A. D. 536 - A Terrible Year Leading Into A Terrible Century

You think 2020 is bad?

You're right.  It's a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

But A.D. 536 was worse.

Encounter with a Bernie Bro

On 3/19, I posted on FaceBook an excerpt from Adam Parkemenko's daily BIG STUFF.  This led to an encounter with a Bernie Bro.

Adam Parkhomenko --

Remember when House Republicans were the worst people in Washington? Well, they’re still pretty awful, the title for worst has been claimed by Mitch and his cronies. Where to begin. Let’s start with Sen. Richard Burr, chairman of the Senate Intel Committee and someone who was busted in a recording obtained by NPR telling rich donors how bad the coronavirus would get even as Trump was telling Americans it was no big deal and it would just go away. Then we have Sen. John Cornyn, who used a racist diatribe to explain why calling it the Chinese Virus isn’t racist. Sen. Ron Johnson, one of the biggest scumbags of the Biden stuff, told his local paper that you just gotta keep it in perspective that a few million Americans might die. And then there’s Rand Paul. And really, ‘nuff said. Under Mitch’s leadership, or lack thereof, the U.S. Senate dragged its feet for days on the action the House took and now Mitch wants to cut Pelosi out of the negotiations. And for reasons we will never understand, there are many Democrats who want to take politics out of this current environment. These people must be new here and have never met a Republican. Like David Axelrod complaining because Democrats are running ads against Trump’s response? Seriously, Axe? Some of those first term capitulations are suddenly making a lot more sense. Trump fucked this up, and he and his party are going to be responsible for the deaths of many Americans. We sure as shit should be talking about that.

The Bernie Bro --

Just more bipartisan fuckfoolery. I'm immured to it, now. What will fall will fall.

JzB --

Both sides are not the same.

BB

They're not?

Could'a fooled me...

JzB

Sure, you can always find an example to validate a point of view. It's cherry picking, and it's not valid. You have to look at patterns of behavior, not isolated incidents. You have to look at policies and their effects.

Seriously, there are differences in any economic or social metric you can think of between when Rs and Ds are in control. And with the Ds it's always better.

Always.

Yes it's true that both parties have too much corporate interest. But that does not mean that they are equal. Frex: BHO had the backing of Wall St in '08, but they largely abandoned him in'12, because they didn't like what he was doing.

BB

Sorry [JzB}...I no longer believe this. I see them as two rival gangs in a kind of "Three families" criminal setup. The third family is the nonpartisan/bipartisan Deep State, which is actually more powerful than either gang. It allies itself with whichever gang seems most likely to continue to succeed in doing its bidding.

We've recently had a little shakeup of that system, because Trump surprised all THREE gangs and essentially took over the Ratpublicans. He is a rogue gang leader, and so far the other two gangs (and whatever parts of his own gang secretly wish him gone as well) have not been very successful in unseating him.

They DO keep trying, though.

We'll see in November...if of course there even IS an election in November. But never fear...we'll someday see who wins and who loses.

But...nothing substantive will change.

It's just the way things work.

Been that way since history began...

BEFORE it began, I'm sure.

It just didn't get written down.

JzB 

Well, you're entitled to your opinion. I've studied these things. Policies have consequences for people's lives, and R vs D policies are drastically different.

My dad told me something ca. 1962, and I never forgot it. Every once in a while, if a crumb falls off the plate, the Democrats might let you keep it. The Republicans won't even do that.

Also, ponder these things -- Would President Gore have ignored the screaming warnings from the intelligence communities like Shrub did - that allowed 9/11 to happen?

Would he have launched an illegal and pointless war against an uninvolved third-party country based on invalid, cooked intelligence?

Would he have cut taxes on the rich while launching this war - something no ruler in the history of the world has ever done?

Would President HRC have ignored the impending Covid-19 situation for months, while denying the reality of it to the American people in the hopes of personal gain?

Would she have signed into law yet another tax cut that benefited only the super rich and did squat for anyone else? And that, by the way, was completely unjustifiable on any economic terms and needlessly blew up the national debt?

Look at the history of criminal indictments in R vs D administration - dozens, maybe hundreds of Rs and a small hand full of Dems.

