Category: interesting

IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Khan:

He argued that global economic growth can no longer be expected to come from such macro-economic imbalances as US indebtedness.

In the United States, hard-hit by recession, “the household savings rate, which was practically zero, is now at 5.0 percent … Good news for the deficits. But who will replace the US consumer to power global growth?”

He recalled that the United States accounts for 25 percent of global output.

“The question of new sources of growth must be considered.”

1. Both theory and empirical facts do tend to show that, on the financial markets, the Invisible Hand does not always lead to welfare-improving general outcomes.
2. Traditional economics has failed to grasp the complexity and dynamism of financial markets.
3. A first step toward rectifying this problem would be to create a global risk observatory.

Guy Sorman on Wild Randomness:

The reason: grain or corn prices may at any point in time be driven more by speculation than by actual harvests. The rule applies to all transactions on financial markets, including oil, stocks, and derivatives.

In the short term—which can mean several years in practice—the connection can be tenuous at best and difficult to model.

Finance itself is a relatively young field of research in which data have been available in large quantities only over the last 20 years.

This book teaches you about ‘marketing weasels’ and how they get your money.

After reading it Jeff Atwood said, “We human beings are a selfish bunch, so it’s all the more surprising to see how easily we can be manipulated to behave in ways that run counter to our own self-interest.”

Williams-Sonoma couldn’t sell their first bread machine until they added a ‘deluxe’ model. Customers soon rushed to buy the cheaper original.

We are all nuts.

As matters now stand, the insurance companies claim $450 billion a year of our health-care dollars. They will fight hard to hold on to this bonanza.

This is a major reason Americans pay more for health care per capita than any other people in the world. The insurance executives didn’t cry “socialism” when their buddies in banking and finance were bailed out. But to them it is socialism if the government underwrites the cost of health care.

George McGovern:

I don’t feel as though the government is meddling in my life when it pays my doctor and hospital fees. There are some things the government does that I don’t like — most notably getting us into needless wars that cost many times what health care for all Americans would cost. Investing in the health of our citizens will enhance the well-being and security of the nation.

We know that Medicare has worked well for half a century for those of us over 65. Why does it become “socialized medicine” when we extend it to younger Americans?

Mike Stathis:

In the end, the mainstream media won’t win because it’s always been about content; not lies and spins. But they will only lose if you wake up and realize how you’re being fooled.

There’s a table of sixteen:

The roulade of wild boar and açaí is already on the slates, the yuzu-confit crocodile is being laid down and topped with perfect quenelles of bullfrog & wild eucalyptus mousse and tarantula tempura are being carefully scattered across the bed of smoked bamboo shoots. At this precise moment the forest caterpillar and manzanilla jus should appear at your left elbow… but… the chef responsible is nowhere to be found.

Naw. He’s jes’ pullin’ yer leg.

Stathis:

It’s time to wake up and realize the facts. America has only one political party. And they plan to keep it that way. This is how all mafias operate.

So stop poisoning your mind with the propaganda and start doing your own research. Find out the truth for yourself because I can guarantee you that you won’t get it from the media. The media’s mission is not to deliver accurate news or valuable insight. Their mission is to maximize profits. The best way to do that is to serve the interests of their financial sponsors. Figure it out.

And stop wasting your time at these useless stupid tea parties. Many of these events are headed by radio talking head propagandists. These are the same lying idiots using rudimentary psychological tactics to seize control over your mind. They position themselves on the side of the people when this simply isn’t the case. You’ve been fooled. Figure it out.

These are the same scumbags who bitch about bailouts and government control, yet they advocate billions of dollars in Wall Street bonuses and criminal CEO compensation. They connect with your “sense of patriotism,” then hijack your mind with lies and manipulation. This is the same tactic they used when pushing for the war in Iraq. This is the same tactic parents use on toddlers.

Are you really that stupid to not see how you have been fooled? You are a kid being fooled by adult idiots and liars.

