"Goldman is so dominant, they can probably make any market they want so why bother with the intrigue."
It's not so much intrigue, but how they've been gaming everything. I mentioned Friedman and the intel links, especially that NRO stuff, because when Reagan brought in Casey as his CIA director, one of the very first actions Casey took was to classify satellite resource data - which had been available to all - then make it available exclusively to his buddies on Wall Street (can you say Goldman Sachs & Morgan Stanley).
This ready access to crucial data (gold & silver mining, plus) along with their speculation on the InterContinental Exchange (which they financed, by the way, along with several well-known oil companies) in oil, energy futures - and who knows what else - demonstrates a broad spread of gaming and rigging, something Taibbi doesn't even mention.
Thanks for your response, though, very thoughtful.
"So you're now claiming that the FAO and the OECD is Catholic because they challenge your religious belief in Malthusian economics?"
The OECD is the administrative or PR arm for the WTO - geez, I thought everyone realized that!
Get serious. Anything the OECD says is ALWAYS suspect - with the exception of stating that OECD countries' wages have fallen since they joined that group.
Ok, new housing starts are inside the margin of error. (Ritholtz just did a nice call out IMHO) but the permits and completions are outside the margin of error.
But they do state this is a moving average and even given the time window for the stats to be considered valid.
Helps to read the fine print I guess.
* 90% confidence interval includes zero. The Census Bureau does not have sufficient statistical evidence to conclude that the actual change is different from zero.
In interpreting changes in the statistics in this release, note that month-to-month changes in seasonally adjusted statistics often show movements which may be irregular. It may take 3 months to establish an underlying trend for building permit authorizations, 4 months for total starts, and 5 months for total completions. The statistics in this release are estimated from sample surveys and are subject to sampling variability as well as nonsampling error including bias and variance from
response, nonreporting, and undercoverage. Estimated relative standard errors of the most recent data are shown in the tables. Whenever a statement such as “2.5
percent (±3.2%) above” appears in the text, this indicates the range (-0.7 to +5.7 percent) in which the actual percent change is likely to have occurred. All ranges
given for percent changes are 90-percent confidence intervals and account only for sampling variability. If a range does not contain zero, the change is statistically
significant. If it does contain zero, the change is not statistically significant; that is, it is uncertain whether there was an increase or decrease. The same policies apply
to the confidence intervals for percent changes shown in the tables. On average, the preliminary seasonally adjusted estimates of total building permits, housing starts
and housing completions are revised about two percent or less. Explanations of confidence intervals and sampling variability can be found on our web site listed
above.
Fantastic column and clip, Mr. Oak, and always a Gomery fan.
Of course, what we have are not economies of scale, but economies of DE-SCALING! The processes are dismantling and cannibalizing the economy - to the detriment of the multitude, while enriching the smallest number!
I'm no longer sold on certain people accepting this ideology, as it were (except for the dummies who follow), but a method for enriching themselves.
One of the comments/questions towards the end of the clip, (it was subtle so it might be missed) concerned the killing of the "Buy American" clause in the federal stimulus package, which ensured further loss of American jobs and further increases in importing STUFF - for building those transportation - and other - systems as provided for in the stimulus bill.
The item which killed that was the Bretton Woods Committee letter to congress (dated Feb. 11, 2009) and signed by all the usual suspects from Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, BofA, Morgan Stanley, their associated foundations and groups, along with various foreign signatories from Asia, Russia, etc., etc., and the usual types: Kissinger, Scowcroft, Roubini, Stiglitz, (Pres. Obama's people: Laura Tyson, Diana Farrell), Morrici, Blinder and on and on.
Sellouts all - who are paid to aid in the dismantling of the economy - or what actually little remains of it.
Fundamentally, as long as we continue to accept the monopolization of land and the monopolization of capital - as we have been raised to be accepting of - this situation shall continue.
This is a dynamite post and something we've talked about but no one really pulled out the realities many are not covered by UI. In tech, it can be really bad for so many are "small businesses" i.e. consultants, which can range from real consulting to abused wage slave, no benefits permatemp.
