Given the employment surprise (NFP 266K actual vs. 978K expected, while GS forecasted 1300K), it would be remarkable if interest rates did not respond. Stock indices did drop, then recovered to pre-surprise trend. Five year bond yields did drop somewhat.
Figure 1: Treasury five year constant maturity yield (blue, left scale), and TIPS five year constant maturity yield (red, right scale). Source: Treasury via FRED.
Both nominal and real yields fell with the surprise, so that the simple inflation breakeven fell one bps (1.66% to 1.65%).
Where does that leave inflation expectations now. Figure 2 shows the 5 year inflation breakeven as calculated conventionally (blue), and the alternative accounting for term and liquidity premia (red).
Figure 2: Five year inflation breakeven calculated as five year Treasury yield minus five year TIPS yield (blue), five year breakeven adjusted by term premium and liquidity premium per DKW, all in %. Source: FRB via FRED, KWW following D’amico, Kim and Wei (DKW) accessed 5/5, and author’s calculations.
In terms of the movement of the unadjusted breakeven series, one can decompose the increase in the breakeven into that coming from rising nominal yields and that coming from falling real yields.
Figure 3: Five year inflation breakeven calculated as five year Treasury yield minus five year TIPS yield (black line), and share attributed to nominal yield (blue) and attributed to real yield (brown), all in %. Source: FRB via FRED and author’s calculations.
This is unrelated to Economics or the specific post. However we have had semi-loose discussion about Journals and some of the problems involved with relationships between the “publishing houses” (I apologize for not knowing the specific terminology here, you get the idea) and those who run the different journals. I encourage those who believe in upholding academic journals ethics and respect (however much or however little you personally believe they have) to read this, and ask yourself, when it benefits all “related parties” who write in and publish journals to keep these things “quiet” (similar to a hospital not telling the local news about a staff member who endangered patients) how often these things may happen, which we the public NEVER hear about??? May I proffer the idea, the possibility, more than most Uni profs/researchers would either imagine or like to admit:
https://scienceintegritydigest.com/2021/05/05/northeastern-university-professor-with-69-papers-on-pubpeer-has-resigned/
Some problem are discussed in the scientific public, without ranking of the issues, only my “coffee break” impressions:
1) Bad reproducibility of experiments in psychology.
2) Fake biomedical papers in high rank journals.
3) Potential drug targets are hyped based on really bad science. Quite old issue actually: https://www.nature.com/articles/nrd3439-c1
2) and 3) are possible because nobody really wants to spend much time and money in rerunning experiments, especially when you need clinical data. No idea what the issues in psychology are. In other fields the situation is better as fake data are more easily detected (it is more difficult to get them through the review process) and even honest errors are found more often as more groups try to rerun experiments.
I’m relatively certain (though obviously not 100%) Menzie will strongly disagree with me on this (specifically my thoughts on Rogoff’s error, I mean), and that doesn’t bother me because I think both sides are “tenable” positions, and my theory is just based on gut. And I think Menzie would argue it’s never a good idea to guess people’s base intentions. But I always felt the Reinhart-Rogoff’s book error was intentional. It was too convenient that the mistaken data fit both their political argument, and an argument that would sell more books. It’s kind of like when banks make an error 98% of the time in their own favor, I don’t buy it. So, what’s my point here?? It’s very easy to make a “hard to find” math error or calculation error that fits a line of argument or fits a plan to make money off of the research and then late go “Oops!!!”. And everyone goes “Well. there was no malice here, they are in academia and well-credentialed” etc etc.
Ulenspiegel, I think your points are salient and well made, and true and I greatly appreciate the reply to an off-topic foray. But I also think that in a general sense, more HEALTHY cynicism needs to be pressed here, if for no other reason than to KEEP the stature, respect, and prestige of the journals, which serves professors and those who need grant dollars well. How many folks signed on to “peer-reviewed” stuff?? Webster wasn’t writing the papers (multiple papers with multiple authors) alone, and neither was Rogoff. Rogoff’s work had tons of mass media attention before the error was finally “flagged” and a lot of policy moves were being rationalized in the mass media and in serious policy circles prior to the flagging of the error. The damage had been done.
Moses,
Looks like Menzie is nor going to reply to this. I do not have inside information on it, but I shall say what is my understanding of what happened with Reinhart-Rogoff, which certainly was massively embarrassing for them when it got found out by a grad student at U-Mass-Amherst.
It was not a “math error” or a “calculation error,” and it was not something that happens “98% of the time.” It happened once, and reportedly it was a data entry error, almost certainly made by a grad student Research Assistant who was entering the data. While it led to an outcome that fit with their political prejudices, and it certainly led to quite a bit of damage in terms of policy given its timing and the publicity it got when the result was announced, it was almost certainly a mistake.
This line in particular was both wrong and insulting:
“It was too convenient that the mistaken data fit both their political argument, and an argument that would sell more books.”
Ken is certainly not a fiscal hawk. And Uncle Moses forgot to tell us what book he was hawking. Now it is true some right wingers ran with this R&R “result” aka data entry error but Moses has decided to go all JohnH on us. It is wrong, it is STUPID as it get, and yes it is highly insulting.
“done by a grad student”. So where is his/her co-author credit?? You wanna know why I dislike you?? Exhibit A
Moses Herzog: My guess is he/she is mentioned in the acknowledgments in the book.
I have no inside knowledge into this episode, but I do know how economic research which spans years goes with multiple RA’s. As a former research assistant myself, I know how people can mistakes, both pre-Excel, pre-Quattro-Pro, post-VisiCalc…
P.S. I didn’t expect or desire Menzie to reply to the comment (unless that desire came organically/naturally to him). My guess is when he sees someone being criticized for incredibly sloppy research work, he notes it then moves on. He’d be more apt to reply if he thought the criticism pertained to him and his work. People who get fired up and angry about these type constructive criticisms are most often those who see a reflection of themselves in the target. Such as people who blame errors on their grad students for example.
I am not a Delong fan, so if someone wants to accuse me of “cherry-picking” here, I suppose I must plead…….. semi-guilty. Be that as it may, some people on this blog have claimed to be Brad Delong fans. May I present you with the following and draw your special attention to, the number 7
https://www.bradford-delong.com/2013/05/there-is-a-substantive-analytical-point-at-issue-between-reinhart-reinhart-rogoff-and-krugman-and-me-that-it-would-be-nice.html
@ Menzie
May I ask you what (seriously, not trying to be funny here) I consider to be a semi-personal and very awkward question to answer in a public context?? You can withdraw from answering of course if it feels too awkward. I suspect you will never have a real life example of this, in your own research. I doubt you will ever do this , not because I see you as “perfect”, but because I believe you to be incredibly scrupulous in the best way of the term…..
