December 2008
60 posts
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Endgames in Israel
When Hamas started lobbing rockets into Israel last week, they had to know a response was coming. Like a hillbilly poking a bear with a stick, they knew they were in for a mauling. That said, why were they instigating this fight? Why would they want to get mauled? And given the possible outcomes, what was and continues to be Israel’s strongest response in the face of these attacks?
Let’s hit...
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Luxury Goods Are Not Inferior Goods
The retail sector was pounded this holiday season, with luxury goods and high-end consumer electronics taking the brunt of the blow. But wait, I heard someone smart say that luxury goods are recession-proof? What happened? Luxury goods are inherently not recession proof. That’s what makes them luxury goods! This is fucking Econ 101. The economic definition of a luxury good is one for which...
Cyber Security and Privacy in the 21st Century
This is the first of what will hopefully be many guest posts from Poli Sci expert Alex Matthews:
In October 2004, Amit Yoran, the founder of Symantec Corporation, decided to quit his post as the U.S. Cybersecurity Chief at the Department of Homeland Security. Which wouldn’t be a big deal, except that he was the fourth (yes one, two, three, fourth) person to quit the post in 2004 alone. The...
Recession Proof Industries →
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Full posting to resume Monday. Stay tuned…
Cheney Keeps Confessing to Stuff →
Murray Waas over at Crooks and Liars with some investigative journalism a propos the Valerie Plame/Flame issue. Turns out Cheney did it. I’m shocked, shocked, there’s shenanigans going on in here. And yeah, that was your Christmas present: a combination Super Troopers and Casablanca reference to describe the sitting Vice President’s propensity to commit felonies.
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Some Coal in Your Stocking →
Ann Coulter names Sarah Palin her conservative of the year. Make it through the first line of this article without puking and you’ll be my conservative of the year.
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George Bailey, Subprime Lender →
Also, poor investor… we all know he shoulda gotten on the ground floor with plastics. Plastics!
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Happy Holidays, and a Little Housekeeping
Just gonna be throwing up some Holiday themed links today… I’ll be back east for the next week so posting may be sporadic.
Did want to say that if you like something, please click the share button below posts (above the discussions) and share stuff. Also, if you have blogs that you think should be added to the roll on the side, shoot me some links.
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Economic Uncertainty and How to Proceed
Greg Mankiw, Harvard Economist, champion of Pigovian Taxation, and all around brilliant guy comes out as skeptical on the fiscal stimulus plan. Paul Krugman, Princeton Economist, Nobel Laureate, and all around brilliant guy is optimistic that the Obama Administration’s proposed fiscal stimulus package will pull us out of our current downturn in two years, and that the bigger issue is how we...
The Deranged Rant of the Savage
If everything I believed in was undermined in both the court of public opinion and the realm of fact I’d lose my mind too. But wow. Bill Kristol’s column this morning is just a sack of crazy shit. He opens with what is perhaps a sarcastic treatise on Dick Cheney as a clear and open leader when it comes to justifying his actions, a claim too absurd to critique seriously. He also spends a good...
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Lack of Faith Put Us in Dire Straights
I think it’s fair to assume that the longest lasting repercussion of the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme is a fresh lack of faith in financial advisors. Which is catastrophic if you are a corrupt financial advisor. But otherwise, this skepticism is not a bad thing! Well, maybe it is, if it leads to a serious downturn in equity investment. But the fundamental principle behind the growth of the...
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Would I Torture?
Alex was gonna write a full post on this, but he liked the Vanity Fair article enough to change topics… so really quickly, the question keeps being asked, “if you could save X number of American lives (X>1000) would you torture one terrorist.” The answer is yes. YES! The problem is the fallacious logic there. Look, if I could win the Seattle Mariners a World Series by...
“There is only one thing that arouses animals more than pleasure, and that is...”
– Umberto Eco
(via hatethefuture)
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Tortured Reasoning →
Via Vanity Fair… I’m reading this right now. Wow.
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Rick Warren, Reverend Wright for the Left?
Much consternation over PEBO’s decision to have Rick Warren swear him in on inauguration day. I personally am an ardent supporter of gay rights, and with that said, I am neither surprised nor dismayed by Obama’s move. First, the bad. Rick Warren publicly supported Proposition 8, and given the sway that his Saddleback Church holds, his support may have tipped the balance towards its passage....
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No One Wins When You Play Chicken
So Chrysler is shutting down its plants for at least the next month, and GM can’t afford to open the plant to start mass production of their plug-in electric Chevy Volt. This is really scary. Everyone okay with all this out there? It’s go time. I guess we’re jumping. One, two, three. Ow.
