Wednesday, August 15, 2018

Kevin Hassett In Lie Lie Land

I feel sorry for Kevin Hassett.  Of course he made a complete fool of himself two decades ago with his book on Dow 36,000 (still some ways away) with James Glassman, but he has had a good amount of time to get over that embarrassment.  When he was appointed CEA Chair for Trump, he was of the few appointments Trump made that received praise, especially in the  area of economics.  Pretty much everybody else appointed was some combination of corrupt (a bunch of those), incompetent (see abysmal forecasting record of Lawrence Kudlow, NEC Chair), or just plain insane (see warmongering Peter Navarro).  A longtime economist at the AEI and a former adviser of earlier GOP presidential candidates, Hassett had a conservative but mostly pretty respectable record, as well as being known as a nice guy.  Even many people on the left said nice things about him at the time of his appointment.  Indeed, he was not obviously corrupt, incompetent, or insane, despite some mistakes here and there (see Dow 36,000 in particular).

Anyway, after getting appointed and Trump becoming president, Hassett has largely disappeared.  Near  as I can tell, the main time he surfaces  was when the CEA put out the Economic Report of the President, the main ongoing official function of the CEA.  For decades the CEA was viewed as the main body providing economic policy advice to presidents, and often the CEA Chair  actually was the top individual economic adviser to the president, although who that is at any point in time has always ultimately been a matter of personalities.  But then for reasons that remain mysterious to me, Bill Clinton created this new body when he came in, the NEC. It  (and especially its Chair) was supposed to communicate to the media and Congress, it apparently being viewed that CEA Chairs were too abstract or in the clouds or whatever to engage in such communications.  But the question became which of these  would have the presidential ear, and more often than not these NEC Chairs have been closer to presidents than CEA Chairs, even though more often than not the case has been that the CEA Chairs have known more about economics than the NEC Chairs.  This is ceetainly the case now, with the incompetent Kudlow regularly identified as being Trump's "top economic adviser," while the much more competent Hassett has been largely invisible.

Before getting into more recent events, let me note that the Economic Report of the President Hassett and his CEA staff put out avoided making actually incorrect statements, at least that I am aware of. Of course data favorable to the administration was emphasized and arguably overly optimistic projections were made regarding the future impacts of policies, especially the tax cut.  But then this is normal CEA behavior in most administrations, putting as positive  spin on actual data and making optimistic, but not off-the-wall projections of policies.  So far so good, or at least not too bad.

Indeed, up until very recently at least the CEA was playing it straight, although in doing so some of its findings were prevented from being publicized.  Thus in early June there were leaked reports that the CEA had determined that Trump's tariffs would damage future economic growth of both the US and also the rest of the world's economy.  When asked about these reports, Hassett had no comment other than to follow the line put out by Kudlow and some others that the tariffs will bring about a move to greater free trade and thus to greater growth.  So far there is little evidence that this is likely to happen, but it is indeed a not absurd thing to say.  It is the official line of the administration, which in fact clearly recognizes that at least the near term effects of the tariffs are damaging to many.  Thus we have Trump's move to provide aid to farmers harmed by foreign tariffs.  And then we had horrendously corrupt Commerce Secretary Ross at one point lecturing those injured to the effect that "gains" are not achievable without some "pains."

But now we find Hassett not only surfacing but doing so in a way to support serious distortions with much more seriously manipulated data.  This involves Trump's exaggerated claims regarding employment increases and especially those for African Americans.  Trump has been repeatedly making exaggerated claims about employment increases and unemployment rate declines, but he went completely off the deep end into lie lie land a few days ago.  He claimed to have "created" more jobs for African Americans since coming into office than Obama did during his entire time in office.  As it turns out the total increase in African American jobe under Obama was nearly ten times what was claimed by Trump.  That there had been a boo boo on this matter was admitted by Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the mistake was so blatant.

This is where Hassett stepped in with some carefully rigged numbers that Sanders could cite to provide a partial comeback after this admission of substantial error.  Hassett was quoted on job growth during the "first 20 months of each administration."  Oooops!  Quite aside from what happens in the first months of an administration not really having much to do with policy of that administration, Trump has only been president for 17 months, not 20.  Hassett gave to Obama the massively horrendous final quarter of the Bush administration while Trump was credited with reasonably decent performance in the final quarter of the Obama administration. The periods compared were the 20 months following the elections.  These changes made Trump's record look much better relatively.  This is beyond merely looking at the best side of data, it is outright lying, and Hassett's name is on it,

So now Hassett can be viewed as a full-blown member of the Trump administration.  He has joined the rest of it in Lie Lie Land.

