Henry Ergas's nose is growing

Henry Ergas is in really bad form.
Firstly Ross Gittins was mostly right. The main culprits behind the structural deficit at present was the Howard Government and their removal of the petrol excise and the reductions in income tax in the expectation company tax would more than make up for it. (see here) The ALP have culpability as they did not criticise these stupid policy moves and then added to them when in Government.

Moreover you have to take into the circumstances of spending . Under Howard and a strongly growing economy it merely added to inflationary pressures as we saw and thus interest rates had to rise up significantly.

The ALP had to contend with the GFC. You do not remove a stimulus too quickly otherwise you get the economy slowing. Interest rates did not move up when the ALP was in power because of inflationary pressures or potential so the charge of profligate spending is without foundation

Moreover the last full Swan budget was the most austere budget this generation has ever seen.This was a budget Ergas has been calling out for all the time. did he applaud it or even acknowledge this. No! Maybe he thought it was expansionary like his two ignorant colleagues Davidson and Samuel J!!

It is amazing what information our Enry can leave out.. He doesn't want to know the facts. He just wants to distort information to fit in with his ideology.

Another person is well known for doing this in history. He went by the name of Goebbels.

No wonder his nose gets larger ever time he writes!

Around the Traps 27/12/13 Christmas Edition

It is time for Around the Traps. Smaller than usual because of Christmas.
Still those numbers men Andrew Gelman and that wily Canadian Dave Giles don't seem to notice.

As you might expect a bit smaller than usual but updates through the weekend as there is no cricket for me. Poms still
getting thrashed in the Ashes however!


Aussie,Aussie,Aussie,Oy,Oy,Oy

• Ross Gittins on blame-for-budget-worries-widely-shared
• Bill Mitchell on There is no umbilical cord between government debt and bond issuance
• Mumble on four_contests_on_the_way, five_out_of_five
• Mr Denmore on feijoa-awards-2013
• Mark Fletcher on immigration-detention-facilities-are-below-standard-but-which-standard
• Matt Cowgill on the-most-important-graphs-of-2013-part-1, the-most-important-graphs-of-2013-part-2
• Sinclair Davidson shows he has no idea of how politicians or academics work
• Harry Clarke on support-for-plain-packaging
• The Ashes  see yesterday's item to visit Tony and the boys discussing how England get thrashed again!!
• John Quiggin on mixed-thinking-about-markets
• Kevin Bonham on unpopular-state-premiers-have-dire-historical-fates

Northern America

• Calculated Risk on ten-economic-questions-for-2014, comments-on-new-home-sales
• Mark Thoma gives us paul-krugman-bits-and-barbarism, paul-krugman-fiscal-fever-breaks
• Menzie Chinn on reason_for_optimism
• Edward Lambert on preliminary-signs-of-a-coming-contraction
• Kruggers on the-plight-of-the-employed
• Barkely Rosser on losing-it-over-obamacare
• Mark Thoma gives us Tim Duy on fed-watch-on-challenging-the-fed, fed-watch-inflation-wages-and-policy

Europe

• Simon Wren-Lewis on some-notes-on-uk-recovery
• Katerina Lisenkova on long-term-economic-impacts-reducing-migration
• Stephen Kinsella on domestic-demand-in-historical-context ( Ireland)
• Menzie Chinn on british_economic_triumphalism_in _perspective
• James Hamilton on all_quiet_on_the_southern_front

Asia
nuttin again!
Wonk

• Noah Smith on noah-smackdown-watch-bayesian-updating, noah-smackdown-watch-minneapolis
• Nick Rowe on nominal-interest-rates-and-inflation, long-run-medium-run-and-short-run-fisher-curves , efficiency-wages-and-recessions, buyers-and-sellers-bargaining-power-and-recessions
• San Francisco Fed on labor-market-global-financial-crisis-okun-law Thanks Mark
• Mark Thoma gives us Joshua Gans on time-for-a-little-bitcoin-discussion
• Kruggers on why-corporations-might-not-mind-moderate-depression, on-the-asymmetry-of-booms-and-slumps-wonkish
• David Glasner on never-mistake-a-change-in-quantity-demanded-for-a-change-in-demand
• Simon Wren-Lewis on werning-on-liquidity-trap-policy

General

• Mark Thoma gives us money-and-inflation
• David Altig on goodwill-to-man
• Noah Smith on redistribute-wealth-no-redistribute-respect

Climate

• Scientific American on dark-money-funds-climate-change-denial-effort
• Benjamin Preston on adaptation-monitoring-evaluation
• Rabett Run on pielkes-all-way-down
• Brian Banisch on climate-clippings

Andrew Gelman( Stats man!)