Look at the Rethug Senators who dumped millions in stocks just before the crash, while publicly saying Covid-19 was no big deal and we'd all be fine. The one from GA even made a huge investment in a tech company that might profit from people working from home. And her husband is Chairman of he New York Stock Exchange.

These are off the top of my head. Policies matter - to you and to me and to the rest of the world. 

Many of the things I listed were earth shaking.

Imagine how different it all would be without 9/11, ISIS, the disaster in Syria . . . Needless wars and ghastly foreign policy blunders have drained us of blood and treasure, and thoroughly destabilized an already fragile middle east.

And Trump and his cronies have gotten richer by many, many millions. To our detriment.

Ignoring these things for the sake of believing in a fictional both-sides-do-it duality might be satisfying in some way that I can't wrap my head around, but it is not an accurate depiction of the world we live in.

Think it over.

BB

You write: "Every once in a while, if a crumb falls off the plate, the Democrats might let you keep it. The Republicans won't even do that."

This in the biggest bakery of all time!!!

And you claim that they are "different?"

Not much more to say. I think that your father's statement pretty well sums up the difference between the two parties.

Minuscule.

Crumbs.

I could argue against every point that you make here.

You are as convinced as are the Trumpsters.

I will say this, though.

Don't worry. You have a lot of company.

JzB

It's pretty damned lame to dismissively hand wave away a long list of actual facts. In case you didn't notice, I put a lot of thought and careful planning into my response. Did you even read past the anecdote? I do commentary like this all the time, because I value the truth. You're welcome.

You could argue - but you don't. That says a lot, right there.

And, btw, comparing me to Trumpers is a blatant insult, because I actually fucking think things through; and I deeply resent it. You haven't done anything to earn the right to an attitude quite that superior.

If I'm convinced of something, it's because I've done the leg work to uncover actual facts and data. Years of technical training, along with my natural inclinations, lead me to make data-driven decisions. I have 463 posts on my blog with the tag "economics" and have actually put a bit of serious thought into some of them, with real graphs and detailed analysis.

What IS similar to Trumpers - and right wingers more generally - is a casual disregard for facts and data, with no attempt at rational discourse. I've experienced this hundreds of times. It's depressing as hell.

My posts are public on purpose. I welcome disagreement.

Note that it moves the discussion along in a more constructive way when the disagreement actually makes some sort of sense.

Prove to me that I'm wrong, and you will have done me a favor. The operative word here is PROVE.

But do it tomorrow. You've kept me up unit midnight, and I'm gong to bed

Think it over. Seriously.

BB

I am not going to even TRY to "prove" what I am saying to you.

The proof will be in the pudding.

We'll see what happens if Biden is elected with a majority in both houses. Or without.

Or if Trump remains.

Or...if some other outcome happens.

Gore?

HRC?

Bill Clinton?

Bush II?

Obama?

ALL willing supporters of the Permanent War state that has decimated this country on all levels and has simultaneously been the single most polluting environmental set of events of the last 30+ years. And all complicit in the selling of the country's industrial strength to the highest bidders, a sale that has totally wrecked the economies of the working class/middle class.

Biden?

Just another tool of the globalist corporate system for his entire career.

And yes, I did read your posts.

All of them.

I will read them no more.

Save your energy.

And at that point, he blocked me.  There was no attempt to engage any of my points, just spouting an extended sequence of naked assertions.

I'll concede that the Dems are far too close to big business and especially big finance.  And, to be sure, the history of humanity in a nutshell - always and everywhere - is the exploitation of the many by a small wealthy, privileged elite. But the mere fact that there are disturbing similarities between the two parties does not mean that there aren't also deeply significant differences. Our own history over that last hundred years, and especially the most recent decades, demonstrates that dramatically.

Unhealthy Inequality

This is from 7 1/2 years ago.

Imagine how much worse things are now.

Memorial Day - Who Should We Remember?

This is the day we quite properly remember those in our various military services who lives were lost in either gaining or preserving our freedom - the American revolution, civil war and world wars I and II. We’ve lost many more service people since then, including over 4000 in Iraq. Sadly, all of these lives were lost in vain. Our freedom was never an issue in any of these incidents. They were fought for a variety of far less worthy reasons. Perhaps the best of them is due to an ideology. Though that is far from noble. The worst of them is to line the pockets of war profiteers like Dick Cheney.

