Megan IS Bad at Math

Shorter Megan McArdle:

Fannie and Freddie: Budget Busters:

30 billion times one is less than 60 billion divided by 9.

Trivial

It's almost Spook Night, & what better time to re-enter the overgrown elfin horror of Megan McArdle's mind? The woman who can't spell her favorite word, even when spotted the "e," would like us to pay some attention to some stuff she's typed about something else.

When we were considering the stimulus, I got asked frequently whether it would work.  That very much depends on what you mean by "work".  If the question is:  "can I increase the size of a measured variable by boosting one of the components of that variable," then the answer is undoubtedly "yes"--but this is trivial.

Well, that depends on what the definition of "works" is, doesn't it? And maybe we aren't ready to deal w/ this. A clue for Mlle.: The question (she asked it herself) was "Will the stimulus work?" Not, "Ha ha, would you type something obvious & not funny even as sarcasm while avoiding the truth about the stimulus?"

We borrowed a bunch of money from abroad, and that was going to show up as an increase in GDP.  But as I wrote in our November issue, GDP is at best a proxy for our well-being, not a direct measure of it.  It's often a good proxy.  But it's never perfect, and it's very easy to manipulate with certain sorts of government actions, most notably borrowing a ton of money from the global capital markets.

I am on the edge of my seat awaiting the McArdle Index, so we can begin measuring our well-being w/o the irksome proxy of the GDP.*

Megan asks four questions, one of which is

2)  Are employment and compensation growing?

Funny, considering wages have been essentially stagnant since the Reagan era, & that, after all is good for Megan's America. Unless "compensation" is code for more bonuses for Wall St.

Elements of Style©:
How to type as if you graduated from a not really bad junior high school:

We borrowed a bunch of money from abroad
borrowing a ton of money from the global capital markets

Next wk., we'll find out that we've borrowed a bunch of tons of money.

Also fascinated by this sentence:

The things I think we really want to know about the economy are

The horror of the overgrown yet still elfin mind. Boo!

* One of the axes of the "McArdle Index."

On Counterproductivity

Let's see if Megan can be a condescending moron:

Let me see if I can make this even simpler:

She shoots! She scores! Condescension in the bag!

1. There is more than one meaning of the word rationing. Economics is a young discipline, and hasn't had the opportunity to nail all its terms down as perfectly as philosophy has. There is a fairly rare technical usage, which refers to any allocation of a scarce good: i.e. "price rationing versus fiat rationing". Then there is the common usage of the term, which refers to a fiat system in which the government uses fiat in order to abrogate the price system and impose a different distribution of the aforementioned scarce goods.

Oh, and she nails the moronity on her second attempt! Look at her conflating "meaning of a word" with "what she was actually arguing." Because, when she said the government rations and private insurance doesn't, she meant technically and wasn't arguing the pros and cons of public/private insurance!

But what's this, Megan has the ball again:

2. The former is a fact. The latter is a mistake.

3. It is no more technically incorrect to use both the common usage and the technical usage in discussing an issue than it would be to use "cost" in both the economist's sense--as any price, non-monetary or monetary, attached to an action--and in the common usage, as "price".

Oh she scores again! Notice how she creates two additional bullets which are clearly part of the first one! An amzing display of trying to make herself look smart and coming off retarded! The whole "making lists is a pretentious dodge to create the illusion of having "points"" bit really makes that tally standout in the annals of being a fucking douche bag!

4. My problem with the latter is that abrogating the price system generally results in a distribution and supply of goods that does not enhance the general welfare, or even, in the long run, the welfare of the people it is supposed to be helping. (See, United Soviet Socialist Republics, economic history of). There is substantial reason to believe that rationing in World War II led to sub-optimal material outcomes, whatever its moral or spiritual benefits.

