Tuesday, December 13, 2016

Don't say it outloud

The California director of finance, via Zero Hedge.  The plain and simple version is that New York and California unions deliberately plan recessions.  They have to, the create this weird law that prevents pension pricing, but pricing is essential.  Without it, unions are unable to count.  So unions, of necessity, plan recessions, together.

"A recession is coming sometime soon, but I think economists in all of the state offices would tell you that there’s a really hard economic forecasting angle of predicting when that’s going to happen,” said Michael Cohen, director of California’s Department of Finance. Cohen said his state, like others, has seen sales taxes consistently miss revenue targets in recent months, spurred by lower consumption. Lower-than-expected tax revenues are likely to force governors and state legislators of both parties to dramatically alter their plans for legislative sessions set to begin next year.

They give a chart. Let's look at the chart and see if we find Yglesias' opportun moment for a federal stimulus:

 State revenues, and this chart is dominated by California, New York and Illinois.  What we seer is the usual pattern, states run the budget up, unsustainably for awhile, then go through massive layoffs.  I see nothing in 2013 that Congress could have done, except do a deal to limit public sector union rule.  Until that rule is diminished, the unions will, of necessity, choose to go through layoff and hiring all at the same time.

And, I might point out that I suggested this, a combined bailout with federal limitations, likely a bad proposal.  But if I remember all the delusional Kanosians said that states were all the same 'little Hoovers' in one of the greatest, stupidest comments every made by any pundit.  If there is one thing wrong with the MIT basket weavers of 1970, it is their inability to see quantization effects.

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