Birthday v. 25

Forget inviting Alex and Twitch from So You Think You Can Dance to my next birthday. I want my party to look like this:

Welcome to Hogwarts

Real Wisdom

There is so much "wisdom" offered by writers, pastors, counselors, and self- proclaimed experts on relationships, singleness, and marriage today. I don't want to discount what their messages or claim that they are untrue, but is it all really necessary? Captivating, Wild at Heart, Passion and Purity, I Kissed Dating Goodbye, Marriage on the Rock, the list goes on and on. I often find myself more anxious, confused, or even worse, convinced that I am now "ready" after listening to sermons or reading books on the subject.

I started reading The Shadow of the Almighty the other day, which is the story of Jim Elliot, written by his wife Elizabeth. He writes this, which I believe to be real wisdom and a simple truth for all of us to cling to:

"No one warns young people to follow Adam's example. He waited till God saw his need. Then God made Adam sleep, prepared for his mate, and brought her to him. We need more of this 'being asleep' in the will of God. Then we can receive what He brings us in His own time, if at all." (50).

What's the wisdom in this? Adam waited. He rested. He didn't know what he needed, but relied on the Lord completely to care for him. And God, when he saw that it was no longer good for Adam to be alone, designed a partner specifically for him. May we all find deeper rest and greater trust in our Father, who knows each of our needs and meets them accordingly.

"O Christ, let me know Thee - let me catch glimpses of Thyself, seated and expectant in glory, let me rest there despite all wrong surging round me." - Jim Elliot (Shadow of the Almighty, 81)

Personal Holiness

Jonathan Parnell posted on the Desiring God blog today about how our holiness is dependent upon the Lord's holiness. He quotes an excerpt from John Webster's book Holiness, explaining that sanctification is not acquired sufficiency, but always referential to the triune work of grace.

The Christian’s sanctity is in Christ, in the Spirit, not in se [in itself]; it is always and only an alien sanctity. Sanctification does not signal birth of self-sufficiency, rather it indicates a 'perpetual and inherent lack of self-sufficiency'.

Sanctification 'in' the Spirit is not the Spirit's immanence in the saint. Quite the opposite: it is a matter of the externality of sanctitas christiana [Christian holiness], the saint being and acting in another.

'Sanctification in the Spirit' means: it is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And 'Christ lives in me' means: by the Spirit's power I am separated from my self-caused self destruction, and given a new holy self, enclosed by, and wholly referred to, the new Adam in whom I am and in whom I act (84).

Obama's Economic Fish Stories

"Obama's Economic Fish Stories" is an article featured in the Wall Street Journal today on President Obama's need to honest with his statements to the nation on the economy and employment to preserve (or regain, however you see it) his credibility. For someone who advocated government transparency during his campaign, Obama's lack of forthrightness on the severity of today's issues is dishonest and disappointing. I encourage you all to read it.

"A president's most valuable asset—with voters, Congress, allies and enemies—is credibility. So it is unfortunate when extreme exaggeration emanates from the White House.

All presidents wind up saying some things that make even their own economists cringe (often the brainchild of political advisers unconstrained by economic principles, facts or arithmetic). Usually, economic advisers manage to correct these problematic statements before delivery. Sometimes they get channeled into relatively harmless nonsense, such as President Gerald Ford's "Whip Inflation Now" buttons. Other times they produce damaging policies, such as President Richard Nixon's wage and price controls. The most illiterate statement was President Jimmy Carter's late-1970s plea to the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates to combat high inflation, the exact opposite of what it should do. Not surprisingly, the value of the dollar collapsed.

President Obama says "every economist who's looked at it says that the Recovery Act has done its job"—i.e., the stimulus bill has turned the economy around. That's nonsense. Opinions differ widely and many leading economists believe that its impact has been small. Why? The expectation of future spending and future tax hikes to pay for the stimulus and Mr. Obama's vast expansion of government are offsetting the direct short-run expansionary effect. That is standard in all macroeconomic theories.

So, as I and others warned in 2008, the permanent government expansion and higher tax rate agenda is a classic example of what not to do during bad economic times. Worse yet, all the subsidies, bailouts, regulations and mandates are forcing noncommercial decisions on the economy, which now awaits literally thousands of new diktats as a result of things like ObamaCare and the financial reform bill. The uncertainty is impeding investment and hiring.

The president does not say that economists agree that the high future taxes to finance the stimulus will hurt the economy. (The University of Chicago's Harald Uhlig estimates $3.40 of lost output for every dollar of government spending.) Either the president is not being told of serious alternative viewpoints, or serious viewpoints are defined as only those that support his position. In either case, he is being ill-served by his staff.

Mr. Obama's economic statements are increasingly divorced not only from competing viewpoints but from those of his own economic advisers. It is surprising how many numerically challenged pronouncements come from this most scripted and political of White Houses. One slip is eventually forgiven, but when a pattern emerges, no one believes it is an accident.