• kluges-today-textbook-solutions-tomorrow
• i-hate-this-stuff
• An article which has a lot of words in it but is very interesting
• nyt-version-birthday-graph
• spam
• measuring-beauty
• statistical-evidence-revised-standards
• statistics-nobel-prize
• statistics-done-wrong
• Good Stats Bad Stats on virgin births
• Kaiser Fong on imprecise-machines-mess-with-history

Dave Giles( Econometrics)

• thomas-bayes-250-years-on
• a-simple-regression-problem
• thought-for-day
• solution-to-regression-problem
• unbiased-estimation-of-standard-deviation
• statistical-significance-again

Dianne Coyle ( quirky + Book Reviews)

• what-does-work-look-like, the-invisible-modern
• how-to-create-a-blockbuster

vox wonk

• has-china-s-new-labour-contract-law-worked
• understanding-regional-innovation-disparities
• evolution-of-global-fx-market
• growing-like-china
• nutritional-impact-india-s-food-subsidy-programme
• policymaking-crises-pick-your-poison
• minimalist-approach-fiscal-oversight
• ukraine-russia-deal

The Ashes. Why we won!

The Melbourne test has started and it is a sell-out.

Tony and the boys are already talking about it.

Why did we win the Ashes.

Easy peazy.

Batting.
 The Poms footwork have been all over the place. Cook is the prime example. Both Petersen and Bell did not pay enough respect to bowlers ( mainly Lyon) and paid the price. They the found it hard to regain their 'mojo'!
Also their strategy has changed. When they only played short wide balls outside the off stump and played him off the hip Johnson was hit all around the park. When you drive at him and he is slanting across the batsman you snick him!

Bowling
They have been bowling far too short. given the only weapon is swinging the ball it reduces the potency of your attack. Both Broad and Anderson are 10 wicket bowlers yet both have struggled because of their poor length.

Fielding

The Poms have dropped catches they previously took whilst we have done the opposite.


Indeed one might well say the teams are playing exactly opposite of what occurred last time the Ashes were fought for in Australia.

Why Satanists support Santa Claus

ah that got your attention.

One essence of Christmas is that is signifies the birth of Jesus the Christ. He came into this world to save people.
Everyone person sins. and the punishment for sin is death!
Jesus not only took our punishment on the cross, He proved by his resurrection he was without sin and thus could take our punishment.

Now let us examine Santa Claus. He apparently knows whether we are good or not. If we are good we get Christmas presents.If we are bad we do not!

Notice how the tale of sin is being twisted.

Now if only good people got Christmas presents then no-one but no-one would get Christmas presents. Only the unthinking  people believe differently!

That is why people who sin cannot stand Christianity. It means there is only one way for salvation and if you deny Jesus then he doesn't take your punishment!!

People love Santa Claus because he is the balance sheet man. If your good deeds outweigh your bad deeds you get presents. He is the get out Claus!  Notice the similarity to almost all religions!!
 That is why satanists love Santa Claus.  It is why the world embraces Santa Claus.
It is the antithesis of Christianity.

Merry Christmas

from the greatest oratorio ever written Handel's greatest song.

The man was a genius!

People have asked for my favourite. Perhaps this

Nazi Germany and Privatisation

the Nazi regime was an evil and very odious regime but in some aspects they very very innovative.

• Broken windows.  They were the very first to test the broken window theory much later promoted by James. Q. Wilson. It was highly successful in reducing crime which was pervasive until then.

• Education. The Nazis attempted student centred learning well before it became trendy in the West. However their attempts at using this within the RAD failed just as it did in the USA with the CCC. Incidentally a lot of people believe the RAD gained numbers because it was made compulsory. This is incorrect. The numbers did not change much at all from when it was voluntary to being compulsory.The reason for this is because by 1936 Germany was experiencing full employment. Hence there were numerous loopholes to get out of 'compulsory' service.

• Privatisation Almost alone amongst Western Countries the Nazis successfully implemented a large scale privatisation programme. As you might imagine it was highly nuanced.

Around the Traps 20/12/13

It is time for Around the Traps.

Matt Cowgill is on fire in the OZ section. In wonk there is an interesting discussion on the microfoundations by a few notables.Real Climate has a very good article on discussing the rise in world temperatures and what has occurred since 1998. (Sorry Katesy you won't understand). I have highlighted all in bold.

