Marginal Utility

by Ken Houghton

Have Lenny Dykstra and Beowulf Shaeffer ever been seen together?

Collateral question: Has Jim Cramer ever gotten anything correct?

Labels: baseball, Fraud, High Finance, Jim Cramer, Journamalism, Ponzi schemes

by Ken Houghton

Although ESPN is officially a, er, Sports Center that uses video, they appear not to be able to see themselves, judging by a paragraph in this piece:

Moore, then a forward with the Colorado Avalanche, suffered severe neck and head injuries in the March 8, 2004 incident, when Bertuzzi sucker punched him from behind, knocking him unconscious to the ice. Moore has not played professional hockey since.

As Joan Collins once observed, "A lie is a very poor way to say hello."

Long-time readers will know this is not the first time ESPN has told this lie. I'll say again what I said then:

Found the video on YouTube. No embedding, and not recommended for the faint of heart. This is a family blog.

ESPN's continued efforts to lie about this do it no favors.

Labels: abject horror, hockey, Journamalism

by Tom Bozzo

I sometimes joke that things that are too good for you must be dangerous, usually with respect to my collection of non-iron dress shirts. Hitting close to the shopping list for my next car, the NYT recently carried a story with the scaaaary headline, "Fear, but Few Facts, on Hybrid Risk."

The case of claimed Hybrid Health Syndrome is not the most compelling I could have read:

Neysa Linzer, 58, of Bulls Head in Staten Island, bought a new Honda Civic Hybrid in 2007 for the 200 miles a week she drove to visit grocery stores in her merchandising job for a supermarket chain. She said that the car reduced her gasoline use, but there were problems — her blood pressure rose and she fell asleep at the wheel three times, narrowly averting accidents.

“I never had a sleepiness problem before,” Ms. Linzer said, adding that it was her own conclusion, not a doctor’s, that the car was causing the symptoms.

No kidding. I'm curious as to whether this was the only story the reporter Jim Motavalli could find, or just the best. Ms. Linzer's "wellness consultant" just might be doing her a disservice by encouraging the belief that there's a stronger causal nexus between the car and those symptoms than, say, aging.

The extra journamalistic touch is here:

Their concern is not without merit; agencies including the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute acknowledge the potential hazards of long-term exposure to a strong electromagnetic field, or E.M.F., and have done studies on the association of cancer risks with living near high-voltage utility lines.

Bob Park reminds us what the NCI study of long-term exposure to EMF actually found:

On July 3, 1997, the day the massive four-year NCI study of power lines and cancer appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, Gina Kolata reported in the Times that the study was unambiguous and found no health effects associated with electromagnetic fields. An editorial in the same issue of the Journal put it in perspective: "Hundreds of millions of dollars have gone into studies that never had much promise of finding a way to prevent the tragedy of cancer in children. It is time to stop wasting our research resources."

I suppose hybrids will eventually be certified to some EMF standard as a matter of lawsuit avoidance. But I don't think I'll lose sleep over the prospect of adding yet another Prius to Madison's streets.

Labels: Journamalism, Trains Planes and Automobiles

by Ken Houghton

If you're going to read people (such as David Brooks) so I don't have to, could the excerpts please be shorter??

Five years? My brain hurts, a lot.

Labels: blogging, Brad DeLong, Journamalism, Meta

by Ken Houghton

But I can live with that, if Joe "I killed my intern and didn't get caught" Scarborough is calling this the standard:

Scarborough said: "You know Willie, the thing is, Americans want their president, if it's a man, to be a real man." He added, "You get 150, you're a man, or a good woman," to which Geist replied, "Out of my president, I want a 150, at least." After guest Harold Ford Jr. said that Obama's bowling showed a "humble" and "human" side to him, Scarborough replied, "A very human side? A prissy side."

(via Dr. Black)

Labels: Journamalism, just life, Politics

by Ken Houghton

Jim Cramer's column in Metro this morning was singing the praises of Toll Brothers and Ryland, another homebuilder. So it is probably only right that CR finds this:

The little bit of good news was KB Home's cancellation rate improved slightly (similar to other builders):

The Company’s cancellation rate improved to 53% in the first quarter of 2008 compared to 58% in the fourth quarter of 2007.

After his BSC call, I didn't think there was anywhere else for him to go. But clearly he's "Workin' in a Coal Mine":

Workin' in a coal mine
Goin' down down down
Workin' in a coal mine
Whop! about to slip down

Added: A Yahoo! Finance graphic for the optimists who think there may be more to Residential Housing than the general market:

Just for giggles, here's the three builders, over the past year, vs. the S&P500 Index:

UPDATE: My Loyal Reader, whose sense of time comes from a Mark Thoma link, recommends "the original" video.

