EclectEcon

Stuffed Chicken Breasts

We decided to try to stuff two large-ish chicken breasts with asparagus, mushrooms, and brie cheese.

First, not just one but lots of slices in each breast:

And then put some asparagus in the slits:

And then some sliced cremini mushrooms and some slices of brie:

And then try to tie them shut. Hah!

Trim the strings and season them. BBQ on medium for about 25 minutes.

Some Pithy Thoughts

From JR, my favourite drug dealer:

"Consensus science" is similar to "precautionary principle":  both are terms used by pseudoscientists, regardless of their pedigree, who do not understand that science is simply the denial of the null hypothesis to support an alternative hypothesis to some degree of probability.

 

Of course, denying consensus makes you "deplorable" in every sphere of life, including politics, religion, and science. ...

 

The saving grace for humanity is that men today, as we always have, put to themselves a goal and a destiny which has no common measure with mere life, mere well-being, or mere comfort.  Specifically, it is the domain of freedom and dignity, or the transcendental, which is never compromised by death, poverty, or defeat, especially since victory does not always fall to the just. (William Earle)

 

Well, it is time for men to give the majoritarians, whatever they self-identify as, what they deserve, a good clean Palmer salute.  Trigger warning:  woke this.

 

 

Note for those who haven't been following EclectEcon for years: JR is a pharmacist is some far-off location, a typically soft-spoken very private person.

Another Reason for Concern about the FED's Liquidity Vacuum

A few weeks ago I wrote about how the FED is vacuuming up liquidity by making interest payments on US commercial bank excess reserves deposited at the Fed. In that post, I noted that so long as the Fed vacuums up the excess liquidity created when they buy up additional debt (gubmnt and otherwise), I can understand why and how there will be little actual monetization of the debt and only minor inflationary pressure. [It took me too long to grasp this, if it's correct.]

But by doing so, the Fed is also probably slowing economic recovery (to the extent that demand-side restrictions or reductions are playing a role in slowing the recovery from the current supply-side Covid shock).

From the Boston Globe:

Americans are finally saving more money — at exactly the wrong time: In an economy built on conspicuous consumption, Americans never seemed to save enough. But in an economy decimated by coronavirus closures, we might be saving too much.

The pandemic has upended consumer habits, with fewer people eating out and traveling and others building a financial cushion. Economists have long worried about Americans carrying too much debt, but ironically the sudden embrace of savings comes at a time when the economy needs consumers to spend more. A prolonged period of parsimony is hampering the recovery and threatening industries that had thrived on our free-spending ways.

In a classical economy, if people try to save more (and save it with financial institutions) those savings become available for others to borrow and spend, and the insane, so-called "paradox of thrift" never materializes. People save, and consumption spending falls; but roughly at the same time, people borrow and business, consumption, and investment spending rise by roughly the same amount. The composition of aggregate demand changes (and the resulting adjustments require time, meaning there are short-term dislocations with unemployment and other losses). However these dislocations cause nothing like what the old-time Keynesian "underconsumptionists" worry about.  The underconsumptionists apparently are still extant and having influence on far too much biz writing and economic policy punditry.

Nowadays, though, there's a new problem. When people consume less and save more, the increased savings still tend to end up in financial institutions. But now, because the financial institutions can earn interest income on their reserves deposited at the Fed, they have a remarkably reduced incentive to create new loans and new money based on their excess reserves when the interest rates they can earn from the Fed compete effectively with the risk-adjusted rates they can receive on loans they grant.

Instead, the gubmnt increases its deficit and the increased debt isn't monetized. The result is that there is only a minimal, if any, impact on aggregate demand.

The problem here isn't that consumers are spending too little on consumption. Rather, the problem is that the Fed is soaking up excess reserves and banks are not using them as a basis for creating new loans.

This reminds me of Fed policy at the beginning of the Great Depression in the early 1930s when the Fed explicitly implemented policies to "soak up" excess reserves and, as a result, made the depression disastrously worse.

