| Yet one more government conspiracy... |
| Somebody quickly send this link to Rosie O'donnell, because we have here the first time in history gasoline has burned hot enough to melt steel. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 5:53 PM |
Friday, April 27, 2007
| What those twirly new bulbs seem to be saying... |
| ...what goes around comes around... Glenn has a tiny blind spot when it comes to legal matters. The issue here is not whether bulbs are sold because big companies don't fear lawyers will take them to the cleaners, but rather precisely how long it will take for the process to start. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 10:11 PM |
| What Bloomberg Doesn't Tell You |
| Let's examine this story. Here are a few extracts, with comments below. WHAT THEY TELL YOU: The dollar dropped to an all-time low against the euro after the U.S. government reported the economy grew at its slowest pace in four years. WHAT THEY DON'T TELL YOU: The dollar's been around for quite a while. On the dollar-historical scale, the euro was invented last week. "All time" highs or lows aren't really very interesting under these circumstances. Similarly, "slowest pace in four (count them -- 4!) years isn't that interesting either (except as a scary headline). WHAT THEY TELL YOU: The dollar also weakened against most other major currencies, with the Federal Reserve's Trade Weighted Major Currency Dollar index at its lowest level in its 36-year history. The U.S. currency pared its losses against the euro after touching the record low and triggering buy orders. WHAT THEY DON'T TELL YOU: First, read this carefully. The dollar dipped below its historic low briefly, then came back up. The Fed trade-weighted dollar chart looks like this:  See? We're back there flirting with numbers not seen since the mid 90's, right? WHAT ELSE THEY DON'T TELL YOU: Historic lows are only part of the picture. You have to consider how any historic low relates to matchihg high points in the trading range? Here's the entire history of the FED trade weighted dollar index:  Oopsies! Bloomberg forgot to point out there was a much bigger runup of the dollar's value in the 1980's, and a much bigger dollar crash between 1985-1988! STILL MORE THEY DON'T TELL YOU: The consequences of run ups in the dollar index have been deteriorating current account trade balances. The consequences of occasional dollar "crashes" have been improvements in the current account trade balance (a.k.a. more domestic jobs). Here's a rough illustration. We've plotted the negative of the trade weighted dollar index against current account trade balance eleven quarters forward (that's the length of time it takes for business to adjust):  Here's the same diagram with blue arrows crudely roughing-in the current account balance trend:  In short: we've been here before, only much worse, and actually everything came out okay. NOTE ON DATA SOURCES AND METHOD: You can find the trade weighted dollar exchange rate index at FRED. Current account balance is from FAIRMODEL. Current account balances from upcoming quarters are FAIRMODEL simulations. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 12:51 PM |
| This is the way the world ends -- |
| -- not with a bang but a lawsuit. UPDATE: For further reading, see this and this. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:33 AM |
Thursday, April 26, 2007
| One thing Congress is very likely to do... |
| Take a bad situation and make it much, much worse: He further stated there will be a "political reaction" and he feared that bad legislation could create problems for the entire mortgage sector that are now just limited to the sub-prime area. He fears, for example, that any legislation creating a moratorium on foreclosures would have a chilling effect on the issuance of home mortgages throughout the industry. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:42 AM |
| This just in... |
| FT Discovers Rent-Seeking Behavior! UPDATE: More, via Instapundit. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:38 AM |
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
| Listen to the professor... |
| Over at Econbrowser, there's a good brief explanation of how to relate time series of existing and new home sales. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 2:52 PM |
| From the guy who started EconoPundit |
| Bill Hobbs says though Al Gore may be "God" to the environmental movent, he's clearly not one of those "all-caring" sorts of deities: The Pascua Lama project would provide 5,500 construction jobs and 1,700 permanent mining jobs for the impoverished village. More than 27,000 people have applied for jobs at the mine, which would pay wages double that the the local poor can earn doing manual farm labor on the rich landowners' vast farms, according to the MYOB documentary. By taking sides against Barrick Gold and against the Pascua Lama project, Al Gore stood firmly against thousands of poor Chileans having a chance to escape poverty. (I might add this is the same elitist snobbery I saw in late 1970's Newfoundland when lefty-environmentalists earnestly explained why Newfoundland outport folk were better off with their "traditional" lifestyle -- a.k.a. grinding poverty -- than with newfangled evil offshore petroleum development.) |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:44 AM |
Friday, April 20, 2007
| On Wolfowitz and administration costs... |