Labels: High Finance, Housing Bubble, Journamalism

by Tom Bozzo

Hullaballoo's dday recommends an L.A. Times article by Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, "Presidential hopefuls are mum on Medicare and Social Security woes," as a "dumb article" And indeed it is.

As dday notes, Social Security is not a particularly urgent problem (though more on that in a moment), and there might just be a problem or two or three that's more urgent than the need to come up with money to plug a gap between payroll taxes and Social Security benefits in the 2040s. On Medicare, the Democratic candidates would deal with the issue in large part through more comprehensive health care reforms. So they are not so much mum.

In fact, one of the first (if passing) waves of Obama disillusionment resulted from his talking about Social Security using what might be viewed as be Republican frames. Moreover, while Alonso-Zaldivar remarks that

The two programs on which millions of elderly Americans depend are apparently just too hot to handle -- especially since any realistic solution is likely to involve a politically unpalatable mix of higher taxes and lower benefits.

this esoteric Intertubal resource called BarackObama.com contains a Web page containing the following words, quoted verbatim:

Obama believes that the first place to look for ways to strengthen Social Security is the payroll tax system. Currently, the Social Security payroll tax applies to only the first $97,500 a worker makes. Obama supports increasing the maximum amount of earnings covered by Social Security and he will work with Congress and the American people to choose a payroll tax reform package that will keep Social Security solvent for at least the next half century.

So, exactly contrary to the article, Social Security is not too hot for Obama to propose a "realistic solution." By the way, this solution is what put me back on the bandwagon, as the very smart Robert Waldmann reminded me some time back that raising taxes on the well-to-do isn't exactly the Republican way of dealing with this sort of thing. (The real Social Security funding issue is that the Bush tax cuts took the money that would repay the bonds held in the Lockbox and gave it to upper-income taxpayers via the tax "cuts." While in a world of magic ponies, I'd prefer to address the issue through the income tax system rather than the payroll tax system — since it's through the latter that IMHO needless tax preferences for capital income can be ended — the bottom line is that money is fungible and removing the cap on the Social Security tax is a big step to extracting the needed funds from the right people.)

And where would we be without the obligatory fluffing of Saint John McCain for a seemingly sensible position he doesn't actually hold? Writes Alonso-Zalvidar:

Of the three candidates, McCain is running as the most fiscally conservative. He criticized the Medicare prescription benefit when it was created in 2003, saying that Congress and President Bush failed to provide for the long-term cost.

Now, what does Candidate McCain say? Again, turning to the Internets:

Lower Medicare Premiums: Seniors face a growing threat from higher Medicare premiums that tax away their Social Security and retirement savings. [emphasis in original]

This is styled as a "retirement tax cut." By taking money out of the system, McCain would make the funding problem worse in exactly the sort of pander that Alonso-Zalvidar is supposed to be criticizing. Moreover, what about the rest of the "fiscally conservative" McCain platform? We have promises to:

• eliminate the AMT
• make permanent the Bush tax cuts (which he was against before he was for them, natch)
• cut corporate tax rates and change the tax treatment of equipment depreciation
  
• not impose a slew of other taxes

which he would offset by

• eliminat[ing] earmarks, wasteful subsidies, and pork-barrel spending
• eliminat[ing] earmarks, wasteful subsidies, and pork-barrel spending (Really, it says that twice! Yet even Gail Collins knows this isn't a major component of federal spending)
  
• reforming military procurement practices (fine, but hardly an offset to an indefinite commitment to the Gulf War II)
• partially privatizing Social Security (which also costs A Lot).

In short, the "fiscal conservative" McCain would reduce federal government revenues by trillions of dollars over the infinite horizon, spend trillions more on the war and Social Security bamboozlement, and save a few billion here and there via the trivial Waste, Fraud and Abuse play. Evidently, fiscal conservatism doesn't mean what it used to. (Over at Media Matters, they were thinking much the same thing.)

Labels: Journamalism, social security

by Tom Bozzo

Headline to Lou Uchitelle's story in the NYT: "A Political Comeback: Supply-Side Economics."

There are a couple of almost useful pieces of information in the story. One is that Arthur Laffer is a "special adviser" on John McCain's crack economics team, otherwise populated by such luminaries as Phil "even his friends don't like him" Gramm and Kevin "Dow 36,000" Hassett. Who's next, Donald Luskin?

