Tuesday, January 31, 2012

 

Kevin Drum notes that Steve Benen is impressed at how unenthusiastic Republicans are about their presidential candidates 52% rate the field only fair or poor vs 46 % who rate it excellent or good.

Drum asks and speculates.

"But how unusual is this, really? Maybe someone with a vast collection of past polling data can weigh in on this, but I'm not sure that we're seeing anything all that out of the ordinary. "

I tried to comment with an iPad which semi ate my comment but allowed me to gmail it to myself. Google beats Apple and I beat on Drum below

Come on lots of polling data are available at www.pollingreport.com for example that url/obama_fav.htm so www.pollingreport.com/obama_fav.htm and you can see that Obama has never been where Romney is with fav < unfav (see all throguh 2008). Same /C2.htm and see H Clinton generally fav > unfav and nothing much happening in 2008 same /k.htm see Kerry more undecided and not so popular but no particular dive during primaries. Overwhelming majority of Dems favorable ( rising from 53 fav 16 unfav Jan 8-9 04 to 82 fav 7 unfav Jan 29-30 04 in Newsweek poll). Dean not so liked ( and not the candidate) but rose fav 28 to fsv 42 in Jan 04 in usa today/gallup. Al Gore fav more than unfav in almost every poll in 00 one Fox after the election and 2 CBS. No swoon during primaries. Fa- unfav consistently positive and large in many many Gallup polls.

In contrast, Romney is fav-unfav= -18 and -14 in the past two polls ( 3rd newest a Fox with fav up). I find no other case of someone tanking in a January of a year which is a multiple of 4. Pollingreport doesn't go all the way back, but there was less polling back in olden days when we were early middle age.

In his next post he discusses McCain noting that Conservatives hated him during the primaries in 2008 and then presented him as the last hope for US Freedom during the general. This one is
www.pollingreport/l.htm search for McCain or www.polllingreport.com/l.htm#McCain
(I had to cut and paste the # as my Euro Keyboard writes it £. I will now go to twitter to add to #damnthiskeyboard thread).

Again nothing like this past month. McCain almost always polled with favorable well above unfavorable. I noticed no marked decline during the nuclear phase of the primaries and no marked recovery. He never came close to unfav-fav = 18% *and* he solidly lost the election.

Pollingreport doesn't go back very far. I'm not going to look at the sites of individual pollsters, let alone look for ink on paper. But I wouldn't be surprised if Romney is making polling history by winning a nomination with such high unfavorables.

I think very highly of Pearlstein and Drum, but they are talking about Michael Reagan as if he mattered at all. I'm sure he will campaign for Romney and I am sure it will make almost exactly zero difference. Romney's problem isn't that conservative opinion leaders (I mean Rush Limbaugh and Roger Ailes) don't like him. They will give their all for the party when he is nominated. His problem is that an immense huge giganticc plurality of registered voters dislike him. I doubt that anyone has ever been elected President after getting poll results like his.

This is mostly a statement about the relatively brief history of polling, I'm sure more people hated Lincoln, but you know, it is hard to win with 40% of the vote.

posted by Robert permalink and comments9:02 PM

 

posted by Robert permalink and comments4:38 PM

Monday, January 30, 2012

 

Freddster (noun): Fraudster who profits from conflict of interest at Freddie Mac (the knife).

Jesse Eisinger, pf ProPublica and Chris Arnold, of the public sector NPR News have the most interesting article about ruthless greedy uh socialism I guess at public sector Freddie Mac.

The idea is that Freddie Went long the interest payments on mortgages and not the principal repayments. This means the harder it is to refinance, the better for Freddie Mac. Freddie Mac also has huge regulatory power to decide how hard it is to refinance Freddie Mac insured loans. The conflict of interest is clear.

via Kevin Drum where commenter
Andrew Sprung wrote
"Could Einsinger and Arnold''s story have been prompted by an administration leak as a prelude to a recess appointment to replace DeMarco at FHFA?"

I hope so, or rather I wish I had any hope that it is so. But at least it is a hint that someone in the White House has decided to put pressure on DeMarco.
I also look forward to testimony by the Freddie Mac CEO Charles Haldeman who I expect will have considerable trouble recalling details (see HR Block)

Here is a summary of the conflict of interest from Eisenger and Arnold with human interest and Freddie Mac efforts to respond to the accusation deleted.

Those mortgages underpin securities that get divided into two basic categories.

