Our economy will soar like a wingless eagle
As I've said before, the most important measure of an economy is GDP or Gross Domestic Product. GDP should equal money supply times velocity or you'll have inflation/deflation problems.
GDP = money supply x velocity
I don't know where we stand on money supply. The health of lending institutions that give rise to the money supply is a mixed bag. Velocity seems to be barely lifting its head up. But this is only one side of the equation and it's not the most important. Money supply and velocity only represent the total money used to make transactions involving goods and services.
Real GDP of goods and services is what truly represents economic activity. So far I have not seen meaningful steps to end these higher risk lending practices that gave rise to the housing bubble. I assume that the housing sector and financial sector will flatten once better regulations are in place. The strongest sector, health care, needs to flatten and perhaps decline before high health care costs devour the middle class. These sectors have powered our economy in the past, but it would be dangerous to place tremendous reliance upon them going forward.
The one bright spot is the potential increase in exports. The dollar has benefited from a flight to safety, but it's overall trend is downward. This is actually needed since we have been stifling economic activity domestically by importing so much as reflected by our high trade imbalances (with China). Unfortunately, we still have trade policies that favor outsourcing. We need to manufacturing to stay here, produce here and export from here.
Is the last great bubble of this economic run comprised of cash for clunkers? We are at the end of a tube of toothpaste trying to squeeze out every last bit. Why do the sides always start leaking goo? Is sodium lauryl sulfate really toxic to my body?
I digress. The Austrians had it right: save and invest. Instead of sound economic policies that encourage the purchase of goods and services at sustainable levels, we try and crunch out 500 reps from one economic sector and then wonder why it seizes up on the ground only to lay flat for the foreseeable future. Our psychology is funny. One person's gain in the short term is everyone's loss in the long term.
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August 19, 2009 |
Jenson Hagen | Comments (46 so far)
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Posted by: Jack Roberts | Aug 20, 2009 7:39:28 AM
I'm sorry, but it's very hard to make sense out of this post.
"GDP should equal money supply times velocity or you'll have inflation/deflation problems" is a nonsensical statement. "Velocity" is simply a mathematical construct that is defined as GDP divided by money supply. In fact, it is a different value depending on which definition of money supply you use (M1, M2, the now discarded M3 or the newer MZM).
Inflation and deflation certainly are affected by changes in the money supply, although before he died even Milton Friedman had to admit that monetary aggregates alone are a less reliable tool for macroeconomic policy than he earlier believed.
But in any event, the idea that either inflation or deflation is the consequence of the money supply times velocity not equaling GDP is absurd. By definition, it simply can't happen.
As for Austrian or neo-Austrian economics, there is a lot more to it than "save and invest" and the differences between monetarism and the neo-Austrian school would require a far more sophisticated analysis than this post offers.
Posted by: Richard | Aug 20, 2009 7:41:52 AM
Well gee whiz with Democrats controlling so much we're going to be on the leading edge of recovery and growth.
With their agenda delivering amnesty, cap and trade, universal health care and the green movement what could go wrong?
Posted by: Boats | Aug 20, 2009 8:05:27 AM
Nonsensical economic babble on Blue Oregon? Say it isn't so! XD
Posted by: ben | Aug 20, 2009 8:07:29 AM
Richard - you're absolutely correct.
The economy will remain in the toilet as long as democRATS run government. Once the money for the give-aways runs out, the RATS will be voted out of office - screaming vote fraud all the way...
Posted by: SCB | Aug 20, 2009 8:33:52 AM
Macro economics always drive me nuts. It's as if a formula can explain all, and it can't. The current state of macro economics reminds me of the state of physics around 1900. At that time, everyone who was anyone agreed that Newtonian physics explained everything. Along came a another generation, and Newtonian physics turned out to be only an early stage of understanding, not the end all that "everyone" thought.
Jenson writes, "The Austrians had it right: save and invest."
Really? I don't disagree with the "invest" part of that, but I really wonder about the savings part. How in the world can we as an "economy" save anything right now? Perhaps my world view is tainted by the "official" local unemployment rate at over 20% here in my part of Central Oregon (reality on the ground is closer to 50% when you count people who have run out of benefits - my City of 10,000 has over 750 documented homeless people), but I just don't see "savings" as something that will happen anytime soon.