If a similar type error was made in one of your books (I think you’ve got at least one more great book in you somewhere) or papers, would you say “it was a grad student error” in a public context after you got busted?!?!?!?!?! Menzie, I gotta tell you, say what you will, my view of you would change drastically if that were the case. It’s low behavior Menzie, it’s lower than the error itself—which I’m also not a fan of. It’s low man, it just is. That’s worse than the dog ate my homework man, and that’s all it is, a PhD saying “The dog ate my homework”
Moses,
You are out to lunch here (and your idea that somehow disliking me is justified by my accurately reporting that a grad student/RA made the coding error involved is not a justification for your sick attitude).
Menzie has explained how this works, so I am not going to add more, other than to say that there is a lot of donkey work by various people involved in papers that does not deserve for them to be made coauthors. Rather they get acknowledged. As it is, apparently Reinhart and Rogoff did not identify by name the specific individual who messed up, which would have been damaging to that person. In the end, they took responsibility, once it became clear that their argument did not hold up because they were spouting incorrect numbers due to a coding error. After correcting, it became clear that their claim of a 90% threshold debt/GDP ratio beyond which nations grow much more poorly simply is not there.
Another matter, this had nothing to do with selling books, with pgl correct to take you to task on this. The book was in 2008, This Time is Different: 800 Years of Financial Follies. It is an excellent book and it sold well and got a lot of deservd attention and praise.
Where the coding error happened was in a working paper from 2010 called “Growth in the Presence of Debt” that was never published because of the problems found in it, although it did get a lot of publicity that unfortunately influenced policy. As it was, the high quality of their book was what gave the working paper credibility, until indeed it was discovered by Hepson of U-Masss-Amherst that the paper’s results depended on a fatal coding error.
BTW, Moses, if you think the people doing what I called “donkey work” are somehow being exploited or treated unfairly by not being made coauthors of papers, I note that generally these people are getting paid money for what they are doing.
“BTW, Moses, if you think the people doing what I called “donkey work” are somehow being exploited or treated unfairly by not being made coauthors of papers, I note that generally these people are getting paid money for what they are doing.”
in the science journals and nih circles, this issue exists and has been addressed to a small degree. many journals require that all coauthors sign off on their effort and contribution to the article. this is progress. this is especially relevant if the published work is the result of government funding. in years past, i have known individuals who pumped out 50+ journal articles per year for a time. i know that some of those articles were published with zero contribution to the final product by the senior authors, other than financial support. not sure how such a situation justifies authorship. these senior researchers were also getting paid for what they were doing, as well. barkley, i guess that argument rubs both ways.
Moses,
I agree that there is some murkiness about exactly what went on with the R-R paper. At a minimum they seem to have been a bit too willing to let their questionable results get widely publicized and do not seem to have knocked themselves out about correcting their mistakes, although the U-Mass team did get quite a bit of publicity in doing so, and to some degree this became one of those situations where the initial story gets more publicity than the retraction of it, which happens a lot.
Moses,
I don’t have a view on whether the R-R error was intentional. However, just to keep the record straight, Herndon, Ash and Pollin found three problems with the R-R analysis, no just a coding error.
“While using RR’s working spreadsheet, we identified coding errors, selective exclusion of available data, and unconventional weighting of summary statistics.”
The second and third errors look more like puting an ideological thumb on the analytical scale than does the first. However, the belief in the evils of debt was so ingrained at the time that the second and third errors may have been the result of unexamined bias rather than dishonest intent.
“Everybody knew” that debt stifles growth, same as “everybody knows” that minimum wages stifles employment and market power is a trivial issue in economic outcomes and taxes are bad, bad, bad.
@ Macroduck
I have to digest this some more, your words, I’m a little slow to catch on sometimes, (no sarcasm). But it seems your comment somewhat supports my contention (maybe not on R-R’s intent, but in a general way). in which case I appreciate it. If I was Luke Skywalker it appears my Han Solo rarely shows up at the end of the film, when he does, I appreciate it. No joke I’m being serious here. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt, I really do. R-R didn’t pass that.
Yes. A coding error is embarrassing but looks innocent. Data exclusion and weighting of stats are overt choices which skew results. In this case, R-R made overt choices which skewed results in a way that supported the view that debt hurts growth. What’s missing is evidence of their intent in making those choices.
baffliing,
Having published in hard science journals, they indeed do things differently from social science ones in a number of ways (dealing with that right now as I am revising a paper currently for such a journal and being reminded of some of this).
So the convention for a hard science journal paper coming out of a lab is that order of authors matters whereas in econ at least authors are usually in alphabetical order of their last names. First author in a lab hard sci journal paper is really the lead author very seriously. Indeed, they may have done the majority of the serious work even if there are 10 authors on there. The final author listed will generally be the PI, the Principal Investigator or lead person of the lab who probably submitted the grant application that got the money for to support the research, that is to pay for all the people working in the lab, even if indeed, as you noted, they may have not done anything else on the paper specifically.
In econ and most other social sciences (psychology, which often has labs, can resemble the hard sciences) usually all the listed authors will indeed have provided some more solid and specific input and mere grad students/RAs will not be coauthors unless their input has some intellectual content, not just entering data or coding or whatever, although in the case of economics, experimental economics sometimes involves labs and some of them will also sort of act like the hard science labs. Some of this can get fuzzy. But this did not apply to Reinhart and Rogoff.
If we can trust Chinese government officials (for just once) it appears the great mystery is solved. Happy ending:
https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/science/china-says-remnants-long-march-rocket-landed-indian-ocean-2021-05-09/
Of course if they had crashed directly into a children’s nursery what would they have said?? Anything but.
Even Nixon did not go this far:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/05/07/washington-post-trump-doj-got-reporters-phone-records/4997276001/
So Trump did not like investigations on his collusion with Putin to steal the 2016 election so he gets the DOJ to secretly obtain the phone records of the reporters. Heck – this abuse of power would be extreme even in places like Russia or China.
“Both nominal and real yields fell with the surprise, so that the simple inflation breakeven fell one bps”
This sounds to me like the news is a signal that aggregate demand growth is not that strong. Wouldn’t a supply surprise have the opposite effect?
Of course the chief economist for Fox and Friends (Princeton Steve) is 100% sure the evidence points to the policies of socialist Joe led to this surprise. Why? Because Tyler Cowen told him so. Not that Tyler is an expert in either macroeconomics or labor economics but we are talking about the Fox and Friends crowd.
pgl: Yes, this is more consistent with a drop in anticipated aggregate demand than with a negative supply side shock or a cost-push shock.
I haven’t yet decided how much credence I give this, but someone on another blog was saying the quick recovery from the equities market, wasn’t it a 200 Down Jones move up?? (Oh man, I hate quoting Down Jones, I get a stomach acid upchuck taste in my mouth) was because the let down in employment numbers would help assure that the Fed wouldn’t make any intermediate term tightening moves. This is probably a “more obvious” point than pgl’s, but I think would also be worth noting when seeing a quick reflexive move back down to basically the same rate before the news.
