Nate Silver handicaps the November Senate elections and essentially comes up with the prediction I’ve been making for some time:

Our March forecast projected a Republicans gain of 5.8 seats. You’ll no doubt notice the decimal place; how can a party win a fraction of a Senate seat? It can’t, but our forecasts are probabilistic; a gain of 5.8 seats is the total you get by summing the probabilities from each individual race. Because 5.8 seats is closer to six (a Republican takeover) than five (not quite), we characterized the GOP as a slight favorite to win the Senate.

The new forecast is for a Republican gain of 5.7 seats. So it’s shifted ever so slightly — by one-tenth of a seat — toward being a toss-up. Still, if asked to place a bet at even odds, we’d take a Republican Senate.

which is that Democrats hold the Senate. How do I justify my claim? Because in real elections we don’t round. The number of seats gained is the number of seats gained and it will either be five (my prediction) or six and when you truncate 5.7 you get a five seat gain. For the Republicans to gain six seats it would more or less require them to run the table and I think the odds of that really aren’t that good whatever the polls say today.

There are things that could happen to change that. Democrats could foolishly seek to nationalize the election. The president’s approval rating could dip as a result of any number of things, e.g. deteriorating economy, one of the various scandals actually coming to a head, etc.

Since I don’t think any of those things will happen, I continue to believe that the Democrats will be weakened but will hold the Senate.

Last night I made a dish I haven’t prepared in a very long time—a braciole. That’s basically an Italian equivalent of German rouladen.

I took a flank steak, pound it out to about twice its original size, stuffed it with Italian sausage and lovage, rolled it, browned it, and then braised it for several hours in a tomato sauce. The incredible aroma that wafted through the house while the braciole was braising can only be imagined.

My original recipe called for celery leaves rather than lovage. I have a lot of lovage. My lovage plant is now about two meters tall and looking out my kitchen window at it inspired me to substitute its leaves for celery leaves. It worked well.

I know that lovage was a popular salad herb in the Middle Ages but it’s awfully robust—a powerful celery flavor—and I’m not sure I’m ready for that.

That’s not a rhetorical question. I’m asking the question because I want to know the answer. A lot of different answers have been floating around. Here are some:

1. Just what the White House has been saying. They’d been negotiating for some time and recently became alarmed at what appeared to be the declining state of Bergdahl’s health. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
2. Ditto with the addition of our pending withdrawal from Afghanistan.
3. Barack Obama promised to shut down the detention center at Guantanamo when he ran for president the first time and he’s still trying to fulfill that promise. Exchanging the five Taliban for Bergdahl is a backdoor way of getting around Congress’s lack of cooperation.
4. It’s part of a larger negotiation to bring the Taliban into the political process in Afghanistan.
5. The president is a crypto-Muslim and Bergdahl presented a pretext for releasing the Taliban.
6. The president wanted something to distract people from the VA (or other) scandal.

I lean towards #1. I think that #5 is a scurrilous and outrageous charge.

What do you think?

Update

I’ve added a sixth speculation. I’d intended to include that but it slipped my mind when I was drafting the post.

I’ve had quite a journey this morning. Starting with Arnold Kling, continuing with Lawrence Summers, and with stops at Mian and Sufi’s book and Vernon Smith’s paper, I’ve revisited the “balance sheet” hypothesis of the late recession. From Dr. Summers’s Financial Times op-ed here’s the kernel of it:

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Mian and Sufi point out a variety of problems with this approach. First, they note that data on credit spreads suggest that the financial system was fully repaired by late 2009, and that even though the economy at that point was very depressed, growth has been anaemic since. Second, they observe that spending on housing and durable goods such as furniture and cars decreased sharply in 2006 and 2007, well before any financial institution became vulnerable. Likewise, they note that the initial impetus behind recession in the US appears to have been a decline in consumer spending. Additionally, the authors observe that when asked why they were not borrowing more, even small businesses, the sector most dependent on banks, more often than not blamed a lack of customers rather than banks’ unwillingness to lend.

