Let's run the numbers

Busy Busy I've been working on a post on lower-quality jobs and the possibility of a declining standard of living in the U.S. It's pretty scary, and so I'm procrastinating on it a bit. Anyway, on to another pet topic of mine, the housing bubble. Over at Crooked Timber , there were a few discussions of the "Efficient Market Hypothesis" which says roughly that at any time a free market will determine the best price for some item utilizing all information. Brad Delong already has links to all three of them. Those of us who feel that information isn't always available due to asymetrical control of information flow know better. Bubbles form due to asymetric information and market psychology. Anyway, here are two articles on the housing bubble from the New York Times. I think there is definately a bubble in the DC area. When my dinky little townhouse has more than doubled in value in 4 years, there's something very odd in the market. The New...

Farenheit 9/11 Just got home from seeing Farenheit 9/11. Nothing really new to report. Michael Moore tries to educate and entertain. Sometimes he uses unflattering shots to amuse the audience, like when he shows Paul Wolfowitz sticking his entire comb in his mouth to wet it to slick back his hair. Moore was pretty restrained though. Brad DeLong wrote about it a few weeks ago. Fahrenheit 911: Archive Entry From Brad DeLong's Webjournal : "Moore was also in many places in the movie much softer on Bush and Cheney than I would have been in his shoes. When Cheney talks about how proud he is of Halliburton, I would have cut to somebody describing the Halliburton accounting fraud--the failure to disclose material changes in accounting practices that moved a big chunk of profits forward in time to the current year--that Cheney presided over, and linked that to Bush's Harken Energy trading and to Halliburton's billing practices in Iraq. I would have had a section on Che...

Bush as 'peace' president A piece of what? Well, what he says is how he'd like to make us all more prosperous through ownership. Trouble is, he and his cronys already own everything. And without an inheritance tax, they'll get to keep it all too. So, don't believe him when he talks about everyone owning. You won't own enough to get the benefit. If you want to see what the future holds under another Bush regime, you have to go back to the past. See Billmon's Building a Bridge to the 19th Century for more on the return to the Gilded Age. As for being the Peace President, what a load of bullshit. First of all, he crowned himself the "War President". Perhaps he borrowed the crown from Sung Myung Moon . He must have figured out that with a majority of the country thinking the War in Iraq was a bad idea now, so he's the Peace President and anyone who says otherwise is being a "nottering nabob of negativity". Trouble is, o...

Guess who's blocking middle class tax relief Rove and Bush raise taxes on the middle class! At least that's how they would phrase it if some Democrats scuttled a 2-year deal in favor of a 5-year extension. Watch them and see if that is the rhetoric they trot out closer to election time. Anyone who doesn't agree with their plan is in favor of raising taxes. Just like that librul John Kerry, who voted to withhold money from our troops (unless we raised taxes to pay for it!) John Kerry voted in favor of funding the troops, he just wanted to make sure we actually had the money to do it rather than borrowing more. Bush Quashes GOP Deal on Tax Cuts' Life (washingtonpost.com) : President Bush yesterday scuttled a Republican agreement to extend three expiring middle-class tax cuts for two years, deciding instead to push for a more costly five-year extension when Congress returns in September. On Tuesday night, congressional GOP leaders agreed to a modest, two-year...

Fun Stuff First, for those who wonder what would make a good wine to serve with pulled pork barbeque, I nominate a South African wine called Fairview Goats Do Roam . Blended in the style of a French Cote du Rhone, it is spicy and fruity, and goes for $6-7 a bottle here in Virginia. Second item. Mrs. Datanerd lived in Rogersville, TN, when we started dating. She is not surprised. Yahoo! News - Four Inmates Flee Jail, Return With Beer ROGERSVILLE, Tennessee - With their cell doors accidentally left unlocked, four county jail inmates escaped only to return the same night — with beer. The Hawkins County Jail inmates, who bought four cases of beer before returning to the jail, were charged Monday with escape and introduction of intoxicants into a penal institution, the Kingsport Times-News newspaper reported Tuesday. "I guess they thought if they came back they wouldn't be charged with escape, but they were wrong," Sheriff Warren Rimer said. Ridgy Dea...

More on Nader Billmon asks the fundamental question—why has Nader stabbed the left in the back? And I think he's answered it too. Billmon: Unsafe at Any Speed [U]p until the past few weeks, I've never questioned Nader's motives or his sincerity. As destructive as I think his actions have been, and as much as I detest his stubborness and his increasingly bizarre egoism, I've taken it for granted that Ralph's objectives were exactly what he said they were: to give the voters a progressive alternative to the Republicrat political duopoly. I may have thought he was wrong - disastrously wrong - but I always assumed Nader was basically an honest person, and a man of the left. And as high as I know the stakes are in this election, it still made me uncomfortable to see the Dems using hardball tactics to try to keep him off the ballot in as many of the key states as they could. In my book, the Democratic Party was (and still is) just an instrument, a tool - a wea...