Dow Jones, wow how did I manage to do that twice?
Whoda guessed. https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/money/2021/05/06/economy-states-easing-business-constraints-early-got-modest-boost/4941691001/
Once again Bruce Hall reads a misleading headline and makes a total fool of himself. Read the damn article moron such as …
“I don’t see the states, by reopening aggressively, bought themselves that much additional growth,” says Moody’s economist Adam Kamins.
Or the part about risking rising infection rates. Who would have guessed you would fall for the headline without reading the whole story? We all did!
Harvard’s https://tracktherecovery.org/ records a – 28.9% employment decline for low income workers as of April 2, 2021 compared to January 2020. Consumer spending in high income neighborhoods as of April 4, 2021 is 4.0%. Small business revenue in high income neighborhoods as of April 28, 2021 is – 35.5%.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/09/us/covid-school-reopening-virtual-learning.html
May 9, 2021
Schools Are Open, but Many Families Remain Hesitant to Return
Even as fears of the coronavirus abate, many students are continuing to opt out of in-person learning. Some school leaders are trying to woo — or push — them back.
By Dana Goldstein
Pauline Rojas’s high school in San Antonio is open. But like many of her classmates, she has not returned, and has little interest in doing so.
During the coronavirus pandemic, she started working 20 to 40 hours per week at Raising Cane’s, a fast-food restaurant, and has used the money to help pay her family’s internet bill, buy clothes and save for a car.
Ms. Rojas, 18, has no doubt that a year of online school, squeezed between work shifts that end at midnight, has affected her learning. Still, she has embraced her new role as a breadwinner, sharing responsibilities with her mother who works at a hardware store.
“I wanted to take the stress off my mom,” she said. “I’m no longer a kid. I’m capable of having a job, holding a job and making my own money.”
Only a small slice of American schools remain fully closed: 12 percent of elementary and middle schools, according to a federal survey, as well as a minority of high schools. But the percentage of students learning fully remotely is much greater: more than a third of fourth and eighth graders, and an even larger group of high school students. A majority of Black, Hispanic and Asian-American students remain out of school….
At this rate real median income for the lower income quintiles is going to be bad for 2020 and 2021. CBO is forecasting that the “economy” will be back to it pre-pandemic levels by mid-2021. But it certainly looks like the gains are once again going to the usual suspects. https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1632/idt2/idt2/dfdf9771-885e-4cfa-863b-1d8d56035169/image/816
While the media exults in the rapid growth, who’s to rain on their party? [Republicans must be salivating at the loss of income in the lower quintiles.]
https://www.npr.org/2021/04/29/991341955/shopping-and-shots-power-an-economy-heading-to-its-fastest-growth-since-1984
Presumably the jobs report claims that 4.2 million people are not working for fear of getting or spreading the virus. Another 2.5 million either have or are caring for someone who has the virus. Finally 6.8 million cannot work because they are caring for children.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/09/politics/unemployment-benefits-republicans/index.html
As soon as the virus has been contained and children can safely go back to daycare/school there will be a lot of available workers. In the mean time desperate and clueless GOP governors are lifting restrictions so we can give the new variants more freedom to spread. They are also trying to increase the virus success by forcing those who have or care for someone with Covid-19 back to work.
Gee – you actually THINK before reacting. Something McConnell Republicans and Bruce Hall never do.
i have not really understood the republican agenda which seems to want to put people at risk of the virus. it seems intentional. look at the position they have taken with teachers. their behavior really just seems punitive in nature. stick it to you while i can type of thinking. sad, really.
I think that for a good many elected Republicans, their behavior during the pandemic was driven partly by a desire to enforce “us vs them” norms. Yes, keeping the economy on tack ahead of the election was a big deal, but demanding obedience from public employees (with the exception of police) is SOP. Exposing workers to risk is part of the show. Division is manufactured so that it can be exploited. If that’s your playbook, you demand that teachers be put at risk. As the death count rose, that position urned out to be bad politics, but it was too late. Republicans don’t admit error.
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202105/1222944.shtml
May 9, 2021
Chinese team designs 62-qubit quantum processor with world’s largest number of superconducting qubits
By Wan Lin
A Chinese research team has successfully designed a 62-qubit programmable superconducting quantum processor, naming it Zu Chongzhi after the noted 5th century Chinese mathematician and astronomer. The computer contains the largest number of superconducting qubits so far in the world, and achieved two-dimensional programmable quantum walks on the system, a major milestone in the field.
Experts said the study * pushes the possibility of universal quantum computing through a two-dimensional quantum walk a big step forward.
The study was conducted by a research team from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), and was published Friday in Science magazine, one of the top academic journals in the world.
The team designed and produced an 8×8 two-dimensional square superconducting qubit array composed of 62 functional qubits in the study, and used this device to demonstrate high fidelity single and two particle quantum walks, according to the team.
Such a device can achieve universal quantum computing, which means that any computing task can be done in this manner, Yuan Lanfeng, a research fellow at the Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale of the USTC, told the Global Times on Sunday.
“It is just like one or two particles randomly moving on an 8×8 chess board. Such random quantum walks can achieve anything that quantum computing can do, which is amazing,” he said.
The work was an essential milestone, bringing future larger scale quantum applications closer to realization on noisy intermediate-scale quantum processors, said the team in the article.
The development of quantum computers, one of the major challenges in the forefront of science and technology in the world, has become the focus of competition among countries globally….
* https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2021/05/05/science.abg7812
its a great achievement, but the headline is a little bit misleading. this is not a universal quantum processor of 62 qbits. bravo nevertheless. quantum computing is going to change the world in the next two decades in ways you cannot imagine. right now quantum computing is kind of hobbled because people want to use them to solve classical computer problems. once we understand how to ask questions that quantum computers can solve well, they will take off. goldman sachs recently issued a report, and i was pleased to see they were moving in that exact direction. gonna be a game changer. financials will be an early adopter of the technology, and those who are good at it will be huge winners. i feel more excited about quantum computers today than i did about the internet in the mid 1990’s.
Thank you for once again blasting out off-topic, pro-China propaganda. I understand your masters require it, and that you’d probably be “re-educated” if you were to point out to them how ham-handed this stuff looks to it’s target audience. Still, it’s mostly wasted electrons.
NBC News reported that the Chinese rocket barely missed hitting Saudi Arabia in the sense had it come down a couple of minutes earlier, it would have dumped its massive debris not in the Indian ocean but on the land where a lot of oil is produced.
I bet Princeton Steve is lamenting that he almost had a two-fer. An oil shortage and his wish that oil reach $100 a barrel and his wildest dream – WWIII with China.
