You must read the maps showing with his tweets.
This gives you hope when idiots like this can be recruited by the Jihadists. This tosser is not the first moron recruited into their ranks with their locator button on in their twitter account.
ISIS sympathizer’s road to jihad — from Canada to Syria to Iraq — tracked one Tweet at a time
31 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, war and peace Tags: ISIS, Middle-East politics, Twitter, war on terror
Link to share: Blasphemous artwork removed from Paris exhibition (due to Islamist threats)
30 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of religion, liberalism, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: Blasphemy, Censorship, free speech, freedom from religion, Freedom of religion, religious bigotry, religious tolerance, terrorism, The Age of Enlightenment
Democrats See Large Distinctions Between Parties | Pew Research Center for the People and the Press
30 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in politics - USA Tags: bipartisanship
The success of monetarism and the death of the correlation between monetary growth and inflation
30 Jan 2015 1 Comment
in business cycles, econometerics, economics of bureaucracy, economics of information, inflation targeting, macroeconomics, Milton Friedman, monetarism, monetary economics, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: lags on monetary policy, Levis Kochin, monetary policy
Monetarists blame fluctuations in inflation on excessively volatile growth in monetary aggregates. In 1982, Friedman defined monetarism in an essay on defining monetarism as follows:
Like many other monetarists, I have concluded that the most important thing is to keep monetary policy from doing harm.
We believe that a steady rate of monetary growth would promote economic stability and that a moderate rate of monetary growth would prevent inflation
The U.S. data supported this hypothesis about the volatility of monetary growth and inflationuntil 1982, but since 1983 monetary aggregates have been essentially uncorrelated with subsequent inflation in the U.S.
Levis Kochin pointed out in 1979 that a well designed monetary policy would lead to zero correlation between any measure of monetary policy and subsequent inflation. The reason for this is the correlation between any variable and a constant is zero.
If monetary growth is stable, say, a constant growth rate of 4% per year, as advocated by Milton Friedman, monetary growth will have no correlations with any variable:
Poole (1993, 1994) and Tanner (1993) also argue that one predictable consequence of optimal monetary policy is that the correlation between monetary policy instruments and policy goals will be driven to zero.
Poole further contends that it is obvious to any careful reader of Theil (1964) that optimally variable policy will give rise to a zero correlation between policy and goal variable…
In 1966 Alan Walters, a U.K. monetarist, observed:
If the [monetary] authority was perfectly successful then we should observe variations in the rate of change of the stock of money but not variations in the rate of change of income… [a]ssuming that the authority’s objective is to stabilize the growth of income.
Milton Friedman in 2003, wrote about how the Fed acquired a good thermostat:
The contrast between the periods before and after the middle of the 1980s is remarkable.
Before, it is like a chart of the temperature in a room without a thermostat in a location with very variable climate; after, it is like the temperature in the same room but with a reasonably good though not perfect thermostat, and one that is set to a gradually declining temperature.
Sometime around 1985, the Fed appears to have acquired the thermostat that it had been seeking the whole of its life…
Prior to the 1980s, the Fed got into trouble because it generated wide fluctuations in monetary growth per unit of output. Far from promoting price stability, it was itself a major source of instability as Chart 1 illustrates.
Yet since the mid ’80s, it has managed to control the money supply in such a way as to offset changes not only in output but also in velocity.
Nick Rowe explained the difficulty of causation and correlation under different policy regimes and Milton Friedman’s thermostat superbly as an econometric problem Nick Rowe:
If a house has a good thermostat, we should observe a strong negative correlation between the amount of oil burned in the furnace (M), and the outside temperature (V).
But we should observe no correlation between the amount of oil burned in the furnace (M) and the inside temperature (P). And we should observe no correlation between the outside temperature (V) and the inside temperature (P).
An econometrician, observing the data, concludes that the amount of oil burned had no effect on the inside temperature. Neither did the outside temperature. The only effect of burning oil seemed to be that it reduced the outside temperature. An increase in M will cause a decline in V, and have no effect on P.