The other is that Martin Feldstein, also a McCainiac, is wildly overoptimistic about the supply-side benefits of tax cuts, suggesting that they might offset 50 to 70 percent of the static revenue loss. The real figure is no more than 10 percent.

Labels: Journamalism, Voodoo economics

by Ken Houghton

IOC's Rogge employing 'silent diplomacy' with China-Tibet protests

King Kaufman at Salon, of all people, gives the lie to that claim, while Richard Sandomir of the NYT proves that there are still signs of life there.

But why is it the sports beats that deal with the international issues, with others discussing the situation only when French Prime Minister Sarkozy threatens to boycott the Opening Ceremonies?

Labels: Economic Development, FDI, Journamalism, sports

by Tom Bozzo

I conclude that, because NPR was expending its scarce time telling me that I should care what some guy named Jeremiah Wright was telling his congregation five years ago.

It does seem that the DFHs have other perspectives on our situation.

Labels: Journamalism

by Tom Bozzo

Ripped from today's headlines...



Isn't it amazing how — amid all these signs of the economy headed down the toilet — the indefatigable Wall Streeters can reportedly find solace in the predictions of a firm which, in the most charitable reading, was blindsided by the need for the asset write-downs to date.

Dean Baker will, no doubt, find endless blog material among people who somehow managed not to see the commercial real estate crash coming.

Labels: High Finance, Journamalism

by Ken Houghton

But there is always the exception:

Clinton versus Obama is shaping up as one of the titanic clashes of recent history, note experts. It's Walter Mondale against Gary Hart in 1984, Jimmy Carter versus Ted Kennedy in 1980, even John F. Kennedy versus Lyndon B. Johnson in 1960 – rolled into one.

1984 was so close that Gary Hart received just over 30% of the delegates, while the "primaries" of 1960 were clearly secondary in decision-making to the convention itself (Note, for instance, that Richard Nixon got more votes in the Democratic primaries than LBJ did.)

Of 1980, Kennedy/Carter revealed the weakness of the incumbent and led to one of Kennedy's best, most prescient speeches ever:

The Grand Old Party thinks it has found a great new trick, but 40 years ago an earlier generation of Republicans attempted the same trick. And Franklin Roosevelt himself replied, "Most Republican leaders have bitterly fought and blocked the forward surge of average men and women in their pursuit of happiness. Let us not be deluded that overnight those leaders have suddenly become the friends of average men and women."

"You know," he continued, "very few of us are that gullible." And four years later when the Republicans tried that trick again, Franklin Roosevelt asked "Can the Old Guard pass itself off as the New Deal? I think not. We have all seen many marvelous stunts in the circus, but no performing elephant could turn a handspring without falling flat on its back."

The 1980 Republican convention was awash with crocodile tears for our economic distress, but it is by their long record and not their recent words that you shall know them....

Eight years later, Lloyd Bentsen noted:

You know, if you let me write $200 billion worth of hot checks every year, I could give you an illusion of prosperity, too. (Laughter and applause) This is an administration that has more than doubled the national debt, and they've done that in less than eight years. They have taken this country from the No. 1 lender nation in the world to the No. 1 debtor nation in the world. And the interest on that debt next year, on this Reagan-Bush debt of our nation, is going to be $640 for every man, woman, and child in America because of this kind of a credit-card mentality. So we go out and we try to sell our securities every week, and hope that the foreigners will buy them. And they do buy them. But every time they do, we lose some of our economic independence for the future.

Which is why another CSM article is so scary, just in its header:

Congress is likely to try other economic boosts. The GOP wants to extend the Bush tax cuts set to expire in 2010.

Which will it be?

Labels: 2008, Economics, Journamalism, Politics

by Ken Houghton

Via ESPN came the claim that some Penn professors "refute[d]" the report that Roger Clemens's late-career performance for the past decade was not unique.

This gets us to the Freakonomics blog, with a guest post from Justin Wolfers, which gives credence to Daniel Davies description of the book's central conceit:

So, for example, sumo wrestlers are "cheating" because wrestlers who need to win a bout to stay in the top league do statistically significantly better when fighting wrestlers for whom the match is a dead rubber. Not "taking sensible steps to minimise the risk of injury". Not "following unwritten social conventions of the sport". Not anything else, but "cheating", and most likely doing so because of bribery and corruption from betting syndicates.

Why do I have such a reaction? From Wolfers say in his guest post:

There’s a pretty neat trick at work [in the report from Clemens's attorneys]: if you compare Clemens only to those who had a terrific last decade of their careers, then the last decade of Clemens’ career doesn’t look that unusual....

So we put together data on all 31 other pitchers since 1968 who started at least 10 games in at least 15 seasons and have pitched at least 3,000 innings...

