Around the Traps 29/11/13

It is time for Around the Traps.

No cricket on sunday so updating then.





Aussie,Aussie,Aussie,Oy,Oy,Oy

• Mark the Graph on the-ageing-population
• Matt Cowgill on ageing-and-the-participation-rate-an-update
• Mumble on so_so_newspoll, who_cares_about_broken_promises, the_wait_is_over
• The Kouk on keating-and-the-recession-we-had-to-have , barriers-and-incentives-to-labour-force-participation, There is no interest in education
• Mark the Graph on more-on-participation-rates-for-older-Australians, prime-working-age-25-54-years
• Ross Gittins on election-well-over-now-for-truth, rise-in-living-standard-set-to-slow
• Andrew Elder on played-off-a-break
• Brian Banisch on numbers-add-up-to-keep-clean-energy-finance
• John Quiggin on grattan-on-growth, peak-aluminium, peak-euphemism-ozfail
• Kevin Bonham on 2013-federal-election-best-and-worst-pollsters
• m0nty on no-alarms-and-no-surprises-please

Northern America

• Mark Thoma gives us Kruggers on california-here-we-come, obamacares-secret-success
• Pro-growth liberal on dean-baker-v-greg-mankiw-on-wage-inflation
• Menzie Chinn on fiscal_drag_in_2013
• Calculated Risk on irwin-five-economic-trends-to-be-thankful-for
• Mike Kimel on previewing-blinder-and-watson-2015 see James Hamilton presidents_and_the_economy
• Mark Thoma gives us Dean Baker subprime-mbs-with-a-government-guarantee
• David Glasner on george-selgin-relives-the-sixties

Europe

• Anna Rosso on rich-and-poor
• Guan Yuang on scotland-sterling-and-debt
• Aeden Doris on wage-flexibility-in-ireland
• Simon Wren-Lewis on uk-banks-and-productivity-puzzle-it-may-not-just-be-about-limited-lending
• Bob Butcher on productivity-still-important-local-growth

Asia
nuttin agin

Wonk

• Nick Rowe on intertemporal-says-law, 
• Edward Lambert on a-negative-natural-interest-rate-really-omg, pushing-on-a-wall-note-on-natural-rate-of-interest, the-natural-rate-of-interest-depends-on-how-you-see-natural-real-gdp, inflation-expections-income-expectations-financial-repression
• Robert Waldeman on a-two-keynesian-analysis-of-multipliers, a-few-keynesian-model-with-multipliers
• Mike Konzal on two-simple-reasons-not-fight-bubbles-higher-interest-rates
• Lord Keynes on price-average-total-cost-average-variable cost-marginal cost
• Kruggers on on-the-importance-of-little-arrows-wonkish,  see Nick Rowe on why-inflation-will-not-fall-off-a-bottomless-cliff new-thinking-and-old-books-revisited

General

• Noah Smith on new-quartz-article-battle-for-soul-of-macro-economics and Nick Rowe on-firing-your-advisers
• Chris Dillow on triumph-of-the-totalitarians, stagnation-in-the-mind,luck, inequality-growth, iq-and-equality
• Steve Roth on businesses-hire-when-they-are-swamped-with-demand-not-when-they-have-high-profits, real-businessmen-respond-to-quantity-signals-not-price-signals
• Simon Wren-Lewis on bertrand-russells-chicken-and-why-it-was-not-an-economist
• Barkely Rosser on bibi-and-gop-whine-while-stock-market-and-spooks-love=Iran-nuke-deal

Climate

• Benjamin Preston on more-loss-and-damage, cop-19
• Rabbett Run on eli-and-weasel
• Real Climate on sea-level-rise-what-the-experts-expect
• Brian Banisch on climate-change-reconnecting-politics-with-reality-2, climate-clippings
• William Connelly on mann-vs-muller

Andrew Gelman ( King (President?) of the p Values)

• interesting-flawed-attempt-apply-general-forecasting-principles-contextualize-attitudes-toward-risks-global-warming
• please-make-fun-of-this-claim
• double-blind-mice
• statistics-is-what-people-think-math-is
• the-gradual-transition-to-replicable-science
• Kaiser Fong on tsa-gets-into-the-randomization-game, for-a-change-the-fda-earned-my-trust
• Good Stats Bad Stats on a matter of perspective

Dave Giles ( The genial Econometric genius)
only one article Dave!!!!!  Dave was late!

