Utopia, you are standing in it!

Three weeks I wrote a blog post about how economists define a recession. I pretty quickly brushed aside the “two consecutive quarters of declining GDP,” since this is not the definition that NBER uses. But since that post (and thanks to a similar blog post from the White House the day after mine), there has been an ongoing debate among economists on social media about how we define recessions. And some economists and others in the media have insisted that the “two quarters” rule is a useful rule of thumb that is often used in textbooks.

It is absolutely true that you can find this “two quarters” rule mentioned in some economics textbooks. Occasionally, it is even part of the definition of a recession. But to try and move this debate forward, I collected as many examples as I could find from recent introductory economics textbooks. I tried to…

The Peace of Westphalia is the collective name for two peace treaties signed in October 1648 in the Westphalian cities of Osnabrück and Münster. They ended the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648) and Eighty Years’ War (1568–1648), and brought peace to the Holy Roman Empire, closing a calamitous period of European history that killed approximately eight million people.

Despite resulting cessation of the Thirty Years War, the Peace of Westphalia was a significant step in the decline of the Holy Roman Empire.

The Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III, Felipe IV-III, King of Spain and Portugal, Louis XIV of France and Navarre, Christina, Queen of Sweden, Willem II, Prince of Orange, United Provinces (Netherlands), and their respective allies were among the princes of the Holy Roman Empire participated in these treaties.

The negotiation process was lengthy and complex. Talks took place in two cities, because each side wanted to meet on…

The German government’s cultish obsession with wind and solar is a mixture of wishful thinking and mass delusion. Both have collided with reality as Vlad Putin continues to put the squeeze on Europe’s gas supplies – gas which has been used to run the banks of fast-start-up gas turbines essential to backing up mammoth, sudden and unpredictable collapses in wind and solar output.

Brave talk about wiping out nuclear and coal-fired power plants has largely evaporated.

And one German State’s Prime Minister, Michael Kretschmer has come out and said what everyone has known all along: Germany’s asserted wind and solar transition is nothing short of a failure – one designed by dimwitted ideologues and cunning profiteers.

Energy Crisis: State Prime Minister Declares Green Energy Transition Has ‘Failed’
Breitbart
Peter Caddle
1 August 2022

Germany’s green energy transition from carbon fuels and nuclear energy to renewables has “failed”, a state Prime…

August 09,2022

The FBI’s raid of the former president’s home is apparently part of an ongoing investigation by the National Archives and Records Administration. Meanwhile, the current president’s recent accomplishments are being celebrated online with “Dark Brandon” memes.

Guest post by Jennifer Lodine-Chaffey, 9 August 2022.

Critical attention to early modern execution narratives has focused primarily on men’s gallows speeches and their behavior on the scaffold, tending to overlook the unique experiences of women executed in Tudor and Stuart England.^[1] A man’s execution performance was often viewed as a test of his manhood. According to historian Anthony Fletcher, men were expected to learn and perform “a social role, founded upon self-mastery and rational behaviour.”^[2] Thus, when providing their final speeches and facing public execution, men endeavored to display manly courage. Witnesses judged men’s execution behavior not only on their displays of contrition and godliness but also on their show of manliness, which included a lack of fear, an upright carriage, a loud voice, and masculine eloquence. But what of women?

Like their male counterparts, the women who suffered public execution during this era were not all…

As described below, when climate scientists removed the warming factors they chose to create in their models, the results showed lower temperatures. They seem unaware or uninterested that this proves little or nothing, but label it science anyway and say their studies attribute most of the blame for any observed warming to human factors.
– – –
Since 1880, the average global temperature on Earth has increased by at least 1.1 °C. The culprit? Climate change, of course, asserts Phys.org.

Getting hotter, faster

According to findings released by the World Weather Attribution (WWA) initiative, a global collaboration between climate scientists and specialists, the record temperatures would have been up to 4 °C cooler without human-caused climate change.

The hottest day ever (40.3 °C) in the UK was registered on 19 July. The WWA analysis also claims [sic] that climate change made this heatwave 10 times more likely.
. …

Last month Eric Basmajian published “Why Demographics Matter More Than Anything (For The Long Term)” on the financial site Seeking Alpha. He predicts that that the developed world plus China face a future of low economic growth (regardless of policy machinations) due simply to demographics. His key points:

Demographics are the most important factor for long-term analysis.

The young and old age cohorts negatively impact economic growth.

The prime-age population (25-64) drives the bulk of economic activity.

The world’s major economies are suffering from lower population growth and an older population.