So I honor the memory of those who died in a noble cause, but grieve in profound sadness for those whose lives were not only lost, by wasted for poor or terrible reasons.

And who else should we grieve for? How about the innocent civilians - men, women and children - of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden and My Lai? And the many 10’s of thousands of Iraqis who were victims of our unjust and unjustifiable aggression?

What about the Japanese and German soldiers who gave their lives for their respective countries? Should we spare a thought for them? Didn't they have mothers, fathers, siblings, children, lovers?

Consider the kidnapped Africans and their generations of offspring whose freedom was taken for our economic benefit. Shouldn’t we honor their memory as well? Their lives were also sacrificed for us and our freedom.

Let's also not ignore the genocide our government and military perpetrated against Native Americans. Wasn’t that a part of American expansion? Weren’t those lives given for our benefit?

So my feelings are mixed on memorial day. Pondering these questions makes me deeply uncomfortable.

Christians Without Jesus - It's a Thing

3/31 Update:  Full disclosure -- I'm not much of a believer; but my lovely wife and I have found a church that we like.  The message is positive and accepting, the sermons are thoughtful and thought-inspiring, I've gotten deeply involved in the music program, and I absolutely love the people there - as individuals and as a community.  For the first time in my life, I'm enthusiastic about going to church!

This mural is in the narthex, right by the front door.  This, in my not so humble opinion is doing Christianity the right way.

How all this happened is a story for another day. What I want to talk about now are walls.  They are the sermon theme for this Lenten season, and today's was about the walls we all build that separate us from each other.  Walls built around geography, race, politics, gender, gender identity, social status, and economic position.

What didn't get mentioned are the walls due to religion.  The ones between Christians and Muslims, Jews or non-believers are pretty obvious.  But there is also a high and thick wall within Christianity, separating the conservative [or as I think of it, regressive] and progressive approaches.  Roger Wolsey does a deep dive into this in his book Kissing Fish, which has informed a lot of my thinking.

Below is a thing that happened on Twitter on Friday evening.  John Pavlovitz, in case you don't know of him, is a progressive Christian writer who I follow and respect.  Both he and Wolsey get a lot of flack from regressives who accuse them of heresy, when they are simply relating the clear and obvious message of Jesus. The exchange below illustrates what the wall within Christianity looks like.

In retrospect, I probably could have been more charitable.  But, let's face it, I'm a smart ass, and that usually comes into play. 
_________________________________________

On Twitter John Pavlovitz posted this -

Here is the article linked in the above tweet.

First response I saw was from this guy -

Christian minister.  This was his response.

JK: You perverse filthy hypocrite: If you knew anything about the Scriptures you would Know that GOD does hold humanity in contempt: & that every leader on earth, whether Good or bad; is put in place By Him.

I don't know if there is some prior history between the two Johns, but the viciousness of this attack, right out of the box is nothing short of stunning. Intrigued by this, I responded.

Me: Please provide specific scriptural references indicating -
1) God's contempt for mankind;
2) God puts leaders in place on earth.

Really - this is fascinating.  I'll wait.

Then this -

Me: I'm especially interested in how you deal with --

"So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them;"
and
"God saw all that he had made, and it was very good." 

These lines are in Genesis, in case you need help finding them.

God bless you!

It gets better.

JK: Way too much work for an account with only 71 followers: Provide the Scriptures That challenge what I said; or do the work yourself: I don't owe you anything troll

Me: Your measure of worth - Twitter followers?
I provided those scriptures in my follow up comment. It's clear in Genesis. Read it.
You, sir, are exactly why people are leaving the faith. They are not inspired by your message of hate. 
You are the troll.
May God have mercy on you.

Me:  Translating John Keister: My hateful opinion is contrary to scripture. I can't defend so I'll hope that nobody notices.
Not a good look, John.
Translating me:
Sorry John - we are noticing.  Me and all 71 of my followers - 70 thoughtful people and one smart dog.
God's mercy on you.

Responses on Twitter get non-linear.  I'm piecing this together as best I can.

JK: The First Message Of Jesus Is: You're eternally damned to everlasting death: Confess & Repent Of your sins: Only then Shall you Be Saved  *

JK:  You like {Genesis 6: 5+11} Educate yourself & Keep your fake blessing

Me:  Fake?  On what do you base that?  Your prejudice?
You memorize verses but have no understanding.
Jesus teaches love and you spew hate.
I am educating myself, with hope and humility.
I don't think you can make that claim.
You're the fake. You know words, but you don't know Jesus.

