Is Kevin Rudd a game changer part 2

Has anything changed since Kevin Rudd was made Leader of the ALP?

Yes it has. Rudd has made himself into a Peter Beattie type of politician. If you want to reform the ALP then you just have to vote for him.

I thought previously any internal squabbling would be bad for the ALP, HOWEVER Rudd has now made that an asset. He is seen as ,rightly, anti-factional politician. This has come about as much by the Liberal party as it has by either himself or his supporters. So when ever a factional leader or their acolyte attempts to show disunity is still in the ALP they fail miserably.

Rudd has already shown he is by far superior to Gillard and Swan as a politician however he has yet to come to terms with the implications of below trend GDP growth nor has he come up with a story on deficits and debt (see  mumble) although I think he will.

I still think the ALP will lose the next election however a close loss means a lot for the incoming government.

Just for a bonus some articles on this topic which will feature in Friday's Around the Traps.

• Ed Butler on kevins-here-to-dumb-it-down and gordon's thoughts as well
• Kathryn Crosby on i-see-you-sam-shakin-that-rudd
• Mark the ballot has weekly-aggregation-labor-on-505-per-cent
• Kevin Bonham on poll-roundup-and-seat-betting-watch
• The Piping Shrike on unleashed
• Mumble on the_necessary_condition_for_re-election

Elton John

A long time ago I was watching TV and the late Bill Collins introduced a movie called Aloha Bobby and Rose.

It was one of the first to have a soundtrack. It contained some great groups on it such as Emerson ,Lake and Palmer however it was the first time I had heard of Elton John. The song was Tiny Dancer

Unfortunately he never reached these heights again.

Here it is.

Around the Traps 5/7/13

It is time for Around the Traps.

I have put on the articles re Kevin Rudd replacing Gillard together in the OZ section.

Look out for Simon Wren-Lewis who is again on fire, David Glasner, as usual, has a very good thoughtful piece in the wonk section and Noah Smith has a piece in the Stats section but overall all the articles are worth a read over the weekend.

Updates will occur then as well!!


Aussie,Aussie,Aussie, Oy,Oy,Oy

• Mumble on the_d_words_and_other_things, new_government_in_town, try_to_imagine
• The Pollbludger on bludgertrack-2-0-50-3-49-7-to-coalition lots of good links , 
• Mark the Ballot on correction-to-weekly-aggregation
• Possum on when-wholes-are-less-than-sums-of-the-parts
• Ben Raue on A very different close election
• The Piping Shrike on the-rudd-effect
• Ingolf on the-politics-of-imperfection
• Gordon's Thoughts on if-the-facts-dont-fit-a-frame-the-frame-stays-and-the-facts-bounce-off, the-time-dynamic-the-case-for-going-late
• Peter Martin on gillards-gone-now-lets-get-rid-of-her-economic-narrative, bowen-draws-line-under-gillardswan-era., its-wrong-to-hire-treasury-people
• Matt Cowgill on the-inadequacy-of-newstart, middle-class-welfare-in-the-tax-code
• Andrew Elder on since-wednesday-night
• Kevin Bonham on seat-betting-favourites-watch-july-3
• Mr Demore on old-empires-new-legacies
• Robert Merkel on can-governments-borrow-enough-to-fix-our-infrastructure-backlog

North America

• James Hamilton on the_allpowerful_Fed, offbalancesheet_federal_liabilities
• Menzie Chinn on another_item_for_the_annuls _of _innumeracy, ever_expanding_government_employment
• Kruggers on historic-mistake-watch, moochers-grifters-and-the-beveridge-curve
• Jared Bernstein on the-benefits-of-the-safety-net-part-2
• Brad De Long on david-kotok-exit-via-reserve-requirements
• the hot Carola Binder on stein-thoma-and-hamilton-on-fed
• Steve Roth on the-so-called-credit-crunch-again-some-more
• Macroblog on getting-back-to-normal
• Mark Thoma gives us Tim Duy who writes about  fed-watch-a-pledge-to-be-responsible and then a-solid-but-not-spectacular-employment-report
• Calculated Risk on public-and-private-sector-payroll-jobs- from- Reagan- to- Obama
• Kruggers on on-the-political-economy-of-permanent-stagnation
• David Glasner on The Dreaded Fed Reaction function strikes again
• Jared Bernstein on job-creation-and-the-affordable-care-act-have-little-to-do-with-each-other

Japan

• Okay this is China but Menzie Chinn on how_competitive_is _China

Europe

• Cormac Ograda on brendan-and-dermot-walsh-on-health-and-austerity
• Stephen Kinsella on el-erian-on-ireland-and-austerity
• Kruggers on rationality-and-the-euro

