Competency
by   Ken Melvin
What is the first criteria when a Board of Directors goes looking for a new CEO? When the construction firm goes looking for a project manager?
Of late, too often, US Politics seems to have a new standard for selecting officeholders. We have been, are, watching this horror of a Pandemic being mismanaged by elected incompetents. Incompetents who might have been promoted to yet higher positions if their incompetence hadn’t been exposed by the course of events. This isn’t about The Peter Principle at play. This is about a large group of US Politicians who were elected to high-level Executive positions based on their perceived allegiance to a specific ideology or dogma.
It is to be expected that Political Appointees, chits come due,

Equivalence
by
Ken Melvin
These two things are not the same.
Giving a woman the right of choice doesn’t deny others that right of choice; makes no imposition on the rights of others. Denying a woman the right of choice imposes the will of others upon her.
When is it lawful for some members of a society to impose their will upon others? What right has the State to impose its will upon its citizens? When it is the writ of law. A State can declare acts to be illegal, even criminal, by the enactment of laws, so long as such laws aren’t in conflict with the State’s constitution. Since at least the 13th century, advanced States’ constitutions have guaranteed certain individual rights. The US Constitution explicitly guarantees certain individual rights and

(Dan here…David offers a different sort of presentation from the normal for AB. Interesting?…)

I’m going on vacation for a few weeks, so I am interrupting my normal blogging for something different.
(I’m not sure if you — or anyone — is interested in my Marshall 2020 Project posts, but I’m doing it for myself — and its a good distraction from every day crazy 😉
Anyways… I’d love to answer your questions about coronavirus, elections, jobs, trade, the economy, climate chaos, woodworking, watches, Amsterdam, sex, drugs, and/or water utilities.
Seriously — Ask Me Anything. 
So submit your question (name and location optional), and I’ll figure out whether it’s better for me to answer them in writing here or in a special episode of my Jive Talking podcast.
Stay

Differences

by Ken Melvin
… He said I have no opinion about this
And I have no opinion about that
Asked an Honors History Class what they thought was the most important issue facing America. In an earlier period, Patrick, a kid from Africa, responded, “our differences.” In a later period, a black female, in a plaintive voice, responded, “we are different.”
Indeed. We are a world of people with many differences: different politics, different religions, … different cultures. Not just here; worldwide, humans are wrestling with this question: How to live with our differences? Can we humans, after all our centuries, change enough? Change enough to accept our differences?
The importance of these questions came to the fore with the recent onslaught of

Via the Boston Globe  comes the consideration of boundary problems this pandemic poses between US states. Worth a discussion. Also, on the world stage, the EU and other countries consider relaxing travel restrictions from ‘safe’ countries, the

By New Deal democrat
Weekly Indicators for June 22 – 26 at Seeking Alpha

My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. The coincident indicators, as well as the short leading indicators, have continued to improve gradually each week.
But this week may be the near term peak, as the reality of renewed exponential spread of the coronavirus in recklessly reopened States starts to hit home. You cannot force people to patronize businesses if they believe it is unsafe, and when complacency leads to new outbreaks, the pain threshold will be hit at which people pull back again. Most noteworthy is that restaurant reservations did not improve in the past week – people are shying away from danger.
As usual, clicking over and reading rewards me with a little

By New Deal democrat
Housing rebounded sharply in May
One aspect of the economy that is important in terms of how well things will go once the pandemic ultimately recedes (which won’t occur until after next January 20) remains housing.
And low-interest rates brought housing back from the depths in May.
My look at the current state of mortgage rates, housing sales, and prices is up over at Seeking Alpha.

Via Economic Populist, rjs writes:
Global oil output surplus was at 8.6 million barrels per day in May, despite OPEC cut of 6.3 million bpd

Submitted by rjs on June 22, 2020 – 3:16pm

Wednesday of this past week saw the release of OPEC’s June Oil Market Report, which covers OPEC & global oil data for May, and hence it gives us a picture of the global oil supply & demand situation during the first month of the two-month agreement between OPEC, the Russians, and other oil producers to cut production by 9.7 million barrels a day from an elevated October 2018 baseline.   But before we review it, ​we have to caution that estimating oil demand while most countries on the planet are restarting their economies after a month or two of lockdown is pretty

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        The Past                                                                  Now             The Future
What Will History Say
by
Ken Melvin
When the new US History books come out in 2040, what will they have to say about 2020? What will they say about:  Globalization?  The Trump Presidency?  Global Warming?  The 2020 Pandemic?  China’s Rise?  America’s Decline?  Capitalism and Free markets?  Mitch McConnell?
to run where the brave dare not go.
Globalization: From a US perspective, globalization began in the 1970s with the first large-scale offshoring of semi-conductor, clothing, shoe, electronic, … manufacturing, and the large-scale importation of automobiles, and accelerated during the 1980s. Capitalists and 401Ks

By Joseph Joyce
The Challenges to the Dollar

The dollar’s position as the premier global currency has long seemed secure. The dollar accounts for about 60% of the foreign exchange reserves of central banks and similar proportions of international debt and loans. But recent developments raise the possibility of a transition to a stratified world economy in which the use of other currencies for regional trade and finance becomes more common.
Such a statement may seem to be inconsistent with the Federal Reserve’s activities to stabilize global financial markets. As it did during the global financial crisis of 2008-09, the Fed has activated currency swap lines with other central banks, including those of the Eurozone, Great Britain, Japan, Canada and

From The Guardian:
In 2010, the UN declared clean water to be a human right. Yet a decade later, millions of Americans lack basic indoor plumbing, more than 100 million are exposed to toxic chemicals in their drinking water, and water bills have risen by an average of 80% across 12 US cities, in a cascading crisis of water affordability.
The Guardian is tackling the subject of the US water crisis with a landmark series, in partnership with Consumer Reports and others – and we’re asking for our readers’ help to test the water quality in your area. As Bernie Sanders and the Michigan congresswoman Brenda Lawrence argue, it is time clean water ceased to be a source of government profit, and became a basic right:
Unbelievably, when it comes to water

