Friday, February 27, 2004

Ugh...

This morning Drudge is featuring a graphic of John Kerry picking his nose.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:02 AM

Hey, when you're right, you're right. Right?

On October 31, 2003, EconoPundit quoted Paul Krugman as follows: My purpose is not to denigrate the impressive estimated 7.2 percent growth rate for the third quarter of 2003. It is, rather, to stress the obvious: we've had our hopes dashed in the past, and it remains to be seen whether this is just another one-hit wonder. Two posts later we reported a Yale-model-forecast 4.1% growth rate for Q4 2003. This forecast has now been confirmed as having been accurate. The model was correct. Krugman's pessimism was unwarranted -- unless he now wishes to claim he was actually thinking of the same number we put out.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:43 AM

Thursday, February 26, 2004

Thomas Friedman

on why outsourcing to India might not be all bad : Well, he answered patiently, 'look around this office.' All the computers are from Compaq. The basic software is from Microsoft. The phones are from Lucent. The air-conditioning is by Carrier, and even the bottled water is by Coke, because when it comes to drinking water in India, people want a trusted brand. On top of all this, says Mr. Nagarajan, 90 percent of the shares in 24/7 are owned by U.S. investors. This explains why, although the U.S. has lost some service jobs to India, total exports from U.S. companies to India have grown from $2.5 billion in 1990 to $4.1 billion in 2002. What goes around comes around, and also benefits Americans.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 11:05 AM

OpinionJournal does its part...

Regarding the new protectionism: We called the [Edwards and Kerry] campaigns to ask which labor and environmental standards should be forced on the rest of the world, but they wouldn't be specific. Nor would they elaborate on what loopholes in the tax code they want to close. Perhaps that is a good sign; the vaguer the fulminations against free trade, the easier they would be to repudiate later on, just as Mr. Clinton flip-flopped on China trade in his first year in office. The rhetoric is still worrying, however. Mixing morality and economics is a tricky business. As Adam Smith wrote, rather than relying on the benevolence of the baker to provide us our bread, we trust to his self-interest; the transaction benefits both parties. So it also is with trade, but the mistaken idea that selling is more virtuous than buying when the exchange is with foreigners continues to have mass appeal. For your information and reading pleasure, here's the NAM report mentioned towards the end of the OpinionJournal article. This report's main finding: ...domestically imposed costs -- by omission or commission of federal, state, and local governments -- are damaging manufacturing more than any foreign competitor and adding at least 22.4 percent to the cost of doing business from the United States... (emphasis added)

Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:12 AM

Wednesday, February 25, 2004

From the policy frontier...

John Kerry thinks what we need most is to work out one more way an employer can be sued.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 10:47 AM

Baby boom generation fails at everything...

I am relieved to find out I'm not the only one who sees outsourcing as evidencing a massive ongoing failure of the US education establishment.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 10:30 AM

Cut spending? Yes. Raise taxes? No.

Sanity from Alan Greenspan.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 10:26 AM

A Report on Genuine Cinematic Antisemitism

Joel Rosenberg: ...Al-Shatat ("The Diaspora"), a...30-part "mini-series" produced by Syrian television...was broadcast during Ramadan last year by Al-Mansar, Hezbollah's satellite television network. The film is "a Syrian TV series recording the criminal history of Zionism," according to a November 11, 2003 report in the Syria Times. In Episode Six...a group of rabbis and other Jews...gather to torture and kill a man found guilty of marrying a non-Jewish woman. As the man screams in agony, the head rabbi instructs his fellow Jews: 'You hold his nose shut. You, open his mouth with tongs. You pour lead into his mouth. You cut off his ears. You stab his body with a knife before the lead kills him. This is a sacred Talmudic court; if any of you fails in his mission I will try you just like this criminal.' The men follow the Rabbi's orders... Those...attacking The Passion are...making a serious strategic error. They're crying wolf, and hurting their own cause by pointing to anti-Semitism where it doesn't exist and thus distracting attention from real and rising evils where they do. Moreover, by attacking a film in which a Jewish person is portrayed as the Savior of all mankind, they're needlessly insulting and alienating millions of Bible-believing Christians, the very people most supportive of the right of all Jews -- and the Jewish state of Israel --to exist in peace and security. And now read this to enhance any sadness you may be feeling.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:05 AM

Others' response...

Here are comments from others present at the Monday night screening I attended. I'm not sure anyone has heard from the three people who walked out during Jesus' scourging.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:42 AM

New Support for the Household Survey

Bill Hobbs has data on small business formation in Tennessee: In 1998, at the peak of the Clinton-era economic boom, 6,934 LLCs were formed in Tennessee. That dropped to 5,710 in 1999, and then plummeted in 2000 as the Clinton-era boom ended, the Internet bubble burst, Wall Street slid, and the economy slumped toward a recession. There were just 4,629 LLCs formed in Tennessee that year. In 2001, President Bush's first year, the rate of LLC formation began to rise, reaching 4,962. In 2002, there were 6,204 LLCs formed in Tennessee. And last year, as the Bush Boom gained strength, Tennessee entrepreneurs formed 7,412 LLCs. Tennessee is only one state - I'd love to have data from all 50 states - but it is one more bit of data indicating there may well be more validity to the household survey than its critics will admit.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:31 AM

Tuesday, February 24, 2004

Those who know don't say, and those who say don't know...

I am still waiting for genuine experts (e.g. Elaine Pagels) to comment on Mel Gibson's new film. Meanwhile, don't assume everyone who's talking loud knows the subject. Case in point: a small but annoying error in Kenneth Turan's review: ...it would be impossible for any disinterested viewer (if one could be found) to escape the fact that "The Passion" does not just mention in passing but is centered dramatically on the culpability of the Jews. This notion, sometimes called blood libel or blood guilt, has led to untold suffering and death over hundreds and hundreds of years, should have given someone, even a believer, pause. (emphasis added) Actually, blood libel is a quite different charge from deicide. These terms shouldn't be thrown around casually without first looking them up. UPDATE: And now this, just in from Drudge: NEWSROOM SOURCES: NYT TO SLAM GIBSON'S 'PASSION' IN REVIEW TOMORROW: 'Gibson has constructed an unnerving and painful spectacle that is also, in the end, a depressing one... It is disheartening to see a film made with evident and abundant religious conviction that is at the same time so utterly lacking in grace.... What makes the movie so grim and ugly is Gibson's inability to think beyond the conventional logic of movie narrative'... (And as we ponder these things, the movie review in question is being written by the very same folks Mel Gibson's dad talked about in his latest interview.)

Link posted by Steve Antler : 3:23 PM

Ralph the Gangster

WSJ: Mr. Nader is best understood as the inventor of today's nexus of liberal politics and trial-lawyer opportunism. His network of organizations have long been suspected of taking trial-lawyer cash, but it is impossible to tell because Mr. Nader refuses to disclose their financial backers. Yet just like Senators Kerry and Edwards he denounces the influence of sinister 'special interests.' It's a little ungrateful for Mr. Edwards to now upbraid the man who did so much to make the Senator's own fortune and political career possible.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:43 AM

Monday, February 23, 2004

Mel Gibson's "The Passion of Christ" -- a Brief Provisional Review

First, on the plus side there's the language -- absolutely stunning (albeit with an occasional, odd-sounding Scandinavian ring that makes you wonder exactly whose Aramaic or Latin is being spoken here). Anyone with a smattering of prayerbook Hebrew or church Latin will find themselves actually understanding what's being said from time to time. Hearing the entire drama play out in these languages is an exciting experience. Second, on the minus side, there's the graphic practically nonstop violence. This movie is not for everyone. But since pain and its acceptance for higher purpose is the central point of the project, a toned-down version would make little sense. Are there universals here non-Christians can relate to? The answer is definitely "yes." Just as the violence repels you, so the varying responses to this violence by Jesus' family and followers, by his enemies, by the crowd, and even by his soldier-tormentors, holds your attention in riveting fashion. Finally, are the critics justified in their condemnation? I think the answer is "yes" -- Jews (in the form of the Temple Priesthood) are unequivocally held responsible by this screenplay for the death of Jesus. Indeed, contrary to previous portrayals the entire Temple Priesthood are present at the crucifixion, a virtual impossibility given Jewish law. Those who want the story to justify their anti-Jewish feelings will easily find what they want here, but on those otherwise disposed can see the screenplay as portraying a kind of Jew-on-Jew sectarian mob violence that became commonplace during the Great Revolt seventy years later. Gibson and his special effects crew place flowing images of Satan and his grotesque Satanic henchmen within the mob, heightening the violence, urging the crowds on. Anyone reading Josephus' accounts of the Great Revolt might well suspect Satan had actually been there exactly as portrayed by director Gibson. More soon. UPDATE: Uh, hope it's not in bad taste to apologize for use of the word "riveting" in the second paragraph above. Gotta watch your metaphors here.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 10:27 PM

"I remain convinced that there has got to be a way to present the free-market case without advocating damage to the economy"

