Politics, Economics and other Stuff

Back in Virginia

The hurricane didn't do much where we were, just some wind and not much rain, but the power went out late Sunday morning and hasn't come back yet.  Reports are that there may be no power even Labor Day weekend, which would be very annoying, since everybody including me shows up again for the big Labor Day cookout. 

We got to practice 'indoor camping', including the lack of sewers, since the new (non-septic tank) sewer hook-up require electrical power to pump the waste into the sewer system.  This means no dish washing or showers. 

No photos since the laptop batteries ran down. 

Perfect weather and record low tied on Monday. 

Update #1 (Aug. 31): power is back in Massachusetts, making for a  more comfortable Labor Day. 

Hurrican Red Tail Hawk

It was sitting there for a long time, but few away as soon as I opened the window to take photographs, so I didn't have time to change the exposure...so this is a bit underexposed and hence noisy.  Also dull overcast lighting.  Most likely a young hawk borning this year.

Update #1: now that I'm back home I confirm that making custom white balance adjustments using the laptop monitor is a bad idea. I'll fix the white balance at some point. 

Der preußische Verfassungsstreit: 1862-1866

Somebody should write a good modern book about this seminal historical event.  There is stunningly little in the modern literature for an even that is so central to why German history went the way it did.  Moreover, this conflict displays one of the central issues in modern state formation and is important for comparative political and legal history. 

Raithel, Thomas: Der preußische Verfassungskonflikt 1862-1866 und die französische Krise von 1877 als Schlüsselperioden der Parlamentarismusgeschichte. In: Themenportal Europäische Geschichte (2007) puts together what appears to be the modern literature:

Eine parlamentarismusgeschichtliche Darstellung des preußischen Verfassungskonflikts steht immer noch aus, der entsprechende Band des „Handbuchs der Geschichte des deut­schen Par­lamentarismus“ liegt noch nicht vor. Vgl. allgemein vor allem Anderson, Eugene N., The Social and Political Conflict in Prussia 1858–1864 (University of Nebraska Studies, N.F., Bd. 12), Lincoln 1954; Hess, Adalbert, Das Parlament, das Bismarck widerstrebte. Zur Politik und sozialen Zusammensetzung des preußischen Abgeordnetenhauses der Konflikts­zeit (1862–1866) (Politische Forschungen, Bd. 6), Köln 1964; aus den zahlreichen Hand­buchdar­stellungen vgl. vor allem Nipperdey, Thomas, Deutsche Geschichte 1800–1866. Bürgerwelt und starker Staat, München 1983, S. 749–768, 795-797; Huber, Ernst Rudolf, Deutsche Ver­fassungsgeschichte seit 1789, Bd. 3: Bismarck und das Reich, 3. Aufl., Stutt­gart 1988 (verb.), S. 275–369; Schulze, Hagen, Preußen von 1850 bis 1871. Verfassungs­staat und Reichsgrün­dung, in: Büsch, Otto (Hg.), Handbuch der preußischen Geschichte, Bd. 2: Das 19. Jahrhun­dert und große Themen der Geschichte Preußens, Berlin 1992, S. 293–372; Wehler, Hans-Ulrich, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, Bd. 3: Von der „Deut­schen Doppelrevolution“ bis zum Beginn des Ersten Weltkrieges. 1849–1914, München 1995, S. 251–301; aus der Bis­marck-Literatur vgl. vor allem Gall, Lothar, Bismarck. Der weiße Revolutionär, Frankfurt am Main 1980, S. 199–380; Pflanze, Otto, Bismarck. Der Reichsgründer, München 1997 (zuerst englisch 1990), S. 171–340.

That's not all that much, mostly chapter long narrative treatments in survey histories.  Dierk Walter, Preußische Heeresreformen 1807-1870. Militärische Innovation und der Mythos der „Roonschen Reform“, Paderborn 2003 is a modern treatment of some of the context, but doesn't look promising for the state building issues I'm concerned about.  Otherwise, the literature is older, much of it from 1933-1939 or 1914-1918, when the assertion of executive authority again very much rises to the surface. 

