Our super smart friend Charles Hugh Smith posts another must-read essay at his Of Two Minds blog:

When it comes to post-bubble retraces, the fundamental reasons may not matter as much as the technical case for a full reversion to pre-bubble prices. We all know the fundamental reasons why housing shot up—a credit bubble of epic proportions plus securitization, fraud and low interest rates, to name but a few factors—and why housing has plummeted: foreclosures and inventory are rising, tightening of credit standards by private lenders, etc.

But the ultimate predictor of price is technical: speculative bubbles retrace to their pre-bubble prices, or in many cases even crash below those levels.

Those arguing the fundamentals are always grasping at various straws to support the case that prices won’t drop all the way back to pre-bubble levels, and they’re always wrong.

Read more at Of Two Minds

This is a great idea. Really shows who the greediest human beings are and where they live don’t it?

Reliable data on economic growth is hard to come by in many parts of the world, especially in developing countries. Yet according to scientists, outer space offers a new perspective for measuring economic growth.

Using satellite images of nighttime lights, J. Vernon Henderson, Adam Storeygard, and David N. Weil from Brown University have created a new framework for estimating a country or region?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s gross domestic product, or GDP by observing the changes in a country?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s ?¢‚Ǩ?ìnight lights?¢‚Ǩ¬ù as seen from outer space.

?¢‚Ǩ?ìConsumption of nearly all goods in the evening requires lights,?¢‚Ǩ¬ù they write in a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper. ?¢‚Ǩ?ìAs income rises, so does light usage per person, in both consumption activities and many investment activities.?¢‚Ǩ¬ù

The researchers don?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t envision the lights density data as a replacement for official numbers, but when added to existing data from agencies like the World Bank, the lights density can provide a better indicator of how these economies really are performing.

 

 
To see the rest of the images go to Next Nature