Wonk

• Simon Wren-Lewis on money-as-credit and then Nick Rmoney-bonds-and-the-price-levelowe on 
• Frances Woolley on economics-is-better-in-some-ways-than-it-used-to-be
• Brad De Long  on  notes-on-steven-kaplans-feldstein-lecture-executive-compensation-and-corporate-governance-in-the-us-perceptions-facts
• Dan Crawford on where-did-the-risk-go-2007
• Yichuan Wang on why-nominal-gdp-targeting-solves-the-credibility-problem
• Jazzbumpa on the-standard-deviation-of-ngdp-growth-since-1950
• Lord Keynes on daviess-top-three-myths-about-great-depression-and-the-new-deal and us-unemployment-in-1930s
• David Glasner on who-sets-the-real-rate-of-interest backed up by Kruggers
• Kruggers on potential-mistakes-wonkish

General

• Dianne Coyle on economics-textbooks, forward-thinking
• Jared Bernstein on when-the-results-look-weird-check-the-methods-carefully, uncertainty-hirschman-and-mozart
• Noah Smith on the-dream-of-post-racial-america,/do-beliefs-contain-useful-information
• Angry Bear on productivity-effective-demand-an-intriguing-and-disturbing-story
• Nick Rowe on keynes-question-and-the-keynesian-answer, /who-sets-the-real-rate-of-interest 
• Simon Wren-Lewis on annoying-anti-fiscal-stimulus-arguments , the-knowledge-transmission-mechanism ,government-debt-inflation-and-money
• Brad De Long on what-people-might-mean-when-they-say-the-fiscal-policy-multiplier-is-zero, john-maynard-keynes-on-friedrich-von-hayek-and-friedrich-von-hayek-on-john-maynard-keynes
• Kruggers on regions-of-derpistan
• Frances Woolley on arguing-for-carbon-taxes-in-the-ex-burbs
• Livio De Matteo on promoting-consumption-taxation-in-canada
• Kevin O'Rourke on why-economics-needs-economic-history
• Lord Keynes on roosevelts-volte-face

Climate

• climate-clippings

Andrew Gelman (Statistics)

• non-statistical tools
• going-meta-on-niall-ferguson
• They want to send me free material and pay for the privilege
• kuhn-1f-noise-and-the-fractal-nature-of-scientific-revolutions
• versatile-affordable-chicken-has-grown-in-popularity
• more-plain-old-everyday-bayesianism
• numbersense-how-to-use-big-data-to-your-advantage link to Kaiser
• how-to-think-about-papers-published-in-low-grade-journals
• Noah Smith on four-levels-of-science
• Good Stats Bad Stats on biomarkers and heart risk ,uninformed analysis
• Kaiser Fong on know-your-data-11-facebook-and-you , know-your-data-12-your-last-200-snapchats

David Giles (Econometrics)

• the-bootstrap-non-technical-introduction
• free-download-of-my-recent-paper
• summer-reading
• the-adjusted-r-squared-again
• allocation-models
• musical-econometrics

Quirky

• Who else but Dianne Coyle with brave-and-humble-economists , giant-lizards-and-geeks

Voxwonk

• home-field-liquidity-advantage
• global-view-cross-border-migration
• real-estate-valuation-current-account-and-credit-growth-patterns-and-after-2008-09-crisis
• tax-shelters-and-theory-firm
• impact-financial-sector-long-term-low-nominal-interest-rates
• four-decades-terms-trade-booms
• rating-agency-europe-good-idea
• gold-prices-depend-market-microstructure
• impact-sovereign-debt-exposure-bank-lending-evidence-european-debt-crisis
• payoff-world-trade-agenda-2013

Simon Wren_Lewis demolishes Anti-Stimulus arguments

Simon Wren-Lewis has a great article at his blog called annoying-anti-fiscal-stimulus-arguments.
  see also the-knowledge-transmission-mechanism
It is so good here it is here!  Go and tell him how good it is!!

Annoying Anti-Fiscal Stimulus Arguments Nos. 3 and 4

For numbers 1 and 2, see this post.

Number 3. We must reduce the size of the state.

This argument is often there but unstated, because to say it explicitly involves a deception. Instead it sometimes goes by the euphemism of ‘structural’ or ‘supply side’ reform. (No, I’m not saying there are no genuinely useful structural reforms out there, but just what some people mean when they use this term.) But as those making the case for austerity get more desperate, I have seen this argument a few times recently.

