Tuesday Reads: Goolsbee Gone, Hotel Workers Heckle Strauss-Kahn, Cancer Drugs, and a Confession

Posted: June 7, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Barack Obama, morning reads, religion, SCOTUS, Team Obama, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, unemployment, Violence against women | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 76 Comments

Good Morning!!

White House economic adviser Austan Goolsbee will soon resign to return to teaching at Milton Friedman Institute the University of Chicago.

“Since I first ran for the U.S. Senate, Austan has been a close friend and one of my most trusted advisers,” President Obama said….”Over the past several years, he has helped steer our country out of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and although there is still much work ahead, his insights and counsel have helped lead us toward an economy that is growing and creating millions of jobs. — He is one of America’s great economic thinkers.”

Maybe … if you favor NAFTA and cutting Social Security. And where are those “millions of jobs” Obama is talking about–China?

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who has been accused of sexual assault on a hotel maid was jeered by NYC hotel workers yesterday outside a Manhattan courthouse.

Lawyers for the maid who has accused Dominique Strauss-Kahn of criminal sexual assault in a New York hotel room served notice yesterday that she will testify at his trial and “tell the world” what he inflicted upon her, as the former IMF chief was met with a chorus of heckling from hotel workers outside a Manhattan courthouse.

The warning, delivered minutes after Mr Strauss-Kahn entered a ‘not guilty’ plea to the seven charges filed against him, is the latest indication of how ferocious the trial is likely to be with the defence, the prosecution and now lawyers for the accuser all aggressively preparing to engage in battle.

[….]

Theatrics outside the court yesterday were further stoked by hotel maids pushing against police barriers jeering Mr Strauss-Kahn as he, accompanied by his defence team and his wife, Anne Sinclair, arrived for his formal arraignment. The hotel employees, bussed in by their union and most dressed in uniforms they usually wear to work, cried “shame” as he walked past. Wendy Baranello, a hotel union organiser, called the charges “outrageous” and said the accuser “is a hard-working woman… just doing her job.”

As Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) left the Faith and Freedom Coalition Conference this past weekend, he was approached by a young Catholic man who asked Ryan:

“Why did you choose to model your budget off the extreme ideology of Ayn Rand rather than values of basic economic justice in the Bible?” James Salt of Faithful America asked Ryan, the author of the Republican budget, before offering him a Bible to read.

Ryan ignored Salt’s questions and briskly walked away.

Faithful America has launched a campaign to encourage Ryan to put down the conservative writer Ayn Rand, who advocated selfishness, and pick up the Bible. The group said his budget plan “reflects Ayn Rand’s love of greed and contempt for the weak by giving huge tax breaks to millionaires while making deep and harmful cuts to programs that protect seniors, struggling families and the middle class.”

Finally the U.S. Supreme Court has done something we can cheer. From Raw Story:

The US Supreme Court gave the green light Monday to a group seeking to bring a class-action lawsuit against US oil services firm Halliburton for alleged fraud.

The nine judges unanimously decided that the plaintiffs, a group of investors, do not need to prove a direct relationship between Halliburton’s alleged fraudulent statements and the investors’ financial losses in order to pursue the lawsuit.

Halliburton is accused of making a series of false statements about its business dealings that artificially inflated its stock price.

Afterward, Halliburton disclosed corrections that then caused stock prices to drop at the loss of investors.

The suit is on behalf of all investors who purchased Halliburton stock between June 3, 1999 and December 7, 2001.

During that time Dick Cheney was Halliburton’s CEO.

There is some “big news in the fight against cancer.”

Two new studies report dramatic progress in treating advanced melanoma and lung cancer.

Both of these treatments use an approach that is creating a lot of excitement among doctors –tailoring drugs to the genetic makeup of individual patients, and the results can be remarkable

A few years ago, Bill Schuette was preparing for the end.

But then he heard about something new: an experimental drug that targets a certain type of lung cancer based on its genetic makeup. Tests showed he was a candidate.

His rare form of non-small-cell lung cancer has a genetic mutation called ALK that fuels cancer growth. The new drug, Crizotinib, works by blocking this abnormal gene, causing tumors to shrink.

Skin cancer treatment: Biggest breakthrough in 30 years – The New Scientist

Two new drugs for metastatic melanoma – the deadliest form of skin cancer – are being hailed as the biggest breakthrough therapies for cancer in the last 30 years. The drugs reduce tumour size, significantly increasing survival rates.

