The news is covered with such a remarkable array of nonsense that I can't really find anything to write about. The war in Israel is a tragedy, but it will end the way their wars always end. Donald Trump still lost the 2020 election. The insurrection at the Capitol on 1/6 is still an insurrection. National economic indicators are slightly off for a tiny time period, and they're still meaningless for anyone not desperately trying to make a partisan point. The Colonial pipeline has been restored, and in a week or two no one will remember it. The CDC has finally said that vaccinated people can stop wearing masks in most places.
Anyway, I was roaming around looking for something off the beaten path, when I remembered this:
"Coincident Economic Activity" is an index of economic health for each state. It's composed of four difference measures, and I don't suppose it's especially any better than other indexes that do the same thing. However, it has the benefit of being a longtime series from the Philadelphia Fed, which means it has no ax to grind.
In this case, it shows how well states have recovered from the Great Recession and then how well they've recovered from the pandemic. Among the six large states on the chart, California did the best at recovering from the recession, while Georgia has done the best at recovering from the pandemic (in the sense of getting back to its pre-pandemic level). Overall, California and Florida showed the best performance both before and after the pandemic.
There's no special point to make here. It's just something to take your mind off the news for a few seconds.
UPDATE: I got curious about which states had shown the biggest drops in economic activity after the pandemic hit. Here's the data for all 50 states:
Arkansas dropped only 3.4%, while West Virginia was down 46%. This is a pretty astonishing range of results and I'm not sure what explains it. Here's a chart that shows how well each state has recovered from the pandemic (that is, their current level compared to January 2020):
Utah comes in the best, while West Virginia still has a long way to go.
Kevin writes:
"The Colonial pipeline has been restored, and in a week or two no one will remember it. "
Bloomberg is reporting that Colonial paid the ransom. I'm waiting for confirmation, but if it's true, I find it deeply disturbing.
The federal government has surprisingly little leverage over private companies in this case. Perhaps we need a federal law that prohibits companies from paying ransoms.
Although Colonial is a private company, I regard this as an attack on our national infrastructure. A vigorous response is required.
> Perhaps we need a federal law that prohibits companies from paying ransoms.
Perhaps we need a federal law that prohibits CEOs from making stupid decisions, but there aren’t enough jails ....
Is a corporation free to pay a ransom to the Taliban or ISIS? Or would that be considered material support to a terrorist organization? There are people who are serving long prison sentences for giving material support to terrorists.
“The company paid the hefty ransom in untraceable cryptocurrency”
Well, at least I finally have an understanding as to what cryptocurrency is good for.
Coinbase!
How low can you go?
Ransomware...
What a hacker know!
They did; the decryption tool was too slow, so they resorted to using backups to restore. They paid $5M in Bitcoin for nothing. Well, not nothing -- they probably bought off the hackers who had their data and was ready to publish it.
Most companies end up paying.
Are individuals prohibited from paying a kidnapping ransom? If not why should a company be forced to not pay when its systems are hijacked? Or do you feel such a company should be forced to go under?
Corporations go under as the result of their own incompetence every day. Failing to secure your operations from a cyber attack is incompetence.
Maybe that libertoid "creative destruction" stuff isn't so cool when your company is getting is the one getting it.
And under some circumstances, individuals are prohibited from paying a ransom to a known terrorist organization. I regard these cybercriminals as terrorists.
Are we sure about which line is New York and which line is California?
I don't know this guy is a Trump supporter, I just know it's true,
https://old.reddit.com/r/IdiotsInCars/comments/nbf59k/idiot_in_hummer_filled_5_gas_cans_expecting/
Note how Hawaii is second-worst in the nation in recovery. But, if you read/watch the local news, they're less concerned about the economic recovery starting too late and more about avoiding the type of surges all other states had. The vaccine "passport" is currently only for interisland travel, but it will eventually open up to the rest of the country and world. That'll be the big step forward in recovery.
> Arkansas dropped only 3.4%, while West Virginia was down 46%. This is a pretty astonishing range of results and I'm not sure what explains it.
Hawaii, Nevada, and Michigan kind of give it away. Tourism.
The Ransom was cheap....a regrettable but necessary evil in this instance, me thinks.
More to the point, there has been federal regulation in reference to cyber security for the electrical grid, but the pipeline lobby has continuously refused in these regards.
Sometimes Government Oversight is a good thing...see also Boeing doing a regulatory capture of the FAA and those tragic...business as well as human results.
As to a deep dive into the lobbing, etc, please see the provided Bloomberg link
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-12/u-s-pipeline-watchdog-has-6-staff-no-cybersecurity-regulations?srnd=premium&sref=MIcoSLsi
Best Wishes, Traveller
YrY growth in the NYC area gonna surge.
The blue "US" bar is weirdly far to the left in the first chart. The only hefty economy to its left is "TX". "CA" sticks down farther below "US" than "TX" is above it. Something is clearly wrong with this dataset.
The "Recovery" dataset looks much better. There are fewer states to the right of the US bar than those to the left, but their cumulative shortfalls are visually comparable to those to the left and include "CA", "IL" and "NY".
Along those lines, it would be a great thing if the width of the bar was an indication of the state's GSP. That way any overall inaccuracies would be immediately visible, because the US bar should be the mean of all the other bars.
Grant, the US bar would be one tubby component.....
I was going to point out the same thing. California , New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois all down in the 20-30% and more area, how is the national down only
6% ? Something is wrong somewhere.
I’m not going to spend more money this year just because last year was bad.
Kevin drum asked a while back what we would do about the awful republicans. I look at the Arabs rioting in Israeli cities and think... well that’s one option. This is what people do when confronted with an oppressive government.
"There's no special point to make here."
Well, one point is that "socialist" CA, as the Trump base would say, is having its economy destroyed by socialism. The chart sort of shows the opposite.
This reminds me of when I have visited Scandinavian countires. They have a lot more governemnt and taxes than we do, but their economies buzz along just fine.
Can't Congress recombine the Virginias to reverse a historical quirk from the Civil War, in return for giving statehood to DC? It would mean not having to find a place for a 51st star on the flag, with the bonus of not having to read about Joe bleedin' Manchin every day.
The Virginias are very different places, but combining the Dakotas would be pretty reasonable. There are only two of them because Republicans wanted two more votes in the Senate.
But you'd have to get the Dakotas to agree to it, they'd have to alter their constitutions to allow it, and you'd have to pass an amendment to the US Constitution.
Still on the keep South Dakota but partition North Dakota between Minnesota & Montana.
Also split Idaho between Washington State, Oregon, Wyoming.
Make Puerto Rico a state, & amend the Constitution to allow Washington, D.C., the U.S. Virgins, Guam, & the Northern Marianas to have their own voting House members (rather than observers). (Also give USVI, Guam, & Northern Marianas three electoral votes each.)
This will leave the Senate at 100 members, but reconstitute it. GQP Battle Royale in Montana, but growth in Minnesota. Washington gets bluer, Oregon marginally redder (but Boise ensures two Dem senators, still), & Wyoming sees no change.
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