• a-bayesian-view-of-p-values,
•  lawrence-r-klein-memorial-prize
• do-you-have-tattoo
• Mark the graph on home-brew-seasonal-adjustment not quite econometrics but useful

Dianne Coyle +  Frances Woolley ( Quirky + Book Reviews)

• Dianne on celebrating-economics , economics-and-public-policy, shopping-your-way-to-the-good-life, hawks-eye-perspective,progress-economics-and-the-good-life,democracy-elfarol-kirk, that-time-of-year
• the'hot' Frances on russet-apples-and-the-sam-i-am-theory-of-affirmative-action
• Tim Harford on why-women-prefer-fixed-price-cars

Voxwonk

• design-preferential-trade-agreements
• currency-wars-and-euro
• dark-side-housing-price-appreciation
• impossible-trinity
• foreign-currency-loans-and-systemic-risk-europe
• inequality-china
• carbon-pricing-and-role-natural-gas-eu-climate-policy
• monetary-policy-will-never-be-same
• new-market-risk-regulations
• euro-and-price-convergence
• oil-prices-and-food-prices
• productivity-italy-great-unlearning
• labour-mobility-europe-and-us
• consumption-and-credit-constraints-during-financial-crises

Kristallnacht 75 years on

My attention was drawn that it is now 75 years since Kristallnacht occurred.
Sinclair Davidson attempts to write about it but naturally is inaccurate.
He quotes Scott Ryan "Never before had an allegedly civilised nation attempted an elimination of an entire people. Never before had all the gains of the renaissance, enlightenment and industrial revolution been put to such evil use. But these were only the means; the driving force behind the Holocaust was not new, it was thousands of years old, it is the oldest of hatreds."

 Whoopsy. Armenian genocide anyone. It only occurred in 1915!
( In what could only be described vas IRONY the Israeli Government has it as official policy to deny this atrocity! Maybe that is why it slipped the memory).
(Postscript. I was asked whether this is an example of denial. I very much doubt it. Indeed He probably didn't even know of the Armenian holocaust)

Why did Kristallnacht occur?
Adam Tooze in his book The Wages of Destruction makes the hypothesis that it was mostly due the the feeling of the SS Leadership  that war was imminent and Jews were seen as a fifth column that would undermine any war effort.

This is borne out by the fact that until Kristallnacht Jews were not put into prison or camps simply for being Jews but for being  influential members of trade Unions, the social Democrats, Communists etc.

We also had the absurd job given to Schacht. He would meet International Jewry and they would finance all German Jews to move to Palestine. ( In another irony Nazi Germany fully supported the setting up of a Jewish state in Palestine!).
Of course this never happened because International Jewry never existed. It only existed in the minds of the Nazi hierarchy who now believed their own propaganda.



Kristallnacht did show how much the German population had changed. When Goebbels tried to stop Germans from buying goods in Jewish retail stores he failed miserably and Hitler stopped it after only a day.  Germans continued to buy goods despite SA bully boys at the entrance of most Jewish stores,

By 1938 a lot of Germans had turned and blamed the Jews for the war they thought was certain. They also disgracefully joined in the pogrom against the Jews at this time.

We can only hope such an event never eventuates again.

Update.
I forgot to mention Robert Gellately mentioned two things of note in his excellent book Backing_Hitler. Consent_and _Coercion _in Nazi_Germany

1) By 1934 there was a recommendation to get rid of all concentration camps for political prisoners as they were no longer needed.
The Nazis being bureaucrats didn't do this.   ( Gellately has two distinct chapters on concentration camps. Before 1938 and after b1938 because their reason for being in Nazi Germany changed drastically.)