Way back when Lincoln talked about labor as being the foundation of all wealth. Of course, he was comparing slavery as a system to freed people. But he had a point. You can have money piled to the ceiling, but it doesn't earn a thing until labor makes it work. When you buy a stock, what you are really buying is the profit created by someone's labor. Money just doesn't grow by itself. Even interest income, when traced down to its roots, involves labor as the starting point. Example: Your bank savings account gets part of that wonderful 1% or less interest you earn from loan payments. Loans for houses, cars, or whatever are paid by the borrowers who get that money from their employment. They are paid for their labor. -- There is no interest without labor.
So, Jenson, Macro Economic formulas are just a little over-stated. What we need is work, jobs, employment, payrolls, and the resulting profits. American can't come out of this recession/depression without finding its ability to create wealth again. We got real good at spending our wealth, so much so that we are bankrupt, but we need to return to creating wealth.
We have everything we need. We have the labor for sure. We have resources natural and otherwise. We have management skills. We have places to put factories. We have transportation. We have an education system. We need to apply all of these to create wealth, and nothing else - Nothing - will create wealth but these factors, the key one being labor.
"Savings" is only part of a circular deadend cycle. It does nothing to create wealth by itself.
Posted by: Joe White | Aug 20, 2009 9:00:48 AM
Jenson Hagen wrote:
"I assume that the housing sector and financial sector will flatten once better regulations are in place. The strongest sector, health care, needs to flatten and perhaps decline before high health care costs devour the middle class. "
Jenson seems to confuse GDP with inflation.
Posted by: Sal Peralta | Aug 20, 2009 9:12:38 AM
I just posted some charts featuring the top-10 debtor and creditor nations based on the IMF's analysis of government debt. The picture for the US is actually worse than indicated in the charts, but it's not a pretty picture in any case.
Posted by: Joe White | Aug 20, 2009 9:26:42 AM
Simple minded comparisons in dollars of debt only lead to erroneous conclusions.
Factor in cost of living, GDP and a number of other things and you might be able to put together a valid comparison of relative levels of debt.
Posted by: Steve Maurer | Aug 20, 2009 9:29:06 AM
Boats: Nonsensical economic babble on Blue Oregon? Say it isn't so! XD
It only doesn't make sense if you haven't studied it, which it's obvious you haven't. But oh.. please lecture us on how returning to the Republican policies of George Bush - the Republican's Republican - will once again take Clinton's economy and make it ever so much better.
The sad part about arrogant cretins like you is that you're so arrogant you don't even realize just how incompetent you are.
Sorry toddler. The grownups are in charge now.
Posted by: Miles | Aug 20, 2009 9:39:18 AM
the most important measure of an economy is GDP or Gross Domestic Product.
Not so, says the NY Times
Posted by: Boats | Aug 20, 2009 9:40:30 AM
The grown ups being in charge must explain the record deficits and the printing of money to buy treasury issues.
Lots of conservatives didn't think Bush was fiscally responsible. His sole virtue was in being not as wantonly vile a choice compared to both Gore and Kerry.
Posted by: Sal Peralta | Aug 20, 2009 10:25:22 AM
I know, Joe. There's just no such thing as a global market for things like weapons when you are talking about military spending, or money, when you are discussing government debt.
Take it up with the economists at the IMF who produced the report, not with me. I'm sure they'll be highly impressed with your acumen.
Posted by: Jason | Aug 20, 2009 10:25:39 AM
And I think we're also forgetting another important item: the production of goods and services.
Basic manufacturing has plummeted during this recession, and has been declining in the U.S. for years. Money supply isn't just based on inflation or deflation, it's also dependent on the flow of monies outside the government.
If you want a stronger GDP then there must be a focus, in part, on creating long-term, sustainable jobs. Stimulus money hasn't done that, and for the most part won't. (Short-term jobs don't provide a family with a means to survive, let a long access to healthcare.)
Unless this country returns to a more vital production level, we will continue to reel from money supply and rely too heavily on exports from other countries.
