George Rebane
Economic growth is now impacted by the sins of the recent past, so argue economists Phil Gramm (former chair of the Senate Banking Committee) and Thomas Saving. In their ‘A Booming Economy Will Challenge the Fed’, they present a very readable explanation of how today “the monetary excesses of the Obama era represent the greatest impediment to igniting and sustaining a full-blown economic recovery.” Fiscally we are between the rock and hard place long anticipated in these pages and elsewhere. And our central bank does not a have a precise model (i.e. transfer function) of the economy to support computing a proper (control) policy for raising interest rates and selling off the considerable assets it bought under Obama. Important stuff that the well-read RR readers will want to know.
The Union’s pulp report on Nevada City pot dispensaries stimulated me to write them the letter below. Their online report (paywalled here) is more informative and does include the applicant ratings misrepresented as rankings. The ratings are uniformly high, averaging 86% of the maximum with a spread of about 6%. This indicates that there’s not much difference between the three and, if there were a difference, then the rating factors were not chosen well enough to reveal such a difference.
Dear People – The 15dec17 article on Nevada City’s pot dispensaries because “rankings” were substituted for what actually were ratings. The three dispensary applicants were numerically rated on a number of factors which were combined into a summary rating for each applicant. Then these ratings were ranked in descending numerical order. For example, published ratings would provide more information to the public because they convey compactly and clearly three important pieces of information – how well the applicants satisfied the evaluation factors, whether and how the applicants qualifications differentiated, and, of course, their rankings. Out of a 100 maximum, say that applicants [A,B,C] received ratings of [92, 65, 31], or [92, 89, 88], or [39, 32, 29] – each case would tell a completely different story about the applicants that is totally hidden by their identical rankings. Ratings are always more informative than rankings, and the two should never be confused.
The sexual harassment ambulance chasers are on the job and happy to help you, whether you need it or not. Here is an example of their enthusiasm for cashing in on this new opportunity to litigate.
rebanesruminations.com 
Leave a comment