The topic came up today when I was talking with a US legal historian about the current US debt ceiling conflict, which to me seems to raise similar issues.   But I'd like to know more about what happened in Prussia and how this history was interpreted over time, especially what seems to be an imprtant oral tradition of what happened. 

Something like Andrea Thier's 1000 page 1999 habilitation Steuergesetzgebung und Verfassung in der konstitutionellen Monarchie, Staatssteuerreformen in Preussen, 1871- 1893, would be nice.  Ideally, it would be even better than that...

Evening Hurricane Swim

Lots of people in the ocean this evening. 

Before the Storm

I expect nothing but a bit of rain.  Note that storm surge is not going to be a problem. 

Weight Update

I've drifted up to around 152.5 lbs over the long weekends up in Masssachussetts, due to social eating and the availablity of things like good blueberry pie and good meatloaf.  That's 5 lbs too much and its all belly fat...no, not additional upper body muscles yet.  No reason for me to be above 150 lbs. 

Fitness Update

I'm moving from doing push-ups thee times a week (5x 40, sometime to only 30) to doing them daily in the morning.  I'll aim for 3x to failure.  This morning that was 50-40-41.  I'll move to doing pull-ups/chin-ups 5x a week, Monday through Friday (when at home).  I'm making some progress with pull-ups/chin-ups, even not having work on them much.  It might be a bit hard to fit them in during the morning if I'm running, but I wan't to be able to do pull-ups in the evening.  Doing push-ups at work (but not going to the gym)might be a bit weird, though I could probably pull it off. 

I've not run since Tuesday a week ago.  My left knee area is feeling much better, after a day or two last weekend when it hurt even when I wasn't doing anything.  Now it feels back to normal, though I've not tried to run again yet.  I may give it a try this weekend, weather permitting.  It might be safer to give it a few more day though.

One thing I've noticed is that the quad tendonitis may have been slowing me down for the last month or two, when my easy pace did seem to be getting slower.  I think tendon soreness could have been the cause.  I'm hopefull getting rid of this soreness will make me faster (and more comfortable).  This is part of learning to recognize what is just tiredness and what is a sign of impending injury.  

Brad Delong seems confused about liberty

Brad Delong writes, quoting Noah Smith:

Libertarians Who Tell You What to Think

Somehow I don't think Bryan Caplan understands what "liberty" is.

Noah Smith:

Noahpinion: The libertarian solution to inequality: Reviewing a book about happiness, George Mason University professor and Cato Institute blogger Bryan Caplan writes:

[The author] suggests that large differences in relative income can have a large influence on happiness...[but even if he] is right about the unhappy effects of income comparison, you shouldn't conclude that redistribution is the solution. Yes, you could fight inequality of income. But you could just as easily fight comparison of income. Instead of praising those who "raise awareness" about inequality, perhaps we should shame them, like the office gossip, for spreading envy and discontent.

So, the libertarian solution to the problem of inequality is to socially persecute anyone who talks about inequality?… Who wants to live in a society in which certain topics are verboten? Would we really be happier if the words "Gini coefficient" were NSFW? And, more fundamentally, when did restricting the free flow of information - by any means, governmental or social - increase our liberty?

Like I said, a very odd notion of what the word means….

The bottom line, libertarians, is that people care about what they care about. Telling them "No, do NOT care about that, care only about my arbitrary, rigid, and counterintuitive definition of liberty!" is not going to win your movement a lot of followers in the long term.

Today, Matt Yglesias posted about an example of the sort of change Bryan Caplan is suggesting, just in another sphere:

An amazing Anna Holmes column takes a look at Martin Luther King, Jr.’s relatively short-lived stint as an advice columnist for Ebony in the late 1950s.

