March 10, 2010
Hurtin’
In anticipation of Vandam's review of The Hurt Locker, I thought I'd slip my own critique in. Sweet Cheeks and Grace and I watched the thing a few weeks ago via the miracle of Netflix, not even knowing it was going to wind up being the center piece in some apparently popular awards spectacle on TeeVee.
I thought I kinda liked the movie at first. Guy stuff. Bombs. Defusing bombs. Reckless disregard of protocol. Punching each other in the stomach between long draughts of nameless hooch.
But otherwise, it didn't make me a believer. And Sweet Cheeks and Grace were never believers. It was mawkish tripe, to them.
And that's what it was. The subject matter imbued it with suspense, but the characters were jokes, and the situations not nearly believable.
The Academy should have given the award to Al Gore Barry O.
ps. Oops. For real hurt lockering, see this:
Rifleman James McKie from Recce Platoon, 3rd Battalion The Rifles was under fire from three directions on a roof when the grenade hit his platoon commander and landed at his feet.
"My first thought was I hope this doesn't hurt too much," the New Zealander said. "That, and I've really only got one chance to do this.
"If it fails, either way, doing nothing, I'm going to get the same amount of hurt. So I picked it up and threw it off the roof."
March 9, 2010
You don’t say
It takes two people at the Washington Post to write like this:
[M]illions of jobs have been lost in the downturn, particularly in the hardest-hit sectors
Ship of fools
Beck and McPhillips mark the progress of the monstrosity sailing into the bay. Beck:
The thing is, of course, that the state is nothing but people who hold arbitrary power over others. There are now more of them than ever before in American history, they have never been so impudently dismissive of the very idea of "freedom", and there only promises to be more of them into the future.
One can see it every hour across the internet, especially in the comments of blogs, the ignorant, "It is right because we can vote for it" and never the consideration that once the lash is swinging, no one is safe from its bite.
I'm not sure about either "shock" or "amazement". I've been watching this storm brewing my entire life, and have always regarded it with a profound sadness. There is something tragic in the makeup of this upright animal, imbued with so much potential, the greatest power of which is to effect reason, and yet, so often stubbornly joined to the refusal to effect it.
March 8, 2010
Klein Boggle – He lisp with forked tongue
A Klein Boggle is a certain non-orientable argument, i.e., a contention (a one-dimensional manifest) with no distinct "logical" and "reasonable" sides.
In a fit of pique, midday, Ezra Klein lashed out at "the right" in general, and Mark Steyn at National Review (Steyn is always a worthwhile read) in particular, betraying Klein's own multicultural principles of inclusion and/or respect for diversity by calling those with whom he disagrees "toxic", "nuts", and "insane".
Klein's thrust was that authors like Steyn are fomenting discord over health care "reform" by telling lies about the true nature of the legislation. Klein averred that the proposed edict "maintains private insurers, private doctors, private hospitals, private medical device companies, private pharmaceutical manufacturers, private nurses, and doesn't even have anything to say about the insurance that medium and large employers provide", etc., despite the fact that the proposed legislation would add greatly to the already large governmentally gargantuan burden on private insurers, doctors, hospitals, medical device companies, and everyone else with any connection to health care, including patients and the citizenry at large.
But the truly stupid thing about Klein's post was the post he'd made an hour before, extolling the "huge progressive victory" (emphasis Klein's) should health care reform pass. He finishes that post with:
[T]he fact of it is that this bill represents an enormous leftward shift for American social policy. It is not, in my view, a sufficient leftward shift, but it is unmatched by anything that has passed into law in recent decades. Progressives have lost some very hard battles but are on the cusp of winning an incredibly important war. For all its imperfections, health-care reform itself is deeply, deeply progressive. And if you don't believe me, just ask the conservatives who have made opposing it their top priority.
Others jumped adroitly on Klein's two faced screeds, so I leave you to them. Protein Wisdom. National Review.
Spicoli – tin pot dictator
"[E]very day, this elected leader is called a dictator here, and we just accept it! And accept it. And this is mainstream media, who should – truly, there should be a bar by which one goes to prison for these kinds of lies."
–Sean Penn, defending compadre Hugo Chavez
Which came first, the subsidies, or the retaliation against them?
In the erstwhile Land of the Free, and Home of the Brave, political payoffs are affecting trade in world markets. The Financial Times reports it as "Tax move by Brazil risks US trade war", but it would be more honest to say, "U.S. cotton subsidies risk Brazilian trade retaliation". The office of the U.S. trade representative emitted the approved NothingSpeak. Our fearless "leaders" aren't likely to have the stomach for standing for free trade, no hope for that change, I guess, and the graft is much more profitable, anyway, so they'll wind up giving away more of that which isn't theirs. It's a great country we've become, ain't it?
March 5, 2010
There’s no benefit like mutual benefit
Jeffrey Tucker at Mises quotes The Count Destutt Tracy:
“Society is purely and solely a continual series of exchanges. It is never anything else, in any epoch of its duration, from its commencement the most unformed, to its greatest perfection. And this is the greatest eulogy we can give to it, for exchange is an admirable transaction, in which the two contracting parties always both gain; consequently society is an uninterrupted succession of advantages, unceasingly renewed for all its members….”
