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DanS
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Kickball Capital of the World
Jan 1970
time: 00:15
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Colon: I used to work for a start-up company that was going to privately finance the development of the next-generation shuttle, based on the X-33 design. Development costs were on the order of about $8 billion for the first 3 copies and would have been led by Lockheed's Skunk Works. I was helping out on the financial model.
Basically, the government was going to place a large number of launch orders (about $4-5 billion worth) and the company was going to fill out the rest of the launch schedule with private business. All very do-able.
However, NASA brought the project in-house and pulled the launch commitment--I'm assuming because they wanted more control over the program. Lockheed became Lockheed-Martin and the merged company became very risk-averse. They were willing to pocket the $1 billion in NASA contract money versus taking the risk on the bigger pot. We were the bigger pot, so we suddenly found ourselves without anything to do, beside pitch ever more "bizarre" non-space launch ideas to the street.
It's a devastating experience helping pitch these space ideas. Thankless, humiliating, and not at all profitable task. My boss just kept on pitching, God bless him. I supported his pitches for a while, but eventually became demoralized and left.
Get the picture? 
That said, there are still some profitable commercial areas in space, as you point out. Remote sensing. Small-scale space tourism. TV sats.
Nobody's going to comment about my proposed company names? 
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el freako
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Bristol, European Union
Oct 1999
time: 05:15
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Colon,
"EF, how did you reach those forecasts?"
I reached those forecasts using a 'trend-growth' rate estimate for the US, EU and Japan and then estimated how much the deviance from the trend would be.
I make an estimate of the trend rate of growth from the growth in the working-age population (16-64), estimated changes in activity rates and my estimate of long-term productivity growth.
In the period 2001-2005 I estimate that activity rates will change little - this is beacuse I believe the long-term rise in activity rates in the US and Japan has come to an end (in the US it was 72% in 1980, 78% in 1990 but only 79% in 2000) whilst I believe the recent faster rise in EU activity is mainly cyclical and making up for a large fall in the early 1990's (the EU's activity rates were 67% in 1980, 68% in 1990 and 69% in 2000).
Major projections for working age population can usually be very accurate for 5-10 years (as the people involved have already been born). I use the UN population figures for this.
My forecasts for workforce growth in 2001-2005 are:
United States: 1.0%
European Union: 0.25%
Japan: -0.25%
Then there are my estimates for long-term productivity growth.
In the US I believe that long-term productivity growth is around 2% a year (One important thing to note is that in these forecasts I use output per man-year to measure productivity not output per man-hour - this is because I have too little data on average hours worked for the countries involved - so it effectively discounts changes in working hours, this will tend to flatter the US rate compared to the EU's and Japan's).
I arrived at this by noting that many of the recent studies on the acceleration in productivity in the US estimate that around half of the change between 1991-95 and 1996-2000.
I also did a check of my own to try to strip out the 'tech-boom' effect - in this I measured the change in Net Domestic Product divided by employment, the effect of this is that instead of counting the increased turnover and depreciation of High-Tech good relative to the 'Old Economy' counting as an increase in income only the Net effect of the investment is counted.
This came in at 1.9% for 1996-2000
For the EU and Japan I have far less data so I made the brave assumption that they would have roughly the same rate of producitivity growth as they did during the 1990's - that's 2.00% for the EU and 1.25% for Japan.
Both of those figures tend to understate their productivity growth relative to the US's 'output per hour' both because of the aforementioned ignoring of changed in hours and the fact that due to the 'Hedonic' deflator used in US national accounts (but not in european or japanese) US growth is around 0.25%-0.50% overstated compared to the EU and Japan.
Putting these estimates for productivity and workforce growth together I can get estimates for the 'trend' rate of growth for 2001-2005:
United States: 3.00%
European Union: 2.25%
Japan: 1.00%
If you compare these figures to my growth forecasts you can see that I expect the US to grow by 1% a year slower than it's trend, the EU by 0.25% a year slower and Japan will grow at it's trend rate.
The reason for the US growing so much below it's trend is that in 2000 it was so far above it's trend, 3.25% in fact - the EU meanwhile was only 0.5% above it's trend in 2000 so it's 'recession' is likely to be relatively mild whilst Japan was 3.5% below it's trend in 2000 which is why I am forecasting a significant recovery in Japan during 2003-05 - in this I am assuming a sucessful reform of the Japanese economy and as such I have less confidence in my forecasts for Japan than those for the US and EU.
My forecasts have not been much affected by the September 11th terrorist attacks as I was expecting some sort of trigger to make the US consumer start to repair his balance sheet.
Likewise I was expecting a large swing of the US budget balance from surplus to deficit.
I am also forecasting a large fall in the value of the Dollar - around 20% in trade-weighted terms - between now and 2003.
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Adam Smith
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Maryland, USA
Jan 1970
time: 00:15
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Last winter I paid up to 84 cents per therm spot price (delivered) for natural gas to heat the house. My gas bill for last January was $400, of which $300 was the gas itself. In July I was offered the opportunity to buy gas under contract for one year at 72 cents per therm. Current price was then 70 cents, six month forward futures were selling for +20%, so I jumped at the chance. Since then we have had unexpected terrorism, and a forecast for an abnormally cold winter
in the northern US, but one month forward futures prices continue to slide, and the spot price (delivered) for natural gas on my last gas bill was down to 50 cents, well below what it was a year ago at this time. Storage appears to be up from last year, but would it make that much difference in price, and if so why were the forward futures prices so high this summer??
edit: fix links
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el freako
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Bristol, European Union
Oct 1999
time: 05:15
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Roland,
Yep it's 79% of the 15-64 age range.
Maybe you are confusing the activity rate with the employment rate - which is ar 75%. The activity rate also includes the unemployed.
Colon,
As my forecasts are mainly based on the 'output gap' it would have to be a really major event to upset them significantly (on the order of WW2 or the Great Depression) for the 5 year period.
Of course there could be adjustments within the 5 year forecast (a deeper recession followed by a faster recovery for example).
Last edited by el freako on 20-10-2001 at 01:15
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Colon
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Antwerp, Colon's Chocolate Canard Country
Jan 1970
time: 06:15
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EF, how do you calculate the output gap?
Dan, I agree with pchang, silk has a connotation with porn. (I have to admit Velvet has a similar connotation with music)
Yes, Soie is pronounced as swah.
I don’t think something with video would work, because video sounds old, but how about combing Visual Magic and Video Alchemy into Visual Alchemy?
Here are more names I though up.
Advanced Imaging (AI?)
Cinema@Home
Broad Vision
Expanded Vision (ExVision?)
Visual Arts
Visual Liberty
Crystal Visuals
Extreme Visuals
Alpha Visuals (or another greek number if you like  )
Bright Sight
Looking Technologies
Lightning (which opens to possibility of renaming your firm to Lightning&Thunder in case you’d merge with a sound apps firm )
Digital Lightning
...
You could of course try to adopt one or another character from Greek Mythology or a Roman god and invent one or another connection with your firm.
How about something with Phocus, who had superior athletic prowess? (he also looked like a seal though)
Or Minerva, Roman goddess of handicrafts, arts and, later on, of war?
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18-10-2001 17:46
Apparently, the Germans are no good at it anymore.
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