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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mike M2 who wrote (87189)	12/19/2000 11:45:57 AM
From: Don Lloyd	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

Mike - ...One example is geometric weighting - which assumes consumers substitute lower priced goods for higher priced goods- sounds reasonable except for housing and fuel but i suppose one can beat rising prices by moving in with their in-laws and using their cars. ... I don't pretend to understand this subject, but I would have thought that the geometric weighting and the substitution effects were separate and independent, and not tied together. Someone else may have a definitive answer, but my first order assumption would be that the geometric weighting deals with the method of combining the prices of different specific goods into a final price index and that the substitution effect deals with what price of a specific type of good is used. Regards, Don

To: Mike M2 who wrote (87189)	12/19/2000 9:16:03 PM
From: Cogito	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 132070

>>I would like to point out some significant factors with a potential political connection fueling this bubble. This is not an attempt to be all inclusive. The government economic statistics have never been more misleading. The implementation of hedonic pricing in 1996 has vastly overstated GDP growth and productivity growth. Earlie has noted there have been 32 changes to the CPI computation all of which serve to understate the true measure of product price inflation.<< William - Much has been made on this thread about the inaccuracies in the current methods for measuring GDP. I will defer to greater economic expertise and accept, at least for the sake of argument, that the inaccuracies have given us both an overstated view of growth and an understated view of inflation. Of course, it's never been easy to get a true measure of the GDP, or to find two economists who agree on how to do it. What I don't see anyone mentioning, though, is the very low unemployment rates we've seen in the past several years. Perhaps I'm just being naive to ask this, but if that many more people are working, can one argue that there has been no real economic growth in the past eight years? You also mentioned bailouts of speculators and investment bankers as a moral hazard. Need I remind you, those bailouts started with the S&L debacle in the 80's. Obviously, that doesn't justify the practice. My point is only that I don't think Clinton's team is responsible for starting that particular greed ball rolling. I do agree that for the most part the best thing to do about overextended financial institutions is to let them fail. Lastly, I'm not sure what you're getting at about the ESF allegedly conspiring to fix the price of gold, and this having something to do with Bob Rubin's strong dollar policy. The Gold Standard ended back in Nixon's day, so I don't see the relationship. - Allen