A July 5 article in the UK Daily Mail (h/t Mike Dovich) says that UN climate data and climate predictions are falsified junk. The article starts by noting that there is more polar ice in the southern hemisphere than there was 35 years ago. The article also says that 40% of temperature gauging stations are down and that "authorities" have been imputing temperatures using neighboring stations without revealing the gaps in their data. That may or may not be a serious problem depending on the representativeness of the working stations. Ethical scientists would discuss the data gaps and the limitations, if any, on their estimation procedures. The article seems to imply that the gaps have not been openly discussed, although that is not clear. If they haven't been, then the scientists are not doing a good job.
A bigger problem to which the article alludes is this:
It has also been discovered that the US’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is using estimates even when perfectly good raw data is available to it – and that it has adjusted historical records.
Why should it do this? Many have noted that the effect of all these changes is to produce a warmer present and a colder past, with the net result being the impression of much faster warming.
If the article is right, i.e., if climatologists are revising data in a biased way and replacing real data with estimates that flatter their hypothesis,then, well, I could just scream. In that case universities are even worse than I thought, and that's pretty bad. I'm not surprised when the dummies at the United Nations make up whoppers about things like climate change, but if scientists are yanking our chain, just what purpose do universities serve?
Monday, July 7, 2014
Sunday, July 6, 2014
Immigration, Monetary Policy, and the Impoverishment of Americans
According to Karen Zeigler and Steve Camarota of the Center
for Immigration Studies, all job growth since 2000 can be matched to immigration into the US. In other words, Americans who were
living in the US in 2000 have experienced negative job growth. That is on
top of declines in the real hourly wage, which is lower today than it was in
1964.
A basic economic principle is that if you cut a price, demand will
increase. Wages have been cut, and demand has indeed
increased, but because of immigration none of the gains--increased job
opportunities-- has gone to the people whose wages have been cut.
The expansion of the money supply has been
accompanied by vast foreign holdings of dollars and US Treasury bonds.
China and Japan combined hold a value of US treasury bonds equal to the total US
money supply. Estimates of the amount of US currency held abroad varies
from 65% to Edwin
Feige's 35% of the $1.2 trillion of US currency in
circulation. The entire US money supply is currently $2.8 trillion.
The large amount of overseas dollar holdings props up the dollar, keeping manufacturing jobs out of the US. Thus, America's monetary policy is a source of stagnant job opportunities. It is also the source of stagnant real wages and income inequality. The reason is that wages lag inflation while monetary policy, the source of inflation, props up the stock market.
The large amount of overseas dollar holdings props up the dollar, keeping manufacturing jobs out of the US. Thus, America's monetary policy is a source of stagnant job opportunities. It is also the source of stagnant real wages and income inequality. The reason is that wages lag inflation while monetary policy, the source of inflation, props up the stock market.
The supposed income-inequality issue on which Obama and his dumbed-down followers harp is a
direct function of the Keynesian money-printing orgy that has occurred since
the Fed's founding. The Fed’s increasing the money supply reduces interest
rates, so the present value of future stock dividends is increased.
A dividend dollar payable next year is worth more today with a
lower interest rate because the alternative use of the dollar, putting it into
a savings account, draws less interest. If you put a dollar into a bank
account that pays 1% interest, you have $1.01 (1.01 x $1) next
year. If you put a dollar into a bank account that pays 2% interest, you
have $1.02 (1.02 x $1) next year.
Conversely, the present value of a dollar at 1% interest payable
in one year is $0.99 today (1/1.01 x $1) while the present value of a dollar at
2% interest payable in one year is $.98 today (1/1.02 x $1). By reducing
interest rates from 2% to 1% you increase the present value from $.98 to
$.99. The same occurs with stocks.
That is why Keynesian and monetarist
economists, virtually all economists in universities, are great friends of the super rich. The advocacy of monetary expansion is tantamount
to the advocacy of stock market gains at the expense of wages. Both parties, Democrats and
Republicans, have advocated increasing the money supply, stealing wealth from employees, and handing it to stockholders. I'll bet you didn't hear that on C-Span or CNN, but who owns C-Span and CNN?
