Friday, June 20, 2014

Epistemic economic closure on the left: Classic Math FAIL by the Pied Piper of Doom


 - by New Deal democrat

A few of you are apparently still trying to explain the Big Bang Theory to the Flat Earth Society that is the acolytes of the PPoD at DK.  They're not interested.  It's all about epistemic closure for them: being told what they want to hear.  It may be time to list a few more of the literally over 100 of his false prophecies of DOOOOM.  But just to give you a few giggles, here's a classic....

The Pied Piper of Doom didn't think it could be possible that an economic series going down could be a good thing:
(INVERTED?)LOL! "Inverted."  What's up is down and what's down is up. That's what "inverted" means. Kind of speaks to the diarist's intent better than anything I could say.
Here's what he was reacting to, in the joint diary  Bonddad and I published in May 2009 arguing (correctly) that the Great Recession was nearing its bottom:
8 out of 10 of these leading economic indicators have now turned positive or at least neutral.  Let's look at them in turn:
....
Average weekly initial claims for unemployment insurance (inverted) (3%) [graph omitted]This is an inverted series, so down = good.  According to research conducted by Prof. James Hamilton of UC San Diego, whose graph is shown above, the end of a recession typically happens about 2 months after the turn in this indicator.  Per the blue dotted line in the graph above, he believes it is substantially more likely than not that we have seen that turn.
That's right.  The Pied Piper of Doom was such an idiot that he didn't know that initial jobless claims going down was a good thing.