The results are a powerful reminder that the past was a very different place:

King’s response to a cheated-on wife was to suggest that she “study” her rival to learn what her husband wanted in a woman. (“Are you careful with your grooming? Do you nag?” he asked.) He informed an unmarried woman grappling with whether to have sex that “real men still respect purity and virginity” and instructed an abused wife to determine whether there was anything within her personality to justify such treatment. “Are you sure that you have a radiating personality, a pleasant disposition, and that feminine charm which every man admires?” he asked a Miss Lonelyhearts. To a newlywed having troubles with her mother-in-law, he remarked, “There is an expression that no home is big enough to have two women at its head.”

People naturally focus on formal policy change as the essence of “politics,” but clearly one of the biggest social and political changes of the past 50 years is that nobody would say that stuff in a prominent magazine column these days. And yet we certainly haven’t made it illegal to tell abused wives that their problem is bad personality. Nor should we. People were persuaded to change their thinking.

Hurricane and Earthquake

The earthquake was exciting and pretty big.  A good experience.  A bit scary since the first wave was smaller than the second wave, so I was surprised by the second wave's strength.  Real shaking. No damage I've noticed, but the media had photos of (badly constructed) brick wall facades taking out parked cars very close by. 

Hurricanes, so far in my experience, never live up to the media hype.  I hope this one is similar.  I fly up to Boston Friday evening and had to move my return flight from Monday to Tuesday.  I'll see how much work I can get done remotely. 

I did check: the house up in Massachusetts, though by the ocean, is not in an official flood plain.  Sort of obvious if you think about the elevation. 

Where we live(d) Part II

I'm on my home machine now, so I'd need to do extra work to make sure the scale is exactly the same as in my previous post, but here are some more views of some of my past living situations. Here I'm doing apartment buildings. 

Lets toss a street view of my first residence ever:

Here is (part of) grad school, my last residence before my wife and I rented a place together. My rooming group was in the top right hand side apartment. 

And finally, what is probably the objectively least good place I've lived, though I did fine, the grad school housing from the first two years of grad school.  My father visited and said something about improving my quality of life. One person was shot to death at the gas station on this block while I lived here. 

 My apartment building before grad school:

First house ever, pre-school, kindergarten and part of first grade. I think I have the right house. 

Some nicer places can't be posted due to privacy concerns. 

Rumors of a Canon 5D III before the end of 2011

CR:

I’m told we’ll be seeing the 5D Mark III announced in October, with delivery shortly there after. I was not given any specs, which is probably a good sign.

Paying Interest on Reserves as a way of crowding out the Shadow Banking System?

More later...seems like it would be an simple model to write with potentially interesting contact with reality. 

In general, shouldn't interest on reserves crowd out maturity transformation?  But how big is this effect?  Big enough to matter?  It should also (strongly) interact with the zero bound on interest and hence with inflation. 

You'd think this model would already exist and would be well known.  But, hey, it's monetary economics. 

Nighttime Photography

I was out taking photos yesterday evening, but I was called in by my mother-in-law who was concerned I'd set off the neighborhood dogs.  I've now pre-cleared myself with the relevant neighbors and will head out again this evening.  It seems like this is making too much fuss of it, but I need I need to keep everybody here happy. At least I'm less likely to have the police called on me (not that that would cause any problems). 

Update #1: But I ran into technical problems...battery died, underexposure, dust in the 17-55mm lens?  Nothing good. 

 

One Billion Cars Worldwide

via ThinkProgress, Ward's reports

According to Ward’s research, which looked at government-reported registrations and historical vehicle-population trends, global registrations jumped from 980 million units in 2009 to 1.015 billion in 2010.

The figures reflect the approximate number of cars, light-, medium- and heavy-duty trucks and buses registered worldwide, but that does not include off-road, heavy-duty vehicles. ...