Here's hoping the current Fed doesn't go that far... From that link in the previous sentence, we see that a decade ago, the St. Louis Fed understood the problem with the Great Depression. Do they fully grasp the situation now?

But the Fed is in a BIG box of trouble as things stand. Suppose they want to use monetary policy to stimulate aggregate demand a bit. To do so, they reduce the interest rate paid on commercial bank reserves, then what will happen? They have to fine tune this precisely so as not to dump billions of tonnes of liquidity onto the market. If they guess wrong, the excess liquidity will set off a frenzy of borrowing, house buying, business investment, and much more rapid inflation than most people are expecting.

Two questions:

1. I'm not sure my analysis and warnings are correct. I'd love to learn more.
2. I have no idea whether the Bank of Canada pays interest on chartered bank deposits, and my 5-minute Google search was inefficient and/or unproductive.

Finally, please tell me, reassure me, that the criticisms of the standard Keynesian presentation of the paradox of thrift hold sway in today's intro courses [unlike the Samuelsonian Keynesian nonsense they tried to indoctrinate us with when I was an undergraduate].

The Single-Cup Coffee Maker Battles: Has Keurig Won?

Nearly seven years ago, I described the competition between Keurig and Tassimo here. For a number of very good reasons, I suggested then that if this is a winner-take-all competition, Keurig would be likely to win it. It still looks that way from my perspective as the variety of disks available for Tassimo continues to diminish, as does the shelf space for both their disks and their machines.

[Edited update in light of the info below] It turns out that I was right (for Canada, at least), but even so, (as is the case for so many economists' predictions) my timing was off. Way off.

However, it does look as if Tassimo is gasping it's last breath:

SO WHAT IS THE ACTUAL TRUTH, ARE TASSIMO DISCONTINUING THEIR COFFEE MACHINE SALES IN CANADA?

According to the below tweet from Tassimo Canada, it would appear that they have discontinued sales of Tassimo machines in Canada.

 

Kirk G

 

@KiloKirk

·

Feb 23, 2019

 

Replying to

@TASSIMOCanada

and

@MFriedenthal

Why is their no brewers for sale any more in any BC Canada ?

 

 

1

 

 

 

1

 

 

 

 

 

 

TASSIMO Canada

 

@TASSIMOCanada

·

Feb 25, 2019

 

Hi Kirk, we're sorry we've discontinued selling Tassimo brewers in Canada, there weren't enough consumers buying them to support production. Thank you for your interest in Tassimo, good day!

So there you have it, Tassimo have pulled the plug in Canada, following poor sales. 

 

 

 

 

We have a Tassimo coffee maker. What will we do about this?

• Probably stock up on the disks we like.
• Eventually switch to Keurig (or Nespresso?)

Why did Tassimo lose? Here's what I wrote back then:

[O]ver time, Tassimo might well fade unless they do several things:

1. license other brand names to manufacture and distribute Tassimo-compatible machines.
2. develop methods for people to fill their own disks with their own coffee blends.
3. Aggressively seek even more licensing with additional major coffee brands.
4. And this one is minor but a constant annoyance: print the type of coffee on the top of each box. In the second photo above [in the original post], you can see that I have written the name of what is inside on the top of the box. Doing so is a nuisance that could be readily solved by printing the name there as the boxes are printed and assembled.

 

 

[O]ver time, Tassimo might well fade unless they do several things:

1. license other brand names to manufacture and distribute Tassimo-compatible machines.
2. develop methods for people to fill their own disks with their own coffee blends.
3. Aggressively seek even more licensing with additional major coffee brands.
4. And this one is minor but a constant annoyance: print the type of coffee on the top of each box. In the second photo above [in the original post], you can see that I have written the name of what is inside on the top of the box. Doing so is a nuisance that could be readily solved by printing the name there as the boxes are printed and assembled.

The Tragedy of the Commons among "Sharing, Caring Elites"

This year and last year I participated in an international convention for The Urban Economy Forum, both as a speaker and as a member of the steering committee.

