The clock change is meant to track the body change which follows the sun. It is not meant to be a dislocation, except that now most of us are tied to the clock (for starting work and school) rather than the sun.
My pets know when it is time to change the clocks - they get up earlier and earlier as the days get longer.
If we didn’t change the clocks then we’d spend more morning sunshine hours sleeping and have less time after work to enjoy summer evenings. Sure, we could change work and schools hours twice a year- but that sounds a lot like daylight savings time! I suppose choice is better than forced change- good point.
The beauty of being retired is it no longer matters- I get up with the sun (and my pets) and go to sleep when I’m tired. Who cares what the clock says?
People are amazing. They will adjust their behavior to just about anything, so long as what's happening isn't changing in unknown and unknowable ways. What brought about the "great moderation" of the so-called business cycle in the USA? Whatever it was, do that.
“What brought about the 'great moderation' of the so-called business cycle in the USA?”
Several factors, of course. But arguably the biggest one was sensible monetary policy from Volcker and Greenspan (tech innovation and some luck helped as well, of course).
Surely not perfect, and Greenspan unwisely introduced too much moral hazard in the process (which Bernanke doubled down on, sadly).
Indeed. People often forget how the Great Moderation ended. It is a bit unclear that the ending was necessarily created by the beginning and middle, but it might have been better to have more small upsets and avoid the giant crash at the end. Better to trip and fall 3 feet every few hours than not trip all week then fall 300 feet all at once.
Scott Sumner argues, and I agree with him, that the 300 foot fall during Great Financial Crisis which ended it was much worse because of too tight monetary policy for too long in 2007-2008.
Inexpert as I am, I don't think "the beginning" created the Great Moderation ending at all, and only the "Greenspan Put" moral hazard from "the middle" impacted it at all.
But of course Greenspan is hardly innocent for the housing bubble, even if he and the Fed directly (unclear to me) were not responsible for the lowered lending standards forced onto Fannie and Freddie by politicians, or even for the growth in mortgage-based derivatives.
What percentage of the responsibility for the size of the fall Bernanke bears is unclear, but for me it's a pretty large chunk.
[Even though I do give him *positive* credit for his "Helicopter Ben" comments later on when the fears of deflation were going around.]
I don’t disagree really. I am thinking more that taking all the turbulence out, letting things seem too safe is what got banks and lenders overly complacent. The Greenspan Put was also to blame, but letting some banks get a bloody nose now and again wouldn’t have hurt the system as a whole. Sometimes people need reminders of how badly things can go if they are not prudent.
This price stickiness seems to validate my belief, shared by none or very few practicing economists, that excess demand and/or excess money supply do not cause inflation; at most they enable inflation. Inflation does not manifest itself until an owner tells his clerk to go out and change the prices (so to speak).
We’ve had this experiment in Russia about a decade ago, when one delusional president decided to halt the clock changing and stick to the summer time rather than standard one.
Saying from my own experience: it is brutal in winter. It seems like you don’t care what the clock is saying, but your body is actually tuned in to the sun. When the winter darkness comes, and you have to wake up an hour earlier - oh, that is going to be painful, especially for those who are meteorologically affected. Government in Russia eventually pushed back on summer time, btw, and keep the standard time since.
An admirable deepening of Milton Friedman's insight of ages ago that the argument for flexible exchange rates is like the argument for Daylight Savings Time. I appreciate it.
Coordination problem is rich, richer than anyone thinks. There is an Italian sociologist, named Varese, who, commenting on Italians' purported unpunctuality, claimed somewhere that cell phones made it worse! Instead of being 10 minutes late, you call up and say I'm on my way! Whatever game is being played -- test the other guy's patience maybe -- is getting more expensive to play. So, us adapting, can be a costly alternative.
My personal piffle is that I can't adjust to my time when everyone else is on DST, because I depend upon them. I hate DST and want the others to stick with Standard Time, invented by railroads. I guess that makes me the equivalent of somebody who favors a strict gold standard! ] Slaps himself in the face.]
“Everyone repeat after us: “A one time increase in the price level is not inflation.” Oh well, tell/sell that to Ma & Pa Kettle :) Public Mind formation of consumer inflation expectations :) Like daylight “savings” Time, it costs more when they make you wake up in the dark :)
Brazil removed price stickness when it ended hyper inflation in the 90's by creating what was essentially a fake currency. Any country can do the same to supposedly end recessions.
"Whether we measure value in dollars, euros, pounds, or yen, everything real — how much you can buy with your salary — is unchanged."
Then why don't we engineer dollars, euros, pounds, or yen with zero inflation for convenience? Thus we wouln't need to calculate "how much my cash would worth tomorrow". Let us make our lives simple again! :-)
What about cows -and their farmers- used to regular milking hours, twice a day?
