Bugs

I'm glad to know you're up to speed on this. I am not very familiar with the logic of economics, at least on the abstract side. You hear the word 'Ponzi scheme' thrown about a bit, a generic insult amidst the jargon. This article explores how it is happening, which is new to me. From the article: Correct me if I am wrong, but honest loans are not inflationary. It's when the government buys the loans itself that inflation occurs. The US Fed has bought $286 billion, and that's the motor for inflation if not properly handled. The cash that bought those bonds now likely sits in banks, as deposits, and these banks now have the possibility of lending out $trillions to the public. Except it isn't just $286 billion, it's (226+704)= $930 billion, in round numbers, a $trillion. Twelve zeros. A million $million. It's hard to absorb what that really means, but it enables the banking system to float a huge amount of credit. A figure approaching the whole GNP of the USA for a year! The USA is hiding the scale of its 'quantitative easing', it's three times as big as they admit to. It's staggering -- at least to me. ================================= I have watched Bernanke, Gleitner, and these people with incredulity. What has perplexed me is their confidence. How can they possibly know they're doing the right thing? What I come to is the realization that they have done this before ... not at this scale, of course, but I suspect that we now know why the high-tech bubble went away so easily. The overly cheap money started to flow. I have no doubt that a lot of this stuff was done then, and they think they can make it work again, this time at a global scale.

Yes, that's what I am saying. All the Democratic candidates, in both 2004 and 2008, aligned themselves to be in a position to surf on the wave of anti-war feelings that were bound to emerge after the initial enthusiasm for war waned -- and that anti-war sentiment never emerged, outside the media and a small hard-core. Kerry tried to capitalize on his 'service' to be a critic of the war, but the issue never had any traction. In the end, his reputation was harmed. Obama never took on the war, although he was perfectly positioned to. Katrina did more to destroy the Bush presidency than either of his wars. It's just a fact.

Who's buying all that US debt? Good question. The amount of money needed to be borrowed by the US government has tripled to over $2 trillion. The interest rate on offer is zero per cent. As the article says " ... [t]here have been no failed auctions, no sovereign defaults, no downgrades of debt and no significant increase in rates: not so much as a hiccup in the treasury market. Knowing what we discussed this past June, we have to ask how it all went so smoothly. After all, it was pretty obvious that there wasn’t enough buying power to satisfy the auctions under ‘normal’ circumstances." So, who are the suckers? That is the question the article undertakes to answer. But this doesn't help much. The Treasury does identify these buyers as "... individuals, government-sponsored enterprises, brokers and dealers, bank personal trusts and estates, corporate and non.-corporate businesses ...", certainly vague enough. Where, one wonders, would these groups get another $700 billion to invest in zero interest bonds? Bear in mind that this enormous “household” investment was made outside of money market funds, mutual funds, ETF’s, life insurance companies, pension and retirement funds and closed-end funds, which are all separate reporting categories. The answer? There you have it folks ... the US government is running a Ponzi scheme ... and we all know what happens to them, don't we? Comments?

I found, to my surprise, that I had surprisingly negative associations with both Gore and Bush ... and I thought I liked Bush more than that. And who can hold it against Rod Blogdogovich (and his equally delightful wife) who sets the pace when it comes to sheer 21st century hutzpah?

First of all, thanks for responding in such a patient way. You should know I am a Canadian, and I thought I was defending Americans from a Brit who cruises through here to treat us like 'colonials'. I applaud the resistance that mainstream Americans are showing, and I am cheered by it. It isn't that I mind government medicine. It's that the way this is being shoved down people's throats that makes me cheer the resistance. My point about the American way of medical care is that working people do have a pretty good idea about the tradeoffs in different plans, what's covered and what isn't, and what it all costs. You're right, Medicare and Medicaid recipients are getting government medicine already -- but working people generallyt are not. Even so, you saw those people at the Town Hall meetings, and it was clear -- they had specific, well understood questions that he politicians couldn't answer! That is hard to imagine happening in any country where medicine is socialized. Interestingly, these medicare patients feel threatened by the new legislation. What does that tell you? The problem with government medicine isn't that people think it's free ... some do ... usually those in the lower pay brackets ... the real problem is that people think they paid for heathcare, and they want to collect what they already paid for. (If they knew how much government medicine took out of their paycheck, they'd probably be dreaming up ways to change their sex at public expense, too ... just to feel it's been worth it.) And, of course, the costs of the system are skyrocketing ... hey, nobody is spending their own money ... and they all feel they paid a lot, at the same time ... the patients feel they're playing catch-up.