Wages don't keep pace with inflation, though,
which Keynes points out in the beginning of his book.
Thus, this is what stock market growth looks
like despite stagnating real wages and declining job opportunities:
People who've been invested in the stock market have done well thanks to the Fed, while people who hold cash or earn wages, the working class, have done miserably. Yet, they keep voting for Democrats and Republicans because America is an idiocracy, and they are the idiots.
Obama the Least Competent but Not the Worst Postwar President
A July 2 Quinnipiac University poll finds that 33% of voters consider Obama to be the worst post-World War II president while 28% consider Bush to be the worst. None of the others comes close. The largest percentage of voters, 35%, like Ronald Reagan best. Journalists who say that it takes years for historians to determine the true quality of a president so that the numbers aren't meaningful are misguided. First, most historians are left or statist biased so that their opinions mean zero. Historians are ideologues, and they frequently place their ideology before the facts. Second, historians are filled with future-oriented biases and typically lack a full grasp of the gestalt of a given era. Future historians will be at a disadvantage in interpreting today's facts.
That said, I don't agree that Obama is the worst postwar president because Nixon did more to expand government than Obama did. Obama is a traitor and a dummy, and his freeing a traitorous soldier a few weeks ago was the result. As well, his ill-conceived healthcare act is and will be a disaster, and he has magnified the economic errors of the Bush and preceding administrations.
The opinions of Americans mean little, for America is a dumbed down idiocracy. For example, a slightly greater number say that they like Obama better than Bush on the economy, but I doubt any can identify real differences between the policies of Bush and Obama because there have not been any. The great debate between Democrats and Republicans about the economy during the Obama years was the $800 billion stimulus spent on crooked Obama cronies, but Bush had also overseen a stimulus. I recall getting the check for a few hundred dollars.
David Vogel's Fluctuating Fortunes: The Political Power of Business in America traces the history of business-government relations in the postwar era. The book was copyrighted in 1989, so it doesn't tell the whole story, but the book makes clear that if you consider the president to have been worst who has most expanded government, then Nixon is worst.
Vogel describes how Nixon got into a pissing contest with Senator Edmund Muskie to see who could pass the more aggressive environmental regulation. He signed the Occupational Safety and Health Act,the Cigarette Advertising Act, the Federal Environmental Pesticide Control Act of 1972, and the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972. Regarding the Clean Air Act, Vogel writes this (p.73):
With the passage of the House bill, the Nixon administration had firmly established a preeminent position in the field of environmental protection. It had initiated a significant strengthening and broadening of the federal government's regulatory authority over what was literally the most visible dimension of pollution control...
Vogel adds (p. 90):
The period of industry's greatest vulnerability--at least in the areas of social regulation and tax policy--coincided with the presidency of Republican Richard Nixon. Just as it took the presidency of Lyndon Johnson to enact the legislative agenda of John Kennedy's New Frontier, so were many of the most important regulatory initiatives of Johnson's Great Society approved during the presidency of Richard Nixon.
As well, Nixon introduced what was probably the most socialistic American policy of the post-war period: wage and price controls and controls on oil prices. Not only did this policy fail; it generated Soviet Union-style lines at gas stations and was punctuated with the worst inflation since the one following Woodrow Wilson's venture into wartime socialism during World War I.
Vogel barely mentions the chief harm that Nixon did to the US: the abolition of the remnant of the gold standard that had survived under the Bretton Woods agreement. This opened up the door to ongoing expansion of government and money printing, which continues today. I have to revise my former belief that Johnson was the worst president; Nixon was even worse than Johnson.
It is also true that the three presidents who introduced unnecessary wars, Truman, Johnson, and Bush, deserve demerits. When you put the Vietnam War together with the Great Society, Johnson comes close to Nixon. The abolition of the gold standard, though, was so far reaching that it reduces Nixon's position to worst.
It is shocking that a candidate as inept as Barack Obama received the adulation that he did, not only from dumbed down college students who have trouble spelling their own names but also from their professors. It is the students who will ultimately pay the price for their choice, though.