A second econometrician, observing the same data, concludes that causality runs in the opposite direction. The only effect of an increase in outside temperature is to reduce the amount of oil burned. An increase in V will cause a decline in M, and have no effect on P.
But both agree that M and V are irrelevant for P. They switch off the furnace, and stop wasting their money on oil.
Subsequent work of Levis Kochin showed that if the effects of fluctuations in monetary aggregates were not precisely known then the optimal policy would produce negative correlations between monetary aggregates and inflation:
The negative correlation results from coefficient uncertainty because the less certain we are about the size of a multiplier, the more cautious we should be in the application of the associated policy instrument.
Therefore, although optimal policy leads to lack of correlation between the goal and control variables if the coefficient is known, it will lead to a negative relationship if there is coefficient uncertainty. The higher the uncertainty, the more cautious will be the optimal policy response. Also, if the control variable can’t be controlled perfectly then the correlation between the goal and the control variable becomes positive i.e., the control errors are random…
Uncertainty about the impact of a policy will stay the hand of any bureaucrat , much less a central banker, as Kochin and his co-author explain:
Uncertainty should lead to less policy action by the policymakers. The less policymakers are informed about the relevant parameters, the less activist the policy should be. With poor information about the effects of policy, very active policy runs a higher danger of introducing unnecessary fluctuations in the economy.
A great hard left critique of the Greens
30 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in environmentalism, Marxist economics, politics - New Zealand Tags: activists, do gooders, expressive voting, Leftover Left, The Greens, UK politics
History of cultural bias has led to a lack of diversity in green and left-wing groups
29 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in occupational choice, personnel economics, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: activists, Greens, Inner-city Left, Leftover Left
Minorities represent nearly 40 percent of Americans, yet account for fewer than 16 percent of workers at the government agencies, nongovernmental organizations called NGOs and foundations that were studied.
…Taylor wrote that an “unconscious bias” exists within the liberal and progressive culture of the groups, preserving a racially homogenous workplace. “Recruitment for new staff frequently occurs through word-of-mouth and informal networks,” the study said. “This makes it difficult for ethnic minorities, the working class, or anyone outside of traditional environmental networks to find out about job openings and apply for those jobs.”
What influence did Milton Friedman have on 1980s and 1990s Australian monetary policy?
29 Jan 2015 3 Comments
in F.A. Hayek, Milton Friedman, monetarism, politics - Australia Tags: conspiracy theorists, conspiratorial left, inflation targeting, monetary policy, vast right-wing conspiracy
The Hayek and Friedman Monday conferences on the ABC in 1976 and 1975 are still ruling the Australian policy roost, if some of the Left over Left in Australia are to be believed. Milton Friedman is said to have mesmerised several countries with a flying visit with his Svengali powers of persuasion.
When working at the next desk to a monetary policy section in the Australian Prime Minister’s Department in the late 1980s, I heard not a word of Friedman’s Svengali influence:
• The market determined interest rates, not the Reserve Bank was the mantra for several years. Joan Robinson would have been proud that her 1975 Monday conference was still holding the reins.
• Monetary policy was targeting the current account. Read Edwards’ biography of Keating and his extracts from very Keynesian Treasury briefings to Keating signed by David Morgan that reminded me of Keynesian macro101.
When as a commentator on a Treasury seminar paper in 1986, Peter Boxhall – fresh from the US and 1970s Chicago educated – suggested using monetary policy to reduce the inflation rate quickly to zero, David Morgan and Chris Higgins almost fell off their chairs. They had never heard of such radical ideas.
In their breathless protestations, neither were sufficiently in-tune with their Keynesian educations to remember the role of sticky wages or even the need for the monetary growth reductions to be gradual and, more importantly, credible as per Milton Freidman and as per Tom Sargent’s end of 4 big and two moderate inflations papers in the early 1980s.
