Professor Ferdinand E. Banks (Uppsala University, Sweden), performed his undergraduate studies at Illinois Institute of Technology (electrical engineering) and Roosevelt University (Chicago), graduating with honors in economics. He also attended the University of Maryland and UCLA. He has the MSc ...
more Professor Ferdinand E. Banks (Uppsala University, Sweden), performed his undergraduate studies at Illinois Institute of Technology (electrical engineering) and Roosevelt University (Chicago), graduating with honors in economics. He also attended the University of Maryland and UCLA. He has the MSc from Stockholm University and the PhD from Uppsala University. He has been visiting professor at 5 universities in Australia, 2 universities in France, The Czech University (Prague), Stockholm University, Nanyang Technical University in Singapore, and has held energy economics (guest) professorships in France (Grenoble), Hongkong, and the Asian Institute of Technology (Bangkok). The main portion of his military service was in Japan (infantry) and Germany (artillery), and he was employed for one year in the engineering department of the U.S. Navy at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station (Illinois). He has also been a lecturer in mathematical and development economics in Dakar (Senegal) for 15 months, and macroeconomics at the University of Technology in Lisbon (Portugal) for one term. He was an econometrician for UNCTAD (United Nations Commission on Trade and Development) in Geneva (Switzerland) for 3 years, and fellow of the Reserve Bank of Australia when visiting professor of mathematical economics at the University of New South Wales (Sydney) for one academic year. He was a consultant for the Hudson Institute in Paris, and a systems analyst and applied mathematician for a consulting firm in Chicago. He has published 12 books, including two energy economics textbooks and one book on international finance, and more than 200 articles of various lengths. His new textbook Energy and Economic Theory will be published by World Scientific (Singapore, London and New York) in 2014. He is completing the writing of his 14th book, which consists of non-technical lectures on energy economics.
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U.S. Oil Production Still Surging
The Recovery Is Complete: America Adds Most Waiters And Bartenders Since 2013
My new book ENERGY AND ECONOMIC THEORY was published a few weeks ago, and in the extensive self-promotion that I sent friends, neighbors and enemies, I forgot to mention that when I was expelled from Illinois Institute of Technology for poor scholarship, I worked as a bartenders assistant in what might have been 'an after hours club' for a couple of weeks. That was a long time ago, but if I remember correctly, that required more alertness than teaching mathematical economics in Australia and Sweden.
Crude Awakening: Why Next Week Could Be Carnage For Oil ETFs
To paraphrase what the good Ernest Hemingway said about women, I know oil and oil is trouble.
Not Just Oil: Guess What Happened The Last Time Commodity Prices Crashed Like This?
My first book was on copper, and perhaps my next on bauxite/aluminum. Perhaps because as compared with oil those items are a side issue. I began doing a Little econometrics with the oil market in the late 1990s, and I dont Think that there was one occasion when I looked at Another resource again, because I knew what was going to happen. It started happening about late 2006 or early 2007, and while I was lecturing at the Ecole Normale Superieure (Paris) the oil price was going into orbit,
That could happen again if the US shale market has lost its steam, which some people say has happened. And by the way, just as I call myself the leading academic energy Economist in the World, James Hamilton is the leading oil Economist in the U.S., and if you look at his work (and perhaps mine) you will see that if the oil price goes into orbit again - which it might - then somebody is in serious trouble, and that somebody might be you.
A Nuclear Energy Update
Venezuela Goes Increasingly Pear-Shaped
I was in Venezuela once for an IAEE Conference. I gave a brilliant talk of course, although I don't remember the subject, and did a Little jogging. I was teaching full time in Sweden though, and spent most of my time preparing my lectures. I didn't see much of Caracas.
But one thing I found out at that Conference, which is that Venezuela is filled with intelligent people, and they deserve a better hand than they have been dealt. Moreover, they should be able to reverse their bad luck, though probably not in the short run. In the short run - as I would also inform the new Swedish government if they asked me, which is dubious - they should do Everything they can to turn of schools of that country into the best schools in the World. That should come first, and probably everybody can contribute..
As an American Citizen, I would love to give the same advice to President Obama, although unfortunately I have become convinced that he is too ignorant to understand it.
The Fed And The Price Of Oil
Let's see. I am polishing up my 14th book, which is called ENERGY ECONOMICS: A MODERN FIRST COURSE. The Fed is mentioned a couple of times in that book, but I cannot remember claiming that they had anything to do with determining the price of oil. If one of my students were to ask me, I would tell her or him that in years/decades I have never mentioned the Fed in that respect...I Think.,and then I would tell him or her to never say any more to me on that particular subject. Never!
Spectacular: Buying Oil
The time is coming, but I wonder if it is now?
Obama’s Populist Tax Reform Proposal
Interesting. My president and fellow Democrat from the great city of Chicago, Barack Obama, is not a populist. He is just pathetically ignorant. But I don't hold his ignorance against him, because he was given a chance to exercise his ignorance by the voters of America. Couldn't they tell after four years of his posturing that he was the wrong man to be President of the United States, '
I have to deal with parasites and charlatans in the Swedish academic World, but I can't remember a single second when I was tempted to return to the wonderful employment I had in and around Chicago, First a president who started a war on the basis of a lie, and then the most ignorant president in modern American history. What did we do to deserve this?
A Crude Boom Built On Sand
Oil prices did not "recover" in 2009. OPEC cut its production, and then it was off to the races again. The idea of a recovery is something you find in the first part of an undergraduate (and sometimes a graduate) economics textbook, where millions of consumers and producers.....blah, blah.....etc. Somehow now, in the executive suite of OPEC's headquarters in Vienna, a deal has been struck. One way or another it involves the same kind of action at some Point in the fture as took Place in 2009.
Pardon me if I forget what I said in my finance book, and say that OPEC is just as smart as what some people lovingly call the market. Congratulations OPEC, and congratulations Fred Banks for undertanding the oil market.