Category: Economy

It’s Jobless Thursday!!!!!

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Initial unemployment claims fell to below 300,000, 298000, beating expectations, though the holidays have a lot of noise in there.

More significantly, 3rd quarter GDP was revised upward by a large amount:

The U.S. economy grew faster than initially estimated in the third quarter but weak demand and a pile-up in business inventories buoyed the case for the Federal Reserve to keep up its bond-buying stimulus for now.

Gross domestic product grew at a 3.6 percent annual rate instead of the 2.8 percent pace reported a month ago, the Commerce Department said on Thursday.

It was the biggest gain since the first quarter of 2012, but inventories accounted for almost half of the increase in growth.

“The strong third-quarter growth pace masks the more subdued tone in domestic activity, and as the bloated level of inventory is worked off, we are likely to see a much softer performance in growth in the fourth quarter,” said Millan Mulraine, senior economist at TD Securities in New York.

So, what happened was that more stuff was made, but it just filled up warehouse shelves.

The holiday shopping season could be make or break for the economy.

Abenomics is Working

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If you believe, as I do, that much of the cause of the lost decade(s) in Japan is deflation/disinflation, then the news of consumer prices rising in Japan is an unalloyed good:

Consumer prices in Japan rose at the fastest pace in five years in October, suggesting policymakers’ attempts to end years of deflation are working.

Consumer prices, excluding food, rose 0.9% from a year earlier. Prices have now risen for five months in a row.

Japan has been battling deflation, or falling prices, for best part of the past 20 years.

It is seen as a major drag on its economy and policymakers have unveiled a series of measures to end the cycle.

While falling prices may sound good to those experiencing inflation, they hold back economic growth as consumers and businesses tend to put off purchases in the hope of getting a cheaper deal later on, which hurts domestic demand.

………

Japan’s central bank has set a target of achieving an inflation rate of 2%.

I think that the central bank is being too timid. I think that their target, at least over the next 2-5 years, should be more, somewhere between 4% and 6%, but the admittedly anemic 0.9% rate is better that what has been the trend for a very long time.

Austerity for Greeks, Welfare for the Germans

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Following elections, because Angela Merkel’s traditional partner, the FDP was shut out of the Bundestag, she had to form a coalition government with her traditional opposition, the SDP.

As a part of the coalition agreement she has agreed to create a minimum wage of €8.50 and a partial lowering of the retiring age to 63:

It was a “Six-Eye Negotiation” – in German, an “Unter Sechs Augen Gespraech”. Three leaders, and so three pairs of eyes, sat down together in the small hours in a private room and haggled amongst themselves, eyeball to eyeball.

 In the 185-page agreement which resulted, the Social Democrats (SPD) came away with a minimum wage of 8.50 euros (£7.10) an hour, uniformly applied across the country. The counter-argument had been that insisting on the minimum wage in the old East Germany would dent the region’s ability to attract work.

 The SPD’s chief negotiator Sigmar Gabriel also got a lowering of the retirement age and some extra public spending. That may be welcomed by those outside Germany, who have argued that the country is “beggaring its neighbours” by not increasing German spending to match the country’s amazing excess of exports over imports.

 The SPD also secured the introduction of a minimum percentage of women on German company boards.

 For her part, Chancellor Merkel got an acceptance from the SPD that its election demand of higher taxes on the rich would not happen. She also emphasised that the new government would continue to balance its budgets – there will be no move away from the belief that spending is tied to revenue.

I think that there is a fair amount consequences, some intended, and some not, to this.

First, a minimum wage of €8.50 will raise the wages of 17% of the workforce, with much of the effect in the service industry.

When one considers the impact on wages of people whose wages are just above the new minimum wage (probably about €10.00) it means that something like ¼ of the workforce will see a raise from this, which, in the long run may have negative political consequences for Merkel’s CDU.

On the other side of the political consequences, the SDP’s capitulation on higher taxes of the wealthy may play to the advantage of the left wing Die Linke, which is really the standard bearer of the democratic Socialism now eschewed by the “3rd Way” movement of the SDP in recent years.