Dear Econ Friend, I don't usually send out my columns anymore. Nontheless I'm sending out this one as it relates so closely to what's on our collective mind. Happy to receive feedback, including negative feedback. I remain convinced that there has got to be a way to present the free-market case without advocating damage to the economy. With thanks, Amity Eppur si muove--Or, It's Back to the Dark Ages on Trade Financial Times UK, Europe, US by Amity Shlaes It is February 23, 2005. President John Kerry and his economic team - Roger Altman and Alan Blinder from the US Treasury and US trade representative Clyde Prestowitz - are busy converting the US into a protectionist fortress. The North American Free Trade Agreement? Rewrite it to force Mexican wages upward. The World Trade Organisation? Reconsider. Japan? Ralph Nader, special envoy, is just landing in Tokyo. And oh, that meeting with Pascal Lamy, the European Union's trade commissioner? Schedule it later. This vision of a return to the Dark Ages of protectionism seems improbable, especially considering the sunny American scenario of just a few weeks ago. No protectionist candidate cast his shadow across the election stage - Ross Perot and Pat Buchanan were nowhere to be seen. The only two serious candidates who talked about protectionism were Dick Gephardt of Missouri and Howard Dean of Vermont. Iowa voters chucked them out early, a humiliation that seemed to underscore the anachronistic nature of the protectionist message. In short, Americans generally seemed to have internalised the principal economic lesson of the 1990s: that the sort of global commerce symbolised by Nafta is a good thing. Certainly, the US transition to an international service economy has been difficult. Many citizens have lost jobs or know people who have. It is infuriating to see Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan thinking about hiring in Mumbai when people are worrying about the death of manufacturing in Montgomery, Alabama. Nonetheless, most voters also know that US unemployment dipped to historic lows in the decade following the signing of Nafta; they know that even now, post-recession, unemployment is lower than the average of the past quarter-century. Finally, Americans know that more jobs will materialise eventually. For while outsourcing may "kill" some jobs, it also helps companies to generate more profits, and those profits are reinvested - eventually - in jobs. But something is changing to obscure this logic. This month Mr Kerry and John Edwards have discovered that the loss of manufacturing jobs is unnerving voters and that calling for "job protection" - precise meaning to be worked out later - has enormous appeal. Suddenly, the basic laws of economics no longer seem to apply. Without considering much the implications of their actions, the candidates are edging towards old anti-trade positions. Thus earlier this month, Mr Edwards told an audience in Wisconsin that trade deals such as Nafta were bad as they "drive down our wages and ship our jobs around the world". He also spoke repeatedly about "fair trade not free trade". Mr Kerry has been more circumspect; he, after all, supported Nafta in the Senate, as well as China's entry to the WTO. His economic guru, Mr Blinder, spent his career repeating the formula, "increasing productivity and trade equals growth and jobs". Nonetheless, Mr Kerry has also - as James Hoffa of the Teamsters union recently put it - "evolved" on trade. Nafta, Mr Kerry says, has to be reopened and rewritten. The Kerry campaign has also reminded voters that its agenda calls for a moratorium on new trade agreements until all old agreements are reviewed, and Mr Kerry has said he wants to "bring back" jobs. What can that mean? The Republicans have also done their part to put back the clock. This month saw a new low for the party, when Dennis Hastert, the House speaker, made the inquisitorial demand that Greg Mankiw, chairman of the White House council of economic advisers, deny his suggestion that outsourcing can increase American well-being. Mr Hastert, a wonderful man but, after all, a former wrestling coach, was forcing Mr Mankiw, author of one of the best economic textbooks, to deny a basic law of economics. ("Recant, Galileo, admit that outsourcing always kills jobs!") It is easy to argue that this retrograde shift doesn't matter. Bill Clinton also asked for Nafta riders during his first campaign. But by crusading so hard for American jobs, today's candidates are suggesting the problem is free markets. They thus make it virtually inevitable that they will have to deliver protectionism after the election - even in areas where they do not intend such an outcome. This spells trouble. Democrats these days generally like to portray themselves as multilateralist. But protectionism is inherently unilateralist. If you are interested in international co-operation at all, you can see that this is exactly the wrong moment to bash international trade. The second problem is that by "protecting" jobs, the new administration is likely to kill them. Mr Kerry's international tax plan will force companies to stay in the US at the expense of profitability. This in turn will force them to lay off workers. His scapegoating of "Benedict Arnold chief executives" certainly won't inspire new companies to list on US exchanges. As for Mr Kerry's domestic tax increases, they represent the one kind of step that ensures lost jobs will not return: they reduce US relative competitiveness. The third problem is subtler: intellectual dishonesty. Congressmen of the 1990s saw first-hand what trade can do for growth. By ignoring that experience, Messrs Edwards and Kerry - and Mr Hastert even - force Americans to ignore it along with them. In effect, these men are erasing history. You can't get more medieval than that.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 12:45 PM

As we continue to re-live the 1960's...

For me they were the worst of times. It's really starting to feel like for everyone else they were best -- just absolutely the best -- of times.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:06 AM

Kerry: National Guard "campus murderers," armed attackers of minorities...

John Podhoretz in FrontPage : Kerry was present at [the headquarters of VVAW] when the group decided to write then-Mayor John V. Lindsay and demand that the city refuse to welcome [the 1970 convention of the National Guard Association]...The decision to stage this...protest against the National Guard -- which then comprised 409,412 Army Guard and 89,847 Air Guard personnel -- was made in John Kerry's presence and with his full knowledge. Executive-committee minutes for Vietnam Veterans Against the War note that among the six "members attending" a meeting to plan the protest was "John Kerry-NE Rep." ...Kerry and others will tell you...Vietnam Veterans Against the War was a group dedicated to advancing the interests of American servicemen -- protecting them, bringing them home, helping them. The group's protest against the National Guard Association[, however,] demonstrates...this claim is revisionist history with a vengeance. (Italics added) Quoting mimeographed pamphlets Podhoretz has VVAW charging National Guard with campus murders and "armed attacks on minority communities." Isn't it just a matter of hours before some enterprising journalist asks Kerry whether he still fosters a bit of residual hostility to the National Guard? UPDATE: On the other hand... UPDATE II: And then again, Larry Jones sends us this: John Kerry wants us to relive Vietnam. I say we revisit the 1980's - namely John Kerry's attempts to eviscerate integral defense systems. As shown in the [reproduced] documents from Kerry's 1984 Senate campaign, Kerry wanted to cut or eliminate: MX Missile (eliminate) Tomahawk Missile (cut by 50 percent) F-14 (eliminate) F-15 (eliminate) B-1 Bomber (eliminate) Patriot Missile (eliminate) NOTE: These supporting fragments are pieced together from scans sent by Jones.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:43 AM

Not looking forward to seeing this particular part of the movie...

David Ansen in Newsweek: March 1 issue - I have no doubt that Mel Gibson loves Jesus. From the evidence of "The Passion of the Christ," however, what he seems to love as much is the cinematic depiction of flayed, severed, swollen, scarred flesh and rivulets of spilled blood, the crack of bashed bones and the groans of someone enduring the ultimate physical agony. This peculiar, deeply personal expression of the filmmaker's faith is a far cry from the sentimental, pious depictions of Christ that popular culture has often served up. Relentlessly savage, "The Passion" plays like the Gospel according to the Marquis de Sade. The film that has been getting rapturous advance raves from evangelical Christians turns out to be an R-rated inspirational movie no child can, or should, see. To these secular eyes at least, Gibson's movie is more likely to inspire nightmares than devotion. EconoPundit film fans: please be advised I will be seeing The Passion at 7 pm tonight with an advance review group, and will post a first draft review of the movie here at approximately 9:30 pm. One of the more serious aspects of our last week's discussion went to the issue of pain and how we confront it. Ansen is, I think, missing an important spiritual point here, one shared by Jews and Gentiles -- and with similar difficulty. The kind of imposed suffering portrayed in the movie is of course extreme, but pain itself -- especially that associated with the final stage of much illness -- is commonplace. At one point or another everyone's had a relative who died facing more pain than we like to imagine. More often than we'd like we turn away from this kind of suffering, and we sometimes realize (too late) we could have done more had we been more courageous. I personally look forward -- with lots of misgivings -- to finding whether The Passion can speak to the non-Christian members of the audience on this unpleasant but none the less important issue.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:16 AM

Saturday, February 21, 2004

Okay, lemme see if I get it...

Saxby Chambliss says Kerry has a "32-year history of voting to cut defense programs..." And Kerry defends his record by saying "I don't know what it is that all these Republicans who didn't serve in Vietnam are fighting a war against those of us who did... " Wouldn't it be easy for a casual onlooker to conclude Kerry is questioning Chambliss' patriotism?

Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:10 PM

Comments on "The Passion" from Fox Newswatch

Jim Pinkerton: "the most audacious movie...by a director since D.W. Griffith made Intolerance in 1916." Cal Thomas: "You'd have to be a bigot to begin with to read anti-Semitism into it...This is the first film...from Hollywood...in a very long time...that speaks to the values, the beliefs, and the culture of religious and social conservatives...who are used to having their values denigrated..." Neal Gabler: "Mel Gibson baited his critics and they walked right into the trap...and in the process Mel Gibson brought together two traditional libels -- the libel that the Jews killed Jesus, and the libel that Jews control all the media and that we have to wrest it back from them." UPDATE: More here, and the whole issue is available here as well. Univ. Nebraska's JRF is a great online academic journal.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 5:50 PM

No problem?

Via Instapundit: The Economist denies US job drain.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 5:41 PM

Which came first?

A little detail from the 1960's has been nagging at the back of my mind all day: by the time of Kerry's widely-reported Senate Foreign Relations Committee testimony, had Ramparts Magazine already published the "lifer" photos showing GI's with trophy Vietcong heads? My recollection is it was the same month this article and its shocking graphics first appeared the issue of war atrocities made it into network news and widespread commonplace discussion. I'm asking this: did Kerry opportunistically join a rapidly-developing movement blaming US soldiers for atrocities ("baby killers!" became a fashionable thing to say at that point) or was he actually in the vanguard of the "baby killers" movement? So far I'd consider this to be the place for most reliable answers to questions like these. I'll be sending David Horowitz this very question by email some time today. UPDATE: From the just-mentioned site: Something is fishy. Here we have a JFK wannabe (the guy Halsey wanted to court martial for carelessly losing his boat and getting a couple people killed by running across the bow of a Japanese destroyer) who is hardly in Vietnam long enough to get good tan, collects medals faster than Audie Murphy in a job where lots of medals weren't common, gets sent home eight months early and requests separation from active duty a few months after that so he can run for Congress. In that election, he finds out war heroes don't sell well in Massachsetts in 1970, so he reinvents himself as Jane Fonda, throws his ribbons in the dirt with the cameras running to jump start his political career, gets Stillborn Pell to invite him to address Congress and has Bobby Kennedy's speechwriter to do the heavy lifting. A few years later he winds up in the Senate himself, where he votes against every major defense bill and says the CIA is irrelevant after the Berlin Wall came down. He votes against the Gulf War (a big political mistake since that turned out well), then decides not to make the same mistake twice so votes for invading Iraq -- but that didn't fare as well with the Democrats, so he now says he really didn't mean for Bush to go to war when he voted to allow him to go to war. UPDATE II: Another post from the same site: VVAW is still active in left-wing circles, protesting American imperialism. Two weeks after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, VVAW issued a statement declaring "The use of massive military power will only escalate the cycle of violence, spreading more death and destruction to more innocent people with no end in sight. ... We see many parallels between Vietnam and Afghanistan." In January EconoPundit posted several links pertaining to VVAW.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 12:57 PM

Another false alarm?

Via Drudge: [The Sunday Express] is claiming Osama bin Laden has been found and is surrounded by US special forces in an area of land bordering north-west Pakistan and Afghanistan... The paper claims he is in a mountainous area to the north of the Pakistani city of Quetta. The region is said to be peopled with bin Laden supporters and the terrorist leader is estimated to also have 50 of his fanatical bodyguards with him. The claim is attributed to "a well-placed intelligence source" in Washington, who is quoted as saying: "He (bin Laden) is boxed in." The paper says the hostile terrain makes an all-out conventional military assault impossible. The plan to capture him would depend on a "grab-him-and-go" style operation. "US helicopters already sited on the Afghanistan border will swoop in to extricate him," the newspaper says. It claims bin Laden and his men "sleep in caves or out in the open. The area is swept by fierce snow storms howling down from the 10,000ft-high mountain peaks. Donkeys are the only transport." The special forces are "absolutely confident" there is no escape for bin Laden, and are awaiting the order to go in and get him. "The timing of that order will ultimately depend on President Bush," the paper says. "Capturing bin Laden will certainly be a huge help for him as he gets ready for the election." The article says bin Laden's movements are monitored by a National Security Agency satellite. UPDATE: More at Command Post, which sends us here. Sorry.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 10:57 AM

$400,000 advanced to Scott Ritter...

