I listened to Grant’s conversation with Brendan Ballou last night and am chomping at the bit to read the book when it appears in two weeks time. Meanwhile I was rivetted by the same quotation citing PEs focus on lower income segments whose power to resist was immeasurably more constrained than the rest, that you quoted. I also reflected on the fact that a similar British insult is “You pillock” or in the shortened version “You pill” which is a slightly politer way of calling someone a wanker. I think the Welsh spelling is “Huw Pill” or something like that.
I thought the same about Ballou's book. Private-equity and its path of destruction across America has been something I focused on a lot on Twitter. And that's where Jerome Powell came from. Have you read this? Well worth it. https://archive.vn/n9RLz
These clowns like Haldane or the goofy "Huw Pill" or Jim Bullard or Janet Yellen, Lagarde etc. ad nauseum wreak so much havoc, yet get promoted and rich. The Press loves them. Congress loves them. Meanwhile, 90% of the population suffer. It's a sad state of affairs.
I too use Wanker fairly often. It is one of the best UK contributions to the insult lexicon. Ever since Jim Kunstler referred to Krugman as a 'fatuous wanker' the label stuck and I use it every time I reference anything Krugman.
'Plonker' and 'tosser' a good ones I like to toss out occasionally. And of course, Shakespeare had some priceless gems, 'three inch fool' and 'beef-witted' to name two of the best. No one does English insults better than the English. I wish Americans could cuss and belittle so eloquently.
“ There’s an assumption that the CPI reflects that actual cost of living. It does not. Heck, the CPI methodology has changed a several times over the years, always to reduce reported CPI.”
If there was intellectual honestly at BLS, over time you’d expect adjustments to CPI to reduce as well as increase reported CPI. The tendency toward reducing reported CPI is good evidence of bias even before we look at the details of how they twist themselves into pretzels with hedonics, how health care costs are measured, owners equivalent rent, etc…
They also don’t account for the fact that it is nearly impossible for the owner to maintain or repair modern cars. It used to be common to do simple maintenance - I would see people working on their cars on weekends. On new cars everything has to be done by mechanics and labor rates are well over $100/hour
Reverse hedonics is everywhere. Where is horrible service accounted for, or a vacuum that used to last 20 years and now 2? I saw a quote, "The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten."
The rollups by VC firms are incredible. Mundane as Porta-Potties. Buy them all up and put the little guys out of business, just like Bezos who spent $100 million to put diapers.com out of business. Oh yeah, Bob's barricades too! They;re even better because they such at the teat of the Gummint on road projects..
I listened to Grant’s conversation with Brendan Ballou last night and am chomping at the bit to read the book when it appears in two weeks time. Meanwhile I was rivetted by the same quotation citing PEs focus on lower income segments whose power to resist was immeasurably more constrained than the rest, that you quoted. I also reflected on the fact that a similar British insult is “You pillock” or in the shortened version “You pill” which is a slightly politer way of calling someone a wanker. I think the Welsh spelling is “Huw Pill” or something like that.
I thought the same about Ballou's book. Private-equity and its path of destruction across America has been something I focused on a lot on Twitter. And that's where Jerome Powell came from. Have you read this? Well worth it. https://archive.vn/n9RLz
These clowns like Haldane or the goofy "Huw Pill" or Jim Bullard or Janet Yellen, Lagarde etc. ad nauseum wreak so much havoc, yet get promoted and rich. The Press loves them. Congress loves them. Meanwhile, 90% of the population suffer. It's a sad state of affairs.
I too use Wanker fairly often. It is one of the best UK contributions to the insult lexicon. Ever since Jim Kunstler referred to Krugman as a 'fatuous wanker' the label stuck and I use it every time I reference anything Krugman.
'Plonker' and 'tosser' a good ones I like to toss out occasionally. And of course, Shakespeare had some priceless gems, 'three inch fool' and 'beef-witted' to name two of the best. No one does English insults better than the English. I wish Americans could cuss and belittle so eloquently.
https://anglotopia.net/anglophilia/british-english-the-top-50-most-beautiful-british-insults/
“ There’s an assumption that the CPI reflects that actual cost of living. It does not. Heck, the CPI methodology has changed a several times over the years, always to reduce reported CPI.”
If there was intellectual honestly at BLS, over time you’d expect adjustments to CPI to reduce as well as increase reported CPI. The tendency toward reducing reported CPI is good evidence of bias even before we look at the details of how they twist themselves into pretzels with hedonics, how health care costs are measured, owners equivalent rent, etc…
Yeah. Hedonics works in theory but not in practice. It doesn't matter if new cars can do brain surgery if you can't afford to buy them.
They also don’t account for the fact that it is nearly impossible for the owner to maintain or repair modern cars. It used to be common to do simple maintenance - I would see people working on their cars on weekends. On new cars everything has to be done by mechanics and labor rates are well over $100/hour
Reverse hedonics is everywhere. Where is horrible service accounted for, or a vacuum that used to last 20 years and now 2? I saw a quote, "The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten."
There’s definitely a lot of junk these days. We have a disposable culture. Maybe the ESG folks should focus on that.
The rollups by VC firms are incredible. Mundane as Porta-Potties. Buy them all up and put the little guys out of business, just like Bezos who spent $100 million to put diapers.com out of business. Oh yeah, Bob's barricades too! They;re even better because they such at the teat of the Gummint on road projects..
Why did the Shoah occur in Germany and not in France? The Germans thought of it first...
Bullard and the rest of them are classic wankers. Your old posts of the maybe Japanese woman depicting it would fit right in
Good point. All gov't data is suspect, especially anything with seasonal and subjective guesses or outright fabrications, e.g. birth/death model.
I like the nominal retail sales figures being reported with a straight face by the same people who adjust everything else by CPI.