A tongue-in-cheek alternate take for a PSA describing the benefits of AFSCME (NSFW):
Via Fallows, the President today took a few minutes to remind the press that we have serious issues to look at:
Fallows is pessimistic this will change anything: "if 'actual knowledge' mattered, the number of people who thought Obama was foreign-born would approach zero by next week -- with exceptions for illiterates, the mentally disabled, paranoid schizophrenics, etc. My guess is that the figures will barely change."
With Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke becoming the first in his office ever to hold a press conference, I wonder whether he'll actually say anything. As I mentioned yesterday, and as Krugman has said for years, Very Serious People worry about inflation even though elementary economics shows there isn't anything to worry about.
Fortunately, other reporters are catching on:
One question more than any than other is crying out for an answer: Why has Mr. Bernanke decided to accept widespread unemployment for years on end, even though he believes he has the power to reduce it?
The Fed’s own forecasts suggest that the unemployment rate won’t fall below 5 percent for perhaps another five or six years. Mr. Bernanke believes the Fed “retains considerable power” to reduce unemployment faster, despite the fact that its benchmark interest rate is zero, as he’s said before. Yet he has been hesitant to use that power.
As he has explained many times, the Fed has alternatives. It could announce that it would keep its benchmark rate at zero for a few years, which would probably hold down long-term rates. It could say that it was comfortable with higher inflation for a limited period of time, given how low inflation has been since 2007 and how high unemployment is. Above all, Mr. Bernanke could make clear that he considers years of widespread unemployment to be unacceptable.
He has not done so, and he has yet to offer a satisfying rationale.
So, later today, will he explain?
Senator Mark Kirk (R-IL) doesn't seem like a Tea Partier on the surface, but he's started to experiment with right-wing populism. Today his office sent out an email suggesting inflation will destroy us all climb in the near future and hurt Illinois businesses. He even shows a chart from the St. Louis Fed showing how the monetary base spiked during the 2009 recession. Only, the chart doesn't have anything to do with inflation except to show how (but not why) we didn't spiral into deflation during the crisis.
You have to remember three things about inflation: first, we haven't got any right now; second, inflation hurts lenders more than it hurts debtors in the long run; and third, deflation—the danger of which has not yet passed—is a lot worse.
Here's my note to the senator's office in response:
The Senator's office recently sent an email to constituents on the dangers of inflation. Only, the data show that core inflation remains below historical levels, and certainly below the Fed's target. If inflation were really a worry, we'd see the bond markets react, as they usually lead other indications of inflation. However, bond yields are at historically low levels.
What we need right now are jobs. Decreasing the money supply during a period of low inflation and high unemployment will not only hurt our already anemic job supply, but also possibly plunge us into *deflation,* which is far worse. Just ask Japan. Or look back at President Jackson's disastrous policy of paying off the national debt in full.
Senator, it's disingenuous of you to argue in favor of policies that hurt average people while claiming it's in their interest. The current policy of quantitative easing, far from hurting the economy, doesn't go far enough to help it. I'm in favor of weakinging the dollar even further, to help exports, boost jobs, and--here's the part your banker friends hate--reducing the real debt burden on families.
For more on how wrong Kirk is, see Krugman on austerity from a couple weeks ago.
At the moment, this is Chicago's cloudiest and coldest April since 1953. With more clouds predicted through Friday, we look likely to set a new record.
At least Saturday we had good weather.
Sigh.
(Via Gulliver.) All right, when I said Michelle Obama was not in any danger, I was right, though the National Transportation Safety Board has more information. Apparently the First Lady's plane came within 2.94 miles of the C-17, which is a loss of separation warranting disciplinary action.
Now, should the FAA have fired the controllers? No, that seems like an overreaction. Instead, the FAA has changed the rules slightly so that all flights carrying the First Lady will be handled by a supervisor. Well, that's Doing Something, anyway.
I finally took my bike to a shop for a cleaning and tune-up. I haven't ridden in a while, mainly because of my knees, but I miss it. My doctor recommended taking some ibuprofen an hour before riding as he believes it's simply age-related arthritis. I hope he's right. Even if he isn't, I estimate the ride from my house to work will take about 20 minutes (cf. 45 by bus or train), which isn't even long enough to work up a sweat.
I'm not planning to ride the North Shore Century this year, though. Let's take it slow. If I'm up to 50 km without pain by mid-July, I'll reconsider.