At MEMRI.ORG, Nimrod Raphaeli has posted a thus-far definitive statement of the Saddam Oil Vouchers Affair in which you'll find the following: United States Shaker Al-Khaffaji (7 million barrels) advanced $400,000 to Scott Ritter, former U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq. Ritter produced a documentary purporting to tell the true story of the weapons inspections, which in his telling were corrupted by sinister U.S. manipulation... Samir Vincent (10.5 million barrels): In 2000, Vincent, an Iraqi-born American who lived in the U.S. since 1958, organized a delegation of Iraqi religious leaders to the U.S., which met with former president Jimmy Carter.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:53 AM

Kafka Filmography

I realize this is not exactly of central interest to everyone. Still, after a friend sent me this it seemed well worth posting for the few who will have little Kafkaic spasms of delight-followed-by-displeasure when they see all the films based on Kafka's work that (a) have been made and are (b) completely unavailable. 1. Am Ende des Ganges (1999) (novel Der Prozess) 2. Sickroom, The (1998) (story) 3. Schloss, Das (1997) (novel Das Schloss) ... aka Castle, The (1997/II) (Canada: English title) 4. Spivachka Zhosefina i myshachyj narod (1994) (story) ... aka Josephine, the Singer and the Mice People (1994) 5. Zamok (1994) (novel Das Schloss) ... aka Castle, The (1994) 6. Amerika (1994) (novel) ... aka America (1994) 7. Trial, The (1993) (novel) 8. Metamorphosis (1987/II) (TV) (novel) 9. Linna (1986) (novel Das Schloss) 10. Klassenverhaltnisse (1984) (novel Amerika) ... aka Amerika, rapports de classe (1984) (France) ... aka Class Relations (1984) 11. Bratrovrazda (1977) (story) ... aka Case of Fratricide, A (1977) 12. Metamorphosis of Mr. Samsa, The (1977) (story) 13. Redogorelse framlagd for en akademi (1976) (TV) (story) 14. Forvandlingen (1976/I) (novel Die Verwandlung) ... aka Metamorphosis (1976) (USA) 15. Informe para una academia, Un (1975) (play) 16. Colonia penal, La (1970) (story) ... aka Penal Colony, The (1970) (USA) 17. Schloss, Das (1968) (novel) ... aka Castle, The (1968) (USA) 18. Grafbewaker, De (1965) (story) 19. Proces, Le (1963) (novel) ... aka Processo, Il (1963) (Italy) ... aka Prozess, Der (1963) (West Germany) ... aka Trial, The (1963) (USA)

Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:16 AM

Friday, February 20, 2004

"I have rarely wished so strongly that I would be proven wrong."

Amitai Etzioni talks about current concerns and Mel Gibson's "The Passion." (Via Milt Rosenberg.)

Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:41 PM

Terrorist kidnap victim recovered?

Nothing on Drudge or Instapundit yet. What is this all about? PORTLAND, Maine - Law enforcement agents were questioning two passengers who were removed from a Moroccan-bound jetliner that was diverted to Bangor, officials said Friday...The FBI identified one of the removed passengers as 27-year-old investment banker Zubiar Ali Ghias, who had been reported missing to Chicago police last Saturday...The second passenger, whose name was not released, was sitting next to Ghias, Bangor police...said... FBI spokeswoman Gail Marcinkiewicz...declined to comment on statements from a private investigator in Chicago who said he called the FBI after Ghias called his family using a fellow passenger's cell phone to say he had been abducted by al-Qaida. Transportation Security Administration spokesman Mark Hatfield said the plane was redirected because of a bomb threat. He said the threat was apparently made by a passenger on the plane... The private investigator, Ernie Rizzo, told The Associated Press that Ghias called from aboard the plane. Rizzo said Ghias had last been seen by his family on Saturday. He said he was hired to track Ghias to New York through his credit cards. Rizzo quoted Ghias as telling his wife, "I'm on flight 201 to Morocco. I've been captured by al-Qaida, they want me to do something for them. I love you, I just gotta do this." Rizzo said Ghias had apparently used the cell phone of another passenger. Rizzo said he called back the number, and the passenger confirmed the flight number. Rizzo said he summoned the FBI to the family's apartment, and the FBI questioned the family. Rizzo's account could not be immediately confirmed... Here's an earlier Tribune story. Don't any Chicago news organizations know why Ghias might have been of interest to al-Qaida or whomever? Or was this a hoax? UPDATE: Now it's at Fox. Drywall? Tape? Glue?

Link posted by Steve Antler : 10:45 AM

How quickly it fades...

Check out QandO on certain opinion leaders' short memory.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 10:29 AM

From the New EconoPundit Dictionary...

Ideology: a dogmatic and incorrect set of beliefs held by one's political opponents; usually can be said to include a private plan which, if made public, would reveal the vile nature of the ideology's proponents. See for example this commentary from Wm. Lipinski: I believe it is appropriate to address what may be the real agenda of America's monetary authorities: preserving their trade ideologies even if it means watching American manufacturing crumble. Right after he made the point quoted above about productivity, Greenspan asked rhetorically, ''Is it important for an economy to have manufacturing? There's a big dispute on this issue.'' What better way to lay the groundwork for meekly acquiescing to America's de-industrialization. The Chicago Federal Reserve Bank has gone even further: ''Many believe that, owing to changing terms of trade throughout the world, the Midwest can no longer compete in the production end of manufacturing.'' [The Chicago Fed seems] to share this belief, but there are thousands of Midwest businesses and workers who disagree with them and their colleagues. I believe the Chicago Fed owes the Midwest an explanation.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 10:06 AM

It was the pudgy dweeb...

Just found this out from Don Luskin. Remember way, way back during December 2000, towards the beginning of the Florida recount during one of the many court sessions there was this testimony from a totally lame, bumbling statistician who caused everyone on both sides to scratch their heads and remember why they don't take college professors seriously? That was Brad DeLong!

Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:00 AM

News from the world of psychology...

Via Milt's File, the LA Times reports Freud was wrong about everything. How long before they discover Marx had problems too?

Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:38 AM

Thursday, February 19, 2004

Computers join the Bush conspiracy...

After a long, ironic, witty, and complicated post involving the administration's job forecasting "Troika" (but hey, I guess it's a better term than "Dreiokonomischeverschworer") Brad DeLong says: It is a possible scenario--it could happen that firms begin hiring like gangbusters, that the pace of work they demand from their employees falls, and that as a result productivity growth is anemic in 2004. The economy is a strange and surprising beast. But nonfarm productivity growth in the fourth quarter of 2003 has already come in, and its initial estimate is that productivity growth was twice as fast as the administration projection. Nobody I have found save the administration Troika and Yale University forecaster Ray Fair regards such a sudden collapse in productivity growth as a reasonable forecast. (Emphasis added) Yo! Brad -- we're all economic scientists here, aren't we? If Ray Fair regards an upcoming productivity collapse as a reasonable prospect, it is not because he hopes for it or has fiddled with various numbers in such a way that it finally seems reasonably possible. Rather, it is because this is what the printout of his model says. So, Brad, please enlighten us. Exactly which of the hundreds of equations in the MC model is wrong? Pray tell us: exactly why is this model generating an incorrect conclusion? UPDATE: And by the way, even though the results can be beefed up if you look at public- as well as private-sector employment, the latest Yale model jobs forecast wasn't all that great for Bush enthusiasts. But that's the way models work, after all. They just spit out those numbers, whether we like the results or not, without being part of any conspiracy to elect or reelect anyone in particular. UPDATE II: Oh yeah, and in the ongoing continuing thuggish tradition of the blog in question, there is neither a link to the Economic Report of the President nor Ray Fair's work.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 11:59 AM

What? Did I say that?

Latest to reluctantly admit the Bush Doctrine may be working: Thomas Friedman.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 11:36 AM

Best reason...

On Sunday morning I led a discussion group in which we debated reason why Jews should (or should not) go to see Mel Gibson's "The Passion." When asked if he planned to go, one of the older men said: "Nah. It would only spoil the book."

Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:53 AM

Wednesday, February 18, 2004

Vietnam and the mystical war against Communism...

In case you can't find it elsewhere, here's Kerry's 1971 testimony. I have to admit I didn't trust him at the time, and I'd like to know whether he now feels World Communism's decline was mystical or real.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 4:07 PM

Teaching Day

For details click here.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:28 AM

Tuesday, February 17, 2004

Analogy and advice...

Slightly altered quote from today's column: It's true that the U.S. spends far more on education than any other country, but this wouldn't be a bad thing if the spending got results. The real question is why, despite all that spending, many Americans aren't assured of the education they need, and American test scores are near the bottom for advanced countries. But I changed it a bit. The Columnist is Paul Krugman, and he talks not about education but about health care. And my question is this: why does he ask one set of questions about health and a completely different set of questions for education? UPDATE: As I look over the column as a whole, speaking as someone who's not only waited months to see a medical specialist under the Canadian system but also dealt with workers choosing to opt out of our employer-provided health plan under the US system, my advice is simply this: skip the column. Krugman is so far removed from the actuality of the subject his opinions are worthless. Read David Brooks' column instead!

Link posted by Steve Antler : 11:07 AM

Why we're not just like France...

Via Merde in France, Nelson Ascher explains in near-perfect Hegelian (my word not his) form why Europe is the old and decaying thesis, Israel is the new challenging antithesis, and the United States (you guessed it!) is the strong, unifying, pathway-to-the-future synthesis.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:11 AM

Who says we're not just like France (Part II)?

Regarding Democrats' revisiting the wild youth of George Bush, Hitchens says in passing: We don't have to take his word for it that he was "saved," but it's plain enough that he has reformed, thanks largely to his wife, and so it's mean and despicable to revisit that period in such a Pharisaic manner. Mean and despicable to do something in a "Pharasaic" manner? Did I get that right? Am I missing something? I'd be the first to admit I can be kinda thin-skinned, but at first glance this looks like another outbreak of the Mel Gibson "Passion" syndrome.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:41 AM

So who says we're not just like France?

Are you one of the many who don't know about urban police bans on immigration enforcement? If the answer is "yes", Milt Rosenberg suggests you read this to learn more: Such laws testify to the sheer political power of immigrant lobbies, a power so irresistible that police officials shrink from even mentioning the illegal-alien crime wave. "We can't even talk about it," says a frustrated LAPD captain. "People are afraid of a backlash from Hispanics." Another LAPD commander in a predominantly Hispanic, gang-infested district sighs: "I would get a firestorm of criticism if I talked about [enforcing the immigration law against illegals]." Neither captain would speak for attribution.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:14 AM

Monday, February 16, 2004

Remember "Social Text"?

The widely-reported Al Gore keynote address to the New School's Conference FEAR: ITS POLITICAL USES AND ABUSES seems to have overshadowed the sponsor. Remember the sponsor, the journal Social Text? It churns my stomach to imagine how these superior thinkers view all us slow learners who believe we're at war.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 1:51 PM

As the story develops it changes focus...

Drudge is developing names of and quotes from familiar media darlings showing how they view adultery investigations highly relevant when Republicans are involved, but sleazy and totally beside the point when any Democrat is on the spot.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:53 AM

Triumphalism by any other name smells just as sour?

Don "EconoGonzo" Luskin has prepared a brilliant takedown of Stephen Roach's whiny "Coping with the Global Labor Arbitrage." I have only this to add. Roach and those who feed on his arguments share a subtext they'd angrily denounce in others. Something must be basically and systemically wrong , they appear to believe, if non-Americans are as educated, competitive, or employable as Americans.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:43 AM

The law of diminishing monopoly...