Oh, and she's on another fast break! She uses the word abrogate and... YES! SHE FAILS TO USE IT CORRECTLY! BEAUTIFUL 3-POINT PLAY. THE CROWD IS GOING FUCKING WILD! Wait, the refs are reviewing the play and... THEY HAVE DECIDED TO AWARD MCARDLE QUINTUPLE POINTS FOR A SENSELESS REFERENCE TO THE USSR AS WELL AS THE SLIPPERY SLOPE FALLACY! WHAT A DAY FOR TEAM GLIBERTARIAN!

5. That said, Mr. Holbo is mistaken about the common usage. Rationing does not have to control 100% of a relevant good in order to constitute rationing, and indeed, no government ever succeeded in doing so (or for that matter, tried particularly hard). For example, during World War II, people who ate in restaurants could get around some rationing requirements in the US, and I believe also in Britain. Taxicabs got preferred access to gasoline. Both allowed the wealthy to "opt out" of the system. Yet I hope we can both agree that rationing during World War II was in the common sense, rationing.

Now here's an interesting gambit. McArdle seems to be making an actual argument based on actual facts. Let's see what the refs think of her examples and the call is..... IT'S GOOD! Yes, the refs seem to agree that since eating out and taking a taxi are luxuries that don't constitute the majority of consumption and easily COULD HAVE been rationed at the time if the government felt it necessary, they are stupid examples! The refs all agree that, while a 100% may not be the needed level for true rationing to occur, it is certainly less than the 10% or fewer of people who will be covered under any "public option" that will most likely not be passed due to opposition from right-leaning democrats! Furthermore, the refs are awarding her another bonus for continuing to fail to grasp that providing insurance isn't rationing because it is removed from the actual providers of service!

DO YOU BELIEVE IN MIRACLES? YES!

An Addition to the Preceding Shorters: "Excellent opportunity for Rehab potential."

Must add 2¢ worth on

Real Estate Moment of the Week

as I took a look at the advert for the $1,000,000 mansion Mlle. McA. was snickering at.Yes, it's 103 yrs. old & sold for $149,000 in 1996, but is now hoped to be worth a cool million. What the hell? How can you base an economy on something like that? Have tips, wages & income increased sevenfold or whatever in the last 13 yrs.? I think not.

Up to the Hilt in Missing the Point

"Why is This Bubble Different From All Other Bubbles?" Megan asks. Someone wrote a story about how wealth creation should be centered around making actual wealth instead of cardboard houses hours away from any urban center and Megan goes all "That doesn't make any sense! Let me put on my thinking cap and think a hole through their argument!" Well, there's a hole in something. We do, as usual, marvel at her decision to properly capitalize the title. She does do brief flings with minimal competence.

James Surowiecki has a very interesting column arguing that this bubble was different because unlike the earlier banking booms, there was no point to the wild spending. The bubble didn't bring us railroads and electrification; it brought us . . . houses. Lots and lots and lots of houses.

I'm of two minds on this. On the one hand, I think that this is an interesting point. On the other hand, of course, the bubble in the 1920s was not limited to electric stocks, or even stocks. Lots of money was wasted on railroads, Florida real estate, mining concerns, and many other unrelated phenomena. And if you look at the history of the 1920s, you see the same thing we see in the 1998-2008 era: markets awash in too much money.

This is a stellar fucking point. I'm sure Surowiecki (Whose name can be only cut and pasted, not spelled correctly on a whim) was thinking as he wrote this article that all previous bubbles were based around only one stock. It's like those crazy people that say crack had something to do with the crime rates of the 80's. What they don't realize is that other, non-drug related crimes were also committed in the 80's so crack obviously had nothing to do with anything.

Megan seems to fully fail to comprehend the expression "irrational exuberance" and can not understand why a reasonable increase in one sector might fuel reckless optimism in all sectors. All booms show markets expanding rapidly in many areas. The question is what fucking PRECIPITATES that expansion. When it's the advent of the personal computer, well, it's a bit less retarded than when it's the belief that houses will double in price every 10 years no matter what.

So I wonder if there isn't a sort of post-hoc, ergo propter hoc reasoning to these "explanations" of the previous booms and busts. A market bubbling over wtih too much credit will end up plowing a lot of money into some technology or industry which ends up being really, really important twenty years later. (The electric revolution continued, surprisingly rapidly, in the 1930s). We look back and interpret the bubble as having been "about" that technology. But at the time, when it's not obvious what the big winner is going to be, it just looks like a giant mess.