It involves a deception, because reducing the size of the state has nothing in principle to do with austerity and stimulus. I personally have no strong views about what the size of the state should be: some things are clearly done better by the private sector, while others are done better by the state, and how this eventually pans out for the aggregate I have no idea. But this has almost nothing to do with the need to increase demand when interest rates are at the zero lower bound. The deception comes when austerity mainly involves cutting spending (as in the UK), because it is anticipated that it will be very easy to cut taxes later on once austerity is over.

When I say it has almost nothing to do with stimulating demand, this is why I say almost. A long established and theoretically robust method of stimulating demand is a balanced budget fiscal expansion, where you temporarily increase government spending by temporarily raising taxes. However as it need involve nothing more than bringing investment projects forward in time (e.g. repairing roads and schools before they completely fall apart), it is not really increasing the size of the state. The idea that what is temporary is bound to become permanent does not stand up.

4. We must think of the children

This is annoying not because it is wrong in principle. Instead it is wrong because it either ignores who suffers the costs of austerity, or because it is not genuine. The argument that is right in principle is that, by increasing debt, we are ceteris paribus redistributing money from future generations to the current generation. There may be a complete offset if that increase in debt avoids hysteresis effects (or enables investment with beneficial supply side effects). Yet even leaving that aside, there are often very good reasons to redistribute income. When a country suffers a natural disaster, both governments and individuals freely give money to help those involved. We can think about the recession as a similar disaster.

If that does not convince you, ask who is bearing the brunt of this recession. All around the world, youth unemployment has risen by more than unemployment in general. If you asked those who cannot find a job after leaving school or college whether they would be willing to pay higher future taxes in order to get a job today, what do you think their answer would be?

Why do I suspect that this argument is sometimes not genuine? Because some of those who make this case also argue against measures to tackle climate change. Now even if you are sceptical about the science, the potential costs of you being wrong and 98% of scientists being right are so great that if you really cared about future generations you would support measures to reduce carbon emissions. (See Martin Wolf here or Martin Weitzman here.) So when, for example, a recent Wall Street Journal articleargued that “we need an exclusive focus on supply-side reform [reducing the size of the state] to promote growth. Luxuries such as family-friendly employment legislation or green initiatives such as the carbon taxes are no longer affordable in the age of austerity” you know something is not right. The biggest risk to the well being of future generations right now is climate change, so what is the point of increasing future growth if the cost is doing nothing to reduce that risk. Of course that combination might make sense if you only care about what happens in the next few decades, but if that is your view then don’t tell me we should avoid a short run increase in debt for the sake of future generations. 

Jackson Browne

Jackson Browne is/was(?) one of the all time great singer/songwriters

This is his best song

Doctor my eyes

Around the Traps 28/6/13

Time for Around the Traps again.

Kaiser Fong has produced a short statistics course on line for anyone interested

It has been a wet week in Sydanee so I expect to update this over the weekend as football will not be on.

Aussie,Aussie,Aussie,Oy,Oy,Oy

• Peter Martin on do-facts-matter, bhp-income-distribution
• The Piping Shrike on control
• Mumble on spills_and_polls, notes_from_a_leadership_change
• Richard Green on before-you-ask-what-does-it-mean-ask-does-it-mean-anything
• Katherine Crosby on white-elephant-paper-on-northern-australia, can-kevin-win
• Ed Butler on if-not-now-when
• The Kouk on global-stocks-surge-tony-abbott-will-be-pm-in-three-months
• Grog's Gamut on vale-43rd-parliament-or-not
• Kevin Bonham on rudd-replaces-gillard
• Tim Dunlop on policy-talk-real-non-solutions-part-i
• Mark the Ballot on polling-discontinuity-post-gillard ,adding-in-reachtel
• John Quiggin on rudd-and-policy-substance
• Harry Clarke disagrees 
• Gordon's thoughts on perceptions-of-diplomatic-conflict 

US which has appropriated Canada

• Calculated Risk on a-few-comments-on-dumb-policy, a-few-comments-on-house-prices-and-new-sales, house-prices-and-mortgage-rates
• Macroblog on casting-web-over-jobs-data ,getting-back-to-normal
• Jared Bernstein on the-safety-net-caught-a-lot-of-people-in-the-downturn
• Brad De-Long on andrew-gelman-is-nate-silver-paying-off-politico
• Menzie Chinn on global_spillover and_domestic_monetary_policy , fiscal_drag_and _GDP growth
• John Cassidy on darrell-issa-vanishing-irs-tax-scandal Thanks Mark
• Carola Binder on long-before-the-nsa Thanks Mark
• Jazzbumpa on remarkably-stable-ngdp-growth-part-3
• Beverly Mann on the-doma-opinion
• The astute David Glasner on watch-out-for-that-fed-reaction-function
• Mark Thoma on inflation-is-too-low, the-long-term-budget-picture