One of the artifacts of German taxation is that it is fairly regressive, and wages of the bottom 90% have decreased in recent years:

According to a DIW study published last year, wages fell in real terms for all but the top 10 percent of earners in Germany between 2005 and 2010. This had a particularly acute effect on those earning the least. “As a rule, the lowest earners spend the highest portion of their income,” study co-author Karl Brenke explains.

Low-wage workers also end up spending a much higher proportion of their income on mandatory health insurance, as any income above €46,000 in annual salary is not subject to premium payments. Thus, while a senior engineer earning €150,000 a year is only required to pay 6.6 percent of his total income in social security contributions, a laborer who makes only a tenth as much ends up paying 20.7 percent.Low-wage workers also end up spending a much higher proportion of their income on mandatory health insurance, as any income above €46,000 in annual salary is not subject to premium payments. Thus, while a senior engineer earning €150,000 a year is only required to pay 6.6 percent of his total income in social security contributions, a laborer who makes only a tenth as much ends up paying 20.7 percent.

The collapse of the FDP was in part a reaction to this reality, as it is the most Thatcherite of the major parties.

Note also that this coalition agreement is exactly the opposite of the normal prescription to debt crises in the Euro zone: reductions in spending, increases in retirement age, and reductions in the minimum wage.

The next country to receive a demand of austerity from IMF and the Euro zone troika will likely highlight the inherent hypocrisy of such a demand.

I Guess that You Get il Papa Buono About Once Every 50 Years

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Pope Francis just went rhetorically postal on Anglo-Saxon hyper capitalism:

Pope Francis on Tuesday sharply criticized growing economic inequality and unfettered markets in a wide-ranging and decidedly populist teaching that revealed how he plans to reshape the Catholic Church.

In his most authoritative writings as pontiff, Francis decried an “idolatry of money” in secular culture and warned that it would lead to “a new tyranny.” But he reserved a large part of his critique for what he sees as an excessively top-down Catholic Church hierarchy, calling for more local governance and greater inclusiveness — including “broader opportunities for a more incisive female presence in the Church.”

………

On Tuesday, he showed a willingness to use tough language in attacking what he views as the excesses of capitalism. Using a phrase with special resonance in the United States, he strongly criticized an economic theory — often affiliated with conservatives — that discourages taxation and regulation.

“Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world,” Francis wrote in the papal statement. “This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacra­lized workings of the prevailing economic system.”

“Meanwhile,” he added, “the excluded are still waiting.”

Although Francis has previously raised concerns about the growing gap between the wealthy and the poor, the direct reference to “trickle-down” economics in the English translation of his statement is striking.

The phrase has often been used derisively to describe a popular version of conservative economic philosophy that argues that allowing the wealthy to run their businesses unencumbered by regulation or taxation bears economic benefits that lead to more jobs and income for the rest of society. Liberals and Democratic officials have rejected the theory, saying it is contradicted by economic evidence.

………

Francis’s language on the economy has been far more accessible than that of Benedict, a theologian who wrote primarily in thick books hard to untangle for the regular lay­person. And Pope John Paul II’s warnings on economic inequality were swallowed at times by his war on Communism, a far more dangerous problem in the church’s eyes because of its anti-religious bent.

John Paul II’s “war on Communism” was a reactionary war against the idea that the church was to be a countervailing force against the excesses of capitalism.

It’s nice to see that some of the less antediluvian members of the Catholic clergy managed to avoid JP II’s purges.

The French Call for Germany to Leave the Eurozone

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It’s not the French government, but it is as close as it can get without a governmental imprimatur:

Suddenly, there’s the next solution. This one is attractively presented with graphs and in simple economic terms that even a politician might understand. It’s seemingly well-reasoned and has no visible partisanship attached to it. And it came from one of the largest megabanks in France, Groupe BPCE, that hardly anyone knows.

It was established in 2009 through a government bailout and a near-simultaneous merger between the Caisse Nationale des Caisses d’Épargne and the Banque Fédérale des Banques Populaires. These vast cooperative bank networks continue to exist with their separate brands. And that’s what consumers see. BPCE has €1.15 trillion in assets and owns about 20% of the retail banking market. It’s huge.

And now, its asset management and investment banking subsidiary, Natixis, released a zinger of a study designed to influence policy. It’s titled, “On a purely macroeconomic basis, Germany should leave the Eurozone.”

