Links for 2009-08-10

I spent the last week of July as a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, home to Macroblog and a number of superb economists. Their Center for Quantitative Economic Research is now going to be reporting my GDP-Based Recession Indicator Index, as you’ll see from following the link.

Jeff Miller has been looking carefully into the BLS birth-death adjustments (
[1],
[2],
[3]).

And I was interested in this story from the Wall Street Journal:

Houston-based Apache Corp. [APA] has agreed to provide natural gas for export to Asia through a proposed project in Canada, the latest sign that huge gas discoveries in North America are reshaping global energy markets. Kitimat LNG Inc., the Canadian company planning to build the liquefied-natural-gas export terminal in Kitimat, British Columbia, will announce Monday that Apache has become the second major North American gas producer to sign on to the project. Last month, another Houston-based gas producer, EOG Resources Inc., signed a similar deal….

“We’re confident that there’s going to be plenty of gas available for export for a long time,” said Greg Weeres, vice president of Pacific Northern Gas Ltd., which is planning to build a pipeline to supply gas to the Kitimat facility.

8 thoughts on “Links for 2009-08-10

  1. Chris Torchiana

    Too bad Congress can not get their act together and build more LNG terminals in the lower 48. Capital Investment = Jobs.

  2. Anon

    It ain’t congress it is;
    1) Mass delusion perpetrated by the Greens that we will somehow not need fossil fuels anymore – with windpower, solar and other crazy schemes to keep us warm and grow our food (and the preposterous idea that the climate and the world will end in some kind of catastrophe if we continue to use fossil fuels)
    2) NIMBY – everybody wants jobs but they don’t want industry in their back yard. So America is becoming a service industry where we make nothing, as everything is outsourced.

  3. kharris

    “Mass delusion perpetrated by the Greens that we will somehow not need fossil fuels anymore…”
    Wow. Wow. I sometimes stumble into the sort of fact-free discussion that spawns such thoughts, but I try not to stay for the conclusion. The notion that the combination of policy and private interest that drives the massive investment needed for an LNG facility is held hostage to that belief? That “mass delusion”? There is no such mass delusion. That’s nonsense.

  4. kharris

    By the way, Jeff Miller may have made a mistake in linking the CES birth/death plug to the business dynamics data. In the business dynamics table, Miller highlights the additions to employment from new firms, as evidence that jobs are being created even during a recession. However, the birth/death plug is meant to be a net figure, between jobs created at opening firms and jobs lost at closing firms. In Q2 of 2008, the business employment dynamics data show a net job loss between new firms hiring and closing firms laying off, but the CES birth/death plug shows a large gain in jobs. At least in this narrow instance, Miller seems to have highlighted evidence that the birth/death plug is not supported by the business employment dynamics series.

  5. Jeff Miller

    kharris – You write, “However, the birth/death plug is meant to be a net figure, between jobs created at opening firms and jobs lost at closing firms.”
    This statement is not correct. The BLS emphasizes that the B/D adjustment is part of an overall process. Another part of the process is what I called the “imputation” step. In a weak economy, the imputation step reduces job creation to reflect what is happening at companies in the sample. The B/D adjustment is a residual. BLS experts refer to it as a “base” since this residual has proven to be positive throughout business cycles.
    Anyone who reads all three parts of my series will understand how this works. The data from the BLS papers is quite compelling.
    BTW – the 4th quarter business dynamics data are in, still showing job creation in the worst of times. http://oldprof.typepad.com/a_dash_of_insight/2009/08/the-most-important-data-you-missed-last-week.html

  6. Joseph Somsel

    If I read the excerpt correctly, a Canadian compamy wants to EXPORT natural gas to Asia. With proper gas transportation (pipelines), that gas could come to US markets.
    Perhaps they are betting that Palin’s Alaskan gas pipeline to the lower 48 won’t get built. That’s a pretty damning criticism of US energy policy.

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