique river, mile after mile of concrete row houses and narrow dirt lanes. They stretch along the flat lands from the river bank up to the bluffs that run out from [...]