Germany should get out of the way so that the remaining countries can devalue in a big way what would remain of the euro. France, Italy, Spain, Greece, etc. have always done that, one way or the other, before the euro took that nifty tool of sudden money destruction away from them. It would be the ideal solution for France.

After conceding that there may be non-economic reasons to form a monetary union, the report lays out five reasons why Germany needs to exit. But it offers an alternate solution: if Germany wants to stay, it needs to pay.

  1. Asymmetries in the economic cycles.
  2. Weakening economic ties between Germany and the rest of the Eurozone.
  3. Structural asymmetries.
  4. Different needs in exchange rates.
  5. Incapacity in the rest of the Eurozone to impose “internal devaluation.”

Read the rest.

The Echos the Rise of Fascism in the 1920s and 1930s is Chilling

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We are seeing increased violence between anarchists and neo-Nazis in Greece:

The decline of the Greek economy has had polarizing effects on the nation’s political system—and tensions are running high.

Now police in Greece are on high alert after a new anarchist group claimed responsibility for killing two members of Golden Dawn, a thuggish neo-Nazi group that has both terrorized immigrants on city streets and surged to become Greece’s third most popular political party.

The anarchist faction, calling itself the Militant People’s Revolutionary Forces, wrote in an 18-page proclamation given to local news agencies that the attack was revenge for the fatal stabbing of anti-fascist rapper Pavlos Fissas. The Golden Dawn members were shot to death outside of a party office in Athens earlier this month.

Tit-for-tat killings has led to worries more violence could follow—and the anarchists are armed. On Nov. 16, police discovered a weapon cache containing assault rifles, hand grenades and ammunition buried in a forest north of Athens, according to Jane’s Intelligence Weekly. And if weapons buried in undiscovered caches are not used against Golden Dawn, they could be turned on the police.

………

The attacks on Golden Dawn by left-wing radicals is also not without its sympathizers. Many believe that anarchists who are willing to use violence are the only effective means of defending immigrants and liberals against fascist attacks.

The anarchists’ have also received sympathy due to suspicions that Golden Dawn is colluding with some police officers—undermining the security forces’ credibility. In their manifesto, the Militant People’s Revolution Force referred to the police as the “armed dogs of the regime.”

In the interwar years, we saw similar clashes between Communists and Fascists.

Then we saw the economy crushed by bloody minded support of the gold standard, with the Bundesbank being the most emphatic in its support, and now we have the Euro and austerity with the Bundesbank being the most emphatic in its support..

My brother is right.  Europe will be at war of some sort again in my lifetime.

The Rest of Europe Begins to Realize that Germany, and Not Greece, is the Problem in the Euro Zone

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When Romano Prodi, generally known as “Mr. Euro,” says that, “Germany won’t sell another Mercedes in Europe,” it is clear that Europe’s “Very Serious People” are beginning to understand than Germany’s policy demands are fundamentally inimical to the continuing existence of the Euro Zone, and perhaps the whole EU:

The plot is thickening fast in Italy. Romano Prodi – Mr Euro himself – is calling for a Latin Front to rise up against Germany and force through a reflation policy before the whole experiment of monetary union spins out of control.

 “France, Italy, and Spain should together pound their fists on the table, but they are not doing so because they delude themselves that they can go it alone,” he told Quotidiano Nazionale

 Should Germany persist in imposing its contractionary ruin on Europe – “should the euro break apart, with one exchange rate in the North and one in the South”, as he puts it – Germany itself will reap as it has sown. “Their exchange rate will double and they will not sell a single Mercedes in Europe. German industrialists know this but all they manage to secure are slight changes, not enough to end the crisis.”

 Professor Prodi is the prime minister who prepared Italy for EMU in the 1990s, and then presided over the launch of the euro as European Commission chief.………

I would note that the German belief in their own inherent virtue and it’s destiny to dominate its neighbors has a very bad history.

Economists Finally Get a Clue

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I called for this at the start of the financial crisis, and finally many economists have begun to realize that there is such a thing as inflation is too low:

Inflation is widely reviled as a kind of tax on modern life, but as Federal Reserve policy makers prepare to meet this week, there is growing concern inside and outside the Fed that inflation is not rising fast enough.