Me: Sorry - I ran out of space to offer a blessing.

I hope God softens your heart, opens your mind, and frees your spirit so you can see that judging is God's business; and that love, inclusion and acceptance are your business. Sheep and goats, amigo.

May God have mercy on you.

JK: Unlike you, I Know Every Scripture In The Bible & Understand most of them: & On Judgement Day you're not going to blame your sins on me hypocrite: #ForTheRecord I Speak for GOD, not you

Me:  Oh, blah, blah, blah. You know nothing abt me, let alone hypocrisy. Nice projection BTW. What you've shown here is that you are prideful, arrogant, hateful, judgmental, and deeply un-Christlike.
The message of Jesus is clear: love and forgiveness.
Go read it.
May God forgive you.

JK: {Luke 13: 1-9} This is the last you get from me: You're muted fool

Me: John really needs to apply Luke 13: 1-9 to himself.

He has the right wing trifecta in spades: projection, tone-deafness to irony, and a stunning lack of self awareness.

He might think he's won by muting me, but all he's done is run away and hide.

It's pitiful. I'm sad for him.

TiredSouthernLibtard interjects -
You might wanna bow out of this thread *Pastor Keister* - you're sorta kinda getting owned...

JK:  Pay attention: My GOD Has Owned everyone in this thread: You're nothing

TSL: And Christ be with you as well. I - like all of us - was created in God's image - so I claim FAR from nothing. ☺ Thank the Lord I was never exposed to a *minister* such as yourself. wow

JK: You pathetic hypocrite; you tweeted💩 @ me first: Beat it: You got schooled #Seeya

TSL:  (and maybe - as a *minister* - not post 💩 emojis... 😮)

Me: I guess the minister has forgotten his wonton attack on @johnpavlovitz at the top of this thread.  No self-awareness.

* Me, in a later response:
I really want to see this verse.  Too bad he's muted me.

What I didn't realize in real time is that this: {Genesis 6: 5+11} were the verses he meant. Here's Genesis 6.  God regrets having created us.  Once we were good and now we are nothing but evil. You'd think an all-knowing, all-powerful God would have had a clue. But that's the Bible for you - chose the passages that seem to support your point of view. This is in the Jewish part of the Bible, and I never hear Jews speak this way.  Haters gotta hate, though, and here is their scriptural support. It's conservative [and false] Christianity at its worst.

There's more between JK and TSL, and lots of other comments from other posters, but you get the idea.

It's kind of fun, in a perverse way, to jab the hornet's nest and find there's nothing in it but a slug. But this whole thing just made me sad.  What this minister [?!?] puts forth is such a hateful perversion of the message of Jesus, that reading his words leaves me in despair - not just for Christianity, but for the whole human race.

Here's Luke 13: 1-9.  It's kind of about repentance, but also kind of about fertilizing your fig tree, avoiding discouragement, and best of all - hope.  Where John Keister sees a negative message of despair and cruel judgement, I see a positive message of hope of and redemption.  What do you see?

4/03 Update:  Then today, this happened.  I just makes me sadder.

It just keeps getting worse.

State of the Union

President Obama's final State of the Union address has received generally high marks - at least from people who think with their brains and not the nether reaches of their alimentary canals.  But there were a couple things in it that troubled me.

One was his enthusiasm for the TPP.  Undoubtedly, it has some good features.  But it's features were kept secret far too long; and it was never adequately explained to the American people.   Especially troubling is the prospect of foreign corporations being able to sue the U.S. for lost profits due to our internal decisions and rule making.  TransCanada is already using NAFTA provision to sue us for lost profits due to our refusal to let the Keystone XL pipeline go through.   Who knows how much more liability we might face under TPP, and what types of courts or tribunals might make those decisions

Do the proposed benefits of TPP outweigh the potential downsides, which might include direct challenges to U. S. sovereignty? Does TPP benefit U. S. workers, or trans-national mega-corporations? How can anyone decide these question intelligently?

