“I got news for you: Marijuana is legal in Colorado,” Hartfield, a longtime marijuana activist, said. “It’s no longer a drug in a sense. It’s a plant. It’s a commodity. There’s no reason not to allow trade in it openly.”
Sometimes a picture really does tell a thousand words. Here’s a chart, based on data from the Philadelphia Fed, showing actual economic results compared to the predictions of professional economists. As you can see, my profession does a wretched job.
Eighty years after the Great Depression we still argue about what caused it and why it ended. If economics is a science, it is more like biology than physics. Biologists try to understand the relationships in a complex system. That’s hard enough. But they can’t tell you what will happen with any precision to the population of a particular species of frog if rainfall goes up this year in a particular rain forest. They might not even be able to count the number of frogs right now with any exactness. We have the same problems in economics. The economy is a complex system, our data are imperfect and our models inevitably fail to account for all the interactions. The bottom line is that we should expect less of economists. Economics is a powerful tool, a lens for organizing one’s thinking about the complexity of the world around us. That should be enough. We should be honest about what we know, what we don’t know and what we may never know. Admitting that publicly is the first step toward respectability.Don’t Trust (Macro) Economists
“Inflation is creeping in. Businesses are holding back. People are up against the wall.”“Those who live in ivory towers and pontificate about the ‘real’ economy while being totally removed from it should really experience how the 99 percent live.”“If you believe the BS stats, you are in the minority. Consumers KNOW differently. Core CPI, etc. What a pile of cowdung!”
Economists use adjusted measures of inflation, such as the seasonally adjusted, core, and 16 percent trimmed mean indexes, because they are looking for underlying trends that are relevant to the formulation of economic policy. Changes caused by seasonal factors, and changes like the price of oil, which are determined in world markets, are not highly relevant to policy making. Consumers, on the other hand, look at price changes as they happen in the real world, without seasonal adjustment. Far from ignoring prices that change more than usual, they may give them exaggerated importance. For that reason, the rate of inflation as perceived by consumers is often higher than inflation as measured by economists.
Series Id: PCU332992332992
Industry: Small arms ammunition mfg
Product: Small arms ammunition mfg
Base Date: 198506
Producer Price Indexes @ BLS
Inflation in June fell for the first time in a more than a year. The Consumer Price Index (CPI), which is the government's most widely watched gauge of what the things average Americans buy cost, fell 0.2% last month. The drop was mostly driven by a fall in gas prices, which were down nearly 7% alone in June. The question is whether this is a good sign for the recovery, or another sign that we are headed for a double dip. Are we at the end of the soft patch, or the beginning of a worse patch?
The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) decreased
0.2 percent in June on a seasonally adjusted basis, the U.S. Bureau
of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the last 12 months, the all
items index increased 3.6 percent before seasonal adjustment.
In contrast, the index for all items less food and
energy increased 0.3 percent for the second consecutive month.
Guerrillas and their paramilitary adversaries have long been involved in mining, often using it and related businesses like cattle ranching to launder money and to extract extortion payments. But military intelligence officials and residents here say that new factors, like the success of American-financed coca eradication projects and the price of gold, have pushed rivals in Colombia’s long drug war to focus elsewhere.
There was one significant factor in greater prediction success, however, and that was cognitive style: “foxes” who know a little about many things do better than “hedgehogs” who know a lot about one area of expertise. Low scorers, Tetlock wrote, were “thinkers who ‘know one big thing,’ aggressively extend the explanatory reach of that one big thing into new domains, display bristly impatience with those who ‘do not get it,’ and express considerable confidence that they are already pretty proficient forecasters.” High scorers in the study were “thinkers who know many small things (tricks of their trade), are skeptical of grand schemes, see explanation and prediction not as deductive exercises but rather as exercises in flexible ‘ad hocery’ that require stitching together diverse sources of information, and are rather diffident about their own forecasting prowess.”Financial Flimflam: Why Economic Experts' Predictions Fail
“If the professional economists can’t predict economies and professional forecasters can’t predict markets, then what chance does the amateur investor have? You know the answer already, which brings me to my own ‘cocktail party’ theory of market forecasting, developed over the years of standing in the middle of living rooms, near punch bowls, listing to what the nearest ten people said about stocks.