 Some economists say more inflation is just what the American economy needs to escape from a half-decade of sluggish growth and high unemployment.

 The Fed has worked for decades to suppress inflation, but economists, including Janet Yellen, President Obama’s nominee to lead the Fed starting next year, have long argued that a little inflation is particularly valuable when the economy is weak. Rising prices help companies increase profits; rising wages help borrowers repay debts. Inflation also encourages people and businesses to borrow money and spend it more quickly.

 The school board in Anchorage, Alaska, for example, is counting on inflation to keep a lid on teachers’ wages. Retailers including Costco and Walmart are hoping for higher inflation to increase profits. The federal government expects inflation to ease the burden of its debts. Yet by one measure, inflation rose at an annual pace of 1.2 percent in August, just above the lowest pace on record.

 “Weighed against the political, social and economic risks of continued slow growth after a once-in-a-century financial crisis, a sustained burst of moderate inflation is not something to worry about,” Kenneth S. Rogoff, a Harvard economist, wrote recently. “It should be embraced.”

Low inflation favors the rentiers over the producers.

Of course, the economists, are talking about maybe moving the targeting from 2% to 3%, and I think that we should target 6%, but I’m an engineer, not an economist, dammit!*

*I LOVE IT when I get to go all Doctor McCoy!!!

What, You Mean that Gazillionaires Won’t Leave New York City for Orlando, Florida for Lower Taxes

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So not surprised.

Studies show that the idle rich do not relocate over their tax levels:

It is not news that New York’s political and media elites worship the extremely rich. You can see this when in a tough economy the New York Times publishes a “Wealth” section fronted by a how-to piece on buying Irish castles. You can see it when you hear the city’s billionaire mayor insisting that critics of wealth inequality should be quiet because they interfere with his dream to “get all the Russian billionaires to move here.” And you can see it when you behold Gov. Andrew Cuomo, D-N.Y., slamming a modest initiative to slightly increase taxes on the Big Apple’s millionaires.

Again, none of this unto itself is all that newsy because it isn’t all that new. New York’s “let them eat cake” culture has been around for a long time in a city where almost half of all residents live below or near the poverty line. However, what is news is the extent to which this wealth-obsessed environment helps strengthen the mythologies that distort economic reality.

Cuomo’s attack, in particular, perfectly illustrates this trend. Fresh off raising millions from wealthy donors for his political front group, the governor slammed Democratic mayoral nominee Bill de Blasio’s tax hike proposal, claiming it will drive Cuomo’s beloved millionaires out of the state.

“What they fear is that they’re in a place where the taxes will continually go up and there will be a ceiling and they’ll say, ‘I’m going to Florida,’” Cuomo said of the rich. “I believe that.”

Before you join Cuomo in weeping for the Manhattan fat cats supposedly forced to flee from economic persecution, remember that his story is a fantastical fact-free fable — one that conveniently serves the political interests of the aristocracy, but has nothing to do with reality.

Rich people leaving New Jersey and California actually fell after taxes rose, and the decrease in millionaires in New York happened because their wages fell after the financial crisis.

Hey, I Used to Work There!

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BAE’s vehicle manufacturing plant in Sealy, Texas is sbeing closed next year:

The U.S. subsidiary of BAE Systems Plc plans to close a military vehicle plant in Texas next year and lay off about 325 employees, the company announced.

 The facility, located about 50 miles outside Houston in Sealy, since 1990 has produced tactical wheeled vehicles for the U.S. military, including blast-resistant trucks known as Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, or MRAPs, for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Humvee replacement Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, or JLTV.

 The London-based company said industry contraction drove the decision to shutter the site by June 2014.

When I worked there in the early 1900s, it was owned by Stewart & Stevenson, and was the center of the $1.4 billion contract for the 2½ and 5 ton military trucks.

The writing for this plant was on the wall when Oshkosh Corp. managed to decode a Sealy’s sub-par drawing package and win the latest FMTV Contract.

It’s Jobless Thursday

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And the numbers suck, but as with the past few weeks, there are computer/reporting issues, so the accuracy is suspect:

Claims for U.S. jobless benefits jumped last week to the highest level in six months, providing the first statistical warning that the damage from the partial federal shutdown is starting to ripple through the economy.