Posted by: Joe Hill | Aug 20, 2009 11:04:32 AM
There are several problems with this analysis, in my opinion. Let's start from the smaller and go to the larger.
1) GDP is intrinsically flawed in that it does not measure what it purports to measure. In fact, it is in many ways a perverse indicator. If I get cancer the GDP goes up; I'll have to have expensive chemotherapy and radiation treatment. If I eat my vegetables and avoid cancer, the GDP will go down, relative to the first scenario. Likewise, if PGE pours pollution into the air and rivers, poisoning the environment but saving money for their stockholders, GDP will go up, for they have externalized their costs. If PGE buys expensive scrubbing technology and people dump their stock, the GDP goes down relative to the first scenario.
2) If our experience over the past eighteen months has shown us anything, it has demonstrated that, just as everyone gets religion in the foxholes, everyone is a Keyenesian in a massive economic downturn. The monetarist gospel that Paul Volcker brought to the Fed when he and Jimmy Carter (sealed by Reagan & company) threw the Keynesians out of the temple didn't work. This entire debacle is a massive repudiation of Frieman / monetarism etc.
3) Thus, from now on, anyone who makes statements like "the Austrians had it right" ought to be accorded approximately the same scientific respect as those who assert belief in the Easter bunny. There is no invisible hand. Hayek was a hack, an apologist for naked greed. The "laws" of supply and demand are transparent reification.
4) Look at the economic crises since the industrial revolution, each one several times the severity of the last. This crisis that we are in now, we truthfully don't know the depth or the endpoints, and we are whistling in the dark if we expect that cash for clunkers is going to get us through. Our experience is trying to tell us that we cannot build a stable economic system on exploitation and greed. That should be common sense, I would think. Eventually, even Americans will respond as the hero of a poem by e.e. cummings did:
Olaf (upon what were once knees)
does almost ceaselessly repeat
"there is some shit I will not eat"
Posted by: mp97303 | Aug 20, 2009 11:22:30 AM
the RATS will be voted out of office - screaming vote fraud all the way...
and replaced with what?
Posted by: Joe White | Aug 20, 2009 12:27:28 PM
Sal Peralta wrote:
"Take it up with the economists at the IMF who produced the report, not with me."
There's nothing wrong with the data, Sal.
But divorced from the overall economic context of GDP, cost of living etc , it gives an incomplete, and therefore inherently misleading picture.
It's like saying that policemen in NYC make $75,000 a year and policemen in Botswana make $10,000 a year.
These figures by themselves sound like either the NYC cops are grossly overpaid or the Botswana cops are grossly underpaid.
You have to take into account the costs of food, housing, etc in the two locales before you know if EITHER of them are being paid a reasonable wage.
For instance, in your chart the US is shown to have 4x the debt as the next highest, Spain.
But the US has 10x the GDP of Spain. That factor alone dramatically alters the perception of who has the greater debt.
Other factors such as cost of living etc could also be discussed, but I think nearly everyone (except you) understands the point.
Posted by: Jenson | Aug 20, 2009 12:57:31 PM
That NY Times article was lame. GDT instead of GDP? I wish I could take back the five minutes it took me to read it.
As a country, we have done an amazing job propping up banks to suspend the money supply and encouraging people to spend as a way to suspend velocity.
What we haven't done is really get to the root of the problem and that is ensuring sustainable, long-term production of goods and services (or transactions or whatever the NY Times author also wanted to include).
Yes, we need to produce some beyond just bubbles.
Posted by: Scott in Damascus | Aug 20, 2009 1:02:21 PM
I see Ben, Boats, and the other bottom-feeders are suffering from Monday morning ADD.
Which president produced:
1. The highest growth in the gross domestic product?
2. The highest growth in jobs?
3. The biggest increase in personal disposable income after taxes?
4. The highest growth in industrial production?
5. The highest growth in hourly wages?
6. The lowest Misery Index (inflation plus unemployment)?
7. The lowest inflation?
8. The largest reduction in the deficit?
The answers: 1. Harry Truman, 2. Bill Clinton, 3. Lyndon Johnson, 4. John F. Kennedy, 5. Johnson, 6. Truman, 7. Truman, 8. Clinton.
