Devine, James quoted Jamie Galbraith:
As the chart shows, the index reached highs on three occasions. The first
was just after President Reagan's stinging midterm election defeat in 1982.
The second was just as Bush the elder was beaten in 1992. And the third
peak came in 2003, with a trivial
More generally, the Manchester index (Unemployment rate * duration of unemployment) is
a shaky. If you multiply two numbers that move together most of the time, you get a
number that exaggerates the movement of either one. There isn't much in the way of
new information.
If so, let me remind you that newspapers are not so different from
politicians. They exist to sell advertising. What goes on the page in
between the ads is not so very important.
I thought the function of news was to keep the ads from bumping into
one another.
Dan Scanlan