For example, on the anniversary of the stimulus bill, Mr. Obama declared, "It is largely thanks to the Recovery Act that a second Depression is no longer a possibility." Yet his Council of Economic Advisers just estimated the stimulus bill's effect on GDP at its trough was 1%-2%.

The most common definition of a depression is a long period in which GDP or consumption declines at least 10%. The decline in GDP in the recent recession was 3.8%, in consumption 2%. No one disputes the recession was severe, but to reach a 10% GDP decline requires tripling the administration's estimate (three times their 2% effect) added to the actual 3.8% decline. On the alternative consumption standard, the math is even more absurd. The depression statement isn't credible. The stimulus bill has assumed certain mystic powers in administration discourse, but revoking the laws of arithmetic shouldn't be one of them.

The recession would have been worse if not for the Fed's monetary policy and quantitative easing. Also important were the unmentioned automatic stabilizers—taxes falling more than income, cushioning declines in after-tax incomes and consumption—which were far larger than the spending and tax rebates in the stimulus bill. Arguing that all these policies (including injecting capital into banks, which was necessary but done poorly) may have prevented a depression is perhaps still an exaggeration but at least is within hailing distance of plausibility. On that scale, the effect of the stimulus was puny.

On his recent "Recovery Tour," Mr. Obama boasted, "The stimulus bill prevented the unemployment rate from "getting up to . . . 15%." But the president's own chief economic adviser, Christina Romer, has estimated that the stimulus bill reduced peak unemployment by one percentage point—i.e., since the unemployment rate peaked at 10.1%, it prevented the unemployment rate from rising to just over 11%. So Mr. Obama claims that the stimulus bill was several times more potent than his chief economic adviser estimates.

Perhaps the most serious disconnect concerns the impending expiration of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, which will raise the top two income tax rates and the rates on dividends and capital gains. If these growth inhibiting tax increases occur—about $75 billion in tax increases next year, $1.4 trillion over 10 years—there will be serious economic damage.

In the most recent issue of the American Economic Review, Ms. Romer (and her husband David H. Romer) conclude that "tax increases are highly contractionary . . . tax cuts have very large and persistent positive output effects." Their estimates imply the tax increases would depress GDP by roughly half the growth rate in this so-far-anemic recovery.

If Mr. Obama is really serious about a second stimulus, by far the best thing he can do is have Congress quickly extend the expiring Bush tax cuts, combined with real spending cuts set to take effect as the economy improves.

The president badly needs to make more realistic pronouncements. No one expects him to say his policies have failed (although most have delivered far less than claimed at large cost). A little candor about the results of experimentation in uncharted waters would go a long way. But at the very least, his staff needs to avoid putting these exaggerations on the teleprompter. It undermines confidence and raises concerns about competence. It's doing nobody any good—not the economy and certainly not Mr. Obama.

Mr. Boskin is a professor of economics at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He chaired the Council of Economic Advisers under President George H.W. Bush.

Life of a Traveling Sales Rep

Some days, life is just amusing. I keep thinking that one day, when I resign from this crazy lifestyle, I will compile a book of all these ridiculous stories from the road. "Are you a basketball player," the time I was offered 4 free breakfasts at the Hilton in Jackson, MS in one visit, and the Nissan cube would both make chapter one.

From the moment I pulled out from my drive way, I knew today would be hilarious. Do you ever have the feeling, like you are on the brink of something crazy? A family of 5 joined me on the parking shuttle this morning and I can honestly say that I have never seen so much luggage in my life. I really think they could have packed up their whole house and their neighbor's house and had less luggage. It was insane. I bumped into one of my co-workers at the Delta kiosks, which was a huge blessing, because the security lines were usually long this morning (at least 45 minutes!). Why have all the laymen discovered the business traveler's secret (ie the South security check point)? At least I had company! Thank goodness I misread my flight time and showed up an hour earlier than I needed to this morning. Then, I made it to my gate to find a 1.5 hour delay. Thanks, Delta! If planes needed maintenance, you probably should have anticipated that LAST NIGHT when it was not in use. Upon my arrival to Jackson, I found out that I-20 was completely shut down, leaving me to fend for myself on back roads.

And then, there was my sales call. Oh, the sales call! You plan these introductory meetings not knowing what to expect. It was the shortest sales call of my career (a whopping 23 minutes!) and the customer even said, "I am an HP shop, with a slight tendency to buy IBM." I laughed, only because I did not know how to respond. Sounds like something a schizophrenic would say. Sales School didn't prepare me for lines like that one! I asked about this "tendency," more specifically his history with IBM and discovered a neglected customer. One of the hardest parts about this job is attempting to repair the damage inflicted upon customers by previous reps. Scars certainly don't heal quickly. I swear, half of my job is damage control. If nothing else, this job has taught me how to articulate tremendous amounts of empathy to people's situations. Undoubtedly something that I needed to learn.