That last little bit is almost certainly how the people who hired Megan are feeling right about now, assuming they feel things.

The Dickipedia pages for her little foray in the dead language says this:

Post hoc ergo propter hoc, Latin for "after this, therefore because (on account) of this", is a logical fallacy (of the questionable cause variety) which states, "Since that event followed this one, that event must have been caused by this one."

So either she's arguing that it was a coincidence that rapid expansions preceded booms and were concomitant with the introduction of technology that radically increased productivity or she doesn't know what the fuck post hoc blah de blah means or when to properly invoke it. That is, she is not arguing that what goes up must come down, but rather coming down is a naturally occuring phenomenon which happens without warning, regardless of height. Things flat on the ground have been known to come down spontaneously all the fucking time. While there is apparent correlation between being up and then coming back down, this does not imply causation. It is certainly possible to come down without having first attained some height above the ground. Ipso facto QED E pluribus unum, BITCH!

Maybe a Little Too Efficient?

I've never really understood why anyone would put their faith in the free market. To me, it's just like faith in god, only it makes less sense. At least god is a single actor working towards his own means. Decisions are being made in some kind of coherent fashion (even if it might look like nonsense to us mere mortals.)

Free market fuckers, on the other hand, essentially believe that a shitload of uncorrelated decisions made for a myriad of reasons by a bunch of people (many of whom are too stupid to pass college level calculus classes) somehow amalgamate together to form really good ideas! Yeah, 'cause people are so notoriously good at making decisions and their collective actions have never in the history of the galaxy created unintended shitstorms. It's like they think adding enough negative numbers together will somehow result in a positive number.

Example: let's take a look at the Dow Jones Industrial Average's gyrations du jour:


Who the fuck can look at those numbers and decide that the market is "rational?!?!?" It's swung hundreds of points, in both directions, IN A SINGLE FUCKING DAY!! What possible meaningful absorption and analysis of information could be going-the-fuck-on? How is that anything other than just noise? Efficient market my ass. IT'S A FUCKING RANDOM NUMBER GENERATOR.

Wait a second... I'm looking at it more closely now.. and... wait is that... OMFG GOD! THAT'S JESUS'S IMAGE IN THOSE SQUIGGLES! PRAISE THE LORD! HALLELUJAH! IT'S A MIRACLE! Surely god is watching over all of us! If only those traders would see the light, then the Dow would climb so high that the lord himself could touch it! Let Jesus into your risk analysis and be saved! AMEN!!!

Fucking idiots.

On a side note, I just read that religious people's brains are deficient in figuring out their own errors (or taking responsibility for them). Viewing free-market leg-humping as the religious fervor that it truly is, those results certainly explain McArdle, don't they? It explains a couple of religious ex-girlfriends of mine, too! Oh shit, my bitter is showing.

Red In The Face. Literally.

I think one of our many fine commenters may have referenced this in a comment earlier, but you must waste 4 mins. 20 secs. of your life to see Ms. McArdle "pwned," as you goofy-ass kids say.

Wouldn't unemployment stats be to count the number of people unemployed, not some imaginary "misery index?"

Good News For All!

In the finest tradition of the repressive, authoritarian right, soon The Atlantic will be in its own gated enclave.

We've also got something that a lot of you (and me!) have been wanting for a while:  registered comments.  Eventually they'll be migrating over here, too, but for now, I hope commenters will stick with the new page.

Why sure. I wouldn't want to be free to express myself, would I? I've been dying to keep some of, y'know, those people out of your comments there, Megan.

Those of you who do register, be prepared for a glut of "offers" from The Atlantic in your in-box.

We hope this doesn't mean that Megan will be forced to earn her keep by doing more econo-blogging & less pancake-blogging.

