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rate if they really have the courage of their convictions then why not admit what they are doing in february i said fiscal stimulus wouldn t work as the fed had some sort of nominal aggregate target in mind and was going to simply offset the fiscal stimulus and that is what happened when things looked scary like a depression was possible the fed announced its big program of buying treasuries and mbss later in the year when things picked up a bit and we were clearly going to avoid a depression the fed started furiously back peddling they started talking about ending the bond buying program and exit strategies ask yourself this what does that back and forth behavior tell you it tells me the fed has some sort of implicit nominal target and if the economy seems to fall short they ll pull out all the stops and flood the economy with liquidity that s why the 800 billion dollar fiscal stimulus was a complete waste of money the fed wasn t going to allow ngdp to fall much further than the actual 2 5 it fell shame on us for not figuring that out and shame on the fed for not explaining that to us end quote don t anyone answer liquidity trap as krugman and bernanke both long pointed out during japan s deflation a government can always depreciate the currency a bit to cure that and monetary policy worked potently in the us during the great depression as pointed out by romer and sumner visually amid supposedly the worst liquidity trap of all right now the fed is cutting back its support for bond and mortgage security markets the big question is how much mortgage rates will rise and how quickly as a result which clearly is de stimumative yet the spending stimulus lumbers on not even half done fed policy is offsetting it people look at econometric models and or whatever and claim the stimulus has created jobs but can do so only in light of the actions the federal reserve has actually taken yet without any doubt whatsoever if there had been no stimulus the fed would have taken much different and greater actions to support the economy one needs to know what the job situation would have been then how many jobs would have been saved created by that and then compute the difference between that job situation and today s to really know how many jobs the stimulus has created or saved at its cost of 800 billion that is until now regarding the first half of stimulus spending going forward from here if the fed steers to hit its policy targets and in doing so acts to offset effects of the stimulus as we seem to see happening above what will be the effect of the remaining 400 billion of the stimulus then link posted at 12 53 am sunday march 14 2010 sunday sports page toilet flushing in edmonton during the olympics hockey finals freakonomics blog beer consumption presumably was more stable pro football isn t what it used to be and never was teams the new jersey nets can look down upon no matter how bad you are there s always somebody who s been worse than you unless you were the 2003 detroit tigers for all you sports stats geeks and why are you reading this if you aren t one the event of the year was last week s mit sloan sports analytics conference check the sub links for digests of the presentations on bias in officiating performance enhancing drugs how nba teams use analytics how pro coaches relate to stat heads what geeks don t get with mark cuban daryl morey bill polian and jonathan kraft and more link posted at 3 56 am wednesday march 10 2010 seen around and about crocodile 1 shark 0 how s obama doing relatively speaking the gallup historical presidential approval center tells all omabacare political quotes of the moment we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it pelosi a bill can be bipartisan without bipartisan votes pelosi to maintain a strong presidency we need to pass the bill obama keith hennessey explains what the democrats really have to do to get the health care bill through reconciliation both the legislative mechanics and the political challenges laptop smashing fun highly entertaining economics class laptop smashing from france also laptop computer meets liquid nitrogen although the presumably shattering payoff is out of camera view really some professors should better prepare their demonstrations today s spoiled generation can afford to smash laptops like this back in my time i paid 2 000 1980 dollars 5 260 today for a top line trs 80 model iii with dual 32k disk drives 48k memory and 2 mhz processor plus another 2 000 for a top quality daisy wheel printer no liquid nitrogen or practical jokes for them what drives media bias the bias of the media s audience surprise how politics works there s what you think of the candidate and then there s what you think of the alternatives a new elon university poll in north carolina finds that only 24 of north carolinians think that sen richard burr r nc deserves reelection however a new rasmussen poll finds burr still leading elaine marshall d 50 to 34 and beating cal cunningham d 52 to 29 and so it goes link posted at 3 01 pm sunday march 07 2010 sunday sports page awful predictions of the past year get their annual recap from gregg easterbrook after the first weekend of the 2009 ncaa men s basketball tournament all 5 million espn bracket entries were wrong if you must make predictions keep em simple my off price ultra generic prediction home team wins went 156 111 this season on espn s sunday nfl countdown mike ditka finished with 157 correct and likely wasted some time by thinking also awful predictions about the stock market economy how the universe will end not disproven yet a million dead by global warming global cooling hurricanes nuclear power glaciers sunspots and more sports pro football weekly publishes two or three best bets to entice readers to sign up for a handicapping inner circle product that costs 109 95 annually in 2006 the pfw best bets went 31 34 2 in 2007 32 36 in 2008 35 32 1 for this season best bets went 31 37 that s a four year total of 129 139 1 meaning when pro football weekly pundits are certain they are right they are usually wrong pfw promotes its handicapping inner circle by claiming 67 percent accuracy yet over a four year period its actual published picks were 48 percent accurate peter king makes so many predictions it s hard to know what to take seriously in late september king said minutes ago i spoke to people in washington who told me there is absolutely no chance jim zorn is in trouble with the redskins two weeks later king said zorn would be fired no later than the following week to be replaced by jerry gray zorn wasn t fired until the season ended and gray was shown the door too king said there was no possibility jay cutler would be traded by denver for the season king forecast a super bowl of new england over chicago the bears did not make the playoffs and predicted the saints would finish 7 9 remember folks the news pages of the newspapers operate just like the sports pages and the news channels on tv operate just like espn dave berri discusses books about sports thinking and thinking about sports as baseball moves from steroids scandals to to human growth hormone scandals j c bradbury observes banning hgh only signals to players that it works to keep players from using it make it legal and let them see it doesn t work the expiration of the salary cap in the nfl during the just started free agent signing season gets a look from brad humphries at