The second was his moment of abject humility over his alleged failure to bridge the partisan gap with the Republicans - as if they hadn't met on the night of his first inauguration and mapped out a strategy to make him fail.  This crystalized for me as I listened to Thom Hartmann while driving home last night. Obama has spoken repeatedly about Dolores Kearns Goodwin's book 'Team of Rivals," which tells the story of the opposition members Lincoln installed in his cabinet. This seems to have influenced him since he said that a greater president, like Lincoln or FDR, would have been able to unite the differing parties.

This is not only false, it is so wrong it makes me sad.  Evidently Obama is still operating under the delusion that the Republicans will work with him to achieve anything.  They've already been blocking the appointment of new ambassadors for well over a year, have slow-walked judicial nominations for as long as they've had the majority, and now will approve no more during Obama's term in office.

When Obama spoke those words on Tuesday, I turned to my lovely wife and said, "For the thousandth time Obama extends an olive branch across the aisle, and for the thousandth time it's dashed to the ground and stomped into splinters."

Lincoln might have worked with members of the opposition, but it was an outspoken opposition sympathizer and anti-abolitionist who murdered him.

FDR, on the other hand, had no regard for bipartisanship.  In a 1936 campaign speech he famously said, "I welcome their hatred."  Then he went on about his business.




I don't know what Obama was thinking.  Maybe this is one more move in his game of 11 dimensional chess.  Certainly he is savvy and far more intelligent than the Republicans who oppose him.

But it looks to me that the time for conciliation is several years past its expiration date; and Obama needs to start educating the American people who their real enemies are.

That would make him a whole lot more like FDR.

The Chronicle of Death

Here it is from the Guardian - 994 mass shootings in 1004 days.

This includes all incidents in which 4 or more people were shot, irrespective of whether there were any fatalities.

The link.

Hospice

Here is a picture of my mother [standing] and her twin sister last month on their 94th birthday.

On the morning of June 2nd she suffered a stroke.  After a week in the hospital, where she declined severely, it became clear that there would be no recovery.  On the advice of several doctors, we moved her into a hospice facility for comfort care.

As of now, she is still there, totally unaware and unresponsive.   There are supposed to be 7 stages of grief, but I must have leapfrogged a few.  I got to acceptance very quickly.  But this is still sad and very painful.

This is a beautiful location, and that helps a little bit.

The last three pics are of a great blue heron.  I was very lucky to get him in flight.

Thoughts on Ferguson

I've been reluctant to comment on the shooting of Michael Brown because so much is not known, and so much of what has been thought to be known is either speculative or irrelevant. 

But I am now prepared to say a few things.

Whenever an atrocity is committed, two things always happen -
--  Real information is suppressed
--  The victim is demonized

We don't know - and may NEVER know - if the killing of Michael Brown was an actual atrocity.  But we see the atrocity cover-up-and-deflect scenario played out here, exactly according to script.

There's a third thing that happens, which is an amalgam of the first two - the spreading of misinformation that is either intended to be exculpatory of the person(s) committing the atrocity, or damning of the victim.

So it is with the fractured orbital bone fiction perpetrated by the right wing media and spread so far and wide in recent days.

Evidently this story originated with Gateway Pundit, probably the least reliable of all the rabid right wing propagandists on the web.  In this instance the level of deceit is astounding.  It is actual fraud.  

It was then spread by first, the Murdoch owned New York Post, followed quickly by Murdoch's Fox News, and thence like wild-fire to a wider population hungry to have their facile and too often racist biases confirmed.

This story smelled very odd to me the first time I saw it.  If the officer had a serious injury, that would have been known immediately, since he got X-rays shortly after the event.   And since the cops were eager to smear Michael Brown by releasing the completely irrelevant security video from inside the store, it's hard to believe they would have held back something that at least marginally tends to make the shooting seem more justifiable.

Then the whole thing got a whole lot stinkier when I checked out the sources.  As always, critical thinking and a slow walk to judgment are advised.

Tigers Update

On the 9th of June the Tigers began a series of 14 straight games against Central Division opponents.  I said then that going 7-7 would not be good enough.   Ten games into it [with one rain-out against the White Sox] they are 4-6.  The best that can do now is 7-6, and that will take a sweep in Cleveland, where their demise began, just over a month ago.

Most recently, the Tigers eked out a win against the first place Royals [How weird does that look?] thereby avoiding getting swept in a 4 game series AT HOME.  And it has been every bit as bad as that makes it sound.

