My Supposed Hubris

I do macroeconometrics, if pushed to define one of my research areas. This is a classic area for criticism by those towards the right of the political spectrum, not least Arnold Kling. Kling has an essay entitled Science of Hubris, in which he carries out his usual attack on what he calls scientism, i.e. any attempt to put really precise numbers on things that we can't be precise about. In Kling's mind, we just can't be precise about any kind of economic aggregate, notably GDP, or investment, because there's just too much going into them, and these aggregates are made up of very different things too.

So essentially, he dismisses the entire field of applied macroeconomics because statistical agencies aren't able to add things up particularly well, and because, well, economists shouldn't be thinking in such broad terms; they should only be thinking at the microeconomic level. Those who practice is, apparently, are the very epitome of hubris; that is, to have "excessive pride or self confidence" as my Mac's Dashboard dictionary tells me.

Of course, anyone who puts their head up above the parapet is liable to accusations of hypocrisy, but folk like Kling at EconLog, and Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek are remarkable examples of precisely this. Kling and Boudreax (and others on their respective blogs) have remarkable confidence in one thing, and one thing only: The price mechanism in a fully free market. They are scornful and incredibly bitingly sarcastic (esp. Boudreaux) of those who dare to suggest anything otherwise, who dare to imagine that government intervention could possibly be a useful thing. To be that requires a heck of a lot of hubris, from what I can see.

And it's not limited to that; Russ Roberts and David Henderson at EconLog had a number of posts about Ideological Turing Tests, and how those on each side of a debate characterise the other, declaring (of course), that those on the right, those nearer to the libertarian school of thinking, were much better than those anywhere else on the spectrum at accurately describing the position of their opponents. Then just today, a post about confidence, where the application is not to Austrians with their remarkable over-confidence in the price mechanism in many inappropriate contexts but, yes, you guessed it, Keynesians (or at least, their crude caricature of them). Utterly stunning the amount of times I think about pot calling kettle when I read Hayekian/Austrians on their blogs.

But back to macroeconometric models. What I struggle to understand is this. If an econometric model is built that happens to include all the relevant explanatory variables for an aggregate variable (e.g. inflation) such that the residuals are white noise, then to all intents and purposes, that aggregate variable has been explained. A humble presentation of such a model would not make bold predictions about the future (forecasting is entirely different to macroeconometrics), but would instead make suggestions at what had been learnt from this exercise. But Kling and those in his camp would disregard it entirely.

Kling et al suggest that one of the most dangerous things about Keynes and his teaching was that he let loose governments and convinced the common man that there was intellectual rigour behind their own whims and desires. Equivalently though, via their scepticism of absolutely everything other than what they previously believed in, Kling et al promote an unhelpful atmosphere of scepticism through which genuine academic progress is hindered - all because of their ideology rather than any desire to be scientific in their pursuit of knowledge.

What is the point of Libertarian Economists?

What useful function to they perform? Economics is a practical discipline, studying the allocation of resources by (semi) rational agents in the context of conflicting interests. On of the agents that will always exist is the government - it's fair to say few examples of anarchy have succeeding, for whatever reason (man's desire for power and to control, probably mostly).

The mere existence of that government will mean that there will be an incentive for some to lobby it to further their interests - creating laws, tariffs, imposing taxes, whatever it may be.

So, what is more useful: Libertarians, who spend their entire time talking about how corrupt, inefficient and a pure waste of space government is, or other economists who attempt to study the nature of the beast for what is it, and try to devise the best possible solution given that government will always exist and hence incentives to manipulate government will always be there?

Libertarians, who essentially just sit on the side bleating on about how terrible things are, or other economists who actually try and understand the nature of these interactions in order that they may, in the future, reduce the problems of crony capitalism? In response to what I think the latter group of economists do, libertarians would provide some pithy quote from Hayek about how because of information constraints, it is silly of us to think we can design things better. How lame is that? This essentially lumps libertarians in with folk like Creationists who try to get in the way of learning more about the world around us.

I think you know where I stand. I think this is the aspect of libertarians that irritates me most of all - their lack of a constructive alternative that could constitute a stable equilibrium.

I should really stop....

...however, I do keep reading blogs by libertarians. Here's one, where Arnold Kling describes another economist as using the "stupidest argument for stimulus". Apparently, that argument is that teachers are being laid off, and it's stupid because schools could instead be reducing salaries for teachers instead, if they valued these teachers so highly.