@ pgl
No No, wasn’t “Princeton”Kopits prediction that the Chinese proletariate was going to attack Xi Jinping after they used their thumbs to beat the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in a mass game of pea-knuckle??
https://econbrowser.com/archives/2018/03/wisconsin-manufacturing-employment-boom-revised-away#comment-206443
https://econbrowser.com/archives/2018/03/wisconsin-manufacturing-employment-boom-revised-away#comment-206452
pgl, How can we have WW III with China if they implode in a mass game of pea-knuckle?? Really pgl, I mean have you even checked with John “Grumpy Economist” Kuckrant and asked him if world inflation rises to 1970s levels how Chinese can afford enough good quality game sets, pieces and boards to kill all of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army playing 圍棋 ??? Come on pgl….. think about the quality of your sources before taking on “Princeton”Kopits in geopolitical debate, would you?? Gosh man……..
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-05-07/China-s-Long-March-rocket-debris-not-out-of-control-expert-104KhZ9WT04/index.html
May 7, 2021
China’s Long March rocket debris not “out of control”: expert
By Sun Ye
China’s Long March 5B Y2 carrier rocket, the one that carried Tianhe space module into space, is heading back. While some media reports claimed as the rocket re-enters the atmosphere, its debris would fall “out of control” and pose threats. A Chinese expert stated that the rocket’s homecoming is a “fully-controlled” process and not a cause for worry.
Zhang Xiaotian, an expert who specializes in spacecraft debris with the School of Astronautics from Beihang University told CGTN that the falling of the rocket and the debris back to Earth is a fully controlled process which requires less accuracy compared to entering into an orbit.
“For the rocket’s coming back, we only need it to fall into the designated safety zone, which is un-manned and usually quite large. We have multiple control measures to achieve this, like selecting the right launch place, controlling the brakes at different stages. The process is like throwing a stone out, you know where it flew from and how much power you use, so you know where it will land. And China has always made sure that even in the least ideal condition, debris will fall where it’s safe,” added Zhang….
News reported that the Chinese rocket barely missed hitting…
News reported that the Chinese rocket barely missed hitting…
News reported that the Chinese rocket barely missed hitting…
[ Such is the fostering of racism, that it is calculated and reflexive. How saddening and frightening. ]
@ ltr
You’re going to let us know when a white guy runs for mayor in Shanghai, right??
https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/decision-2021/2021/04/18/andrew-yang-democrats-spectrum-news-ny1-ipsos-poll-new-york-city-mayor-s-race
I could ask you about white guys fighting in your military during wars or white guys becoming part of “the standing committee of the people’s congress”
中华人民共和国全国人民代表大会常务委员会 but I don’t want your head to explode. Then we could go down the road of Chinese citizens’ attitude towards Blacks, Asian Indians, Uyghurs, Tibetans. How about we just stop wasting time and say anyone not Han?? Well nevermind, victimization is a national pastime for some, and I can’t spoil your fun like that. You just go on where you left off there. Sorry for interrupting.
I don’t like to share these things often, because as humorous to some as it may sound, I consider them deeply personal in some ways, Most the time I don’t talk about it unless I was drinking. But one of my better friends in China, was a Canadian man of Bangladesh ethnicity. We got along quite well because we met during a summer time there when the college campus I worked at was largely empty, my girlfriend had gone back to her hometown to see her parents, and probably my best friend at the time had just left to further her postgraduate studies in Austria (after we were pretty close platonic friends for over a year after I had helped her to get a high score on her TOEFL exam (free “tutoring”, other than her plying me with tons of free beer, free meals, and pretty solid conversation), and she had introduced me to the girl who eventually introduced me to my gf. So…… the Bangladesh Canadian guy and I palled around that summer in the “economic zone” there as the two semi-isolated foreigners and he said he couldn’t get the Dean of my dept. at the school to hire him because of his brown Bangladeshi skin, they assumed his English was substandard, even though he was a very “westernized” Canadian with near perfect English at that point (his English vocabulary exceeded any Chinese people I knew). So being the jerk I am, I went down to the Deans office inside the next 48 hours to say a couple words for him as “the white faced guy” so he could get a job at my school. And they hired him almost immediately after.
So…… one day I’m sitting in the office not doing much of anything probably, maybe reading, for self-improvement, and our office manager, a middle aged woman with decent social skills and affable enough up to that point in time walks into the office and says “what do you think of ‘Madhu’??” (not his real name, using it to tell this story to protect both of our privacy) I said something like “Oh, he’s a pretty solid guy”. She says “Don’t you think his English is a little funny??” [ “funny” said in a condescending tone ] I said “No, he has some very few pronunciation errors, his “th” sounds like a “d” sound once in a blue moon, but his English vocabulary is better than any of the Chinese English teachers”……. DEAD SILENCE.
See if you can figure out how that struck her, or the specific reason she was upset, because I promise you, inside herself, she was seething with anger. Because a woman who had made the effort to be phonily courteous to me up to that point in time, suddenly had nothing to say to me from then on.
WTF? I did not say the rocket was a person. It was launched by that government. OK – next time I will be more explicit so I will not offend you in this way. But come on – relax.
“A Chinese expert stated that the rocket’s homecoming is a “fully-controlled” process and not a cause for worry.”
Oh wait – now you are spreading racism but your standards. You really need to chill out.
The claim that the re-entry of China’s space junk was “controlled” of course, utterly untrue. An object surrounded by ionized gas heater 2700-3000 f prevents communication. No communication means no control. Even simple ballistics can’t be relied upon to provide control – the thing is coming apart into objects of uncertain shape moving at extraordinary speed. Predictability falls apart. That’s why every other nations which launches objects into earth orbit no longer do what China just did.
This embarrassment for China is probably why ltr was ordered to post two comments today having to do with China’s tech “achievements”. “Nothing shameful to see here. Move along.”
“This embarrassment for China is probably why ltr was ordered to post two comments today having to do with China’s tech “achievements”. ”
good point. i thought it odd that ltr would post a comment on the quantum computer. i am a great fan of the technology, but was curious because the paper was by no means game changer. it was interesting work. but your comment probably clarifies why it was posted here to begin with. interesting.
The person who has attacked me with pornographic and racist imagery needs to leave me alone. Leave me alone forever. Am I clear?
I noticed the latest from Princeton Steve who is scratching his head why his forecast that oil prices reaching $100 a barrel has not materialized (yet). As usual this pseudo analyst is all over the map.
But he protects that other commodity prices are booming so why not oil. Well soybean prices are up. Metals like iron ore and copper at up.
But wait – what about other energy commodities. I checked on natural gas, coal, and uranium. Their prices are still rather modest. Yes Princeton Steve thinks oil and copper are substitutes but oil and natural gas are not. Folks – no one should be paying this consultant for a damn thing.