Safire, worrying about Comcast and Disney, has a populist moment: But the message in this latest potential merger is not about a clash of media megalomaniacs, nor about a conspiracy driven by "special interests." The issue is this: As technology changes, how do we better protect the competition that keeps us free and different? EconoPundit's reply: so long as property rights are protected, it is precisely because technology changes that we are assured protection of the competition that keeps us free and different! Translation: in the very long run, property rights and technical change assure no monopoly is permanent.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:10 AM

From the "Great Minds Travel in the Same Rut" Department

Martin Feldstein for the most part agrees with EconoPundit: Although fiscal deficits impose a burden on future generations, it would be wrong to respond now with a tax increase. Raising tax rates would hurt the expansion and weaken the incentives that drive long-term growth. Rescinding the Bush tax cuts on high income individuals would not only be economically counterproductive but would also have little effect on future budget deficits. A 15% increase in the taxes of those with incomes over $200,000 (e.g., taking the 35% top rate back to 40%) would reduce future budget deficits by a mere 0.3% of GDP aside from the adverse effect on long-term growth. The medium-term goal for U.S. fiscal policy should, at a minimum, be a constant or declining ratio of debt to GDP. Achieving that goal requires bringing the deficit down to about 2.5% of GDP or less. Recent analysis by the Congressional Budget Office indicates that there is ample time to decide whether more is needed to achieve this than tight controls on spending. The low interest rates on long-term bonds also show that the participants in financial markets have confidence that future deficits will be coming down. Now all we have to do is get him to rethink that business about fiscal deficits and future generations. UPDATE: Feldstein: Looking ahead, one reason why actual budget deficits may be smaller than those implied by the CBO analysis is that the CBO bases its calculations on a projected GDP growth rate of only 2.8%. The improved productivity after 1995 has caused average GDP growth of 3.4% since then despite the recession. Continued growth at that rate for the next decade would reduce the fiscal deficit in 2014 from the projected 2.6% of GDP to just 0.9% of GDP. For the curious: the chart shows Yale model forecasts for GDP rates of growth through 2007. Wish we could say otherwise, but these are pretty much in line with the CBO numbers Feldstein quotes. The short term numbers are somewhat more optimistic however (5.2, 3.7, 3.2, and 3.0 percent for the four quarters of the current year).

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:32 AM

Sunday, February 15, 2004

Easy Bush reelection?

Bruce Bartlett has found new reasons why.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 1:30 PM

Small+Ethanol+Hydrogen=Cool!

This story seems to form a perfect link of three basic green desiderata --decentralization, sustainability, and cleanliness. Of course it may be another example of cold fusion in an old coke can, but why not get excited for a few minutes anyway? UPDATE: A reader responds, asking: Note that the story does not mention anything about the energy balance equation of the process. That is, how much energy is required to convert each molecule of ethanol into 6 (probably fewer) molecules of H2, and finally, the amount of energy produced by oxidizing the H2 produced by each molecule. Are we obtaining 10% more power than we used to cleave the Hydrogen from the ethanol? Are we producing less power than we used to produce the input hydrogen? [Could this be mere] rent(grant)-seeking obfuscation on the part of the study authors, or the usual incompetence on the part of our press[?] EconoPundit's two cents: I keep wondering what the renewability of ethanol fuel sources adds to the calculations. It is quite true that normally you make sure you're not using more fuel in the production process than you're producing, but how do these considerations change when you've got a continent-full of unemployed farm land just waiting to grow mountains of corn and reprocess greenhouse gasses into oxygen?

Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:56 AM

From the "Well What did you Expect?" Department

From last night's NRO Corner, Andrew Stuttaford finds this passage buried in the London Independent's review of Lars von Trier's film Dogville: But this would be to ignore [this film's] veiled criticism of America, once the country that prided itself on being a refuge to the tired and poor but more recently the scourge of immigrants and aliens. "Scourge" -- very interesting word choice here. Stuttaford just points this out leaving the rest to the reader's imagination, but now let poor dumb old EconoPundit spell it out literally for his fellow slow learners. Okay, the London Independent is like Mel Gibson telling the story of the Passion. The "immigrants and aliens" are like Christ. And the party "scourging" these victims, the US is like -- well, was it the Romans who were really responsible? The Roman soldiers? How about all of us, you know, like Gibson says in the public relations interviews, shared responsibility by all of humanity? No, actually, somehow I think the Independent, caught up in the mood of Gibson's film (rather than public relations and commentary), is imagining a single collective villain here -- the United States -- whom the Independent's readers seem encouraged to visualize as very much like the... UPDATE AND CLARIFICATION: This clever point having been made, let me say I look forward to seeing the film and encourage all my Jewish friends to do likewise. I am eager to see whether Elaine Pagels -- who has dealt extensively with certain problematic aspects of early Christian texts -- will review the film.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:35 AM

Friday, February 13, 2004

Phillips Curve 2004

As a kind of pre-weekend exercise I've tested some previous EconoPundit conclusions using the newly-reestimated Yale model. Hypothetically increasing the personal income tax parameter by 1%, 5%, etc., all the way up to 75%, I've been able to compute what levels of deficit reduction could be "purchased" with higher taxes, slower economic growth, and (therefore) a higher value of that politically-all-important number, the unemployment rate. The chart summarizes the sixteen quarter forecast results by plotting average forecast 2004-2007 unemployment rates against averaged deficit. Results are sobering but not unexpected. Cutting the deficit in half requires a return to an almost-certainly politically unacceptable 6% rate of unemployment. The numbers suggest deficit hawks should get serious. In a political environment where Mankiw's kinda innocent lecture on trade invokes Democrat charges of job export as official policy, fiscal "responsibility" at a cost of higher unemployment purely and simply will (I repeat -- will) not (I repeat -- not) happen (oh, you get the point I'm sure). UPDATE: Econ 101 types will recognize this immediately as the Phillips curve in drag, but I don't recall seeing anyone plotting it as this particular economic tradeoff. I know there are no original theoretical contributions here, but still, unless I hear someone else has claimed this particular diagram I'm going to reserve the right to call it the "Antler Curve."

Link posted by Steve Antler : 11:12 AM

President Kerry on Imus...

Recorded as it happened: 1. He's ready for the race. He's a fighter, ready to fight back. Americans want Truth. Subject is 3 million jobs lost, unaffordable health care, kids with poor education, environmental decline, lots of people are sick and tired of same old politics. 2. Vietnam is the war that will never go away. I worked to get answers on POWs and MIAs and make peace with Vietnam. It's not what I'm focused on. We've got a deficit that's growing and a budget that doesn't include cost of war in Iraq. How can this be left out? 3. Lost allies, world looking for greater leadership, bla, bla... 4. I won't comment on photo of me and Jane Fonda. Time to move on. War was screwed up. Veterans weren't welcomed back. I wrote Agent Orange legislation with Tom Daschle. Bla bla.. 5. On Drudge intern report: the answer is "no," there's no story there, nothing will come up to interrupt the race. 6. No comment on why Dean is still in the race. Bla, bla, bla, drone, drone, sanctimonious drone, etc. A nothing interview. Nothing new, nothing surprising, no real denial of Drudge story that I could recognize, but Imus took it as complete denial. IMUS: "So now, if something comes up he's a dead man." UPDATE: It's nice to be agreed with. James Taranto heard it like I did: John Kerry has responded to rumors of an "intern issue"...in Clintonian fashion. "Well there is nothing to report, so there is nothing to talk about," the BBC quotes him as telling MSNBC. "There's nothing there. There's no story." If you read this carefully, you see that it's not actually a denial, and you have to wonder if Kerry didn't choose his words carefully for just that reason. Then again, the Clinton comparison goes only so far; unlike in Clinton's case, which involved perjury and obstruction of justice in a sexual-harrassment case there has been no hint that this Kerry rumor involves anything beyond private behavior.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:36 AM

Whose consciousness is false?

Paul Krugman says most of us are hypnotized cult members: Some of his critics hope that the AWOL issue will demolish the Bush myth, all at once. They're probably too optimistic -- if it were that easy, the tale of Harken Energy would have already done the trick. The sad truth is that people who have been taken in by a cult of personality -- a group that in this case includes a good fraction of the American people, and a considerably higher fraction of the punditocracy -- are very reluctant to give up their illusions. If nothing else, that would mean admitting that they had been played for fools. Dale Henninger says we're being invited to regress to the 60's: The Primary Democrats danced a few rounds with Howard Dean, whose rage-at-the-machine temperament recalled their own best memories way back when. They have since settled on John Kerry, and properly so. John Kerry, in his person and career, exists today as the embodiment of Democratic Party politics from 1968 to this moment. For Primary Democrats, he is their perfect vessel. These Democrats opposed the Vietnam War, and like Mr. Kerry, that event serves as sextant in their political journey. Primary Democrats regard their active and successful opposition to Vietnam as moral affirmation of their world view, which holds, more as a matter of belief than principle, that any American foreign policy not of their making is too aggressive, morally suspect and wholly wrong. And there you have it. If Bush wins the election, it will prove arsenic in the water supply has lowered our collective intelligence. If Kerry wins, someone's laced the reservoir with LSD, and we've all gone back to the happyland of peace, free love, and Kumbaya.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:34 AM

Vietnam Revisited

A disturbingly dogmatic Robert Reich showed up on Scarborough Country last night. His job was to defend all John Kerry Vietnam statements down to the last punctuation mark. Vietnam was the darkest episode in American history, the Winter Soldier Investigation is gospel as proved by the William Calley trial, on and on Reich went, loud and shrill. I understand this was all political, but the gaps in Reich's treatment were in retrospect breathtaking. Communism in its day had a world-historic mission of expansion -- this is not ideology but fact. And correctly or not, Johnson genuinely believed in the domino theory. So to Bob Reich does it count for absolutely nothing that World Communism collapsed to great extent of its own accord -- that within the world history of ideas, the ideology of our opponents in the Vietnam War has been clearly and unequivocally discarded? Surely all of John Kerry's Vietnam statements can't be exactly correct given this very basic fact? UPDATE: Rich Lowry: Dishonesty must be official policy at the Kerry campaign when it comes to his anti-Vietnam record. A Kerry spokeswoman has said that, back then, "he praised the noble service of his fellow servicemen and -women." Yeah, right. Are we to believe that Kerry thought they were "noble" beheadings? "Noble" acts of torture? Kerry was indeed an advocate for better veteran health care. But this was partly because he considered vets shattered wrecks destroyed by the immorality of their actions. He explained high alleged suicide figures among vets by the fact that "they have to face what they did in Vietnam." (Vietnam vets actually have the same suicide rates as the general population.) Kerry wasn't just wrong about the vets, he was wrong about the big picture, too. He called Vietnam a "mystical war against communism." Given the massive aid to the North Vietnamese from the Soviets and Chinese, it was clearly a very real war against communism. "We cannot fight communism all over the world," Kerry declared. But in the 1980s, Ronald Reagan fought communism in hot spots all over the globe and won the Cold War.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 5:40 AM

Thursday, February 12, 2004

Even stranger still...

