The Burden of Brilliant Economists

RealClearPolitics - Articles - Markets, Not Economists, Will Help the Economy

George has a good one here, worth the read. I do love the context of BOs claim for "helping to save or create 2.5 million jobs". A classic meaningless statement. Here is some context -- I love the "Before Reagan / After Reagan" part, the change to an economy that averaged a million more jobs a year after Reagan's first term is the kind of results that the MSM isn't that interested in providing for context:

"Since Eisenhower's first term, the economy has created an average of 1.5 million new jobs each year. Since Reagan's first term, the average has been about 2.5 million a year. And Reagan, who inherited an economy as bad if not worse than the current one, saw 6.3 million new jobs created four years after he entered the White House."

What will the benchmark be after BO? How many jobs the economy LOST in a 4 year term? Here is the punchline of the piece--George has a wit that is very urbane and subtle, but it certainly gets the point across.

In his wise book "Capitalism, Democracy & Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery," John Mueller, an Ohio State political scientist, notes that John Maynard Keynes' central theme, according to his biographer Robert Skidelsky, was that "the state is wise and the market is stupid." Mueller continues: "Working from that sort of perspective, India's top economists for a generation supported policies of regulation and central control that failed abysmally -- leading one of them to lament recently, 'India's misfortune was to have brilliant economists.'"

Many of them were educated in Britain, by Keynes' followers. In America today, everyone agrees that the president-elect's economic team is composed of brilliant economists.

The End

The End of Wall Street's Boom - National Business News - Portfolio.com

I'm about 3/4 of the way through Alan Greenspan's book as well. One "little known fact" (at least by me) is that the whole of the world equity (stock) markets are "a pimple on the ass of world finance" in the crude terms of one of the guys in this article.

The cumulative world stock markets are something order $30-$40 TRILLION (they vary--a LOT). The Bond markets are like $50 Trillion (they vary less), and the Derivatives Market is like $500 Trillion !!! or something like 12x the value of the entire world GDP for a year. Derivatives are complicated -- the easiest to understand is the "futures contract" that is commonly used by farmers or people buying their fuel for next winter the summer before, or farmers selling their crops expected in the fall in the spring. The contracts have a couple of functions -- spreading risk and providing a speculative vehicle. The homeowner buying in the summer speculates that the prices are lower in the summer than the winter -- but this year, that is likely wrong by a lot. A fuel contract purchased in the summer is likely very costly compared to the actual price of the fuel if one had waited until the winter to purchase it. BUT, it COULD have been much higher-- so the person buying the contract "hedged" against that risk and speculated that they would actually pay less in the summer than the winter.

Farmers likewise might usually assume that corn prices will be lower in the fall than in the spring, so selling part of their crop in the spring allows them to speculate on that assumption and hedge against the risk that the price will be lower. This year the prices were A LOT higher in the spring than they now are, so a farmer could see 2-3x as much profit off the grain in his field if he had sold it in advance.

I'm not even going to try to go into the long and short sales of stocks, credit default swaps, etc, but suffice it to say that it is all those derivatives build off the home "mortgage backed securities" that blew up when the sub-primes were downgraded. It is those losses that drug down the financial system, and are a major reason that the way forward is quite unclear. Greenspan certainly believes that the world markets need those derivatives, but given the level of leverage that was created, it seems that it may be very hard to unwind all of this to get the system operating again.

Add in all the uncertainties of "change" with the upcoming coronation of BO, and even with the rather staid picks he has made to date, a lot of his economic claims during the campaign would lead one to believe that he may at least desire to do a lot of tinkering with the financial engine, and it is an engine that tends to react badly to uncertainty.

In any case, the article is long but quite worthwhile. This is a nice little anecdote about how far out of hand things got when folks thought that Freddie and Fannie would be bailed out and housing values would always rise:

Long Beach Financial was moving money out the door as fast as it could, few questions asked, in loans built to self-destruct. It specialized in asking home­owners with bad credit and no proof of income to put no money down and defer interest payments for as long as possible. In Bakersfield, California, a Mexican strawberry picker with an income of $14,000 and no English was lent every penny he needed to buy a house for $720,000.

Suspended Animation

Mark Roth's Proof of Reincarnation - Scientist Bringing Back the Dead - Esquire

Apparently, this guy is in trials with a drug that provides hours of "suspended animation" -- really really good if your heart stops or if you are bleeding out in a battlefield someplace. Get some of this drug that tells your body "stop burning oxygen", and your cells will sit there not burning oxygen for quite a long time with "no ill effects" until they are restarted.

