Harvard Economist Jorgenson interviewed on CNBC today
very interesting to hear a bright guy working as apologist
nothing in my article was refuted, only confirmed
I wont be lengthy here
he said:
- Fed has been successful in engineering mild volatility in the economy, with the gentle recession so far
how about the volatility in the financial asset markets?
jeez! their entire focus has been to restrain inflation in the product sector, and they have succeeded
but at the cost of producing wild stock market actions, and destruction of various national economies like Argentina
prices are now subdued, NO, they are suffocated
colossal overhang in product supply and production capacity now threatens many industries, and will continue for several more quarters or years
- he has great confidence in the productivity figures, as Q3 was revised upward from 4.0% to 5.1%, as intense scrutiny has been given to the Fed calculations
how about the quality adjustments whereby InfoTech spending is multiplied by 15?
are faster computer processors, faster disk storage retrieval, faster internet bandwidth really producing more work?
15x as much?
utterly absurd !!!
productivity is no more than 1.9-2.0%, end of story
take out IT spending adjustments and you get 2.0% neighborhood
hack statistics is better described as VOODOO
- services have been a big beneficiary for productive usage of new equipment
no doubt
but how about India and China taking business away for 1/3-rd to 1/20-th the cost?
these nations might offer better reliability than our sloppy American work
I have seen it in programming, esp with Microsoft
terrible level of software errors
even use of the public as beta test sites
these guys are inept, brilliant, misguided, and ineffective
no comment from Jorgenson by the way about the StLouis Fed simulations on stress tests revealing a US-wide banking collapse might occur with 20% likelihood
The Economist community is fast becoming an EDEN OF FOOLS
/ jim |