In the first stage of an upward market – one that has been down awhile and that nobody expects to rise again – people aren’t talking about stocks. In fact, if they lumber up to ask me what I do for a living, and I answer, ‘I manage an equity mutual fund,’ they nod politely and wander away. If they don’t wander away, then they quickly change the subject to the Celtics game, the upcoming elections, or the weather. Soon they are talking to a nearby dentist about plaque. When ten people would rather talk to a dentist about plaque than to the manager of an equity mutual fund about stocks, it’s likely the market is about to turn up.
In stage two, after I’ve confessed what I do for a living, the new acquaintances linger a bit longer – perhaps long enough to tell me how risky the stock market is – before they move over to talk to the dentist. The cocktail party talk is still more about plaque than about stocks. The market is up 15 percent from stage one, but few are paying attention.
In stage three, with the market up 30 percent from stage one, a crowd of interested parties ignores the dentist and circles around me all evening. A succession of enthusiastic individuals takes me aside to ask what stocks they should buy. Even the dentist is asking me what stocks he should buy. Everybody at the party has put money into one issue or another, and they’re all discussing what’s happened.
In stage four, once again they’re crowded around me – but this time it’s to tell me what stocks I should buy. Even the dentist has three or four tips, and in the next few days I look up his recommendations in the newspaper and they’ve all gone up. When the neighbors tell me what to buy, and then I wish I had taken their advice, it’s a sure sign that the market has reached a top and is due for a tumble.”
Even if they did, they would shy away from forecasting. The main advantage that academic economists’ have over professional forecasters may be their greater awareness of established relationships between factors. What is hardest to forecast, though, are turning points – when the old relationships break down. While there may be some factors that signal turning points – a run-up in short-term leverage and asset prices, for example, often presages a bust – they are not infallible predictors of trouble to come.Why Did Economists Not Spot the Crisis?
The actual year-end 10-year yield was 31% higher than the average of the economists' estimates made less than three months earlier.An Economic Forecasting Fiasco: What Pro Economists Predicted For QE2 And Treasury Yields
The truth is that our knowledge of the complex system called the economy is woefully inadequate and may always remain that way. We ask too much of economics. Even our best attempts to measure the job impact of the stimulus spending make this clear. In November of 2010, the CBO estimated that the stimulus had created between 1.4 and 3.6 million jobs. Not a very precise estimate.Congressional Testimony on the Stimulus
The discussion largely centers around the weak version which says that, while market prices may not always be a great guide to real economic forces, their movements are not systematically predictable. At every moment, prices reflect all the forecasts of all the market participants who, between them, have access to all potential information and ways of utilizing it. A price moves only when new information arises. But to be truly new, this information has to be unpredictable—otherwise it is simply an inference from information that already exists. Because the information is unpredictable, so is its effect on prices. The randomness of price movements in turn implies that no one can outperform the market in betting on where they will go.Why the Efficient Market Hypothesis (Weak Version) Says Nothing about the Ability to Identify Bubbles
I have no problem with this. The fallacy arises when this argument is invoked to deny the possibility that economists can identify bubbles in real time. If you’re so smart you can spot a bubble, why aren’t you rich? If people could spot bubbles with any predictability, then the EMH would be wrong—but we know it’s right.
One way to interpret this is that the economics profession was not fully accounting for the economy’s human element, an element that can’t be reduced to mathematical analysis.A People’s Economics
The relatively few professional economists who warned of the current crisis were people, it seems, who not only read the scholarly economics literature, but also brought into play more personal judgment: intuitive comparisons with past historical episodes; conclusions about speculative trading, price bubbles, and the stability of confidence; evaluations of the moral purposes of economic actors; and impressions that complacency had set in, lulling watchdogs to sleep.