One portion is backed mainly by principal, pays a low return, and was sold to investors who wanted a safe place to park their money. The other part, the inverse floater, is backed mainly by the interest payments on the mortgages ... . So this portion of the security can pay a much higher return, and this is what Freddie retained.

In 2010 and '11, Freddie purchased $3.4 billion worth of inverse floater portions — their value based mostly on interest payments on $19.5 billion in mortgage-backed securities, according to prospectuses for the deals.

[skip]

It’s ... a big problem if people ... refinance their mortgages. That’s because a refi is a new loan; the borrower pays off the first loan early, stopping the interest payments. Since the security Freddie owns is backed mainly by those interest payments, Freddie loses.

[skip]

Restricting credit for people who have done short sales isn’t the only way that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have tightened their lending criteria in the wake of the financial crisis, making it harder for borrowers to get housing loans.

[skip]

just as it was escalating its inverse floater deals, it was also introducing new fees on borrowers, including those wanting to refinance. During Thanksgiving week in 2010, Freddie quietly announced that it was raising charges, called post-settlement delivery fees.

In a recent white paper on remedies for the stalled housing market, the Federal Reserve criticized Fannie and Freddie for the fees they have charged for refinancing. Such fees are “another possible reason for low rates of refinancing” and are “difficult to justify,” the Fed wrote.

A former Freddie employee, who spoke on condition he not be named, was even blunter: “Generally, it makes no sense whatsoever” for Freddie “to restrict refinancing” from expensive loans to ones borrowers can more easily pay, since the company remains on the hook if homeowners default.

posted by Robert permalink and comments11:18 PM

 

Wow politifact has rated 4 claims by Mitch Daniels and didn't rate any as better than false ( one was worse - pants on fire). http://www.politifact.com/personalities/mitch-daniels/

Small sample but still an impressive record.

posted by Robert permalink and comments10:02 PM

 

Simon Wren-Lewis writes that he is an anti-anti-Keynesian not a Keynesian.

I want to abolish the Keynesian school. Keynesian analysis should be part of the mainstream, and does not need to be embodied in a school of thought. However, for those that like schools of thought, I will replace it with a new one: the anti-Keynesian school of thought. It covers all those who attempt to dismiss Keynesian ideas like fiscal stimulus at the zero bound, or countercyclical fiscal policy in a monetary union, not through reasoned analysis, but by just labelling it Keynesian.

I comment

First he is right that there is an anti-Keynesian school of thought which rejects ideas because they are Keynesian (and without regard for the data).

However, there are Keynesians. People (some of whom are employed as economists) who think that the first think most contemporary macro-economists should do right now is re-read Keynes (except for the horrible suspicion that many many contemporary macroeconomists will have to read Keynes first before they can re-read him).

I am such a Keynesian. I think that Keynes is one of the very few most insightful commentators on the recent recession in spite of the disadvantage of having been dead for decades.

For example, let's go back to the early 80s. It is true that self proclaimed Keynesians had set great store on IS_LM-AD models with aggregate demand based on some sort of Phillips curve. Keynes specifically warned against doing this. Of course he didn't write "Phillips" as he wrote before Phillips, but his assrtion was clear enough that we can conclude that Keynesians in the 70s either forgot Keynes or decided that they had surpassed him. http://bit.ly/aWS5PS

Also there was some interest in the so called Lucas supply curve then. It is now agreed that the hypothesis that it was key to "Understanding Business Cycles" (Lucas is not just rejected by the data but was silly to begin with. But the observation that there could be a correlation between inflation and output due to price level perception errors even if the economy was at what Keynes called full employment was interesting. It was also interesting when Muth made that observation. It was even interesting when Keynes made that observation in "The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money" Chapter 20 section III paragraph 4


"(1) For a time at least, rising prices may delude entrepreneurs into increasing employment beyond the level which maximises their individual profits measured in terms of the product."

I am perfectly prepared to be convinced that you are not a Keynesian. In spite of our relative professional standing, I am not so convinced that you shouldn't be a Keynesian.

And now for something completely different.

Wren-Lewis also wrote

the label monetarist has many layers of meaning, from the very specific and policy related (money supply targeting) to the much more general and theoretical (money matters). These layers may be related, but they do not have to be.

Magari (if only) the range of meanings were that narrow.

