Arctic Heating

I note there has been a lot of debate of late over the heating of the Arctic.

Tamino of Open Mind fame writes about this at length.

Is the Arctic heating up? You betcha. Should we be worried? You betcha

The utter disgrace of Greece

Simon Wren-Lewis goes to town on the policies that were imposed on Greece by the Troika based on that evil classical economic theory. Evil is a bit much you say.
No Greece experienced conditions far worse then the Great Depression.
It was an utter disgrace and no-one appears to have learnt from this most terrible lesson.

We knew exante and of course expost the recommended policies would worsen Greece's situation yet they still went ahead anyway.

Here is Frances Coppolla from early 2016.

As I said an utter disgrace.

There are people who do have blood on their hands

Seat Polling again

The brilliant Kevin Bonham examines the record of seat polling in lieu of the Super Saturday polls.

Can I make a suggestion.
It could well be that gaining an unbiased poll is much easier for a national poll than for a seat poll.
Thus it is much harder to gain a random sample of a seat than for the nation. Of course this matters not if the result is not close as in Mayo.

I do urge people not to get too excited about seat polls in Wentworth.

I do think the ALP have a fair chance in this seat because:

1. Turnbull has an large  personal vote. I accede to Antony Green on this
2. The Liberal's disgraceful behaviour which voters usually react badly to
3. It involved the ousting of Turnbull ( for nothing)

Cost of Living pressures

How many times have we heard from politicians about people having cost of living pressures.
It has been a running theme over the last decade.
Ross Gittins pores over this .
He notes RBA Governor Lowe saying over the CPI, has averaged 1.8% over the last three years.
This being the case where are these cost of living pressures coming from?
Must be electricity right?  Nah most people are paying no more for electricity out of their household budget than they did in 1984!!

The reason people feel prices rises so much is two fold.
First is the fact we take more notice of price rises then we do of price falls. I will give the example of my good wife. She loves travelling overseas. And she does regularly because she gets 'bargains'.
She complains about when fruit and vegetables prices go up but says little when they come down. She rarely talks about the price falls she gains to go overseas but again complains about price rises here and there.
most people are like this. They make a big deal about price rises but little about price falls.

Second is the fact wages are not rising with regular monotony in real terms courtesy of our deregulated wages system. when you add low nominal wage rises with little real increases then you have people realising  household budgets are under pressure.

Politicians can educate people about the former but are too frightened to. They can only change the second by legislation.

Around the Traps 31/8/18

It is time again for Around the Traps.

Aussie,Aussie,Aussie,Oy,Oy,Oy

• James Walter on if-the-liberals-have-any-hope-of-rebuilding-they-might-take-lessons-from-robert-menzies
• Nick Gruen on monetary-policy-settings-hawks-doves-and-the-seat-of-the-pants, the-royal-commission-and-the-wages-of-complacency-scandals-as-far-as-the-eye-can-see
• Croaking Cassandra on tossing-away-valuable-emigration-data, a-country-is-not-a-company, work-visas-for-shop-managers, on-our-disappearing-migration-data
• Mark the Ballot on model-updates-are-coming, the-first-poll-of-morrison-period, second-morrison-poll, third-morrison-poll
• Kevin Bonham on australia-so-what-bloody-hell-was-that, rolling-poll-roundup-early-morrison-polls
• Andrew Cataras on the-bastard-fool-and-delighted-liberal
• John Freeebairn on drought-is-inevitable-mr-joyce
• Alex Oliver on julie-bishop-and-her-place-history-books
• Productivity Commision on rising-inequality Thanks Peter Whiteford
• Sam Roggeveen on no-australia-has-not-caught-trump-bug
• James Curran on julie-bishop-buffeted-headwinds
• Jake Whitehead on our-new-pm-wants-to-bust-congestion-here-are-four-ways-he-could-do-that
• Chris Wallace on a-woman-problem-no-the-liberals-have-a-man-problem-and-they-need-to-fix-it
• ANU on study-governments-must-act-now-or-face-global-water-tragedy
• Greg Jericho on if-youre-talking-about-drought-but-not-climate-change-youre-not-doing-your-job-pm
• Katherine Murphy on renewables-forecast-to-halve-wholesale-energy-prices-over-four-years
• The Kouk on the-political-fallout-of-a-new-morrison-government ,three-downside-risks-to-the-aud
• Jonathon Pollock et al on spring-is-coming-and-theres-little-drought-relief-in-sight
• Rodger Shanahan on australia-right-to-question-manning-visa
• Richard Holden on vital-signs-online-retailing-is-changing-our-lives-whether-we-use-it-or-not
• Ross Gittins on digital-disruption-is-stopping-retail-from-rising, inequality-not-as-great-as-claimed-worse-than-others-admit
• Lloyd Cox on australian-politics-and-the-psychology-of-revenge
• Andrew Dodd on media-files-what-does-the-nine-fairfax-merger-mean-for-diversity-and-quality-journalism