2) The Gestapo could not have functioned without support from the broad public as their numbers were far too small.

Further update on a related topic
Tooze and Gellately are at opposite ends of the terror debate. Tooze believes the population were terrorised to support Hitler whereas Gellately believes terror was invoked only on a small proportion of the population.
I think their writing on 1934 shows how accurate both of them were. Tooze merely notes the German population was more worried about inflation than the night of the long knives whereas Gellately explicitly says Germans supported Hitler's action and it boosted his popularity ( which was always much  higher than that of the Nazi party.)

The Polls

There has been conjecture that the two major polls ,Neilsen and Newspoll, are showing different results and thus one is a rogue.

Is this correct?

First let us go to the pollbudger for Neilsen and for Newspoll. and also Mumble for Newspoll.

Now a bit of history is needed. In the 2004 election the polls which did better in 2PP terms were the ones who used the preference flows from the previous election. Hence ever since then this is what all polling organisations do now EXCEPT at present they do not have preference flows from the last election. Thus they have used preference flows from the 20120 election.

Some people have done a rough and ready preference flow from the last election.
When they do that they get a 2PP vote thus:
Neilsen       49:51
Newspoll   51: 49
Reachtel     51:49

After taking into account the margin of error the polls are saying basically the same thing.
Kevin Bonham is still correct!

Special Bonus. Kevin Bonham on Essential polling ( historical but useful and of course was in Around the Traps)


Special bonus update. Philip Lowe The RBA Deputy Governor made an important speech recently.
If you read it carefully then it means nominal GDP growth will be quite limited UNLESS...
This is bad news if you rabbitted on about how easy it was to get the budget into the black!
Interesting times.

The Spirit of Cricket

The spirit of cricket is laid out in the preamble to the laws of cricket.

It is thus.

Preamble to the Laws

Cricket is a game that owes much of its unique appeal to the fact that it should be played not only within its Laws but also within the Spirit of the Game.

Any action which is seen to abuse this spirit causes injury to the game itself. The major responsibility for ensuring the spirit of fair play rests with the captains.

1. There are two Laws which place the responsibility for the team's conduct firmly on the captain.

Responsibility of captains

The captains are responsible at all times for ensuring that play is conducted within the Spirit of the Game as well as within the Laws.

Player's conduct

In the event of a player failing to comply with instructions by an umpire, or criticising by word or action the decisions of an umpire, or showing dissent, or generally behaving in a manner which might bring the game into disrepute, the umpire concerned shall in the first place report the matter to the other umpire and to the player's captain, and instruct the latter to take action.

2. Fair and unfair play

According to the Laws the umpires are the sole judges of fair and unfair play. The umpires may intervene at any time and it is the responsibility of the captain to take action where required.

3. The umpires are authorised to intervene in cases of:

• Time wasting
• Damaging the pitch
• Dangerous or unfair bowling
• Tampering with the ball
• Any other action that they consider to be unfair

4. The Spirit of the Game involves RESPECT for:

• Your opponents  ( My emphasis)
• Your own captain and team
• The role of the umpires
• The game and its traditional values

5. It is against the Spirit of the Game:

• To dispute an umpire's decision by word, action or gesture
• To direct abusive language towards an opponent or umpire
• To indulge in cheating or any sharp practice, for instance:

  (a) to appeal knowing that the batsman is not out
  (b) to advance towards an umpire in an aggressive manner when appealing
  (c) to seek to distract an opponent either verbally or by harassment with persistent clapping or unnecessary noise under the guise of enthusiasm and motivation of one's own side

6. Violence

There is no place for any act of violence on the field of play.

7. Players

Captains and umpires together set the tone for the conduct of a cricket match. Every player is expected to make an important contribution to this.

The players, umpires and scorers in a game of cricket may be of either gender and the Laws apply equally to both.