I was far too junior to point to this gap in their analytical memories about the role of sticky wages, and I was having far too much fun watching the intellectual cream of Treasury senior management in full flight. (I read Friedman & Sargent much later).
Mendicant NZ artist denounces neoliberalism and tall poppy syndrome in same breath
28 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of media and culture, politics - New Zealand, rentseeking Tags: corporate welfare, green hypocrisy, Left-wing hypocrisy, neoliberalism, rent seeking, starving artists, tall poppy syndrome, Yes Prime Minister
Man Booker Prize author Eleanor Catton from New Zealand managed in the same interview in India to denounce the neoliberalism of New Zealand’s current government and then denounce the tall poppy syndrome that cuts down artistic elites such as herself down to size when they become successful.
At the moment, New Zealand, like Australia and Canada, (is dominated by) these neo-liberal, profit-obsessed, very shallow, very money-hungry politicians who do not care about culture
This is tremendous a hypocrisy: to denounce a neoliberal philosophy that supposedly favours the elite over the working class and then complain about members of the elite such as herself are not supported sufficiently from the taxpayers’ tough:
We have this strange cultural phenomenon called “tall poppy syndrome”; if you stand out, you will be cut down…
If you get success overseas then very often the local population can suddenly be very hard on you. Or the other problem is that the local population can take ownership of that success in a way that is strangely proprietal.
Catton manages to denounce neoliberalism and the capitalist competition that entails but then gets quite annoyed over the fact the successful people aren’t rewarded and recognised by the country.
What hypocrisy. She denounces neoliberalism and then complains about been cut down because of her success. If you’re an opponent of neoliberalism, there is some obligation on you to argue for a levelling of income and wealth, including your own.
It betrays an attitude towards individual achievement which is very, uncomfortable. It has to belong to everybody or the country really doesn’t want to know about it…
I’ve really struggled with my identity as a New Zealand writer. I feel uncomfortable being an ambassador for my country when my country is not doing as much as it could, especially for the intellectual world.
Catton is particularly upset over the fact that New Zealand is expected to share her fame with them some way. Obviously, Catton believes in private profits, private fame at social losses and public subsidies for the arts. Having to share what she earns is not part of her opposition to neoliberalism.
From each in accordance with their ability, to each in according to their need is the heart of the anti-neoliberal philosophy, or is it Robert Nozick’s capitalistic acts between consenting adults where it is from each as they choose, to each as they are chosen, especially if you’re a successful artist.
Such is the price neoliberalism is Eleanor Catton, like every other able-bodied adult, is expected to earn a living for themselves by producing something that someone wants a profitable global for them rather than expect a hand-out from the government simply because of the desire of the recipients to receive the money. In her case, her claim for government hand-outs is because she happens to be artistic.
Jim Hacker: “So they insult me and then expect me to give them more money?”
Sir Humphrey: “Yes, I must say it’s a rather undignified posture. But it is what artists always do: crawling towards the government on their knees, shaking their fists.”
Jim Hacker: “Beating me over the head with their begging bowls.”
Bernard Woolley: “Oh, I am sorry to be pedantic, Prime Minister, but they can’t beat you over the head if they’re on their knees. Unless of course they’ve got very long arms.”
Richest queue in India (world perhaps) and cronyism at its best..
28 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in growth disasters, growth miracles, politics - USA, Public Choice, rentseeking Tags: cronyism, India, President Obama, rent seeking
This picture is quite an interesting one. It shows India’s richest businessmen queuing to wait to meet US President Barack Obama patiently. It is ironical in many ways to see the rich and mighty queue like school children waiting for their score card or something. In many ways it is a score card of future where the chosen guys would either get to invest in US or be a partner of US money into India.
It clearly shows the power of politics. Those who keep talking of free markets and so on should see how politics dominates the game. At the end of the day, you have to get closer to the politique to see your empire grow.
But this is also an example of cronyism where business and politics get real close. Deals are signed amidst favorites and it is dubbed as competition. Most of cronyism happens behind the scenes and this is all…
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