Over the long run, the world’s major economies will have worse economic growth, which will negatively impact pro-cyclical asset prices (like stocks).

I will paste in some of his supporting charts. First, the labor force is more or less proportional to the 25-64 age cohort (U.S. data shown) :

…and GDP growth trends with labor force growth:

If climate change is a problem, then wind turbines and solar panels aren’t a solution: heavily subsidised and unreliable wind and solar are an economic and environmental disaster.

When climate alarmists managed to hijack energy (and with it economic) policy it was a case of lunatics taking over the asylum. In every breath, they exhort us that immediate action must be taken to prevent runaway climate change. Where “action” means – and only ever means – more (indeed endless) subsidies for wind turbines and solar panels to generate chaotically intermittent electricity at exorbitant cost.

In the veritable blink of an eye, hysterical claims about cataclysmic global warming and imminent catastrophe managed to capture the imagination of the anxious, fretful and foolish. Sadly, while a few sought to throw a bucket on the more ludicrous claims made by furtive doomsdayers, plenty of otherwise sensible characters went along with the herd.

STT…

Edward VII (Albert Edward; November 9, 1841 – May 6, 1910) was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from January 22, 1901 until his death in 1910.

The eldest son of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and nicknamed “Bertie”, Edward was related to royalty throughout Europe. He was Prince of Wales and heir apparent to the British throne for almost 60 years.

During the long reign of his mother, he was largely excluded from political influence and came to personify the fashionable, leisured elite. He travelled throughout Britain performing ceremonial public duties and represented Britain on visits abroad. His tours of North America in 1860 and of the Indian subcontinent in 1875 proved popular successes, but despite public approval, his reputation as a playboy prince…

Olivia Newton-John has died:

Born in Cambridge in 1948, Newton-John and her two siblings – the grandchildren of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Max Born – moved to Australia with their parents when she was just 5. It was there that she won a trip to London on television talent contest. The appearance would lead to numerous spots on local Australian programs before she redeemed her prize and traveled back to the U.K.

In London, Newton-John began touring as one-half of Pat & Olivia – her act with Pat Farrar. By 1971 though, Newton-John’s solo career had kicked off. Two albums – If Not For You and Olivia – followed in quick succession, before 1973’s Let Me Be There certified her star status in the U.K. and the U.S. The title track won Newton-John her first Grammy, for best female country vocal performance.

The next year, Newton-John collected two more Grammys…

One of the foundational principles of the Holy Roman Empire is that the Emperor was the preeminent Monarch throughout Europe and that the Empire itself was a genuine extension of the ancient Roman Empire as proclaimed by the Roman Catholic popes.

Not only did the Holy Roman Emperors hold to the contention that they were the preeminent Monarch throughout Europe, they firmly asserted that they were the only Emperor’s entitled to hold the title of Emperor within Europe.

The problem with this view was the fact that throughout the history of the Empire other Emperors began to rise within Europe. Eventually they were formally recognized as Emperors by the Holy Roman Empire. The first was in 1606 when Sultan Ahmed I was recognized as Emperor in the Peace of Zsitvatörök which concluded a long war with Austria.

When Czar Peter I the Great of Russia was created Emperor…

August 05,2022

Denmark’s government is being criticised for its plans to eradicate disadvantaged neighbourhoods. A set of laws, controversially called the ‘ghetto package’, was introduced in 2018. It aims to transform areas with high rates of crime and unemployment. But rights groups say immigrant communities are being unfairly singled out. Denmark has been tightening its rules for immigrants and asylum seekers, including revoking the resident permits of some Syrian refugees. But are accusations of racism justified?

Presenter: Mohammed Jamjoom Guests: Muhammad Aslam – Chairman, Mjolnerparken Residents’ Association. Fatma Tounsi – Co-founder of Almen Modstand, an organisation campaigning against the ‘anti-ghetto laws’.

Bill Barr’s latest stop on his redemption tour as he seeks to justify himself. Not impressed by Peter Robinson in this episode. Some elements of self justification were nauseating.

Update: see this re Dana Milbank article in WaPo debunking Barr

Recorded May 17, 2022

William P. Barr is one of only two people to have served as attorney general of the United States under two presidents and the only one to have done it in two different centuries (under George H. W. Bush from 1991 to 1993 and under Donald Trump from 2019 to 2020). In his new book, One Damn Thing after Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General, Barr goes into great detail about the chaos, the troubles, and the triumph that occurred during the time of his service under President Trump. This wide-ranging interview covers Russiagate, the COVID outbreak, civil unrest, the impeachment, and the 2020 election…