Although melanoma can be cured if caught early enough, individuals in the late stages of the disease are only expected to survive for an average of six months. One of the two drugs – vemurafenib – works by inhibiting the effects of a mutated form of the BRAF gene, which is thought to accompany around half of the cases of malignant skin tumours.

[….]

In a study presented this week at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting in Chicago, and published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Chapman’s team compared both drugs on 672 patients with late stage, inoperable melanoma and a mutation in the BRAF gene.

The group found that 48 per cent of those receiving vemurafenib responded to the treatment, while only 5 per cent of patients responded to dacarbazine. At 6 months, survival was 84 per cent in the group taking vemurafenib compared to 64 per cent in those taking dacarbazine.

A new drug for breast cancer: Aromasin a major breakthrough in fight against breast cancer, cutting risk by 65 percent

Doctor Harvey Greenberg is the director of University Community Hospital’s Cancer Program. He said, “There’s been some suggestion that women are reluctant to take Tamoxifen due to the potential side effects,” which reportedly include developing blood clots, or developing uterine cancer.

A study was conducted to see if a different class of medicines could be used for the prevention of breast cancer. Study results just released show the estrogen blocker Aromasin reduced the chance of developing breast cancer by 65 percent in post menopausal women at high risk.

The study, which was sponsored by Pfizer — the company that makes this drug — broke the participants into two groups: one that got the drug and one that got the placebo. There were 11 invasive breast cancers reported in the group that got the drug compared to 32 cases in the group that got the placebo.

Doctor Greenberg says, “The most important take away is that there is now another class of medicines that can be helpful in preventing breast cancer in high-risk women. The second take away is if there are women who have been identified as possibly benefiting from Tamoxifen but they won’t take it, here’s a substitute.”

For those of you who have read this far, I’m going to make a confession. I’ve been horribly depressed by the political news lately, and for the past couple of weeks I’ve been watching the trial of Casey Anthony, a young woman accused of murdering her 2-1/2 year-old daughter.

I know, I know … tabloid stuff. But I’m telling you, it’s more interesting than watching Law & Order, CSI, and Criminal Minds all rolled into one. Yesterday, there was testimony from an researcher on human decomposition from the “Body Farm” at Oak Ridge National laboratory.

Dr. Arpad Vass testified that he detected human decomposition in the air from the trunk of Casey’s car. It’s the first time a jury has heard testimony about the controversial air tests. The evidence has never been used in a criminal case before.

Prosecutors say the tests prove Caylee’s [Casey’s daughter] body was in the trunk of Casey’s car.

“I can find no other plausible explanation other than that to explain all the results we found,” said Vass.

Vass testified that a machine called a “gas chromatograph” can identify chemicals that are unique to human decomposition.

“Those are the chemicals that a cadaver-locating dog could smell,” Vass said.

Yesterday there was testimony from an FBI forensic expert about a hair found in the truck of Anthony’s car that showed signs of human decomposition.

In addition to the opportunity to learn about the latest methods in forensic science, the trial offers a chance to observe Casey Anthony’s amazing lack of affect as she listens to testimony about her allegedly killing her child. She has to be one of the most evil human beings I’ve ever encountered. If you’re interested in this kind of thing, you can watch the trial streamed live on-line at a number of sites. Here’s one. Frankly, I find it much less depressing than observing American political culture.

So … what are you reading and blogging about today?

Goolsbee goes au naturel

Posted: June 5, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Economy, jobs, unemployment, We are so F'd | Tags: , , , , | 20 Comments

I never thought I’d ever hear an economic adviser to a Democratic administration justify taking a natural path to recovery when the US economy is reeling from a basic lack of aggregate demand.   The comments were just about as Chicago school as you could get.   It was just another reheated bowl of smoking green shoots.

“Our effort now as a government should be to get the private sector to help them stand up and lead the recovery,” Goolsbee told “This Week” anchor Christiane Amanpour, citing efforts on regulatory review, while maintaining policies such as reduced payroll taxes through the end of the year. “We’ve got to rely on policies that are trying to leverage the private sector and give incentives to private sector to be doing the growth.”

I didn’t catch Obama economist Austan Goolsbee with Christian Amanpour on ABC which is where I got that quote.  I caught up with him on Candy Crowley’s Sunday show.  From what I can tell, the story line was about the same.  According to Goolsbee, whatever recovery we’re experiencing from the worst financial crisis we’ve had since The Great Depression is in the hands of the private sector who just needs to appreciate the gentle nudge they’ve already gotten. Goolsbee conveniently ignored every thing going on in the recent economy except a small window’s worth of job creation.  He declared that there was no downward trend in the economy.  I felt like I was watching a big ol’ flaming head tell me to ignore the man behind the curtain. But, I musn’t be the only one that was watching the little man behind the curtain given that the one month’s worth of data turned into “DOW plunges into longest weekly losing streak since 2004” last week.  I don’t think that’s the end of that either.

