The steno-pool commentariat doesn't seem to have noticed yet that poor ex-Governor Bush, trying to crawl out of one embarrassment, couldn't resist taking a jab at those notorious scroungers, people who work 30 hours a week instead of 40 (or 47) and thus are consigned to "getting in line and being dependent of government."
Govnah Bush doesn't have to get in line. Why, his clients get in line to pay him 7.3 million dollars (in 2013) to listen to his evident wisdom.
Thursday, July 9, 2015
If you're explaining, you're losing...
Washington Post:
HUDSON, N.H. -- Jeb Bush raised eyebrows on Wednesday by suggesting that "people need to work longer hours" in order to grow the economy.
But he later clarified the comment, moving quickly to quell a fresh assault by Democrats eager to characterize the Republican presidential front-runner as out of touch.
Not so fast, Bush told reporters as he clarified his comments after a town hall meeting at a Veterans of Foreign Wars hall here.
"If we’re going to grow the economy people need to stop being part-time workers, they need to be having access to greater opportunities to work," he told reporters.
"You can take it out of context all you want, but high-sustained growth means that people work 40 hours rather than 30 hours and that by our success, they have money, disposable income for their families to decide how they want to spend it rather than getting in line and being dependent on government," Bush said. [Sotto voce: note the reflex kick at people working "only" 30 hours a week as scroungers "getting in line and being dependent of government."]Bush wasn't actually explaining his earlier statement. He was reinterpreting the statement, "people need to work longer hours," to mean something entirely different than "people need to work longer hours." "Working longer hours" and "having access to greater opportunities to work" are not equivalents.
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| Jeb Bush "at work" |
I would take those figures with a tablespoon of salt. People lie about how hard they work. They think saying they work incredibly long hours makes them appear better than everybody else. Actually, it makes them look unproductive. Nevertheless, the Gallup results have held steady for the last 14 years at close to those numbers. If people are padding their hours for the pollsters, they are at least consistent about it.
If those superfluous seven hours per week were "lumps of labor" they could readily be redistributed to involuntary part-time workers and the unemployed eliminating both unemployment and underemployment! But of course, there is not "a fixed amount of work to be done" and the mere fact of redistributing work opportunities would increase productivity and output thus exacerbating the problem of insufficient demand unless that redistribution of hours was accompanied by a substantial redistribution of income in the form of higher wages.
Well, now you see why Jeb Bush was calling for longer hours rather than shorter hours. Longer hours means less pressure for wage increases. Wouldn't want that. Heck of a job, Jebbie!
Feudal Reveries
Reading Robyn Creswell and Bernard Haykel's essay on jihadi poetry in the June 8-15 New Yorker, I was intrigued by how their description of the "culture of jihad" (cult might have been a more apt word than culture) could easily be applied to the "culture of confederacy":
"Gosh, if only I had been born a thousand years ago, surely I would have been king!" Obviously the recruits to these anachronistic reenactments have a deficient understanding of probability and statistics. They wouldn't have been knights or gentlemen, they would have been peons. They wouldn't have been writing (or reading) poetry and brandishing swords. They would have been illiterate, wielding a hoe.
People should be careful what they wish for. Especially when it's nostalgia.
The culture of jihad is a culture of romance. It promises adventure and asserts that the codes of medieval heroism and chivalry are still relevant. Having renounced their nationalities, the militants must invent an identity of their own. They are eager to convince themselves that this identity is not really new but extremely old. The knights of jihad style themselves as the only true Muslims, and, while they may be tilting at windmills, the romance seems to be working. ISIS recruits do not imagine they are emigrating to a dusty borderland between two disintegrating states but to a caliphate with more than a millennium of history.One might paraphrase, "The cult of confederacy is a cult of romance. It promises adventure and asserts that the codes of ante-bellum heroism and chivalry are still relevant..." Notable in these anachronistic fantasies is that the recruits imagine themselves to be medieval knights, Southern gentlemen. In other words, the transit back in time also represents a profound elevation in social class.