None of this sits easily with what Mian and Sufi call the banking view of the Great Recession. They argue that, rather than failing banks, the key culprits in the financial crisis were overly indebted households. Resurrecting arguments that go back at least to Irving Fisher and that were emphasised by Richard Koo in considering Japan’s stagnation, Mian and Sufi highlight how harsh leverage and debt can be – for example, when the price of a house purchased with a 10 per cent downpayment goes down by 10 per cent, all of the owner’s equity is lost. They demonstrate powerfully that spending fell much more in parts of the country where house prices fell fastest and where the most mortgage debt was attached to homes. So their story of the crisis blames excessive mortgage lending, which first inflated bubbles in the housing market and then left households with unmanageable debt burdens. These burdens in turn led to spending reductions and created an adverse economic and financial spiral that ultimately led financial institutions to the brink.

Policy measures were largely targeted at a) bolstering the banks and b) ordinary pseudo-Keynesian pump-priming. If we truly experience a recession because of excessive household debt, neither of those really address the problem and our subsequent experience, continued low employment, is to be expected. Why weren’t other solutions tried? Dr. Summers’s view is that solutions targeted at solving the problem of excessive household debt were politically impossible.

Why? If, as I believe, not a single incumbent would have lost his or her seat running on a platform of mortgage reduction, what rendered such a strategy politically impossible? I’ll offer a few potential explanations:

1. Malice
2. Donors
3. Stultified political discourse

1. Malice

Consistent with the prevailing Western thought of the last several millennia, from Plato to Paul of Tarsus to Thomas Aquinas to Kant, I reject this idea.

2. Donors

If the objective of our elected officials rather than doing the will of the people or serving the good of the people has become retaining office and as a means to that end amassing a huge “war chest” to ward off serious political competitors, we should hardly be surprised at the vigor with which those official curry favor with the financial sector. I note, too, that neither political party has any particular aversion to the financial sector and companies and individuals in the financial sector, the primary beneficiaries of the vast increase in wealth among the very richest over the period of the last forty years, gives to both parties with fairly even hands.

3. Stultified political discourse

This is my preferred explanation. The policy preferences and arguments between the two major political parties settled into their present form twenty or thirty years ago and no dissenting view has penetrated either party since. This would be hardly surprising considering the length in office of present incumbents.

Consider Illinois. The senior Senator from Illinois, Dick Durbin, has served as senator since 1997 and prior to that served in the U. S. House of Representatives since 1983. The junior senator from Illinois, Mark Kirk, has served since 2010 and prior to that served in the House since 2001. Long tenure in office is the norm in Washington rather than the exception. In the Illinois House delegation Bobby Rush, Luis Gutierrez, Danny Davis, and Jan Schakowsky have all had long tenures in office (15-20) years and most of Illinois’s present delegation succeeded someone who served a long tenure in office. Not exactly fertile ground for new and exciting ideas.

That’s unlikely to change. Most of Illinois’s incumbents don’t face serious opposition.

The pictures in this article about kids’ chemistry sets of days gone by really took me back. I sold greeting cards door-to-door (something else I can’t imagine an eight-year-old of today doing) to get a chemistry set very much like the last one pictured. In those days any money I didn’t spend on books I spent on science kits. A few years later it was on back issues of Astounding or Galaxy.

My parents could never really understand my interest in math or science. They’d never really encouraged it, just stood back and watched in amazement. I blame Captain Video.

Over at Bloomberg Peter Orszag recognizes that Thomas Piketty’s proposed global wealth tax has no legs whatever:

In the hoopla over whether Thomas Piketty’s data on growing global inequality are correct, an important question about how to address the problem has been obscured. Piketty describes his own global wealth tax idea as more of a “useful utopia” than a practical policy suggestion. Is there anything more plausible that can be done?