Vehicles in operation in 2010 equated roughly to a ratio of 1:6.75 vehicles to people among a world population of 6.9 billion, compared with 1:6.63 in 2009. ...

In the U.S., the ratio was 1:1.3 among a population of almost 310 million – the highest vehicle-to-person ratio in the world. Italy was second with 1:1.45. France, Japan, and the U.K. followed, all of which fell in the 1:1.7 range.

In China, the ratio was 1:17.2 among the country’s more than 1.3 billion people. India, the world’s second most-populous nation with 1.17 billion people, saw a ratio of 1:56.3.

The world vehicle population in 2010 passed the 1 billion-unit mark 24 years after reaching 500 million in 1986. Prior to that, the vehicle population doubled roughly every 10 years from 1950 to 1970, when it first reached the 250 million-unit threshold.

Why does Italy have so many cars? It appears that the main thing going on here is that low income Italian households have more cars than poor households elsewhere in Europe.  But why is that?  I would hazard a combination of these effects: a) a better ability to keep old cheap cars on the road, due to good weather (a California effect) and a less stringent inspection regime, b) non-functional public transit, c) the cultural acceptance (why?) of very small cheap cars.    Interestingly, Portugal has the of the lowest low income household car ownership rate in Europe (but Portugal is much poorer than Italy).

Bike Project

Since I'm stuck with a running injury, I need want to ramp up my bike buying project.  I also need to confront my wife's opposition/doubt about (unnecessarily fancy & expensive & dangerous) bike buying. Or maybe I should just bypass them?  Or I could blame her for causing a running injury. 

In any case, what are the cost points here? We have bike, 2x pendals (basic and clipless), bike shoes, helmet, power meter, ANT+ bike computer(+GPS?),  trainer (i.e. indoor bike set-up).  And a hitch for my car and the associated bike rack. 

So lets list costs. 

Bike: from low to high cost, the range is, taking Cannondale as an example, most brands have very similar price points, CAAD10 105: $1,500, CAAD10 Ultegra, $2,150 & SuperSix 105 $2,150, Supersix Ultegra $3,200 and CAAD10 Dura-Ace $3,200.   

Power Meter: there are two obvious choices.  In order of cost they are PowerTap Comp $600, wired power meter that also needs to be installed (with some costs for installing into a rear wheel),  PowerTap Elite with wheel goes fro $1,000-$1,150.  Next up, a crank based power meter, what I want, is Quarq, which as far as I understand the pricing, goes for $1,700 or so, but I'm not sure I understand their pricing (i.e. what crank compatibility requirements and cost for a potentially new crank are), the range seems to be $1,500-$1,900.  

ANT+ bike computer costs range from...I see costs adding up. 

So on the cheapest side we have CAAD10 105 and the PowerTap Comp with a wheel for maybe $2,500.  Plus teh additoinal costs that get me to a bit over $3,000, excluding hitch and bike rack costs.  I don't want to dump the power meter, but there are no additional cost from waiting to add it later (say as a Christmas present, with the bike itself counting as a brithday present). 

 More later...

Equal Population States

I've been wondering about geographical clustering analysis for work.  Time to get serious about that...

This from here. 

Where we live(d) or comparative suburb studies

Google map views of where I've lived, including where my parents grew up or my wife's family's summer place.  All at the same scale (oops, not quite...agh, that was the main point of this post...well, same scale for all US locations and one German location), but with variable image resolution.  Image are not necessarily centered. Sort of in reverse chronological order. 

It looks like my most recent life is more suburban and that my mother's house growing up was more urban than I remember it (but have people been paving over green space as part of urban decay?). 

Update #1: my mother suggests I add in two more childhood addresses...not that this makes the list complete, I still have Cambridge, Chicago and DC addesses to add.  I was sort of limiting this to more suburban locations.  So at the very bottom childhood Heidelberg and Munich addresses. 