After completing a sweep of the Red Sox in Boston on May 18th, the Tigers' run differential stood at 55 for the 39 games played up to that point.  After game 67, on June 17th, a devastating 11-4 loss to the Royals, the run differential reached -2.  In 28 games the Tigers had been outscored by 57 horrific runs.  After splitting the next two games by identical 2-1 scores, they're again at -2.

There is no single cause.  Starting pitching for anyone not named Anibal went from outstanding into a range between ordinary and dismal.  Relief pitching gave no relief.  Scoring evaporated to the extent that they were shut out 3 times in those 28 games, and averaged a mere 3.933 runs per game.  This is scoring at the Seattle - Houston level, equivalent to 21st out of 30 MLB teams.  This stretch also includes a 12-9 win over the Twins, and a game in Cleveland where they scored 10 runs and lost by 1.

As this suggests, pitching has been awful.  The table shows the ERA's of the Tigers' rotation on the last start before arriving in Cleveland on May 19th, compared to now.  Sanchez has been outstanding, Smyly ordinary, and the rest at times embarrassingly bad.  We won't even look at the relief staff.

Now consider hitting.  For simplicity, we'll just look at batting averages.  Martinez, Marinez, and Cabrera have continued to produce, though Miggy is only hitting .259 for the latest 8 games.  Castellanos has brought his average up.  But Jackson, Hunter, and Kinsler have dropped off quite a bit.

After their win last night - a razor-thin 2-1 victory behind another brilliant start by Sanchez, an assist by Jaba, and Nathan finally having a strong 1-2-3 9th - I'd like to be optomistic.  But Verlander is burned out, Scherzer's last start was ghastly, and Smyly can be erratic.  Even worse, in the last 2 games, they've scored a total of three runs on 9 hits.

At their apex, the Tigers were on a pace to win 112 games.  Now the projection is 87.  There's a lot of season left, and plenty of time to turn this ship around.

But everything from pitching to hitting to fielding to base running will have to get a lot better.

A New Look at Real GDP - Part 2

Part 1 took a hard look at GDP growth after 1955.  Part 2 will take a hard look at Volatility.  The usual measure of volatility is the Standard Deviation.  Graph 1 is a scatter plot of Standard Deviation [St Dev] vs RGDP growth over an 8 year period.  The X-axis value is the average RGDP over the previous 8 years [32 quarters] while the Y-axis value is the standard deviation of RGDP growth over the identical period.  There's nothing magical about using an 8 year period, you get a similar picture using a 15 year period.

Graph 1 - RGDP Growth and Volatility

When I looked at the 15 year graph I noticed something that made me want to use an 8 year period, and that is the data trend over presidential terms.  The last data point in the term represents the performance of a given 8-year administration, and the trend over the term can offer contrast to other administrations.

Since the major trend over time has been decreases in both RGDP and St Dev, the data set starts at the upper right, and moves generally down and to the left over time.  The blue points at the start of the data set represent the Kennedy-Johnson administration from 1963 on.   JFK inherited high volatility from Ike, and during the Democratic term, RGDP growth increased while volatility decreased from 2.95 to 2.09.  During Nixon-Ford [purple], volatility jumped back up to the 2.5 range while average RGDP growth plummeted from 4.8 to 2.7%.  During the Carter administration [light blue], RGDP growth increased to 3.6%, then fell again, while volatility remained fairly constant in the 2.5 to 2.7 range.  Interestingly, the moribund Carter administration at it's best gave us average RGDP growth equal to Reagan's, at it's best, with much lower volatility.

During Reagan's term [red], RGDP growth fell, then rose. Both RGDP growth and volatility reached their maxima in Q4, '84 at 3.5% and 3.06, respectively.   During George H. W. Bush's term [yellow], average RGDP and St Dev didn't change much, despite the sharp RGDP drop in 1991.  By Q2, '95, RGDP growth stabilized, and grew slowly from there for the rest of Clinton's term [blue] while volatility dropped dramatically from 2.5 at the begiining of the term to 1.3 at the end.  During the George W. Bush term, volatility remained low while average GDP growth took a nose dive from 3.8 to 2.3%.