On Choosing a Belief System
by
Ken Melvin
Belief Systems, these prisms through which we view the world, have been around from our earliest days. Not so long ago, the Ancient Greeks separated the concept of what we might call belief into two concepts: pistis and doxa with pistis referring to trust and confidence (notably akin the regard accorded science) and doxa referring to opinion and acceptance (more akin the regard accorded cultural norms).
In quest of a personal Belief System, should one: Go with the flow and adapt to the Social or Cultural Norm? Follow the Abrahamic admonishment to first believe? Follow their own Reasoning? Or, should one look to Science?
Social or Cultural Norms are standards for behavior engendered from infancy by parents,

By New Deal democrat
Weekly Indicators for June 15 – 19 at Seeking Alpha
My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha.Almost all of the metrics have improved off of their worst readings. Enough of the short leading indicators have improved so much that the short term forecast was upgraded to neutral as of this week.
As usual, clicking over and reading should bring you “up to the moment” on the economy, and it also rewards me with a penny or two for the effort I put into the endeavor.

By David Zetland    (One handed economist)
Interesting stuff
“Biohacking life” — a physics geek gets into our metabolism
Governments are printing money to “get out of the crisis”, but they are probably sowing the seeds of the next crisis (of inflation? fiscal collapse?)
An incredibly interesting dive into Japanese cosmology
The American Press Is Destroying Itself (under pressures of political correctness)
This is the governance article (good/bad responses to C19 as a function of government quality) I’ve been looking for!
Excess deaths really explain the damage from C19: NYT and Economist
Some techniques for reaching consensus on difficult topics
Humans have used technology to help women to have 8 billion babies
Massive glaciers are melting in Antartica in

Angry Bear Still On List Of Top Economics Blogs For 2020
Intelligent Economist has again put out its annual list of the top 100 economics blogs, with some new ones and some gone, although two of those were due to retirements, especially the  Economists View of Mark Thoma.
Closely connected Econospeak , Bondadd blog ,  and Capital Ebbs and Flows also were named to the top 100 economic blogs,

Abbreviated Coronavirus dashboard for June 15: tracking the four horsemen of the reopening apocalypse

– by New Deal democratThere’s no big economic news out today. So let me follow up on my post Friday about the cost of reopening recklessly coming due.
Here is the graph from 91.divoc.com of the 10 States with the highest per capita infection rate over the past 7 days ending Saturday:

With the exception of rapidly declining Maryland, the focus has almost entirely shifted away from the Northeast and Midwest and instead to the Confederacy plus Iowa, Utah, and Arizona. The 4 “leading” States are Arizona, Alabama, Arkansas, and South Carolina.

I’m having problems with the 91-divoc site this morning, but the raw data through Sunday shows a slight decline for

By New Deal democrat
Weekly Indicators for June 8 – 12 at Seeking Alpha

My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha.
The short leading indicators have continued to improve, from awful, to less awful, to merely really bad.
But that the NASDAQ briefly made a new high last week, while the S&P was only 5% from one, while the coronavirus pandemic rages on, was simply insane.
As usual, clicking over and reading should bring you up to the moment on the economy, and reward me a little bit for my efforts.

Another Look
by
Ken Melvin
In the wake of riots following the Police murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and too many other Black Americans, and Trump’s earlier installation  the likes of Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr as Attorney General; let US Cities find now to be a particularly good time to look anew at what they, the people, think should be the proper role of Police in America. It is time and time to rethink Policing in America. Any and all changes made need be made nationwide, else we would wind up forever dragging around this same Policing Model, a model purportedly somewhat based on some interpretation of the Old Testament of the Bible, a Model with ties to Slavery and Servitude. It is time and time that Policing in America broadly reflects

The authors’ Brookings blog Post, they explain their peer-reviewed work. The major conclusion is:
We find the impact of attending a virtual charter on student achievement is uniformly and profoundly negative, equating to a third of a standard deviation in English/language arts (ELA) and a half of a standard deviation in math. This equates to a loss of roughly 11 percentile points in ELA and 16 percentile points in math for an average virtual charter student at baseline as compared to their public school peers (see Figure 1 above). There is no evidence that virtual charter students improve in subsequent years. We could not “explain away” these findings by looking at various teacher or classroom characteristics. We also use the same methodology to analyze

By New Deal democrat
Weekly Indicators for June 1 – 5 at Seeking Alpha
My Weekly indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha.
The interest rate-sensitive long leading indicators largely turned positive as soon as the coronavirus crisis hit. As lockdowns have eased, several of the short leading indicators have also now turned – or at least are a lot less awful.
If the easing up and/or the huge protests result in a surge of new coronavirus cases, that could certainly reverse itself. But for now, “less awful” is the trend.
As usual, clicking over and reading rewards me with a penny or two for the effort I put into the endeavor.

If only it were so simple
by
Ken Melvin
The covid-19 pandemic has been difficult to get a handle on; so much unknown, everyday so much new info. It will probably take years for the world to fully to understand all that the 2020 covid-19 pandemic entailed.
The George Floyd protests are all too familiar. The gut wrenching images from Minneapolis angered the nation. I don’t know what it’s like to be black in America; don’t feel that I have the right to say what I think for fear that I might be wrong; might do harm; but there is a part of Black Americans’ struggle and of the protests that I feel that I do know something about; enough to offer my thoughts.
America is not doing well; hasn’t been doing well for more than 45 yrs now. Today, by any measure,