Now, of course Kling is averse to just about any argument in favour of fiscal stimulus because he is averse to just about any argument for government intervention it would seem (because the market always performs better - despite unending amounts of economic theory and empirical evidence to the contrary).

However, I think most of all it's just inconsistent of him. He says it's stupid because in economics there's always another way. Yet I suspect that when faced with the assertion "the deficit needs cutting", he wouldn't describe statements like "we must cut spending if we're going to cut the deficit" as stupid, even though perfectly equally, we could raise taxes to cut the deficit.

Maybe I'm just stupid, but I don't see what the difference is, and why Kling is also not advocating the stupidest of arguments, just because there is another perfectly reasonable way to do the same thing.

The Beveridge Curve

Inspired by a few things, I had a little look into the Beveridge Curve recently.  As the links will show, in the US something curious has happened to the Beveridge Curve since around the middle of 2008.  It appears to have shifted right dramatically:

Some of the commentators in the links have asserted that the change happened after the US government extended the duration of unemployment benefits, although others have noted that even taking into account the theoretically most generous impact of this duration change would not explain all of the movement.

David Andolfatto appears to be on to something, comparing this shift in the Beveridge Curve to previous shifts in Beveridge Curves towards the end of recessions.

I've done a couple of things. First I've looked into the data.  If one wants to spin an unemployment benefits story, one can.  Simply put in dummy variables into a simple Beveridge curve regression; we get something like:

Here, Y is the vacancy rate, X is the unemployment rate.  Standard errors are in parentheses.  Clearly, if one wants to sell a structural break story, one can: Both the impact on the intercept (via dummy D_t) and the slopt (via the interaction of D and X) are strongly significant. The resulting regression lines look like:

Hence the intercept falls in size dramatically, as does the slop of the curve.  Had this happened, it would be really scary stuff: Much higher unemployment rates would be able to coexist with very small declines in the vacancy rate.

However, a regression such as that just run suffers from many, many econometric problems.  Not least both the unemployment rate and the vacancy rate bear all the hallmarks of non-stationary, unit-root time series, and hence a static regression of one on the other, as just carried out, could well be spurious. Additionally, there are many recognised factors that might shift the Beveridge Curve relationship, without affecting its slope.  Economically plausibly, things other than the duration of benefits may have contributed to the scatter plots observed for the Beveridge Curve.

To investigate these possibilities we must specify a model that includes a number of lags of the relevant variables, and also extends the set of relevant variables from just the unemployment rate to other variables capturing the efficiency of the matching process (the current hiring rate for example could be a proxy), the level of long-term unemployed (proxy by those unemployed over 27 weeks), the level of frictional unemployment (those unemployed less than 5 weeks), and the level of labour mobility as well as simply the level/duration of benefits and the level of productivity and labour costs.  This means a very large regression model.

However, one can employ an automatic model selection procedure called Autometrics (in OxMetrics 6) to help. This software is based on the General-to-specific methodology of Sir David F. Hendry and seeks to select the simplest possible model from an initially large model with many candidate explanatory variables.  Such a procedure of model selection would actually find that the 2008 US legislation change to extend unemployment benefits was entirely uninformative for explaining the evolution of the Beveridge Curve, and would actually find a curve with a slope somewhere in-between the two found above, but a curve that is shifting left and right with labour mobility, with long-term unemployment and other factors. I'll save you the details, but I'm writing it up currently, and just plot you the following to give you some idea what was found:

The black line is the Beveridge Curve found after the more detailed econometric investigation allowing for factors that shift the Beveridge Curve. Hence one can see that without these additional variables we have not necessarily identified the Beveridge Curve just by eye-balling the scatter plot. We need to do serious econometric analysis based on economic theory, helpfully augmented by Autometrics, if we are to understand more of what is going on.

However, if you are simply informed by plots and not complicated econometric analysis, an alternative consideration of a scatter plot of the vacancy level and unemployment level in the UK over roughly the same time period may be more persuasive of the idea that it is not unemployment benefits causing what we've seen recently (since there has been no similar increase in the duration of benefits):

All in all, I'm going for the "it's not a structural break caused by the duration of benefits" story, along the lines of that proposed by David Andolfatto.