In the Economic Sweepstakes, Democratic presidents trounce Republicans eight times out of eight!
But what about the stock market? The Dow Jones Industrial Average during the 20th century has risen 7.3 percent on average per year under Republican presidents. That sounds pretty good until you realize under Democrats, it rose 10.3 percent – which means investors gained a whopping 41 percent more. And the stock market declined further during George W’s two terms. Moreover, since World War II, Democratic presidents have increased the national debt by an average of 3.7 percent per year and Republican presidents have increased it an average of 10.1 percent. During the same time period, Democratic presidents produced, on average, an unemployment rate of 4.8 percent; Republicans, 6.3 percent. That’s the historical record.
What about economic policies over the past 15 years? The Clinton-Gore administration presided over the longest peacetime economic expansion in our history. The national debt was reduced dramatically, the industrial sector boomed, wages grew and more Americans found jobs.
How has the Bush-Cheney team fared? During those 8 miserable years we have experienced the weakest post-recession job creation cycle since the Great Depression, record deficits, record household debt, a record bankruptcy rate and a substantial increase in poverty. We have gone from being the nation with the biggest budget surplus in history to becoming the nation with the largest deficit in history.
"But but but but its different here in Oregon" stutters the Glenn Beck Fan Club here on Blue Oregon. Not really - the Oregon GOP can't even be counted on to pay payroll taxes to the IRS.
Now back to Joe White telling everyone how much smarter he is than the IMF .....
Posted by: Sal Peralta | Aug 20, 2009 1:14:06 PM
I've certainly never suggested that local differences in economic productivity, costs of living, etc. are not relevant. Only that there are other factors -- the cost of borrowing money in this case, or the cost of weapons on the global market in the other discussion -- that are relatively inelastic.
Accounting for such differences would not change the fact that the United States is the largest debtor nation on the planet, nor that other economies with relatively comparable standards of living -- Germany and Japan, for example -- are among the largest creditor nations.
As to the other thread... You are off your rocker if you believe that such differences would make North Korea, which has an economy that is 1/70th the size of California and spends less on defense than Australia, is a threat to the United States, or that our current level of defense spending is justified given that the United States and our allies or major trading partners account for something like 95 percent of all global military spending.
Posted by: Boats | Aug 20, 2009 1:19:13 PM
Nice of you to leave out Carter, his legacy already being as crappy as it is and his spiritual successor carrying out a symbolic second term of malaise.
Posted by: mp97303 | Aug 20, 2009 1:34:29 PM
I love watching people get hammered with facts and reply with the equivalent of 'your momma'
Posted by: Boats | Aug 20, 2009 1:55:08 PM
I wasn't hammered by "facts" I was hammered with circumstance.
Post WW2 presidents all benefitted from the end of the war and being leaders of the only major untouched industrial base. Clinton primarily benefitted from the end of the Cold War.
Every president gets too much credit for the good times and too much blame for the bad, irrespective of party. However, Carter and Bush seem to be birds of a feather regarding economic incompetence. The jury is out on Obama, but the early returns are not promising.
Posted by: Greg C | Aug 20, 2009 5:28:06 PM
"Clinton primarily benefitted from the end of the Cold War."
And the fact that he was smart enough to keep us out of starting another one. Or two.
Posted by: Boats | Aug 20, 2009 9:42:57 PM
Alas not smart enough to bag bin Laden when Sudan offered him up, nor smart enough to keep from eventually being disbarred for lying under oath.
Posted by: Joe White | Aug 21, 2009 6:43:09 AM
Greg C wrote:
"And the fact that he was smart enough to keep us out of starting another one. Or two."
yeah, when we were attacked by terrorists during the Clinton term, he simply ignored them.
Khobar towers
embassy bombings in Africa
USS Cole
He was too busy chasing skirts to be concerned.
So, the terrorists were emboldened to greater attacks, thinking that America lacked the political will to go after them.