 

 

Quadriceps tendonitis

As soon as I name my running injury, it gets worse.   Since I stopped running five days ago I couldn't tell I was injured unless I ran, but as of noon today I'm afflicted even if I just walk around or even just sit! 

Never name an injury? 

Obscure Plants of the Day

As usual on weekends, I don't have a monitor I can see colors on.

Ancient Egyptian Religion and Christianity

There is a post brewing on this topic, but....well, it seems like a topic prefered by cranks, so I need to tread carefully. 

Quadriceps tendonitis

Looks like I have this common running overuse injury....I did gear up my running milage too fast.   Now I need to not run for some time (five days into not running now, it may take another ten days or so), then gear up milage slowly enough not to have another injury.  Live and learn.  I need to think of more stretching and strenth training to do.

Time to gear up the bike buying project, thought that will involve overcoming/ignoring wifely opposion. 

Book Buying Update

Some books I've purchased since my last book buying post.  Not all have arrived yet. [Typepad line spacing is off, no time fix it now.]

Sage Rountree, The Athlete's Guide to Yoga: An Integrated Approach to Strength, Flexibility, and Focus

Mark Elliott, Emperor Qianlong: Son of Heaven, Man of the World

Toby Wilkinson, Lives of the Ancient Egyptians: Pharaohs, Queens, Courtiers and Commoners

Mark Rippetoe, Starting Strength (2nd edition)

John Romer, The Great Pyramid: Ancient Egypt Revisited

Toby Wilkinson, The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt

David Archer, The Global Carbon Cycle

Hunter Allen, Andrew Coggan, Training and Racing with a Power Meter

Steven Munatones, Open Water Swimming

Emmett Hines, Fitness Swimming, Second Edition

Joe Friel, Your Best Triathlon

Joe Friel, The Triathlete's Training Bible

Joe Friel, The Cyclist's Training Bible

Robert Penn, It's All About the Bike: The Pursuit of Happiness on Two Wheels

C. Calvin Jones, Park Tool BBB-2 The Big Blue Book of Bicycle Repair - 2nd Edition

Todd Downs, The Bicycling Guide to Complete Bicycle Maintenance & Repair: For Road & Mountain Bikes

Lewis Sorley, A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam

Krislert Samphantharak, Robert M. Townsend, Households as Corporate Firms: An Analysis of Household Finance Using Integrated Household Surveys and Corporate Financial Accounting

Roddy Boyd, Fatal Risk: A Cautionary Tale of AIG's Corporate Suicide

Charles C. Mann, 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created

Roderick Floud, Vogel, The Changing Body: Health, Nutrition, and Human Development in the Western World since 1700

Eric Nelson, The Hebrew Republic: Jewish Sources and the Transformation of European Political Thought

Jack P. Greene, The Constitutional Origins of the American Revolution

James Belich, Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Angloworld, 1783-1939

Alexandre B. Tsybakov, Introduction to Nonparametric Estimation

Robin Blackburn, The American Crucible: Slavery, Emancipation and Human Rights

William D. Cohan, Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World

David E. Bernstein, Rehabilitating Lochner: Defending Individual Rights against Progressive Reform

Julius A. Stratton, Mind and Hand: The Birth of MIT

Jonathan Steinberg, Bismarck: A Life

Emma Rothschild, The Inner Life of Empires: An Eighteenth-Century History

Mark Elliott, Color-Blind Justice: Albion Tourgee and the Quest for Racial Equality from the Civil War to Plessy v. Ferguson

Christopher Tomlins, Freedom Bound: Law, Labor, and Civic Identity in Colonizing English America, 1580-1865

Lawrence Goldstone, Inherently Unequal: The Betrayal of Equal Rights by the Supreme Court, 1865-1903

Richard S. Grossman, Unsettled Account: The Evolution of Banking in the Industrialized World since 1800

Ordered but not here yet (some are not yet released...not sure I'll get all of these):