On the technical end of EP: You don't have to add share buttons, we already have those and they kind of "mess up" the layout on EP, you should be able to edit your post, remove those additional shares and put a link which says
at the top of your post (see the user guide on modifying content, at the top of the post and please change the blog post title too, to make sure the Google SEO doesn't punish EP for duplicate content, it has to be slightly modified) and then we have signatures, where you can add your home base in your signature. We're all for crossposting but one has to do a few tricks in order to make sure no one site is punished by the SEO gods at large for it.
Again, great post, my head wasn't even thinking about plain reforming UI, which is a really needed concept in times like we're in right now.
Do you have a reference for that error margin? That is a great addition to EP, error rates on these various stats.
I think most are projecting, NDD is obviously going to the green shoots camp to the point I think he's drinking joy juice, (only in friendly fun NDD!), but most are projecting GDP growth of about 1% to 2.x% in 2010. The grand debate is when this starts, i.e. when it bottoms.
Myself, I'm a layman, so my current hypothesis is there cannot be a real recovery in these so called "jobless" recoveries. Something is serious amiss between international stats vs. national EIs, but that's a hypothesis, not proven.
and my guess is that we aren't going to see any real sustained growth for quite some time. Once the market accepts the end of the recession, interest rates are going to rally to a point that prevents meaningful expansion. Also, the margin of error on that starts data is over 8%, which makes it pretty useless.
No, sorry, overpopulation goes into a host of other issues, from resources, to labor supply to infrastructure, to pollution, it's not just "food".
I'm getting very tired of you trying to shove your Catholic beliefs onto an economics site.
Monsanto likes to sponsor reports to push GMO agenda, through all sorts of other organizations and "independent" studies.
If a report came out about increased agriculture production and isn't pushing GMO foods, that's fine but to try to claim that somehow jumps the fence and concludes some religious edict is false.
Nope, sorry. The first study I linked to was from the FAO- the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, not industry funded in any way. The second was the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, which is a G7 committee. Both are GOVERNMENT funded, not industry funded.
Secondly, your assertion " there are assuredly too many people" is shown to be false by these two studies. The problem isn't "too many people" it is, just as it is in our own economy, a small minority of elites being greedy and interfering with resource allocation for their own greed.
Thirdly, if you look at the FAO study, you'll see that they specifically claim that GMO foods are a part of what is harming development of Africa; they recommend seed saving and small-scale farming instead as the proven best way to develop the Guinea Savannah- especially in light of monoculture problems with GMO plants.
You're always saying not to post Economic Fiction. Well, overpopulation is Economic Fiction, according to these two studies- an economic theory held to by people who don't understand the math.
-------------------------------------
Maximum jobs, not maximum profits.
Because he really doesn't "blast" the concept of trade at all, they analyze scenarios of trade, I'll call them regions, and so this book is actually very pro trade. I think this is one of the biggest misunderstood contributions, it's variable dependent. So, if we got these corporatists away from running trade policy, had a national strategy, one could use these models, and create strategic trade that probably would increase exports and probably imports too.
In other words, if we had a national trade policy, plus the ability to monitor, analyze, adjust accordingly, based on the statistics as well as the theory, one could be extremely "Pro" trade yet create a true "win-win" sort of scenario.
I don't know if it's because Gomory is really a math head, or what, but I find a lot of his work beyond rational, some of it to me is almost breakthrough, kind of thinking past the paradigm. But to me it doesn't go into this "either you are for free trade or against it". I think their point really is, trade is not so simple as a "yes/no", or "black/white" answer, it's almost an optimization problem, it's a system, which has a lot of interaction, feedback to it, and contained within that optimization/system analysis, are policy recommendations, even at the high international economic level.
Another thing I liked is the U.S. "get off" of what China or other countries do and "onto" what is the U.S. gonna do. i.e. action instead of reaction.