Nader and the Republicans Eric Alterman and Salon Magazine are both doing a good job of covering the ego trip that is the Nader campaign. I'll stay away from that, and address another salient point. Is it right for the Republicans to be trying to get him on the ballot? I have a friend who is a small-c conservative, and he says no. I did my usual thought experiment, and thought about how I would feel if it was Perot, and prominent Democratic activists were trying to get him on the ballot to split the Republican vote. The thing is, some Democrats did go over to support Perot, though more Republicans did. I have no question that they shared Perot's neo-populist views. They also voted for him in the general election. Let's contrast this with Nader's Republican backers. They don't share his views on anything, from gay marriage to controlling corporate interests in government to the War in Iraq. They also will not be voting for him. They only want him to...

Speaking of elections Most of you all who follow other blogs probably already heard about this. I think this is a sign the Republicans in government are finally overreaching. Censuring a U.S. Representative for criminal actions, or personal attacks on another member, is one thing. Censuring a U.S. Representative for saying unpleasant things about your party is another. Her statements were much less offensive than Dick Cheney telling Pat Leahey "Go fuck yourself". But I don't see the Senate passing a resolution censuring him. First Coast News | Top Stories : Members of the U.S. House of Representatives censured Brown after a shouting match on the House floor Thursday night. The argument started during a debate over HR-4818. The bill would provide international monitoring of the November presidential election. Congress has been considering an outside monitor due to all the confusion over the last election, and the 'hanging chads' in Florida. Repre...

Another election fear Note that I think the subject of this editorial is far-fetched. But I thought the whole electoral imbroglio in Florida in 2000 was far-fetched, and of course everyone who voted would get their vote counted. Silly me. The Supreme Court's decision in Bush v. Gore contains a disclaimer that it was only for that election, but I doubt that the 5 Republicans who voted for it would shy away from implementing it again if it means getting four more years of Dubya. Usurping the Voters (washingtonpost.com) : Suppose that some of the electors -- the people who under our constitutional system conduct the real presidential election some weeks after voters go to the polls -- aren't actually selected by the voters. Impossible? Not if you give a close reading to the Supreme Court's decision in the case of Bush v. Gore , which finally settled the presidential election of 2000, if not to everyone's satisfaction. Under that decision, there is no guaran...

An invaluable resource for the election season This website tracks the presidential election polls by state, and calculates how many electoral votes each candidate would receive based on the latest poll. Also, it presents a map showing the candidate preference and the strength of that preference. As of today, Kerry has 322 electoral votes, and Bush has 205. Tennessee is shown as exact tie. There are some downsides. The polls do not always count third-party candidates. Some small states haven't been polled in this election cycle. In that case, the electoral votes go to whoever won them last time. In general, though, this is good stuff. Go check it out. Current Electoral Vote Predictor 2004

Does the Bush administration want workers to have any benefits? Today's Paul Krugman column in the N.Y. Times points out the differences in the two health plans offered by the presidential candidates. Kerry's plan would help 26.7 million of the 44 million uninsured. Bush's plan offers tax credits. "The credit would be $3,000 for a family of four with an income of $25,000; for an income of $40,000, it would fall to $1,714. Last year the average premium for families of four covered by employers was more than $9,000." This would only help 1.8 million families. What really caught my eye was the part futher down: In the case of health savings accounts, the key side consequence is a reduced incentive for companies to insure their workers. When companies provide group health insurance, healthier employees implicitly subsidize their sicker colleagues. They're willing to do this largely because the employer's contributions to health insurance are a tax...

Blowing Bubbles The best assessment of the housing price bubble in a long time comes from Morgan Stanley. This addresses both the housing bubble in the United States and in the rest of the world. Steven Roach addresses the why's of the housing bubble: Morgan Stanley: Global: Global Property Bubble? If price inflation in the real economy is unusually constrained by structural factors — precisely the case today — then the impacts of the liquidity cycle may simply spill over into asset markets. The equity bubble of the late 1990s was but the first example of this phenomenon. After it popped, excess liquidity then flowed into bond and property markets. As seen in this context, asset bubbles are a perfectly logical consequence of a more generalized monetarist model — one that sees the money supply driving some combination of prices in the real economy and prices in asset markets. When pressures bear down on one segment of this broader price structure — precisely the case in this ...

I'm Back Just haven't had much to say lately, I guess. I've been busy with work and just in a funk. I'm resolving to post once a day until the election, when God willing we will elect John Kerry. Hopefully my little voice will contribute to a Democratic victory in November.