To be clear, we don’t know whether Roger Clemens took steroids or not. But to argue that somehow the statistical record proves that he didn’t is simply dishonest, incompetent, or both. If anything, the very same data presented in the report — if analyzed properly — tends to suggest an unusual reversal of fortune for Clemens at around age 36 or 37, which is when the Mitchell Report suggests that, well, something funny was going on. [emphases mine]

and, from the NYT tarringarticle:

Other measures suggest Clemens performed similarly to his contemporaries. But these comparisons do not provide evidence of his innocence; they simply fail to provide evidence of his guilt.

and ends by giving the lie to their own lie:

Statistics provide powerful tools for understanding the world around us, but the value of any analysis invariably comes down to choosing a useful statistic and an appropriate comparison group. Statisticians-for-hire have a tendency to choose comparison groups that support their clients. A careful analysis, and a better informed public, are the best defense against such smoke and mirrors. [again, emphases mine]

You would think, from this, that the evidence presented by the Penn professors and Mr. Wolfers would be somehow sacrosanct, a Holy Grail, a definitive "smackdown" to make Brad DeLong proud.

Instead, we get "all 31 other pitchers since 1968 who started at least 10 games in at least 15 seasons, and pitched at least 3,000 innings." Now, some of these are Hall of Famers: Dennis Eckersley but maybe not Steve Carlton (career began in 1965), and if Carlton, then Doyle Alexander, Charlie Hough, Milt Pappas, Joe Niekro, Chuck Finley, Danny Darwin, Mike Mussina, and Jamie Moyer, to name a few from this site.

In short, most of those 31 pitchers aren't people whose career, up until the age of 33, compares to Clemens. Which is why—not to put too fine a point on it—the Wolfers graphic for walks and hits per innings pitched looks more like an Edgeworth Box than a statistical analysis.

The authors are careful not to name the pitchers in their sample. But they are perfectly willing to cast aspersions on the sample that named pitchers, since the pitchers named—Ryan, Randy Johnson—are generally presumed above suspicion and have early careers rather closer to Clemens's than the Charlie Houghs and Danny Darwins and Jamie Moyers ever were.

So the "statisticians" managed to show that Clemens's final decade is an outlier. But their own graphics shows that Clemens's career is an outlier from their smoothed data. You might think from this that they would know that their comparison was rather suspect.

From their text, they clearly knew it. Also from their text, they didn't and don't care. They got to cast aspersions, got published in the NYT, got pushed on ESPN, and got a nice writeup on the Freakonomics blog.

Let's look at their last sentence again:

A careful analysis, and a better informed public, are the best defense against such smoke and mirrors.

That would be nice. I wonder: do the authors intend to do one?

Labels: baseball, Economics, Journamalism, Statistics

by Ken Houghton

Mark Kleiman blew some smoke a couple of days ago, catching, among others, the normally-brilliant Battlepanda with his "I'm a pundit, I don't have to know anything" post.

More on that one later, but let's do a high-level comparison. Kleiman lets Harold Pollack attack the Gruber paper. Why? Because of this (inane and unworthy of even a Huffington Post contributor; see later post) quote:

In particular I assume that 95% of those who would not voluntarily choose to insure are forced to insure through the mandate.

So we are left to wonder whether he will now attack the Obama campaign and David Cutler in the same manner, after Cutler declared (via Brad DeLong):

Our estimates, based on studies in the literature, is that we can get 98% or 99% coverage without a mandate for adults. There may be some small pockets of people who choose not to buy it.

I'll wait patiently for Kleiman to realise that Cutler's estimate has the same basis as Gruber's, with much less empirical data to support it.

UPDATE: Let's put the best spin possible on this. Cutler assumes a 98-99% adoption rate wihtout mandates. In the discussion, he declares:

If there are free riders, Obama is open to mandates....

Richard Eskow: Would mandates be considered at that point?

David Cutler: He hasn't ruled anything out. It's a matter of priorities. The fact is, the policy differences on the mandate issue aren't that large at all. Sen. Obama believes they're an option down the road, if other approaches don't work.

Let us leave aside that what Senator Obama believes doesn't match with his advertisements or his public statements (Krugman's point here and here), which implies either Cutler isn't as deeply in the loop as he appears to be, or Obama isn't so good a politician as the world believes he is.*

Cutler is essentially saying, "Yes, mandates would increase the participation rate, but we would prefer not to use them." Gruber is saying, "Mandates should improve the participation rate—especially given that the enforcement mechanisms are already in place—so I'll make a reasonable assumption that, even with them, there will still be a small fraction of the populace that will remain uninsured.**"

But the former assumes a significantly higher adoption rate than the latter, even though both agree that a Mandate would insure more people.