I didn't want to get myself into trouble in our last flame war Robert- I was in enough trouble already- I nearly posted, in response to your "religion is not economics" a "yeah, but economics is a religion" with exactly this example- the unthinking religious adherence to free market ideals and theories without actually understanding the math behind those theories.
I also think that's why nobody has paid attention to any Pope's economic theories for a century or two at this point, despite the very good sense in those seven documents I listed- because Catholic economics goes against treasured theories and rights that mainstream traders and brokers believe in.
-------------------------------------
Maximum jobs, not maximum profits.
I've become not-a-capitalist under the very pressures you've been yelling about- but I'm also not-a-communist. The problem, as I see it, is that price doesn't have enough bandwidth to convey enough information for the end consumer to make an informed choice. We try to make it up with lies, er, advertising, but price is held to be such a big signal that even name-brand advertising can't entirely overcome it.
What we need is a couple more channels of bandwidth to the end consumer. Country of Origin labeling laws are a stab at this, as is (gasp, they're doing something good) Wal*Mart's new Sustainability Index, which in six months will be on every shelf price tag at Wal*Mart, and due to their 700 lb gorilla status in retailing, will likely be on every store shelf in every store by 2020.
Perhaps we also need a quality index.
-------------------------------------
Maximum jobs, not maximum profits.
Also, the middle column is selected for other blogs which are really useful to our readers, fast moving content, we're not doing link exchange with them.
NDD while there might be some technical indicators I'd hardly call this rock raving statistics, esp. coupled with 1.5 million foreclosures with a projected 3.2 million in this year (excess inventory).
+GDP growth yeah sure but ya know, what is +1% really?
I mean that looks like a sideways L, |___ , a big muddled yuck, versus getting my 90's on and feeling happy.
I yelled about it for 25 years. I am a devout capitalist but I am not an idiot. When you give away the store you can't expect to maintain a healthy, robust, economic engine. Third world countries were always a people without capital and we are headed to the same fate.
What to do? I'm not at all big on government intervention and hope that the people can express our distaste of outsourcing at the cash register.
I still remember a world where quality mattered, where built in obsolescence was not a business model. How I long for those times!!!!!!
because it lowered prices a la Wal-Mart. But the problem was that free trade and globalization has reduced wages far more than the lower prices. To make up that deficit and to maintain a living standard people went into debt.
I would like to put a link to your site on my blog roll if you want to do the same for mine. It would be a good way to build up both of our readerships.
"Goldman is so dominant, they can probably make any market they want so why bother with the intrigue."
It's not so much intrigue, but how they've been gaming everything. I mentioned Friedman and the intel links, especially that NRO stuff, because when Reagan brought in Casey as his CIA director, one of the very first actions Casey took was to classify satellite resource data - which had been available to all - then make it available exclusively to his buddies on Wall Street (can you say Goldman Sachs & Morgan Stanley).
This ready access to crucial data (gold & silver mining, plus) along with their speculation on the InterContinental Exchange (which they financed, by the way, along with several well-known oil companies) in oil, energy futures - and who knows what else - demonstrates a broad spread of gaming and rigging, something Taibbi doesn't even mention.
Thanks for your response, though, very thoughtful.
Until he agrees to follow the rules. That was the last insult flame rant comment I'm willing to deal with.
"So you're now claiming that the FAO and the OECD is Catholic because they challenge your religious belief in Malthusian economics?"
The OECD is the administrative or PR arm for the WTO - geez, I thought everyone realized that!
Get serious. Anything the OECD says is ALWAYS suspect - with the exception of stating that OECD countries' wages have fallen since they joined that group.
Here is the housing stats data sheet.
Ok, new housing starts are inside the margin of error. (Ritholtz just did a nice call out IMHO) but the permits and completions are outside the margin of error.
But they do state this is a moving average and even given the time window for the stats to be considered valid.
Helps to read the fine print I guess.
Fantastic column and clip, Mr. Oak, and always a Gomery fan.