Scarecrow at FDL calls it the best speech evah given by President Romney’s chief economic adviser.

Goolsbee correctly told us that a smart economist wouldn’t get overly excited about one month’s jobs and growth numbers but would instead look at the overall trend. Of course what he wouldn’t want to concede is that GDP grew at a meager annual rate of 1.8 percent over the first three months of 2011 and so far was predicted to grow at only 2.8 percent for the next three. And the overall trend for job growth was still not enough to make a serious dent in unemployment unless you believe taking 5-10 years to get back to full employment is okay.

So Goolsbee was in denial from the opening moment because he didn’t have a decent story to tell even in his own framework. When Amanpour asked him what the Administration could or should be doing to improve conditions, he ticked off items you’d expect to hear from a typical GOP Presidential adviser: we’ve got to get the debt under control; we have a White House effort to identify and get rid of governmental regulations that are preventing the private sector from growing the economy; we should pass “free trade” agreements backed by the Chamber of Commerce; and we should leverage limited public dollars to release billions in private funding for investments.

Goolsbee’s bottom line: “It’s now up to the private sector.” That’s exactly what you’d expect from President Romney’s economic adviser.

It took Paul Krugman and Chrystia Freeland, over the absurd denials by Martin Regalia of the Chamber of Commerce, to remind ABC’s audience that business confidence and concerns about taxes and regulations aren’t the problem: business polls repeatedly show businesses aren’t expanding/hiring much because the demand for their products is weak. Demand is weak because the recession and the housing market crash depleted consumers’ wealth and they’re worried about losing their homes and jobs. You don’t need a degree in economics to grasp the logic of that. When private spending is still depressed, only government spending is keeping the economy afloat, and the stimulus is phasing out.

Now, I hate to keep writing about the same things over and over again.   I know I’m not the only one.   Brad DeLong has finally discovered there is no Plan B.  There is only full speed ahead with deficit reduction which is a great long term goal but a disastrous short term strategy.  Mark Thoma is even more straightforward.

Policymakers have been telling us to have patience for some time now, but patience ran thin long ago. We need action, not excuses to do nothing based upon Republican talking points. We have millions of people out of work, we face the prospect of a five to ten year recovery for employment, yet the administration has no plans to even try to push Congress to do more.

I stuck the nifty graph up top because it basically shows that most businesses aren’t expanding because they don’t have customers and they don’t see the economy improving.  Again, tax breaks don’t do businesses any good when they don’t have revenues. Low interest rates aren’t working either.  That means the Fed basically can’t do anything via monetary policy either at this point. The graph and the following analysis are from the  NFIB which tracks small business trends. They come from their latest poll of small and independent businesses.

The percent of owners planning capital outlays in the next three to six months fell 3 points to 21 percent, a recession level reading. Money is cheap, but most owners are not interested in a loan to finance equipment they don’t need. Prospects are still uncertain enough to discourage any but the most profitable and promising investments. Four percent characterized  the current period as a good time to expand facilities (seasonally adjusted), down 1 point from March and 4 points lower than January. The net percent of owners expecting better business conditions in 6 months slipped another 3 points to negative 8 percent, 18 percentage points worse than in January. Uncertainty is the enemy, and there is plenty of it to convince owners to “keep their powder dry”. Apparently consumers feel much the same way, as more customers spending more money would overcome the reluctance of owners to hire and make capital outlays. One in four still cite “weak sales” as their top business problem.

There is nothing mysterious about the fiscal policy solution to your basic lack of aggregate demand. What’s mysterious is the complete lack of concern about the significantly high unemployment rates, the continued foreclosure crisis, and the downward trends in both consumer and business confidence.

I guess I know what happens with the phone rings at 3 a.m.

No one picks it up and then some one goes on TV the next day and says we’ve done all we can do.  For this they expect re-election?

Dismal Scientists and the Folks that Use and Abuse Them

Posted: June 13, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , | 1 Comment

Today I will go into something  of which I can speak from authority.  As a dismal scientist myself, I’ll try to give you some insight into Obama’s dismal scientists starting with a brief introduction to them on this post. These are the guys that will most likely put together his economic plan.  Every time I’ve been pointed to his site for specifics by eager young Obamamites, I’ve found the usual platitudes and no details that are characteristic of his hopie-changie speeches spoke from teleprompters.  They typify the specifics-challenged Senator Obama.

