Sunday, July 29, 2012

Silver Falls


Silver Falls State Park is in Oregon, near Silverton.  On the Silver Creek.  I wonder what sort of mining they did around there?

We hiked most of an 8-mile trail called the Trail of Ten Falls, and parts of it twice.  It goes past 10 waterfalls, and at some of them you can go behind the falls.

 

They had shamrocks there.  The climate is very much like Ireland.


And salmonberries. 






Another very popular berry they have here is called Marionberry.  Reminds me of the former mayor of Washington, DC.  It's large and very tasty, like a blackberry.  Not that the Mayor was tasty, I don't know about that, just the berry.

Then we went to see the Gallon House covered bridge.  It was named that because it was where the customers would meet their bootleggers to transact business during Prohibition.







Here are some more pictures.  And some movies herehere, here, here, and here.


Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Lassen National Park



Lassen National Park is all about volcanos.  We couldn't go to the place we wanted to, it was closed for snow, so we went around to the other side and did a 2-mile hike up to an area of thermal activity. 








Saw some local wildlife on the way. 



The thermal area wasn't so spectacular, and the mud pots were all dried up.



But it was a nice hike through the meadows and woods and up the mountain.

On the way to our next stop, we saw this view of Mount Shasta.



More pictures of Lassen here, and three short videos here.

Monterey Peninsula


 


Took a drive to Big Sur, and relaxed there for a few minutes



There's not much in Big Sur, leading me to believe that the attraction is the drive to get there. 
The road winds around and up and down the coast. Fun to drive, glad I didn't have the 5th wheel attached. 
We saw a few cottages near the ocean.



Then back to the Monterey Peninsula, where we stopped first at The Basilica of Mission San Carlos Borromeo del Rio Carmelo, aka the Carmel Mission.   It is one of the many in California, Arizona, and northern Mexico founded by Father Junipero Serra, and is where he is buried.




Then on to the 17-mile drive. We made lots of stops at scenic places, but the highlight was ... well, you can guess.




The next day we went to Castroville, which is where artichokes come from.  My favorite food.
We had dinner at a local restaurant.
 


I had the soup and salad bar, with cream of artichoke soup and artichoke vegetable soup.
Vicki had artichoke quesadillas, and we split a deep fried artichoke heart appetizer.

I got a few fresh artichokes from a fruit stand


They were SO much better than the feeble imitations you find in grocery stores, and I got 5 for $5 instead of $3.99 each.  I think we have to stop here again next year, for more artichokes, and maybe I'll save up enough to play golf next time.

Friday, July 13, 2012

Economic spaghetti sauce

My grandmother's recipe for spaghetti sauce goes, in part, something like this:

“Combine ingredients in a saucepan on high heat and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer … “

Managing the economy is sort of like making spaghetti sauce.  The sauce is the economy, and its temperature represents its output, as compared to its potential.  (Think of the temperature in celsius, where 0 is freezing, and 100 is boiling.  That scale maps well to many economic variables.)  The stove is the government, the gas is the government deficit, and the kitchen is the rest of the world.  Simmering represents the economy operating at full potential, but without overheating.

If the sauce ingredients start out at room temperature, you can turn the gas up all the way, and keep it there for quite a while, with no danger of the saucepan boiling over.

Likewise, when the economy is operating with lots of unemployment and excess capacity, like it is today, we can have very large deficits with no danger of inflation.  In fact, we have so far had deficits of record-breaking size for 4 years running without any increase in inflation, and the economy is still nowhere near our goal of “simmering”.

As the sauce temperature approaches 100 degrees, you have to reduce the heat, or the sauce will boil violently, boil over, and make a mess.  Likewise, when the economy gets near full employment, you will have to reduce the deficit, or the economy would “overheat”, and cause inflation.

But, you can't turn the gas off completely, and expect the sauce to continue simmering.  The sauce is constantly losing heat to the kitchen, and will cool off if the gas is turned off completely.

Likewise, you can't balance the budget (no deficit) and expect the economy to continue operating at capacity.  It will lose money to the rest of the world, because of the trade deficit, and the result will be a recession.  Economists call this loss of money from the economy a “leakage”, and it is just like heat transfer from something hot to its cooler surroundings.

In order to keep the sauce just simmering, without cooling off or boiling over, the gas must be on at just the right level to offset the heat loss to the kitchen.

Likewise, to keep the economy operating at peak level, there needs to be a deficit just large enough to offset the leakages to the rest of the world, and also domestic savings, which is another leakage.  (I have no analog in spaghetti sauce for domestic savings, which just proves that no analogy is perfect.)

Reducing the gas before the sauce has come to a boil means it will take longer to boil, or may never boil, if the gas is not high enough to offset the heat loss to the kitchen.

Likewise, reducing the deficit today, when the economy is so far from optimal, and not even moving noticeably in the right direction, is a recipe for recession, with no hope of ever getting back to full employment.

The Treasury is the supplier of money to the economy, just as the stove is the supplier of heat to the sauce.  Nobody else can create the dollars needed to raise GDP, and if government refuses to have a high enough deficit, refuses to create dollars in sufficient quantity, we will continue to suffer as we have for the past 4 years.

Monday, July 9, 2012

MMT basics

Warren Mosler has a recent post listing some basic principles of MMT.  Most un-wonkishly.  Not your father's economics.

http://moslereconomics.com/2012/07/08/the-certainty-of-debt-and-taxes-comments-on-the-fiscal-cliff/