David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years

E. A. Wrigley,  Energy and the English Industrial Revolution

David Edgerton, Britain's War Machine: Weapons, Resources, and Experts in the Second World War

Douglas W. Allen, The Institutional Revolution: Measurement and the Economic Emergence of the Modern World

Regina Grafe, Distant Tyranny: Markets, Power, and Backwardness in Spain, 1650-1800

Daniel Yergin, The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World

Zara Steiner, The Lights that Failed: European International History 1919-1933

Jill Titus, Brown's Battleground: Students, Segregationists, and the Struggle for Justice in Prince Edward County, Virginia

Suzanne Mettler, The Submerged State: How Invisible Government Policies Undermine American Democracy

Paul Starr, Remedy and Reaction: The Peculiar American Struggle over Health Care Reform

Emanuel Derman, Models.Behaving.Badly: Why Confusing Illusion with Reality Can Lead to Disaster, on Wall Street and in Life

Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern

Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined

Joe McGinniss, The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin

Lewis Sorley, Westmoreland: The General Who Lost Vietnam

Joshua S. Goldstein, Winning the War on War: The Decline of Armed Conflict Worldwide

Ezra F. Vogel, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China

Inflation Aversion

Listening to the media, I think NPR both today and yesterday, I've seen several mentions of what sounds like 'inflation aversion' by the general public, once by a man on the street in Iowa and once by a man on the street in France, both along the lines of 'everything is so expensive and getting more so', especially food and energy. 

This seems to play into the aversion out there to expansionary monetary policy which would raise nominal spending and, in some combination with various ill understood lags, real output and prices and inflation.  In particular, people seem to see their wage rate or hours worked as unreponsive to expansionary monetary policy, while the prices they pay, especially for energy, as responsive to expansionary monetary policy.  

There are several issues here.  

1) My first reaction is that people who are against monetary expansion don't understand how monetary expansion works.  In standard macro the causal chain is 'monetary expansion' -> higher demand -> more output -> higher marginal costs -> higher prices due to higher current and anticipated costs, with dynamics that depend on monetary policy and price stickiness mechanics as well as cost curves.  Even in a fully flexible price world in which expansionary monetary policy has no effects on output expansionary monetary policy does not raise prices any more than wages, so that it has no real effects. 

2) My second and novel reaction was 'hey, these guys may be more right that I think, under the special circumstances we are in now'.  In particular, nominal wages are sticky downwards and prices are less sticky upwards.  We may now be in a situation where real wages, because of downward sticky wages and a weak labor market, are substantially above market clearing prices.  What this means is that additional labor market demand will not raise wages (but it will raise hours worked and employement).  So what monetary expansion does is raise prices and hours and employment, but not wages for people in jobs with downward sticky wages.  People on fix salaries will see their real income decline with monetary expansion, all additional real labor income will go to people whose hours go up or who become employed again.

This is a (somewhat) plausible short-run story, though how it plays out in the long-run is less clear.  People aren't going to be at the binding zero wage growth constraint for all that long.  Still, it points ou that there may be a short-run conflict of interest  between the employed fix salary worker and other workers that is larger than usual. 

3) Since people see price moving around but don't see their wages moving, they may learn to understand the economy along lines that overemphasizes the above story line. 

Does any of this apply to me?  I'm on a bonus system, so the base wage doesn't really matter all that much, at least in simple models of labor compensation.  Still, there is the issue of how wage 'stickiness' should be conceptionalized when workers receive bonuses or how to conceptionalize price 'stickiness' when firms have sales.   One of the holy grails of macroeconomics... 

My 8:55 pm flight out of Dulles in now leaving at 12:05 am

I should be in bed around 2:30 am. 

Not too bad.  A small laptop screen is the most annoying aspect of this ordeal. 

Why the Tappan Zee Bridge is in the wrong place

A nice story on NPR right now. 