| ROBERT B. HOLLAND III: Those interested in the success of the World Bank should be under no illusion as to what is really motivating the staff revolt now playing out and what the consequences are likely to be. Many are opposed to Mr. Wolfowitz's anti-corruption emphasis, some on the good faith basis that he is placing disproportionate emphasis on the issue at the expense of other development priorities. Others, however, are opposed on the selfish basis that elevating anticorruption and governance considerations will result in lower lending levels and more difficult negotiations with borrowing governments. Still others may fear exposure of corruption among staff itself and possible adverse donor reaction if widespread corruption appears to plague Bank operations. Regardless of the fates of Mr. Wolfowitz and the anticorruption initiative, the Bank faces an existential financial problem because of the combined effect of its declining relevance and attractiveness as a funding source for many middle-income countries like China, India, Mexico and Russia, and an annual administrative budget exceeding $1 billion. It's a positive development that many countries no longer are dependent on Bank lending, but the income consequences to the Bank need to be addressed because the administrative budget is a serious burden on the world's poor and donor taxpayers. Isn't it interesting that the same social critics who angrily wet themselves over private health insurance administration costs never seem to notice administration costs at the World Bank, the UN, and, well, uh, how about the administration costs of the US federal government? |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:49 AM |
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
| Been there. Done that. |
| I've commented many times on the left's unwillingness (or inability) to intelligently differentiate metaphor, simile, and normal real-life. (The whole thing summons uncomfortable flashabacks of greasy blue mimeo pamphlets angrily denouncing Dow Chemical's campus job interviews as exactly equal to dousing babies and their mothers with napalm.) And here comes Obama -- idolized by much of my family -- telling us that certain words (as well as much everyday misfortune) are not what they seem but rather, in actuality, "violence." I like Radley Balko's take on the subject: Ugh. Words aren't violence. And to suggest they are betrays a nonchalance about the First Amendment that's rather disturbing (but not surprising given the generally hysterical reactions to Imus). After all, if words are as bad as guns, if Imus' comments were even remotely comparable to the Virginia Tech slaughter, then words, like guns, should be heavily regulated, right? Or even banned? |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 5:23 AM |
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
| When stories are writ via prejudice... |
| As usual, they're so far removed from the facts they have to make things up based on things that, well, "everybody" knows for sure: From Fresno to Sacramento, big tangles of wire and PVC pipes clutter vacant lots in silent subdivisions, waiting for houses to be built  some day. Dozens of ÂFor Sale signs already dot the lawns across new residential communities. And right next to the ubiquitous billboards from builders are fresh signs offering homeowners help to avoid foreclosure. But another set of losers is less visible: the immigrant workers, mostly illegal, who rode the construction boom while it lasted and now find jobs on building sites few and far between. Offering more than $10 an hour as well as new skills and a shot at upward mobility, construction provided many illegal immigrants the best job they ever had, a step up from the backbreaking work reserved for those toiling without legal authorization... [emphasis added] Based on dozens of new building sites here in Chicago, we'd conclude many of the newcomers are already highly skilled craftsmen, far removed from the poor mumbling backward folk Eduardo Porter invites us to imagine. Of course Chicago isn't California (you knew that, right?), and some might argue we get the enterprising, higher-skilled, experienced illegal workers who've moved East looking for a better situation. UPDATE: One might add a corollary: if on average the illegal (undocumented, whatever) construction workers are more skilled than we might expect, their rate of return-migration owing to the housing slowdown will also be larger than we might expect. In this as in many other "problems" involving illegal (undocumented, whatever) immigration, simple voluntary return-migration may provide much of the solution without our help. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:35 AM |
| It was different in my day... |
| James Taranto: Why does a genre that embodies ugly stereotypes about blacks have such appeal to young whites? Our surmise is that it has less to do with race than with sex. Adolescent males yearn to be men--but the aspiration for manhood has few ready outlets for expression in a society that has embraced the notion that the differences between the sexes are but social constructs. So boys and young men are drawn to the crude, stylized masculinity of gangsta rap. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:00 AM |
Monday, April 16, 2007
Monday, April 09, 2007
| Much as I genuinely hate to criticize or disagree... |
