Sunday Independent Stupid Statement of the Week July 28, 2013
Posted by Garibaldy in Sunday Independent Stupid Statement of the Week.trackback
This economist always believed that if only government would stop interfering in the market with dysfunctional pro-cyclical regulation and overtaxation, house price levels can and should settle back to 2004 levels, ie levels that are prudently and sensibly located between the extreme highs of 2006 and current dysfunctional lows.
Marc Coleman. What can you say?
pro-cyclical regulation
WTF does this even mean? Can someone explain in non-gibberish please…?
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It means take two numbers at random and unrelated to other economic factors such as unemployment, wages, inflation, tax levels, emigration, add them together and divide by two, and abrakebabra that’s the correct market price for housing. But don’t tell anyone the secret formula, you need to do a €12k MBA in the Smurfitt business school to learn the tricks of the trade.
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It’s based on the assumption that price fluctuations are a consequence of a ‘business cycle’ – a rather mysterious thing that is mostly just a theoretical band-aid which says “even though prices are falling and this contradicts all of our theoretical models, it’s just a normal cycle thing, don’t worry people, capitalism will correct itself’
Pro-cyclical regulation is regulation that exaggerates the magnitude of the fluctuations in the cycle – it makes prices go up more when they are already going up and down more when they are already falling.
Marc Coleman is remarkable for a couple of reasons. Firstly, he doesn’t seem to realise that not everybody is as thick as he is and some people actually understand what an absolute fool he makes of himself regularly (his defence of ‘the best is yet to come’ is a world class case of self-humiliation). I suspect that he actually believes himself to be both bright and knowledgeable about economics. Secondly, he is probably the economics commentator who is given the most space in the Irish media, despite the fact that he is so ill-informed and dim-witted that the world cringes every time he opens his mouth.
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Thanks for that. I had heard of the so-called ‘business cycle’ before, but “pro-cyclical regulation” was a new one.
And I suspect his continued space owes a lot to the ever-expanding reach of Denis O’Brien throughout the Irish media landscape.
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zǒu gǒu
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I was struck by this piece from an NYTimes piece which has been criticised for ‘psychologising’ the crisis – I think it’s an accurate summary of how the sociology of the Irish ruling class works. If you’re on the inside in Ireland, then there is no outer darkness to which you can be cast, however heinous your crime (or however stupid your book)
For many of these people, action and consequence don’t apply; their lives are mapped out from birth, and nothing they do will alter that map.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/28/opinion/sunday/the-psychology-of-an-irish-meltdown.html?_r=0
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> What can you say?
You could ask the doctor to increase the medication?
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few humane cures for that level of stubbornness I am afraid
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Brendan o connors ‘bleeding the coping classes, feeding the welfare classes’ looks promising
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Indeed. I thought though the stupidity of the suggestion that 2004 prices were prudent and sensible stood out on its own.
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what year did Marc buy his house 🙂
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That is the most funny bit alright. Based on the economic principle that, absent regulation, prices will be not so low and not so high, but sort of high. Relationship to income, supply and demand, ideology, etc, etc, are not relevant, what’s important is that they seem sort of about right to me.
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Marc Coleman, the man who just keeps giving, I might have to give him a special thank you mention in my thesis (on ideology in the print media).
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Following Hitchens and Bono, someone should write
a “Verso Counterblasts” book about Coleman.
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New DUP finance minister Simon Hamilton talking about the squeezed middle. He must read the Sindo.
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