I’m reminded of a Tom Friedman column during the run up to the war with Iraq. ...
Cheney Confession, cont. (Why I Would Gaymarry...
(Except that I’m a guy… whatever.)
On the Rachel Maddow show last night, Rachel went on the attack against Cheney making a point that was so stunning I felt it worthy of a full post.
After World War II, Japanese military officers and prison guards were tried for war crimes before an international tribunal which featured an American delegation. Those who had used waterboarding as...
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Regulation and Transparency
There is a lot of talk right now about the need for further regulation in the financial sector. Lots of righteous indignation about money gone missing. And rightly so. The case of Bernie Madoff… just wow. Mindbogglingly bad. Think of all the broke Jews… as a Jew myself, the thought makes me queasy. But at the same time, do people get outraged when they leave Vegas with no money in their...
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Why Deflation is a Problem
I’m working through this, Econ 101 style, so bear with me, as I may have shifted a curve or two wrong in my analysis…
Let’s say you want to sell widgets, and at what appear to be Pareto efficient levels you’ll sell 100 widgets a year at ten dollars a widget. This price includes all labor and capital costs. So you borrow a thousand dollars, knowing that you will pay it back.
And then...
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Liquidity Traps and You
The Fed cut interest rates to essentially zero today. The lowest rate in the history of the fed. Which means they can’t cut interest rates anymore. Which is bad news for everyone. Because now they can’t cut interest rates anymore. Which is really bad news for everyone. Because they can’t cut interest rates anymore. Which is fucking terrible news for everyone. Because they can’t cut...
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Final Chapter Heading For 18th Century Novel On... →
Hate the Future predicts the future… watch out this April…
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“The point of capitalism is that actions have consequences. Once that market...”
– Andrew Sullivan
I want to disagree, and the argument that polling is relevant is unconvincing… and the bit about unions is overblown… but I just picture a world where Chevys are like those eastern European cars on The Simpsons, and I think well, at that point we’re fucked. And...
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Dick Cheney Confesses to War Crime… No One Cares
Hubris alert! Cheney confessed to ABC News that he was the architect of the US’ waterboarding policy, a direct violation of the Geneva Conventions. He confessed to a war crime on national television. While in office. I don’t know what is more stunning: that he had the cajones to confess to a war crime knowing that no one would hold him responsible, or that everyone in the media is being...
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Innovate or Die or Buy Up the Innovators
Well, a Chinese company just released a plug in electric hybrid that is 40% less expensive than the Toyota Prius in their market. It can go 70 miles without activating the gas engine. Game. Set. How do you say match in Chinese?
Okay, so maybe the BYD (which apparently really stands for Build Your Dreams) isn’t game over for US auto makers. I mean, plug in power in China comes mostly...
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Why Lash Back? Accepting the Backlash via...
I was arguing with a friend a couple nights ago about the band Vampire Weekend. I said that I thought they were terrible, and he challenged me on that. Because they aren’t terrible. They’re just sort of nothing. I’m no indie music reviewer, but they are essentially The Cars lite. The problem is that they were sold to me before I first heard them as some blend between early Weezer, The...
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Low Taxes Good? Slightly More Complicated Than...
So Andrew Sullivan is back at his blog today with a post strongly in favor of gas taxes. Well, duh. Anyway, he opines at the end, “We can help the working poor and accelerate energy innovation and encourage employment. Why does this obviously simple and great proposal never get off the ground?”
Two reasons, Andrew: entrenched financial interests and bullshit ideology. The financial...
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You Can Now Say "First" When I Post!
A little house keeping in lieu of a first post today (the internet ate my first attempt at a post on gas taxes, so stay tuned for a lazy rewrite that hits on some of the same ideas).
This blog is done on Tumblr, which has the feature set of a stock Kia Rio circa 99. Basically I have to pedal a stationary bike for a good ten minutes every time I post. Fun times! That said, I’m adding...
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Sarcasm and Sociopathy
Apparently a sign of dementia is the inability to detect sarcasm. So apparently I’m fucking crazy because last week when Robert Mugabe said publicly that Cholera was not an epidemic in Zimbabwe that went straight over my head. He was being sarcastic! Cause it is a problem. But we shouldn’t care. Or something.
HILARIOUS!
Don’t you get it! It’s funny because...
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A Huggable Evangelical →
Nic Kristof on the ousting of Richard Cizik, one of the Evangelical leaders out there using the movement’s political will for good. Much of his base suggested that he should be forced to resign last year for diluting the movement’s will… by coming out against the genocide in Darfur and helping pressure Bush into increasing South Asian AIDS funding and decreasing human...