The use, throughout the text, of pronouns indicating the male gender is purely for brevity. Except where specifically stated otherwise, every provision of the Laws is to be read as applying to women and girls equally as to men and boys.

It can be very easily seen that the spirit of cricket was not entered into by the Australian team in particular. Indeed it seems as that they have no idea of what the spirit of cricket entails.

Certainly Michael Clarke, nor comments made by Alastair Cook, show that the Captains are there to uphold the spirit of cricket. This did NOT occur.

It is my hope the Umpires intervene next time to ensure the spirit of cricket is  understood by both teams and they uphold those values!

The Indonesian fiasco

A number of people have written about the Indonesian fiasco.

John Quiggin for one , Brian Banisch for another.

Thus it is hard to be original in any analysis.

It is quite easy to say the Government's handling has been very inept.

It could have done a number of things.

• This problem occurred under the previous Government. Hence things have changed since the election.

• They could have copied the reaction of the US administration.

• They could have reacted much much quicker.

My guess is this is one of the main reasons for this poll. UPDATE more polling and explanation ( which means once both organisations get the 2013 election preferences their polls will be about the same given the margin of error!)

This amplifies what I said here

Further Update
The Government was aware of what the ABC had yet still reacted as they did. Amazing

Around the Traps 22/11/13

It is time for Around the Traps again.
Great stuff again. David Glasner, Nick rowe, Simon Wren-Lewis, Edward Lambert, Kruggers, Chris Dillow,
Robert Waldeman, Antonio Fatas etal. wonderful reading and highly thoughtful stuff. Climate is highly interesting as well.
Will update over the week-end depending on cricket( coaching, umpiring, watching)



Aussie,Aussie,Aussie,Oy,Oy,Oy

• The Kouk on hockey-putting-politics-ahead-of-economic-management
• Ross Gittins on how-we-lost-our-way-on-climate-change
• Tony and the Boys give you the Ashes FIRST TEST
• Mr Denmore on the-civic-vacuum
• John Quiggin on konfrontasi, sauce-for-the-goose-3
• Brian Banisch on hartcher-on-rudd-and-gillard
• Mark the Graph on are-we-teetering-on-edge-of-the-edge-of-an -unemployment-cliff?
• Ross Gittins on outlook-for-us-and-world-is-sombre, budget-will-test-abbotts-mettle

Northern America

• David Glasner on the-internal-contradiction-of-quantitative-easing
• Menzie Chinn on reality_and_unreality,fiscal_policy_accomplishments, jec_chair_brady,jeffrey_frankel_$_and_its_rivals
• Mark Thoma gives us Tim Duy on fed-watch-about-that-unemployment-threshold, fed-watch-desperate-to-taper
• Calculate Risk on key-measures-shows-low-inflation-in.-October
• Livio De Matteo on the-economics-of-rob-ford, /canadian-housing-markets-bubbles-if-necessary-but-not-necessarily-a-bubble
• pro-growth liberal on taylor-rule-follow-up-core-cpi-is-not-biased
• Dan Crawford on medical-spending-is-slowing
• James Hamilton on orward_rates_and_monetary-tightening

Europe

• Antonio Fatas on europe-lack-of-reforms-or-austerity Thanks Mark
• Simon Wren-Lewis is furious , stages-of-economic-recovery-in-uk
• Tim Harford on could-scotland-handle-its-debt

Asia

• nuttin
• Robert Waldeman on is-abenomics-working

Wonk

• Kruggers on the-new-keynesian-case-for-fiscal-policy-wonkish, structural-problems-with-economese,bubblephobia-and-monetary-policy
• Nick Rowe on optimal-fiscalmonetary-policy-in-hybrid-oldnew-keynesian-models, does-the-invention-of-nifty-new-goods-increase-ad
• Simon Wren-Lewis on should-fears-of-financial-instability-raise-interest-rates, is-zero-the-new-normal
• Antonio Fatas on saving-glut-or-investment-dearth Thanks Mark
• Mark Thoma gives us this paper dont-blame-the-robots-assessing-the-job-polarization-explanation-of-growing-wage-inequality
• Edward Lambert on the-elephant-in-the-room-of-secular-stagnation, tracking-profits-with-kalecki
• Chris Dillow on the-non-politics-of-stagnation
• David Glasner on what-makes-deflation-good
• Miles Kimball on -qe-or-not-qe-even-economists-need-lessons Thanks Brad