"Gosh, if only I had been born a thousand years ago, surely I would have been king!" Obviously the recruits to these anachronistic reenactments have a deficient understanding of probability and statistics. They wouldn't have been knights or gentlemen, they would have been peons. They wouldn't have been writing (or reading) poetry and brandishing swords. They would have been illiterate, wielding a hoe.
People should be careful what they wish for. Especially when it's nostalgia.
Jens Weidmann on Central Banks as Lenders of Last Resort (Not)
I don’t think we should let this pass. Jens Weidmann, Germany’s representative on the governing council of the ECB and considered by most Germans (and their media) as a paragon of economic and financial wisdom, is quoted as saying, “Central banks, although they have the means, have no mandate, in my view, to safeguard the solvency of banks and governments.” Note that he refers to central banks in general and not only the ECB.
Frankly, I think Weidmann should sue the reporter who put these words into his mouth—obviously a crude attempt to make him sound like a yahoo who doesn’t know the first thing about his line of work.
Frankly, I think Weidmann should sue the reporter who put these words into his mouth—obviously a crude attempt to make him sound like a yahoo who doesn’t know the first thing about his line of work.
#OXIdizeExxon
Guardian: Exxon knew of climate change in 1981, email says – but it funded deniers for 27 more years
Wednesday, July 8, 2015
Jeb Bush: "People need to work longer hours."
Dubya's dumber brother.
"My aspiration for the country and I believe we can achieve it, is 4 percent growth as far as the eye can see. Which means we have to be a lot more productive, workforce participation has to rise from its all-time modern lows. It means that people need to work longer hours and, through their productivity, gain more income for their families. That's the only way we're going to get out of this rut that we're in."How many more hours? Let's put this in perspective.
The Jeb Bush household's declared income in 2013 was $7.3 million.
The median U.S. household income in 2013 was $52,250.
The median hourly wage for May 2013 was estimated by the BLS at $16.87 and hour.
If the median income household earned a median hourly wage, they would need to work a total of 2942 hours a year, assuming 155 hours a year (5%) vacation and holiday pay.
The Bush household had 140 times as much income in 2013 as the median U.S. household.
To earn as much income as the Bush household, the median household would have to work an additional 8,600 hours -- night and day for a whole year -- each week.
Tuesday, July 7, 2015
I Said, THE FUNDAMENTALS ARE SOUND!
Isn't anyone listening?
The CSI300 index slumped more than 7% at the open and was down 4.8% at 3,739.18 points by 2.08am GMT.
The Shanghai Composite Index dropped 8% and was down 4.7% at 3,551.13 points by mid-morning.
China stock futures pointed to further losses.
Losses on the mainland also weighed heavily on Hong Kong shares, with the Hang Seng Index down 3.3% and shares of Chinese companies listed in the city falling 4.2%.
As the markets opened, only 11% of companies on the two key mainland markets were still trading.
Christopher Balding, a professor of economics at Peking University said that while it was not possible to know exactly why so many companies had suspended trading, a large number were doing so because they had used their own stock as collateral for loans and they want to “lock in the value for the collateral”.
“Today is all about China, with Greece in the background now that it’s been given a new deadline,” said Ayako Sera, a senior market economist at Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank in Tokyo.
“Shanghai’s early losses were like a cliff-dive, which had a huge impact on investor sentiment.”What fundamentals?
Imperial Panorama: A Tour of German Inflation
Walter Benjamin (1925-6):
“1. In the stock of phraseology that lays bare the amalgam of stupidity and cowardice constituting the mode of life of the German bourgeois, the locution referring to the impending catastrophe — that “things can’t go on like this” — is particularly noteworthy. The helpless fixation on notions of security and property deriving from past decades keeps the average citizen from perceiving the quite remarkable stabilities of an entirely new kind that underlie the present situation….”