The Tappan Zee crosses one of the widest points on the Hudson — the bridge is more than three miles long. And if you go just a few miles south, the river gets much narrower. As you might expect, it would have been cheaper and easier to build the bridge across the narrower spot on the river.  ...

There was an alternate proposal for a bridge at a narrower spot nearby. The proposal was put forward by top engineers at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

But that proposal was killed by New York governor Thomas E. Dewey. The New York Thruway was his baby; in a 1954 speech he proclaimed that it would be "the world's greatest highway." ...

The Port Authority — the body that proposed putting the bridge further south — had a monopoly over all bridges built in a 25-mile radius around the Statue of Liberty.

If the bridge had been built just a bit south of its current location — that is, if it had been built across a narrower stretch of the river — it would have been in the territory that belonged to the Port Authority.

As a result, the Port Authority — not the State of New York — would have gotten the revenue from tolls on the bridge. And Dewey needed that toll revenue to fund the rest of the Thruway.

So Dewey was stuck with a three-mile-long bridge.

Third Day of Not Running

I seem to have some (muscle?) soreness above my left knee, in the front.  It was there for a few days before I stopped running as well.  I assume it will go away soon. 

Does getting iPhones make sense?

The topic of iPhones came up at a family gathering yesterday and iPhone users were quite supportive of the usefulness of their iPhones ('you can def. get along without them, but you'll wonder how you ever did so once you have one').  Still, I don't see how they make sense from a cost standpoint.  My current cell phone plan for two very basic phones -- basically voice only -- is $58 (which is probably too much).  If I got two iPhones for a total of $400, I'd have a monthly plan cost of around $160 or so (voice, data, minimal texting), i.e. $1,200 more per year.  I could toss in a 3rd phone for kid #1, who really wants one, without raising the plan cost much, but that just runs the risk that she'll loose it or misuse it as a distraction.

I'm all for tech gadgets, but I don't see the point given the cost.   

The iPhone 5 comes out early October. 

And yes, we do have a land line we could think about dropping, but I don't see that happening. 

Update #1: Jody comments:

Yeah, I keep doing the numbers and reaching the same conclusion(s). I figure we'll have to do the math again when the kids all get their mobiles in a few years, and until then, our $60 monthly plan is fine.

Update #2: my wife does point out that lots of iPhones seem to be paid for by employers.  I've never had a business phone, nor do I want to be reachable before or after work. 

Shearwater skimming the Ocean

A shearwater skimming the ocean in front of the fast Provincetown-Boston ferry today.

Update #1: my wife tells me this is a Great Shearwater. 

The 30 Year Treasury yield goes from 3.59% to 3.78% in just a couple of hours

via the FT, today's action on the 30 Year Treasury -- now that's vol, biggest move since 1987.  I never traded 30 year instruments, since they are weird...the ten year treasury is much better behaved (still, the 10 Year Treasury did 16 bps today, so this looks like it isn't a 30 year technical). 

Superstition or Magical Thinking

My favorite example of superstition or magical thinking:

If we behave rationally, it will all turn out okay.

10 Year Treasury Yields 2.32%

Totally crazy.  What is the Fed doing? 

Update #1 (Aug. 9, 6:30 pm): make that a yield of 2.2% on the 10 year Treasury. 

To make clear: this is a sign of monetary policy that has been far too tight.  The TIPS implied real return on 10 year Tresasuries right now is, just coincidently, 0.00%, with negative real yields at shorter maturities.

We need a signal from the Fed that rates will stay low even during a rebound in spending and the price level.    That we don't have this even now is crazy. 

Update #2: Doug comments:

Do you think the problem is that monetary policy is too tight? Or that with the real economy so weak there is zero actual return on capital?

The simple theory here would be 'too tight money -> low demand -> low real activity -> low real returns on capital -> low real rates.'   Don't think of the real return on capital as exogenous but as driven by the utilization of capital.   The bigger problem in interpreting this data along these lines is that treasuries don't have a tight (or even very loose?) relationship to 'return on capital'. 