He proposes a couple of implausible taxes himself: a graduated consumption tax, a favorite among economists, and an inheritance (as opposed to estate) tax. You can get the details from the op-ed itself. The wind has been blowing against any form of tax on estates for decades and the only way Republicans could possibly support a consumption tax of any flavor would be would be as a replacement for the income tax, something Democrats would find completely unacceptable. This is part of our national impasse. One party or another opposes anything that would be more economically sound than the status quo for ideological or political reasons.

While we’re proposing implausible taxes, I’ll propose one, too: a graduated carbon tax. In essence, it would consist of a tax prebate on a sliding scale based on income combined with a very stiff tax on gas at the pump, jet fuel, boat fuel, and home energy use. There would be no additional tax on energy use by businesses.

My objectives for this would be geopolitical, avoiding the regressive and job-destroying character of other neoliberal proposals for reducing emissions, and, frankly, shutting people up.

The continuous overflowing of outrage James Joyner complains about always reminds me of this famous episode from Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac:

THE VISCOUNT:
No one? But wait!
I’ll treat him to. . .one of my quips!. . .See here!. . .
(He goes up to Cyrano, who is watching him, and with a conceited air):
Sir, your nose is. . .hmm. . .it is. . .very big!

CYRANO (gravely):
Very!

THE VISCOUNT (laughing):
Ha!

CYRANO (imperturbably):
Is that all?. . .

THE VISCOUNT:
What do you mean?

CYRANO:
Ah no! young blade! That was a trifle short!
You might have said at least a hundred things
By varying the tone. . .like this, suppose,. . .
Aggressive: ‘Sir, if I had such a nose
I’d amputate it!’ Friendly: ‘When you sup
It must annoy you, dipping in your cup;
You need a drinking-bowl of special shape!’
Descriptive: ”Tis a rock!. . .a peak!. . .a cape!
–A cape, forsooth! ‘Tis a peninsular!’
Curious: ‘How serves that oblong capsular?
For scissor-sheath? Or pot to hold your ink?’
Gracious: ‘You love the little birds, I think?
I see you’ve managed with a fond research
To find their tiny claws a roomy perch!’
Truculent: ‘When you smoke your pipe. . .suppose
That the tobacco-smoke spouts from your nose–
Do not the neighbors, as the fumes rise higher,
Cry terror-struck: “The chimney is afire”?’
Considerate: ‘Take care,. . .your head bowed low
By such a weight. . .lest head o’er heels you go!’
Tender: ‘Pray get a small umbrella made,
Lest its bright color in the sun should fade!’
Pedantic: ‘That beast Aristophanes
Names Hippocamelelephantoles
Must have possessed just such a solid lump
Of flesh and bone, beneath his forehead’s bump!’
Cavalier: ‘The last fashion, friend, that hook?
To hang your hat on? ‘Tis a useful crook!’
Emphatic: ‘No wind, O majestic nose,
Can give THEE cold!–save when the mistral blows!’
Dramatic: ‘When it bleeds, what a Red Sea!’
Admiring: ‘Sign for a perfumery!’
Lyric: ‘Is this a conch?. . .a Triton you?’
Simple: ‘When is the monument on view?’
Rustic: ‘That thing a nose? Marry-come-up!
‘Tis a dwarf pumpkin, or a prize turnip!’
Military: ‘Point against cavalry!’
Practical: ‘Put it in a lottery!
Assuredly ‘twould be the biggest prize!’
Or. . .parodying Pyramus’ sighs. . .
‘Behold the nose that mars the harmony
Of its master’s phiz! blushing its treachery!’
–Such, my dear sir, is what you might have said,
Had you of wit or letters the least jot:
But, O most lamentable man!–of wit
You never had an atom, and of letters
You have three letters only!–they spell Ass!
And–had you had the necessary wit,
To serve me all the pleasantries I quote
Before this noble audience. . .e’en so,
You would not have been let to utter one–
Nay, not the half or quarter of such jest!
I take them from myself all in good part,
But not from any other man that breathes!

