Don’t worry your pretty little head

George Rebane

Imagine trying to land a 747 when all you can see is out the back where you have been.  This is pretty much the drill in attempting to manage a centrally controlled economy using financial performance data that is more than a day late and a dollar short.  Our socialist inclined friends always feel up to this challenge.  I was reminded of all this when a while back I did some research for my August column in The Union.  But there turned out to be more to it.

 

I introduced a graphic called the Regulatory Impact Curve (RIC) that allowed one to visualize how a government’s imposed regulatory burden affects the growth rate of its underlying economy.  Since the regulatory burden has recently been increasing at a gallop, both nationally and especially in California, I wanted to put a few dots on the RIC to show the relative locations of how recent growth rates have responded.  There should have been no problem getting this data since we have tens of thousands of public service employees in big buildings and bureaus across the land collecting, collating, and coagulating it all into information to be used by businesses and public policy makers.

I simply wanted the 2009 growth rate for California’s state gross domestic product (GDP).  It being August 2010, there should be no problem in going to some government website and copying down the number.  Wrong.  After almost an hour googling data service places that I didn’t even know existed on the web, I gave up.  I found the data for up to and including 2008, but that’s where the ‘actual’ stuff ended, and ‘estimates’ and ‘projections’ for 2009 and 2010 started.

Well, I didn’t really give up.  In my web wanderings I came across the name and phone number of the California Department of Finance.  These people would surely have this 2009 data at their finger tips.  I called and went through the usual byzantine ‘death by menu’ experience; I talked to four different individuals, all with fine sounding titles, none with the answer that I wanted.  A couple of them had to repeatedly ask me what exactly did I want, giving evidence that the main economic growth rate for the state was a notion beyond their ken (but then I remembered that government is the employer of last resort).

Finally I reached Ms Cecilia Palada, analyst, who was in charge of such data.  Ms Palada is an intelligent, lucid, and good-humored lady who told me a lot about how things currently work (or not) in Sacramento and the Department of Finance.  Let me summarize.  First, the bureau that actually computed such economic indicators was shut down last year due to our well-known budget woes.  And today no one in California computes such things as the state’s GDP or its rates of change.  What it seems we actually do is collect a lot of disparate data that we don’t process, and then ship it to Washington to the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA).  There their mavens massage it into releasable form, and feed it back to us when the time is right.

Then I pointed out that the BEA has already published the 2009 US GDP (-2.63%), and that this had to include the states’ GDPs, so someone ‘up there’ already has California’s 2009 GDP.  Ms Palada agreed that this was the plausible case, but no matter, the BEA has not yet released these data to the states.  Then she dropped my jaw, by stating that the announced release date for California’s GDP was some time in November.  I re-confirmed what I found hard to believe, thanked her, and ended the conversation.

California is locked in nothing less than a millennial battle to either implement or delay the onslaught of AB32, its draconian energy cap and trade legislation.  Proposition 23 to delay AB32 implementation until the state’s unemployment returns to 5.5% will be voted on in November.  Its fate will be watched around the globe – everyone wants to see whether the richest state in the richest country will accept the draconian costs to the economy that such legislation will impose.  It’s hard to believe that anyone with a three digit IQ actually believes the progressive bullcrap that AB32 is going to be anything other than a burden on our state, the extent of which is the only remaining question. 

(Note that while the nation's unemployment is steadying out, California continues to lose jobs.)

So now it is clear why no one, from Obama through the Democratic Congress down to the governator and our own dirtbags in Sacramento, wants California’s recent growth rate data to influence the voters.  Seeing it will once again underline that the ‘print and borrow’ stimulus flows from Washington have not worked, and more of them will do even more harm.  The ruling class has decided that such data should not inform the voters come November.  (More on Russ Steele's NCMW here.)

Oh yeah, for the sake of tradition I have included the Friday graph of ARRA monies as reported by the Nevada County government.  The beat goes on.

Comments

[Steven Frisch]

Ah so you admit that your graph was based on no real data?

And yes, your ARA figures are WRONG.

[George Rebane]

SteveF, your ignorance displayed is swelling beyond the limits of tedium. The growing rarity of your criticisms and contributions based on reason put me into a quandry - should I just hang the persona non grata tag on you and be done with it? You will still have other blogs on which your wit and wisdom can find a more commensurate outlet, and on these you can continue to take me to task to a fare-thee-well. Please take a moment to dwell on it.

[Mikey McD]

mr. frisch's constant extreme left comments...all typed while he is on tax payer time/dime. George, you asked for 'it' when you went against AB32 A.K.A. "frisch's future paychecks"

John Couger- "Ain't that America"

[Steven Frisch]

Mikey, have you actually listened to the lyrics to "Little Pink Houses".

Here's a link:

http://www.stlyrics.com/songs/j/johnmellencamp2062/pinkhouses98938.html