Europe

• Simon Wren-Lewis on fiscal-legacies-and-competence and uk-growth-has-been-even-worse-than-we-thought
• Seamus Coffey on national-accounts ( Ireland)
• John Cassidy on austerity-and-the-mistaken-lessons-of-history
• Chris Dillow on celebrating-failure

Japan


Wonk

• Mike Konzal on can-taper-matter-revisiting-wonkish-2012-debate
• Nick Rowe on raising-expectations-of-inflation-vs-raising-expectations-of-ngdp-growth
• Noah Smith on some-essential-papers-in-behavioral-economics, i-get-what-you-get-in-ten-years-in-two
• Simon Wren-Lewis on government-default-reserves-and-qe

Brian Banisch (or Climate)

• climate-clippings
• Lentern on climate-reversals
• Kruggers on aggregate-supply-aggregate-demand-and-coal
• Harry Clarke says obamas-direct-action-plans-deserve-applause
• but Alan Moran says obamas-climate-policy-even-more-infantile-than-australias
• Michael Roberts on taking-action-on-climate-change Thanks Mark
• Laura Tyson on the-myriad-benefits-of-a-carbon-tax Thanks Mark

Andrew Gelman (or Statistics)

• bayesian-quality-control
• why-it-doesnt-make-sense-in-general-to-form-confidence-intervals-by-inverting-hypothesis-tests
• is-there-too-much-coauthorship-in-economics-and-science-more-generally-or-too-little
• dont-buy-bayesian-data-analysis
• huh,the-weirdest-thing-about-the-ajph-story
• econ-coauthorship-update
• Good stats Bad stats on supermoon
• Kaiser Fong on reading-predictive-analytics and a-short-statistics-course

David Giles or (Econometrics)

• can-you-actually-test-for-multicollinearity
• Dianne Coyle on the-scarlet-letter-for-economists

General

• Diane Coyle on from-dead-end-to-dynamism, provocative-economics
• Kruggers on we-were-middle-class-once-and-young, karicature-keynesianism ( add Mark Thoma)
• Lord Keynes on vaughn-on-early-history-of-austrian-school, marshall-on-mengers-orders-of-capital-goods, observations-on-pure-time-preference-theory-of -interest
• Richard Green on are-models-that-assume-linear-utility-useful?
• Simon Wren- Lewis on the-intellectual-bankruptcy-of-the-Austerians
• Nick Rowe on rates-rents-and-shares, we-should-not-teach-the-keynesian-cross-in-intro-macro
• Corey Robin on the-hayek-pinochet-connection-a-second-reply-to-my-critics , if-reagan-were-pinochet-sigh
• Mark Thoma on new-research-in-economics-the-imf-and-global-financial-crises-phoenix-rising
• Frances Woolley on family-feuds-canadas-interminable-tax-unit-debate-
• James Hamilton on just_how_helpful_is_low_inflation
• Scientific American on do-blog-posts-correlate-with-a-higher-number-of-future-citations Thanks Mark

Quirky

• Livio De Matteo on animal-spirits

Voxwonk

• spillovers-why-macro-fiscal-policy-should-be-coordinated-economic-unions
• hopes-and-false-hopes-china-s-interest-rate-reform
• financial-imbalances-and-cycles-do-they-matter-general-public
• rethinking-competitiveness-global-value-chain-revolution
• when-good-intentions-go-wrong-effects-bank-deregulation-and-governance-risk-taking
• macroprudential-capital-add-ons-systemically-important-banks
• explaining-global-great-recession
• redistribution-policies-root-eurozone-crisis
• capital-adequacy-and-hidden-risk

Is Kevin Rudd a game changer?

Some people believe that by changing leaders from Julia Gillard to Kevin Rudd the political game has changed.
John Quiggin is certainly in this camp. However so is Mumble and his opinion is to be respected.( Kathryn Crosby is in this camp as well.)

I am not. I certainly think he will do better than Gillard who whilst good on policy was extraordinarily bad at simple politics. Swan was even worse and Gillard thought he was great!

Rudd is a very much better political operator and can sell policies he understands as his history shows BUT:

1) The ALP has been shown up to be divisive. I fully expect backgrounding from Factional heavies to keep on this theme. As was stated yesterday If Rudd wins or loses 'well' the factional overlords will lose power again. They do not want this and would rather lose bigtime and keep their power.

2) When you combine nominal GDP growth well below trend with people's expectations of rising prices that are way too high then it is not strange people think the economy has either slowed drastically or is in a recession now.

Either of those issues would sink the ALP, both of then makes it a rolled gold certainty!