From this week’s The Economist ( a great publication from the UK):

“On domestic matters, Mr Obama has assembled a team of sharp academic economists who premise their work on his supposed ability to sell sophisticated policy. Most prominent up until now has been Austan Goolsbee … a University of Chicago professor whom many expect to head a President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers. Mr Goolsbee’s record suggests neither the hostility towards globalised capitalism nor the desire for large-scale redistribution that conservatives, spooked by tales of Mr Obama’s left-wing voting record, might fear: Mr Goolsbee is a problem-solver who favours such unsexy proposals as altering American tax forms. He got into trouble earlier this year for telling the Canadians not to worry too much about the anti-NAFTA rhetoric the candidate was emitting on the campaign trail.

“From Harvard Mr Obama plucked Jeffrey Liebman, who has produced good research on the earned-income tax credit and its role in moving people from welfare to work, and David Cutler, a health economist who wants doctors’ pay tied to medical outcomes. As of this week, though, Mr Obama’s newly appointed economics director is Jason Furman …. an economist in the Clinton administration and a top aide to John Kerry in 2004. His presence rebuts criticism that Mr Obama’s team has too little policymaking experience. Mr Furman, too, hews to the non-ideological centre, heading Washington’s Hamilton Project, an economic policy group co-founded by Bob Rubin, once Bill Clinton’s treasury secretary. Mr Furman is a staunch free-trader who once praised Wal-Mart and has favoured lowering corporate taxes. With a PhD from Harvard, he also does not lack for academic credentials.”

First, let me say there are degrees from Harvard and then there are DEGREES from Harvard.  I think we can all agree that George W. Bush’s Harvard MBA served only as a decoration.  I’m getting that same ol’ feeling from the Harvard Law Degree that Obama obtained.  There are hard ways of getting in to Harvard and easy ways to get into Harvard.  Legacies and diversity quotas stand among the latter.  Then, of course, there is the joke that Harvard is the hardest school to flunk out of once you’re in.  There are folks that struggle to get into Harvard and do a lot of homework that does eventually lead to credentials worthy of respect.  I’m willing to put Goolsbee and Furman in that latter list.  Their academic work is compelling and that is what I will focus on.

Goolsbee has had some rather impressive publications and topnotch peer- reviewed journals.  This is one way to tell the real deal.  You actually have to publish in a prestigious journal; not just manage or edit the journal.   Dr. Goolsbee is the real deal and teaches at the University of Chicago.  Yes, THAT University of Chicago that is well-known as a hot bed of Milton Friedman type, hands-off that market, monetarists.  His focus is primarily on markets and a lot of his research is in the area of the internet as market. His has experience as a policy wonk and has looked at both international trade and tax issues.

He has a lot of tax publications.  Now, I don’t think you’re going want to delve into the details, but do look at the titles and abstracts.  Here’s his on line vc which includes a lot of his publications.

http://faculty.chicagogsb.edu/austan.goolsbee/website/research/vitae.htm

Dr. Furman is also respected and has great credentials. He appears to have gotten in and out of Harvard the honorable way.  This is his vc listed at the Brookings Institute:

http://www.brookings.edu/experts/furmanj.aspx

I’ve heard that labor unions are fairly upset with his appointment.  Furman hasn’t been thrown under the gigantic Obama bus yet.  Neither has Goolsbee whose conversation with the Canadians about NAFTA was frequently cited as one of the problems costing Obama elections in Ohio and Pennsylvania. 

Both of these dismal scientists are corporation friendly and have published papers criticizing the corporate income tax in the country.  Dr. Furman has done a bit of research in the social security arena.  I look forward to reading his articles as this is one area of interest to me.

Well, the purpose of this particular post is to introduce you to the players and you’ve got some homework you can do on your own if you you so choose.  As for me, I’ll go glean what I can out of their papers.  Again, that’s the best place to look for interests and tilts.  Given that The Economist didn’t send them directly up a flag post, I’m assuming they are both have a moderate-to-conservative outlook.  This would highlight a disconnect to me between those really liberal folks looking for Obama to be the shining beacon for the ultra liberal causes and also, those conservatives looking for Karl Marx in Obama’s closet.

I’ll look into them for the time being.  When the Obama campaign comes up with something more than touchy feeling economics positions, look back here,  I will be watching.