Surprising and unsurprising

John B. Taylor has long been associated with monetary policy after his contributions to the field, most obviously encapsulated in the Taylor Rule.  However, it would sound like he's heading in the direction that Paul Krugman took of getting so mired in politics that one seriously has to call into question his academic integrity.  In this defence of a package to cut government spending, he says on the idea that cutting government spending might cause the economy to contract: "Nothing could be more contrary to basic economics, experience and facts"

Really?  The basic economics that people tend to make use of when making suggestions that cutting government spending might just have a negative effect on the economy is national accounting identities which say that part of aggregate spending is government spending.  The experience?  Well, most economies that have tried it when they haven't had some positive external shock to help them (so we're talking currently of the UK and Ireland at the minimum, and many more could be found I'm sure).  Facts?  Well we've just noted a basic economic model, and given a few experiences to counter Taylor.

But of course, according to Taylor, we're just wrong, plain wrong.  That's because he's basing what he says on some model that assumes immediate crowding in when governments reduce spending (in the absence of any evidence for such an effect - but Taylor says these models are more modern so that means they must be right!).  Well how about that.  A model which assumes that a fiscal contraction will be expansionary finds just that.  Mindblowing.  And to think people get disillusioned with economists.  So in the US, this bill will pass, and sure enough growth won't follow, just like we're seeing in the UK currently.  No wonder people like Krugman despair so much...

 

What Did They Expect?!

It seems both Nick Clegg and David Willetts are surprised and disappointed that universities are thinking about charging the full £9000 they are allowed to charge students for an education under the Coalition's reforms.

Duh!  You cut off university funding, and allow them to make it up by charging fees and then you're surprised they do that?!

Willetts's comments are bizarre - these universities may get caught out?  Well duh!  Of course they might, you're making it a marketplace!  Then they'll change when they realise, instead of being told what to do by government...

Nick Clegg's comments though take the biscuit - it's not up to the universities what fees they set?!  I thought that was the entire point of the reform? Seems like a very confused man these days Nick Clegg...

Blog Resurrection

So it turns out that the link in the previous post no longer works. I left Oxford University and now I am employed by the University of Birmingham - although they don't give me webspace so I have to buy my own.  Running a blog on my website though has turned out to be cumbersome, whereas these web based things are much more flexible and easy. And now I have a nice app from the Google Chrome Store to cumulate all my blogs into one window, well it's never been easier.

I probably have too many blogs, but I don't have one where I can simply write about anything, so that's what I think I'll resurrect this one for.  I'm an avid reader of many blogs via Google Reader, and hence I often feel the need to comment, but don't know whether I really have an appropriate blog on which to do that commenting, so here goes...

New blog address

I'm moving my blog to: http://www.economics.ox.ac.uk/students/james.reade/J_James_Reades_Website/Blog/Blog.html, hope you can head there instead of here, as I don't intend on writing any more stuff on here (at least until I change my mind again).

The role of economic theory

I'm nearing the end of three conferences in various parts of Europe (it's a hard life being an academic at times), and the mix of papers at these conferences has meant that I've listened to a lot of papers that are purely theoretic, and a lot of papers that are purely empirical, and some others that are somewhere in between.

Being an applied person myself, my initial reaction to purely theoretical papers is: what's the point? For a paper to be of any use, my first thought goes, it must be empirically validated.

Of course, the problem here is, can a theory be empirically validated? And the answer is, a lot cannot. I listened to a paper this morning by Gerhard Illing on 'dancing banks', asking about the effect of bailing banks out that are failing in times of financial turmoil. This kind of people, theoretical in nature, cannot really be empirically validated, unless it so happened that some country already operated the kind of regime that Illing proposes, and another didn't.

Perhaps he could get hold of data for different countries, and try to measure how likely each country was to bail out its failing banks, and then get data on the amount of liquidity at various points in inter-bank financial markets, and try to come to some conclusions. However, measuring how likely a country is to bail out its banks is very hard indeed: it doesn't happen too often, and the actions of countries usually differs from words, as no government will say it's prepared to bail out failing banks, as this would encourage reckless behaviour.

So, there's clearly a number of papers for which empirical validation is impossible, particularly papers proposing reforms in governance, and other prescriptive papers.

This doesn't excuse papers like this one on the effect of financial markets being imperfect. These Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) models make great predictions about the economy, about policy, and wider, yet rely on very flimsy relevance for the real world.