Most of the participants of these tea parties are mad as Hell, but they have been fooled into blaming Obama and the Democratic Party for the mess America finds itself in, when the fact is that it’s a Washington problem. Where were these tea parties last year when the Bush administration got the bailout ball rolling?

Most Americans not only have very short memories, they simply aren’t that bright.

Tom Konrad, PhD:

To massively oversimplify one of Taleb’s major points, we tend to place too much weight on likely and easily imagined events, and not nearly enough weight on unlikely, difficult to imagine events.

So far my change in strategy has served me well since the market has been going up when I expected it to head down.

Lost a job?

The detached tail of the gecko continues to leap, lurch and lunge, sometimes in intricate patterns never before detected….

If I was a packrat I would ratpack these.

Our nearby Heirloom Tomato crowd is hoping tomato vines are another wine biz. Speaking of wine. Didya believe the studies showing blindfolded wine connoisseurs are fooled by cheaper wines? Is buying prestige “getting a placebo effect from a drug when you know it’s a placebo“?

Fair Examination at Vanity Fair:

As the Bush administration waned, the Treasury shoveled more than a quarter of a trillion dollars in tarp funds into the financial system—without restrictions, accountability, or even common sense.

Some measure of scrutiny and control has since been imposed by the Obama administration, but even today it’s hard to walk back the cat and trace the money.

As for us:
We must uncenter our minds from ourselves;
We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident
As the rock and ocean that we were made from.

about a California poet, Robinson Jeffers

via wikiquote on Jeffers:

Something utterly wild had crept into his mind. The seabeaten coast, the fierce freedom of its hunting hawks, possessed and spoke through him. It was one of the most uncanny and compete relationships between a man and his natural background that I know in literature.

Did root causes precede massive narco corporations? Ponder poor and drugs. Fuse two words and think. Add Taliban and war and think again.

Add Mexico!!

La Familia has a solid base, a growing presence in other states and in several US cities.

It is also innovative: it has a spiritual leader called Nazario Moreno González, nicknamed El Más Loco, the Craziest One.

The “latest sinister developments in Mexico” cast fresh doubt on the wisdom of the war on drugs.

In order to strike a hard point, think again. Trumping Pakistan’s recent attacks, the Taliban have revived land reform first proposed by democratic liberals thirty years ago to quickly renew ‘a vested community of support’.

“There we have it. Pakistan’s political system is wholly founded on the rule of the country’s narrow, landowning and industrial class.”

Yes, there we have it. Class. Landowning. Industrial. Poor. Drugs. War. The passing of Robert McNamara reminds us of great error, expensive folly and deadly mistakes. Will we learn to develop policies that are worth what they cost?

Can we reach poverty before poverty reaches war? We are enabled for battle. Testing that is no betrayal. Some say a ragged underground will gain symmetry to blow up a bus or hack a blackout or attack our water or gas.

Some are able and many are willing.

But what shrewd thing does a Taliban or will El Más Loco do if it’s not gather the poor? Will we learn to develop policies that are worth what they cost?

Battle Against Terrorism To Go Beyond Bombs and Bullets

boys in the field
Special Forces now journalist
The British like to say that Helmand Province is medieval, but I say the British give Helmand far too much credit. Medieval is space-aged compared to some of these places.

And never forget that forty years ago, a single middle-class income was enough to buy a house, feed a family, get the occasional new car and take a vacation. Things have, indeed, been going downhill for that long to where, in most areas, even two middle-class incomes (like husband and wife) are lucky to live such a life.