I purchased a newly-unexpurgated edition of Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land a few years ago, to see how it had aged since I'd first read the original (expurgated, I guess?) version many years ago in high school. I was surprised to find how (ahem) sexist and uncomfortable Heinlein's future (neither desktops nor internet!) actually seems to an, uh, adult early-21st century reader. But now, via Milt Rosenberg, we're sent to Colby Cosh in The American Spectator: If you wish to trace the sources of the libertarian strain in 20th-century American thought, you must include the science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein in your accounting of Hayeks, Menckens, Rands, and Rothbards. He deserves no less, yet is not always found in the ledger...Called everything from fascist to pornographer in his time, Heinlein is now recognizable as a particular sort of conservative, one who would get along well with Thomas Jefferson, Mark Twain, and Barry Goldwater. I suppose I should have thought of this, but I didn't.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:50 PM

Fork time for Kerry?

Okay, so the two main stories on the news tonight are allegations of Kerry's Clintonian extramarital affair and this news from his home state: The chants broke out spontaneously in pockets up and down the street, and included, "Hey hey, ho ho homophobia's got to go." Others chanted, "Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve," or held signs that read "Civil Unions." State police had to separate two crowds inside the Statehouse who began pushing and shoving after one group unfurled an American flag across from the chamber and began chanting "One Man. One Woman. Let the People Vote." Moments later, a contingent of gay marriage backers arrived shouting "Equality Now." Somehow I don't think John Edwards is quite done yet. UPDATE: However, strong evidence against veracity of the Kerry allegations would seem to be the rumor was spread by none other than Wesley Clark. UPDATE II: Jonah Goldberg at NRO The Corner: It will be fascinating to see how Howard Dean and John Edwards talk about the issue. They have one obvious point to their advantage. Because Kerry's campaign is based almost entirely on the "electability" issue they can go after Kerry on those grounds while at the same time denying the underlying offense is "anybody's business." Hence they will be able to say something like "those nasty Republicans will unfairly exploit John Kerry's private mistakes. I think that's terrible, but we have to face reality and run the best candidate we can. John Kerry's damaged goods." UPDATE III: Honestly, why bother with any of this. First, it seems all this happened back in the early 80's. Second, it was a journalist, not an intern. And finally, Wesley Clark, who put the rumor into play, is now going to endorse Kerry. UPDATE IV: Maybe it is more recent after all.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 11:11 AM

Rising GDP and falling dollar...

Sandy Pedersen writes: To sharpen my debating skills and learn, I visit The Independent's forum where a lot of Brits and Euros "reside." Some were discussing our "growth" especially 3rd quarter and argued our growth isn't what we're led to believe since the dollar has fallen so much--we're deluding ourselves and aren't as well off as we seem, too much FoxNews, the usual. One poster is married an American and works here and still doesn't think Islam is a threat. Your thoughts??? I read a lot yesterday and won't be able to find the actual posting, sorry. Or do we not care, because we're chugging along and they're not? EconoPundit pontificates as follows: The dollar, now moving wherever world markets care to send it, is proving its strength not by maintaining any particular value but by changing value in an orderly fashion. Sooner or later we may see rapid and dislocating movements in the value of our currency, but so far -- even in the face of George Soros' malevolence -- the brave little dollar is proving its mettle through its basic intertia. French wines and cheeses are now more expensive. Too bad for them. California vineyards and Wisconsin dairy farms can and will replace anything with lower-priced and equal-quality substitutes. Virtually nothing we import has no domestically-produced substitute. Even petroleum imports can and will be augmented by domestic supplies. And to frost the cake with real buttercream, consider how the economics of Ethanol (the fuel we grow!) change when world oil prices go up. And yes, before I forget, let's remember how the falling dollar changes the prices of the goods we export and, therefore, the level of employment in our export industries. How far can the dollar fall? Will interest rates be affected? Orderly operation of market forces will provide the answer.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 10:29 AM

What's happening?

All stories seem to have been pulled off of Drudge. Everything's been replaced by a single "World Exclusive Developing" story entitled "CAMPAIGN DRAMA ROCKS DEMOCRATS." As of this post, all one finds there is the headline. Keep clicking and maybe that will change. UPDATE: More there now. It's about marital infidelity. (I can hear it now, dozens of jokes about 57 varieties! Oy vay! Heaven save us!) UPDATE II: Okay, there's more now. The site is jamming up, so if you can't get thru, here's what's there right now: In an off-the-record conversation with a dozen reporters earlier this week, General Wesley Clark plainly stated: 'Kerry will implode over an intern issue'... Kerry commotion is why Howard Dean has turned increasingly aggressive against Kerry in recent days, and is the key reason why Dean reversed his decision not to drop out of the race after Wisconsin, top campaign sources tell the DRUDGE REPORT.... A serious investigation of the woman and the nature of her relationship with Sen. John Kerry has been underway at TIME magazine, ABC NEWS, the WASHINGTON POST and the ASSOCIATED PRESS, where the woman in question once worked...

Link posted by Steve Antler : 10:01 AM

What?

Thomas Friedman may finally be getting it. UPDATE: Then there are those who would disagree.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:05 AM

Dubya as Hal turned Henry V

Via Milt Rosenberg, Tony Blankley explains explains what GWB has in common with Monroe, Roosevelt, and, yes, Falstaff's best buddy Hal. UPDATE: Mackubin Thomas Owens seems to have picked up the meme. Lots of it going around I guess.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 4:12 AM

Andrew Sullivan, urine real trouble...

EconoPundit's impatience with Andrew Sullivan's bad economics training is shared by reader Gary Bezowsky: I've stopped reading Andrew Sullivan. I used to be a regular reader but recent offerings are mostly unconvincing rants about the Bush budgets. He is really hopeless on economics and really takes a political view of the budget rather than put it in the context of a US downturn or compare the deficit or spending to the size of the overall economy. Although he professes to be a conservative, he has spent a considerable amount effort to bash the president over the size of the budget. He ignores the economic turnaround with US growth rates exceeding those of much of the world, the declining unemployment rates, the great rebound in the stock market, the cuts in marginal tax rates which will insure a higher long-term rate of growth and the reductions in the dividend and capital gains rates which will lower the cost of capital. He has turned on the President and is looking for a scab to pick. Keep up the good work in your column. I read it every day and thoroughly enjoy your musings. EconoPundit replies: Thanks for the kind words. Regarding Andrew Sullivan -- I sympathize thoroughly, but can't agree we should stop reading the guy. He just might be the most important popular ethicist of our time, and even when he gets it thoroughly wrong the errors are still worth thinking about. UPDATE: Stan Brown objects: I have to agree with [Bezowsky]. I only majored in economics in college before getting my JD, so I don't have the background of professional economists, but I find his stuff increasingly unhinged. I have read him since before the 2000 election, but find that I spend little time there anymore. Lately, it is just a quick scan to see if there might be one post worth reading out of the 4 or 5 he puts up and I'm gone. As for his ethics, you got to be kidding. He has the strangest, most self-serving ethical and philosophical structure I have ever seen. He is a Catholic, except for the fact that he disagrees with the Church on almost everything. He is a conservative, except for the social and economic issues that he disagrees with. I think he is the ultimate modern man per C S Lewis. Andrew puts God in the dock and judges Him. Sullivan likes drugs, so he decides they are morally acceptable. He succumbs to the temptation of unmarried sex with serial partners, so he decides it isn't sinful. He enjoys homosexual sex, so he decides that it isn't sinful. What he ends up with is a god who is nothing more than a deity who reinforces all of Andrew's rationalizations. Andrew has constructed his own god for his own reasons. Sullivan apparently doesn't repent. He merely redefines sin to accord with his own earthly desires. We read him for the same reason we read the papers and monitor the networks. He has influence and it is important to understand how other people are thinking.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 3:58 AM

Howard Dean, urine real trouble...

So many gross puns based on this story, so little time: Making the point that good scientists must "never take anything for granted," Dean observed that water from a flushed toilet actually would be cleaner for drinking than water untreated from the nearby Mississippi River. "That's disgusting!" one girl shouted. Another student volunteered that his experiment studied dog urine. On it goes, in much the same vein, for some paragraphs more. This is one of those for which I'd not say "read the whole thing."

Link posted by Steve Antler : 3:36 AM

Wednesday, February 11, 2004

These Just In

New report from JEC; here are the highlights: Payroll employment increased by 112,000 jobs in January, the largest monthly gain since 2000, and the unemployment rate fell to 5.6 percent. The economy grew at a robust 4 percent annual rate in the 4th quarter of 2003. Forecasters see continued growth of around 4% throughout this year. Productivity...grew at a 2.7 percent pace in the 4th quarter, above historical averages. The Federal Reserve kept short-term interest rates unchanged at 1 percent. Greenspan as well is making fairly optimistic noises. UPDATE: I especially like the unemployment graphic from the JEC. It feels nice to find other economists interested in putting current unemployment in historical perspective -- a message EconoPundit's been preaching since day #1 of the blog. (Whoa! Danger! Watch out there EconoPundit, next thing you know you'll start imagining it was you who invented the unemployment rate!)

Link posted by Steve Antler : 11:19 AM

Finally

Andrew Sullivan is finally talking like he understands something of economics: When people tell me to forget the debt because the war on terror trumps everything else, they are missing the fact that the deficit will kill this war sooner than any Baathist insurgent. The struggle abroad desperately requires reform and sacrifice at home. I'm not sure I agree with this -- it is, after all, a technical rather than a moral matter -- but at least Sullivan now sounds like he understands this important distinction. UPDATE: I think I take it all back. Now, in a later post, Andrew sends us to this site for helpful charts. "If you're not worried about the spending explosion after looking at these," he says, "you're Dennis Kucinich." Ohhkay, let's play along. Dennis to Andrew, Dennis to Andrew: come in please! We want you to re-examine those charts. Here's the first one, showing what you call the "spending explosion." Now look the exact same data, but this time starts counting the vertical scale not at a well-chosen 18%, but at zero. What's the lesson here? You'll see an "explosion" rather than just a teensy little wiggle if you fall for the oldest trick in the "how to lie with statistics" book -- starting the scale at a well-chosen, sympathetic number.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:16 AM

Teaching Day

First we drive downtown and park in the shadows of the massive Eisenhower Expressway, the Buckingham Fountain, and the Auditorium Theater (soon to be showcasing newest productions of Chicago's own Joffrey Ballet!). With wheeled computer briefcase buzzing in tow we walk half the distance of the Loop -- past the Art Institute and Orchestra Hall across from Grant Park -- to the new quarters of the Walter E. Heller School of Business. There, from 3-5:45, we teach MBA students from the Peoples' Republic of China. Today's topics: labor markets, other factor markets, technical and ethical issues in connection with same, British Liberalism vs. French Republicanism and implications for political economy, and intro to macroeconomic variables. Then we walk back halfway across the Loop, wheeled computer briefcase still buzzing along behind, to the Auditorium Building to meet with mathmatical economics students from 6-8:30 pm. Downtown urban universities mean different things to different people. Some sneer at them as mere "night schools." To me, standing in the middle of a downtown area and granting real degrees to those willing to not only work during the day but also study at night is about as American as anything can get. My only real complaint is that unlike the situation depicted in the illustration, it is now Winter outside rather than Spring.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:46 AM

Tuesday, February 10, 2004

He noticed...

