by Calculated Risk on 1/24/2005 04:29:00 PM

In Friday's Boston Herald, "Billionaire Buffett has a bear-y bad feeling" reports that Warren Buffett is very worried. A few quotes:

``We are force-feeding dollars on the rest of the world at the rate of close to a couple billion dollars a day,'' he said in an interview on cable channel CNBC. ``That's going to weigh on the dollar . . . unless we have a major change in trade policies, I don't see how the dollar avoids going down.''

But, he added, ``I don't know if it's going to be this month, next month or next year.''
...

He doesn't like the stock market: ``I'm having a hard time finding things to buy,'' he said. He doesn't like commodities, such as steel, copper or coffee: ``We haven't been buying commodities.'' And he doesn't like bonds: ``I think you're going to see more inflation,'' he said.

Buffett is now sitting on $43 Billion in cash, an incredible amount considering (BRK-A:) Berkshire Hathaway's market cap is $138 Billion. To put that in prospective, MicroSoft's special dividend was considered amazing and that was $32 Billion.

by Calculated Risk on 1/18/2005 04:37:00 PM

Atque ubi colitudinum faciunt pacem apellant.
"They create a desolation and call it a peace."
Calgacus quoted in Tacitus' Agricola (98 A.D.)

Cover Story in The American Conservative:
A Time for Leaving
by William R. Polk

The Independent on Sunday U.K.
Not Even Saddam Could Achieve the Divisions This Election Will Bring
By Robert Fisk

IRAQ, the new Afghanistan
by Mark Follman, Salon.com

The Tsunami of Iraq
Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches, 15 January 2005

Destroying Babylon
Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches, 16 January 2005

by Calculated Risk on 1/18/2005 01:52:00 AM

This article by Roger Lowenstein is excellent.
A Question of Numbers
By ROGER LOWENSTEIN
Published: January 16, 2005

EXCERPT (my emphasis added):

The campaign to privatize has not only been about ideology; it has also focused on Social Security's supposed insolvency. Moore's book calls Social Security a ''Titanic . . . headed toward the iceberg'' and a program ''on the verge of collapse.'' A stream of other conservatives have bombarded the public, over years and decades, with prophecies of trillion-dollar liabilities and with metaphors intended to frighten -- ''train wreck,'' ''bankruptcy,'' ''cancer'' and so forth. Recently, a White House political deputy wrote a strategy note in which he said that Social Security is ''on an unsustainable course. That reality needs to be seared into the public consciousness.''

The campaign is potentially self-fulfilling: persuade enough people that Social Security is going bankrupt, and it will lose public support. Then Congress will be forced to act. And thanks to such unceasing alarums, many, and perhaps most, people today think the program is in serious financial trouble.

But is it? After Bush's re-election, I carefully read the 225-page annual report of the Social Security trustees. I also talked to actuaries and economists, inside and outside the agency, who are expert in the peculiar science of long-term Social Security forecasting. The actuarial view is that the system is probably in need of a small adjustment of the sort that Congress has approved in the past. But there is a strong argument, which the agency acknowledges as a possibility, that the system is solvent as is.

Although prudence argues for making a fix sooner rather than later, the program is not in crisis, nor is its potential shortfall irresolvable. Ideology aside, the scale of the fixes would not require Social Security to abandon the role that was conceived for it in 1935, and that it still performs today -- as an insurance fail-safe for the aged and others and as a complement to people's private market savings.

by Calculated Risk on 1/13/2005 09:29:00 PM

An interesting post on macroblog started me thinking about something my father once told me: “The American economy floats on oil”. Now macroblog has suggested a possible link between our sluggish job creation and the recent spike in energy prices. He offers this theory as an alternative explanation to EPI’s view that sluggish job creation is the result of poor public policy; specifically Bush’s tax cuts.

While I think about issues like causation and timing, I would like to make a minor contribution by asking: What exactly is Sluggish Job Creation?

To be fair to Bush (admittedly hard for me), when he took office the economy was clearly overheated. All things being equal, we would expect the economy to add about 1.7 million jobs per year based on working age population growth. So we would expect on average about 6.8 million new jobs created over Bush’s first term. But all things are not equal.

In Jan 2001 there were 132.388 million Americans employed. Unemployment was 4.2% with a civilian labor force participation rate of 67.2%. In Dec 2004 there are 132.266 million Americans employed. Unemployment is 5.4% with a civilian labor force participation rate of 66.0%.

The BLS is the source for all statistics.

The average unemployment for the 10 year period before Bush took office was 5.6% so it is not unreasonable to expect the unemployment rate to rise during Bush’s first term from the historically low rate of 4.2%. But what is surprising is the significant drop in the civilian labor force participation rate – the average for the same 10 year period was 66.7%.

We would expect, with averages of 5.6% unemployment and 66.7% participation rate, approximately 1.2 million more jobs today. And that estimate is probably low since we are 3 years into a recovery (the recession ended in Nov 2001) and usually unemployment is falling (it is) and the participation rate is rising (it is not). For example, with 67% participation and 5% unemployment we are 2.6 million jobs short of expected employment. So job creation is disappointing (by 1.2 to 2.6 million jobs) and I guess that defines “sluggish”.

by Calculated Risk on 1/12/2005 02:41:00 PM

A beautiful day in Yosemite!

Photo captured from this live cam.