Last year, not knowing what I was getting into, I prepared a 20-30 minute presentation, only to learn a few days in advance that I would have only ten minutes for my presentation.

The morning of the opening presentations started very late. And then every single speaker took more than their allotted time. By the time we got to my session, I was cut back to only 3 minutes, much to my dismay.

This year, I moderated one session and spoke at another, all via Zoom.

The session I moderated involved mayors and urban planners. They were each allotted ten minutes. One of them actually stayed within the time limit. The rest of them "cheated", some going over the limit by five or more minutes. The implication from their attitude was that they believed that what they had to say was SO important, they should talk longer. [note: I did not have control of the mute function, and I'm not sure I'd have felt free to use it if I'd had it...]

The same thing happened with session on which I was making a presentation with the addition that the moderator went well beyond his allotted time as well.

This is a good example of The Tragedy of the Commons.

The tragedy of the commons is a situation in a shared-resource system where individual users, acting independently according to their own self-interest, behave contrary to the common good of all users by depleting or spoiling the shared resource through their collective action. 

A classic example is overfishing when there are no restrictions on how many fish people can catch. Fishers take too many fish from the common pool, thus making things worse for all fishers.

In the case of conferences when speakers are left on their own merit and integrity to honour the speaking limits, it's the same thing. As the early speakers run over time, those near the end have less time (analogous to catching fewer fish). Transaction costs are high, cheaters can't easily be reined in.

Every one of the speakers would think they were caring and sharing people. And yet also, every speaker also knows they are part of the elites, people who, in their own minds, should plan and control and design for the future. In their minds, they are entitled to more time because of their status.

But it doesn't matter who thinks who is entitled to what. What matters, for this post, is that when property rights (to time slots, in this case) are not enforced, people, even those who think they are decent folk, will cheat (de facto) and take more for themselves.

Clearly The Urban Economy Forum needs to learn some way to avoid this "Tragedy of the Commons" for future meetings.

Maybe in the future, speakers should have to obtain "fishing" licenses?

Clean-out-the-Fridge Crustless Quiche

If you're like us, there are times you buy more perishable foods than you can use up before their expiration dates (the best of intentions....). Yesterday we realized we had quite of few things we wanted to use up, and so we made some crustless quiches.

Ingredients:

• one dozen eggs
• 6 cups of half-and-half
• half a stick of butter (melted)
• one floret of broccoli (cut up)
• one package of sliced cremini mushrooms
• a dozen asparagus stems, (cut up)
• three stems of green onions (cut up)
• one large onion (diced)
• one and a third packages of Tex-Mex shredded cheese
• twelve slices of jalapeno-Havarti cheese
• thirteen slices of processed mozzarella cheese
• one huge package of Ziggy's sliced pepperoni

Whip up the dozen eggs with a whisk.

While someone else is doing that and adding the half-and-half, along with the melted butter to the bowl, spray-oil three square tinfoil (or other) pans.

and fry up all the veggies (we pre-cook the asparagus and broccoli in the microwave):

While the veggies are simmering, spread some sliced pepperoni on the bottoms of the pans.

and then parcel out the fried veggies on top of the sliced pepperoni. In the above photo, you can see the bowl of the egg-cream-butter mixture on the side.

 

Cover everything with gobs of shredded Tex-Mex cheese.

Then add another layer of pepperoni slices, followed by some processed mozzarella cheese (I love what everyone else calls 'plastic cheese', but then I was raised thinking Velveeta was the only cheese in existence).

Carefully ladle the egg-cream mixture onto the food in the pans and let is sink and soak all the way down.

We had a bit too much, so I quickly spray-oiled a little round dish for the surplus.

Place squares of the jalapeno-Havarti cheese on top of each pan. But we put plastic cheese on the little round dish.

Bake them one hour at 350F on baking sheets (in case they spill). And WOW!!! Fantabulous!!!

Two of the square pans and the little round dish have ended up in the freezer. The rest? Lunch today and lunch again tomorrow!