Bartlett: This brings us to the most important chapter in President Bush's budget, the one entitled "Stewardship." Buried in an appendix volume where reporters are unlikely to notice it, the chapter paints a chilling picture of long-term budgetary trends. It shows federal spending rising from about 20 percent of gross domestic product this year to 53 percent in 2080. Much of this comes from interest on the debt, which rises by 20 percent of GDP. But this is because the budget assumes that taxes will not rise to finance rising entitlement spending. In all likelihood, taxes will rise sharply at some point. It is completely unrealistic to think that federal taxes will remain close to 20 percent of GDP for the next 75 years.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:25 AM

Why aren't we all flocking to Canada, anyway?

David Bernstein at Volokh Conspiracy has links to statistics and goes farther than our usual "undocumented-immigration-changes-the-data" approach in dealing with the supposed superiority of Canada and Europe when it comes to social statistics: First, if we measure things by revealed preferences, i.e., voting with their feet, this seems false. For example, the number of Canadians moving to the U.S. dwarfs the number moving in the opposite direction, and, anecdotally, despite living in cosmopolitan cities I don't recall any American I've met in my entire life permanently settling in Europe, and I would guess the stats would support my impression that immigration is almost entirely westward. Second, the U.S. would be much wealthier relative to Europe and especially Canada if they didn't mooch off of the U.S.'s military protective umbrella. Canada has a whole twenty thousand soldiers under arms, not enough to fend off the NYPD. Give Canada the U.S.'s per capita defense budget, and the U.S. Canada's, and the population movement will become even more pronounced, and of course all of Brian's statistics would be affected to the U.S.'s advantage. Third, the differences between the U.S. and other countries can be grossly exaggerated. Take the vaunted "lack of national health care" in the U.S. The U.S. in fact has a quasi-socialized health system, in the sense that the government pays most (yes, most!) of the health care costs (from Medicare, Medicaid, and the Veterans Administration) and is responsible for a good chunk of the remainder (through tax subsidies, mandates to insurance companies, mandates re emergency care, etc.). Indeed, I remember seeing a study noted in the Economist a while ago showing that the private sector in the U.S. doesn't account for a substantially larger share of health care spending than in many European nations, but that the U.S. health care system has just been socialized in a more haphazard and inefficient way, creating greater costs while insuring fewer people. Indeed, because the U.S. has higher per capita GNP than the Canada and Europe, the U.S. spends more per student, including per poor student, on elementary education, and, I would wager, in many states more on welfare. So it's not like we are comparing Nozick to Rawls when comparing the U.S. to other Western democracies, at worst it's like comparing Dukakis to Gerald Ford, and I wouldn't be surprised if the U.S. acually actually spends more per capita (due to its great wealth) on the poor (of course, if you define poverty circularly as a percentage of the median wealth, this still makes the U.S. look stingy).

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:12 AM

Monday, February 09, 2004

From the ERP

From Chapter 2 of the new ERP, which (as this little excerpt shows) pulls together so much important but widely-scattered information it will turn out to be this year's basic recommended textbook in applied economics: The decline in manufacturing employment in the official statistics may somewhat overstate the number of actual manufacturing production jobs that have been lost. Changing business practices in the manufacturing sector have led to both the outsourcing of nonproduction work that used to be done "in house" and the increased use of temporary workers. Manufacturing firms that once employed lawyers or accountants in their legal or finance departments might now hire outside consultants to perform these services. Counting this outsourcing as a decline in manufacturing jobs is somewhat misleading, because these workers provide services whether they are working for a manufacturing firm or an outside firm. Similarly, manufacturing firms are increasingly using temporary workers, especially during periods of uncertain demand. Such workers, previously counted as manufacturing employees, are now counted as service-sector employees in the payroll employment data, although many of them still produce manufactured goods. The way in which employment statistics capture the increased use of outsourcing and temporary workers thus overstates the shift from manufacturing to service-providing jobs. And then there's this. Play the "we are not alone" music from Steven Speilberg's "ET" to yourself as you examine this chart:

Link posted by Steve Antler : 11:37 AM

This Just In...

I have it from a good source this new Economic Report of the President is the most important economic document yet issued by the current administration.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:46 AM

Sunday, February 08, 2004

Ideological Left versus Non-Ideological Right?

I am really surprised to discover this about the ADA: Since ADA's founding in 1947, the Annual Voting Records have served as the standard measure of political liberalism. Combining 20 key votes on a wide range of social and economic issues, both domestic and international, the Liberal (LQ) provides a basic overall picture of an elected official's political position. No right wing ideologue need ever worry about whether or how to tar someone with the "liberal" label. The ADA provides its own officially-sanctioned numerical rankings. Having spent much more of my time on the Left than on the Right, there are a few holes in my knowledge of the workings on this side of the fence. Can someone enlighten me: how many right-wing equivalents are there to this absurd ADA official rating of ideological purity? Am I naive to think the Right is a little less willing to rate officials' ideological purity than is the Left? Also: what with libertarian versus conservative versus neocon schools of thought floating around, isn't everything on the Right less ideological this decade? UPDATE: From many sources we now learn yes, we've been quite naive on this point. ACU, for example, has its own rating scheme.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:53 AM

Saturday, February 07, 2004

Bad employment forecast day...

Maybe it is unwise to waste too much confetti celebrating the latest presidential vote equation results? Lurking within the latest run of the Yale model is this apparent bad news for Bushies, a new revised private-sector version of our infamous "jobs dubya": In English, this chart says private sector job creation will only just restore all lost private sector jobs by the date of the election. (Our previous more-optimistic results included public sector and military employment. Counting things that way would give a better outlook, but I'm having a crabby weekend and thought I'd share the gloom.)

Link posted by Steve Antler : 12:00 PM

Baby Boom Economics

I was born exactly 12 months before the first of the official "baby boom" generation. I've seen the entire history -- thru the eyes of a guy who's older and wiser by, hey, a whole year. I just knew something was going on when, in 1956, Davy Crockett hats started appearing everywhere. Somehow capitalism had intruded on my private weekly relationship with Walt and Fess Parker. I started to realize there must be lots of kids just like me watching every week, enough to cause my secret and most cherished wish -- a racoon-skin hat just like Davy's -- to suddenly appear in about seven different versions in stores everwhere. And thus it has been all my life. The market has always sensed massive profit opportunities in catering to needs of people my age, and those younger than me by 1-10 years. With the wisdom of years and professional experience, I've come to realize the price of most relevant assets include a heavily discounted and highly accurate assessment of any such profit opportunities. And this is the core idea in an important editorial in today's WSJ OpinionJournal. This idea explains why neither John Kerry nor anyone else -- radical rhetoric notwitstanding -- will dare go anywhere near Big Pharmaceuticals with price regulation.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:17 AM

Weekend correspondence...

Sandy Pedersen, while on the way a root canal, had these thoughts and sent them in to EconoPundit: [Employment seems to be recovering,] but I wonder how many of [the newly-counted-as-employed] started their own business [rather than going] back into the workforce?...I think those who actually started their own businesses...got a wake-up call as to how much in taxes Uncle Sam really takes[. They] might become more active in the future. Passively having 6.2% taken out of one's paycheck for SS and being means-tested v. actively writing a check for 12.4% plus FUTA/SUTA/etc. would tend to color one's view, I would think. EconoPundit replies: First and most important I hope the root canal went okay. As far as the rest, all I can say is going from academia to the business world certainly changed my viewpoint radically. (Have to say the fall of World Communism also played its part, though.) Rob Stevenson (TheNeoConservative.com -- try going there tomorrow since this is a blog that observes Jewish Shabbos) sent this before sundown on Friday: [I]it occurs to me...an analogy can be made between business and weather cycles. Dec. 21st is the shortest day of the year, and yet it continues to get colder for months still. While the longest day is June 22nd, the hottest days typically aren't until August. Although each day in January and February is getting subsequently longer, there is still a net loss of heat until some point where the days are long enough to allow for a net gain in heat...Most engineers will tell just how hard good control systems are to develop. There is no reason why the economy should have a perfect control system - rather the evidence seems to point to the contrary. Although the recession has ended, this information still needs to disseminate and confidence needs to build before the results (job growth) will be seen...One curious point does stand out. Why is the unemployment peak after the early 90's recession and the 2001 recession appearing a year after the recession ended(jobless recovery), while the past peaks were concurrent with end of the recession? Could it be that as the economy gets larger, the lags do as well? EconoPundit's response: First, there's a growing literature on job creation/destruction, structural change, and globalization (i.e. expanded world trade). Lots of great links to this work is floating around here, at Bruce Bartlett, Robert Musil, etc. (I'll poke around and see if there's a definitive bibliography with links somewhere.) I think Rob's point on information dissemination is particularly thought provoking, though. Let me make the point in a nutshell: Why isn't the widening and cheapening of information technology should be making job searches faster and cheaper? I don't have a good answer, but it seems like this is an important question. Finally there's this note from David Cushing: Ok, the news is that the expectations were around 150,000 (if I remember correctly), and the actual number is 112,000. Later, they admit that the December numbers should be 16,000, not 1,000. So, December was under by a factor of 16, what kind of error will there be in the January number? So, why all the adjectives (disappointing), and opining (likely weigh on President Bush's re-election campaign.)? Is there an agenda behind this report or what? If I had any ambition I'd have to start watching the Anna Willard byline. EconoPunditista? Hmm, I like it, but exactly how do I pronounce it? It almost comes out like a stutter. :-) And when is Bush going to roll out his plan to change retirement savings. I liked that report you clued me into, but I don't think I've seen anything from the White House talking about it. Here is EconoPundit's response: David, even though it is the weekend and I'm trying to be mellow, you're raising my professional-economist's hackles here. Revisions in the monthly numbers aren't error-correction in the sense the first draft of the report is supposed to be perfect. This is just the way the system works. We either accept that early information may be innaccurate and needful of revision, or we perpetually wait in the dark for two months and then hear the"near-perfect" numbers. "EconoPunditista" rhymes with "Zapatista," "Batista," or, if you've been to Starbucks lately, "Barista." Consider my position. Let's look at some alternate possibilities: EconoPunditeers (sounds too much like the Mickey Mouse club) EconoPunditooties (oh please) EconoPunditReaders (boring and does not roll trippingly off the tongue) Members of the EconoPundit Truth Squad (I think someone else is using this) This is all I can come up with right now. Suggestions are welcome.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:48 AM

Friday, February 06, 2004

The Moving Finger writes and, having writ, moves on...

Thanks to a good friend, for the next week we can all legally read this WSJ (paid subscriber) article about the presidential vote equation and its dire (for Democrats) forecast.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 10:13 AM

Wrong. And isn't the timing just exquisite?