Such models claim to have "structure", and this is their great claim in the light of the Lucas critique of 1976, which pointed out that simple regression models may be undone in structural change because underlying parameters, such as those of personal preferences of individuals, change.

But what if these models have the wrong structure? Then they are no better than what came before, and no more illuminating than a simple regression model. And do they? For one thing, they assume a representative agent: i.e. everyone is the same and has the same preferences.

Yet in microeconomics, regression models are perfectly acceptable if they claim to explain less than 30% of the observed variance in a given data series; the reason? Unobserved heterogeneity between individuals. So if so much heterogeneity exists, precisely in the kinds of studies that the above DSGE models use to choose the important parameters for their models, how can these same DSGE models assume a representative agent?

The simple fact is, these models make far too great claims on far too important things given their total lack of empirical validation. Theory is by no means useless, it is vitally important, but when empirical validation is possible, it should be carried out.

God and politics

According to this chap in the New York Times, the presidential campaign should be godless.

However, I'm very much with the writers of the first two comments (Bob S and Peter Kerry Powers). Why should religion be a private thing?

Certainly secularism, and in particular materialism, are anything but private: you deserve this, go on, treat yourself, etc., abound in the adverts. Why do the gods of democracy, and consumerism, get preference over God himself?

And why, if you've got good news, or a severe warning for others that you believe is based on firm evidence, should you not tell others about it? The government in the UK has told us that using our mobile phones while driving is dangerous, is that somehow immoral of them? On what "evidence" did they make that decision to implement a law and fund numerous advertising campaigns?

On another note, it's good to see Rick Warren inviting homosexuals into his church, thankfully showing God's love to people that are still loved by God just as much as anyone else. Far better to see than the abhorrent comments from Pat Robertson and John Hagee that are cited there.

Ian McEwan and Revelation

Bit late, but last Sunday Ian McEwan, the novelist, wrote a very long article in the Guardian on prophets of doom, those who predict the end of the world.

Naturally, I had a lot of issues with the article! Not least, that it associates Christianity with people that regularly predict the end of the world. Now at first sight, that might seem a little obvious: of course that's what Christians do, isn't it? Well, just the week before, I listened to this sermon given by Julian Bidgood at St Ebbes church, and if you listen, you'll actually hear him mocking those that make such predictions, notably a chap called Michael Drosnin, who has apparently made numerous predictions about when the end will happen.

The issue is that Jesus explicitly tells Christians not to bother predicting. In Matthew 24 and 25 Jesus goes into great lengths on this, with a number of parables, not least that of the Ten Virgins, where the punchline is (25:13): "Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour". So Christians, at least those following the teachings of Jesus (which is a fairly good description of a Christian really), should not be going about making apocalyptic predictions.

Another thing that bugged me about McEwan's article is the description of the God of Old Testament in the following way: "slave-owning, ethnic cleansing, infanticide, and genocide urged at various times by the jealous God of the Old Testament". I suspect infanticide comes from the bit about Isaac in Genesis 22, which is undoubtedly quite shocking, but the point is that the infanticide doesn't actually happen, and that God was testing Abraham. Slave-owning? There's little doubt that happened in the Old Testament, as it did in the New Testament (see the search here for all references in the Bible to slavery). Yet does that mean God urged it?

The other issue is that of the God of the Old Testament somehow being the angry vengeful God, but the New Testament God being one of love, peace, happiness etc. But that just doesn't stack up. The God of the Old Testament is the same God as the God of the New Testament, and in fact, one wouldn't make sense without the other. Jesus' death and resurrection can only be made sense of by looking at the Old Testament and reading that Jesus was long predicted, to be the savour of God's people. I've heard people say that basically the Bible is the Old Testament with the answers in the back.

But enough for now, I'm not a bible scholar, and in fact I need to get on with preparing a bible study right now....

Fuel prices

So in that barometer of public opinion, a number of Facebook groups have appeared moaning about fuel prices.

They all seem to fail to notice that the rising price of fuel has little or nothing to do with the government - oil prices are rising, duh! Fuel prices have rocketed from about 80 or 90p only a few months ago to around £1.15. Now in that time, yes the government has raised fuel duty, but if I'm not mistaken, the rise was by 2p. So that leaves another 20+ pence contributed by the rising price of oil.