This light-hearted romp takes us through some of the lighter, more heart-warming parts of the 'aughts' -- including a younger Al Gore's passionate kiss of Tipper ... the kind of thing I thought we quit seeing when Al quit wearing big fat white belts and white shoes ...

Krauthammer gets it. This is one of his best bits, where he decries the American president's passivity, after Ahmedinijad had spit in his eye, and Iran lurches towards a bomb. Surely, under the circumstances, supporting the people of Iran in their stuggles is the best path to a regime change? Who can be against that? Yet Obama says little with any force in it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohF2NayTNAA Comments?

I can feel your disappointment. Let's talk about the way it really is. For a nation to gain entry to the United Nations, it has to swear to uphold the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Check it out for yourself. http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/ Does it ever strike you as strange that the so-called World Court wants to arrest George W. Bush, but they don't even look at Rwanda and Burundi? (the Rwandans have run a 'Truth and Conciliation Commission', and have oodles of evidence, and they are trying earnestly to get the World Court's attention. It's futile. Think of all the people they ignore. Why does Mugabe get a pass? Or any of the unimpeachably piggish tyrants that blight Africa? It's worse than that. The UN Human Rights Commission, before it was reformed, elected the Sudan to its Chairmanship. And, you know, the Sudan is one of the last places in the world where you can buy a human being, as a slave, and it's all kosher. That's what the 190-whatever member states of the UN General Assembly think ... and almost none of them comply to the UN Universal Declaration as well as we do. If they took that requirement seriously, how many nations would be members of the UN? The only nations that think the Universal Declaration applies to them are North America, western Europe, and a smattering of other nations around the world such as India. Maybe 15 nations. In realpolitik, these courts have NO JURISDICTION. What makes these 'human rights' legally enforceable in Canada? It's a serious question -- if American law were enforceable in Canada, you'd shit a brick. What is the source of legitimacy for the UN's intrusion into our sovereign space? None of these requirements were in our criminal code. It comes from a foreign place, in the form of a requirement that we conform to a foreign practice. But put that aside -- in fact, Human Rights zealots routinely violate existing legal procedures rooted in common law and ancient practice. When Pinochet was arrested, it was on warrants submitted in a Spanish Court, that held him in England for 'crimes' committed in Peru while he was the head of state. None of that could have happened before -- in fact, Pinochet was a precedent-setting case. It's clear that the idea of 'jurisdiction' has disappeared. Until now, what an elected head of state did to his own population was a domestic matter, and would never be a crime. On the very same weekend that Pinochet was arrested, another dictator, Fidel Castro, was actually in Barcelona, being honored. Castro is worse that Pinochet in every respect, and he lacks Pinochet's decency in turning a prospering economy to an elected government, and retiring. (Perhaps it's because the economy got nothing but worse all the time Fidel was in control.) What I am getting to is that International Human Rights only apply to us. Nobody expects Afghans not to commit war crimes. Nobody expect Bashir not to torture. Nobody expects honest elections in Zimbabwe. Nobody expects the Chinese to presume people's innocence in their trials. Nobody expects the rights of property to be secure in Russia. It's a weapon.