Of course, what we have are not economies of scale, but economies of DE-SCALING! The processes are dismantling and cannibalizing the economy - to the detriment of the multitude, while enriching the smallest number!
I'm no longer sold on certain people accepting this ideology, as it were (except for the dummies who follow), but a method for enriching themselves.
One of the comments/questions towards the end of the clip, (it was subtle so it might be missed) concerned the killing of the "Buy American" clause in the federal stimulus package, which ensured further loss of American jobs and further increases in importing STUFF - for building those transportation - and other - systems as provided for in the stimulus bill.
The item which killed that was the Bretton Woods Committee letter to congress (dated Feb. 11, 2009) and signed by all the usual suspects from Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, BofA, Morgan Stanley, their associated foundations and groups, along with various foreign signatories from Asia, Russia, etc., etc., and the usual types: Kissinger, Scowcroft, Roubini, Stiglitz, (Pres. Obama's people: Laura Tyson, Diana Farrell), Morrici, Blinder and on and on.
Sellouts all - who are paid to aid in the dismantling of the economy - or what actually little remains of it.
Fundamentally, as long as we continue to accept the monopolization of land and the monopolization of capital - as we have been raised to be accepting of - this situation shall continue.
Thanks again for this great stuff!
I got it from The Big Picture blog. Here is the article:
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/07/housing-starts-fall-46/
This is a dynamite post and something we've talked about but no one really pulled out the realities many are not covered by UI. In tech, it can be really bad for so many are "small businesses" i.e. consultants, which can range from real consulting to abused wage slave, no benefits permatemp.
On the technical end of EP: You don't have to add share buttons, we already have those and they kind of "mess up" the layout on EP, you should be able to edit your post, remove those additional shares and put a link which says
original posted on The Realignment Project
at the top of your post (see the user guide on modifying content, at the top of the post and please change the blog post title too, to make sure the Google SEO doesn't punish EP for duplicate content, it has to be slightly modified) and then we have signatures, where you can add your home base in your signature. We're all for crossposting but one has to do a few tricks in order to make sure no one site is punished by the SEO gods at large for it.
Again, great post, my head wasn't even thinking about plain reforming UI, which is a really needed concept in times like we're in right now.
Do you have a reference for that error margin? That is a great addition to EP, error rates on these various stats.
I think most are projecting, NDD is obviously going to the green shoots camp to the point I think he's drinking joy juice, (only in friendly fun NDD!), but most are projecting GDP growth of about 1% to 2.x% in 2010. The grand debate is when this starts, i.e. when it bottoms.
Myself, I'm a layman, so my current hypothesis is there cannot be a real recovery in these so called "jobless" recoveries. Something is serious amiss between international stats vs. national EIs, but that's a hypothesis, not proven.
http://realignmentproject.wordpress.com/
If you like what you read, check out the blog, there's a lot more where that came from!
and my guess is that we aren't going to see any real sustained growth for quite some time. Once the market accepts the end of the recession, interest rates are going to rally to a point that prevents meaningful expansion. Also, the margin of error on that starts data is over 8%, which makes it pretty useless.
No, sorry, overpopulation goes into a host of other issues, from resources, to labor supply to infrastructure, to pollution, it's not just "food".
I'm getting very tired of you trying to shove your Catholic beliefs onto an economics site.
Monsanto likes to sponsor reports to push GMO agenda, through all sorts of other organizations and "independent" studies.
If a report came out about increased agriculture production and isn't pushing GMO foods, that's fine but to try to claim that somehow jumps the fence and concludes some religious edict is false.
Nope, sorry. The first study I linked to was from the FAO- the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, not industry funded in any way. The second was the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, which is a G7 committee. Both are GOVERNMENT funded, not industry funded.
Secondly, your assertion " there are assuredly too many people" is shown to be false by these two studies. The problem isn't "too many people" it is, just as it is in our own economy, a small minority of elites being greedy and interfering with resource allocation for their own greed.