Naomi Klein:

A term like capitalism is incredibly slippery, because there’s such a range of different kinds of market economies. Essentially, what we’ve been debating over—certainly since the Great Depression—is what percentage of a society should be left in the hands of a deregulated market system. And absolutely there are people that are at the far other end of the spectrum that want to communalize all property and abolish private property, but in general the debate is not between capitalism and not capitalism, it’s between what parts of the economy are not suitable to being decided by the profit motive. And I guess that comes from being Canadian, in a way, because we have more parts of our society that we’ve made a social contract to say, ‘That’s not a good place to have the profit motive govern.’ Whereas in the United States, that idea is kind of absent from the discussion. So even something like firefighting—it seems hard for people make an argument that maybe the profit motive isn’t something we want in the firefighting sector, because you don’t want a market for fire.

Tyler Cowen, What is a Conservative’s beliefs?

1. Evil is real and there exist evil nations in the world.
2. The United States in particular has been unselfish to a remarkable degree.
3. The spread of nuclear weapons to irrational, evil and undeterrable powers is the number one foreign policy issue.
4. Societies succeed if strong family structures support an emphasis on learning and acculturation.
5. Side with the laws and customs associated with the Western powers and their growth into powerful and durable societies.
6. We do not have either the resources or the norms to remake society in the direction of a fully-comfortable-for-everyone social democracy.
7. Fiscal conservatism is part and parcel of conservatism.
8. Small government is a means to the values which lie behind Western civilization and it is a means toward the prosperity we need to live well and defend ourselves.
9. Responsibility is a more important value than either liberty or equality.

James Hamilton:

Contrary to popular assumption, stimulus spending under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act [Obama] has been a very small factor in the expansion of the federal budget deficit in 2009.

Many policies that pre-date the Obama Administration, including Bush-era spending on the wars in Iran and Afghanistan, are key factors in the growing deficit.

“The Bush-era tax cuts are the largest contributors to this period of policy-induced increases to the federal budget deficit.”

The years between 2001 and 2007 saw a large deterioration in the budget balance, which was driven chiefly by legislated policy changes.

The Bush-era tax cuts are the largest contributors to this period of policy-induced increases to the federal budget deficit.

Esquire report:

To review, using what seem to be very conservative numbers, our first unofficial tally of the drug war in the United States is staggering: 15,223 dead and $52.3 billion spent each year.

America’s prohibition of narcotics may be costing more lives than Mexico’s — and nearly enough dollars for universal health care. So why not repeal our drug laws? Because cops are making money off them, too.

free to dare,
free to speak,
free to wonder,
free to associate,
otherwise reason.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0-FYyuvrRk&hl=en&fs=1&]

Trickle-down, i.e. protecting the wealthy as a means of improving economic outcomes for the middle class and poor, is “morally and economically indefensible” but we’ve bought this math since Reagan.

One million homeless schoolchildren.

Dana Blankenhorn: The birthers and the deathers and the secessionists and the liars have to be placed out of bounds…

For months now conservative politicians and their followers have acted like a street gang.

They have told a series of outright lies, each more outrageous than the last…

The summer of 2009 has become a summer of hate.

Jon Taplin:

How can we ever make a collective decision about the wisdom or folly of war if our news media decides its role is to protect us from the reality of war?

Reihan Salam on The Great He-Cession:

Manly men have been running the world forever. But the Great Recession is changing all that, and it will alter the course of history.

The era of male dominance is coming to an end.

Seriously.

For years, the world has been witnessing a quiet but monumental shift of power from men to women. Today, the Great Recession has turned what was an evolutionary shift into a revolutionary one. The consequence will be not only a mortal blow to the macho men’s club called finance capitalism that got the world into the current economic catastrophe; it will be a collective crisis for millions and millions of working men around the globe.

The death throes of macho are easy to find if you know where to look.

How long before costs come home?
…shipping two 20 pound packages by overnight air -the most energy-intensive delivery mode — still uses 40 percent less fuel than driving 20 miles round-trip to the mall or store or wherever you’re going;

…ground shipping — which is much more efficient than overnight air — checks in at just one-tenth the energy used driving yourself.

Well, did things with fangs that might injure babies lead women to evolve built-in fears?