General

• Josiah Neeley on money-for-nothing-negatives-of-negative-tax
• Noah Smith on new-article-bs-jobs-in-bs-industries
• Kevin O'Rourke on globalization-and-the-great-moderation
• Nick Rowe on a-suggestion-for-simplifying-some-macro-math
• Chris Dillow on the-economic-base-of-illiberalism, the-ballad-of-kostas-jurgen
• Mike Konzal on do-negative-rates-call-permanent-expansion-government
• Robert Waldeman on secular-stagnation-and-fiscal-policy
• John Quiggin on why-spies-never-discover-anything-useful
• Simon Wren-Lewis on attacks-on-mainstream-economics-and-reforming-economics-teaching

Climate

• Benjamin Preston on loss-and-damage
• Run Rabette run on ever-since-this-came-up-in-twitter,adaptation-for-those-that-can-afford-it, the-poor-spit-back-on-rich
• Real Climate on statistics-and-climate
• Scientific American on missing-data-from-arctic-one-cause-of-pause-in-temperature-rise
• Gareth Renowden on while-they-sleepwalk-in-warsaw-icebergs-calve-emissions-climb-pause-disappears

Andrew Gelman ( King of the p Values)

• More on data science and statistics
• nyt-non-retraction-watch
• hidden-dangers-noninformative-priors
• bayesian-model-increasing-function-stan
• tables-figures-yet
• Kaiser Fong on several-things-about-education

Dave Giles ( The bespectacled Econometric Genius)

• data-data-everywhere
• forecasting-from-regression-model

Dianne Coyle & Frances Woolley (?) Quirky + Book Reviews

• Dianne on situation-vacant, value-and-values-public-and-private, ripping-yarns,festival-books
• Peter Martin on easy-lovers-how-to-understand-you-adolesence
• Chris Dillow on irrational-voters, the-responsibility-paradox

Voxwonk

• unconventional-monetary-policy-and-tail-risk-perceptions
• trade-unions-in-europe
• rigidity-global-supply-chains
• eurozone-bank-restructuring-agency
• managing-bureaucrats
• growth-still-good-poor
• outward-fdi-and-domestic-jobs
• trade-vs-development-effects-trade-preferences
• temporary-work-support-and-long-term-joblessness
• growing-out-of-corruption
• macro-imbalances-and-culture
• does-policy-uncertainty-reduce-economic-activity

The ALP government. What was their record like?

There are some people saying the previous government was the worst in Federation.
Naturally people who make this accusation never put up any evidence to back up their statement so let us look at their record.

GDP Growth
GDP growth was 2.6% which was clearly below trend. Moreover Nominal GDP has been clearly below trend for some time. This is mainly because of the fall in the terms of trade. Contractionary fiscal policy did not help here either.

Fiscal

The government ended up with a budget deficit of 1.2% of GDP. Outlays were 24.3% and Receipts were 23.2% of GDP.
Clearly  the below trend growth rates of Nominal GDP have had a huge impact.This is the main reason why the budget is still in the red and it is no bad thing.

Labour market

Unemployment is 5.7% and labour costs are rising at 2.7%. Clearly we see no sign of a rigid labour market here. Wages are now rising at a lower rate than when the GFC hit us.

Inflation

the RBA preferred measure is at 2.3%.


Thus looking at these various measures of the economy any person who claims the previous Government was the worst Government in Federation is either a moron, an imbecile or simply stark raving mad!