by New Deal democrat

The producer vs. consumer sectors of the economy: a comparison

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Why negative transportation indexes don’t support a recession call

Every month for at least the past half year there is a spate of bearish economic commentary that relies upon one or both of two metrics: AAR rail carloads and/or the Cass Freight Index.

I have a post up at Seeking Alpha showing why the first measure is not a representative slice of transport as a whole, and the second has a history of being very volatile and with a slew of negative readings in the teeth of continuing expansions.

As usual, clicking on the link and reading helps reward me with a $ or two for my efforts.

Addendum: after I put together and posted the article, I came up with the idea of averaging the Cass Freight Index and the Dept. of Transportation’s Freight Index after adjusting for the former’s volatility (shown below). It gives us an even less noisy overview of the transportation sector, although it still does go negative during slowdowns without there being a recession. In any event, none of the current negative readings are sufficiently below zero to accord with recessionary readings over the indexes’ short history:

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Guns and Commas

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I have begun to keep a daily journal on my thoughts and feelings in the lead-up to my diagnosis and treatment of cancer, a dedifferentiated lymphosarcoma in the groin area.  Sharing these thoughts was not my first or second impulse until Bill encouraged me to keep notes of my progress and publish  them (from the  point of view on our medical system and the more personal journey in considering my own mortality and experience).

I have a second surgery scheduled for Jan. 27; and then about 4-6 weeks later, I start a course of radiation 5 days a week for 33 treatments.  I am greatful to have adequate insurance through medicare and medex blue cross/blue shield of MA. Dana Farber hospital has a bone cancer and sarcoma treatment center that has experience in my rather uncommon cancer and body location.  My surgery will be at the Brigham and Womans Hospital, which is the big building next to Dana Farber, since DF does not provide those services. There is a close coordination between staff.

My Dec. 2 surgery by a urologist at another excellent regional hospital (Newton-Wellesley) was part of an exploratory and diagnostic survey and included the removal of a ‘growth’ that also needed a biopsy, a needle biopsy being inadequate due to the nature of lipomas.  The first surgery turned into a more extensive 4 hour attempt at ‘clean margins’ which failed.  The Mass General Hospital was consulted on the biopsied samples. Newton Wellesly has close ties to MGH as the cancer was not easily recognized and the consult was needed.

My attention to detail is on purpose as it is a demonstration of the benefit of  living near world class hospitals, privelege of choice and access to them, and not worrying so far about the crushing cost if I had to pay out of pocket. This stands in contrast to what many Americans face in rural parts of the country.

I have notified most of the Bears; but, I want readers to know that Bill and Eric will be on top of things.

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(Dan here,,,at lunch the other day a friend asked about the great prices for stocks.  This post by Thomas Palley caught my attention as a well written post on the nuances between stocks and finance and the 80% who do not own many stocks and the economy of losers and winners. )

by Thomas Palley  (re-posted)

A Stock Market Boom is Not the Basis of Shared Prosperity

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C-SPAN

“In this first portion of day 3 of the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump, Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA), the lead House impeachment manager, began opening arguments by explaining the history of why the framers included impeachment in the Constitution. He then laid out the specifics of the charges against President Trump. Throughout his presentation, Representative Schiff used digital slides, graphics, and videos, including footage from House impeachment inquiry hearings as well as clips of remarks by the president and from White House Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney during a news conference. ”

Let me know what clips you wish to see. C-SPAN

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Covering Up The Coverup

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Like many liberals, I am encouraged by the new energy of progressives and the growing political support for progressive causes.  But I also share the common worry that the idealism of progressives is in danger of becoming self-defeating (see, e.g., Judis and Edsall for two recent discussions).  That’s a problem, because the stakes are high and we don’t have much room for error.

As I see it, progressive idealism today has two manifestations, one political, one economic.  Political idealism manifests itself in a reluctance to acknowledge the scale of the political challenges progressives face, the scorched-earth opposition that awaits us, and the need to find potential allies among the not-so-progressive and to design policies and arguments that can win them over.

On the economic side, idealism makes progressives reluctant to take policy design seriously.  For example, there is a big gap between progressives and economists (including progressive economists) on carbon pricing and other aspects of climate policy.  There is also a gap on fiscal and budgetary policy, and on many other issues.  To some extent, this simply reflects the unavoidable fact that non-economists always find economics counter-intuitive – if they didn’t, we wouldn’t need economists.  But the problem today goes beyond this.  There is a strong tendency to rely on moralistic thinking, to assume that every wrong has an easy remedy and that good intentions can solve any problem.  This goes along with a resistance to thinking about tradeoffs, costs, and market-oriented solutions like carbon pricing, and a tendency to favor command-and-control policies and to ignore fiscal constraints.  I suspect that we have right-wing economists and politicians to thank for this state of affairs, but whatever its cause the rejection of careful economic thinking on the left is real.

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Bloomberg’s Plan for Addressing Economic Inequality: not a wealth tax

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