Stupid Filter

The Filter Strikes Back.

Now, if they would just make a "stupid filter" for faculty meetings.

(Nod to KL)

The Great Debate

Over at MR, an ebullient Tyler reports that he and resident CATO pretty boy Will Wilkinson opened up a big can of whoopass on Jeff Sachs and Betsey Stevenson last night in NYC.

I don't doubt the outcome, but I must confess to not understanding the debate at all. The proposition in question was: "America is failing at the pursuit of happiness". I can understand debating whether Americans are ACHIEVING happiness, but I can't see how anyone might deny that we are PURSUING it with all our might.

I also can't accept the implicit notion that it's the government's responsibility to make people happy. Hey Congress: really want to make me happy?? DISBAND!

Finally (if anyone is still with me at this point in the proceedings), if you feel that maximizing human happiness is extremely important but you personally are failing at achieving happiness, let me inform you that Mrs. Angus and I are fiendishly effective at turning $$ into happiness.

As a public service, and taking a page from the brilliant Cat and Girl concept, send us your contribution and we will describe exactly what we did with the dough and how happy it made us.

Really. No need to thank us, we live to serve.

Cállate la boca!!

Here is a verbatim translated text of the Ibero-American Summit:

"Are too!!"

"Am not!!"

"Are too!!"

"Yeah well so's your Mom!!"

It seems that Hugo Chavez called former Spanish Prime Minister Aznar a "facist"

Then current Spanish Prime minister Zapatero (literally, shoemaker) criticized Chavez for being disrespectful.

Then Chavez interrupted Zapatero's remarks.

Then Juan Charlie, King of Spain (KING I say!!!) starting yelling at Chavez to shut up and pointing his finger at him.

Socialist Solidarity indeed!!

You can read more about it here.

Leijonhufvud takes on Inflation Targeting

Monetary Economist Axel Leijonhufvud (who wrote one of the funniest pieces about economics ever) is not enthralled with inflation targeting. Here is a tidbit:

With the demise of Monetarism, more and more central banks around the world have come to adopt a policy strategy known as ‘inflation targeting.’ This is the case, for example, with the European Central Bank, the Bank of England, and the Swedish Riksbank. The Central Bank of New Zealand was a pioneer in committing itself publicly to this policy. Some other important
central banks, such as the Federal Reserve System of the United States and the Bank of Japan, have not officially declared inflation targeting as their strategy, but they have behaved as if it were, and the markets have believed that to be the case. Many influential advocates of this policy have argued that keeping the inflation rate very low and maintaining it within a very narrow band of variation should bea central bank's exclusive goal. If it is known that this is the Bank's exclusive objective, its policies will be transparent and, the proponents believe, as long as the markets understand clearly what the monetary policy is, they will take care of other matters, such as unemployment, as well as can be. If, on the other hand, the central bank from time to time trades off unemployment versus inflation, or one of the two versus the exchange rate, the private sector will not be certain what is going on and this will lead to various mistakes and inefficiencies. I have a number of reservations concerning this fashionable policy doctrine. In particular, I maintain that stabilising the consumer price index (or its rate of growth) does not guarantee stability of the financial system. Moreover, under certain conditions, concentrating on year-to-year monetary stability, in the sense of keeping to a CPI inflation target, can lead you to follow policies that are inimical to financial stability over the longer run.

All Roads lead to Crawford

This is what makes blogging so great. Alex over at MR posts about Cheatneutral, a "company" that provides infidelity offsets (that is actually a satire of carbon offsets). Then a bunch of his commenters go crazy complaining that carbon offsets are not a joke. I, thinking they are a joke, google the phrase "Al Gore Carbon Offset Fraud" and then in the muck and the mire I find this old but fascinating (to me anyway) information:

The 4,000-square-foot house is a model of environmental rectitude.

Geothermal heat pumps located in a central closet circulate water through pipes buried 300 feet deep in the ground where the temperature is a constant 67 degrees; the water heats the house in the winter and cools it in the summer. Systems such as the one in this "eco-friendly" dwelling use about 25% of the electricity that traditional heating and cooling systems utilize.

A 25,000-gallon underground cistern collects rainwater gathered from roof runs; wastewater from sinks, toilets and showers goes into underground purifying tanks and is also funneled into the cistern. The water from the cistern is used to irrigate the landscaping surrounding the four-bedroom home. Plants and flowers native to the high prairie area blend the structure into the surrounding ecosystem.

No, this is not the home of some eccentrically wealthy eco-freak trying to shame his fellow citizens into following the pristineness of his self-righteous example. And no, it is not the wilderness retreat of the Sierra Club or the Natural Resources Defense Council, a haven where tree-huggers plot political strategy.

This is President George W. Bush's "Texas White House" outside the small town of Crawford.

Holy Crap! Maybe Al can buy the carbon offsets he needs for his oversized, 20 room, $30k annually in electricity and gas bills, home from the SHRUB!!!

All I can say is, thank you Al for inventing the internet tubes.

Heat - Dolphin Deathmatch: Who will win first?

The NBA roll of shame is still long: Seattle, Golden State, Miami, Washington, and Minnesota. In the NFL, the wannabes have dropped away and the winless now include only Miami and St. Louis. Alone atop the confluence of these rosters of woe stands the city of Miami like a colossus! Congratulations to Miamians for living in the worst sports city in America right now.

Our question though, is which hapless Miami franchise will get a W first? Sunday, the Dolphins play the 4-4 Bills at home. That's gotta be a tossup at worst. The Heat play the Suns at home Friday (I'm penciling in an L) and travel to the Garden to play the Knicks Sunday (ditto).