He made the insight that they don't die because they don't have oxygen, they die because they are BURNING oxygen and they don't have any. You stop their operation by telling them "quit burning oxygen".

One of the interesting points of the article -- we still don't scientifically know what "life" is ... we just know what it does.

We don't know what life is, anyway. Not really. We just know what life does--it
burns oxygen. It's a process of combustion. We're all just slow-burning
candles, making our way through our allotment of precious O₂ until it becomes our toxin, until we burn out, until we get old and die. But we live
on 21 percent oxygen, just as we live at 37 degrees. They're related.
Decrease the oxygen to 5 percent, we die. But, look, the concentration
of oxygen in the blood that runs through our capillaries is only 2 or 3
percent. We're almost dead already! So what if we turn down the
candle's need for oxygen? What if we dim the candle so much that we
don't even have the energy to die?

Third Bush Term?

Op-Ed Columnist - Continuity We Can Believe In - NYTimes.com

BO kept mistaking John McCain for George Bush, could it be that he ought to have looked in the mirror? The finance team is headed Tim Giethner, a Bush appointee to the NY Fed and clearly a major player in the current bailout roulette. Here Brooks talks about the security team, especially the SecDef Gates being a direct cabinet carry over. Who would have thought that the anti-war candidate, opposed to the surge would carry over the SecDef that Bush appointed to preside over the surge?

Had McCain won the election and made these moves, I think we can be certain that the MSM would be screaming "where is the CHANGE!!!" at the top of their lungs. The luxury of being a Democrat is that since it is BO doing it, it is "brilliant".

Secret Senate Seat Grab

TheHill.com - Franken may seek Senate’s help to win race

As the Democrats "get out the vote" for their 60 seat majority, we get a bit of a peek into how they and the MSM operate. Just imagine a reversal of the current situation -- a newly elected Republican President, big Republican majorities in the House and Senate, and a Republican Senate Leader and Republican campaign threatening to throw out the vote of a state in question and have the Republican Senate decide who to seat. Throw in a Republican Sec of State hand-picked to deal with this kind of close race by "Republican organizations" (remember, MN SoS Mark Ritchie was selected by MoveOn and ACORN as part of a move to get "their folks" in positions of power over elections after the 2K FL election)  Think that kind of shenanigan might get just a "little" coverage in the MSM?

MIGHT we hear about "will of the people", "honoring elections", "Diebold", "partisan manipulation of elections", or the importance of "checks and balances in government"???

Nah, that would mean the press is biased, and BO would be quick to assure us that isn't so, so we should all bleat approvingly to what we are now seeing.

Range Toys

There was a gun show early in November and I decided that if I ever wanted to get the little Kel Tec PLR-16 .223 "Assault Pistol", it was very likely now or never. This is what it looks like right out of the box, I've got the picatinny foregrip for it on order and have put the screw-on muzzle brake on the front of the barrel already. In my opinion, those items are critical to the looks of the weapon, and for not burning your fingers while holding on to the front for accuracy, they are needed for function as well. I took it out to the range once and put 50+ rounds through it. Very accurate at 20 yards even in current config with sights that were hard for me to use given my older eyes. (focus on the back sight sort of precludes a lot of focus on the front sight).

I've put a cheap AIM red dot on it already and am waiting for the foregrip on back order -- it seems like everything to do with guns, and especially "assault weapons" is on backorder! My intent is to mount a laser and a light on the front end--mostly because I think it will look cool, but in some theory, one could at least imagine it as a pretty nasty looking home defense weapon.

We also upgraded our Beretta Tomcat .32 to a Glock 26 9mm with VERY happy results. First time in my hand I can shoot better groups with it than I can with my XD and my wife is ecstatic over how well she did with it right away as well. The next gun I get will certainly be a 1911 .45 ACP, but I have to admit that I got a chance to shoot the Glock 30 and 3 different 1911s one day at the range, and my groups with the Glock at 20' were better than any of the 1911s. I guess that means that the 1911 mystique has a hold on me-- the Glock was cheaper than any of them and holds more rounds, but I want the 1911 anyway. So much for my claims to rationality!

BO Triangulation

The Obama Jolt

Slick Willie famously survived the debacle of his first two years and loss of the House of Representatives to the Republicans in '94  by bringing in Dick Morris and the "triangulation" strategy by which you support key Republican issues in order to govern. If people want Republicans and you want power, just govern as a Republican -- easy if you are Slick Willie and your only principle is power (well, that and oral sex isn't sex).