“14. The earliest customs of peoples seem to send us a warning that in accepting what we receive so abundantly from nature we should guard against a gesture of avarice. For we are able to make Mother Earth no gift of our own. It is therefore fitting to show respect in taking, by returning a part of all we receive before laying hands on our share. This respect is expressed in the ancient custom of the libation. Indeed, it is perhaps this immemorial practice that has survived, transformed, in the prohibition on gathering forgotten ears of corn or fallen grapes, these reverting to the soil or to the ancestral dispensers of blessings. An Athenian custom forbade the picking up of crumbs at the table, since they belonged to the heroes. If society has so degenerated through necessity and greed that it can now receive the gifts of nature only rapaciously, that it snatches the fruit unripe from the trees in order to sell it most profitably, and is compelled to empty each dish in its determination to have enough, the earth will be impoverished and the land yield bad harvests”
“1. In the stock of phraseology that lays bare the amalgam of stupidity and cowardice constituting the mode of life of the German bourgeois, the locution referring to the impending catastrophe — that “things can’t go on like this” — is particularly noteworthy. The helpless fixation on notions of security and property deriving from past decades keeps the average citizen from perceiving the quite remarkable stabilities of an entirely new kind that underlie the present situation….”
“14. The earliest customs of peoples seem to send us a warning that in accepting what we receive so abundantly from nature we should guard against a gesture of avarice. For we are able to make Mother Earth no gift of our own. It is therefore fitting to show respect in taking, by returning a part of all we receive before laying hands on our share. This respect is expressed in the ancient custom of the libation. Indeed, it is perhaps this immemorial practice that has survived, transformed, in the prohibition on gathering forgotten ears of corn or fallen grapes, these reverting to the soil or to the ancestral dispensers of blessings. An Athenian custom forbade the picking up of crumbs at the table, since they belonged to the heroes. If society has so degenerated through necessity and greed that it can now receive the gifts of nature only rapaciously, that it snatches the fruit unripe from the trees in order to sell it most profitably, and is compelled to empty each dish in its determination to have enough, the earth will be impoverished and the land yield bad harvests”
Austerity vs. Stimulus: Ignoring the Inherent Contradictions of "Growth"
Jennifer Hinton at the Guardian:
The issue of austerity versus stimulus is often framed as the entire debate – if you don’t support one, you must support the other, because there are no alternatives. This is the same binary debate that has been going on for more than 100 years between the state versus the market. Yet, these dichotomies distract people from thinking about what’s really important – the goal of these policies, which is to grow the economy.
No analysis I’ve read thus far has questioned the damaging role that the endless quest for economic growth plays. Neither austerity nor government stimulus will ever be able to address the debt crises and recessions of the twenty-first century because what we’re dealing with here is an inherent contradiction of capitalism.
Monday, July 6, 2015
Has The Syriza Government Been Fiscally Irresponsible?
According to commentator after commentator, especially on lots of blogs, that is certainlhy the case. Those nasty, lazy, corrupt, good-for-nothing Greeks just want to have it all as shown in the horrible irrational and irresponsible No vote on their referendum, having been doing nothing but running primary budget deficits and demanding bailouts from their troika creditors, who have been offering them highly reasonable deals that they should just shut up and accept or else have their government step down and be replaced by an appropriatedly kowtowing responsible one. Among those pushing the line that they have been running nothing but primary budget deficits has been Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution, most recently posting a link to a Ricardo Hausmann Faecbook post that states "It has been running primary deficits..." with no modification, with Tyler, having made such a claim earlier and being told that he was misrepresenting things thinking that this post would somehow vindicate his inaccurate position.
So, of course there is a lot of confusion and we cannot know for sure what is going on, but in fact official data is in on the budgetary situation of Greece during the first quarter of 2015 during which the Syriza government was in power, supposedly irresponsibly running massive primary deficits and otherwise showing why they should be removed from power, the awful commies. But, whoooops! if one looks at the official data, it turns out that not only did the government run a primary surplus during the first quarter, but that this surplus increased from about 770 million euros in the last quarter of 2014 to about 1.19 billion euros in the first quarter of 2015, a more than 400 million euro increase in that supposedly nonexistent primary surplus, as reported by phantis just yesterday, (actually April 2) although there have been earlier reports coming in with roughly similar numbers, with little of this getting much media or other attention anywhere.
