Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Clueless in Gaza II

“U.S. officials say they believe Hamas has been constrained by the Israeli operations, but that Israel will not be able to achieve, in the foreseeable future, its goal of eliminating the group’s military capability.” also “An Israeli military intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity under military protocol, said that Israel was engaged in […]

The Facts Don’t Care About Your Honor’s Feelings

His honor assumes a fact not in evidence. Ruth Marcus has an important op-ed which cites strong evidence that the party of the president who nominated federal judges helps one predict their opinions. I will fair use the important part. “Now comes an intriguing study by a Harvard Law School professor that buttresses my point: If anything, […]

Asymptotically we Will all be Dead

This will be a long boring post amplifying on my slogan “asymptotically we will all be dead.” I assert that asymptotic theory and asymptotic approximations have nothing useful to contribute to the study of statistics. I therefore reject that vast bul of mathematical statistics as absolutely worthless. To stress the positive, I think useful work […]

A Longgg Time Series of Safe Real Interest Rates

I learn from Brad DeLong (nickname delong run) that Paul Schmelzing has gone to a truly heroic effort and estimated safe real interest rates since 1310! The main point is the long slow decline (it is ironic that one of the stylized growth “facts” is that there is no clear trend in real interest rates. […]

The Bipartisan Military Aid and Border Security Bill Appears to be Dead. What now ?

The Republican Party has demonstrated it’s subservience to Donald Trump and rejection of policy making as such. In a sane country, this would doom the party to a very long period in opposition, but I am a citizen of the country I have not the country I want. I think the issues are well known, […]

The Roaring 20s II : This Time It’s Fiscal

In the Washington Post David Lynch (no not that David Lynch) reports that “Falling inflation, rising growth give U.S. the world’s best recovery.” lternative titles Handling the blue team with velvet gloves (not used as it alleges bias when the article merely reports the facts without Ballance (TM) for once) Twin Peaks (inflation and GDP […]

Visting www.nytimes.com I am shocked, shocked to find that editing is going on there.

My quest to detect evidence that the New York Times actually employs copy editors has arrived at success (a day late and an apology short). TI just discovered that today this article begins with the not absurdly incorrect abstract “Five universities have agreed to pay $104.5 million to settle a lawsuit accusing them of violating […]