 While half the increase came from California as the state worked through a backlog following a switch in computer systems, another 15,000 reflected the furlough of non-federal workers from employers losing government business, a Labor Department spokesman said as the data was released to the press. Applications (INJCJC) for unemployment insurance benefits surged by 66,000 in the week ended Oct. 5 to 374,000, the most since late March, figures from the Labor Department showed today in Washington.

Hopefully, we will start seeing some “normal” numbers in the next few weeks.

It’s Jobless Thursday

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The numbers look pretty good:

The number of Americans filing new claims for jobless benefits edged higher last week but remained at pre-recession levels, a signal of growing strength in the labor market.

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits rose 1,000 to a seasonally adjusted 308,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday.

The data could provide some of the strongest guidance this week on the health of the U.S. economy as a partial government shutdown delays the release of economic data, including the monthly employment report which was scheduled to be released on Friday.

In related news, we won’t get last month’s figures on Friday, because there literally three people left working at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Greece ……… Is ……… F%$#ed

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The leaders of the Greek Fascist Golden Dawn Partywere formally charged with assault and murder:

Nikolaos Michaloliakos, the extremists’ enigmatic leader, was said to be in his pyjamas when police surrounded his home and knocked at the door. Like his second-in-command, Christos Pappas, who subsequently surrendered, and the four MPs who were hauled before a public prosecutor on Tuesday, he stands accused of murder, money-laundering, blackmail and illegal possession of arms.

But they were almost immediately kicked loose on bail:

Three senior lawmakers from Greece’s far-right Golden Dawn were freed on Wednesday pending trial on criminal charges, an unexpected setback to the government’s efforts to clamp down on a party it has labelled a neo-Nazi criminal gang.

The decision to free the men after an 18-hour court session raises questions about the solidity of the state’s case against Golden Dawn after one of its sympathisers stabbed to death an anti-fascism rapper.

Party spokesman Ilias Kasidiaris and fellow lawmakers Ilias Panagiotaros and Nikos Michos stormed out of the court to cheers of “bravo” from supporters. They kicked and shoved journalists out of the way before hailing a taxi.

“We will not back down!” Michos shouted. “You can only stop us with bullets. Even from the grave, we will rise up – know this well!”

The parallels between a certain beer hall putsch of a failed painter are rather alarming.

The Euro looks to be doing the same job of stabilizing Europe during a depression as the mindless fixation on the gold standard of the German central bank did in the 1930s.

Supply Side Economics is a Fraud

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In interesting showing in a very concise form that the data does not support the theory of supply side economics:

The biggest political theory of the last 30 years is supply side economics. It was the basis of the policies of all Republican presidents from Ronald Reagan onward. The idea is that if the rich are given more money, they will use it to invest in business and thus create jobs. According to the theory, if you give money to the poor, they will just spend it. The rich, on the other hand, will help businesses to grow and this will help the poor.

 The idea is nonsense as anyone who has ever run an actual business should be able to explain. Businesses expand when they see a lot of demand for their products. If a computer repair business has to turn away business for lack of resources, it will hire another tech to be able to take the extra work. This is as simple a notion as there is. Now it is also the case that in rare instances, a company may see a market opportunity but not expand to meet it because they simply don’t have the start up capital to do it. Maybe expanding would require buying more property and the cost of a loan is too high. But that is a rare case. In general, businesses are demand constrained.

 But this isn’t a matter of conjecture. If businesses really acted the way that conservatives claim, then businesses should invest a lot more when profits were high compared to when they were low. That’s why I found the following graph from Dean Baker so interesting. It shows corporate profits and investment as a share of GDP since the end of World War II. The thing to notice here is that there is nothing to notice:

While correlation does not imply causation, as the saying goes, a lack of correlation does imply a lack of causation, and in this case, we have what appears to be a slight  negative correlation.

Economics is frequently called dismal science for reasons that are patently obvious, but supply side economics does not even rise to that meager standard.

It is instead a reflection of Calvinist theories of predestination, which, among other things believes that wealth and material success are indications that one is part of the “elect” and hence bound for salvation.

Calvinism believes that wealth is a (though not the only) sign of virtue, and supply side economics is an outgrowth of a philosophy that came over with the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock.

