October 2004 Archives

It is just after 1am for the second time tonight. Just heard a radio newscaster remind everyone to set their clocks back, "you don't want to be late for that Halloween party."

Umm... shouldn't that be "early"? Tonight is the night we get an extra hour.

When I worked in the dorm at Concordia College, the 1-4am shift on this night was the most sought after desk shift of the year. On the last Sunday morning of October, that shift was, after all, 4 hours long. That's an extra $4.25 or so, as I think that was the minimum wage at the time. (Conversely, no one wanted the corresponding shift in the spring.)

We had a big clock on the outside of our dorm. (The clock is visible on the upper right hand picture on this page.) As building manager, one of my duties was to keep the clock on time. Generally, it kept perfect time, and only needed to be reset when going on or off daylight saving time. The mechanism was controlled by turning a key that had three settings: stop, run (normal), and run (fast). Resetting the clock one hour back in the fall was the first time that I had to adjust it, so I figured that it wouldn't take too long to wind it forward 11 hours at the fast setting and get it back to 1am. So, I turned the key and walked outside to watch the hands move. That's when I learned that "fast" was not very "fast". But it was sort of interesting to see this big clock turning faster than normal, so my friends and I let it go, checked on it periodically, and got it set by about 2am. That's right, it would have been more efficient to just stop it for an hour.

But I'll never pass into or out of daylight saving time without thinking of the clock on Livedalen Hall.

Taggert Brooks has another good one.

I like eclipses. I really do. Tonight's was particularly good, and long (actually it's not over yet), even though a partially cloudy sky interferes with the purity of the view from time to time. And tonight's eclipse is the last total eclipse of the moon until 2007.

I like the way a lunar eclipse lasts for hours, but still feels like a single fleeting moment. It is a brief flourish in an eternal celestial dance, just to see if you're paying attention.

Here's a good site on the eclipse.

Stephen Karlson quotes a Journal Sentinel article reminding us why the electoral college is a good thing. Their main point is that if the presidency were decided by popular vote rather than the electoral vote, there would be a major shift in the way campaigns are conducted. Big markets like California and New York would be the only focus since advertising dollars would hit more people than in, say, northern Iowa.

The real genius of the electoral college is that the vote reflects things about this country that would not come out of direct popular voting. It gives more weight to areas of the country that are changing. Florida is growing and becoming more diverse, making it a place worthy of attention by the candidates. Minnesota used to be a liberal stronghold. Now it's in play, and Bush visits almost weekly. Ohio, home of Taft and McKinley, is in play; Kerry has a chance there. As I mentioned earlier, Nevada is hard to read because of the way it is changing.

It's not perfect, but it is quite remarkable in the way that it puts the focus precisely on the areas of the country where divergent views seem to be concentrated. I think that this is necessary for the health of the republic if we are to remain the United STATES of America.

Taggert Brooks posts a gem.

It's close here too.

And that goes for election prediction websites too. I'm looking at this as objectively as I can. Look at the contrast in the maps at electoral-vote.com and MSNBC. On Monday morning, electoral-vote.com had Hawaii in the Bush column. I don't think so. All I can figure is that this is just an example of how bad some polls can be. The same site has New Mexico and Ohio for Bush, albeit weakly. By the same token, I find it hard to accept New Hampshire being a tossup state as it is on MSNBC's website.

As I see it today, New Mexico is a tossup, leaning Kerry. Electoral-vote.com has to be joking about Hawaii, and NH will not turn its back on its neighboring state's senator. Nevada is hard to read because Las Vegas (which will tend Democratic) is growing faster than the rural (Republican) areas.

If Kerry wins either Ohio or Florida, then Bush must win both Colorado and New Mexico to win. I'm not ready to declare Ohio as this year's one and only pivotal state, but we're kidding ourselves if we don't admit that Ohio and Florida are the important states. Keep in mind that Ohio is in the eastern time zone and Florida has a small part in the central time zone. Thus, to be fair, the networks should hold off on calling Florida (not that they won't be a little gun-shy about calling Florida too early anyway). So in that sense, Ohio is key because we'll know the result sooner. An early Kerry victory in Ohio and all of a sudden FL, MN, IA, WI, CO, and NM become very important. If Bush wins OH and FL, then Kerry needs to sweep CO, NM, IA, and either MN or WI. That's not impossible, but neither is it easy.

No one is going to bed early on Nov. 2nd.

You never know what you'll find when you "Google" yourself. I rated a one line quote in this Peoria Area C of C paper. Well, it's actually by participants of their leadership school. They are trying to get a program going to encourage saving. Nice thought. People are definitely saving less and going into debt more than in years past. As interest rates come up, that might reverse a bit, but I'm uncertain about how much. A large part of what might be considered savings is home equity, and in some areas, there is talk of a housing bubble. I wouldn't call that true savings.