I think you misread the American people. Are you from England? Let me give you how I saw the election. The Republicans went into the election bearing the odium of the Bush presidency. In the end, Bush was at roughly the same levels of support as Dick Nixon at the time of his impending impeachment. Even the Republicans turned their back on Conservatism, and selected McCain, a 'liberal hawk'. And then, the terrible bank collapse happened in the heat of the campaign, in September, when McCain was (surprisingly) still neck-and-neck with Obama. Obama didn't do as well as he really should have, under the circumstances. The other thing is that race was a positive factor for Obama. He won without even outlining a philosophy or a program. (He still hasn't.) No white candidate could have won on his platform. His political ideas are all the things that were rejected when Carter was thrown out of office. The election was decided by people who didn't want to vote Republican, but couldn't find much reason to vote for Obama. You have to understand that the media is 100% in the bag for Obama. Only now, a year into a disastrous administration, are criticisms coming to the surface. You have to get your information from the blogs. I am chuckling, thinking of you saying this while folks in England have to hoist Gordon Brown on their shoulders as a national leader. The American people were disgusted by George W Bush because of his spending, because of what was felt to be a deceitfulness. The other thing they didn't like was his stand on immigration, and his performance on Katrina. The war was never a factor, and it even hurt Kerry. But Obama is now doing exactly what Bush was doing -- most of the time. In fact, they say Obama is Bush on steroids. Is it any wonder that people are coming to detest him? Thousands of Americans are in the streets virtually every weekend, quietly talking to people, and putting names on lists, all around building a movement to resist the spending on a non-partisan basis. (The Tea Party people.) These people, mainstream people from the 'Red states' are largely agreed on that. Healthcare will produce another wave of protesters. In all likelihood, the Congress will grow ever more fearful of the public, until they abandon these grandiose plans. On top of this, there will be demands for another stimulus, another bunch of bailouts ... if unemployment doesn't respond. If Obama keeps this up, he will take his party into a Charge of the Light Brigade scenario. And he hasn't even talked about 'Cap and Trade' yet! Personally, I try to avoid depending on the brilliance of enlightened intellectuals for much. Those days are over. Let me tweak you -- I, myself, wonder how one of the world's great history-making powers ended up as a province of Euroland, giving the British less control over their affairs than, say, oh ... the state of Nebraska? How did intelligent people, with a long history of universal public education, ever get themselves in a situation where the British Army might be led by by ... oh, say ... an Italian general? The Royal Navy under the leadership of, say ... a French Admiral? In other words, how's all this social planning working for you? -------------------------------------------- The reasons Americans are opposing government medicine is because they like their present plans better. It isn't like they're suffering medically, you know. They know what they pay -- its on their pay stub, likely. (Do you know what YOU pay?) They also know what they get with their policy. The American health system is already 'socialized' if you mean nobody is spending their own money, and the costs are skyrocketing. The insurance companies can't control costs. (The 'tort industry' also adds $billions to the costs of heathcare.) The traditional European approach to a problem like this, I know, was to approach the master ... which has evolved into asking the government. The Americans, perhaps immaturely, look for a commercial solution. Is there a middleman to cut out? Can technology make things more affordable? Why isn't there more competition? What this is actually about, at least in one dimension, is forcing 20 or 30 million who self-insure (by choice) to start paying for other people's medical care. Secondly, Americans rarely think that the government is where you go when you want to control costs. There are other motives, as well. We still don't know what the healthcare bill will look like, but there are all kind of lobbyists very happy, and stocks of health companies has risen 25%. How are people in England finding funding medical care? Is it threatening to eat up the budget?

Just to underline your point -- this video shows what 50 grams can do. (50 grams is less than 2 ounces.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZENvUVG6TE&feature=player_embedded

It seems that there might be more of them coming. If this is true, then this attack is likely a forerunner of what is to come. At the same time, it's obviously the word of a failed jihadist. Can it be trusted? It's this uncertainty that gives terrorism its effectiveness as a method of warfare. The psychological cost of defending yourself is huge. That's what terrorism costs its target -- the feeling of safety, security.

A vocal part of the American left is getting very upset at President Obama. You should understand that the writer of what follows, David Michael Green, is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York. A very partisan liberal democrat who's written articles strongly supporting Obama, like this: http://www.opednews.com/articles/Of-Tea-Parties-and-Telepro-by-David-Michael-Gree-090423-987.html Yeah, I know, post-modern academics seem to write funny. But it is one more indication of the tough times ahead for Mr. Obama. His political capital is quickly beinh frittered away. Prepare for disaster, folks.

More photos -- a photo gallery at Huffington Post shows more police action. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/27/iran-protestors-beat-poli_n_404533.html?slidenumber=vQzKPj1x3F8%3D&slideshow&slideshow&slideshow&slideshow&slideshow&slideshow&slideshow&slideshow&slideshow&slideshow

Most band members do not live on their own reservation. A majority of them spend most of their time in cities and towns. The people on the reservation are the ones who vote, and the ones who should vote. Whatever lengths you will go to justify racial segregation of our rights, it still comes down to this -- the Warriors' Society has NO RIGHTS whatever!