Update #3: as far as I know, there is surprisingly little research on this channel of monetary policy, though it seems like it ought to be a major transmission mechanism.  One of the issues I have thought about looking into, thought it has all the usual macroeconomic modeling pitfalls. 

More Blueberries

Part of my mother-in-law's childhood shell collection

Andrew Sullivan's 'The View From Your Window' Today

Hey, the view from my office window may be slightly better....being on the other side of my building would be even better though. 

8 Aug 2011 12:30 PM

The View From Your Window

Heidelberg, Germany, 12 pm

Long Run

I ran my long run today in rain, at times in a full downpour with lots of wind, at times just in drizzle.  Low to mid 70s temperature in the early afternoon.  A much more comfortable run than the last few long runs, which was a mental relief: some of my tiredness was just due to high temperatures and high humidity.  This was much more fun and I felt like I would have been glad to run further.  I would have considered running further if I'd not been expected to be a birthday party for one of the cousins. 

I did have a young child run to his mother and then reverse course and run right in front of my, sending me into a sumersault and into a puddle.  I thought it was well done and the kid was unhurt, as was I.  Just one more trail running challenge. 

Still pretty slow: 12.85 miles in 2:02 hours.  43.3 miles for the week. 

I need to start doing tempo runs again, ideally twice a week.  I did a 4x 3 min intervals at 7 min/mile on Friday, but I need to do better than that.   Still, I may stick with intervals for the moment until I feel strong enough to run fast for 20-30 min. 

Too much chocolate and red meat out here at the summer place, as well as social eating.  Oh well...I need to shift from eating chocolate to drinking Pero. 

Rainy Day

I still need to go on my long run, most likely in the rain.  If it gets too unpleasant I'll simply do my long run tomorrow.  Also 210s racing, shot without a telephoto lens. 

Kid #1 turns 11

Back to 150 lbs

Still, I should weigh a bit less.   And now I face the long weekend...

Still waiting for those training effects

My legs feel wiped out.  I may not even run tomorrow.  A tempo run in on the schedule. 

Not clear what is going on, but I do have some sort of fatigue build up in my legs.  It may be due to squats, or more milage.  My legs don't feel perky while running.

Chess Players are getting better?!

via Cowen:

Kenneth W. Regan and Guy McC. Haworth analyze games move-for-move, using chess-playing computer programs.  The result:

...we conclude that there has been little or no ‘inflation’ in ratings over time—if anything there has been deflation. This runs counter to conventional wisdom, but is predicted by population models on which rating systems have been based…The results also support a no answer to question 2. In the 1970’s there were only two players with ratings over 2700, namely Bobby Fischer and Anatoly Karpov, and there were years as late as 1981 when no one had a rating over 2700 (see [Wee00]). In the past decade there have usually been thirty or more players with such ratings. Thus lack of inflation implies that those players are better than all but Fischer and Karpov were.

Fitness Update

I put myself on the scale this evening and I'm a tad above 154 lbs...so at least 152 lbs tomorrow morning.  The result of long weekends in the land of good take-out pizza and very good blueberry pie, as well as social eating and no accurate scale.  Well, I know how to deal with this.  Sadly, not due to the result of strength training.

I need to start lifting heavy free weights. 

I need to pick up speed training. 

Some plyometrics also seem called for. 

Otherwise, I'm waiting for training effects to kick in.  My runs currently are getting slower, due to fatigue, even after a rest week with only 12 miles of running. 

Update #1 (July 3, 7:20 am): 152.2 lbs this morning.  And no running due to thunderstorms.  It will also thunderstorm this evening according to the forecast.  So I may need to run Saturday, if I can fit it in.

Quarq Power Meter

I'm moving my consideration from the hub based PowerTap Power Meter to the crank based Quarq Power Meter.   This gets me a wider choice of wheels as well as the ability to switch out wheels.  It increases my cost though.