Top all-time · #1297
Simon Johnson
Personal blog · baselinescenario.comeconomicspolitics
Simon Johnson writes The Baseline Scenario, a personal blog at baselinescenario.com about economics and politics. Since 2009, 57 different Hacker News readers have linked it 90 times, most often “The Importance of Excel (2013)”. The last post was in 2023, but the archive is still widely read.
What happened to the global economy and what we can do about it
Most-linked posts?
- The Importance of Excel (2013)5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2016-08-24
- Baseline scenario: good, up-to-date blog on economic crisis4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2009-03-04
- The Importance of Excel2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2013-02-09
- A Colossal Mistake of Historic Proportions: The “JOBS” bill2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-03-20
- More Bad Excel2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-04-19
- Wall Street and Silicon Valley2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-10-09
What Hacker News says?
Read this: https://baselinescenario.com/2016/10/17/you-cant-get-there-f... The very same Gallup study which that Vox article relied on to argue that Trump support was correlated with higher, not lower income also found that blue collar and less educated workers were disproportionately likely to vote for Trump, and Vox intentionally omitted that fact. This is particularly dishonest of Vox because the result they did…
Comment linking /2016/10/17/you-cant-get-there-from-here/
on “Shame on Y Combinator”Submitted The Importance of Excel as a story · 285 points
HN discussionNot even just ignoring large chunks of the country, but actively arguing that their problems don't exist and that anyone who thinks otherwise is just making excuses for racism: https://baselinescenario.com/2016/10/17/you-cant-get-there-f...
Comment linking /2016/10/17/you-cant-get-there-from-here/
on “Shame on Y Combinator”Submitted Why do Harvard kids head to Wall Street? as a story · 98 points
HN discussionYup. Regulatory capture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture Cultural capture: https://baselinescenario.com/2016/04/22/cultural-capture-in-... The revolving door between government and the private sector: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/11/11/slowing-the-revolving...
Comment linking /2016/04/22/cultural-capture-in-black-and-white/
on “OxyContin's 12-hour problem”Submitted Wall Street and Silicon Valley as a story · 69 points
HN discussionStepping back for a moment, this thorough debunking of Reinhart and Rogoff's flawed paper means that now there is NO evidence that government debt exceeding 90% of GDP somehow negatively impacts growth. Let me repeat that: there is NO EVIDENCE that more government debt causes slower economic growth -- just theories. I wonder what all the government deficit scaremongers will say to this! -- PS. For reference, the oft…
Comment linking /2013/02/09/the-importance-of-excel/
on “Researchers Finally Replicated Reinhart-Rogoff, and There Are Serious Problems”Submitted How Are the Kids? Unemployed, Underwater, and Sinking as a story · 46 points
HN discussionI would point you to this post by James Kwak: http://baselinescenario.com/2011/10/09/wall-street-and-silic... Venture capital has been around for centuries, and in its modern form, since about the 1950s. Very little of it comes from Wall Street.