What about cross-border workers: domiciled in country A and working in the neighbor country B, with different currencies, different unemployment and inflation rates?
So perhaps in the FAA NOTAM failure in January 2023, the FAA could simply have declared a two hour clock pause for purposes of crew rest and all other elements of commercial air travel, allowing all flights to resume in lock step with unchanged schedules. Instead of the colossal mess that actually happened. Would have to add those two hours back in at say 0300 the next day.
Funnily enough, I've actually lived the coordination problem. When I was living in a country that's pretty far north, we had summers with early daylight and long, long evenings. I worked at a firm that did not have retail customers. Someone suggested we should start an hour earlier in the summer because the sun would already be up and, if we did, we could have 5-6 hours of usable daylight after work. Essentially the proposal was to double down on summer time and make a 2-hour change instead of the government's 1-hour change. There was a lot of interest in the idea but it died because workers who had kids - who also liked the idea, generally - couldn't come in an hour early: they had to wait for schools to open.
I learned in travels to Stockholm that they not only do that, they work 9-hour days in winter so that they can work 7-hour days in summer. And no wonder: when I was there once in early February, the sun would (sort-of) rise at about 9:30 and set at about 3:30. Brutal!
John, what is the right way to think of the fiscal theory of the price level mechanism in Europe? Is the price level in the eurozone determined in the aggregate, or on a per-country basis, considering the fragmented fiscal policy but integrated currency/monetary union?
Aggregate. The ECB issues currency, ultimately backed by fiscal policies of member states. As is now on view. If the ECB monetizes member state debt, you know where that's going. In the end, the ECB relies on recapitalization by member states -- taxes to soak up money -- when it runs out of other tools. "Crisis cycle" draft on my website and forthcoming PUP June 2025 with Luis Garicano and Klaus Masuch has lots more. There is also a section on ECB in "fiscal theory of the price level."
Some people say "aint" in stead of "aren't". Is that "coordination failure" that requires government mandates?
Merriam-Webster disagrees with you, D.J.!
ain't (contraction)
1: am not : are not : is not
2: have not : has not
"I ain't your friend": "They ain't my friends": "He ain't my friend."
"You ain't seen nothin' yet": "She ain't seen nothin' yet."
“if the US moves to UTC, everyone would change their opining hours,…”
People opine on the Internet at all hours, regardless.
[sic] 😏
Not to be rude: i usually don't like grammar nit-picks; but this one merits a LIKE
Well played. 👍
I love long Summer nights
But I'm not a fastidious worker
Also a Jimmy Buffet fan
The clock change is meant to track the body change which follows the sun. It is not meant to be a dislocation, except that now most of us are tied to the clock (for starting work and school) rather than the sun.
My pets know when it is time to change the clocks - they get up earlier and earlier as the days get longer.
If we didn’t change the clocks then we’d spend more morning sunshine hours sleeping and have less time after work to enjoy summer evenings. Sure, we could change work and schools hours twice a year- but that sounds a lot like daylight savings time! I suppose choice is better than forced change- good point.
The beauty of being retired is it no longer matters- I get up with the sun (and my pets) and go to sleep when I’m tired. Who cares what the clock says?
People are amazing. They will adjust their behavior to just about anything, so long as what's happening isn't changing in unknown and unknowable ways. What brought about the "great moderation" of the so-called business cycle in the USA? Whatever it was, do that.
“What brought about the 'great moderation' of the so-called business cycle in the USA?”
Several factors, of course. But arguably the biggest one was sensible monetary policy from Volcker and Greenspan (tech innovation and some luck helped as well, of course).
Surely not perfect, and Greenspan unwisely introduced too much moral hazard in the process (which Bernanke doubled down on, sadly).
Indeed. People often forget how the Great Moderation ended. It is a bit unclear that the ending was necessarily created by the beginning and middle, but it might have been better to have more small upsets and avoid the giant crash at the end. Better to trip and fall 3 feet every few hours than not trip all week then fall 300 feet all at once.
Scott Sumner argues, and I agree with him, that the 300 foot fall during Great Financial Crisis which ended it was much worse because of too tight monetary policy for too long in 2007-2008.
Inexpert as I am, I don't think "the beginning" created the Great Moderation ending at all, and only the "Greenspan Put" moral hazard from "the middle" impacted it at all.
But of course Greenspan is hardly innocent for the housing bubble, even if he and the Fed directly (unclear to me) were not responsible for the lowered lending standards forced onto Fannie and Freddie by politicians, or even for the growth in mortgage-based derivatives.
What percentage of the responsibility for the size of the fall Bernanke bears is unclear, but for me it's a pretty large chunk.