I am a US born Italian resident non monetarist, but I dare suggest that monetarist has a third quite different meaning in the UK. It often is used to mean "somewhat like Margaret Thatcher" and is assumed to refer to hard core laissez faire and indifference to income inequality (or love of it). This conflation is not due to the Iron PM alone. Milton Friedman was a monetarist according to all three definitions and the word often indicates agreeing with Milton Friedman about a lot (uh oh my credentials as a non monetarist are in danger).

posted by Robert permalink and comments5:30 PM

Sunday, January 29, 2012

 

Language:A Key Mechanism of Control
Bleg

In this excellent essay Timothy Egan wrote

“Language: A Key Mechanism of Control.”

[skip]

Today, if you listen carefully to any Gingrich takedown, you’ll usually hear words from the control memo.

I've noticed this too. But what's with this old fashioned listening business. If I were computer literate, I would write a script which counted the number of times words listed in "Language:A Key Mechanism of Control" appear in transcripts of Gingrich's speech (especially when he isn't reading a prepared speech).

To be fair, the same script could count the frequency in speech by others. I never read the whole memo. I feel totally sure that Gingrich is still relying on it. The proof, one way or the other, is out there.

Has this been done (link please). If not do it (script and link pretty please with strawberries on top)

posted by Robert permalink and comments12:18 PM

Saturday, January 28, 2012

 

Matthew Yglesias goes over to the shades of grey side

I think. I haven't read the post. I just read a post on the post by Drum and flipped out.

Drum wrote

Matt Yglesias notes a tension in lefty thought today: the stuff we all support (better healthcare, more teachers, childcare, new infrastructure, etc.) is in the non-manufacturing sector, and yet we all cheer when President Obama calls for increased focus on manufacturing. So which do we want? More people working in manufacturing or more people working in service and construction industries? It's hard to have both, after all.

I support high employment in manufactuging. The reason is that I believe that people are paid more if they work in manufacturing than if they work in other sectors. These labor market rents are not considered by employers when deciding how many people to hire. The aim isn't just a sustainable trade balance but also "good jobs for good wages." The evidence supporting the hypothesis that high wage sectors provide better jobs (not just compensating differentials) to the same workers is overwhelming.

update: Is it still true ? Angus wonders. FRED failed me with an index of hourly compensation in manufacturing only from 1987 on. For what it's worth it doesn't show a trend of relative decline compared to overall non-farm, but 1987 was mostly post Reagan and, in particular, post a period of grossly over valued dollar and huge trade deficits.

https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?graph_id=64329&category_id=0



Yes economists argued for decades that this can't be true and that our models show that people are paid (counting non pecuniary amenities) based on their ability. But believing in those models is like believing in Phlogiston. They don't fit the facts. If there are labor market rents, then the logic of propmoting manufacturing employment is clear. People get something for nothing if they switch from employment in services to employment in manufacturing -- well the data show they lose big if they move the other way. This happens when the shift can't possibly be a sign that the manufacturing employer learned that they weren't as able as they seemed, because it happens when whole plants are closed.

Two decades ago, there was an interesting academic debate on the topic. I claim it was settled. The people who were wrong (as usual) just changed the subject and ignored the data (as usual). Google scholar Larry Katz. In any case, you have to admit that we might want higher employment in one sector because of labor market rents. The argument that the market knows best requires the assumption that the labor market clears. That is that there is no unemployment. I promise you that this is clear.

" It's hard to have both, after all." Huh ?!?!? Have you noticed that the unemployment rate isn't exactly zero right now ? More generally that the employment/population ratio varies a lot and we might want it to be high. I will consider this to be just a slip (mostly). But one point is that, if the labor market doesn't clear, then we don't have any reason to think that we prefer employment to unemployment but don't prefer employment in one sector to employment in another. There are models in which one can prove that the government shouldn't favor one sector. They are models in which there is 0 unemployment. Relying on them is not a good idea.

On more narrow topics.

I don't think you can understand the widespread leftist and centrist support for infrastructure spending without considering the unemployment rate. Some might think that we should spend more on average over the next decades, but others think we should pull spending forward so that we spend more now and less in the future -- that the point of spending now is that we will have non falling down bridges then and won't have to spend then. Supporters of more infrastructure spending now and in the future can agree with supporters of more infrastructure now and less in the future about what to do now. But it just isn't true that Obama says he supports high government spending now and in the future.

Also the supporters of high spending on education and infrastructure don't argue that it is an substitute for manufacturing -- that our goal is to be able to recite Shakespeare we drive our foreign made cars down nice new highways. Rather it is that infrastructure and education are needed for high manufacturing productivity so that the effect will be that employment now in infrastructure and education will cause higher manufacturing employment in the future.