Today's NYT Krugman: Now let's turn to the administration's other big embarrassment, the budget deficit. The fiscal 2005 budget report admits that this year's expected $521 billion deficit belies the rosy forecasts of 2001. But the report offers an explanation: stuff happens. "Today's budget deficits are the unavoidable result of the revenue erosion from the stock market collapse that began in early 2000, an economy recovering from recession and a nation confronting serious security threats." Sure, the administration was wrong -- but so was everyone. The trouble is that accepting that excuse requires forgetting a lot of recent history. By February 2002, when the administration released its fiscal 2003 budget, all of the bad news -- the bursting of the bubble, the recession, and, yes, 9/11 -- had already happened. Yet that budget projected only a $14 billion deficit this year, and a return to surpluses next year. Why did that forecast turn out so wrong? Because administration officials fudged the facts, as usual. I'd like to think that the administration's crass efforts to rewrite history will backfire, that the media and the informed public won't let officials get away with this. Have we finally had enough? (a) First: why is Paul going back to February 2002 for the deficit projections? Why not go back to the more-recent 2003 budget tables (follow the link EconoPundit provides on the blogroll) for the more-realistic deficit projections of $80 and $13 billion respectively? Can it be, perhaps, because the comparison is less dramatic? Can this actually be an attempt to mislead the reader into thinking the 2002 projections are the most recent ones available? (b) Were the "fudged-facts" projections Krugman talks about seriously out of line with then-contemporary private sector and academic forecasts of the same numbers? Since the answer is "no," everyone must have been in cahoots with the administration to deceive the public! CALLING OLIVER STONE! CALLING OLIVER STONE! THIS IS AN EMERGENCY!!!!! (c) Finally, Paul's timing (as usual) is exactly wrong. A perfectly non-political model -- as (or more) sophisticated as anything used in Washington or anywhere else -- has just projected the "expected $521 billion" deficit as overestimated, perhaps owing to negative reporting, by about 25%! Gimme a break.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:59 AM

From the new Fairmodel Forecast Memo:

Real Growth and the Unemployment Rate: The predicted growth rates for the four quarters of 2004 are 5.2, 3.7, 3.2, and 3.0 percent, respectively. The large increase for the current quarter is because of a large predicted increase in inventory investment. These growth rates are high enough to drive the unemployment rate to 5.3 percent by the end of 2004. The jobs variable, JF, is predicted to increase in the four quarters of 2004 by 2.5, 3.0, 3.1, and 2.9 percent, respectively. This is fairly substantial job growth. Inflation: Inflation as measured by the growth of the GDP deflator (GDPD) is predicted to rise to 2.6 percent by the end of 2004. Monetary Policy: The Fed lowered the short term interest rate more in 2001:1, 2001:2, 2001:3, and 2001:4 than the model predicted. (You can see this by estimating the model in Eviews or the FP program and examining the estimated residuals for equation 30.) The estimated interest rate rule (equation 30) is predicting that the three month bill rate (RS) will rise to 2.1 percent by the end of 2004. Other Variables: The federal government budget deficit is predicted to be around $400 billion in 2004 (on a NIPA basis). (See the predicted values for SGP.) This is smaller than many others expect. This is where experimenting may be useful. In particular, it may be that the above assumptions have underestimated future federal government spending. It could also mean, however, that people are too pessimistic about the deficit. The U.S. current account deficit (variable -SR in the model) is forecast to be extremely large throughout the period. It is predicted to be $591.0 billion in the fourth quarter of 2004. The above paragraphs are directly taken from the forecast memo. Expect comment, experiments, and explanations to appear at this site in the hours/days/weeks to come, but for now we can briefly note everything looks very good.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 4:50 AM

Thursday, February 05, 2004

The Genious Ideology of Asymmetrical Warfare

A new effective anti-Zionist-entity tactic is being proposed by the Egyptian official government daily newspaper Al-Masaa. It falls under the heading assymmetrical warfare, specifically, taking advantage of your enemy's stupid sentimental attachment to ethics. As translated by MEMRI: Even if during [a martyrdom operation] civilians or children are killed -- the blame does not fall upon the Palestinians, but on those who forced them to turn to this modus operandi. Ultimately, we should bless every Palestinian man or woman who goes calmly to carry out a martyrdom operation, in order to receive a reward in the Hereafter, sacrificing her life for her religion and her homeland and knowing that she will never return from this operation. But at the same time, we wonder about the [Arab media's] reason for publishing the names of those who carry out the [martyrdom] operations; [this publishing] is a valuable gift that the Palestinian resistance gives the Zionist entity, since as soon as it receives this gift, the armies of the [Zionist] entity hasten to the home of the martyr's family, wounded by the loss of its son, in order to multiply its pain by destroying its home. Moreover, the home of the martyr's family is always destroyed negligently, causing serious damage to or the collapse of the neighbor's home. Lemme see if I get this right. Since the Israelis punish suicide bombers by destroying the family home (after due notice clear the premises) the best way to handle things is to simply not publish the name of the suicide bomber so the Israelis will then, uh, maybe, do what Saddam Hussein or the Syrians do and perhaps (after due notice) level the entire town? (Oh wait -- I forgot, the Syrians and Saddam Hussein never gave due notice for all those inhabitants to get out. Oh well...)

Link posted by Steve Antler : 3:07 PM

CNN looks for bad jobs numbers?

Loyal EconoPunditista David Cushing sends us this: [T]he tone of this article seems to be that the job numbers are finally anticipated to be good for January, and the author is taking great pains to explain why they aren't nearly as good as they seem...So the job numbers haven't even been posted, and the article is already trying to knock them down. Hmmm EconoPundit can't agree more. Here's an updated version of a basic chart we started looking at way back in the summer when this blog first emerged from the classroom: The pink bands show recessions, and the red arrows show, roughly, the increasingly "jobless" nature of recoveries -- the fact unemployment now seems to peak after (rather than during) the recession itself. But the good news is, just look at how unemployment keeps going down and down and down once the recession is over. And, hey, doesn't it look like the process has started for us right now?

Link posted by Steve Antler : 1:45 PM

Care and Feeding of a Macroeconomic Model (installment #4)

So now re-estimation of the stochastic equations (on the basis of all pre-existing and new data) has taken place (in installment #3 we imagined it like a field house event in which data strings jump around and perform, as the macroeconomic coach keeps score). Now comes the dark night of the soul. The model-keeper retires to the study, and late into the night, with crackling fire and steaming coffee (maybe brandy?) he broods over these variables: TRGH-- federal transfer payments to households COG-- federal purchases of goods and services JG-- number of civilian federal govt jobs TRGS-- federal transfer payments to states TRSH-- state transfer payments to households COS-- state purchases of goods and services JS-- number of civilian state govt jobs EX-- exports PIM-- average price of imports D1G-- indexed rate of personal income taxation Like an alchemist, these he mixes and matches until one goal is reached -- the entire package is a reasonable approximation of what he, the macroeconomic forecaster, suspects will be typical for the coming twelve quarters. At dawn he emerges, all numbers neatly recorded on pages in a folder. He looks up the hill, toward a towering lab that resembles Castle Frankenstein. There awaits the computer. It is time to --- RUN THE MODEL!!! (To be continued; scroll up for more.)

Link posted by Steve Antler : 1:32 PM

Kerry

Howie Carr:: One of the surest ways to get the phones ringing on any Massachusetts talk-radio show is to ask people to call in and tell their John Kerry stories. The phone lines are soon filled, and most of the stories have a common theme: our junior senator pulling rank on one of his constituents, breaking in line, demanding to pay less (or nothing) or ducking out before the bill arrives. The tales often have one other common thread. Most end with Sen. Kerry inquiring of the lesser mortal: "Do you know who I am?"

Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:45 AM

Wednesday, February 04, 2004

On Outsourcing Jobs

Bartlett: The problem really arises because India, rather than, say, Canada or Germany, is the perceived threat. We don't generally worry about American jobs going to wealthy industrialized countries like Canada and Germany, because their workers are highly paid and cannot undercut us based on low labor costs. Because Indian workers are paid only a fraction of what a comparable American (or Canadian or German) makes, the competition is viewed as unfair. But how did the U.S. and other wealthy countries get that way? It was by being the low-cost producer in some area. No doubt, the European farmers of the 18th century were bitter about being undercut by American farmers, whose cost of land was a fraction of that in Europe. They must have felt that this was as unfair as unemployed IT workers feel about India. But as time went by, costs equalized as capital and labor migrated to other countries and other industries. This is all part of the process of economic growth.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 1:50 PM

At last -- they see the truth!

Glenn Reynolds and the Columbia Journalism Review Weblog have now discovered what EconoPundit has been preaching for months: that the best measure of the so-called burden of public debt is interest on the public debt as a percent of GDP, which varies with (1) interest rates and (2) federal debt as a percent of GDP. Econo-heh. UPDATE: We missed this, on the same subject, from Bill Hobbs.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:50 AM

Tuesday, February 03, 2004

That's the point, guy!

Peter Robinson, in "sticking up" for free trade, actually sticks it to the free traders. He makes the point for nativist anti-free traders quite effectively: A peeve: Of all the counterexamples the protectionist could name, Bismarck's Germany represents one of the weakest. In the first place, Germany under the Second Reich was undergoing rapid industrialization. Any nation that brings large numbers of farm workers-peasants-into an industrial economy will produce high rates of growth regardless of its trade policy. In the second place, just think for a moment about the unification of German states that Bismarck achieved. Before the Iron Chancellor, German-speaking Europe was divided among literally dozens of states. Bismarck put Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, Hesse, Oldenburg, and many others together. Across a broad swathe of central Europe, in other words, Bismarck established a single market and...free trade. Yes but when Pat Buchanan raises the spectre of a new "Hamiltonian American Free Trade Zone," (this expression is my just-improvised invention, and the scare quotes are to indicate novelty, not quotation) he's imagining a retro-Hamiltonian integrated, unified, self-sufficient national U.S. market satisfying all its needs safely behind tariff walls. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for genuine free trade. It must be remembered, though, how fragile this position can be made to appear. Hamilton's (and Bismarck's) contribution was to show how free trade within a large, integrated (and isolated) market can yield benefits which look very much like the real thing. All the pre-globalization neo-Marxist "metropolis-hinterland" babble helped not one bit and still colors popular thought on the subject in some corners. And Edwards' current statements, of course, suggest the new defining issue may actually be free trade opposition. UPDATE: If I sound peevish and ill-tempered, it is because I feel like some kind of Cassandra or John the Baptist out here, warning that trade/jobs, not the war, will be the main issue of election 2004. I keep seeing evidence supporters of the "correct" side are intellectually ill-prepared for this.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 1:05 PM

Real Inventor of the Clash of Civilizations

When friends ask how I could possibly vote for George Bush over, say, John Kerry, my answer is usually something like: "You'd vote that way too if you'd just spend a little time reading Bernard Lewis." Today -- thanks to a good friend who has read Bernard Lewis -- we have a one-week link to today's WSJ.com article on this important figure: A central Lewis theme is that Muslims have had a chip on their shoulders since 1683, when the Ottomans failed for the second time to sack Christian Vienna. 'Islam has been on the defensive' ever since, Mr. Lewis wrote in a 1990 essay called 'The Roots of Muslim Rage,' where he described a 'clash of civilizations,' a concept later popularized by Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington. For 300 years, Mr. Lewis says, Muslims have watched in horror and humiliation as the Christian civilizations of Europe and North America have overshadowed them militarily, economically and culturally. "The question people are asking is why they hate us. That's the wrong question," said Mr. Lewis...shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks. "In a sense, they've been hating us for centuries, and it's very natural that they should. You have this millennial rivalry between two world religions, and now, from their point of view, the wrong one seems to be winning." He continued: "More generally ... you can't be rich, strong, successful and loved, particularly by those who are not rich, not strong and not successful. So the hatred is something almost axiomatic. The question which we should be asking is why do they neither fear nor respect us?" (Emphasis added)