Ally of 'six nations' - 'warrior society' Really crime group -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This comes from the time of Oka, a generation ago. The current crop of 'Warriors' has evolved. They could now be compared to an outlaw motorcycle club, and they hold the legitimate tribal authorities in contempt. At their core are natives with US military experience. In fact, they outgut the OPP. They are into black market cigarettes, on-line gambling, and various other activities. The take from black market cigarettes alone in the 100's of $millions. They conduct businesses that would be legal if you or I engaged in them, another example of redemptive Canadian racial justice in action. If you don't think this is part of the problem, then, yeah, I would say naive is a good word.

There's reason enough for him to have largely avoided notice ... he's only 23, and has been a student in Nigeria. Why would officials in the West known about him? If he was recruited into al Qaeda, he could have met his superiors in mosques, without being noticed particularly. There is more to the story. Two witnesses on the plane, a lawyer and his wife, say that he got on the plane in Amsterdam through the intercession of a 'sharp dressed man' at the entry lounge where passengers waited to board the plane -- presumably after all the immigration and security checks. http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2009/12/flight_253_passenger_says_at_l.html Mutallab is Nigerian. Haskell believes the man may have been trying to garner sympathy for Mutallab's lack of documents by portraying him as a Sudanese refugee.

When oil hit $150 a barrel, the world economy went for a crap. How much is oil worth when that happens? They had to cut production way back to get it back to the $70 range. Chavez played a role in that the cartel. In the meantime, gold has skyrocketed. When OPEC was happy with $60 oil, an ounce of gold cost 5 barrels. Now it costs over 15 barrels. It seems like there is a natural price at work here, and that the Sheiks end up with far less gold for their greed than they would have enjoyed if oil had stayed at $60. ========================= The point is that oil's price is dependent upon demand, and without the internal combustion engine, the oil becomes almost valueless, as it was before we became mechanized. OPEC nations are as dependent on the industrial nations as the industrial nations are on them. Chavez is blowing Venezuela's best chance. In simple terms, he is using the income from oil to buy out the high points of the existing economy. Net, there is little net new investment, and the government takeovers scare off investors. To add to it, industrial investors, unless they can force conditions, face huge currency restrictions that makes it impossible to get money out of the country without paying fees and artificial rates of exchange that essentially emulate the Cuban system. The word 'confiscation' is often used to describe them. A Venezuelan passport now costs about US$25,000. You get the picture? People can't get their assets out of the country. Chavez, a kind of elected military dictator with pretensions to becoming a South American Lenin, has mastered the feat of minimizing the economic growth that pumping a million barrels a day can produce for the ordinary people of the country, and overspending, to the tune of creating an inflation rate that is only 18% because of economic slowdown. An 18% inflation means prices double every four years. Wages? Not so much. That's the socialist part.

Warning: graphic images. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ygi3p4WQpkw&feature=player_embedded I'm sorry, but I don't agree with the idea that encouraging people who want liberty is ever inappropriate.

These are events that have occurred in the last day or two, and are being live blogged at http://www.dailyniteowl.com/wordpress/index.php/2009/12/27/live-blogging-ashura-protests-in-iran/ At that site is what appears to be the burning of a police station. There are some videotapes at: http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/200164.php It could be the end for the regime.

Not at all ... why discuss which alternative is the right one, when there may be no need to make the choice? The CO2 is only a means to an end -- cooler temperatures on earth -- and guess what? We are already at 1990 levels of temperature. And here you are, wanting to refocus the discussion on which form of taxation is least objectionable to finance this expansion of state power. Which is my point. What you characterize is the 'debate' on the debate is, at least in part, a way of ignoring the objections, and making the record skip back to the same old weary chorus. My hope is that Copenhagen has ended all of that. Kyoto was negotiated back in the 1980's, and started out being chiefly a method of raising money for the UN, a form of taxation. As luck would have it, we moved into a hot period of the sun cycles, and it did seem to be getting hotter. Then, Al Gore's movie came out. Since then, we have been in the midst of a 'mania', a social phenomenon that occurs regularly in contemporary urban communities. As the weather began to cool, the slogans changed, but the programs did not. The budgets rose. Data kept coming out -- temperatures ARE still rising, they insisted. Except all of that was a sham, an illusion created by Environmentalism's own Wizards at the CSU. Now we can, with good conscience, go back to cleaning up out own environmental problems. Like Nanicoke ... a publicly owned state-regulated monopoly ... What's wrong with fixing things, rather than enjoying denouncing your neighbours as neandrathals?