Finally (whew) there are sectors other than manufacturing, infrastucture, education and health care. For example FIRE. It is very easy to argue that we would be better off if fewere people worked in financial services (Yglesias argues this frequently). One might suspect that they are working away separating fools and their money, that is they would be out of a job and their clients would be better off if those clients decided to buy and hold the market portfolio instead of trying to beat the market and losing. This is definitely your view and Yglesias's view. But somehow you forget it when discussing sectors other than manufacturing. This was not a slip. This was contrarian BS.

Or how about real estate. And now that I mention it construction of housing. One might think we would be better off with smaller houses and more manufacturing, infrastructure education and health care. One might note that the current policy isn't neutral but involves huge subsidies for the mortgage interest deduction. One might be Matthew Yglesias proving that Matthew Yglesias wrote that post as a contrarian dweeb.

Or how about insurance ? Some people think we could get just as much health insurance with much lower employment and cost if we had single payer or a public option or Medicare buy in. The evidence for this view is overwhelming. One of those people is named Matthew Yglesias. But he forgot about the bloated private health insurance industry when aiming to channel his inner Kinsley and write some pointless contrarian BS.

He knows better. You know that your devastating critique is just one of many valid devastating critiques. His post was a provocation. That is, he is going over not to the dark side but to they many shades of grey side.

posted by Robert permalink and comments3:12 PM

 

ResurgentRomney quotes Steve Singiser on ResurgentRomney ?

"The evidence lies, as it often does"

posted by Robert permalink and comments12:23 PM

Friday, January 27, 2012

 

Mitt Romney LDS yes LSD no

Wolf Blitzer asking Romney to repeat the charge.

“I haven’t seen the ad, so I’m sorry, I don’t get to see all the TV ads,” Romney said. “Did he say that?”

The fact that Gingrich did say something like that is a bit awkward for Gingrich, and has been for quite a while. But there was plenty of awkward to go around: Turns out the ad Romney said he’s never heard of is running on the radio from his campaign — and Romney’s voice, in Spanish, is on the end saying he approved it.

This Time Mitt Romney said something which is true (I think I will devote this blog to reporting all of his non-lies -- plus other things as I want to blog freequently).

It depends on what the definition of "seen" is. He has heard the ad, but sticking to LDS and not LSD he hasn't seen it man. The problem is that, like Bill Clinton, he is too clever by half. His denial is technically true, but gives the impression of very deliberately misleading. It adds the insult of outsmarting Wolf to the injury of trying to mislead us.

In fact, his campaign's defense is that he made an honest mistake (better than a much too clever dodge).

“We’ve had about 85 web videos, radio ads, and TV spots that have been up and running which he has reviewed and approved,” Fehrnstrom told TPM. “He doesn’t recall every single one of them,

So Romney doesn't remember the claims he has made in public. According to Fehnstrom he has reckless disregard for the truth, not the sort of character flaw which would lead him to deny that his campaign made a claim in a TV ad without mentioning that it made the claim (which is substantially true) in a radio ad.

Fehrnstrom also mentions Politifact (see post below)

"Politifact looked at that ad, they looked at that specific claim, and they rated it mostly true.”" Here I agree with Politifact. Gingrich contrasted English with an un named "language of the Ghetto". Everyone infers that this other language is Spanish, but he didn't use the word. So the Romney campaign's claim is "mostly true" rather than just plain true, because they paraphrased (accurately I'm sure) rather than translating word for word.

posted by Robert permalink and comments8:47 AM

Thursday, January 26, 2012

 

Politifact

When is true not true ?

It isn't just private sector jobs growth. They also rate

"Right now, American oil production is the highest that it’s been in eight years." Mostly true. The post concludes

"Obama was correct when he said that "right now, American oil production is the highest that it’s been in eight years." We think he may have overstated his administration’s role in achieving that, but not wildly so. We rate the claim Mostly True."

To summarize "Obama was correct ... Mostly True."

Huh ?!?

I also disagree with this one

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/jan/16/mitt-romney/mitt-romney-tweets-more-americans-have-lost-their-/

“more Americans have lost their jobs under Barack Obama than any president in modern history”
The alleged fact check.


Romney’s claim is accurate if you count from every president’s first day in office to his final day
...
we arrive at a ruling of Mostly False."

Wow. Mostly false ? The claim as stated and quoted is accurate. But it doesn't mean what Romney wants to think it means. So an "accurate" statement is "mostly false."

Fact checkers should check facts.

posted by Robert permalink and comments4:28 PM