Those were the days. In modern times, there's a third party that parcels out the dribs and drabs of other people's advantages, and in many cases does a bang up job of dispensing disadvantage.
On any given day the papers are filled with this stuff…
The Food and Drug Administration on Feb. 17 declined to approve Xenoport’s application to market the drug, Horizant, for patients with restless legs syndrome.
Heaven forfend that ordinary people get to muse over the value of their own exchanges.
Of peas, of pods
John Patrick Bedell, 36, of Hollister, Calif., was identified as the shooter. Officials said they'd found no immediate connection to terrorism but had not ruled it out.
Signs emerged that Bedell harbored ill feelings toward the government and the armed forces, and had questioned the circumstances behind the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
In an Internet posting, a user by the name JPatrickBedell wrote that he was "determined to see that justice is served" in the death of Marine Col. James Sabow, who was found dead in the backyard of his California home in 1991. The death was ruled a suicide but the case has long been the source of theories of a cover up.
The user named JPatrickBedell wrote the Sabow case was "a step toward establishing the truth of events such as the September 11 demolitions."
… reminds me of this guy…
Steve Kangas was found dead on the 39th floor of his enemy's doorstep [...]
… without the terminating cowardice, of course, unless one contends that trying to get the drop on a couple of unsuspecting officers to be somewhat less than brave.
March 3, 2010
Gobekli Tepe
Some old stones in Turkey are reshaping theories of how human civilization progressed. The story. Some pix.
To Schmidt and others, these new findings suggest a novel theory of civilization. Scholars have long believed that only after people learned to farm and live in settled communities did they have the time, organization and resources to construct temples and support complicated social structures. But Schmidt argues it was the other way around: the extensive, coordinated effort to build the monoliths literally laid the groundwork for the development of complex societies.
Via: Classical Values who adds another link.
March 2, 2010
Really Rich
Frank Rich is a despicable worm (sorry, worms), and in case you have doubts, there are people who will spell it out for you. Start (as usual) with Vandam (who links Power Line), then Radosh (nice job, Ron), and then that other McCain, for samplings. Each rightly tears little Rich into big pieces of nonsense.
But I like Rich's article. I like it because it reeks of fear and desperation, the rank essence of which coalesces around one little line:
The distinction between the Tea Party movement and the official G.O.P. is real, and we ignore it at our peril.
That comes smack in the middle of Rich's sundry frothings, and casts the whole potholed road of them into high relief. Rich sees the distinction between the new movement and the old ways and recognizes it for what it is, and it terrifies him, for it's a real split away from the cozy little world of the two major parties that have scratched each other's, and Rich's back, all the years of the last several decades. (Okay, Rich has only been a power propagandist a decade or so, but his "we" and "our" demonstrates his yearning solidarity with the burgeoning nomenklatura). The tea partiers (at least some of them) are that unheralded mythical beast come to life, that bogey man of mincing collectivists everywhere, the righteous individual, arisen from beyond to ride to the rescue and wreak havoc on the criminal establishment for whom Rich has so devotedly toiled. And now his franchise is in danger. Or so he thinks. So he references all the specters in his specter file with one rambling pass, knowing that a sizable portion of his ignorant audience will swallow it all, uncritical, and a portion of the rest will descend like vultures to pick over the already previously multiply argued particulars. But those latter people have never scared Rich. They are his bread and butter.
It's the "mob" he doesn't understand that scares Rich.
And I like that he hears their rumblings.
March 1, 2010
Lessons
Now, finally, here is a cheerful sort of story. It's not OUR story, of course, but still it warms the heart to know that there is competence and responsibility hiding in the unlikeliest corners somewhere. It's the story of the amazingly untroubled mortgage and banking system in dear old Canada. Yep, those crazy Canucks have so far weathered the worldwide economic buffetations without a single bank closure. It's a nice story, so read it, won't you, along with the necessary importances:
1. Full Recourse Mortgages in Canada. Almost all Canadian mortgages are “full recourse” loans, meaning that the borrower remains fully responsible for the mortgage even in the case of foreclosure. If a bank in Canada forecloses on a home with negative equity, it can file a deficiency judgment against the borrower, which allows it to attach the borrower’s other assets and even take legal action to garnish the borrower’s future wages. In the United States, we have a mix of recourse and non-recourse laws that vary by state, but even in recourse states, the use of deficiency judgments to attach assets and garnish wages is infrequent. The full recourse feature of Canadian mortgages results in more responsible borrowing, fewer delinquencies, and significantly fewer foreclosures than in the United States.
2. Shorter-Term Fixed Rates in Canada. Canadian mortgages carry a fixed interest rate for a maximum of five years, and rates are then re-negotiated for the next five years, similar to a five-year adjustable rate. This practice allows banks to achieve a better maturity match between their assets (mortgages and loans) and interest income, and their liabilities (deposits) and interest expense, which protects them from the kind of maturity mismatch and interest rate risk that resulted in our S&L crisis and almost 3,000 bank failures in the 1980s and 1990s.