And really, why should the government lower the tax it puts on fuel? Why should the government encourage car usage? The answer, simply, is it shouldn't. We already use our cars far too much as it is, with everyone having a car each - the levels of congestion on the roads show that really, we don't need to use our cars any more than we already do. It's simply laziness and selfishness driving the current desire for lower fuel duties. Do we really care about the environment when it comes to the crunch? Clearly not...

And the haulage companies? All I can say is, stop moaning. I have no sympathy. There just isn't enough oil in the world to go round, and it usually works in the world that if something becomes too expensive, you adapt - you stop buying, or you move away from it. If a business isn't profitable, you move out of it. At least, that should be the response. But as Ronald Reagan once said: "The government's stance on taxation can be summed up as: if it moves, tax it, if it continues to move, regulate it, and if it stops moving, subsidise it". The government will probably end up subsidising nauseating truck drivers...

More bad news from FIFA HQ...

It seems the plan to promote mediocrity was passed "overwhelmingly" by FIFA delegates. The plan is 6+5, limit the number of foreign players in your football team to 5. One of the reasons why apparently this was a good thing was that it would help national teams do better, because now their players won't be part of big squads at the best Premiership teams.

But instead, their players will be playing against bit-part players in crummy local leagues, or lower down the English footballing pyramid, if they like the money and the English countryside. How does this help national teams around Europe and the world?

And how do we square the English representative being against it? England is purported to be the team suffering most from foreign influence, having failed to qualify for Euro 2008. Yet it's only a couple of short years since England were touted as one of the favourites (wrongly!) for the World Cup in 2006. How fickle footballing commentators are, and how good it is that (apparently) the English footballing bodies understand a bit of economics.

Economists are overwhelmingly free-trade, as Greg Mankiw points out, for a number of reasons, not just that it gives a country a share of a bigger pie, but also philosophically. And it's pretty implausible that football is somehow immune from this kind of economic analysis. The overall output of English footballers will be greater with foreign competition, in terms of goals/quality football/silverware etc., because they have to produce it to survive. And this will rub off on the national team.

Football is notoriously unpredictable (part of its appeal), and fortunes can change quickly, particularly if badly managed (by an English manager in England's case!), which has more explanatory power for England's current malaise than foreign dominance: England failed to qualify for TWO World Cups in the 1970s, when the number of foreign players in England was minuscule.

As a final aside. The economics department in Oxford is foreign dominated. My masters class had at most 10% of students being English, and the ratio doesn't improve at Ph.D or postdoc (although perhaps slightly when you get to tenured staff). Is that a cause to introduce some idiotic 6+5 rule? Supervisors must have at least 50% of their students being English/domestic?

The quality would fall drastically as the best students from around the world then could not enter Oxford, and supervisors would be forced to take on poorer quality English students. I've benefitted massively from rubbing shoulders with students from all around the world of a very high quality, something that might not otherwise have been the case had UK academia had someone like Sepp Blatter as its figurehead.

Not more...

So the BBC's done some research, and there aren't too many English players playing in the Premiership. The number has "alarmingly" dropped away this year, to 170 players. It might be worth noting this is 9 players less than 2002-03 season, something not mentioned at all in the report.

So, naturally, people talk about how we need quotas, and Sepp Blatter talks about his protectionist plan to have 5 domestic players in each team, and 6 overseas, as being the big solution. How exactly will that help? Basic economics says if you protect, you promote mediocrity. If we have quotas, yes it will mean English players will play, but will it make them any better?

The answer has to be: no. They'll play against lesser opposition. Fabio Capello's point is not really emphasised: the quantity of English players is down, but the quality is high. If we have quotas, soon we'll have the quantity, without the quality, because the players won't be tested in their domestic leagues against the best players in the world. English players will become complacent with their positions in teams because they can't be threatened by foreign competition.

Another very good point is also not picked up on, made this time by the Premier League itself. England failed to qualify for TWO World Cups in the 1970s, when the English league was filled with English players. The poor showing in the Euro Qualifiers has nothing at all to do with the number of foreign players in England. 10 were on the field in the Champions League Final last week, just to give an example.

However, FIFA appears to be pressing ahead with its protectionist plan, and disappointingly, the only argument against it that is cited is European regulations. Thank God for European competition regulations...