| Find the following at Instapundit: GOOD QUESTION: "Under Bush, unemployment dropped to numbers seldom seen -- far below the Clinton years. Clinton's people counter with well, the stock market took off when he was prez. Wait a second, aren't Republicans supposed to be the Wall Street guys while Democrats are the blue collar guys?" Glenn: there are two problems with this post. 1. The link (at least as of 12:26 pm central time) doesn't work, so we can't go to the source and see whether we're missing something. 2. As the chart below (source: calculated at www.economagic.com) shows, unemployment has not dropped to anything below numbers seen during the Clinton years.  UPDATE: Okay, Glenn has now posted several clarifications and modifications. It turns out we're being directed to compare unemployment rates at similar points in the expansion, or something like that, maybe, if only we could see the original source (the link still doesn't seem to work). |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 12:24 PM |
| Class Struggle of the 21st Century... |
| The LLs (Limousine Liberals) versus RWT (Republican White Trash): [Elizabeth] Edwards [says she] views Johnson as a "rabid, rabid Republican" who refuses to clean up his "slummy" property just to spite her family, whose lavish 28,000-square-foot estate is nearby on 102 wooded acres. Johnson, 55, acknowledges his Republican roots. But he takes offense to the suggestion he has purposefully left his property, including an old garage he leases for use as a car shop, in dilapidated condition. Johnson said he has lived his entire life on the property, which he said his family purchased before the Great Depression. He said he's spent a lot of money to try and fix up the 42-acre tract. "I have to budget. I have to live within my means," Johnson said. "I don't have millions of dollars to fix the place." |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 10:16 AM |
Saturday, April 07, 2007
| Beginning to see the institution in a whole new light... |
| Some students at Yale say they cannot see the act of burning a flag as anything but a political statement. For example: "I have a hard time believing that burning a flag is not inherently a political act," Matt Magliocco, [class of 2008] said. Wow. Oh wow. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:49 AM |
Friday, April 06, 2007
| Culture of corruption... |
| in the very institutions that are supposed to teach us the culture of everything else! |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:28 AM |
Thursday, April 05, 2007
| Neue Steuern brauchen die Politiker... |
| The incomparable Dasha H. sends a partial translation of this new article in the Die Welt online: According to evolutionary biologist Josef Reichholf, the author of the recently published 'Kleine Naturgeschichte des letzten Jahrtausends' ('A Brief Natural History of the Past Millennium') the "mini-ice age" that set in after the High Middle Ages was much worse than the current trend of global warming. "The cold was particularly intense in the 16th and 17th century. Wolves migrated from the northeast. Bears became common. The floods were much stronger than any experienced in the 20th century. Many historical high-water marks are testimony to this. The great storms of the late Middle Ages battered the coast between Holland and Denmark and created the islands and islets we have there today." Reichholf points out that global warming has its advantages. "We're secretly glad that last winter was so mild. According to the calculations of one of Germany's major banks, it helped save around eight billion euros in heating costs - that's 200 euros per household. So the weather has already fulfilled our ambitious goals for us in the battle against global warming." According to my blurred recollection of undergraduate European economic history, Greenland's depopulation, England's deforestation and its subsequent "early" industrial revolution (see Herbert Heaton, Rise of the British Coal Industry) -- not to mention Englang's increased international quest for resources like New World codfish, sugar cane, etc. -- were all consequences of Medieval warming's end and the coming of the "little ice age." In other words: we adapted (wir passten uns an). |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 12:01 PM |
| Where could I get one of those? |
| Alan Reynolds on Lou Uchitelle's recent-auto-industry-layoff-lament: The claim that "only a third held new jobs two years later that paid as well as those that were lost" is deceptive because about one third accepted buyouts to retire early, go to college or start their own business. The article mentions one man who is using his $100,000 buyout to finish college. It notes that such a "lump-sum payment ... could be used to start a small business or to buy into a franchise." |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 5:31 AM |
Monday, April 02, 2007
| You're polluting. Stop breathing. |
| It seems to me the Supreme Court's C02/EPA decision, just handed down, represents some kind of ultimate politicization of science. While nobody would argue C02 isn't a greenhouse gas, subjecting it to regulation as a pollutant lends the world's most powerful judicial blessing to one side of a serious scientific constroversy. Arguably, global warming is now in fact "settled science," -- "settled" by the judiciary, that is. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 10:25 AM |
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