Northern America

• Barkley Rosser on hannity-as-goebbels, marrying-nafta-and-tpp-us-mexico-free-trade
• Ian Horwood on obituary-john-mccain-who-survived-torture-and-ran-for-the-us-presidency
• Elizabeth Sherman on john-mccain-dead-at-81-helped-build-a-country-that-no-longer-reflects-his-values
• the conversable economist on us-multinationals-producing-elsewhere
• Julia Azari on is-trumps-legitimacy-at-risk
• Noah Feldman on southern-district-of-new-york-will-tear-into-trump-organization Thanks Brad
• Laura McGann on sarah-palin-john-mccain-legacy-trump
• Calculated Risk on real-house-prices-and-price-to-rent-ratio-in-june
• New Deal Democrat on what-the-compressed-yield-curve-means-for-employment, even-if-the-yield-curve-tightens-no-further-there-will-be-consequences-next-year, house-prices-continue-to-rise-exacerbating-unaffordability
• Jeffrey Frankel on the-next-us-recession-will-be-severe Thanks Brad
• Robert E Kelly on swooning-over-mccain-more-about-trump
• Eric Lach on andrew-gillums-win-in-florida-sets-up-a-clear-battle-between-the-new-gop-and-the-new-democrats
• Uneasy Money on hu-mcculloch-figures-out-more-or-less-the-great-depression
• stumbling and mumbling on whats-behind-the-rising-profit-share
• Tyler Cowen on what-explains-americas-economic-anomalies

Europe

• long and variable on brexit-was-not-really-a-neoliberal-project-whatever-that-is
• coppolla comment on patrick-minfords-holidays
• Kevin O'Rourke on the-euro
• Mainly Macro on conservative-zugzwang-redux

Asia

• Arti Betigeri on india-north-south-disparity
• Greg Nabs-Keller on indonesia-running-mates-spark-controversy
• Merriden Varrall on belt-road-china-biggest-brand
• Uri Friedman on north-korea-war-declaration
• David Kenner on israel-gamble-assad-syria
• Tom Eck on south-korea-s-demographic-deficit

Wonk

• Mainly Macro on the-imf-as-transmission-mechanism-for-academic-knowedge
• Nick Rowe on the-blind-controller, the-1-vs-3-model-of-quick-recessions-vs-slow-recoveries
• Tim Harford on five-lessons-from-the-us-governments-ultimate-innovators
• the conversable economist on identity-portability-when-firm-has-your-past-data, some-pictures-of-currency
• stumbling and mumbling on on-wider-access-to-culture
• Cass R Sunstein on hitlers-rise-it-can-happen-here
• Menzie Chinn on guest-contribution-rising-us-real-interest-rates-imply-falling-commodity-prices
• Brad De Long on steering-by-the-socialist-idols-in-the-heavens-leads-us-to-sail-not-towards-but-away-from-the-shores-of-utopia-early-monda
• coppolla comment on job-guarantees-for-disabled
• Eric Lonergan on central-bank-equity-debunked
• Nick Gruen on the-decline-and-fall-of-australian-economics