The This American Life program reported that massive and sophisticated computer modelling of economic forecasts results in not particularly high levels of accuracy. There is too much chaos in the world – chaotic randomness, including national and global political events – for modelling to be that effective in increasing forecasting accuracy.
Also, the program reported that the forecasters find it very difficult to admit that their forecasts are wrong – their egos get in the way when they need to revise their forecasts.Witches, ghouls and economic forecasting
Forecasters collectively have tended to make the largest
errors during periods that included either turning points
in the business cycle or significant shifts in the trend rate
of growth of labor productivity. Large changes in oil
prices—apart from their role in precipitating business
cycles—also cause errors in forecasts of inflation.
The result? More often than not, the dart board beats the traditional, technical analysis methods of trading stocks! One group of dart-board investors beat the S&P 500 without fail for 12 consecutive years, and realized an impressive 23.4 return on their dart board stock selectionsAstrology and the Stock Market: “Astro Investing”
The purpose should also be to keep wages at a point stabilized with today's cost of living. Both must be regulated at the same time; and neither one of them can or should be regulated without the other.
At the same time that farm prices are stabilized, I will stabilize wages.
That is plain justice -- and plain common sense.
“And sailors will soon again be able to afford a stripper in every port! . . . What inflation has done before it will do again! . . . What a man! And what a leader! Yowzer! Happy days are here again!”
In a not-too-distant future, I can even imagine frequenting, for example, a HIGH TIMES Café or a NORML Healing Center. Given the right partners and conducive legal circumstances, it hardly seems a stretch of one’s imagination to see this happening relatively soon in California, where citizens will vote this November on a marijuana-legalization ballot initiative.
With this in mind, Print contacted four firms: Lust, a graphic design practice in Amsterdam established by Thomas Castro, Jeroen Barendse, and Dimitri Nieuwenhuizen; the New York office of Base, which worked with its branches in Europe; the Oslo firm Strømme Throndsen, winner of the 2009 Award for Design Excellence for its flour packaging; and The Heads of State, a two-man operation run by Jason Kernevich and Dustin Summers in Philadelphia.Building a Better Baggie
The brief was simple: What would a legal pack of marijuana cigarettes look like?
YAK edibles is launching a broad line of eight products, including; YAK Brownie, YAK Fudge, YAK Mini Cookies, YAK Greenie, YAK Sensi Star (cookie in star shape), YAK Haute Chocolate (instant hot chocolate drink), YAK Mocha Juana (instant coffee drink) and their best selling YAK Cannabis Extract Capsules.
The Hershey Co. has sued Affolter, 40, for giving his forbidden marijuana munchies names like Stoney Rancher, Rasta Reese’s and Keef Kat. Each came in packaging similar to Hershey’s Jolly Rancher, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and Kit Kat candies.Hershey Vs. Pot Dealer in Trademark Suit
Hershey’s suit, filed earlier this month in U.S. District Court in San Jose, accuses Affolter of trademark infringement, trademark dilution and unfair competition. The company is seeking $100,000 in damages.
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The world is complicated, and an electorate so diverse in geography, race, class and beliefs can’t be shoehorned into two fixed templates. There is no particular reason why all advocates of fiscal restraint should also oppose abortion rights, or why supporters of a progressive tax code should necessarily favor restrictions on gun ownership.
But, ask around town now about Santa Barbara’s local currency experiment and the answer is nearly always, “Never heard of it.” Then, after a healthy pause, “What’s a local currency?”
The Justice Department released a presentation entitled "Obtaining and Using Evidence from Social Networking Sites." The slides, which were prepared by two lawyers from the agency's Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section, detail several social media companies' data retention practices and responses to law enforcement requests. The presentation notes that Facebook was “often cooperative with emergency requests” while complaining about Twitter’s short data retention policies and refusal to preserve data without legal process. The presentation also touches on use of social media for undercover operations