More news from economists today:
Peter Navarro went on the Steve Bannon show and said, and this is an actual quote, “Fauci wanted to weaponize that virus and he is the father of it. He has killed millions of Americans if it came from the lab and I’m 99.999% sure it did.”
navarro is an example of old white male entitlement that is best put out to pasture. his efforts to remain relevant simply reveal how irrelevant his life work really was.
Navarro may have been a decent scholar in his day but over the last several years he has been flying over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Sad to see.
It is actually sad. I think Navarro must have been a decent guy in times past.
Moses,
Wow, seriously, I congratulate you for showing compassion and reasonableness here. I have never known Navarro personally so cannot personally judge this, but certainly Menzie worked with him in the past, and his economic views back then seem fairly reasonable, whatever his personality was or is. But something happened along the way since then that is indeed fundamentally sad.
Not to stay on topic or anything, but (as I noted in an earlier comment) ADP showed a much more rapid pace of hiring in April than did BLS. That’s not to say ADP is right, but we shouldn’t take one month’s data too seriously. Of course hiring will slow down. The logistics of putting hundreds of thousands of people to work on a sort of ad hoc basis is pretty daunting. Seasonal swings in employment are planned. Schools bring back teachers who were already teaching. Census prepares extensively for it’s decennial hiring binge. Restaurants and hotels and movie theaters are filling jobs the hard way. Had to slow down eventually.
Which is not to say the April number from BLS represents that slowing. A 300,000+ pace of hiring is entirely sustainable from the point of view of logistics.
As has been note elsewhere, schools reopening for in-person classes will probably expand the labor force a good bit. There is also a good chance seasonals which anticipate a reshuffling of the labor market in June and July will lead to a mess in the data for those months.
https://twitter.com/globaltimesnews/status/1391689638864056323
Global Times @globaltimesnews
China conducted close monitoring over entire re-entry of #LongMarch5B remnants on Sun and had shared relevant forecast via intl cooperation mechanism in advance, Chinese FM said on Mon, refuting attack by #NASA chief @SenBillNelson on China over the event.
5:40 AM · May 10, 2021
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202105/1222935.shtml
May 9, 2021
China’s rocket debris falls to Earth as ‘accurately predicted’
Most parts burnt up during reentry, ‘common practice’ of space powers
By Fan Anqi and Cao Siqi
China’s space authority announced on Sunday that remnants from China’s Long March-5B Y2 carrier rocket reentered the Earth’s atmosphere, most of it burning up on entry, with some remnants falling in the Arabian Sea.
Amid an intense China-US relationship and increasingly fierce competition in technology between the two great powers, some Americans have been racking their brains and grasping every chance to hype the “China threat” theory, with the latest episode being they accusing China of being “irresponsible” for leaving rocket debris “uncontrolled, causing threats to objects on Earth,” despite the fact that it is a global common way to deal with rocket debris, practiced by all space powers including the US itself.
Chinese aerospace experts mocked that they felt “surprised” that some people would buy such absurd logic as it is common sense in the science field. Analysts of foreign affairs pointed out that it reflects the double standards of the West in an attempt to sabotage China’s space station construction plan, exposing their military intentions to track China’s space hardware….
Thank you for once again blasting out off-topic, pro-China propaganda. I understand your masters require it, and that you’d probably be “re-educated” if you were to point out to them how ham-handed this stuff looks to it’s target audience….
[ Such is definitive racism; imagine having a need to express such disdain, imagine such a need to intimidate, but intimidation is evidently necessary against those we have been taught to have disdain for. Frightening, yes, for that is the purpose of such expressions. ]
Oh, you misunderstand. I am not attacking a race. I am accusing you, an individual, of being a lacky. You slavishly pump out wierdly off-topic, pro-Chinese blather. You hide behind accusations of racism. You. Not a race (whatever that is), not a people, not a country. You. Your behavior is transparently servile. You. Tens of thousands in Hong Kong have stood up against the bullying of the Chinese government and the betrayal by their own leaders, but not you. I am accusing you.
And your masters.
“Such is the fostering of racism, …” and “Such is definitive racism,”
Your words are complete, utter bulls#/t. You have cynically, callowly, and cravenly leveled a grossly unfair and grossly inaccurate accusation against commenters who have histories of serious comments made in good faith and with a great deal of wisdom.
You are ignoring the fact that most of us have been reading your comments for a long time. All of us who have been trained in economics or other analytic fields have absolutely no problem easily recognizing obvious patterns.
Over the years, whenever the Communist Party of China makes an error that earns it some light ridicule or commits an act that earns it outright condemnation, the CCP barfs out a couple puff pieces that appear in extremely friendly media outlets. A social crackdown, e.g. on protests, begets a puff piece about the CCP enhancing rural incomes or sanitation or environmental quality or some such matter. Or, as in this case, a technological blunder spawns paeans to China’s achievements in other areas of technology. This. Is. A. Pattern.
And how do we, the humble readers of this humble yet highly respected blog, come to know about these ‘accomplishments’? Why, our fellow reader and commenter ltr dutifully regurgitates these puff pieces directly into these comment threads. This. Is. Also. A. Pattern.
These attempts by the CCP, and by you, to distract us from its mistakes are akin to the Trump Administration’s repeated promises that “next week will be Infrastructure Week” after its screw-ups. That’s why “Infrastructure Week” became a running joke, even in mainstream media.
In other words, the commenters here treated blatant, transparent attempts to deflect attention by one authoritarian entity, the CCP, exactly as they, we, treated similar blatant, transparent attempts by another authoritarian entity, the Trump Administration. Equal treatment of the two entities, one coincidentally located in Asia and the other one located in North America, is not racist.
Previously, our host has brought to our attention (on the off-chance that we had missed it) actual acts of racism in our country. Most of us (with certain execrable exceptions) roundly criticized and condemned those acts.
Your attempt to exploit this situation and our concerns to falsely accuse some of us being racist is cynical, despicable, malicious, and would libelous if we were posting under our real names, slanderous if we were conversing in person and in public.
This is exceedingly poor behavior. Your accusations go far, far beyond the limits of acceptable behavior even in an anonymous forum. I would insist that you apologize to my fellow readers if I could reasonably expect that you would be sincere. Alas, my only reasonable expectation is that your apology would be just as cynical and just as false as your baseless accusations.
Do all of us a favor and Just. Go. Away. Forever.
P.S. I apologize profusely to our hosts and to all the rest of my fellow readers for the length of my reply to that scoundrel. I was unable to convey my contempt in a shorter post without resorting to much, much more profanity, which would have been most unfair to our moderator/host.
https://cepr.net/the-reinhart-rogoff-debt-to-gdp-error-why-it-matte/
April 18, 2013
The Reinhart-Rogoff Debt-to-GDP Error: Why it Matters
By Dean Baker
The Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff (R&R) paper purported to show that countries with debt-to-GDP ratios above 90 percent see sharply slower growth rates, and has been widely cited in policy discussions in the United States and Europe and used as a rationale for a near-term focus on deficit reduction. Politicians and policy analysts relied on the results of this paper to insist on spending cuts and tax increases even in economies that are operating at levels of output far below full employment. Based on R&R’s findings, they argued that it was important to keep debt levels from crossing the 90 percent threshold.