*And, yes, I do fit in that world.

**Indeed, if we assume sufficiently high income and a sufficiently safe lifestyle, insurance could become an unnecessary expense. Bill Gates, for instance, could pay for all the health care he needs out of petty cash.

Labels: Health Care, Journamalism, Politics

by Ken Houghton

Katie Couric "informed" her audience around 9:00pm that ObamaNation had "closed the entire gap" here in the great state of New Jersey (it's a 10-point gap as I type, with the state called for Clinton before then), while the other insane septuagenarian won the entire "tri-state" (New York and its two rich suburbs) because of the support of Rudy G.

In other news, I was voter #286 in my precinct tonight, nearly an hour before the polls closed. I don't believe I've ever had that high a number before, so maybe there is something to the rumors of the Obama turnout.

Then again, for those whose memory is better than Katie Colonoscopy's: remind me again how many Republicans won a House or Senate election in 2006?

Labels: Journamalism, Politics, Republicans

by Ken Houghton

On CNBC right now: my old friend Larry Kudlow speaking with Ben Stein on how the Fed is "saving" the economy.

Labels: Economics, Journamalism, The Old Firm

by Ken Houghton

UPDATE: Brad DeLong and Scott at LG&M both point to Spencer Ackerman, who got all the way through the piece and found it even worse than I thought.

The New York Times Public Editor describes their editorial columnists:

I agree with their effort to address an Op-Ed lineup that, until Kristol came aboard, was at least six liberals against one conservative who isn’t always all that conservative.

Six liberals?? Bob Herbert, yes, in that he often speaks for the underrepresented. Krugman has been radicalized by the Administration's incompetence, which I guess in Clark Hoyt's mind is the same thing. (So has John Cole, and I doubt many would confuse his entire oeuvre as "liberal."). Frank Rich is more of a bloviator, but let's put him in the category as well.

That's three. Who are the other three? Maureen "Michael Douglas chose Catherine Zeta-Jones over me and I don't know why" Dowd? Roger Cohen and Gail Collins, who between them have never seen a civil liberty they liked or a country that shouldn't be invaded? Caitlin Flanagan, whose most recent piece will be dissected by Bean and Melissa and the Usual Suspects, so I don't have to? [UPDATE: Bean, as expected, was Already on the Case. And Scott had an early pointer.] Is Hoyt counting Olivia Judson, since she writes about science, and believing that the world existed before September of 4004 BCE has become exclusive to "liberals"? Or Tom "my brain is flat" Friedman?

We have to assume that Hoyt—who used to know better—considers Friedman, Dowd, and Collins to be "liberals," while former Weakly Standard columnist Brooks "isn’t always all that conservative" (a statement that, if it were true, would appear to speak ill of Mr. Kristol's perceptions, skills, and possibly hiring practices).

Can someone please define "liberal"—a word Hoyt also uses to disparage his commenters—in such a way that Hoyt's definition is both (1) viable and (2) not restricted to "would be able to be printed without editing in The Weekly Standard"?

Labels: Journamalism, NYT, Politics

by Ken Houghton

Via Dr. Black Thers, David Ignatius explains "close to unanimity":

By 1996 the percentage willing to vote for a black candidate reached 93 percent, so close to unanimity that the survey dropped the question.

Labels: analytics, Economics, Journamalism, Statistics

by Ken Houghton

Via Infectious Greed, Breaking Views argues that privacy is dead.

Now, don't get me wrong. Charles Platt has been making this argument for over a decade. But Robert Cryan and Jeff Segal resort to a strange argument to "make" their point:

Just look at Google's free e-mail service, Gmail. Google mines messages so that it can insert context-related advertising. Just a few years ago, this seemed like an outrageous incursion into privacy. Now, Gmail is common, and the number of accounts doubled in the past year. [emphasis mine]

What else happened in the past year? GMail became available to anyone, not just people who were recommended to the service.

What should be amazing is if GMail only doubled in the past year. If it was already reaching 50% of its near-term potential audience before "going public," then there is good reason that Google now depends primarily on non-US sources for its revenue.

Labels: Journamalism, technology

by Ken Houghton

FiOS description of The Big One:

PG-13. 1997. Biased documentary analyzes the idiocy of corporate layoffs in the wake of record profits, with attempts at surprise interviews with executives. Director: Michael Moore

Strangely, looking at the film, there are no attempts at "surprise" interviews.

Labels: Journamalism, mass media