Comment linking /2011/10/09/wall-street-and-silicon-valley/
on “Panic of the Plutocrats”Submitted The Myth of Efficiency as a story · 34 points
HN discussionWait a minute: you say that our expenses versus income is too high, but then also say that higher taxes won't solve anything? Unless you're arguing that higher taxes won't increase government income (which is a totally specious argument that people make all the time, but which isn't backed up in the least by any actual historical analyses), then higher taxes absolutely could solve the deficit problem. Federal tax re…
Comment linking /2011/10/03/how-big-is-the-long-term-debt-problem/
on “Too Hot for TED: Income Inequality”Submitted Salespeople and Programmers as a story · 12 points
HN discussionTwo I have visited in the past: Economics: Baseline Scenario: http://baselinescenario.com/ Asian History: Frog in a Well: http://www.froginawell.net/
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on “Why don’t journalists link to primary sources?”Submitted The Importance of Excel as a story · 11 points
HN discussionWell, all your concerns may very well be provably correct, from a purely academic perspective. I just think the question you keep missing is: Does it matter in practice? Our entire world runs on imperfect systems. Can we really already tell whether bitcoin is worse? Where is your mathematical proof that the current monetary system is secure against polynomial time attacks? Where is your rigorous security definition…
Comment linking /2012/11/29/high-frequency-trading-and-high-returns/
on “I Tried Hacking Bitcoin and I Failed”Submitted Bad Government Software as a story · 10 points
HN discussionThere's a name for this product space! "Spreadsheet controls" describes the product space inhabited by various products that aim to help businesses manage the terrifying, complex Excel workbooks whose contents influence business decisions in subtle, interrelated ways. Microsoft recognized that this was an important hole in the way enterprises used Excel, which is why they acquired a company in this space, Prodiance,…
Comment linking /2013/02/09/the-importance-of-excel/
on “The Future of Excel”Submitted Goldman Goes Rogue – Special European Audit To Follow as a story · 7 points
HN discussionExcel is/was a popular tool at the highest level in various industries, including finance. A frequently shared anecdote: https://baselinescenario.com/2013/02/09/the-importance-of-ex... > JPMorgan’s Chief Investment Office needed a new value-at-risk (VaR) model for the synthetic credit portfolio (the one that blew up) and assigned a quantitative whiz (“a London-based quantitative expert, mathematician and model devel…
Comment linking /2013/02/09/the-importance-of-excel/
on “Siemens contractor pleads guilty to planting logic bomb in company spreadsheets”Submitted Why Do Harvard Kids Head to Wall Street? as a story · 5 points
HN discussionScience is probably the least scary thing that an Excel bug can affect. JPMorgan Chase's "London Whale" venture lost $2 billion in part because spreadsheet modelers divided by a sum instead of an average to get a value at risk. https://baselinescenario.com/2013/02/09/the-importance-of-ex... Then there was the infamous Reinhart-Rogoff paper in economics, used to justify harmful austerity policies worldwide post-2008,…
Comment linking /2013/02/09/the-importance-of-excel/
on “Gene name errors are widespread in the scientific literature”Submitted Why does our culture shape high-achieving people into BigCo execs? [Orszag/Citi] as a story · 5 points
HN discussionI enjoyed the article. I also enjoyed looking through their blog (which is mentioned at the bottom of the article pages). It seems like a good place to get an easy to understand analysis of the banking crisis news. http://baselinescenario.com/
Comment linking /
on “The Quiet Coup: IMF advice on the US economy”Submitted Tax Breaks (for the Rich) Are Forever as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThere are several vendors out there selling version control for spreadsheets like pathio, Finsbury Solutions. IMHO the problem is that devs know the value of version control, but it's a hard sell to the busy end users building sheets who see only barriers and controls. I believe unit testing for spreadsheets could eliminate the kind of errors that we saw in the London Whale spreadsheet [1]. SpreadServe's Python API…
Comment linking /2013/02/09/the-importance-of-excel/
on “Show HN: SpreadServe – Cloud automation for Excel spreadsheets”Submitted The Problem with Software as a story · 4 points
HN discussionAh it's good to see that the colossal mistake of historic proportions ( http://baselinescenario.com/2012/03/19/a-colossal-mistake-of... ) Just Open Bucket Shops (JOBS - http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/15/opinion/collins-the-senate... ) act is in full swing and that the exploiters of it are already out there having at it with gusto. I'd like to propose a toast to the forthcoming increase in financial fraud, cost of ca…
Comment linking /2012/03/19/a-colossal-mistake-of-historic-proportions-the-jobs-bill/
on “FundersClub rewarding investors for referrals ”Submitted Mark Zuckerberg’s $45B Loophole as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI work with an army of very smart people who need to build incredibly complex models to drive our business. Like most companies, we turn to Excel. It's the only widely used application with a low enough barrier to entry that "non-technical" people can build legitimately complex (if not always robust) models. But the problems with Excel and general spreadsheet modeling limitations offer such a great opportunity for i…
Comment linking /2013/04/18/more-bad-excel/
on “Humans vs. Microsoft Excel: The Quest For Smart Tools”Submitted Where Do You Want to Be Born? as a story · 3 points
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