Barkley Rosser




13 comments:

Unknown said...

I want to be sure you include Peter Navarro in the "corrupt" group as well as insane. Navarro was caught laundering a million dollars from Nucor Steel through a non-profit in San Diego, UCAN. The WSJ reported on this.
The non-profit, btw, had nothing in its remit about China, steel, or film making.

rosserjb@jmu.edu said...

Fair enough, Gene, Navarro is both corrupt and insane. It is pretty shameful that he seems to be the only PhD economist in this admin aside from Kevin Hassett, and he was so obviously awful and appointed first, that I think this is part of why people applauded so much when Hassett got appointed, although he then promptly disappeared.

Anonymous said...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/05/us/politics/nucor-us-steel-tariff-exemptions.html

August 5, 2018

Steel Giants Tied to Trump Block Tariff Relief for Other Firms
By JIM TANKERSLEY

Nucor and United States Steel, both with deep ties to Trump administration officials, have used veto power over other companies, forcing them to buy their products instead of steel from abroad.

The ability of a single industry to exert so much influence over the exclusions process is striking.

Anonymous said...

https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/1026341491411701760

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

This is the worst thing about Trump trade policy I've read yet. Tariffs are one thing; tariffs that are enforced selectively, at the discretion of political appointees, are much worse -- an open invitation to corruption

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/05/us/politics/nucor-us-steel-tariff-exemptions.html

Steel Giants Tied to Trump Block Tariff Relief for Other Firms

Nucor and United States Steel, both with deep ties to Trump administration officials, have used veto power over other companies, forcing them to buy their products instead of steel from abroad.

The ability of a single industry to exert so much influence over the exclusions process is striking.

10:37 PM - 5 Aug 2018

AXEC / E.K-H said...

You don’t see what you don’t see: censorship in the econoblogosphere
Comment on Barkley Rosser on ‘Kevin Hassett In Lie Lie Land’

Barkley Rosser rates the personnel of the current administration: “Pretty much everybody else appointed was some combination of corrupt …, incompetent …, or just plain insane ….

As an economist, though, Barkley Rosser is in NO position to rate any personnel/institution because it is pretty obvious that the representative economist himself is incompetent/corrupt/insane. The four main approaches ― Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism ― are mutually contradictory, axiomatically false, materially/formally inconsistent, and all got profit ― the pivotal concept of the subject matter ― wrong. With the pluralism of provably false theories, economists have not achieved anything of scientific value. They nonetheless hold up the insane claim to be scientists.

One tends to think that economics started as Political Economy and that the economists of old were according to their self-definition more agenda pushers than scientists but that this has changed in the meantime. Yet, this is definitively NOT the case, economists ignore/violate scientific standards to this day. As incorrigible political agenda pushers, economists apply all tools and tricks of political warfare. And they do keep up with the times.

In the great wave of privatization, censorship, too, has been privatized. This is provably true for economic discussion/debate/dispute. As a starting point for a thorough analysis, in the following, a provisional list of blogs is provided that tend to violate the first rule of “the friendly-hostile cooperation of scientists” that is “… a critical discussion is well-conducted if it is entirely devoted to one aim: to find a flaw in the claim that a certain theory presents a solution to a certain problem.” (Popper)#1

In the econoblogosphere, it is not unusual to make critique/refutation disappear or to bury it under a heap of irrelevant/off-topic filibuster and then to go on to recycle one’s junk. This is not a new phenomenon of the social media age but standard operating procedure since the founding fathers. Morgenstern reminded his colleagues back in 1941: “In economics we should strive to proceed, wherever we can, exactly according to the standards of the other, more advanced, sciences, where it is not possible, once an issue has been decided, to continue to write about it as if nothing had happened.”

It is important to remind oneself that Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism is refuted according to the scientific criteria of material and formal consistency. However, this junk is undeviatingly recycled. In the social media age, refutation is simply blocked or deleted and then all goes on “as if nothing had happened”. Most of the private censors have an academic degree, are honorable members of honorable economic societies, have published in peer-reviewed journals, and their blogs reappear regularly in the Top-10, -20, -100 charts.#2, #3, #4, #5, #6

See part 2

AXEC / E.K-H said...