8 Reasons to Hope the Megan is Never Really Trying to Procreate, Or: Finally, Some Good News

Megan's got a triple dose of dumb up today, but let's start with the good news. I'd like everyone to know that it is now 100% guar-un-TEED that we will avoid a depression. I know this, obviously, because Megan is convinced that we're in one already.

My reasoning for thinking of this as a depression, rather than a recession: roughly, that we don't understand how to get in or out of it.
(...)
This kind of perfect financial storm is a rarer bird, and no one has plausibly claimed to have mapped the way out yet.

Megan is possibly the only person on earth who claims that we don't know what's going on. I've read at least a dozen articles about the causes of this recession, and most of them are in agreement (except for the crazy bastards blaming the black people). Megan can't be bothered to acknowledge them, however, because that would expose her readers to the idea that overly free markets played a role in this calamity andwecan'thavethatnowcanwe?

Nope, instead it's just some "perfect storm" of three things coming together in an unprecedented fashion. Megan doesn't know what those three things are, but somehow she knows that they're there. I guess that's just the Catholicism in her, that faith in three undefined but all controlling entities. Who cares, though? As I mentioned, Megan thinks we're in a depression which means next quarter will show a rapid turnaround. You're welcome.



Also on the docket today,-because she wants us to.... uh... something? I don't know, maybe just show us that she reads The New Yorker-she links to this piece, an intelligent insight into the minds of a neurotic idiot that I couldn't be bothered to finish. The author trenchantly describes the fact that she's delusional and has spent herself needlessly into huge debt whilst being not very gainfully employed in order to furnish herself a certain lifestyle. A lifestyle that she appears to have never actually evaluated before sitting down to pen this 1000 word ode to her poor life skills. It's a real thinker piece, or I'm sure it gets to be one by the end that I got far too bored to reach.



Megan's most recent post once again makes us all thankful that she never procreated. Actually, maybe I wish she had as it'd have been hard for her to become a shitty hack blogger ruining a perfectly good magazine while serving time for child neglect. On errands:

If you are a towing a child (and his gargantuan supply of diapers), it is much easier to bind him tightly into a car seat than manhandle him onto the bus.

Megan's idea of motherhood; dragging children by their ears while carrying around 50 diapers and strapping them to car seats with knots that make their arms turn blue. What human thinks babies shit "a gargantuan" number of times per day?

And indeed, whenever I write anything at all in praise of city living, I am contemptuously informed that I only like it because I don't have kids.

Hmm, and yet somehow you know all about how hard it is to raise them...?!?!?!!?!?!?!?!?!? And for fuck's sake, Megan actually swallows that bullshit parents say about it being "easier" to raise kids in the suburbs? Um, no, parents do that so their children don't have to sit next to any black kids in school, not because they like forcing their child to be utterly dependent on them until driving age rather than until they're old enough to read a map. She even acknowledges that in her next paragraph:

But this is not, really, a very good argument against city living. Most people spend the majority of their lives these days neither being nor having small children. And small children are the ones that make suburban living preferable. Older children are much easier to deal with in a city, because after age eleven or so, they no longer need to soak up hours of Mom's time being ferried around.

She shoots down her own arguments now... is that progress?

That's not to say that we should force the suburbanites into the city, either. To each his own. But the mere fact that something is not convenient for toddlers, or their guardians, does not ipso facto mean we should discard it in favor of something that better pleases the Playskool set.

Right, civil engineering is so nanny state. I mean, Megan's all for pricing negative externalities into things so long as that means no one has to actually make any of the sacrifices (like moving out of the suburbs) that would be required to actually mitigate those externatlities. And what the fuck is that last sentence supposed to mean? Now she's arguing against the suburbs? Wasn't her introduction in defense of them? What the fuck is this woman blathering about? I swear, she takes a straight jacketed stroll through la-la land and calls it a coherent analysis. She doesn't even know what a fucking thesis is!

I really don't understand the people that think she's any kind of intelligent. I think she basically got her audience by giving a bunch of libertarian dorks a boner over the idea of a "Jane Galt" and has just been coasting on that ever since. In the comments section of the depression post there's oodles of people saying that if the government just sat back, everything would be fine. The post I mocked below about her car has all these morons making tangential declarations about declaring "if Megan the government fucked up registering her car so badly, imagine what socialized medicine would be like!"