It’s an article of faith, and as such it should be accorded no more intellectual weight than the precepts of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. (Maybe less, because Pastafarians don’t want to screw it up for the rest of us.)

It’s Jobless Thursday

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The number of initial claims, 292,000, sounds good, but there were problems with the statistics:

Initial jobless claims fell to their lowest level last week since the spring of 2006, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Or not.

The reported figure, which estimated that jobless claims had dropped to 292,000, about 31,000 fewer than the week before, seemingly suggested that the economy was finally entering a self-sustaining recovery on the back of a healing job market.

The number, however, is unreliable, the government said, skewed by upgrades on two state computer systems that caused those states to underreport claims. The total number of initial jobless claims is almost certainly higher than reported, though nobody knows the scope of the mismeasurement at this point.

The data malfunction has called into question the accuracy of a major leading indicator, one scrutinized by investors, economists and policy makers alike. It also shined a light on the imperfect and often outdated systems that states and the federal government use to provide benefits to workers and cull data on the labor market and the broader economy — a situation that some experts warn might become even worse because of the $1 trillion in budget cuts spread over 10 years known as sequestration.

The Labor Department would not confirm which two states had issues or guess as to the scope of the mismeasurement. But Nevada confirmed that it had not reported complete claims data to the federal government because of a computer upgrade.

So basically, the numbers won’t mean anything until next week, when the revision comes in.

The shortened Labor Day week probably skewed the numbers too, or at least made it harder for Nevada and a state to be named at a later date to get their act together with regard to the computer update..

Krugman Nails It

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In accordance with Euro Zone requirements, France is taking steps to reduce its deficit.

The people who most strongly argue for “expansionary austerity”*, are criticizing Frances steps, and Paul Krugman rightly takes them to task:

Simon Wren-Lewis looks at France, and finds that it is engaging in a lot of fiscal austerity — far more than makes sense given the macroeconomic situation. He notes, however, that France has eliminated its structural primary deficit mainly by raising taxes rather than by cutting spending.

And Olli Rehn — who should be praising the French for their fiscal responsibility, their willingness to defy textbook macroeconomics in favor of the austerity gospel — is furious, declaring that fiscal restraint must come through spending cuts.

………

But the larger point here, surely, is that Rehn has let the mask slip. It’s not about fiscal responsibility; it never was. It was always about using hyperbole about the dangers of debt to dismantle the welfare state. How dare the French take the alleged worries about the deficit literally, while declining to remake their society along neoliberal lines?

It should be noted that Robert Mundell, known as the “Father of the Euro”, is also a big figure in supply side economics (aka Raganomics).

The Euro’s academic and intellectual roots are dominated by people who have the dismantling of the social safety net as one of their important goals.

It is therefore no surprise that they are prosecuting their agenda by using austerity as a tool to do this, but the people who have to live in the Euro are their victims.

*Much like sparkle ponies that sh%$ M&Ms, expansionary austerity does not exist.

It’s Jobless Thursday

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Initial unemployment claims rose by 5,000 to 333,000, though the less volatile 4-week moving average fell to the lowest number in almost 6 years.

Continuing claims rose slightly.

It’s not a bad report, particularly when compared to Greece, where the May unemployment number was revised upward to 27.6%:

Greece’s jobless rate hit a new record high of 27.6 percent in May, official national data showed on Thursday as the country staggers under austerity linked to its international bailout.

Record joblessness is a nightmare for Greece’s two-party coalition government as it scrambles to hit fiscal targets and show there is light at the end of the tunnel after years of unpopular tax rises and cuts to wages and pensions.

Unemployment rose to 27.6 percent from an upwardly revised 27.0 percent reading in April, according to data from statistics service ELSTAT and was more than twice the average rate in the euro zone which stood at 12.1 percent in June.

This is grim, and the two mainstream parties have absolutely failed to do anything to fix this, and it is highly unlikely that they can do what it takes, given that step one is to stand up to German politicians spinning morality tales.

That leaves us with the left leaning SYRIZA party, or the the Fascist, nativist, and racist Golden Dawn party (see the party symbol on the right).

If history is true to form, the 1930s, it’s going to be the Fascists who win this, and given that we are already seeing Fascism lite in Hungary, this has very unpleasant historical echos.