Part 2

No doubt, everything looks good with economic communication except for the fact that the general public does not see what has been made to vanish into thin air.

Currently, every blog owner is entitled to reject submissions for whatever reason. There is nothing illegal in selecting the content of one’s own blog and in tuning up consent and in tuning down dissent. This is standard operating procedure in the political realm, however, this is an absolute no-go in the scientific realm.

Social communication is composed of information, misinformation, disinformation, story-telling, and deceit. Propaganda, fake news, lies, and censorship are bad in politics but worse in science because, of all human endeavors, science is explicitly committed to truth. Political corruption is bad but scientific corruption is the worst thing of all. An economist who hyperventilates about the incompetence/corruption/insanity of figures like Kevin Hassett has lost his priorities, his compass, the reality of his discipline, and makes a fool of himself.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

#1 Multiple or one-time blocking/deleting/manipulation/threat of blocking: Economist’s View, Billy blog, Real-World Economics Review blog, Lars P. Syll blog, Uneasy Money, Worthwhile Canadian Initiative, EconoSpeak, The Baseline Scenario, Social Democracy For The 21st Century, bradford-delong, Stumbling and Mumbling, Roger Farmer’s Economic Window, evonomics, Critical Macro Finance, INET, Naked Keynesianism, The Conversation, Information Transfer Economics, Bloomberg View, Dietrich Vollrath, EconBlog101, heteconomist, Fresh Economic Thinking, Noahpinion, Robert Skidelsky, Angry Bear, Renegade Inc, Social Europe, The Everyday Economist, Dani Rodrik’s Weblog, On the Economy Jared Berstein Blog, New Economic Perspectives, Michael Roberts Blog, The Harvard Crimson, Asymptosis, longandvariable, taxresearchuk.

#2 Cryptoeconomics ― the best of Lars Syll’s spam folder
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2018/01/cryptoeconomics-best-of-lars-sylls-spam.html

#3 Cryptoeconomics ― the best of Bill Mitchell’s spam folder
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2018/01/cryptoeconomics-best-of-bill-mitchells.html

#4 Cryptoeconomics ― the best of Real-World Economics Review’s spam folder
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2018/01/cryptoeconomics-best-of-real-world.html

#5 Cryptoeconomics ― the best of Mark Thoma’s spam folder
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2018/01/cryptoeconomics-best-of-mark-thomas.html

#6 Cryptoeconomics ― the best of Nick Rowe’s spam folder
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2018/01/cryptoeconomics-best-of-nick-rowes-spam.html

Barkley Rosser said...

Egmont,
I know you have been blocked here by another person, but I have never done so myself and expressed disapproval of that being done when I heard of it. I have no power to block or undo somebody else blocking you here.
You accuse me of being "incompetent/corrupt/insane." Many have and continue to call me insane, with some of them really meaning it. The last person to tell me I was incompetent was my late old man, a brilliant and famous mathemacian, many decades ago, but he stopprd doing that for the last couple of decades of his life. You are not in his league brainswise, Egmont, so not in any position to pass on that one. I realize you say that because I declare you profit theory to be a vacuous tautology, but, sorry, that is what it is.
Nobody has ever accused me of being corrupt. I can assure that nobody is paying me or rewarding me for refusing to accept your claim that your profit theory is anything other than a vacuous tautology, and I challenge you to provide a basis for this charge that does not involve me disagreeing with your vacuous tautological "theory." If you cannot do so, I suggest you retract that particular charge and apologize for making it. You can call me insane and incompetent all you want, although making the latter claim just makes you look stupid.

Barkley Rosser

AXEC / E.K-H said...

Barkley Rosser

What I wrote is this: “As an economist, though, Barkley Rosser is in NO position to rate any personnel/institution because it is pretty obvious that the representative economist himself is incompetent/corrupt/insane. The four main approaches ― Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism ― are mutually contradictory, axiomatically false, materially/formally inconsistent, and all got profit ― the pivotal concept of the subject matter ― wrong. With the pluralism of provably false theories, economists have not achieved anything of scientific value. They nonetheless hold up the insane claim to be scientists.” and “An economist who hyperventilates about the incompetence/corruption/insanity of figures like Kevin Hassett has lost his priorities, his compass, the reality of his discipline, and makes a fool of himself.”