Morality The Megan Way

First we get this, from a long bit of rental advice for newcomers to the Quaint & Sleepy Village By The Potomac:

The inauguration rental ads in the wrong place on Craigslist are still going strong, but they've been supplemented by clearly fraudulent ads aimed at the Obama folks.  I came across this myself during our house hunt, when I randomly discovered that someone was advertising my mother's place for rent, at a ridiculously low price.  A friend suggested we try to play the scammers, which would have been fun and instructive, but immoral, given that other people on Craigslist might be taken in by the ad.

I have no idea what she means by "rental ads in the wrong place" or "play the scammers," but wouldn't one want to stop whatever scam is going on? Wouldn't that be "moral?" How would "playing the scammers" be "immoral?"

The morality of scamming the government is, of course, another matter to Megan.

* One of my favorite doctors was running a Medicaid mill, which I faithfully patronized when I was uninsured.  She was charming, caring, and merrily full of ways to help me milk the system, which I had to politely turn down and pay her in cash.  Given the reimbursement schedule Medicaid offers, I couldn't blame her a bit.

No moral question of turning in the "milk the system" doctor? Well, doctors are special people. 

Here, she reverses her usual "poor people are dirt who deserve what they get (or don't deserve what they don't get)" shtick:

It seems to me that there is no good reason for Medicare and Medicaid to be two separate programs. Housecleaners are surely no less deserving of decent medical care than Palm Beach retirees, yet we arduously separate the two programs so as to lavish extra care on the more affluent class of beneficiaries. It's no good saying that the Medicare recipient earned theirs through contributions, because they didn't--people in the system now are net beneficiaries, not contributors. It's just that on average they're whiter, they speak better English and their subsidized lifestyles are considerably better upholstered. I'm not sure why any of these entitles them to a better grade of publicly provided healthcare.

I'm in complete agreement w/ this "merger" idea (as a wig job on the gummint dole, I'm not even sure if I have Medicare or California's version of Medicaid, MediCal) except for the "people in the system now are net beneficiaries, not contributors" bit. Like, whatever. Are they paying? Have they paid? Just because they're getting health care out of the system now doesn't mean they haven't paid in. 

Spare me your fucking economics trickery. And your bogus, bourgeois "morality."

TOLD YOU SO!

Well, either it was completely idiotic not to realize that a car company OF COURSE was going to get hit hard by a financial crisis, or else Toyota took on some unions and fast. Over at NYT the have an article up today about the super company that is profitable only 'cause it doesn't have this horrible obligation to pay people actual money for actual work. Unfortunately, the article is titled "Toyota Expects its First Loss in 70 Years"

I haven't read the article yet, but I'm gonna go ahead and guess that the words "legacy cost" and "70 dollars an hour" are conspicuously absent.

Calling Brad....

Dude, where brad at? Has Atlas Shrugged eaten him whole? I don't like having to work this much. Plus, there's a lot of stupid not getting the scrutiny it so deserves. Oh well.

For today's tidbit, let's take a look at one of McNotbasedinreality's latest pile of bullshit:

Alex Massie on the bailout:

The perception that GM and Ford and Chrysler build crappy cars is just another obstacle to recovery. And of course it's a perception that, even if out of date, is predicated upon the bitter memories of the crap cars they really did build. Turns out it takes a while for that perception to fade. One more reason why you shouldn't crap on your own brand. So the current crisis, driven by poor management and stupid unions, is also built upon the junk they spent years selling to gullible consumers taken in by the faux-patriotism of "Buying American".