[Even though I do give him *positive* credit for his "Helicopter Ben" comments later on when the fears of deflation were going around.]
I don’t disagree really. I am thinking more that taking all the turbulence out, letting things seem too safe is what got banks and lenders overly complacent. The Greenspan Put was also to blame, but letting some banks get a bloody nose now and again wouldn’t have hurt the system as a whole. Sometimes people need reminders of how badly things can go if they are not prudent.
This price stickiness seems to validate my belief, shared by none or very few practicing economists, that excess demand and/or excess money supply do not cause inflation; at most they enable inflation. Inflation does not manifest itself until an owner tells his clerk to go out and change the prices (so to speak).
We’ve had this experiment in Russia about a decade ago, when one delusional president decided to halt the clock changing and stick to the summer time rather than standard one.
Saying from my own experience: it is brutal in winter. It seems like you don’t care what the clock is saying, but your body is actually tuned in to the sun. When the winter darkness comes, and you have to wake up an hour earlier - oh, that is going to be painful, especially for those who are meteorologically affected. Government in Russia eventually pushed back on summer time, btw, and keep the standard time since.
An admirable deepening of Milton Friedman's insight of ages ago that the argument for flexible exchange rates is like the argument for Daylight Savings Time. I appreciate it.
Coordination problem is rich, richer than anyone thinks. There is an Italian sociologist, named Varese, who, commenting on Italians' purported unpunctuality, claimed somewhere that cell phones made it worse! Instead of being 10 minutes late, you call up and say I'm on my way! Whatever game is being played -- test the other guy's patience maybe -- is getting more expensive to play. So, us adapting, can be a costly alternative.
My personal piffle is that I can't adjust to my time when everyone else is on DST, because I depend upon them. I hate DST and want the others to stick with Standard Time, invented by railroads. I guess that makes me the equivalent of somebody who favors a strict gold standard! ] Slaps himself in the face.]
Frank, lighten up, Self Flagellation is not the answer.
“Everyone repeat after us: “A one time increase in the price level is not inflation.” Oh well, tell/sell that to Ma & Pa Kettle :) Public Mind formation of consumer inflation expectations :) Like daylight “savings” Time, it costs more when they make you wake up in the dark :)
Brazil removed price stickness when it ended hyper inflation in the 90's by creating what was essentially a fake currency. Any country can do the same to supposedly end recessions.
The story is both more complicated and simpler (fiscal policy mattered)
https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2021/05/brazilian-inflation.html
"Whether we measure value in dollars, euros, pounds, or yen, everything real — how much you can buy with your salary — is unchanged."
Then why don't we engineer dollars, euros, pounds, or yen with zero inflation for convenience? Thus we wouln't need to calculate "how much my cash would worth tomorrow". Let us make our lives simple again! :-)
https://youtu.be/k4MhC5tcEv0
What about cows -and their farmers- used to regular milking hours, twice a day?
What about cross-border workers: domiciled in country A and working in the neighbor country B, with different currencies, different unemployment and inflation rates?
So perhaps in the FAA NOTAM failure in January 2023, the FAA could simply have declared a two hour clock pause for purposes of crew rest and all other elements of commercial air travel, allowing all flights to resume in lock step with unchanged schedules. Instead of the colossal mess that actually happened. Would have to add those two hours back in at say 0300 the next day.
Funnily enough, I've actually lived the coordination problem. When I was living in a country that's pretty far north, we had summers with early daylight and long, long evenings. I worked at a firm that did not have retail customers. Someone suggested we should start an hour earlier in the summer because the sun would already be up and, if we did, we could have 5-6 hours of usable daylight after work. Essentially the proposal was to double down on summer time and make a 2-hour change instead of the government's 1-hour change. There was a lot of interest in the idea but it died because workers who had kids - who also liked the idea, generally - couldn't come in an hour early: they had to wait for schools to open.
I learned in travels to Stockholm that they not only do that, they work 9-hour days in winter so that they can work 7-hour days in summer. And no wonder: when I was there once in early February, the sun would (sort-of) rise at about 9:30 and set at about 3:30. Brutal!
John, what is the right way to think of the fiscal theory of the price level mechanism in Europe? Is the price level in the eurozone determined in the aggregate, or on a per-country basis, considering the fragmented fiscal policy but integrated currency/monetary union?
Aggregate. The ECB issues currency, ultimately backed by fiscal policies of member states. As is now on view. If the ECB monetizes member state debt, you know where that's going. In the end, the ECB relies on recapitalization by member states -- taxes to soak up money -- when it runs out of other tools. "Crisis cycle" draft on my website and forthcoming PUP June 2025 with Luis Garicano and Klaus Masuch has lots more. There is also a section on ECB in "fiscal theory of the price level."