The infuriatingness of political correctness

Read an article on the BBC website this morning: finally someone in the Church of England is remembering that the Church believes in Christianity!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7418957.stm

I find it astonishing that the Church isn't currently proclaiming that Jesus Christ is the only way to God - the Bible says that after all, and is very clear indeed on it. But it's a sad sign of the times that this message is seen as "offensive" to some and hence withdrawn. It is offensive, there's no doubt about that. But is that a reason to withdraw it, if it is correct?

Telling people to always wear seatbelts offends some, telling them to drive at 30mph not 40 offends some, but is it therefore wrong to say it?

There's a clear danger to of death if some of these guidelines are not upheld. If someone (say, the Church!) believes in the Bible, then they believe there's a clear danger of (spiritual) death if certain things are not said - so the Church should say that - if it believes in the Bible...

And the BBC Religious Affairs editor says how the move of this Christian in the Church of England will alienate Muslims at this delicate time. What Muslims is he talking about, and talking to? Does he regularly check how Muslims feel about Christians actually believing something?

Somehow I doubt it. I am not offended by a Muslim believing something different to me, nor threatened. I'm convinced in my belief in the Bible. I seriously wonder whether those who trumpet the politically correct line about not offending people are slightly insecure in their beliefs. Why shouldn't people be challenged by the beliefs of others? I'm more than happy to be challenged by anyone who wants to challenge me, and I'm sure that would be true of many Muslims too, and a good few atheists and agnostics.

That's one big moan off my chest for the time being...

Oxonomics Blog Article

I made my debut yesterday: http://oxonomics.typepad.com/oxonomics/2008/04/does-beer-decre.html#comments

Greed, Westernisation and the Church

I've just read a piece on the new Oxonomics blog about Modernisation and Westernisation, asking whether one can be "modern", or develop the "technology, customs and institutions which might herald their own intensive growth", without also developing Western morals.  

I doubt I'll be able to coherently write my thoughts out, but I am sceptical that one can have the Western pursuit of more more more without Western lax morals, because these countries have looked enviously in the first place at the living standards in the West, and decided that they like them and want them, and this is surely only a hop, skip and a jump from greed, which dictates Western morals.

The desire to grow, grow, grow can surely only come from greed for more?  Otherwise why wouldn't we be satisfied carrying doing just as well as before?

At least, the most abhorrent displays of "Western morals" anyway - showing off flash cars etc., but these are far removed from "Christian morals" anyway, morals which are based, incidentally, on gratitude, not guilt.  Gratitude for the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ in the place of the Christian, motivating a response.  

Not particularly related, Jean-Paul Carvalho, the author, makes a suggestion which rankles with me, as a Christian and an economist, hence something like a scientist.  The "scientific and Darwinian revolutions undermined belief in a Christian God", Carvalho claims. Science explains the "how" about the universe, how it works, while Christianity gives a motivation, a "why" for it all, why are we here at all in the first place?  

There is nothing undermining about finding out more of the world that God has created, if one is a Christian - about finding the rules and regulations God set in place.  Additionally, there is nothing contradictory in God using evolution as a force in the world he created.

88%?

Here's another bit of virulent anti-Europe talk from the UK. Apparently 88% of us want a referendum on some treaty or other, some watered down bit of paper which affects us in about zero ways.

That's 88% of a 36% turn out in a poll in some marginal Labour and Lib Dem constituencies. So that's not really 88% is it? And half the people in these areas didn't recieve ballot papers...

But who to listen to on this? Some say it's watered down so much it's not worth making a fuss about, others claim it's a disastrous encroachment of our national sovereignty. Both sides are probably tweaking things a little to back up their prior positions: either very pro-Europe, or anti-Europe.

Some sensible politics from the States

So I have to admit I'm quite impressed with this Obama chap, and part of me would like to see him President. My preferences on US political parties are pretty limited by the fact I'll never vote for one or the other given I'm not American. But the kind of talk coming out of the Democrats that is anti-free trade is concerning, to put it mildly.

However, John McCain appears to be talking a lot more sense on this issue, saying it's crazy for the US to start threatening to renegotiate NAFTA or pull out.

It's certainly the case the US doesn't really practice what it preaches with regard free trade; the whole furore over steel a few years ago made that abundantly clear. And the recent fuss about Airbus being given a contract to build something for the US military has had a number of US politicians talking as if Europeans are barbarians or something. Wasn't the big criticism of Airbus that it was too protected by European governments?