This debate is important because the threat to growth from high debt levels was one of the main arguments against the aggressive use of fiscal policy to boost growth. The work of Thomas Herndon, Michael Ash and Robert Pollin (HAP) and Arindrajit Dube, all at the University of Massachusetts, has essentially undermined the basis for this argument. No one can still maintain that we have good evidence that debt levels of the size we could conceivably face in the near future would impair growth….
https://cepr.net/the-university-of-massachusetts-econ-department-how-we-know-reinhart-and-rogoff-were-wrong/
April 24, 2013
The University of Massachusetts Economics Department: How We Know Reinhart and Rogoff Were Wrong
By Dean Baker
The worldwide debate over fiscal policy and austerity was turned upside down last week by a paper co-authored by a University of Massachusetts grad student Thomas Herndon and two professors, Michael Ash and Robert Pollin (HAP). The paper uncovered serious calculation errors in an important paper by Harvard professors Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff (R&R).
The Reinhart and Rogoff paper, “Growth in a Time of Debt,” has been widely cited in policy debates in the United States and around the world as providing the basis for cutting deficits even at a time when the economy is suffering from large amounts of unemployment and interest rates are extraordinarily low. Ordinarily economists would argue that these are exactly the circumstances in which governments should undertake aggressive stimulus measures. Government spending can both boost growth and increase employment in the short-run, and also lead to long-run benefits insofar as the stimulus takes the form of investment in infrastructure, research and development, and education.
The Reinhart and Rogoff paper was used to argue against increased spending because it purports to show that high ratios of debt-to-GDP lead to large falloffs in growth. The implication of the paper is that the United States and other wealthy countries are at debt levels near a tipping point where further increments of debt can lead to decades of slow growth.
The moral of the Reinhart and Rogoff analysis is that we have no choice but to live with the pain of high unemployment and slow growth now, since the eventual cost in terms of a prolonged period of slow growth and high unemployment would be so awful. This is the sort of reasoning behind the austerity plans that are leading to double-digit unemployment across Europe and slow growth and high unemployment in the United States.
The paper by HAP was a body blow to the intellectual foundations for these policies. When corrected, the R&R analysis provides no basis for the concerns about a high debt cliff that they had been pushing for the last three and half years.
Following on this analysis, Arindrajit Dube, another professor at the University of Massachusetts, put out a paper that examined the direction of causality between growth and debt. He found a very strong causal relationship between slow growth and high debt. It turns out that high debt is a very strong predictor of poor growth in the prior three years. However, debt tells us almost nothing about future growth. In other words, R&R got the story backward, weak growth leads to high debt, not the other way around….
ltr,
Dean is misleading here. It was a coding error. That led to incorrect outcomes of calculations because incorrect numbers were being fed into the calculations. It was not that somebody (or a computer program) did not know how to add or multiply properly, which would be a “calculation error” properly speaking. Wrong numbers came out of the calculations because wrong numbers were put into them. Garbage in, garbage out. The calculations themselves were fine.
Barkley Rosser The problems with the R&R paper were more than just a coding error. Their results were highly sensitive to arbitrary bin ranges, which should have invited some kind of sensitivity analysis. And the direction of causality was a rookie error. Their definitions of developed and under-developed economies was inconsistent and hopelessly muddled. And their public testimony before Congress was cowardly as they allowed themselves to be overawed by Tea Party nitwits.
@ 2slugbaits
I’m pretty certain this isn’t why you made the comment, Either way~~~thanks for helping me not feel like I am totally crazy/irrational. I hold you in high esteem on this blog one of the top 2–3 commenters on the blog, so even when you half-agree (better in full) with me it pleases me.
2slug,
I agree that they clearly messed up on the matter of causality, which was obvious even if there had been no problems with coding or bin range choices (which played a role in setting up the supposed 90% cutoff, although by how much remains somewhat unclear). Lots of people, including even me on various sites, pointed out the causality matter when their paper first got publicized and before the technical problems were discovered.
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202105/1222944.shtml
May 9, 2021
Chinese team designs 62-qubit quantum processor with world’s largest number of superconducting qubits
By Wan Lin
[ Obviously, being unlearned, I thought this was a remarkable achievement and thought readers would be pleased with what has been happening. Then too, there is the international space station that is soon to be completed and foolishly, because I am so unlearned, I thought near completion of the Chinese international space station a similarly remarkable achievement. The social-economic advances are wondrous to me, thoroughly benign and hopeful, but I realize I am ever so unlearned.
No matter, I did my best for all my limitations and will continue to do so however frightening the disdain. ]
I could ask you about white guys fighting in your military during wars…
[ I know the venom and falseness with which this was written, but to begin with I was immediately reminded of the statue honoring Dr. Jakob Rosenfeld who was a founder of the People’s Liberation Army medical corps.
Dr. Jakob Rosenfeld made his way from Dachau to Vienna to refuge in Shanghai and joined the PLA and built a medical corps and has been memorialized yearly since. The statue is before the gates of Huazhong Medical School, and Dr. Rosenfeld is always to be remembered… ]
HOw many prayers did Rosenfeld make to the communist party right before death?? Man, do you realize you’re a living breathing satire??? Oh my God,. I actually feel pity for you, Pity you I do. PITY. DO you know how hard that is for me to feel that emotion at middle age. [edited- MDC] I don’t care he believed in communism, the reason I point it out is, that’s the only reason your [deleted – MDC] country said “Oh…..look…. a admirable white guy…… LOOK EVERYBODY!!!!!! it’s a white guy freak show everybody”. WOW your country is sad.
I wish to add an addendum/correction for my poor wording, I was drinking a little bit. I should have specified China’s GOVERNMENT is sorry and sad. Not the people or the land, of China which I LOVE~~More than most non-Chinese Americans I venture to say. I apologize for my poor wording and overcoming of anger,
I hope that’s already understood and I was given the benefit of the doubt by any of Menzie’s and Professor Hamilton’s regulars. I like to think Menzie kind of understands me, the inside of me in that way, I have no idea
“Ltr” all of Amerrica is “out to get you” rawr rawr…rawr rawr…. You’re a complete joke, you know that right???