Posted by: Steve Maurer | Aug 21, 2009 10:31:31 AM
Given the way it is administered, I propose a change to BlueOregon's mission statement. While it currently reads:
BlueOregon is a place for progressive Oregonians to gather 'round the water cooler and share news, commentary, and gossipIt really should read...
BlueOregon is a place for progressives to read conservative trolls parrot outright lies and fabrications they heard from Rush Limbaugh, because seriously, the right wing doesn't have enough outlets to peddle their idiocies.
While it's mildly amusing to read the loons repeat things that have been thoroughly debunked by snopes or fact check, along with so many logical fallacies it becomes impossible to count, really I think most of us can get that from reading freeperland. And I simply don't have time to go debunking every incorrect statement out of Boat's and White's mouth.
If Kari wants BlueOregon to be a place where people who have a basic clue about actual facts discuss things, then he needs to start exerting a little control over this site. Otherwise, change the mission statement.
Posted by: Boats | Aug 21, 2009 10:43:23 AM
The proposed mission statement could read "Blue Oregon is a place to come see the thin skinned self-styled natural wonder Stevie Maurer throw a hissy fit as regularly as the Old Faithful geyser vents in Yellowstone National Park."
Posted by: Joe White | Aug 21, 2009 10:49:36 AM
Steve Maurer wrote:
"debunked by .... fact check"
You mean the Annenberg website factcheck.org?
The site funded by Obama's former benefactor, Annenberg Foundation?
You know, where Obama was the Director of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge schools project with a $49 million budget and NYC police headquarters bomber Bill Ayers (just some guy he had seen in the neighborhood) was the founder?
You mean THAT 'unbiased' factcheck, right?
Posted by: Boats | Aug 21, 2009 10:54:48 AM
Don't let the actual facts get in the way of Stevie's facts so help you God.
Posted by: mp97303 | Aug 21, 2009 1:43:22 PM
The site funded by Obama's former benefactor, Annenberg Foundation?
You do know that Leonore Annenberg, the director of the foundation, ENDORSED MCCAIN don't you?
Just b/c someone says something that doesn't fit YOUR ideology doesn't make it less than factual.
When will independents rise up and bury these two idiotic parties?
Posted by: Joe Hill | Aug 21, 2009 2:15:40 PM
I don't know if this is technologically possible on this website, but if we individuals had the option to filter certain posters, it would be welcome.
It's just not useful to spend all the time correcting basic factual misinformation.
Posted by: Kurt Chapman | Aug 21, 2009 3:09:53 PM
I'm sorry, I just can't get past the stupid similie.
Please educate me regarding how ANYTHING can soar, let alone an eagle, without wings?
And no, a rocket doesn't "soar". Through hundreds of thousands of pounds of thrust, it and its payload overcome earth's gravitational pull and hurtle into the sky.
Posted by: Joe White | Aug 21, 2009 4:48:08 PM
mp97303 wrote:
"Just b/c someone says something that doesn't fit YOUR ideology doesn't make it less than factual."
I completely agree.
I didn't say that everything on factcheck.org is wrong.
I would never make such a claim.
But neither is it always right.
My statement was simply to point out that it should not be viewed as objective, without bias.
Just because factcheck.org 'debunks' something doesn't mean that it is automatically false.
That was my point. I hope I have clarified it so that you understand.
Posted by: Joe White | Aug 21, 2009 4:52:38 PM
Joe Hill wrote:
"to filter certain posters, it would be welcome"
It is truly sad that the American left has come to the place where toleration of dissent is viewed as a foreign concept.
That's what often happens when your revolution succeeds and you become the establishment that you despised.
'meet the new boss, same as the old boss.....'
Posted by: Joe Hill | Aug 21, 2009 5:48:13 PM
Joe White, let me break my own non-commenting policy and fling myself against the waves and see if I can explain, if not to you, then to others.
The bummer about engaging in dialogue with the right wing fringe is that you never actually get to the argument. You have to spend all your time correcting basic factual errors. These errors cannot be refuted by mere textbooks or evidence, because they are theological for the wingnut crowd. They are central to their worldview.
Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction. Can't find them? They're in Syria!