the sports economist steady return generally has more value than inconsistent return at the same average rate phil birnbaum discusses this regarding predicting game outcomes from team average for against scores as a simple example of why this is so say a baseball player hits six home runs if he hits them all in one game he may feel great about setting a record but most of the home runs probably will be wasted running up the score and none of them would help his team win any other game in contrast if he hits one home run each in six games he could help his team win two three or four games as it happens this week i got in a discussion on this topic in the comments to a post at pro football reference com that presented a counter intuitive finding that higher pass completion percentage for nfl quarterbacks is associated with scoring fewer points scored and fewer games won while higher numbers in other metrics such as average yards per pass attempt aya are associated with more scoring and winning now i much prefer aya as a measure of qb performance over pass completion percentage since the objective of passing is to advance the ball downfield not to successfully complete a very high percentage of passes that don t advance the ball and for the record the nfl s official passer rating is probably the worst metric of all it is so biased towards completion percentage that a qb can increase his rating by completing passes that lose yards hit 10 of 10 for minus 10 yards each and he ll get a rating of 79 for losing 100 yards but even with aya being my preferred measure logic says completion percentage should have some additional positive value analogous to the home run example while the goal is to advance the ball advancing it any given total amount at a steady rate with a high completion percentage should be preferable to doing so hit or miss with a low completion percentage so i got out my spreadsheet software plugged in the nfl 2009 season passing numbers and sure enough multiple regression produced a formula that predicts points scored from passer data weighting both aya and completion percentage positively while giving the former twice the weight of the latter and from that i can produce my very own passer rating formula looking at the numbers they actually correlate with scoring better than do aya the nfl s official rating or any other rating method i ve found in a couple days in principle from that i can rate passing defenses offense in reverse then rate whole teams then pick winners and best bets against the spread come the start of the 2010 nfl season i may have my own sport web site be rating teams and predicting game outcomes and for 150 be selling my premium best bets a year from now you may be reading about me in easterbrook s column link posted at 1 25 am saturday march 06 2010 krugman the future of newspapers and the ny times corrections collection when was the mermaid on the barracuda don t believe the new york times paul krugman notes that he and his friend brad delong really don t like the wall street journal but the bad news that the wsj is so bad also is good news he says because there s a pretty good chance that we will end up with only one great national newspaper and i know which paper that should be hmmm i can t tell let s look at the times own reporting the two decade erosion in newspaper circulation is looking more like an avalanche with figures released monday showing weekday sales down more than 10 percent since last year usa today lost the top spot in weekday circulation for the first time since the 1990s to the wall street journal the journal s circulation just over two million rose 0 6 percent it is one of a very few papers to sell online subscriptions which are counted in the circulation total helping the journal which does not publish on sundays defy the industry wide decline it has more than 400 000 digital only subscribers up by more than 100 000 from five years ago at the new york times which has repeatedly raised its prices in recent years weekday circulation fell 7 3 percent to about 928 000 the first time since the 1980s that it has been under one million and as we mentioned here earlier speculating that krugman s resume is likely to end up on murdoch s desk in the end paul s good friends at rasmussen report that only 24 of voters have a favorable impression of the ny times something pk might take personally being that most voters 55 don t know enough about paul krugman to venture even a soft opinion about him those with an opinion are fairly evenly divided 22 favorable and 22 unfavorable with four percent 4 voicing a very favorable opinion and six percent 6 a very unfavorable view but if people are asked about new york times columnist paul krugman the numbers shift significantly once he is identified with that publication his unfavorable ratings jump 15 points to 37 the number with a very unfavorable view more than triples to 20 however krugman s favorable ratings show little improvement inching up only three points to 25 john fund was viewed favorably by 12 of voters and unfavorably by 22 just one percent 1 had a very favorable opinion of him and six percent 6 offered a very unfavorable view however when fund was identified with the wall street journal his numbers jumped to 34 favorable and 20 unfavorable well if krugman really believes the times is going to come from behind to bury the journal he can buy some of its stock it s cheap all of which gives me a convenient excuse to segue into this semi annual ny times corrections collection courtesy of the super bowl wrap up edition of the world s most eclectic football column the following is edited for brevity in the past six months the times has according to its own corrections page said arizona borders wisconsin confused 12 7 millimeter rifle ammunition with 12 7 caliber the latter would be a sizeable naval cannon said a pot of ratatouille should contain 25 cloves of garlic two tablespoons will do nicely on at least five occasions confused a million with a billion understated the national debt by 4 2 trillion used idiomatic deficiency as an engineering term correct was adiabatic efficiency said paul revere s midnight ride occurred in 1776 it was in 1775 by 1776 everybody knew the british were coming misstated the status of the united states in 1783 it was a country not a collection of colonies the times also misidentified the song pink was singing while suspended on a sling like trapeze confused the past 130 years with the entire 4 5 billion year history of earth misused statistics in the course of an article complaining that public school standards aren t high enough said citigroup handed its executives 11 million in taxpayer funded bonuses when the actual amount was 1 1 billion said a column lauding actress terri white overstated her professional achievements based on information provided by ms white reported men landed on mars in the 1970s there was in fact no mars mission the times primly corrected the times also gave compass coordinates that placed manhattan in the south pacific ocean near the coastline of chile said you need eight ladies dancing to enact the famous christmas song when nine are needed said iraq is majority sunni though the majority there is shiite hey we invaded iraq without the cia knowing this kind of thing got the wrong name for a dog that lives near president obama s house an article about the sale of a house next door to president obama s home in chicago misstated the name of ...