Now we have "Mr Change", Saint BO of the Left deciding that the markets losing 20% right after he is elected is less than a "vote of confidence", so he immediately rushes in to appoint a bunch of Clinton centrists to the economic posts in the cabinet and casts some doubt on whether or not his repeal of those AWFUL Bush tax cuts was factual, or just more campaign talk. The markets don't seem to think that taking money away from success (taxes on the wealthy) and giving it to the failed (bailouts) is all that good a business strategy. Go figure.

Triangulation right from the git go for BO? The right appears to be hopeful. It is of course a very workable strategy for BO--Slick Willie tacked right and got all the benefits of policies that worked better, plus, the media still hung with him, and he got support from the Republicans on those policies that they agreed with him on (NAFTA, Welfare Reform, reducing spending rate of growth, etc). Bush showed the failure of trying to tack left from the right -- Prescription Drug was hated by both the right and the left and it helped provide the kind of bad precedent that convinced Republicans in congress that they could spent worse than drunken sailors and still get re-elected.

It is still way too early for me to believe that BO is actually going to abandon his agenda of "change" and operate with policies that actually work, but his appointments and words since the election at least give some creedence to the idea that there actually IS some "hope"!

From the Bedroom Window

This is a shot through our big bedroom window of the back yard this AM. Not a lot of melting happened today other than on the roads, so it looks like this will be staying for awhile. From my 40+ years of decent memory of falls and winters in MN and NW Wisconsin, I'd say this is pretty normal. Milder early, then pretty average out to now with snow trying to show up here about when it usually does -- "first of December". Looks like 36 degrees forecast for Tuesday is the highest we will see on the 10-day extended, nothing else above freezing at all, which seems about right.

The Fable (parable?) of Boris' Goat

POLITICIANS, CEO PAY & THE TALE OF BORIS' GOAT - New York Post

Just read it, it is short. Increase the envy, misdirect the scapegoat and shear the sheep. So is the new "centrist BO" the REAL BO, or is he just playing with the sheep? I'm not sure how one would ever know. I suspect a lot of business will just sit on the sidelines until his actions make some committment that means he has made up his mind. Sure, he has appointed some folks that OUGHT to be reasonable, and has SAID that he is holding off on raising taxes for now, BUT, his rhetoric still says this is going to be a "new way".

Like, what does that mean? Really, nobody knows yet.

Hysteria

RealClearPolitics - Articles - The Hysterical Style

Some perspective on the current situation, something the MSM isn't very excited to do. I like the idea that Harry Truman and George Bush have similar popularity ratings as they leave office. Harry doesn't seem so bad these days, does he?

Reid Enters the Fray

Power Line - Minnesota Senate Recount, Update IX

As I've been watching the MN Senate recount, I harken back to FL and Katherine Harris. Somehow the Dems and the media seemed to be VERY concerned that the head of the canvassing board was a Republican. Here in MN, the head of the board is a Democrat, Mark Ritchie, but it seems that nobody in the MSM, nor thankfully from the Republican party is making much of a stink about that fact.

Now have Harry Reid entering the fray providing a not too veiled threat that if the answer isn't the one that the Democrats like, maybe they will just have to throw it into the Senate. Golly, if the situation was reversed -- 58 seat Republican majority, Republican in charge of the canvassing board and this came out, might one suspect that the MSM would go a just a BIT bonkers???

Not now, hard to find anything on the situation at all on the MSM, and only these rather muted strains on the right wing blogs.

As The Rich Get Poorer

RealClearPolitics - Articles - As the Rich Get Poorer

Good article, everything in there has been covered in this Blog, and to anyone that understands even the basics of economics, the conclusions are on the order of "the sky is blue", "many people like chocolate" -- however, we seem to live in a country where something over 50% don't quite get these basics, so I guess this kind of article is needed.

First, when the stock market goes down, then there aren't any capital gains to get $100 Billion a year or so in taxes from. True, the rich folks are less wealthy, but so are all the rest of us. You take 7.5 Trillion out of the economy and folks tend to feel less wealthy for some reason. I'm thinking at some point Democrats may understand that "losing $7.5 Trillion is bad", but I guess I might be wrong:

Unfortunately, the mine has less gold. All the financial turmoil has
left the wealthy -- however defined -- much less wealthy. Stock
ownership is highly concentrated. In 2001, the richest 1 percent owned
34 percent of stocks and mutual funds, estimates economist Edward N.
Wolff of New York University. Let's see. Since the market's high in
October 2007, stocks are down (through Oct. 31) 38 percent, or $7.5
trillion, reports Wilshire Associates

Second big point. If you like to redistribute wealth, it is kind of important to have something to redistribute. If it is gone, you can't redistribute it. I guess this is tough to fathom for the left, but I remain nearly certain that they are going to "get it" here at some point in the next few years.