Hmm, the perception is out of date, huh? Well, anecdotal evidence sure doesn't help that out. My 1996 Thunderbird was falling apart at the seems before it got totaled, with a new tranny, head gasket (twice), and other expensive repairs all before 80k miles. Compare that to my 1982 Integra which made it almost to 200k and then died when routine maintenance costss surpassed its worth. It was still getting 33 mpg highway at 13 years old. Now my 2003 Saab (now a GM company) is falling apart with less than 50k on it. Consumer Reports can give you so more concrete examples but it's pretty safe to say that American cars have been shit for the entirety of my 26 years. Maybe the new ones aren't going to get shredded by a stiff wind, but it'll take 10-20 years to find that out. So, yeah, she's starting off strong with her usual quoting-someone-who's-full-of-shit style. I swear she does this just to make what she writes look less stupid by comparison. Speaking of stupid:

That's one thing the "Car Czar" can't fix: the perception that the company apparently needs nearly unlimited access to government funds in order to prop up its failing operations is hardly going to restore America's faith that its automakers make good cars.

Um, by perception, you mean "actuality," right?

On the other hand, maybe people will buy them just to stop the tax drain. If they're going to take the money one way or another, you might as well get a car out of it.

Yeah, people might do that. There is a chance that people are as mind numbingly stupid as Megan is. Certainly could happen.

In another post, she rolls in some more bullshit:

One thing is clear about the bailout: congress intends to use it to push GM et. al. into manufacturing more fuel efficient cars.

Yeah, that's a horrible idea. Who the fuck wants a fuel efficient car these days?

When gas prices were high, a lot of people blamed Detroit's troubles on the fact that they hadn't learned to make awesome small cars. But Toyota isn't so successful in the US because of the Yaris and the Corolla; its core business, like Honda's, is American-sized sedans, station wagons, luxury cars, and so on.
(...)
But they're not making their money on gas-sipping hybrids and compacts, either. They, like Detroit, are making their money by selling cars that will need a pretty big refit to pass the new CAFE standards. The top selling cars in the US last January (midway through the price spike in oil, before the financial crisis):

1. Toyota Camry: 31,601
2. Honda Accord: 23,957
3. Nissan Altima: 21,635
4. Honda Civic: 20,993
5. Toyota Corolla: 20,736
6. Chevrolet Impala: 17,544
7. Chevrolet Cobalt: 17,310
8. Chevrolet Malibu: 14,105
9. Pontiac G6: 13,942
10. Ford Focus: 11,600

The Impala gets about the same MPG as the Camry, the Accord, and the Altima--actually, slightly better (32 rather than 31 highway).

Anyone that can tell me what the fuck she's talking gets a free referral to a psychiatrist. She's saying they aren't making money on fuel efficient cars because their top sellers are getting 32 mpg??!?!??! And what fucking CAFE standards is she talking about? 32 is as high as shit gets when it's not a hybrid. Her Mini only gets 34!!!!! As a side note, including a number on those cars in a top ten listy is complete bullshit. People aren't buying those cars because they're any good. They're getting bought by rental companies and government agencies who get great deals for buying in bulk and don't give a fuck if their cars perform like shit.

It is true that when gas prices rose, there was a temporary surge in the prices companies could charge for hybrids and small cars, but though I think that the memory of recent price spikes will offer some support to the smaller car market, I also think we'll see that market head back down along with oil prices. In short, the small, fuel efficient car market is still not some sort of gold mine that the Big Three have stupidly overlooked.

Right, cause the recent surge in oil shows us that oil is always cheap. I'm sure the downturn of its price recently is proof positive of that and not the overreaction to the burst of a bubble combined with the crashing of an economy. No sir. Cheap oil is here to stay forever. The fact that oil is still twice as expensive as it was less than 10 years ago is completely irrelevant and you're a NAZI for mentioning that. OIL IS OUR GOD GIVEN RIGHT AND WILL ALWAYS BE THERE!!!!

The question is, when the desire to make the companies refocus on fuel efficiency conflicts with the desire to make them profitable, which way does the Car Czar go? Because those goals are only reconcileable[sic] if oil prices shoot back up and stay there.

Duh, cause, people will always hate fuel efficient cars and not pay any money for them forever and ever and that's why GM is making so much money these days. They smartly realized this fuel efficiency thing is just a fad and that the real money is in the gas guzzlers.