I enjoy Conrad Black's patrician contempt, which he has raised to an art form. Here, he casts his caustic eye on events of the last year ... Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com/todays-paper/story.html?id=2380724#ixzz0au9fdOGl It goes on at some length. If you like this kind of thing, this is Black with a broad canvas. Here's another taste:

I think it's reasonable to take this as one indication, amongst many, that Congressional Democrats will grow increasingly resistent to the demands that Obama is putting on them. First of all, healthcare isn't in the bag yet. The two forms of the Bill have to be reconciled. Many of the central items in the House version are NOT in the Senate BilI. It promises to be rancorous. Put that together with the economy. Let's imagine that in the next six months, there is a stock market slide, or the banks go wormy under the pressure of the commercial mortgages? Or any of a dozen other things happen. Say the figures show that Christmas shopping was worse than last year, and unemployment is growing, month by month. The Tea Party protests continue ... and the countdown to the election is underway. I imagine Cap and Trade is next on the legislative agenda. People are going to go nuts, just like they did with the heathcare fiasco. My point is these great battles are going to be going on, inflaming the American center, as the countdown to the election goes on. The election campaigns actually start after the Labor Day holiday, but the positioning begins now. If Obama continues in this direction, it will make it very difficult on his supporters in Congress. He will have no coat-tails ... and if he has no coat-tails, his power is seriously curtailed.

I shouldn't be talking, I haven't seen much TV over the last couple of days. But, when this first happened, it looked as if the major media weren't picking up on it. Maybe they were just delaying the story, so they didn't break in on the church services, etc. There have been at least two planes that disappeared mid-ocean under circumstances where they could have been victims of successful versions of this method of attack. One was the Air France plane, going from Brazil to Paris ... the other one was in Indonesia. What was evident in the coverage of the Air France crash was that it had broken up in the air. The most likely explanation was an on-board explosion, which means, almost certainly, terrorism. From the point on, the coverage was an attempt to prove that the plane had not been a victim of terrorists. The spokesmen simply refused to entertain the possibiity publicly. No more hard facts on the locations, etc. was published. In the same connection, what happened in the 'chunnel' that shut it down? Such things are prime targets for terrorists.

I'll take issue with that. It's dangerous to overlook the huge role government had in the 'managed' economy of the 1950ies. Mortgage rates were essentially set by government, which ran a whole department of government about housing. Hydro power, as a government utility, brought power to Canada far sooner than the market would have. All the monopolies, such as telephones, were regulated in such a way to give the 'ordinary joe' a good deal. Cigarettes and beer was cheap. Taxes -- for the working man -- were low. There were no provincial sales taxes. In the 1950ies, I worked at Goodyear Rubber Company, in New Toronto, and I made $2.26 an hour, plus a 12¢ shift bonus. I went home, as a single man, with about $83 of my paycheck. Just to give you taste, I was looking at buying a new VW bug, then $1575, which would have been about 4 months wages. Small semi-detached houses in good shape then cost about $6000 up. You needed 25% down, but after that, you had a 20 year mortgage at 6%. That's why immigrants could come here and start buying their own houses in a couple of years. It was a better deal for the working person then than now. What good has the welfare state brought them? The NDP and the Liberals have pretended to bring us 'benefits' but they really bring us social dislocation. Now, the working man is in an economy that has been transformed into a huge administrative machine. Now that auto is so 'down', that we've quit making steel, we make precious little of any importance. We lumber, we make agricultural products, we extract resources, and we are as much dependent on those commodities as we've ever been. There's hardly any 'good' industrial production going on anymore. The 'working man', once the hero of the left, has not only been abandoned, he's been stigmatized by them. He has been transformed into a different cultural product entirely -- the men of the 'greatest generation' have somehow morphed into the detested white male. He's the male chauvinist beast, the smoker, the gun enthusiast, the transfat-eater. People like him, his kids are encouraged to believe, are responsible for War, and all the injustice in the world. And, of course, what delegitimizes him entirely is that he can no longer earn enough to support his family. Can you compare these apples and oranges? Comments?

A bomber apparently attempted to blow up a airliner on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day. Passengers noticed smoke and noises, and responded, forcing the bomber to stop igniting the bomb. The plane managed to land without further incident. But there are a lot of ominous aspects to the flight; http://apnews.myway.com/article/20091226/D9CR18JO0.html This story hasn't gotten much coverage. Comments?