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay6MLO2pd30
I’m Elmer J. Fudd – millionaire. I own a mansion and a yacht. This needs an update in light of the booming market for super yachts:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/jeff-bezos-superyacht-is-so-big-it-needs-its-own-yacht/ar-BB1gzJ1P?ocid=uxbndlbing
Bezos will own a 417 foot version plus a 2nd yacht to support the 1st. But no – he can’t pay a dime in taxes because he is “job creator”. Well he is creating jobs for yacht companies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJtHdkyo0hc
When I was in China, “my mind was playing tricks on me”
Dr. Jakob Rosenfeld made his way from Dachau to Vienna to refuge in Shanghai and joined the PLA and built a medical corps and has been memorialized yearly since. The statue is before the gates of Huazhong Medical School, and Dr. Rosenfeld is always to be remembered…
[ Imagine demeaning and mocking such a person. Imagine demeaning and mocking a survivor of Dachau, given refuge along with many others needing refuge and repaying the decency. Imagine demeaning such a person. What sadness.
I love the memory of Dr. Rosenfeld and others of the Shanghai community of sheltered refugees. The entire community is of course memorialized. I love these memories. ]
I am accusing you, an individual, of being a lacky.
I am accusing you, an individual, of being a lacky.
I am accusing you, an individual, of being a lacky.
[ Surely and absolutely so. Such is what what it is to be overwhelmed by the antipathy of prejudice. ]
I am accusing you, an individual, of being a lacky.
[ I know of course that such words are meant to be insulting and intimidating, and they surely frighten me, but oddly for all of my reading I did not know what the word “lackey” meant and needed to look it up. So I know just how I am being demeaned, though I will never have course to use such a word.
Prejudice is so saddening. ]
ltr: I am not sure how accusing one of being a lackey is an indication of prejudice, racial, ethnic, or national in nature.
I am not sure how accusing one of being a lackey is an indication of …
[ When a person is repeatedly abused for merely caring for, say, Nigeria, we are of course dealing with prejudice. When a person is repeatedly abused for caring for Pope Francis, we are of course dealing with prejudice. Abusing a person for expressing love for Pope Francis or for Chinua Achebe is precisely what prejudice is.
“I am accusing you, an individual, of being a lacky.”
“I am accusing you, an individual, of being a lacky.”
“I am accusing you, an individual, of being a lacky.”
There is my scarlet letter.
I am completely sure of what the abuse I am repeatedly subject to means. The abuse frightens me, but is making me more persistent. ]
ltr, never seen you make a caring comment about the atrocities committed against the uyghurs. i have asked you about that repeatedly. i guess that makes me a racist? would love to hear your take on the matter, however, rather than intentional silence.
ltr,
You have probably noticed that i generally stay out of all this back-and-forth catcalling that goes on when you post questionable things supported by the CCP, although I have occasionally offered corrections when I have seen factual errors being too great. A curious thing is that you seemed to have stopped doing this for awhile, and I even privately noted this to Menzie, wondering what was going on and maybe you had adopted a different view of things.
As it was he accurately forecast to me that you would be back at it, as you are in this thread. My only observation on this particular thread is that these claims by the PRC leadership that they were in control of how this thing came down have zero credibility.
BTW, in the sort of addition that would annoy Moses or CoRev, I have just returned from Madison where in visiting my recently engaged daughter I was rereading certain books she has that came from my late father that he wrote on real rocket science. One of those, the hardest core math one of the lot almost nobody here would have a clue reading, was indeed about the details of how one controls such objects. Without going into those details, I shall simply say that despite their claims to having done so, they did not. Period.
I would urge you that if you are going to post things supporting actions by the PRC government, please try to do so for ones that are not so completely and flagrantly false.
https://cepr.net/reinhart-and-rogoff-are-not-being-straight/
April 26, 2013
Reinhart and Rogoff Are Not Being Straight
Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff, used their second New York Times column in a week, to complain * about how they are being treated. Their complaint deserves tears from crocodiles everywhere. They try to present themselves as ivory tower economists who cannot possibly be blamed for the ways in which their work has been used to justify public policy, specifically as a rationale to cut government programs and raise taxes, measures that lead to unemployment in a downturn.
This portrayal is disingenuous in the extreme. Reinhart and Rogoff surely are aware of how their work has been used. They have also encouraged this use in public writings and talks. While it is unfortunate that they have “received hate-filled, even threatening, e-mail messages,” as one who works in the lower-paid corners of policy debates, let me say, welcome to the club.
This column is careful to halfway walk back the main claim of their famous paper, telling us:
“Our view has always been that causality [between high debt levels and slow growth] runs in both directions, and that there is no rule that applies across all times and places.”
It is good to hear the reference to causation from slow growth to high debt and that “no rule applies across all times and places.” However it is worth noting that Reinhart and Rogoff never felt the need to use their access to the NYT’s opinion pages to correct all the politicians who used their paper to argue the exact opposite: that their paper implied that countries with high debt levels could anticipate long periods of slow growth.
In addition to misleading the public about the role their work has played in policy debates, they also are not quite straight about two strictly factual points. The first sentence begins by referring to the publication of their article in May of 2010. This might lead readers to believe that this is when their claims about high debt slowing growth first began to affect public debate on stimulus and deficits.
This is not right as I know since my first e-mail requesting their data was written in January of 2010. In fact, their work first made a splash in international debates when they put out a version of this article as a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper in January, 2010. Their findings were already widely known by the time the paper was published in May, 2010.
The other point on which they mislead readers is the claim:
“Our 2010 paper found that, over the long term, growth is about 1 percentage point lower when debt is 90 percent or more of gross domestic product. The University of Massachusetts researchers do not overturn this fundamental finding, which several researchers have elaborated upon.”
…
* http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/26/opinion/debt-growth-and-the-austerity-debate.html
https://cepr.net/reinhart-and-rogoff-are-not-being-straight/
April 26, 2013
Reinhart and Rogoff Are Not Being Straight
By Dean Baker
In addition to misleading the public about the role their work has played in policy debates, they also are not quite straight about two strictly factual points. The first sentence begins by referring to the publication of their article in May of 2010. This might lead readers to believe that this is when their claims about high debt slowing growth first began to affect public debate on stimulus and deficits.
This is not right as I know since my first e-mail requesting their data was written in January of 2010. In fact, their work first made a splash in international debates when they put out a version of this article as a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper in January, 2010. Their findings were already widely known by the time the paper was published in May, 2010….
I note here that I made an erroneous statement in comments well above. I suggested that the Reinhard and Rogoff paper did not get published due to the discovery of its various problems. That is incorrect. It was published in May, 2010 in the Papers and Proceedings of the American Economic Review, which, not as prestigious as a regular paper in the AER, nevertheless is prestigious, with those papers getting widely read and cited. It was as “Growth in a Time of Debt.”
However, an odd detail of papers in that particular outlet, which are invited papers at the AEA annual meetings, are that not only are they quite short and lacking usual details about technicalities, but they have not gone through the usual review process that regular papers in the AER go through. This one could have used such a more careful review.
What clearly happened was that they got invited by whomever was the incoming president of the AEA back then to participate in a presidentially organized AEA session in Jan. 2010, with this certainly based on the success of their 2008 book on This Time is Different. This deeply flawed paper was what they presented.