For fuck's sake, she can't even be right about the fucking PAST! She's still clinging to the notion that GM can't make money on fuel efficient cars. How dumb is she? If that were true, their sales figures wouldn't be slumping like the fucking Hunch Back Of Notre Dame. WHAT IN THE FUCKING HELL IS WRONG WITH THIS STUPID WOMAN?

Drawing Comparisons so that We Don't Have To

Megan recounts this typical conversation:

Megan: So, the financial crisis. What the hell?
Smart economist: Yeah, that's what I'm titling my next paper.

Notice how she differentiates herself from her theoretical interviewee by using the descriptors "smart" and "economist." Even she knows that she's neither.

Such a Journalist

Amusing fact of the day:

Our muse just "investigated" the credit crisis by applying for credit cards! Yes, that's real behind the scenes work there gumshoe!

You might say "Well, some journalists would only apply for a single credit card, so MM really is going the extra mile" to which I rejoinder "Actually, this moron only MEANT to apply to one but accidentally applied to three because she's retarded."

"She can't be that retarded, can she?" you ask. Well, yes, and also, she forgot that you shouldn't be checking out lots of new lines of credit while you're looking to buy your first ever house.

Our intrepid journalist: stupid enough to do things of no merit to anyone and harm herself in the process. Natural selection at its finest.

Get it While it's Cold!

In an article that prolly deserves more attention (or less, really) Megan whips out this whopper:

You know who made most of the money on the subprime bubble? Anyone who bought a house in the last ten years. Yes, that's right, you, with your low fixed interest rate on a reasonably sized house. You're the profiteer who laughed all the way to the bank.

Megan is so clueless here that it's astounding. She thinks the people who massively overpaid for their houses and are threatened with foreclosure and/or bankruptcy are the ones that made out like bandits?

NO, YOU FUCKING IDIOT! The ones who made the money are (aside from the hedge fund managers and such) the ones that SOLD THEIR HOUSES. See, when prices are artificially inflated, it's a good idea to sell things.

I know that "buy low" and "sell high" are complicated economics concepts, but you'd think that Megan would've picked it up somewhere. I guess that little factoid isn't buried up her ass with the rest of the "knowledge" she craps out.

Good morning!

It's time for stupid! Gotta start the day off right! Let's to turn to our econo expert to see what insights into the markets she has!

Oil falls free

Twenty dollars to whomever can tell me what in the fucking hell that title is supposed to mean. And, to go back to an old haunt, when the fuck is she going to start capitalizing titles? She finally got brow beaten into knocking off the obnoxious "block quoting herself" shit (You're welcome Megs), so there is some hope. But the shift key.... it's really not that far away. Right there, by your left and right pinkies. Come on, baby, give it a whirl!

I think we can officially say there was a sizable speculative premium in oil, given that major troubles in one of the world's major oil-producing regions did little to halt its fall.

Really, queen dipshit? That's how we know? I thought it was because oil surged upwards like 1000% in about 4 days and then plummeted downwards another 500% like two minutes later. No, that's not speculation? Hmm, okie, I guess it's a good thing there is another war in the Caucasus. Those are always the best economic indicators.

On the other hand, if that speculative premium was $40--the mid-to-high range of analyst estimates--then we're close to having wiped it out at this point. Don't start pricing minivans just yet.

Wait, you mean the speculation didn't just start on it's own as if by magic? Are you telling me that people started betting that oil was going to go up in price because it was actually going to go up in price? GOD DAMN IT WOMAN! HOW MANY TIMES HAVE I TOLD YOU TO SLOW DOWN AND STOP BLOWING MY MIND!!!

She is such an idiot. She is telling us now -weeks after it became clear that oil was overpriced- that there was speculation involved. Just like when she told us it isn't is isn't a recession(that's the current diagnosis, right?). Plus, Mrs. Insight is telling us not to get too excited, cause oil is still pretty expensive. THANKS MC BRILLIANT. We all fucking noticed that oil is still FOUR FUCKING TIMES HIGHER than it was like, 6 years ago, and that gas is still AN ARM AND A FUCKING LEG PER GALLON.

