Thursday, July 28, 2016

Happy Stagflation Anniversary (and what it's an example of)

OK, so I am a day early:  but tomorrow will be the 5 year anniversary of the Sinclair Davidson stagflation warning.   I am reminded too that my lengthy post about this in 2013 attracted a comment from a Catallaxy reader (they're the only ones who address me this way) as follows:
You can wait Stevie, perhaps stagflation will happen, or not. Certainly there is a recession around the corner.

Maybe this won't affect you, but there will be about 1.5 million people who will be effected.
Not sure how long I have to wait to declare that prediction wrong too - how far away is "a corner" in economic terms?  

Anyway, how's inflation going?   It is very low. Now true, this might not be the best sign economically - but it is not "stagflation".   (I presume that the economic doldrums that do not incorporate high inflation would still be claimed by Sinclair to be "the consequence of pursuing Keynesian economic policy" - because that's the beauty of being ideologically committed to a view against government spending - everything's the fault of Keynesian economic policy!) 

Catallaxy also no longer features any posts by the Prof about the "pause" in the global temperature record - presumably because the long term temperature/modelling record now looks like this:



In fact,  his series of posts about "the pause"; his stagflation warning (which seems to have been inspired by a very short term bump in CPI);  his (more recent) attempts to decry tobacco plain packaging as a failure by analysing some post introduction short term data about tobacco consumption; and his blog's (though not his own) posts about the dire state of renewable energy because of a very high but very brief spike in South Australian electricity prices - all show up a clear pattern.   Namely, a continual rush to make claims out of obviously limited short term data.   But look at the longer term and the claims either have collapsed entirely, or look extremely wobbly.

Do the threadsters of Catallaxy appreciate this pattern?  Of course not.   Ideology and short term evidence trump long term results every day.  (Oh yeah, and speaking of Trump - most of them are on board with him being better than Hilary.   What a bunch of jokers.)

1 comment:

not trampis said...

It is an echo chamber for not very bright people which is why such specious rubbish gets through without any debate there.