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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (100019)	4/16/2013 7:53:00 PM
From: TobagoJack	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 217617

truth suppressors are at work too funny bloomberg.com Reinhart-Rogoff Paper Cited by Ryan Faulted for ‘Serious Errors’ By Rich Miller & Alex Kowalski - Apr 16, 2013 10:59 PM GMT A paper by Harvard University economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff that has been cited by Republican lawmakers to justify eliminating the budget deficit contains “serious errors,” according to a study by a group of University of Massachusetts academics. The Reinhart-Rogoff paper, “Growth in a Time of Debt,” argued that countries with public debt in excess of 90 percent of gross domestic product suffered measurably slower economic growth. The new study -- by economists Thomas Herndon, Michael Ash and Robert Pollin -- says that the Harvard economists excluded some data and unconventionally weighted the statistics they included to reach their conclusions. This led to “serious errors that inaccurately represent the relationship between public debt and growth,” Herndon, Ash and Pollin said in the paper published yesterday. In an e-mail, Reinhart and Rogoff defended the conclusions of their 2010 paper and said that “on a cursory look” the new study also finds growth slowing in nations with excessive debt. “We literally just received this draft comment, and will review it in due course,” they said. Ash said in a telephone interview that his paper does show “a modest diminishment of growth” in countries with big debts yet nothing like “the stagnation or decline” seen in the study by Reinhart and Rogoff. Ryan’s BlueprintHouse Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, pointed to the work by Reinhart and Rogoff in his 2013 budget, “The Path to Prosperity: A Blueprint for American Renewal.” “Essentially, the study confirmed that the massive debts of the kind the nation is on track to accumulate are associated with stagflation -- a toxic mix of economic stagnation and rising inflation,” the blueprint said. Ryan’s 2014 budget, introduced earlier this year and subsequently passed by the Republican-controlled House, eliminates the budget deficit over the next decade. The Senate has approved its own 2014 budget, and leaders on both sides have rejected the other chamber’s work. Federal debt amounted to 104 percent of GDP in the fourth quarter of last year, according to calculations by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis on its website. Debt held by the public, which excludes securities issued to the Social Security Trust Fund and other government entities, was equivalent to 73 percent of the economy. Advanced EconomiesThe study by the economists from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst looks at a subset of countries considered by Reinhart and Rogoff in their paper -- 20 advanced economies from 1946 to 2009 -- and argues that group is most relevant to the current policy debate in the U.S. and Europe. After adjusting for what they called the errors in the Reinhart-Rogoff paper, Herndon, Ash and Pollin found that countries with debt more than 90 percent of GDP grew an average 2.2 percent per year. Reinhart and Rogoff said countries in that group saw GDP shrink on average by 0.1 percent. Herndon, Ash and Pollin attributed the different results to spreadsheet errors, “selective exclusion of available data” and unusual weightings of the statistics by the Harvard economists. The findings by Reinhart and Rogoff “have served as an intellectual bulwark in support of austerity policies,” the University of Massachusetts academics said. The fact that their results “are wrong should therefore lead us to reassess the austerity agenda.” To contact the reporters on this story: Rich Miller in Washington at rmiller28@bloomberg.net Alex Kowalski in Washington at akowalski13@bloomberg.net

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (100019)	6/18/2013 9:49:52 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 217617

Gold price seems to be closing on that perspicacious prognostication Mq. <30 JUNE* 2013 $1,317* > Interest rates sliding up slightly. US$ doing well vs many. Gold down to $1,360 today. Mqurice

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (100019)	6/26/2013 11:48:47 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 217617

Gee Mq, it's tough being in the financial services business. C2 asked you for an actual price of gold prediction, instead of generalities about how it was going to go down, so you gave it your best guess, with explanation, including that volatility in political shenanigans and hunting [price moving substantially as the unknown unknowns, known unknowns and known knowns come to the fore] was making it tough to be in the soothing business. You were even pretty well on the money [give or take a % or so]. Whether prices go up or down, somebody is winning and somebody is losing in terms of instantaneous purchasing power of Big Macs. C2 should be happy when gold goes down, like you when QCOM goes down, because you can then buy another big tranche of the sacred goods at low prices. Gold Bugs should be partying like there's no tomorrow, because they can load up with megatons of gold without having to pay many US$ to get more of the stuff they love. Maybe they aren't really true believers if they are unhappy with gold being cheaper in US$, and were really wanting to have US$ and Big Macs rather than the one true sacred, venerable and venerated store of value and measure of all things known, unknown, and unknown unknown in a single number for time travel to a better tomorrow. Mqurice PS: I notice you didn't give your usual double your money back guarantee on that perspicacious prediction. Note to self... next time somebody asks for a prediction, say "Aw shucks, that would be so egocentric to have an opinion and then consider at a later date whether said prediction was amazingly prescient or not". Maybe they don't really want opinions, they just want to gloat how atavistic Aztecian Gold Bugs are going to be dancing on the graves of the bust, broke and desolate as the last whimpers and financial twitches cease and the Aztecs hold the financial heart of the losers aloft in celebration.