That said, I don't agree that Obama is the worst postwar president because Nixon did more to expand government than Obama did. Obama is a traitor and a dummy, and his freeing a traitorous soldier a few weeks ago was the result. As well, his ill-conceived healthcare act is and will be a disaster, and he has magnified the economic errors of the Bush and preceding administrations.
The opinions of Americans mean little, for America is a dumbed down idiocracy. For example, a slightly greater number say that they like Obama better than Bush on the economy, but I doubt any can identify real differences between the policies of Bush and Obama because there have not been any. The great debate between Democrats and Republicans about the economy during the Obama years was the $800 billion stimulus spent on crooked Obama cronies, but Bush had also overseen a stimulus. I recall getting the check for a few hundred dollars.
David Vogel's Fluctuating Fortunes: The Political Power of Business in America traces the history of business-government relations in the postwar era. The book was copyrighted in 1989, so it doesn't tell the whole story, but the book makes clear that if you consider the president to have been worst who has most expanded government, then Nixon is worst.
Vogel describes how Nixon got into a pissing contest with Senator Edmund Muskie to see who could pass the more aggressive environmental regulation. He signed the Occupational Safety and Health Act,the Cigarette Advertising Act, the Federal Environmental Pesticide Control Act of 1972, and the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972. Regarding the Clean Air Act, Vogel writes this (p.73):
With the passage of the House bill, the Nixon administration had firmly established a preeminent position in the field of environmental protection. It had initiated a significant strengthening and broadening of the federal government's regulatory authority over what was literally the most visible dimension of pollution control...
Vogel adds (p. 90):
The period of industry's greatest vulnerability--at least in the areas of social regulation and tax policy--coincided with the presidency of Republican Richard Nixon. Just as it took the presidency of Lyndon Johnson to enact the legislative agenda of John Kennedy's New Frontier, so were many of the most important regulatory initiatives of Johnson's Great Society approved during the presidency of Richard Nixon.
As well, Nixon introduced what was probably the most socialistic American policy of the post-war period: wage and price controls and controls on oil prices. Not only did this policy fail; it generated Soviet Union-style lines at gas stations and was punctuated with the worst inflation since the one following Woodrow Wilson's venture into wartime socialism during World War I.
Vogel barely mentions the chief harm that Nixon did to the US: the abolition of the remnant of the gold standard that had survived under the Bretton Woods agreement. This opened up the door to ongoing expansion of government and money printing, which continues today. I have to revise my former belief that Johnson was the worst president; Nixon was even worse than Johnson.
It is also true that the three presidents who introduced unnecessary wars, Truman, Johnson, and Bush, deserve demerits. When you put the Vietnam War together with the Great Society, Johnson comes close to Nixon. The abolition of the gold standard, though, was so far reaching that it reduces Nixon's position to worst.
It is shocking that a candidate as inept as Barack Obama received the adulation that he did, not only from dumbed down college students who have trouble spelling their own names but also from their professors. It is the students who will ultimately pay the price for their choice, though.
Thursday, July 3, 2014
Despotism Light
Clyde Warren Crews of the Competitive Enterprise Institute has an excellent piece in Forbes on what he calls despotism-lite: Barack Obama's use of executive orders to circumvent the legislative process. What is the difference between a dictator like Saddam Hussein's giving an order that's obeyed without question and Obama's giving an executive order that's obeyed without question?
Warren refers to Obama's imperious style, and he lists a number of major executive orders whose execution usurps Congressional authority. These include executive orders concerning work-life programs, student loans, and establishing a quadrennial energy review.
Besides these programs' being useless crap, the pattern confirms that the federal government is neither a republic nor a democracy: It is an authoritarian dictatorship that lacks legitimacy.
Warren refers to Obama's imperious style, and he lists a number of major executive orders whose execution usurps Congressional authority. These include executive orders concerning work-life programs, student loans, and establishing a quadrennial energy review.
Besides these programs' being useless crap, the pattern confirms that the federal government is neither a republic nor a democracy: It is an authoritarian dictatorship that lacks legitimacy.
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