"In my experience, poetry and facts are nearly immiscible"
morgan
like some poetry
that sounds better then its sense

sounds hard nosed and no foolin'
but really it isn't

a selection of facts can contradict a fuller pattern
with great ease and u know it

your 90's is not clinton its clinton plus bush one
typical reagan babbit talk
sly sliders off load your crap on a poor jack ass like bill
btw
check out the final three years of clinton
when we got to a reasonable level of employment
here state side
and
before the corporate investment drought
post bubble pop
----------
its child's play to notice
facts must be re assembled
into something like
their original totality
and then carefully parsed

polemical needs not with standing
anything less is pure sport

who fails to point out

to have any chance of reflecting reality
its best not to start
with your conclusion in hand
and find its vindication
by a cherry picking
and/or by use of a transmog lense
----------------

winslow R

your first comment on this thread deserves a careful long response
too bad every one here .....

including
me

likes to see their own words
roaring out at everyone
from a comment cage

often real fresh pardigms
go un noticed as well as unaknowleged

---------
speaking of paradigms

i think u are very clearly correct
about the political essence
of our whole credit system

the death of gold is a fact

but
much like
the death of god
this fact scares us
with its finger of responsibilty
now
pointing back at uncle sam's
fed and treasury
and saying
"only you can prevent total
domestic employment "

but in reality
hi fi closed door decisioning here
is vatican like

requiring hocus pocus

ritual actions

rote memes

that is
popular
ignorance and submission

but comes forth
winslow

"let the people's spirit
be the holy spirit"

i agree
lets bash
the narrow tower of gains spirit
masquarading as mother reason
and father necessity

okay
even if the steering system
is not "quite"
as straight forward
as this quarter
corporate profit max
its still
a class fragment's eye view of what's best for our
national supper

---------------
" The tax cuts were plutocratic
and the spending increases had a large military element
- but for the growth rate of the economy,
it's the magnitude that counts. ...'
jamie galbraith

i like the rough and ready of that

but not this
also by jamie

"Obviously, Bush's tax cuts
should not be made permanent,
and so long as the economy
is growing,
some of them should be
rolled back or allowed to expire"

i say no

flank em on the richy rich side

come up with a brand new tax base

wealth
a level tax
but aimed at the mighty few
with much too much

a wealth tax does not penalize high performers
or entrpreneurs on the make

it merely gives the hyper rich
rentiers a quarterly hair cut

forces em to be as productive as possible
with their arriviste wealth

forces em to save more
contrary to income
where more means more saving

for those of high wealth
a tax on wealth
may actually mean more savings
talk about system wide win win

make the guys with a net worth over 3 million
pay all the service charges on our national debt
out of a tax on their wealth

get the gimmick

we cut the income tax on the high earners borrow the diff to cover the deficit
but go to the wealthy to cover the consequences of the borrowing

green field taxation
thats my dream
a whole new area for heavy extractions
that 99% of us will never face

I GUARRRRRRRENTEEEEEEEEEE

Posted by: reason

math is a road way
not a road block

your science quest
is all admirable
still u must
leave room for
pragmatics

ie
what's the best policy
today for today
knowing what we don't know

----------------------------
nice post mark
covers
the macro policy counter revolution
very compactly

its
culmination
in "the bourbon restoration"
we now call
the reagan 80's
produced some seriously
harmful
mind games

harmful to ordinary folks
at any rate

a set of logical fantasy lands
wonderful nonsense
in themselves
worthy of
lewis carroll
and pastor abbott
certainly not in themselves
all that horrrid

(i like barro lucas et al)

but as policy considerations
rounds the bend
i just wouldn't listen to em
anymore then i'd listen to humpty dumpty

----------------------
now if i were a member in good standing
of the hi fi trans nat set ...

well
its really simple
if the electorate believes
uncle can't do anything helpful
for any one ...

hence the bourbon era
broadcasted models
worthy of
walt disney

if the logical implication
of your wonderland
when
applied to the real world
is as a practical matter
to "do nothing gubmint wise "
that can be
great for "profiteers" looking
to keep or generate "economic rents"
reduce wage share
escape whole society
righteous regs and rules
etc etc
---------------------------------------
as to
the deeper question
"but is it a true model"

that's a non questionif your some over grown babbit
and
the present set up is working for u

yup
and u tell the helots:

"just keep the beliefs
u got from ronnie
you jobbled rubes
while i keep the benefits
pinus
i like your take away here
models must be simplificationsu really never escape analogy

models become more passive
and untracable
ie
useless
if they try to be
too comprehensively specified

a model as complex as the realityit models
would need a simpler model
to help us understand it

it would "explain"
nothing
it would simulate it

but a siumlator could
be judged by its forecasting strength

call it a rational oracle

who knows how or why
but it predicts the next step pretty damn well
or at least it has so far....
" A "forecasting oracle" cannot possibly deal
with a changing environment, with new situations"

yup
hence the shallow pragmatics
of say
greenspans for sale
"hand variable completed "
macro model of the early and mid 70's

imagine a model that spits out
a perfect fit function
that exactly duplicates
the sequence of numbers we call
" employment 1970 to 1986 "

surely we have no reason to assume
its 87 employment number
will be on the money
just because it was correct in producing
the prior 16 years numbers
thats reverse engineering so to speak

"We want to know _why_ exactly this happened"

why do we want to know why ????
when the future is our arena not the past

building larger frame works
that more deeply explain stylized facts
sure
but again why ??

is the added insight
part of a policy enlightening process???

if not
what did it explain and what for ????

lets not fall back on

"it describes "

okay i bet u agree
truer true models
are not always
generalizations

one's that can anticipate
"new situations"
ones that can turn developments
now crudely rendered as " random external shocks "
into
"internalized" features
ie
as a possible morph
anticipated by
the system's model

hopefully
that leads to a data hunt
for other confirmations
of the model's true ness
one looks to find
othermodel predicted "correlates "
to the anticipated morph's
own "inception" requirements

me agreeing with brad delong....

a nasty consequence
of always being
on the side of science and god

sometimes brad d
gets it right
(so far as he go gos )
and there we are
side by side by sondheim

-------------------
motivation analysis:

seems herr spence
is another
very bright brain
for hire

here like my mentor
nobeler bob m
he's touting for the wally boys
vide the bit about
chinese financial markets
needing rectification

read it over and it makes
good horse sense
so long as u want
the trans nat
super profitable
china boing boing to continue

so use a oner equation

with
frozen relative prices
makes for kool
implications
"its our fault
forex rectification (with only china)
won't get it done pard"
of course
he's right just raising china's forex won't do it
conclusion:
the dollar needs to fall against
all the currenciesout there
of all our emerging market trading "partners"

------------------------------------
but if you like
the domestic jobbled masses
horror
show
to go on

blame it on
the great middle american
household majority
and their gubmint over spending
and let
the nation's
de industrialization continue apace

to ice the stink bomb
bring on for rent nobelers
like spence
to
justify it
withtheir curlie cue
"mad science"

Posted by: slink | Jan 6, 2007 9:00:03 AM

ps
this is where delong sucks lemon drops

" And--as long as the Federal Reserve
is successful in avoiding recession--
the rise in interest rates
will reduce investment
inside the United States
and also lower asset values,
which will make
homeowners and investors
feel poorer
and increase their savings.
It will thus reduce the gap
between savings and investment,
and so diminish the capital inflow"

first usery lending on house lots is not investment
but thats a side bet

second and my main point
tax cuts for the credit constrained would serve equally well to stimulate
demand
to off set rising import prices

now i want to point out
even
if as i hope
we raise the trade balance
mostly
by import substitution
rather then raising
our share of global exports
by an invasion of foreign markets with our new slim fasted dollar costs
this
will still require huge "fiscal"
knock on adjustments
else where

keynes 1936 all over again
in faster motion
and from far less grotesque levels
this may include
a possible period
where world
international economic activity is growing slower then intra nation act

maria
" I wonder why US economists
spend so much time
fussing about it all"

because not every american
is a net winner here maria
jobs are getting lost
good paying jobsand when thejobs are gone
community welfare
around such a closed plant
is hit too

wages are effected prolly all wages
to some degree

now maybe u know this
and maybe you've been one of those wacked by our forex tilted trade
but maybe u think its all worth while
as its got some global long view benefit
you have faith in
but
altruism has its limits

some folks feel screwed
and not because they borrowed on the market raised value of their house lot

typical response

"Slinks barely readable what? verse? makes me want to comment"