Via Fallows, UC Berkeley biologist Michael Eisen watched a used book price war between two bots that ended...oddly:
Once a day profnath set their price to be 0.9983 times bordeebook’s price. The prices would remain close for several hours, until bordeebook “noticed” profnath’s change and elevated their price to 1.270589 times profnath’s higher price. The pattern continued perfectly for the next week.
But two questions remained. Why were they doing this, and how long would it go on before they noticed? As I amusedly watched the price rise every day, I learned that Amazon retailers are increasingly using algorithmic pricing (something Amazon itself does on a large scale), with a number of companies offering pricing algorithms/services to retailers. Both profnath and bordeebook were clearly using automatic pricing – employing algorithms that didn’t have a built-in sanity check on the prices they produced. But the two retailers were clearly employing different strategies.
What’s fascinating about all this is both the seemingly endless possibilities for both chaos and mischief. It seems impossible that we stumbled onto the only example of this kind of upward pricing spiral – all it took were two sellers adjusting their prices in response to each other by factors whose products were greater than 1.
When Eisen published his blog entry the book had dropped to $106—or $135 through bordeebook. Just now, though, bordeebook has it for $977, and profnath seems not to have it any more. I wonder what happened there.
Apparently cluing into my accidental theme this week of things that scare people irrationally, Patrick Smith had a pair of child safety scissors confiscated, even though he's, you know, the one flying the plane. He worries things will never change:
When it came right down to it, the success of the Sept. 11 attacks had nothing—nothing—to do with box cutters. The hijackers could have used anything. They were not exploiting a weakness in luggage screening, but rather a weakness in our mind-set—our understanding and expectations of what a hijacking was and how it would unfold. The hijackers weren't relying on weapons, they were relying on the element of surprise.
All of that is different now. For several reasons, from passenger awareness to armored cockpit doors, the in-flight takeover scheme has long been off the table as a viable M.O. for an attack. It was off the table before the first of the twin towers had crumbled to the ground. Why don't we see this? Although a certain anxious fixation would have been excusable in the immediate aftermath of the 2001 attacks, here it is a decade later and we're still pawing through people's bags in a hunt for what are effectively harmless items.
How depressing is that, to be stuck with this nonsense permanently? Not only the obsession with sharps, but the liquids and gels confiscations, the shoe removals, etc.
These policies aren't just annoying, they're potentially self-destructive. Self-destructive because they draw our security resources away from more useful pursuits.
I remember when people weren't scared all the time. I'd like to go back to that era. I can only handle so much irrationality.
The news shows were hyperventilating earlier this week about a "near miss" involving an Air Force plane carrying the First Lady and Jill Biden. Only, it wasn't a near miss. It wasn't even a loss of IFR separation (though the planes did come too close for strict wake-turbulence safety). The planes were never close enough to warrant even a stern talking-to by the FAA. No, instead, Obama's plane—a military version of a Boeing 737—came within 8 km of a landing C-17 transport, which is close enough that the air traffic controller at Andrews warned the 737's pilot of wake turbulence. I mean, it's one thing if a Cessna takes off behind a 747: that's dangerous. But a 737 landing behind a C-17 might suffer, at worst, a momentary bump.
Then, because the C-17 took its time getting off the runway, Obama's plane had to go around to prevent a loss of separation. (Ideally, you don't want to land when there's something on the runway ahead of you, particularly when that something is large enough to carry your house inside.) Ten-hour student pilots do go-arounds routinely; it's a standard procedure.
Phil Bertorelli, editor of AVWeb, does a facepalm:
I award first place to Lisa Stark, of ABC News, who consistently reports aviation stories, no matter how minor, in urgent, 72-point type. Her report on this incident, while not wildly inaccurate, lacks the balancing perspective a lay viewer could grasp if the story weren't so dumbed down. Her gatekeeping of facts proceeds from the notion that this was a dangerous situation when, in fact, is was just less than optimal. Too tight sequences get fixed every day.
As a journalist, I judge these stories on the reporter's apparent ability to listen, digest and understand technical issues related to aviation. There are exceptions, but most general assignment reporters don't do this very well for aviation stories, although not many mangle it to the extent that Lisa Stark does. She is in a league of her own.
This is just another instance of dispensing fear instead of information. Perhaps I'm cranky because Parker needed to go outside at 4:45 this morning, but this kind of story makes me crankier.