Port Vale 0-3 Oldham Athletic

Yesterday morning, I realised that Oldham were playing away, but were only playing down in Stoke, which is about an hour's drive from my parents' place in North East Manchester. So, having not yet been to an Oldham match the entire season (not since I was about 10 years old have I been able to say that), I decided I would head out and take in my first match of the season!

An hour's drive later, I arrived in Burslem, some suburb of Stoke, slightly delapidated and displaying the effects of what some would say is post-industrial Britain. I paid my £4 parking, deciding it was better to do that than find some chav breaking into my car when I returned to it (as has happened before when leaving my car near Oldham's ground for a home match!).

The chap on the turnstile relieved me of £19 for the joy of watching Port Vale, marooned at the bottom of the League One table with 5 wins from 33 matches so far, against Oldham, the epitome of mediocreness - played 33, won 11, drawn 11, lost 11.

I've been to Port Vale to watch Oldham play on at least two previous occasions: one Oldham won, and another Oldham lost. Oldham's usual trait at Port Vale is to lose: Port Vale are Oldham's bogey side, as the lingo goes. In fact, in my lifetime, Oldham had won just once at Port Vale, 12 years previously (and to my distress I had been there, making me feel old).

The first thing that hit me was the lack of people in the ground to watch the game. Numbers on the internet later told me Oldham took 785 supporters there, and "swelled" the attendance to 3,700. But if I looked around stadium, it was simply a mass of empty seats. Clearly being adrift at the bottom of the table has taken its toll on Port Vale.

Then the game began, and quickly I found that Oldham supporters haven't changed too much. They still sing about how much they hate other teams, rather than how much they like Oldham. They still sing about how they hate Man United, as if it matters! We were last in the same division at Man United 14 years ago now, and the chances of it happening again in the near future are slim to zero. But still, we do really hate them, apparently.

The game was played in windy conditions, on a pretty poor pitch, making it hardly the greatest spectacle ever. But not long in, on 21 minutes, a floated ball into the area found Oldham loanee Jordan Roberton, who hit a superb volley into the net. Sadly this was at the far end of the pitch, so it was hard to see its full glory. Nonetheless, 1-0 to Oldham!

Port Vale then came into the match, and almost certainly should have levelled the scores, first when a complete mix-up between an Oldham defender and keeper Crossley left the ball rolling across goal. Thankfully another defender ran in to hoof the ball away. Secondly, another defensive melee minutes later saw the ball fall to a Vale player about 3 yards out, but his shot cannoned off a defender and on to the cross bar. Another let off.

In fact, if I ever saw a match which confirmed that when you're near the bottom, it all goes against you, this was it. Oldham's keeper pulled off a great save to deny another attempt by Vale, but the second half was almost entirely one-way traffic. Port Vale hit the post, a player of theirs twice rounded the Oldham keeper, only in one case to miss the open goal, and in another case to be crowded out by defenders. Oldham's keeper also made a number of good saves.

But to add gross insult to injury, with 13 minutes left and Oldham still hanging on to their 1-0 lead by some miracle, a long ball forward hit a Vale defender, and almost rebounded past their goalkeeper for a spectacular own goal. The keeper though responded well, and saved the unfortunate ricochet. However, in a most bizarre decision, the referee decided this was a deliberate pass back to the goalkeeper, and awarded Oldham a free kick right in front of goal!

Few people, even the Oldham fans, could quite believe it, and understandably the Port Vale fans and players were livid. I'm not sure I ever want to condone intimidation of the referee, but I could certainly understand their frustrations, having worked so hard, been so close to getting a goal and a win finally, to be undone by a seriously bad mistake by the referee must have been a hard pill to swallow.

The pill became even harder to swallow when Oldham dispatched the free kick into the bottom of the goal, via Neal Eardley, their Welsh International full back. At 2-0, the game was almost up, though still there was time for a superb double save by Oldham's keeper to deny another almost certain goal.

Into injury time at the end of the game, a long ball forward saw an Oldham substitute Wolfrenden race on to it, and delightfully loft the ball over the goalkeeper to score Oldham's third. This gave the scoreline an even harsher look for Port Vale. I've certainly never been to watch a more unfair 3-0 scoreline before, but it was pleasing for me that Oldham were on the end of some good fortune...