Grassroots efforts to encourage saving through community organizations has another positive effect of bringing some of the "unbanked" into financial institutions. For some, this might be the first step towards home ownership, and that is something I would definitely support.

The flu vaccine is in short supply. When a shipment comes in, predictable but unintended things happen. Case in point, my local county health department was giving out flu shots yesterday. The usual rules apply--only those in high risk categories. They were given to those people on a first-come, first-served basis. So, the predictable, but unintended outcome was that you had a bunch of senior citizens and parents with babies camping out in the cold starting at 2:30am for a clinic that opened at 9.

Thankfully, someone opened the doors a little early to shorten the suffering.

So what is the appropriate way to ration this limited supply? Left to the market, the price of the vaccine would simply go up, but for a number of reasons (some good, some not) we have decided that it is unacceptable to do that. The alternative we seem to have chosen is to have people line up at 2:30am--and these are the high risk people.

The trouble is that even if you limit it just to the high risk people, you still have to ration the vaccine. There doesn't seem to be anything in place to identify the highest of the high risk patients. Without such a mechanism, there is no guarantee that the vaccine will really go to those who need it most ("need" being identified with vulnerability to the flu). Instead it goes to those most willing to stand in line at 2:30am. Apparently that is more acceptable.

Marginal Revolution discusses the vaccine shortage. This is a clear case of a market not working because it was not allowed to work from the get-go. How long will it take before people realize that this will happen again unless some meaningful changes are made?

Joe Trippi once again proves that he gets it. I usually resist the temptation to say that this election is like no other. I've studied the elections of the 19th century enough to know that they were just as dirty. The election of 1876 even saw the loser of the popular vote win the electoral vote; that year even had states where the vote was disputed. Yes, Florida was one of them. Point is, the basic issues of presidential politics are not changing nearly as quickly as the mechanics by which those issues filter down to the electorate.

Joe Trippi understands this, and I have to believe it is why the Dean campaign did as well as it did. Whatever your opinion of Dean as a candidate, his campaign reflected a change that is coming. I think this might be the last campaign that a Dean-like candidate loses. So study up, future candidates of both parties. Learn from Dean. It's like I wrote earlier, the Internet is starting to really hit its stride in terms of becoming a vehicle of communication. The Internet makes it possible for meetup.com to exist. Blogs don't replace the regular media, but if they keep the media honest, it's a good thing.

It won't fundamentally change the American people. The issues at stake won't change. But more people will have a voice. I'm not entirely sure that the winner in 2004 (whoever it is) really understands that, but mark my words, the winner in 2008 will.

If you are the type who stays up late on election night, you need to look at this! The electoral map is the best I've seen. Click the "pick 'em" tab to change the map and see who you think will win.

So Jon Stewart goes on CNN and rips the hosts. OK. But that's not the big story. The New York Times tells how the incident became instant fodder for the blogosphere. The point is that CNN missed an opportunity to promote themselves by giving away free downloads of the video from the program.

"What's fascinating about the Jon Stewart takedown of 'Crossfire' is not just what he said, but how his message got distributed," Jarvis wrote. "The really stupid thing is that CNN didn't do this themselves: 'Hey, we had a red-hot segment...you should watch; here, please, look at this free download because it will promote our (hosts) and our brand and our show and give us a little of that Stewart hip heat.' That's what CNN should have done. Instead, they'll charge you to deliver a videotape (what's that?) the next day."

CNN media representatives said they were not surprised by the massive response, based on "Crossfire's" ratings and Stewart's own visibility. They had no comment on the company's policy of distributing its programming via mail, as opposed to online. The CNN.com site does offer short clips of some of its programs.

The new media community filled the void. The article continues...

In addition, Jarvis pointed out that the Internet serves as a sort of unofficial index of other media outlets, giving people the ability to access almost any report transmitted on television, radio or in print news.

"Welcome to the future of TV!," Jarvis wrote. "In old TV, a moment like this came, and if you missed it, you missed it. Tough luck. In new TV, you don't need to worry about watching it live--live is so yesterday--because thousands of peers will be keeping an eye out for you to let you know what you should watch, and they'll record it and distribute it."

That's the power of a network, and I'm not talking about CNN.

Half hour to go in the central time zone. NCAA sanctioned basketball practices are about to begin. However, this might be the last year for midnight madness. Read here. Yes, it would be fun to have that first practice at Duke covered live in prime time. But I like the idea of getting all the real die hard fans to come play games, eat pizza, and have fun all through the wee hours as the team gets their official debut. I even attended one of these midnight madness events once.

7 o'clock madness just doesn't have the same ring to it.

Blogging from the road today. Nashville seems like a nice city. All I've seen of it is an airport and a hotel though. The Missouri Valley Economic Association meetings are this weekend.