Then the Great Recession happened, and during Obama's term we've seen RGDP growth and volatility both stabilize.   While the Std Dev has settled in at an intermediate level, average RGDP growth has never been lower during the period under study.

This demonstrates what I've believed for a long time:  the Great Moderation is a myth.  The only meaningful declines in St Dev took place during the Kennedy-Johnson and Clinton administrations - what I call the two little moderations.  You can attribute this to good policy or good luck.  But the Great Stagnation is real.  Only during the Kennedy-Johnson and Clinton administrations did we experience increasing GDP growth along with falling volatility.

Now, I'm gong to introduce the concept of Relative Standard Deviation [RSD] this is simply the standard deviation divided by the average of the data set on which it is based.  You might think this is a novel concept, but analytical chemists and quality engineers use it all the time.  Think about it this way.  If the St Dev is two and the data is clustered around 10 that's one thing, but if its clustered around 2, that's something quite different.  The denominator provides context for the numerator.

Graph 2 shows the RSD of RGDP growth, again based on a moving 8 year kernel.

Graph 2 - Relative St Dev of RGDP Growth

I've included the grand average [0.735] in yellow and some trend lines. At the beginning of the series, RSD falls sharply to a low of 0.418 in Q4, '69.  From there it's a bumpy rise to the top at 1.35 in Q4, '82.  But the value remains below the average for 9 years from Q4 '65 to Q4, '74.  Following the peak, there is no meaningful breach of the average again until Q1, '97.   In other words, after the peak, volatility remained high for 7 years, and at or above average for 15.  From 1990 through '96, the values cluster close to the average line.  After that, values stay below average until Q4, '98, 12 years later.  What we have are two roughly symmetrical, approximately decade long periods of low volatility - the little moderations - surrounding two above average decades that include two volatility bumps and one brief excursion into ultra-high high volatility in 1982-3.  The low volatility of the little moderations results from avoiding recessions - periods when volatility goes up while GDP growth declines.  The 1982 peak is an artifact of the double dip recessions of  '80 and '82. The whole key to having low volatility has been, up until recently, to avoid recessions.

As I said, I think the Great Moderation is a myth.  It's entire existence is predicated on 2 things: 1) a brief ultra-high volatility blip due to a double dip recession; and 2) completely ignoring the existence of the first little moderation. 

But what's happened since is truly remarkable.  We now have what some people consider to be [and applaud as] remarkably stable GDP growth.  But what we actually have is the lowest non-recessionary GDP growth ever recorded, coupled with historically high RSD.  This is a truly ugly economic environment.  Anyone graduating now is the unluckiest of all.

The Standard Deviation of NGDP Growth Since 1950 - Revised

This is a follow up to The Standard Deviation of NGDP Growth During the Great Inflation.  In that post I showed this 100 point scatter graph of the 12 Quarter average Compounded Annual Rate of Return [CARC] of NGDP vs 12 quarter Standard Deviation [Std Dev] of CARC from 1954 to 1978.  It then occurred to me that some of those red dots that have fallen down close to the yellow trend line might be misallocated.  What they represent are 3 quarters in 1957 when Std Dev had a chance to settle down between recessions, and the tumble down of Std Dev in the early 60's as the high Std Dev values of the the 1960 recession fell out of the 12-point data kernel.

This is illustrated in Graph 1.

Graph 1 CARC vs Std Dev 1954-78, With Points Reallocated

The red dots are data points from 1954 through Q1 '62.  The yellow dots are from Q1 '64 on. The blue dots are the three low Std Dev points from 1957, and the pink dots represent the transitions in and out of the 1957 blue-dot data, and the tumble down in Std Dev from Q2 '62 to Q4 ''63.  The original blue trend line is retained for comparison.  Note that removing these three blue and 8 transitional data points from the pre-1964 data set causes the negative correlation of that period to completely evaporate.

This might seem a bit arbitrary; but now we can observe a more tightly packed red data set, and the behavior of the pink data points does seem to be unusual.  The string of high side outliers in the yellow data set occurs in 1971-2, and is associated with the 1970-71 recession.

This piqued my curiosity, so I took a look at the bigger picture - all 253 quarterly data points from Q1 1950 through Q1 2013, shown in Graph 2. 