I note that the book made important and useful points, too bad they damaged its rep with this nonsensical paper and their publicizing of it to politically interested parties. In particular they noted that recessions/depressions arising from major financial crashes tend to last longer and are harder to come out of, a completely accurate point and relevant to the 2008 crash. Thus it is ironic that they later effectively supported fiscal policies that would not help get us out of that deep and persisting downturn, a problem they themselves highlighted in their excellent book.
How many prayers did Rosenfeld make…
[ Imagine demeaning a survivor of Dachau, imagine demeaning a Jewish doctor who survived Dachau to be honored in the country in which he sought and found refuge, imagine demeaning such a person.
I honor Dr. Jakob Rosenfeld, and always will. Countless more have and will honor Dr. Rosenfeld. ]
Fauci has to endure stupid comments from Rand Paul again?
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/552857-rand-paul-clashes-with-fauci-over-coronavirus-origins
I just wish the next time Paul pulls this garbage, Fauci is allowed to reply “shut up you worthless troll”. Because that is what the junior Senator from Kentucky is.
i wonder if paul would take offense if fauci told him how to operate on eyes? paul is out of his league and simply ignorant of pandemic response. he is irresponsible as a medical professional.
The funny thing is that Paul practices without a license. Why anyone allows this fool to operate on their eyes is a mystery.
…never seen you make…
[ The poor lackey can never escape. The Inquisitors need to make the lackey say magic prescribed words and do magic prescribed stuff, only the lackey knows neither the stuff nor words so the lackey is to be forever branded and tormented.
There is however a dignity in a lackey resisting the Inquisition.
I will resist and continue. Dilma Rousseff resisted and continued… ]
It is not resistance. It is embarrassed silence. I understand the behavior quite well. You hope with silence we will simply move on to a more comfortable topic than the poor treatment of the Uighurs by the Chinese communist party. I will continue to challenge you on these topics periodically until you address them truthfully.
https://www.amazon.com/Brothers-Karamazov-Translated-Constance-Garnett/dp/1420954369
1879 – 1880
The Brothers Karamazov
By Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Translated by Constance Garnett
The Grand Inquisitor
[ The teacher who read this with us died not long ago, but the memory will remain and I find this wonderfully relevant and comforting. At least I was well taught. ]
I am “worthless,” a “lackey” and a liar, so please, please, please just leave me alone. Please stop harassing and bullying me. Please stop frightening me. I will never ever bend to the prejudiced bullying, so please just stop. I will continue just as I know best, no matter the prejudiced bullying, no matter how frightened I may be.
Please, I will never bend, so stop the prejudiced bullying.
Please stop.
ltr: One of the consequences of interacting on social media is that people have the ability to criticize your commentary. If you only provide what is perceived as one-sided commentary, then it is to be expected that — in a free society — you will have your assessments critiqued.
One of the consequences of interacting…
[ Thank you so much for the clear and enabling explanation. I am heartened. I do appreciate the opportunity to collect my thoughts here. I will continue then precisely as I wish, for the sake of what I am thinking about and working on, and pay no attention at all to any “criticism” or rather the prejudice and accompanying bullying and efforts at intimidation.
I am grateful for the uplifting words. ]
ltr,
When you post on matters not about the PRC you are usually reasonable and accurate and interesting. When you post on the PRC sometimes you are accurate, such as when you noted the recent success in ending extreme poverty. But on some other matters your posts are not as accurate. Others have commented on how certain matters do not get commented on.
i am not sure about this, but i think it was macroduck who noted there appeared to be an increase in off topic and pro ccp propaganda posted by ltr at the same time that poor international news appeared with respect to china. ltr, if this is the case, then your credibility continues to decline as this provides pretty strong evidence that you are not an innocent bystander just pointing out interesting facts, but are in fact a media arm of the ccp. nevertheless, i am still interested in hearing your view on the atrocities committed against the uyghers.
No, no, no, no, no.
After having the word “racism” denied to you because it is highly, grossly inaccurate in this context, you cannot simply substitute a synonym, “prejudice,” and expect to get away with it. If racism is not the correct word, neither is prejudice.
You are being obtuse about this, and I don’t know for sure whether it’s innocent or malicious. However, given how cynically, how quickly and how often you play the racism card, I lean strongly toward malicious.
Allow me to give you some context. Yes, I am white and have been a recipient of white privilege all of my life. Furthermore, I freely acknowledge that I am likely unaware of the extent to which I am still a recipient of it. However, because of the time when, and the place where, I grew up (not the place where I now reside, though it too has its own history of racism), I have been a witness to the practice of overt and even violent racism several times, against African Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and Hispanic Americans. I am eternally grateful that my parents ensured that all of their children learned how wrong, how unfounded, how depraved racism is. I have seen the effects of it, including blood, broken bones, and broken teeth, and I was powerless to stop it. As an adult, I have also witnessed racism, both overt and implicit, but thankfully, no violence, and I know victims of it.
As a result, among the things I hate with the fire of 10,000 suns (a list topped by stating things as facts when they are demonstrably, provably wrong), are the practice of racism and racist behaviors, and cynical, manipulative, and unwarranted claims of being a victim of racism. The former tries to deny the intrinsic value and discrete personhood of a class of people and the individuals within it. The latter trivializes and demeans the actual suffering, the actual trauma, experienced by those who can rightfully claim to be victims of racism.
You are being rightfully and deservedly castigated, not for who you are, but for what you have chosen to do. Originally, you were called to task for being a stooge for the CCP, a charge for which there is more than ample evidence. Now, you are being excoriated because, instead of trying to refute the evidence or defend your actions, you tried to deflect criticism by appropriating to yourself the victimization and suffering of others.
Within these comment threads, you have NOT been victimized by, nor have you suffered from, the comments of others. You have not suffered abuse of any kind. You have not been bullied in any way. The criticism is not about, or even based on, who you are. The criticism is unambiguously about your words, your actions, within these threads.
Therefore, you have zero standing to invoke racism in this matter. In fact, by claiming the suffering of others to yourself, you have dishonored those people who have actually suffered racist attacks. For that, you deserve all of the criticism you’ve received. You are unworthy to stand among them.
Two more points:
1) If you are unwilling to take responsibility for your own words, you need to stop writing. If you continue to write, you must be willing to accept the consequences for what you choose to write.
2) If criticism of your words, criticism which you richly deserve, “frightens” you, you have no business posting those words on social media, and I strongly suggest you seek treatment for your hypersensitivity from a mental health professional.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=wGeV
January 15, 2018
Sticky Consumer Price Index less Shelter, 2017-2021
(Percent change)
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=w3Wk
January 15, 2018
Sticky Consumer Price Index and Sticky Consumer Price Index less Shelter, 2017-2021
(Percent change)