Finn Kydland and Edward Prescott received The Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for 2004. (Commonly referred to as the Nobel prize by everyone except Nobel purists.) This is a good choice. I'm very partial to their 1977 JPE paper on time consistency. They also had the groundbreaking 1982 Econometrica paper which is a classic in the stochastic general equilibrium literature.

A while back the Minneapolis Fed printed an interview with Prescott. Well worth reading.

Job numbers were not what was expected or needed. Should be an interesting evening.

But anyway, my prediction of the annual revision was (barely) closer than Mankiw's! I said 200,000, he said 288,000. It was 236,000.

Did you ever hear the one about the three econometricians who went hunting? The first one shot, and the bullet went 10 yards in front of the deer. The second one shot, and the bullet went 10 yards right behind the deer. The third one jumped up and shouted, "We got it!"

I was interviewed by WMBD TV today. The subject was oil prices. When you're reading on the Internet that oil hit $53/barrel and the phone rings, sometimes you just have a feeling about who's on the other end. Anyway, a couple things I mentioned that didn't make it into the story (at least not at 10pm which was the only newscast I saw) were that the price of oil in 1980, if it were adjusted for inflation, would be close to $80/barrel and that today we use about 1/3 fewer BTUs per dollar of GDP than in 1980.

That is not to say that $53/barrel will be without pain. I am worried about the situation in Nigeria and Russia, not to mention the Middle East. There could be a perfect storm brewing. If we can catch a break, maybe prices won't go too much higher as we go into the winter. If we don't catch a break and everything goes wrong that can go wrong, it will be a long winter indeed.

September job numbers come out on Friday. The payroll number will get a lot of attention; anything under 200,000 will mean uncomfortable questions for Bush on Friday night. Anything over 200,000 will cause Bush to point to the future with optimism while Kerry reminds everyone of the dismal numbers in previous months. (Really, this sort of predicting is too easy!) Another important number coming soon is the annual revision. Greg Mankiw thinks that payroll employment will be revised up by as much as 288,000 for the year (with a margin of error of +/- 140,000 -- that sort of predicting isn't much harder!) Objectively speaking though, Mankiw is probably right. Economists who follow this sort of thing realize that there is usually a positive revision in the first couple years of a recovery. 2003 was the year the jobs recovery started to get off the ground, so I would expect about 200,000 based on past experience. Mankiw might be a little optimistic, but my estimate is in the same range as he gives.

The reason for this is that while the payroll survey is a much better measure of jobs than the household survey, the payroll survey tends to miss newly created companies and self-employed workers for a while. Eventually, the new firms work their way in the survey, but in periods when more new firms are being created than usual (such as the early part of an expansion), it underestimates the actual number of jobs.

Whatever the revision ends up being, it will be exaggerated by the Republicans (assuming it is positive) and dismissed by the Democrats. If it ends up being close to my estimate, I won't give it much thought either way since I've already figured it in to my own assessment of the employment situation.

Last night was the Vice Presidential debate. Today, web based polls seem confused about who won. Seems that the Democrats are encouraging their supporters to go out and hit those polls to push their candidate up. So now, (did you really need me to tell you this?) the Republicans are catching on. Two can play at that game. What does this mean? Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later. Those on-line polls, already known to be unscientific, are even less so. Some polls don't allow you to vote more than once, but there are ways around that. Most polls do not track individual IP addresses, but everyone knows that simply disabling cookies (or deleting cookies after each vote) is enough to render them as useless as voting by decibel meter at a pep rally.

So I would predict even more confusing results after Friday's debate. Now that both Republicans and Democrats will be hitting the on-line polls in droves, they won't even be worth reporting on. That probably won't stop people from reporting on it, but that's for another day.

The IEM is still favoring Bush in the popular vote, but just barely, and it has narrowed in the last week.

When life happens, blogging pauses. I'm back. Here we go...

One of my favorite places on earth: the Grand Tetons. Photo from a 2002 visit. The Tetons are the only national park with a commercial passenger airport in the park. You haven't lived until you've ridden a 757 in and out of Jackson Hole Airport. According to AirNav.com, the runway is 6300 feet long and the elevation is 6451 feet above sea level. That is enough for a 757 to take off, even at that altitude (typically, it needs 5000 to 6000ft depending on weight and weather), but it will get your attention if you're the sort of passenger who watches the signs go by indicating the amount of runway remaining. That's not a lot of room to spare. But you'll be too enthralled by the incredible view to worry about it.

The Jackson Hole Airport also has, according to their website, the most stringent noise abatement regulations in the U.S. Nothing above 92dBa on approach is allowed. No noisy old DC-10s, for example. But then, if you landed a DC-10 at Jackson Hole, how would you get it out?