 Graph 2 - CARC vs Std Dev 1950 to 2012

I see the great majority of these points clustering or stringing out along imaginary upward sloping lines that suggest coherent data subsets, and a relatively small number of points [39, or 15.4% of the total] where the data is in transition between sets.

I parsed it out as shown in graph 3.

Graph 3 - CARC vs Std Dev 1950 to 2012 - Parsed Data

The data points are color coded to correspond with the straight lines that best fit each subset of data, describing 5 distinct realms.  Equations for the lines and R^2 values are also presented in corresponding colors.

The 39 light green dots represent the lowest Std Dev to CARC relationship.  The 72 dark green dots represent a slightly higher relationship. These two subset occur across all decades from the 60's on in times of stable NGDP growth, i.e times outside of recessions.  There are 41 blue points, representing a medium-high relationship.  These occur when the economy is either in or coming out of a recession.   The 53 yellow points represent a high Std Dev to CARC relationship.  This has occurred during especially severe recessions, or when recessions repeat within the 12 quarter data kernel.  The 8 red dots at the top of the graph are ultra-high.  They demonstrate the severe economic instability of the early post WW II years.  Four of these subsets exhibit extremely high R^2 values, above 0.91; and the fifth  [yellow] is quite respectable at 0.74.  The 39 pink dots occur in discrete short periods when Std Dev rises or falls sharply.

This is an unusual way of looking at GDP data, but I feel pretty good about it, because the linear subsets sort themselves out quite reasonably, and to my eye do not look contrived.  Also, the data points of each subset generally follow the trend lines, in either clusters or strings, for several consecutive quarters.  These subsets are trend stationary along the entire time span of the FRED data set, irrespective of inflation or disinflation; high or low levels of NGDP growth; and whether CARC is rising or falling.  This suggests that the relationship between CARC and Std Dev is not random.  Rather, it is deterministic, and also quantized.  I'm reminded of the chart of nested Phillip's curves Noah Smith posted, and the quantization of electron energy levels diagram shown here.

To draw an analogy, recessions provide the activation energy to boost the Std Dev from a low level trend line to a higher level trend line.  When the recession ends, the Std Dev naturally decays down to a lower level.

To bring this back into the real world, Graph 4 shows the 12 period CARC average from 1950 to 2013, with the CARC data points color coded to correspond with graph 2.

Graph 4 - CARC Color Coded to match Graph 2

The color coding is indicative of the economic conditions as described for Graph 3.   Note that each of these data sets is coherent, irrespective of the inflationary environment or the long trend NGDP growth level.  It is the presence or absence of recessions that mainly determines the realm in which the Std Dev of CARC resides. Outside of recessions, the data resides along one of the green lines.  When not following any of these lines, the CARC - Std Dev relationship is transitional, moving into and out of recessions.

What strikes me is that I simply eyeballed straight lines through this scatter of data as an exercise in curiosity, and it wound up making some sort of coherent sense. Each of the realms associated with the best fit lines is trend stationary in a way that is robust across time and varying economic conditions.

But NGDP growth, per se, tells you absolutely nothing about either the rate of inflation nor the Std Dev realm.  So - the big question in my mind is this: how can NGDP targeting be expected to lead to controlled, relatively stable economic growth at any desired level, unless you can also control not only the underlying rate of inflation, but also which Standard Deviation realm you end up in?

For anyone who's curious, Graph 5 shows the CARC - Std Dev scatter, color coded this time by decade.

Graph 5 - CARC vs Std Dev by Decades

Red - 1950-59
Yellow - 1960-69
Light Blue - 1970-79
Purple - 1980-89
Orange - 1990-99
Green - 2000-09
Blue - 2010-13

Note three things. 1) As the data moves across time, when it gets to one of the realms described by Graph 3, it tends to linger there.  These trend stationary realms have real traction.  2) Transitions generally take a short, quick route to the next trend line.  3) Since 1980 there has been a choppy but relentless migration to lower and lower NGDP growth.  We are now stuck in the worst recovery on record, and the lowest growth period ever to occur outside of a recession.  In fact, NDGP growth is now lower than that which has occurred within most recessions.

Whether fiscal policy, monetary policy, trade policy or something else I can't think of  is to blame, this is, to borrow a phrase from my seven-year-old granddaughter Emily, a "total epic fail" of economic policy.  It is grim on a scale unprecedented in the post WW II period.