J. Bradford DeLong's Blog, page 162

And, speaking of totalizing revealed ideologies, the Chin...

And, speaking of totalizing revealed ideologies, the Chinese Communist Party is finding little difficulty in proof-texting its current doctrines out of the scripture that is the collected writings of Marx and Engels. Their point that Donald Trump and Brexit suggest that unequal slow-growth political democracies do not have it right is powerful. And it is hopeful that Xi Jinping and company view gross inequality as a problem to be solved���"the result of an 'early stage of development'"���rather than a reality to be suffered:

Tom Hancock: China���s Selective Version of Marxist Theory Is a Puzzle: "A TV show, Marx Got it Right, and an illustrated edition of his masterpiece Das Kapital aimed at 8- to 14-year-olds.... The Communist party is stepping-up promotion of Marxist thought when it has largely abandoned its core tenet: public ownership of the means of production. About 80 per cent of urban workers are employed by private companies. Levels of wealth inequality are among the highest in the world, making egalitarianism potentially subversive. It is rendered more confusing by a recent crackdown on self-declared Marxist students at elite universities.... Beijing pushes a selective version of Marxism... likes the theory of historical change that helps portray Communist party rule as inevitable.... Marxism means one-party rule... means fixing inequality, the result of an 'early stage of development'... gives US president Donald Trump and Brexit as examples of 'serious problems of capitalist development'...

...A retooled Marxism asks a lot of the party���s leaders. First, that they take on those, including party elites, who hoard opportunity. Second that technocratic management can limit financial risk. Failure to deliver on either could bring the party problems. The leadership appears to believe fostering the development of ideals that could eventually challenge it is a safer option than presiding over nihilism or allowing the young to invent their own principles for living...

#noted

Liveblogging: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: To the End of Roman Rule in Britain

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (J.A. Giles and J. Ingram trans.): To the End of Roman Rule in Britain: "A.D. 189. This year Severus came to the empire; and went with his army into Britain, and subdued in battle a great part of the island. Then wrought he a mound of turf, with a broad wall thereupon, from sea to sea, for the defence of the Britons. He reigned seventeen years; and then ended his days at York. His son Bassianus succeeded him in the empire. His other son, who perished, was called Geta...

...A.D. 199. In this year was found the holy rood.

A.D. 283. This year suffered Saint Alban the Martyr.

A.D. 343. This year died St. Nicolaus.

A.D. 379. This year Gratian succeeded to the empire.

A.D. 381. This year Maximus the Caesar came to the empire. He was born in the land of Britain, whence he passed over into Gaul. He there slew the Emperor Gratian; and drove his brother, whose name was Valentinian, from his country (Italy). The same Valentinian afterwards collected an army, and slew Maximus; whereby he gained the empire. About this time arose the error of Pelagius over the world.

A.D. 418. This year the Romans collected all the hoards of gold (14) that were in Britain; and some they hid in the earth, so that no man afterwards might find them, and some they carried away with them into Gaul...

#liveblogging #history #anglosaxonchronicle

June 21, 2019: Weekly Forecasting Update

Outlook Slides: https://www.icloud.com/keynote/0iqGf9C1E8-9mHJVeQdy1U7YQ

The right response to almost all economic data releases is: Next to nothing has changed with respect to the forecast���your view of the economic forecast today is different from what it was last week, last month, or three months ago in only minor ways.

About the only news in the past week or so is that the Federal Reserve has���behind the curve���become convinced that it raised interest rates too much in 2018. To the extent they attribute their change of view to news, the news is that President Trump is a chaos monkey with respect to international trade���but that was well known back in 2015.

Worth noting is that the ten-year CPI inflation breakeven is now 1.6%. If investors were risk neutral with respect to bearing this particular inflation risk, this breakeven ought to be 2.5% if investors expected the Federal Resrve to meet its 2.0% PCE inflation target over the next decade:

Federal Reserve Bank of New York: Nowcasting Report: June 21, 2019: "The New York Fed Staff Nowcast stands at 1.4% for 2019:Q2 and 1.3% for 2019:Q3. News from this week's data releases left the nowcast for 2019:Q2 largely unchanged and decreased the nowcast for 2019:Q3 by 0.4 percentage point. For 2019:Q3, negative surprises from regional survey data drove most of the decrease...

 

Key Points:

Specifically, it is still the case that:

The Trump-McConnell-Ryan tax cut has been a complete failure at boosting the American economy through increased investment in America.

But it has been a success in making the rich richer and thus America more unequal.
And it delivered a short-term demand-side Keynesian fiscal stimulus to growth that has now ebbed.

U.S. potential economic growth continues to be around 2%/year.
There are still no signs the U.S. has entered that phase of the recovery in which inflation is accelerating.
There are still no signs of interest rate normalization: secular stagnation continues to reign.
There are still no signs the the U.S. is at "overfull employment" in any meaningful sense.

A change from 1 week ago: The Federal Reserve has���behind the curve���become convinced that it raised interest rates too much in 2018...

A change from 1 month ago: An 0.8%-point decrease in our estimate of what production will be over April-June.

A change from 3 months ago: The U.S. grew at 3.2%/year in the first quarter of 2019���1.6%-points higher than had been nowcast���but the growth number you want to put in your head in assessing the strength of the economy is the 1.6%/year number that had been nowcast. The falling-apart of Trump's trade negotiating strategy with China will harm Americans and may disrupt value chains, and the might be becoming visible in the data flow.

