Tag: critique

  • Kavanaugh the Conservative

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Last night President Trump nominated Merrick Garland to fill the seat left by Anthony Kennedy. Just kidding. But he is up for a vote in the Senate. Also just kidding. No, instead, President Trump nominated a very conservative judge for the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh. How conservative? Well, FiveThirtyEight explained in a piece that plotted…

  • Still a Loyalist

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    As most of you know, I am what would have been called a loyalist. That is, I disagree with the premise of the American Revolution. People often mistake that as saying I think Americans should be British. No, although I personally would not mind that. Instead, America would likely have been a lot more like…

  • Going Over (But Actually Under)

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Late last week I was explaining to someone in the pub why the World Cup matches are played beyond their 90 minute booking. For those among you that do not know, basically the referees add up all the stoppage time, i.e. when play stops for things like injuries or people dilly dallying, and then tack…

  • The London Job Exodus

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Brexit is bad for Britain. Here is some proof from an article by Bloomberg that looks at where London-based banking jobs are headed post-Brexit. Spoiler alert, not elsewhere in Britain. The article purports to be more of a tracker in that they will add on data about jobs moving places when news breaks. But I…

  • The Evolution of the S&P 500

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    I found myself doing a bit of summer cleaning yesterday and I stumbled upon a few graphics of interest. This one comes from a September 2016 Wall Street Journal article about the changes in the S&P 500, a composite index of American stocks, some of the 500 largest. In terms of the page design, if it were not…

  • For Whom to Root

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    The World Cup continues. Well for a few teams. Some have already been eliminated from the Round of 16. But for those Americans rooting for Team America, well, if you have not yet figured it out, you got knocked out well before the World Cup even started by…Panama. And so you are stuck in the…

  • World Cup Match Probabilities

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    The World Cup has had some impressive matches and some stunners. (And the two are not mutually exclusive.) But if you are like me and have to work during most of the broadcasts, how can you follow along? Well thankfully FiveThirtyEight put together a nice statistical model that provides the probability of a team winning—or…

  • When the Whole Is Less Than the Sum of its Parts

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Last week we talked a lot about trade—and we will get back to it. But the World Cup is now in full swing and I want to take a look at a couple of things this week. But to begin, the Economist published an article about the difficulty of predicting the outcome of World Cups.…

  • Trade with Canada

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Yesterday we looked at trade with China. Today, we look at Canada, allegedly ripping off America. But what does the data say? Thankfully the Washington Post put together a piece looking at just that topic. And it uses a few interesting graphics to explore the idea. The easiest and least controversial graphic is that below,…

  • Tariffs and Trade with China

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Following up on yesterday’s post about the facts on tariffs, today we look at an article from Politico that polled voters on their feelings about trade and trade policy. Now the poll dates from the beginning of June and unfortunately a lot of things have changed since then. But, the data overwhelmingly supports the conclusion…