The bottom line for the Heat may well be that until D-Wade walks through the door, they aren't going to win a single game. Shaq is averaging 13 points, 6 rebounds and 3 turnovers and doesn't really look very Shaqlike so far at least. Aside from Haslem, the rest of their roster is a horror show. Jason Williams shooting 34%? Penny Hardaway playing 18 minutes a night? Smush Parker shooting 28%? Daequan Cook? Dorrell Wright? Ricky "shoot at my own basket to make a fake triple double" Davis? Say it ain't so Pat Riley.

Given that Wade is practicing now, I'd say that the Dolphins must win Sunday or else it will turn out to be the Heat that gets the city of Miami off the sporting schneid. Either way, it's going to be a long, long, warm and humid winter in Miami.

Rep. Ron Paul at today's JEC meeting with Bernanke

The best way I could describe the problems that we face here in this country, as well as the problem the Federal Reserve faces, is that we are indeed between a rock and a hard place because we have a serious problem but we don't talk about how we got here. We talk about how we're going to "patch it up". The bubble has been burst - we saw what happened after the Nasdaq bubble burst and we don't ask how it was created and then we had a housing bubble and it's deflating and it's spreading.

Yet nobody says, "Where does it come from?" and what is the advice that you generally get? Inflate the currency. They don't say "inflate the currency", they don't say "debase the currency", they don't say "devalue the currency", they don't say "cheat the people who have saved", they say "lower the interest rates". But they never ask you and I never hear you say, "the only way I can lower interest rates is I have to create more money".
...
Unless we get down to the bottom of it and define what inflation is and not look at only prices... this was taught by the free market economists all through the 20th century, they said, "Beware, they will increase the money supply but they will make you concentrate on prices and they will give you CPIs and PPIs and they'll fudge those figures and they'll talk about wage and price controls to solve our problems".

We ignore the fundamental flaw and that is that not only have we had a subprime market in housing, the whole economic system is subprime in that we have artificially low interest rates. And it wasn't under your tenure in office - it's been going on for ten years or longer and now we're bearing the fruits of that policy. A one percent interest rate and that's not a distortion? Instead of looking at consumer prices, that nobody in this country really believes, we need to talk about the distortion, the malinvestment, the misdirection, the bad information that is gotten from artificially low interest rates.

Well said Ron! (hat tip to Tim Iacono)

Excuse, I'm Going to the Head

President Bush, regarding President Musharraf: "You can't be the president
and the head of the military at the same time." (Yahoo link)

1. Wouldn't a strict constructionist point out that the U.S. Constitution says "The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States"?!

2. Haven't MANY of Pres. Bush's claims of executive privilege been based on PRECISELY the fact that he is Pres and Head "at the same time"?

3. Now that I think of it, Pres. Bush is right, and can use his own example as proof.

(Nod to KL)

Time to Short Sell Domestic Pisco Manufacturers?

I am a free trader. I understand that multilateral agreements are probably the better way to go over bilaterals, but I generally like the bilateral ones as well, though it always troubles me that the text of a "free trade" agreement can be more than 2 or 3 sentences long (NAFTA runs into the thousands of pages I believe).

However, I am not sure that anything George Bush and Nancy Pelosi agree on can be very good economic policy, so I am stumped by the following from the NY Times:

In a rare show of bipartisan cooperation, President Bush and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appealed Tuesday for passage of a free-trade agreement with Peru in a vote scheduled for Wednesday in the House of Representatives.

If approved by the House, the pact could revive the administration’s trade agenda and propel faltering trade deals with Panama, Colombia and South Korea, all of which are awaiting Congressional approval.

Nearly all 200 Republicans are expected to support the Peru deal, making it possible for the measure to pass with only a small number of Democrats. Some put the number of Democratic votes in favor at 75, and it could go higher. A favorable Senate vote is considered likely.

What do other prominent Democrats think, you ask?

Former Senator John Edwards opposes the Peru deal, Senator Barack Obama has endorsed it and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has not announced a position but has expressed skepticism about trade deals generally.

Don't fret Hill, I'm sure you'll figure out how to get on both sides of this issue too!

More good economic news (no wonder the mkt is tanking!)

Specifically, labor productivity grew by 4.9% in the 3rd quarter.

The Labor Department reported that productivity -- the amount of output per hour of work -- jumped at an annual rate of 4.9 percent in the July-September quarter. That was double the 2.2 percent rise in the second quarter and represented the fastest surge in worker efficiency since 2003.At the same time, wage pressures eased with unit labor costs dropping at an annual rate of 0.2 percent, the best showing in more than a year.

Both outcomes were far better than had been expected and should relieve some of the concerns that a remarkable surge in productivity that began in the mid-1990s was in danger of being reversed.

The slight drop in wage pressures was especially welcome after hefty increases over the past four quarters. Rising wages are good for workers but if they are not accompanied by strong productivity gains, they raise concerns among Fed policymakers about inflation.

The 0.2 percent decline in unit labor costs in the third quarter followed a 2.2 percent increase in labor costs in the second quarter and even bigger jumps of 5.2 percent in the first quarter and 10.3 percent in the fourth quarter of last year.

The article even gives its own punchline!!

Wall Street was not impressed with the big rise in productivity and slowdown in wage pressures, preferring to worry about the weakness of the dollar against other currencies. The Dow Jones industrial average was down more than 240 points in afternoon trading.