But the redistributionist argument is at best a half-truth. The
larger truth is that much of the income of the rich and well-to-do
comes from what they do. If they stop doing it, then the income and
wealth vanish. No one gets it. It can't be redistributed because it
doesn't exist. Everyone's poorer.

Ever helpful to those leftys that may be reading here, Samuelson points out that if your cookie jar is empty, you can be really really generous, but there will be no cookies to redistribute! Now I know that BO will be printing a lot of imaginary cookies (debt/inflation), but I really think that the leftys will realize that an imaginary cookies are a whole lot less satisfying after awhile.

This isn't just theory. Last week, Gov. David Paterson of New York
pleaded with Congress to provide emergency aid to states. Heavily
dependent on Wall Street for taxes, he testified, New York faces a
$12.5 billion budget deficit next year and expects joblessness to rise
by 160,000. Wall Street bonuses will drop by 43 percent and capital
gains income by 35 percent, he estimated. People in New York would be
better off if the securities industry were still booming, even if there
were more economic inequality.

Conclusion, the sky is still blue, up is up and down is down. Perhaps BO believes he will repeal all that is factual, but I'm one of those nasty doubters.

BO Taking "Owership"

Borger: Obama takes ownership of the economy - CNN.com

Man, this BO guy is really something. Larry Summers was secretary of the treasury under Slick Willie, and then went off to be president of Harvard, but had to resign in "lefty disgrace" because he made politically incorrect remarks. So when BO the savior appoints a person to something, apparently even all past lefty sins are forgiven!

Tim Geithner started his career at Kissinger and associates and has recently been on the Federal Open Market Committee which is chaired by the Fed Reserve Chair, Ben Bernanke. He certainly worked as part of the BUSH administration on bailing out AIG and Bear Stearns, and not bailing outLehmann Brothers (and I suppose now bailing out Citi). How can a smart guy like that we working with the worst president ever, BUSH??? One would think that leftys would see him as having horrible judgement, but again, one he is appointed to treasury by BO, he is "redeemed".

The GREATEST slight of hand  is here:

Not only is there a team, but there's also a plan.

It's a
stimulus package with a price tag that could total as much as $700
billion over the next two years. It's as much as Congress allowed for
the Wall Street bailout, and more than we've spent in Iraq. The
incoming administration is also sending clear signals that it could
delay its promise to repeal President Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy.

All of which are good signs.


WOW, now "delaying the repeal of tax cuts" is something that is a "good sign" to a lefty? How can that be? If it is bad to raise taxes when the economy is bad, how can it be good to raise them when it is good? Isn't a delay and admission that taxes remove funds from the economy that can be better allocated by market forces to allow the economy to grow and that doing it when the economy is growing just reduces growth by some value related to the size of the tax increase? If there was such a thing as "consistency", one would think that all the people that have gone beserk over the past 7 years on those HORRIBLE "Bush tax give-aways for the wealthy" would be simply apocoleptic and the idea that their knight in shining armor would delay their repeal due to a poor economy!

Again, if one thought there ever were any consistency on the left, they are probably so fart out to lunch that this whole thing is simply invisible.

BO Will "Do What's Necessary"

Obama will 'do what's necessary' to fix economy, aide says - CNN.com

Easy to see why the mood of the country is so bright an cheery now that BO has been elected. Talk about leadership! When is the last time we have had a President-elect with such comforting and insightful leadership as "Doing What is Necessary", and on a specific topic! Thankfully, he had an aide provide the information so BO himself has some plausible denyability in case going out on the limb with such a bold and insightful statement needs to be softened. Sources close to the administration claim to be working on something less restrictive, such as: "Obama is studying what may be hopeful ways to change the economy". Some hard line aides are pushing for "earnestly studying", but feel that would  fail to connect with the rural red state voters.

CNN reporters were gratified to see BO return to "his roots" of "hope and change" rather than the stark and slightly wonkish pronouncement made by Axlerod.

The Market Keeps Voting

CNNMoney.com Market Report - Nov. 20, 2008

The Dow closed on election day at 9,625, today it closed at 7,552, 2,073 points or 22% lower. One thing very nice is that in listening to NPR, they are a lot less concerned now. Market drops prior to the election were all due to Bush, and the 300 point rise on election day was due to BO, but now I guess it is "unimportant". I suppose it is just another sign that evil market economy is a thing of the past and in the age of BO, who needs markets? BO will just wave the magic government wand and we will see jobs created, incomes rise and tax dollars stream in with nary a deficit in sight.

Ah yes, happy days are here again!