If you’ve never seen it or read it, it’s one of the loveliest plays in any language, particularly so in the French. If you’re an Amazon Prime member, Jose Ferrer’s marvelous performance as Cyrano is captured here.

FiveThirtyEight (newly added to my blogroll) has a solid rundown on the big picture on employment, unemployment, and job growth chock-full of graphs, charts, and numbers. The bottom line is that jobs are being created but at a rate just a tiny bit greater than the “natural increase”, i.e. not fast enough to bring the millions of people who lost their jobs in the late recession back to work, and the jobs that are being created don’t pay as well as the jobs that were lost. Spin this as you like.

Here are the president’s priorities on jobs:

President Obama will continue calling on Congress to:

1: Raise the minimum wage to $10.10 for all American workers.
2: Ensure women get equal pay for equal work by passing paycheck fairness
3: Extend emergency unemployment insurance for Americans who are looking for work.
4: Reward hard work by expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit.
5: Remove retirement tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans and improve them for the middle class.
6: Protect LGBT workers by passing the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.

and here’s the statement on the economy from the Republican National Committee’s web site:

We believe in the power and opportunity of America’s free-market economy. We believe in the importance of sensible business regulations that promote confidence in our economy among consumers, entrepreneurs and businesses alike. We oppose interventionist policies that put the federal government in control of industry and allow it to pick winners and losers in the marketplace.

If there is something in either of those statements that will put 10 million people back to work in something short of geological time, I’m missing it.

It certainly appears to me as though either neither party is particularly interested in the millions who are out of work or neither party has any ideas and both want to change the subject.

I am trying hard to resist fisking Eric Poole’s article in the Harvard Business Review on the EPA’s new anti-coal initiative. In the interest of my own mental health and brevity I’ll limit my observations to a few choice examples.

Something reassuring happened Monday after EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy unveiled the Obama administration’s proposed Clean Power Plan, arguably the most important step the U.S. has taken in the fight against global climate change: The S&P 500 and Dow Jones stock indexes rose to record highs. I’ll take that as a sign investors aren’t buying the old scare tactic that federal climate action is bad for the economy.

or the market may already have discounted the Obama Administration’s anti-coal policy or other events that happened at the same time overshadowed the policy announcement or the market has a life and momentum of its own that’s disconnected from the larger economy or any number of other possibilities. Are short term market moves really a gauge of long term investor sentiment? That would make an interesting study.

Renewables are growing faster than any other kind of of power generation, with more solar panels installed in the U.S. over the last 18 months than the previous 30 years combined.

Alternative energy is heavily subsidized. In total biomass, geothermal, solar, and wind account for about 5% U. S. energy production, most of which is wind, the most heavily subsidized.

The cost of solar and wind are falling rapidly…

The Chinese are dumping solar panels on the United States.

California is also delivering some big results. The Golden State’s energy efficiency programs have saved its residents $74 billion over the last few decades and avoided the construction of more than 30 power plants.

California is a net importer of energy. California’s programs have resulted in their importing more energy from elsewhere rather than generating it locally. Californians are in essence taking the same attitude that American do to China: if it’s not happening here, it’s not happening at all and has no consequences.

Illinois, a state heavily dependent on coal for electricity, has aggressive energy efficiency mandates that require utilities to cut energy use by 2% annually by 2015, as well as a 25%-by-2025 renewables standard has been a boon for the state’s wind industry.

Over the period of the last thirty years Chicago has derived more than 85% of its energy from nuclear power. The state’s energy mandates are driving businesses out of the state (businesses have left Illinois faster than any other state) and Illinois’s aggressive subsidies for wind power are actually higher than the value of the power being generated.

I could go on. You can prove practically anything if you cherry-pick the data with sufficient ferocity. If you torture the data long enough, they will submit.