I will update on Sunday


Aussie,Aussie,Aussie,Oy,Oy,Oy

• Mumble on stranger_in_the_lodge, nice_one_george, on_coalition_leadership
• Sinclair Davidson on myefo-kicking-the-can-down-the-road
• Mr Denmore on doing-a-number
• Brian Banisch on if-a-tree-falls-in-the-forest
• Ross Gittins on why-kpis-are-dangerous-fad , hockeys-midyear-budget-forecasts-are-plausible
• Brian Banisch on analysing-the-polls
• The Kouk calls 2014
• John Quiggin on abbott-vs-science-the-case-of-the-murray-darling-basin
• Andrew Elder on no-surprises , on-journey
• Ed Butler on freedom-to-infuriate
• Damien Walker on never-mind-the-style-strategy-is-what-really-matters
• Matt Cowgill on new-guardian-piece-on-unsustainable-tax-cuts, the-effect-of-the-carbon-price-on-inflation, what-caused-the-structural-deficit

Northern America

• Mark Thoma gives us Tim Duy on fed-watch-fomc-meeting-something-of-a-nail-biterm fed-watch-the-beginning-of-the-end-for-quantitative-easing
• Edward Lambert on tapering-going-to-happen-good-decision
• Menzie Chinn on government_spending _to_GDP_ratio:_down_down_down
• Kruggers on the-obamacare-worm-continues-to-turn
• Beverly Mann on more-on-the-real-reason-healthcare-insurance-companies-are-now-encouraging-obamacare-enrollment
• Frances Woolley on so-we-work-harder-in-canada-eh
• Brad De Long on the-wall-street-journal-is-a-very-strange-concentrator-of-strangeness-indeed-the-view-from-the-roasterie-liv-december-13  both funny and sad at the same time
• James Hamilton on links_for_20131
• Pro-growth liberal on john-cochrane-on-1982-fiscal-restraint 
• Barkley Rosser on losing-it-over-obamacare

Europe

• Simon Wren-Lewis on osbornes-plan-b, the-conservatives-and-ghost-of=christmas-past
• Kruggers on the-three-stooges-do-westminster
• Nick Rowe on more-greek-barter-evidence-for-monetary-disequilibrium

Asia
nuttin
Wonk

• Edward Lambert on the-fed-policy-is-heading-toward-trouble
• Antonio Fatas on four-missing-ingredients-in-macro-economic-models Thanks Mark
• Robert Waldeman on antonio-fatas-has-4-excellent-criticisms-of-current-macroeconomic-research
• Simon Wren-Lewis on microfoundations-illusion-of-necessary-superiority
• Noah Smith on i-love-microfoundations-just-not-yours
• Nick Rowe on microfoundations-we-like-vs-microfoundations-we-can-solve , does-finance-need-moneymacrofoundations
• Simon Wren-Lewis on more-on-illusion-of-superiority
• Kruggers on uber-and-the-macro-wars  (Use link to read original article)
• David Glasner on  my-paper-on-hawtreys-good-and-bad-trade
• Noah Smith on risk-premia-or-behavioral-spazzing , whining-about-price-gouging
• Nick Rowe on getting-the-right-sign-on-the-nominal-interest-rate-signal
• Chris Dillow on profits-and-investment
• Menzie Chinn on phillips_curve_non-linearities_in _data
• David Glasner on milton-friedmans-dumb-rule

General

• Noah Smith on a-blow-to-prescott-theory-of-labor
• Tim Harford on the-gross-distortions-of-gdp 

Climate

• Benjamin Preston on chinas-adaptation-planning
• Brian Banisch on real-clothes-for-the-emperor
• Real Climate on the-global-temperature-jigsaw
• Open Mind on smooth

Andrew Gelman ( Statistics)

• whither-the-bet-on-sparsity-principle-in-a-nonsparse-world
• replication-backlash
• revised-evidence-statistical-standards
• happy-birthday
• discovered-new-fallacy-now-need-name
• chasing-noise
• Kaiser Fong on why-is-math-boring-or-why-should-no-pain-bring-any-gain
• good Stats Bad Stats on meaningless numbers on inheritance

Dave Giles ( Econometrics)

• dennis-lindley-passes-away
• the-history-of-econometrics-alternative-view
• maximum-likelihood-estimation-in-eviews
• what-is-econometric-model-objectivity  really interesting  fair dinkum!!

Dianne Coyle ( Quirky + Book Reviews)

• j-k-galbraith-redux, 21st-century-inequality-blues

Voxwonk

• supply-chain-vulnerability-fukushima-evidence
• can-we-move-beyond-maastricht-orthodoxy
• basel-risk-weights-can-t-be-trusted
• hollowing-out-labour-market-new-evidence
• global-value-chains-interdependence-and-future-trade
• do-trade-agreements-increase-trade-evidence-zollverein
• fed-tapering-and-emerging-markets
• wage-moderation-spain
• obstacles-international-macro-policy-coordination
• regulation-supervision-and-role-central-banks
• banking-union-ecb-independence-risk
• trade-services-agreement