When the evidence for man-made climate change became overwhelmingly accepted by climatologists and university departments, this was "the greatest hoax in the history of the world," according to the right wing crowd. As the evidence piles up, their voices become louder and more shrill.
Gay marriage is going to undermine straight marriage. When you show statistics that show that divorce rates are generally lower in states which have legalized gay marriage, this is all a liberal plot, and the sample size is too small, or just give it time.
Franklin Roosevelt started the Great Depression, or deepened it because he refused to cut spending. When you show actual budget figures that demonstrate that the one time FDR cut spending (1936-1937) that the economy fell into a nosedive (as Keynes predicted), they simply refuse to believe the numbers. It conflicts with their theology. It's a government plot.
We could go on and on (evolution, the utility of torture, the difference between a blastocyst and a baby, etc.) but it's all a variation on a theme.
Right wing Republicans don't exist well in a fact-based universe. It's a fool's errand to attempt to wean them from their mythical structures that have been sold by their corporate overlords.
And these factual errors are, so far as I can tell, numberless, and they reach down to dizzying levels.
For example: On this blog the other day, there was a rather trivial point about the religion of the framers (who, tellingly, were never named). Some generalizations ensued. I chimed in that they were for the most part deists, foolishly thinking that factual material would settle the matter.
Silly me. Someone (I can't remember who) said "a common misconception." This sent me to my library and to the university library since I have been a lecturer on this subject for about 27 years now, and we're about to start another year, and I wouldn't want to be inaccurate. Were there new papers published? I consulted OVID, the Social Sciences Citation Index, called some of my usual suspect colleagues. Nothing. I re-read key passages of some primary documents.
Then I came back and tried to explain why, although it was complicated and had layers, deism was a convenient way for the framers to communicate across state lines within a difficult subject matter, and mentioned several specific reactions against this in the post-Constitutional period. I mentioned a standard sourcebook on the First Amendment that treats the subject.
To no avail. The contrary evidence? I think (it wasn't clear) this person's idea of deism was inconsistent with a kind of disneyesque view of Washington praying for victory or something.
Jesus wept.
So, by this example I hope to demonstrate that an undereducated simpleton who not only does not know anything but, more importantly, is completely innocent of what the boundaries are of what s/he does not know or of what is known, throws out these vapid right-wing kernels of faith as if they had some tangential basis in the real world. Then the community may say, "No that's not the case," but it avails them nothing, for no evidence or authority or logic can shake what is really religious dogma masquerading as political discourse.
Q.E.D.
Posted by: Joe White | Aug 21, 2009 8:31:07 PM
Joe Hill,
It's easy to tell when you're having a discussion with a liberal.
Their answers to everything are either:
a) you guys are stupid
b) you guys are nuts
c) you guys are lying
It's unfortunate, but ad homs are about all the answers boil down to.
We can discuss facts all day long, but the differences between liberals and conservatives aren't in the acceptance or non-acceptance of facts.
The differences between liberals and conservatives are in the interpretation of facts, i.e. the conclusions drawn from them.
When a liberal is told that I don't agree with his conclusions, he almost always responds "oh so you don't accept facts, eh?"
The inability of the liberal to tell the difference between facts and the interpretation of facts is the Achilles heel of liberalism.
Posted by: Boats | Aug 21, 2009 10:52:48 PM
What a fantastical parsing that was. They were "deists" booms the lecturuing voice of authority.
How nice for you. "Deists" coming out of what background pray tell? Was Jefferson a lapsed "Mohammedean?" Was Hamilton struggling to come to grips with his closeted Hinduism?
Yes, many of the Founders were men of the Enlightenment and rather freethinking for their time. However, to extrapolate from there that they'd be just dandy with the moral degeneracy embraced by the modern left since the 60s because they were "Deists" would be pointy headed conjecture without any basis in reality. When religious conservatives pine for a "return to the Judeo-Christian traditions of this nation" they are pointedly not wrong that that was the soil the seeds of this country were planted in and the atmosphere under which it first flourished. Just zeroing in on some deism is to willfully ignore the depth and breadth of all of those men regarding their knowledge and internalization of Christian traditions, irrespective of their denominations or weekly attendance or absence from church.