A change from 6 months ago: Stunning dysfunctionality in the British Conservative Party has put a destructive, hard, no-deal Brexit on the scenario list...

#macro #forecasting #highlighted


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Paul Miller: How to Fix the Internet: "What we'll see ver...

Paul Miller: How to Fix the Internet: "What we'll see very clearly in hindsight is that when we published our content on other people's servers, it always went bad. Instagram's algo made us sad. YouTube's algo made us mad. Twitter's algo mad us sad AND mad. Google Photos algo, it turned out, made us easily tracked and controlled by totalitarian governments. Oops! Self-hosting will be the 'difficult' and 'cumbersome' option for a while, but by the year 2025 it will be easier than the centralized services are. Think about it: have you ever tried to upload a YouTube video? There are a ton of options, and the interface is kind of annoying, and it's a many-step process. This is because YouTube has to be designed to be a jack of all uploading trades, master of none. But when self-hosting is mature and common, you'll be able to pay for a highly specific app that streamlines the experience to match your exact needs. If you don't want to pay for a high-end app there will likely be a more general, harder-to-use, free and open source option as well...

#noted

Where There's a Whip, There's a Way!: For the Weekend

For the Weekend: Where There's a Whip, There's a Way!:

#noted

Patricia Crone Meccan Trade: "The conventional account of...

Patricia Crone Meccan Trade: "The conventional account of Meccan trade begs one simple question: what commodity or commodities enabled the inhabitants of so unpromising a site to engage in commerce on so large a scale? That the trading empire grew up in an unexpected place is clear, if not always clearly brought out. There have, of course, been commercial centres in Arabia that developed in areas of comparable barrenness, notably Aden. But Aden and other coastal cities of south Arabia all owed their existence to the sea, as Muqaddasi noted, whereas Mecca was an inland town...

#noted #books

Scott Manley: Asteroids In Resonance With Jupiter: ...

Scott Manley: Asteroids In Resonance With Jupiter:

...This video highlights 2 groups of asteroids that have orbits in resonance with Jupiter. To highlight the motion we rotate the view at the same speed as an idealized version of Jupiter, that is, we keep the rotation constant as if the planet was on a circular orbit.

The first group highlighted is in the 3:2 resonance, Objects in this group complete 3 orbits in the time that Jupiter takes to complete 2. The periodic interaction with Jupiter's gravity creates the 3 lobed pattern you see where they never come close to the giant planet. This makes their orbits more stable by protecting them from strong interactions with the planet.

The second group consists of those which have orbital periods identical to Jupiter, these are primarily found in 2 clusters around the Jovian Lagrange points. These points are 60 degrees ahead and behind Jupiter in its orbit...

#noted

The Fed now seems to be saying: "We misjudged the situati...

The Fed now seems to be saying: "We misjudged the situation late last year. We are going to reverse our policy. But not quite yet." And I do not understand the frame of mind in which that is a coherent system of thought. I wish they would explain: Tim Duy: Rate Cut On The Way: "The Fed turned... dovish... basically announcing a July rate cut as clearly as they could without taking out an ad in the Wall Street Journal... increased 'uncertainties'... 'muted inflation pressures'.... The proximity to the lower bound coupled with low inflation was always going to lead the Fed to err on the side of a rate cut. It just took them some time to find their way there.... The dot plot was far more dovish than I anticipated.... Eight participants expecting lower rates.... Forecasts were dovish as well.... Market participants have priced in a 100% change of a rate hike in July. The 2 year treasury yield is also begging the Fed to cut rates.... It would take some spectacular data to call the July cut into question.... It would be exceedingly difficult to pull back on a rate cut now. Nor is there any reason to...

#noted

Tim Duy: Rate Cut On The Way: "The Fed turned... dovish.....

Tim Duy: Rate Cut On The Way: "The Fed turned... dovish... basically announcing a July rate cut as clearly as they could without taking out an ad in the Wall Street Journal... increased 'uncertainties'... 'muted inflation pressures'.... The proximity to the lower bound coupled with low inflation was always going to lead the Fed to err on the side of a rate cut. It just took them some time to find their way there.... The dot plot was far more dovish than I anticipated.... Eight participants expecting lower rates.... Forecasts were dovish as well.... Market participants have priced in a 100% change of a rate hike in July. The 2 year treasury yield is also begging the Fed to cut rates.... It would take some spectacular data to call the July cut into question.... It would be exceedingly difficult to pull back on a rate cut now. Nor is there any reason to...

#noted

"Unionization for me, but not for thee"���Jonah Peretti: ...

"Unionization for me, but not for thee"���Jonah Peretti: Alexia Fern��ndez Campbell: BuzzFeed News Walkout: "Managers at the popular news website, which employs more than 200 journalists in the US, have been fighting... about how many employees can join the bargaining unit, according to a statement BuzzFeed News Union shared with Vox.... BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti said the union won���t accept a proposal to define which positions would be part of the bargaining unit before recognition, and won���t agree to honor individual contracts while they negotiate a collective bargaining contract.... The company���s offer would recognize 77 journalists in the bargaining unit���far fewer than the union wants...

Jonah Peretti (2001): My Nike Media Adventuren: "As a challenge to Nike, I ordered a pair of shoes customized with the word 'sweatshop' Nike rejected my request... correspondence.... None of Nike���s messages addressed the company���s legendary labor abuses, and their avoidance of the issue created an impression even worse than an admission of guilt. In mid-January I forwarded the whole e-mail correspondence to a dozen friends, and since that time it has raced around the Internet, reaching millions of people...

#noted