Now it must be admitted that this outcome includes some one-off elements unlikely to continue. There is also the unfortunate fact that the Greek economy has fallen back into a recession, which is likely to worsen in the near future. So, tax revenuse are likely to fall, and it may be as Tyler Cowen stated in an earlier post that "the primary surplus is gone." But at least one report I found made a projection for the second quarter (actual numbers not in yet for that quarter just ended) that showed a primary surplus still holding in the second quarter and even into June, although much reduced from the first quarter. I would note that one item people have pointed to has been an incentives program the government put in place to encourage those in arrears on paying past taxes to come in out of the cold, a one-shot deal. Best estimate I saw of that amount for first quarter was 147 million euros, helplful, but less than half of the increase in the primary deficit from the previous quarter, with reduced spending responsible for more of it, despite all the caterwauling to the contrary by so many very self-righteouss outside critics. As it is, while those making those tax arrears payments not returning to do so again, the incentives program remains in place, so there may still be more arreared taxpayers coming in from the cold in the future.
Greece may well have gone into primary budget deficit territory by now (or shortly will do so), but those claiming that it has been just running primary deficits all along are misinformed and misinforming when they repeat this falsehood. They should all go check the actual data before repeating this drivel further agains.
Barkley Rosser
So, of course there is a lot of confusion and we cannot know for sure what is going on, but in fact official data is in on the budgetary situation of Greece during the first quarter of 2015 during which the Syriza government was in power, supposedly irresponsibly running massive primary deficits and otherwise showing why they should be removed from power, the awful commies. But, whoooops! if one looks at the official data, it turns out that not only did the government run a primary surplus during the first quarter, but that this surplus increased from about 770 million euros in the last quarter of 2014 to about 1.19 billion euros in the first quarter of 2015, a more than 400 million euro increase in that supposedly nonexistent primary surplus, as reported by phantis just yesterday, (actually April 2) although there have been earlier reports coming in with roughly similar numbers, with little of this getting much media or other attention anywhere.
Now it must be admitted that this outcome includes some one-off elements unlikely to continue. There is also the unfortunate fact that the Greek economy has fallen back into a recession, which is likely to worsen in the near future. So, tax revenuse are likely to fall, and it may be as Tyler Cowen stated in an earlier post that "the primary surplus is gone." But at least one report I found made a projection for the second quarter (actual numbers not in yet for that quarter just ended) that showed a primary surplus still holding in the second quarter and even into June, although much reduced from the first quarter. I would note that one item people have pointed to has been an incentives program the government put in place to encourage those in arrears on paying past taxes to come in out of the cold, a one-shot deal. Best estimate I saw of that amount for first quarter was 147 million euros, helplful, but less than half of the increase in the primary deficit from the previous quarter, with reduced spending responsible for more of it, despite all the caterwauling to the contrary by so many very self-righteouss outside critics. As it is, while those making those tax arrears payments not returning to do so again, the incentives program remains in place, so there may still be more arreared taxpayers coming in from the cold in the future.
Greece may well have gone into primary budget deficit territory by now (or shortly will do so), but those claiming that it has been just running primary deficits all along are misinformed and misinforming when they repeat this falsehood. They should all go check the actual data before repeating this drivel further agains.
Barkley Rosser
Sunday, July 5, 2015
Thursday, July 2, 2015
Next Up in Greece: Regime Change
It was clear all along that Greece had no defense against the troika’s doomsday weapon, a credit cutoff by the ECB. As “negotiations” dragged on, the dispenser of euros publicly warned of a Greek banking failure, actually provoking the sort of run that central banks normally do all they can to prevent. Finally, in retribution for Tsipras’ final act of defiance, calling a referendum scheduled several days after the termination of the loan program, the ECB fired away in force, freezing support and essentially telling Greek depositors, pull your money out now or never see it again. With capital controls in place, banks shuttered, and the government unable to find euros to fulfill its core obligations, Greece is prostrate.