It's a long way from no religious test for office and whatnot that is a direct reflection of "deism" to not having the moral will to hang murderers or being okay with children being partially delivered to have their brains vacuumed out.
Posted by: Joe Hill | Aug 22, 2009 2:14:09 AM
http://www.uclalawreview.org/articles/content/56/ext/pdf/1.1-1.pdf
Read it. It's a 2008 UCLA Law Review article on the subject. Not heavy duty. When you've read it, you'll at least have the vocabulary to have a non-embarrassing conversation.
Saying the earth is flat is not "dissent."
Posted by: Joe White | Aug 22, 2009 10:21:45 AM
Joe Hill,
Possibly the definition of 'deism' you are using is not what the rest of the world means by the term.
The core of deism is the 'non-intervening God'.
For instance, the National Geographic reports "In a 1997 survey in the science journal Nature, 40 percent of U.S. scientists said they believe in God—not just a creator, but a God to whom one can pray in expectation of an answer."
In your view, can these scientists be termed 'deists'? Would your students refer to these as 'deists'?
Posted by: JHL | Aug 22, 2009 11:22:07 AM
Joe Hill... looks like Joe White and Boats are unwittingly bolstering your argument. The experiment validates the hypothesis!
My favorite general example of this phenomenon is Bill O'Reilly, who -- if you confront him on-air with cited facts and numbers contrary to his claims -- will generally issue the same retort: "Well, that's YOUR opinion!"
Since when did math become subject to opinion?
There was a great spoof article written once about how the Alabama Legislature redefined pi (to 3) for the state's schools, saying that pi was only a theory and that students should be able to hear different opinions on the value of pi. Funny stuff.
Posted by: mp97303 | Aug 22, 2009 11:51:26 AM
@Joe Hill
No, you didn't say they were wrong but that b/c they were associated with a group that Obama worked with, that they were somehow biased (You mean THAT 'unbiased' factcheck, right?)
Posted by: mp97303 | Aug 22, 2009 12:00:31 PM
My above comment should have been addressed to Joe White. Sorry Mr. Hill
Posted by: Joe White | Aug 22, 2009 4:24:39 PM
JHL wrote:
"Since when did math become subject to opinion?"
As you are aware, we weren't discussing math. But thanks for the non sequitur.
Posted by: fred friendly | Aug 24, 2009 7:13:54 PM
The reason Jack Roberts cannot make sense of this post is because this post is rather hallucinatory:-)
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Posted by: Augustus Milverton | Aug 19, 2009 10:55:28 PM
While the general point in your article ("musings about economic terminology") is apt, I must respectfully disagree on a few key points.
GDP should equal money supply times velocity or you'll have inflation/deflation problems.
Kinda like saying, "The force of gravity should make things fall to the ground, or we'll have problems." The relative definitions of M, V, and GDP (with deflator) generally keep this equation nice and... well... equated.
The health of lending institutions that give rise to the money supply is a mixed bag.
I see where you're going, but I would suggest that what you're referring to here is really related more to the credit freeze, which is slowing velocity. The Federal Reserve is more the 'M' end of that equation.
So far I have not seen meaningful steps to end these higher risk lending practices that gave rise to the housing bubble.
Well, what about the new Federal Reserve rules that came out last summer?
The one bright spot is the potential increase in exports. The dollar has benefited from a flight to safety, but it's overall trend is downward.
We discovered in the 80's and 90's that a trade deficit (which results in U.S. dollars ultimately being "owed" overseas) can actually have a positive impact on the dollar, since regardless of the U.S's economic status, we have a stellar credit rating and more demand for U.S. dollars is a good thing.
The Austrians had it right: save and invest. ... One person's gain in the short term is everyone's loss in the long term.
Well, that's economics. As for the Austrians... the one that led California into its economic morass isn't really much of an economic genius! :)
I wholeheartedly agree with your statements about keeping production in the United States, and your thought about the health care system being too-heavily relied on as an economic sector is an interesting thought. I'd like to hear more about that... it's a huge sector (is it almost $2 trillion/year or something?), but it's a double-edged sword since unwarranted growth in that sector raises costs for all others. Bizarre.