General

• John Cook on pareto-80-20-rule
• Lisa Harvey-Smith on curious-kids-where-are-all-the-other-galaxies-hidden
• Barkley Rosser on are-we-alone-in-galaxy-or-maybe-even-in-the-universe
• the conversable economist on i-dont-know-so-well-what-i-think-until-I-see-what-I-say
• Evelyn Parr on belly-fat-is-the-most-dangerous-but-losing-it-from-anywhere-helps
• Philip Branch on what-is-a-mobile-network-anyway-this-is-5g-boiled-down

Climate

• David Appel on drop-in-ocean-heat-content
• Open Mind on global-warming-how-long-do-we-have-left , talk-about-it, arctic-heating
• Danildo Urzedo and Robert Fischer on old-school
• stoat on basic-science-of-changing-climate
• David Roberts on california-100-percent-clean-energy-target-brown-de-leon

Andrew Gelman ( mainly stats)

• statistics-talk-uncertainty-without-viewed-undesirable
• Bayesian model comparison in ecology
• get-started-suggest-coming-simple-reasonable-model-missingness-simulate-fake-complete-data-followed-fake-missingness-pattern-check-can-recover-missing-data
• old-school
• some-clues-that-this-study-had-big-big-problems
• 3-recent-movies-50s-70s
• identification-correction-publication-bias-another-discussion-forking-paths-not-thing-file-drawer

Genial Dave Giles ( mainly econometrics)

• No Hesitations on long-memory-scaling-laws-in-return-volatility

Dianne Coyle (quirky + book reviews)

• holiday-reading
• my-damp-scandinavian-view-of-the-world
• Tyler Cowen on fall-industrial-organization-reading-list, what-ive-been-reading, lenin-man-dictator-master-terror
• Alex Reilly on book-review-behrouz-boochanis-unsparing-look-at-the-brutality-of-manus-island
• Tim Harford on four-awesome-yet-accessible-economics-and-business-books

Vox wonk

• free-trade-between-eu-and-us-match-made-heaven
• macroeconomic-beliefs-and-firm-performance
• english-language-eu-after-brexit
• stickiness-digital-labour-platforms-and-ethnic-networks
• relabelling-increases-fiscal-cost-rd-incentives
• finance-and-blockchains
• how-global-factors-affect-banks-foreign-currency-funding
• italian-risk-spreads-fiscal-versus-redenomination-risk
• banks-potentially-crooked-secret-keepers
• effect-house-prices-household-borrowing
• predictable-movements-asset-prices-around-fomc-meetings

Drought again

Some good stuff on drought since I wrote about it.

• Ross Gittins
• John Freebairn
• Brett Finlay ( sort of)

We should always remember drought is one way capitalism weans out bad farmers from goon ones. Too often we give out drought assistance like governments might do to people whose house has burnt down in a bushfire but failed to take out insurance,

Here from 2009 is the Productivity Commission

Chris Uhlman says more

Chris Uhlman ,the highly respected head on Nine's political bureau, had a spray at various journalists and commentators who had become actors the last weeks political events. He accused 2GB, Sky after Dark and the Murdoch press of being up tho their armpits in being directly involved in the changing of the PM.
Yesterday being interviewed by Patricia Karvelas ( who has gone up a long way in my estimation, he went further. He levelled accusations of bullying. He said he had been told by various liberal mps that they would be threatened.
He wanted these MPS to come out and say who had threatened them but they were too frightened to do so.

This is very worrying. We have people who are so bullied by certain people they will not even say what has occurred. This is very trumpian.

There are some people who believe it is their right to build up and then tear down PM's. Never mind about the electorate.

Oh dear I forgot my last important point. all these self professed defenders of the people who only know which way the Liberals should go. Their great goal thus far is to hive off some the liberal vote to mad parties one nation, Katter's mob etc. This always means part of this protest vote go to the ALP because of the diluted preferences. Yep in other words the worst defenders of the Liberal party are those people who always say they know best.

They were all massive apologists for Abbott yet most Australians were glad to see the back of him according to all the polls. They have no idea of what main stream Australia wants at all.

I just love irony