The best news of all: today is only Tuesday!

Human Trafficking...at Home?

Atlanta ranks as one of the world's leading cities for the trafficking of women and children. In fact, we are #13 in the world - in the world! Each month, approximately 500 girls are trafficked in Atlanta. Nearly 7,200 men knowingly or unknowingly purchase sex from adolescent girls. The average age of child exploitation is only 14. That's horrifying. What's even more troublesome is how few Georgians are aware of this nightmare happening on our streets everyday.

Atlantans, rise up! No matter who you are, you can do something. Learn the facts and tell others. Pray for our city, for our children, and that our Father, a God of justice, to make right the brokenness of our world.

To learn more:

Street Grace

A Future. Not a Past.

Three Million Imaginary Jobs

Great article from Friday's Wall Street Journal. The White House believes the stimulus worked better than expected.

It may be that the last people in America who believe that the $862 billion economic stimulus of February 2009 created millions of net new jobs are Vice President Joe Biden and the staff economists in the White House. Yesterday, President Obama's chief economist announced that the plan had "created or saved" between 2.5 million and 3.6 million jobs and raised GDP by 2.7% to 3.2% through June 30. Don't you feel better already?

Christina Romer went so far as to claim that the 3.5 million new jobs that she promised while the stimulus was being debated in Congress will arrive "two quarters earlier than anticipated." Yup, the official White House line is that the plan is working better than even they had hoped.

We almost feel sorry for Ms. Romer having to make this argument given that since February 2009 the U.S. economy has lost a net 2.35 million jobs. Using the White House "created or saved" measure means that even if there were only three million Americans left with jobs today, the White House could claim that every one was saved by the stimulus.

The White House also naturally insists that things would be much worse without the stimulus billions spent on the likes of Medicaid payments, high speed rail projects, unemployment benefits and windmills. Mr. Obama said recently in Racine, Wisconsin that the economy "would have been a lot worse" and the unemployment rate would have gone to "12 or 13, or 15 [percent]" if government hadn't spent all of that money.

This is called a counterfactual: a what would have happened scenario that can't be refuted. What we do know is what White House economists at the time said would happen if the stimulus didn't pass. They said the unemployment rate would peak at 9% without the stimulus (there's your counterfactual) and that with the stimulus the rate would stay at 8% or below. (See the nearby chart.) In other words, today there are 700,000 fewer jobs than Ms. Romer predicted we would have if we had done nothing at all. If this is a job creation success, what does failure look like?

All of these White House jobs estimates are based on the increasingly discredited Keynesian spending "multiplier," which according to White House economist Larry Summers means that every $1 of government spending will yield roughly $1.50 in higher GDP. Ms. Romer thus plugs her spending data into the Keynesian computer models and, presto, out come 2.5 million to 3.6 million jobs, even if the real economy has lost jobs. To adapt Groucho Marx: Who are you going to believe, the White House computer models, or your own eyes?

Or, as Milton Friedman used to say, "there's no such thing as a free lunch." The money government spends does create some jobs—the folks working on road projects, say—but that money has to come from somewhere, which means taxing or borrowing it from areas of the private economy that are nearly always more productive. This doesn't mean that government spending is always a bad idea, but it does mean that government spending as economic stimulus is fanciful.

Harvard economist Robert Barro first blew apart Keynesian assumptions with his famous 1974 essay, "Are Government Bonds Net Wealth?" He and Charles J. Redlick, also of Harvard, recently updated this demolition in a new study for the Mercatus Center examining 50 years of defense spending in various countries. They find a multiplier effect of between 0.4 and 0.7. This means that government spending shrinks the private economy, because it "crowds out other components of GDP, particularly investment."

This would certainly explain better than Ms. Romer's computer models why a nearly $1 trillion stimulus has been followed by a mediocre economic recovery, a 9.5% unemployment rate, and almost no net new private job creation.

Faith

As I read through James 1 yesterday morning, a verse stood out to me that I have never noticed.

"But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave in the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind." [James 1:6]

Aw, yes. This verse describes me to a tee: instead of clinging steadfastly to the Truth that I know and claim in my own heart, I am tossed about and driven by the winds of change in my own life and in the world around me. I know that our Father is faithful, unchanging, and that His love for me is endless. But, oh, how quickly I can forget to trust, to abide, and to ask in faith and with confidence.

I continue to rejoice and rest in the hymn, proclaiming the Lord's faithfulness to my own heart:

Great is Thy faithfulness, O God, my Father;

There is no shadow of turning with Thee;

Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not;

As Thou hast been Thou forever wilt be.

Great is Thy faithfulness! Great is Thy faithfulness!

Morning by morning, new mercies I see:

All I have needed They hand hath provideth -

Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord unto me!