To say an economist is making a fool of himself is NOT an offense but an accurate and well-established characterization: “If a professional group regards itself a having a message to deliver to others than its own members and makes any public claims in that respect, it thereby gives others the right to scrutinize the methods whereby that message was discovered, including the principles, or possibly prejudices, followed in choosing premises. They continue to do so. Cunningham in 1891 remarked that in the choice of premises ‘it is not always easy to tell when a professor of the dismal science is making a joke’ and I suspect that Cunningham meant that if the professor was not joking, then he was making a fool of himself.” (Viner, 1963)

Because the premises of economics ― the concept of profit in particular#1 ― are false at least since 1891, holding up the claim that economists are doing science is foolish or worse.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

#1 Wikimedia, Profit Law
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AXEC143.png

rosserjb@jmu.edu said...

Ah well, although you have avoided my challenge to you on your apparently labeling me as "corrupt," I sse that you are referring to the "representative economist." Now I think you think that moniker fits me, but it does not Egmont. I am far from being such a creature, so I can take it that your remarks do not apply to me, although some people I know consider as evidence of my insanity that I give you the time of day.

While I know you think you have, you have not disproven any of the four schools of economic thought, although you have brought up some genuine problems each has, with others including me agreeing with some of those criticisma. All four of the schools have problems, but none of them has been "disproven," only in the minds of fanatics and fantasists.

Of course anybody reading this knows that you consider your enunciation of your profit "theory" to be the ultimate piece de resistance of the disproof of all of them (if only the world would sit up and notice!!!), but it is not, being merely a vacuous tautology, as I have repeatedly pointed out.

Let me add to that last point. Your accounting identity "theory" is completely consistent with completely conventional Keynesian-derived national income and product accounts. It is in fact measured and kept track of, as I have also repeatedly pointeed out. Anybody who knows anything about NIPSA, knows of it, and it has a narrow use in some Keynesian-style models of capital investment. But that is it. Otherwise it is of zero theoretical import, being a mere accounting identity. It explains very little and certainly disproves nothing at all, certainly not anything as grandiose as an entire school of economic thought, and certainly not all four ones you claim to have diaproven. Of course all of this has been pointed out to you many times, and you have completely failed to refute any of it; you just keep repeating your same old worthless arguments over and over again.

Needless to say, this is a major reason many bloggers block you, Egmont. They simply tire of you endlessly repeating your stuff with at most minor variations. Their readers have already seen it, so why waste their time with it over and over again? The other reason, which I know is what led to your being blocked here, is your propensity to engage in personal insults of nearly everybody you communicate with. But I know these do not apply to me as I am not a "representative economist," so ha ha ha.

AXEC / E.K-H said...

Barkley Rosser

The key to understanding economics is that there are TWO economixes: political and theoretical economics. The main differences are: (i) The objective of political economics is to successfully push an agenda, the objective of theoretical economics is to successfully explain how the actual economy works. (ii) In political economics anything goes; in theoretical economics, the scientific standards of material and formal consistency are observed.

Theoretical economics (= science) had been hijacked from the very beginning by the agenda pushers of political economics. Political economics has produced NOTHING of scientific value in the last 200+ years because the representative economist was fully occupied with agenda pushing.

So, the representative economist can be characterized (using your words referring to the current WH-staff): “Pretty much everybody … was some combination of corrupt …, incompetent …, or just plain insane.”

As it happens, this is an unintended self-characterization of economics which boils down to this neat formula: economics ⇒ political economics ⇒ zero scientific content ⇒ representative economist ⇒ useful political idiot ⇒ incompetent/corrupt/insane.

Needless to emphasize that the representative economist does NOT care about the scientific standards of material and formal consistency but relentlessly spreads his political BS across the econoblogosphere.

The corruption of the representative economist consists of claiming to do science while pushing an agenda. Fact is, the four main approaches ― Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism ― are mutually contradictory, axiomatically false, materially/formally inconsistent and all got the pivotal economic concept profit wrong.