Link posted by Steve Antler : 10:56 AM

Report from the Academy

Paul Krugman is now so isolated he can't notice when he makes his opponents' points for them. Today he admits (a) more than half the current budget deficit is cyclical (that is, the fault of the recession and not Dubya) and (b) the majority of the deficit results from war spending (which most of us support -- I think). So what to do, thinks professor Krugman? He's got to find the root causes, the real villains -- the evil big corporations supported by the Bush Administration: Another major source of revenue could be a crackdown on tax loopholes and tax evasion, which has reached epidemic proportions. In particular, what's going on with the tax on corporate profits? That source of revenue is down, as a percent of G.D.P., to 1930's levels. No, that's not a misprint. And receipts are not growing nearly as fast as one would expect, given an economic recovery that has bypassed workers but given big gains to their employers. An administration that actually tried to make corporations pay their taxes might be able to find $100 billion or more each year. First and foremost, much has been written about this issue. Mihir A. Desai, for example, documents a number of causes of the bifurcation of book and tax income during the late 1980's and 1990's -- all leading to declines in the corporate profits tax base well before the Bush Administration's demonic tax cuts for the rich. Doesn't Paul Krugman know about this literature? But putting all that aside let's ask a simple question: who pays taxes on corporate profits? If we're talking about taxes paid strictly at the corporate level (not personal income arising from dividends, etc.) the answer is easy: these taxes are a cost to the corporation. And like all other costs, they are either passed on to the consumer or absorbed in the form of structural changes first to the corporation itself, then to the economy in general. So Krugman is lamenting a decline in a tax that can in large part be as regressive as any sales tax. Not too impressive for an economist supposedly on the side of the little guy.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 10:16 AM

Ricin in Senate Office Buildings?

Doesn't this suddenly change everything? Doesn't it (a) take top story status away from the Democratic Party primary, (b) weaken the hand of those who are security-inconsistent and (c) raise the attention paid to anyone who can articulate a genuine strategic vision? UPDATE: There are of course those who disagree. UPDATE II: Firstly, yes, it's now confirmed it is ricin. Second, this scarier than anthrax. Forget Cipro or anything else. For Ricin, there's nothing they can do for you. UPDATE III: More here. UPDATE IV: From the Command Post we now learn there's suspected material in the Capitol Building as well. UPDATE V: False alarm.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 5:50 AM

Monday, February 02, 2004

Just in case you didn't know...

Here, via Carnival of the Capitalists, is an incomplete list of the taxes a typical Minnesota business has to pay and (at some expense) keep track of: 1. Federal withholding. This isn't a tax we pay per se, but it is the taxes my employees pay. The IRS has essentially drafted every employer in America as a de-facto tax collector, requiring us to do its dirty work for it. 2. State withholding. And, hey, if the feds can do it, why not Minnesota? This requires a separate set of forms, and a different ID number. 3. Social Security withholding. Another federal tax which we're required to collect on behalf of the federal government, governed by a different set of rules, exemptions, and cutoffs. 4. Medicare withholding. Yet another one, with yet another set of rules. We're up to four taxes we need to pay (and do paperwork for), and we haven't even reached the ones that we actually owe yet. 5. Social Security employer contribution. You thought that Social Security deduction was it, right? Nope, we're required to match the employee's deduction. 6. Medicare employer contribution. Same for this tax. So we've effectively increased our payroll by about 7.5% because of these two hidden payroll taxes. 7. Federal Unemployment Insurance. Another hidden percentage of the payroll. At lease this one lets us use the same Tax ID number as our other federal payroll taxes, unlike... 8. State Unemployment Insurance. I'm not sure what the difference is between the state and federal unemployment taxes, but the Minnesota program must be more generous, since we pay a lot more to it. Minnesota uses a separate Tax ID number for the unemployment insurance. Don't ask me why. 9. Workers' Comp. Technically not a tax, but a legally required insurance program. It works just like a tax: they take a percentage of our total payroll, and we're in big trouble if we don't pay it. Workers' Comp (for those not familiar with it) is a sort of parallel health insurance system. Never mind that we're already paying big bucks for everyone to have health insurance. We're required to buy everyone a separate policy which just covers work-related injuries. In case you think this privately-administered program is less onerous than the state and federal taxes, I should point out that workers' comp also has a mandatory annual audit. Yes, they audit our payroll every year. Okay, so we're up to nine different taxes, and we've only covered the payroll. What else is in store? Let's take a look.... 10. Delaware Franchise Tax. Since we're incorporated in Delaware, we have to pay them a tax for the privilege. Cheaper there than in Minnesota, but that doesn't save us from the.... 11. Minnesota S-Corporation Registration Fee. We're an S-corporation, a particular type of company which doesn't directly pay corporate income taxes, but passes the corporate profit or loss to the shareholders. Apparently, Minnesota wants to make sure to get you somehow, so we pay this tax, on top of any taxes the shareholders pay on the corporate profits. 12. Sales Tax. Fortunately, we don't have to collect sales tax on our revenue (though we might in the future), but we still pay it on most of the stuff we buy. And in those cases where we somehow avoid paying sales tax, there's always.... 13. Use Tax. Use tax is for those instances when you don't pay sales tax on purchases which would normally be taxable. So, for example, if you buy a DVD from Amazon, in most states, you're supposed to pay "use tax" which is the sales tax you would have paid had Amazon actually collected it. Almost nobody does this, but it is harder to avoid if you're a business, because the states are much more likely to audit businesses for use tax compliance. So we pay use tax. By the way, how does it feel to be a tax cheat? 14. Various telecom taxes. These are included in our bills for local phone service, long distance, and T1 service. Since our business involves a lot of telecommunications, we wind up spending a few hundred bucks a month in telecom taxes (both federal and state), FCC fees, surcharges, and so forth. There are at least three or four separate taxes in here, but I don't even know what they are. 15. Health Insurance taxes. Because we provide health insurance, the state takes a chunk to fund health care programs for those who don't otherwise get it. As with the telecom taxes, I don't even know what they all are, but they're buried in our health care expenses somewhere. 16. Property tax. Our landlord folds this into our rent, but you better believe we pay it. This is the basic mechanism for funding everything not provided at the state or federal level: roads, schools, police, public libraries, etc. In other words, all the government programs we really use on a daily basis. Okay, that's at least sixteen separate taxes we're paying, with at least four separate tax ID numbers, and a ton of paperwork. If someone would just give me a four-line formula to calculate what we owed each year, I wouldn't mind paying the taxes. That is, after all, the price of having a high standard of living in this country. But the sheer overwhelming number of different taxes we have to pay imposes some additional burdens: 17. Payroll service. For about $80 per payroll period, we hire an outside vendor to deal with the nightmare of complexity which is our tax system. That's not too bad, given the amount of paperwork they relieve us of, but it adds up over a year, and it's a fee we really shouldn't have to pay. In addition, they make mistakes with some regularity, and often the people working at the payroll service don't understand the various tax laws. So, we have to keep a close eye on them. By the way, this is a very well-known national payroll service, so the mistakes aren't due to going with the lowest bidder. 18. Tax accountants. Every year, we have to pay accountants to prepare our corporate tax return (even though we're an S-corporation and don't directly pay corporate taxes, we still have to file a return). They, too, make mistakes, and seemingly every year we find some technical area where we had been doing things wrong. As with the payroll service, we use a national accounting firm with a good reputation. 19. Legal fees. We also hire lawyers to keep us advised about what we should be doing. They also make mistakes, which is more due to the overwhelming complexity of the tax structure than any inexperience on their part. All told, our effective tax burden is probably 25% higher because of the professional services we pay to ensure compliance with the laws. Even then, I know we're not in complete compliance with the tax laws, I just don't know where we're making mistakes.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 1:13 PM

One of Kerry's Neighbors Speaks Out

From The Corner on National Review Online: After [Kerry] moved to [a] Louisburg Square townhouse (the best address in the best neighborhood), he ignited a local mini-scandal by getting the public works department to relocate a fire hydrant that blocked a particularly convenient parking space. Considering that a deeded parking space in that area could sell for $300k this was a sort of ultimate Marie Antoinette moment. This snob di tutti snobs managed to piss off even his neighbors with that one.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 11:10 AM

You can't get there from here...

I'm sent to this, a new George Will essay on (I am guessing) equality of opportunity versus equality of outcome. The essay is only available to paid subscribers, however, so the link won't do you any good. WSJ increasingly becomes a problem. I buy the doggone thing to read the stuff I want, but you can't link to a hard copy so I can't easily share what I read there. The paid online edition is really attractive, but... UPDATE: Thanks to the reader who suggested I just go to Townhall.com and find George Will's latest editorial there.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:14 AM

Sunday, February 01, 2004

MA visits Fair's Presidential Vote Equation

Macroeconomic Advisers recently reevaluated Ray Fair's presidential election equation in the light of their own alternate, proprietary macroeconomic forecasting model and the newer method of chain-weighting price indices. A quick view of the results: In both models, we specified the economic explanatory variables as the variable less its mean so that the intercept can be interpreted as the incumbent party's share of the two-party vote if the economic performance variables remain neutral. Fair's specification of the model (estimated with the recently updated data) fed with MA's economic forecast predicts that President Bush will win the election with 61.9% of the two-party vote... Thus, reestimation of the model using updated (chain-2000 dollar) data did not have an impact on the model's prediction for the outcome of the election. Similarly, our version of this model predicts that Bush will win 60.8% of the vote. (Emphasis added) UPDATE: Bruce Bartlett has additional comment and links.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:28 PM

Victims of structural change...

They're all in their 40's and 50's, laid off and/or chronically unemployed. Many were laid off when their antiquated factories closed -- victims of economic change and modernization. Their identities were formed during the radical era of the 1960's, but today nobody likes talking about all that old stuff. The economic boom of the 90's passed them by. The rich keep getting richer, but this lost generation struggles just to stay even. Check it out. We're talking not about the United States. Rather, we're refering to the situation in China.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:55 PM

Super Bowl Halftime Show...

If it seemed creepy to you, trust me, in HDTV it was even creepier. UPDATE: I guess CBS has now apologized for the exposed breast -- but not for the overall creepiness of the event. UPDATE II: Go to Drudge for bigger picture and text of a CBS apology that mentions regret for a "wardrobe malfunction." Ohhkay -- uh, I guess this means we were supposed to see the other one as well?

Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:43 PM

Care and Feeding of a Macroeconomic Model (installment #3)

The variables have all be updated. All data that's come in since the last time the model was run has now been positioned. Now we take all the data (which in installments #1 and #2 we've pictured as little cetipede-like creatures) to a big field house for something like an athletic event. The data, in groups from five to fifteen at a time, perform a kind of combination track-and-field event, dance, maybe even winding around each other like DNA recombination, and we, much like a coach, sit in the stands and keep track of the numbers these events generate. There are about thirty such events -- re-estimation of the stochastic equations on the basis of all the pre-existing and new data. TO BE CONTINUED -- SCROLL UP TO FIND MORE

Link posted by Steve Antler : 12:53 PM

 
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