Thirdly, if you look at the FAO study, you'll see that they specifically claim that GMO foods are a part of what is harming development of Africa; they recommend seed saving and small-scale farming instead as the proven best way to develop the Guinea Savannah- especially in light of monoculture problems with GMO plants.
You're always saying not to post Economic Fiction. Well, overpopulation is Economic Fiction, according to these two studies- an economic theory held to by people who don't understand the math.
-------------------------------------
Maximum jobs, not maximum profits.
Because he really doesn't "blast" the concept of trade at all, they analyze scenarios of trade, I'll call them regions, and so this book is actually very pro trade. I think this is one of the biggest misunderstood contributions, it's variable dependent. So, if we got these corporatists away from running trade policy, had a national strategy, one could use these models, and create strategic trade that probably would increase exports and probably imports too.
In other words, if we had a national trade policy, plus the ability to monitor, analyze, adjust accordingly, based on the statistics as well as the theory, one could be extremely "Pro" trade yet create a true "win-win" sort of scenario.
I don't know if it's because Gomory is really a math head, or what, but I find a lot of his work beyond rational, some of it to me is almost breakthrough, kind of thinking past the paradigm. But to me it doesn't go into this "either you are for free trade or against it". I think their point really is, trade is not so simple as a "yes/no", or "black/white" answer, it's almost an optimization problem, it's a system, which has a lot of interaction, feedback to it, and contained within that optimization/system analysis, are policy recommendations, even at the high international economic level.
Another thing I liked is the U.S. "get off" of what China or other countries do and "onto" what is the U.S. gonna do. i.e. action instead of reaction.
I didn't want to get myself into trouble in our last flame war Robert- I was in enough trouble already- I nearly posted, in response to your "religion is not economics" a "yeah, but economics is a religion" with exactly this example- the unthinking religious adherence to free market ideals and theories without actually understanding the math behind those theories.
I also think that's why nobody has paid attention to any Pope's economic theories for a century or two at this point, despite the very good sense in those seven documents I listed- because Catholic economics goes against treasured theories and rights that mainstream traders and brokers believe in.
-------------------------------------
Maximum jobs, not maximum profits.
I've become not-a-capitalist under the very pressures you've been yelling about- but I'm also not-a-communist. The problem, as I see it, is that price doesn't have enough bandwidth to convey enough information for the end consumer to make an informed choice. We try to make it up with lies, er, advertising, but price is held to be such a big signal that even name-brand advertising can't entirely overcome it.
What we need is a couple more channels of bandwidth to the end consumer. Country of Origin labeling laws are a stab at this, as is (gasp, they're doing something good) Wal*Mart's new Sustainability Index, which in six months will be on every shelf price tag at Wal*Mart, and due to their 700 lb gorilla status in retailing, will likely be on every store shelf in every store by 2020.
Perhaps we also need a quality index.
-------------------------------------
Maximum jobs, not maximum profits.
Also, the middle column is selected for other blogs which are really useful to our readers, fast moving content, we're not doing link exchange with them.
NDD while there might be some technical indicators I'd hardly call this rock raving statistics, esp. coupled with 1.5 million foreclosures with a projected 3.2 million in this year (excess inventory).
+GDP growth yeah sure but ya know, what is +1% really?
I mean that looks like a sideways L, |___ , a big muddled yuck, versus getting my 90's on and feeling happy.
I yelled about it for 25 years. I am a devout capitalist but I am not an idiot. When you give away the store you can't expect to maintain a healthy, robust, economic engine. Third world countries were always a people without capital and we are headed to the same fate.
What to do? I'm not at all big on government intervention and hope that the people can express our distaste of outsourcing at the cash register.
I still remember a world where quality mattered, where built in obsolescence was not a business model. How I long for those times!!!!!!
because it lowered prices a la Wal-Mart. But the problem was that free trade and globalization has reduced wages far more than the lower prices. To make up that deficit and to maintain a living standard people went into debt.
Hello.
I would like to put a link to your site on my blog roll if you want to do the same for mine. It would be a good way to build up both of our readerships.
thank you.
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