“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write,...”
– Alvin Toffler (hat tip to Alex Matthews)
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One Big Lie?
“Legendary” investment advisor Bernie Madoff described his firm as, “one big lie,” before finally coming clean and reporting that he lost his clients over one billion dollars. He claimed to be getting a solid 8-16% ROI regardless of surrounding market conditions. And no one called him out on his bullshit. Because once an investor becomes legendary, no one calls them out...
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Do People Know What Approve Means?
Blago’s approval rating falls to seven percent. Which makes me wonder, who the hell still approves of this man? Even with the margin of error there are still some people when asked, that responded in favor of the governor. They said the word approve. Out loud I would imagine. Fucking weird.
If you or anyone you know has responded to a poll question regarding Blago favorably this week,...
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Your Fiddle, Mr. McConnell
“A lot of struggling Americans are wondering where their bailout is,” Mr. McConnell declared today. He then spearheaded an effort to kill the automaker bailout. Some of those struggling Americans live in Ohio and Michigan… so… he’s clearly being a manipulative ass… let’s figure out why? I bet it’s really complicated…
Let’s see… maybe...
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Kitchen Sink This Problem (Intellectually)
For various reasons, simply throwing everything in the kitchen sink at our current economic woes is a problem. Essentially, if we are not careful with our policies, they could wind up counteracting or conspiring to make things worse instead of better. For example, bailing out the auto industry without taxing carbon emissions will lead to a stagnation in development of the new energy technologies...
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Human Rights Day
Today is Human Rights Day (I call the first slice of Geneva Cake!), and I’m not quite sure how to celebrate. I’m not currently abusing anyone’s Human Rights per se, so there’s nothing to stop doing. I was considering cyber-harassing John Yoo, but then I realized that I would then be violating his human rights, and I would be no better than he was. Well, I’d be...
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Kathryn Lopez is Unattractive
This is her unattractive response to the Rod Blago scandal:
“This Illinois Senate-seat news is outrageous and shameful. That said, it warms my heart. Finally, a political scandal you can talk to your children about. No room at the Mayflower. No myspace page. No Gay-American announcement. Just good and evil and money and power corrupting.”
This just evoked so many questions. A few...
Corruption is Bad
The purging of the corrupt in the Democratic ranks, Bill Jefferson (not Clinton) and now Rod Blagopurjuryavich, is the best thing that could be happening right now. Fiesty Left Wingers may want to spend this time consolidating power, but we are so much better off having long term control of a left-center coalition. And purging the worst elements from that coalition as far from election time as...
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Volcker II: This Time It's Personal
I will not apologize for my ever increasing Jimmy Carter fetish. The more I learn about that peanut farmer the more I realize he was less history’s greatest monster and more the last honorable man to hold the office of the presidency. Nonetheless, his lack of popularity was understandably due to the economic hardships America went through during his presidency. And the architect of those...
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Wagoner, Not Evil, Cont.
US News has picked up on the fact that Rick Wagoner was not inept. Good work US News… you’re only a few days behind me… anyway, all this got me metaphor happy.
Let’s say you have this doctor:
And he’s telling you to smoke. Because smoking activates your T-Zones. And then after a while you start coughing, and you realize that maybe T-Zones aren’t real or...
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Economic Russian Roulette Sounds Fun!
Citigroup is too big for its own good. The CDO’s they were trading were immoral and irrational. They have unsound finances propping up almost every aspect of their company. Not to mention the serious moral hazard issues with their bailout that I would love to go in another post. But no matter how you feel about those all of that, none of it changes the fact that Citigroup’s failure...
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60 Senators
Nate Silver has an interesting piece steeped in game theory on the upside for Democrats if Franken fails to secure Minnesota’s Senate seat. This whole sixty senator business has gotten me thinking about the nuclear option that was nearly invoked by Bill Frist back in 2005. Bill Frist being a man who practiced surgery on cats he adopted from local animal shelters (relevant? maybe?)
Has...
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Bill Kristol, Oy
Is there any coherent though on the conservative side of the aisle these days? Read this piece of crap that the New York Times decided was worthy of publication. Okay, done? What the hell?
What is big government conservatism? It seems to me that Kristol is proposing spending a lot of money on things that don’t help people. Investing in neither the present nor the future. To which I...
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“A Primer On Fractional Reserve Banking (1957):
Q: What are banks for?
...”
– First published in the British humour magazine “Punch” on April 3, 1957. Sent to me by Alex Matthews on December 7, 2008.