Even if oil were to miraculously go back down, it would still be idiotic to go back to our gas wasting mentality. Have you noticed how we got hit the hardest by the recent price increases? You think that might have something to do with the fact that other countries learned their lesson in the 70's??!??!?!?!?!!?

SO....FUCKING....STUPID.... AHHHGHHGHGHGGHGHGHGHGHGHGHHGGHGHGHGHHGHG!!!!

I hate economics and I could do her "econoblogging" better than she does. Who the fuck was in charge of hiring her? They need to be fucking hung.

How Dare You Lose Money?

Short Megan McArdlge:

To whom should coporate boards be responsible?:
Companies that try to do good at the risk of even the smallest amount of profit are unAmerican and selfish.

Small is beautiful:
People that are buying small cars are irrational to think that they may save money from reduced fuel usage.

BONUS STUPID: Megan is saying people are putting too high a premium on small cars, but for some reason is flying all the way to Florida to pick up her small car.

Ezra, stupid enough to believe a sound-byte

I don't know why I'm so eager to insult people today, but if I can't insult Megan I'll insult her friends.

So I strolled on over to our favorite ambiguously gay blogger's house and, like the lazy ass that I am, took a gander at a few of his most recent posts

This one caught my eye. He quotes Al Gore saying "Here's the difference, when the demand for wind and solar goes u, costs go down. When demand for oil and gas goes up, prices go up." and gives an enthusiastic "True dat girlfriend!" before ducking his head, checking to ensure that no one saw, and typing a muted "True enough."

You know what's also true? The difference between driving to work and skydiving to work is that when demand for skydiving goes up, prices come down! We should totally invest in skydiving, ASA-FUCKING-P.

You see, dipshits, oil is an entrenched part of our economy and there are not many easy ways left to utilize it more efficiently (and no, fuck nuts, replacing the entire US fleet of cars with slightly more efficient models isn't actually easy), which is why its demand is inelastic and supply is limited.

Renewable energies are a fringe market, not even close to fully implemented that hardly even glimpse the economies of scale that oil does, let alone have seen the hard core research that oil has seen for like the past million fucking years.

If we had a renewables based economy and there was a demand spike, guess what, PRICES FOR ENERGY WOULD STILL GO UP.

I'm all for renewables, but let's try not to muck up the cause with a bunch of "being a fucking moron" along the way, eh?

I'm lazy.

Kathy G isn't.

For those too lazy to click the link, Kathy demolishes Megan's psuedointellectual economic assertions with intellectual economic arguments. It hurt my brain. However, there is this jargonless jem: After Megan said "The problem is that, as [Kathy G's] own commenters point out, the empirical research doesn't quite says what she says it says."

Kathy G's retort: "Go back and read the comments to my post. As of this writing, there are five of them. Four of the commenters agree with me. One of them, ninja_zombie, does not. But s/he doesn't take issue with what I say about productivity. Instead, s/he disagrees what I say about card check, and also argues that the lower profits that are associated with unions means that there will be less investment in unionized sectors, and thus an efficient use of resources. However, ninja_zombie did not write a word about productivity."

Zing! And she's right--Megan just made up the disagreement with commentors. Just flat out lied! We win!

Retarded then, retarded now

Oil hit nearly $140 a barrel today. Was it really only a few years ago that I was writing articles for The Economist questioning whether oil could stay above $40 a barrel for any length of time?

Yes, only a year ago you were just as much of a clueless moron as you are now. Hooray

Someone just emailed "If I had even an ounce of spine, I'd be shorting oil like crazy now." My reply: "The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent."

Yes, irrationally the market is seeing an increase in price of something of which we are running out. SHORT IT NOW AND YOU'LL GO BROKE MAKE MILLIONS!!!!!

Also, with regards to the question raised in her title as to where she can trade her blood for oil. The answer is IN IRAQ! GO NOW BEFORE THE DEAL ENDS!!!!!