EconoSpeak

 Crickets.UPDATE: George W. Bush: “I just talked to the President-elect of the United States, Joe Biden. I extended my warm congratulations and thanked him for the patriotic message he delivered last night.”

 As I write this the outcome of the presidential election remains uncertain, although the trends seem to be heading steadily in Biden's favor and it seems very unlikely he will lose, but the hanging on of this is beginning to get to many of us.  Most other races have been decided, although some of those are still up in the air.  In any case, although it is near certain Biden will win, it will be by a substantially lower margin that forecast by the main polls, with him not taking several...

 I am about to turn in and let the vote counting continue without me.  It will be a troubled sleep, since the election was mostly a disaster.  (Universal preschool won in Oregon, and if everywhere were like here I would be happier.)Meanwhile two questions:1. What went wrong with the polls?  They didn’t do too badly in 2016; the popular vote was close to the consensus prediction, and the electoral college was a squeeker within the margin of error.  This time though the polls were apparently...

 Several months ago I forecast that "He who wins Prairie du Chien wins the White House."  I also argued more generally that SW Wisconsin would determine Wisconsin.As of right now Trump is leading by about 2% in Wisconsin, and he seems to be ahead in most of the counties of SW Wisconsin, although Milwaukee has not yet come in.  And the county Prairie du Chien is in, Crawford Trump is leading 4620 to 3953.But, for what it is worth, in the City of Prairie du Chien itself Biden is ahead 1303 to...

 My favorite ; A hand-made sign a few blocks away from my house:ONE DAY, LIKE A MIRACLE, HE'LL BE GONEAmen to that!

 I made it through episode 5 of The Queen’s Gambit last night, but I doubt I will finish it.  A noticeable deterioration takes place on all fronts as the story proceeds: weak dialog, dull cinematography, clumsy editing.  It’s as if the creative folks behind the project had done what they set out to do and were now just playing out the endgame.But here I want to focus on the chess, the way the game is portrayed in the Netflix series.  I have some experience at this, since I was a “promising...

 The election season is nearly over, thank heavens, but I guess I shall throw one more story for it out there, one I really did not expect and find plenty weird, but with two different sources pushing it, well.  As it is, I must say that given how totally lacking in any credible support this whole Hunter Biden story was from the get go, I found it hard to believe that the Russian GRU was behind it. I think they are more competent that that. The Chinese I think are maybe less practiced at...

My friends, If you post endless copies of off-topic news articles and list of corona virus statistics to my substantive posts, I will simply hide all comments on that post. DO NOT DO IT! Effectively, all you do with those "comments" is to prevent conversation. If that is your intention, you are trolls. One way or the other it is SPAM. You are welcome to post whatever you want on an "Open Thread." 

We took a trip this weekend, driving 180 miles each way on I-5 through Oregon and Washington State.  We kept our eyes peeled for bumper stickers relating to the upcoming election but counted only three for Trump and an amazing zero for Biden.I’ve never seen anything like this before in the US.  (In Europe bumper stickers don’t seem to exist at all.)  Just four years ago you could see Clinton and Trump plastered on cars everywhere.Is this your experience too?And what does it mean?  This...

 It has long been a truism of economics that high interest rates were favored by wealthy capitalist lenders against poor borrowers, with such a view lying behind the populist demands of the late 19th century.  We are used to applauding Keynes's forecast of the "euthanasia of the rentiers." But now that such a situation is upon us of increasingly likely very low interest rates for a long time ahead, this euthanasia does not seem so much like something poorer people should be all that happy...