That’s Act I, which has culminated with Tsipras folding and giving in to the same demands he rejected five months earlier.
Now begins Act II. The creditors will offer Greece a further deal, with more loans (and indebtedness) and more austerity, but enough support to allow Greece to have a financial system again. This offer will not be made to Syriza, however. It will be presented on the condition that Tsipras resign, and that a new government, led by New Democracy, the center-right party that Syriza replaced, take over. This appears to be the thinking behind the recent statements by Merkel and Dijsselbloem that no further discussions can be held until after Sunday’s referendum: the expectation is that “Yes” will win big, and that this will lead not only to a new government but athe collapse of Syriza as a coherent political entity. That’s Plan A. If a Plan B is required, the obvious strategy for the creditors is to exact even more suffering on the Greeks—for instance, keeping the euro spigot closed even as food imports dry up and starvation sets in. But that increases the likelihood of a violent regime change, presumably led by the military. My assumption is that “liberal, reasonable” Europe would prefer to see Syriza deposed in a civilized manner, without tanks and prisons, but one way or another the political goal has to be fulfilled.
From where I sit, it was obvious from the outset that a Syriza government in Greece was viewed as unacceptable by the rest of the EU. (I’m referring of course to member governments.) It was always understood that resolving the dispute meant removing Syriza as a disputant. It is likely that future releases of diplomatic communications will verify this. In the meantime, I wonder whether this was recognized in Athens and, if so, what their strategy was to prevent it.
That’s Act I, which has culminated with Tsipras folding and giving in to the same demands he rejected five months earlier.
Now begins Act II. The creditors will offer Greece a further deal, with more loans (and indebtedness) and more austerity, but enough support to allow Greece to have a financial system again. This offer will not be made to Syriza, however. It will be presented on the condition that Tsipras resign, and that a new government, led by New Democracy, the center-right party that Syriza replaced, take over. This appears to be the thinking behind the recent statements by Merkel and Dijsselbloem that no further discussions can be held until after Sunday’s referendum: the expectation is that “Yes” will win big, and that this will lead not only to a new government but athe collapse of Syriza as a coherent political entity. That’s Plan A. If a Plan B is required, the obvious strategy for the creditors is to exact even more suffering on the Greeks—for instance, keeping the euro spigot closed even as food imports dry up and starvation sets in. But that increases the likelihood of a violent regime change, presumably led by the military. My assumption is that “liberal, reasonable” Europe would prefer to see Syriza deposed in a civilized manner, without tanks and prisons, but one way or another the political goal has to be fulfilled.
From where I sit, it was obvious from the outset that a Syriza government in Greece was viewed as unacceptable by the rest of the EU. (I’m referring of course to member governments.) It was always understood that resolving the dispute meant removing Syriza as a disputant. It is likely that future releases of diplomatic communications will verify this. In the meantime, I wonder whether this was recognized in Athens and, if so, what their strategy was to prevent it.
Wednesday, July 1, 2015
The Cover-up is Alway Worse Than the Crime
The crime:
Nobel laureate [Stiglitz] tells TIME that the institutions and countries that have enforced cost-cutting on Greece "have criminal responsibility"The cover-up:
"Greece is in a difficult situation, but purely because of the behaviour of the Greek government ... Seeking the blame outside Greece might be helpful in Greece, but it has nothing to do with reality," said Schäuble. "The Greek government is not doing its people any favours at all if it keeps making completely false statements. Nobody else is to blame for their situation. It’s all very sad. We’re in a much harder situation than before. It was always difficult. But it has just kept getting more and more difficult since January."Follow the money and it is clear that Schäuble is lying. He knows he's lying and he knows we know he's lying. The bluster is meant to paralyze criticism with its audacity.
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