The axiomatically correct macroeconomic Profit Law reads Qm = Yd + (I−Sm) + (G−T) + (X−M).#1

As a representative economist, you (i) NEVER refuted the Profit Law, and (ii), you NEVER showed that one of the four main approaches applies it. You just keep parroting the brain-dead ‘accounting-identity’ idiocy#2, #3 and playing your silly political kindergarten games by exposing some random figure as corrupt/incompetent/insane. This is political agenda pushing and has NOTHING at all to do with science.

Science tells us how the economy works and it is common knowledge that the representative economist has not figured it out to this day. It is therefore NOT an incivility to call him corrupt/incompetent/insane but an unassailable statement of fact.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

#1 Profit Theory in less than 5 minutes
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2017/07/profit-theory-in-less-than-5-minutes.html

#2 Wikipedia and the promotion of economists’ idiotism (II)
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2018/07/wikipedia-and-promotion-of-economists.html

#3 Wikipedia and the promotion of economists’ idiotism (I)
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2016/11/wikipedia-and-promotion-of-economists.html

rosserjb@jmu.edu said...

Egmont,
This will be my last comment on this thread.

1) I have never attempted to refute your "profit law" for a reason you dismiss by name calling as "accounting idiocy," but sorry, that is exactly what it is. Your "law" is a well-known accounting identity. Thus it cannot be refuted. But it is also thus utterly vacuous. You have never shown any implication it has for "scientific economics," not ever, which means providing empirically testable hypotheses. But as a an accounting identity, it does not do so.

2) Your claim that it has nothing to do with any of the four schools I answered in my last post. Your "law" is completely consistent with, and a minor part of in-place NIPA based on Keynesian macroeconomic theory. It is well known and of little importance, retained earnings, how boring, snore. You really have nothing here, nothing new at all.

3) Oh, so apparently I am back to being "corrupt." Well, you clearly do not know what you are writing. But I shall nor block you in the future because you refuse to retract your false accusations. It is clear rhar you actually do not even know what you are writing. I feel sorry for you, far more pathetic than Kevin Hassett you are.

4) Oh dear, since you are unable to publish anything, you are now taking to creating silly Wikipesdia entries. Are your employers at the German think tank you seem to be employed by beginning to get on your case by your total inability to publish anything (aside from one pathetic paper in a shit journal several years ago)? Is this why you are flying off the handle and accusing people of "corruption," we publish and you do not, and now you are getting in trouble for your failure to do so? Sorry Egmont, anybody who knows anything knows what I have just pointed out, that your "theory" is a vscuous and totally well-known accouting identity, completely not worth publishing, and as a long time journal editor, i know exactly what I am talking about on this matter. You can still come here and make a fool of yourself, but you are not going to get publlshed with this repetitiious silly stuff, and, frankly, if your think tank fires your sorry ass, I shall not grieve or urge them to rehire you.

AXEC / E.K-H said...

Barkley Rosser

The axiomatically correct macroeconomic Profit Law reads Qm = Yd + (I−Sm) + (G−T) + (X−M).#1

It has profound consequences, e.g.
• Keynes’ I=S is false,#2
• All I=S/IS-LM models are false,#3
• The MMT balances equation (I−S) + (G−T) + (X−M)=0 is false,#4
• National Accounting is false.#5

The representative economist, who is too stupid for the elementary mathematics of accounting, reiterates the BS-consensus about accounting identities on Wikipedia.#6

Your characterization of the WH-staff: “Pretty much everybody … was some combination of corrupt …, incompetent …, or just plain insane.” is a self-description of the economics profession in general and yourself in particular.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

#1 Profit Theory in less than 5 minutes
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2017/07/profit-theory-in-less-than-5-minutes.html

#2 How Keynes got macro wrong and Allais got it right
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2016/09/how-keynes-got-macro-wrong-and-allais.html

#3 Mr. Keynes, Prof. Krugman, IS-LM, and the End of Economics as We Know It
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2392856

#4 MMT, Bill Mitchell, and the lack of basic scientific integrity
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2018/08/mmt-bill-mitchell-and-lack-of-basic.html

#5 The Common Error of Common Sense: An Essential Rectification of the Accounting Approach
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2124415

#6 Wikipedia and the promotion of economists’ idiotism (II)
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2018/07/wikipedia-and-promotion-of-economists.html

Unknown said...

Barkley, good on you for wrangling with this egmont character for so long.

How ludicrously exhausting.