3. Mortgage Insurance Is More Common in Canada than in the United States. About half of Canadian mortgages carry mortgage insurance (compared to 30 percent in the U.S. currently and only 15 percent before the crisis), primarily for those mortgages financing the purchase of a home with less than a 20 percent down payment, and the borrower is required to pay the full mortgage insurance premium upfront. Another difference from the U.S. is that when private insurance companies in Canada insure mortgages, they have the authority to approve or reject the property appraisal, and they have strong financial incentives to only approve realistic property appraisals. Mortgage insurance in Canada covers the full loan amount for the full life of the mortgage, and cannot be eliminated like in the United States when the property value exceeds the mortgage balance. The traditionally much higher frequency of mortgage insurance in Canada compared to the United States helps to stabilize Canada’s mortgage and housing markets, and is one of the many features that contribute to its ranking as the safest banking system in the world.
4. No Tax Deductibility of Mortgage Interest in Canada. Home mortgage interest has never been tax-deductible in Canada, so there is no tax advantage to home ownership in Canada over renting. There is also no tax benefit to converting home equity into household debt in Canada, which has resulted in a much greater equity accumulation in Canada (70 percent of total real estate value) than in the United States (currently only about 45 percent). Also, paying down your mortgage in Canada is a tax-free investment and further encourages greater equity accumulation than in the United States. Interestingly, even without any tax advantage for home ownership, the Canadian homeownership rate (69 percent) is actually higher than in the United States (67.2 percent).
5. Higher Prepayment Penalties in Canada. Prepaying mortgages in Canada is allowed, but there are much stiffer prepayment penalties (three months of mortgage interest) than in the United States, which discourages the kind of refinancing that frequently took place in the United States leading up to the housing meltdown, and often involved pulling home equity out in the refinancing process (encouraged by the tax deductibility of mortgage interest).
6. Public Policy Differences for Low-Income Housing. To promote affordable housing for low-income households, the Canadian government has not used public policies like the Community Reinvestment Act in the United States, which encouraged homeownership for lower-income and less creditworthy borrowers, financed frequently with subprime mortgages. Instead, the Canadian government provides public funding for low-income rental housing, rather than encouraging homeownership for low-income households, and Canada has thus avoided the American mistake of using misguided policies to turn good, low-income renters into bad homeowners.
7. Differences in Canada’s Bank Concentration and Greater Diversification. Compared to the United States, the Canadian banking system is much more concentrated, with the five largest Canadian banks (out of only 82 in the entire country, compared to more than 8,000 banks in the United States) holding more than 80 percent of total bank assets. This concentration became an advantage during the recent financial crisis because it facilitated critical discussions among the five large banks and the single federal regulator (the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions). Also, Canada has never had branching restrictions like the U.S. laws that prevented interstate banking up until 1994, and this has historically allowed Canadian banks to achieve geographical diversification for their deposits and loans portfolios. It was largely this difference in geographical diversification that help explains why the United States had 9,000 bank failures during the Great Depression (each operating within only one of the 48 states, due to the prohibition on interstate branching) and not a single Canadian bank (all with branches nationwide) failed in the 1930s.
8. A Few Other Differences that Contribute to Bank Safety in Canada. There is a much lower rate of loan originations by mortgage brokers in Canada (only 35 percent) than in the U.S. (70 percent), far less mortgage securitization in Canada than here, and a much smaller subprime mortgage market. Banks in Canada keep and service 68 percent of the mortgages on their own balance sheets that they originate and underwrite, which encourages prudent lending since banks are putting much of their own capital at risk. Finally, almost all mortgage payments in Canada are made electronically by an automatic payment arrangement, which minimizes late payments.
Bottom Line: Taken together, the features and regulations of banks in Canada outlined above create a healthy and sound “pro-lender” environment absent of political motivations for outcomes like greater homeownership, compared to the often politically motivated “pro-borrower” and “pro-homeowner” policies of the United States. While Canada’s banking system has promoted responsible borrowing and prudent lending and underwriting practices with little politically motivated interference, the U.S. banking system seems to have encouraged excessive lending to risky borrowers because of the political obsession with homeownership.
Amazing how unencumbered the Canadian market is with federal regulations. Marvelous indeed.
Keynes lies abed
This is some cheerful news, innit?
The U.K. has produced notable economists over the years, but John Maynard Keynes, the guru of government intervention, was one of truly global significance.
So it may be fitting that the U.K. will also become the deathbed of Keynesian economics.
It's about time the old bugger died. Pity the avoidable misery of him.
Britain has been following the mainstream prescriptions of his followers more than any developed nation. It has cut interest rates, pumped up government spending, printed money like crazy, and nationalized almost half the banking industry.
Short of digging Karl Marx out of his London grave, and putting him in charge, it is hard to see how the state could get more involved in the economy.
The results will be dire. The economy is flat on its back, unemployment is rising, the pound is sinking, and the bond markets are bracketing the country with Greece and Portugal in the category marked “bankruptcy imminent.” At some point soon, even the most loyal disciples of Keynes will have to admit defeat, and accept that a radical change of direction is needed.
And then what? Suddenly it's all going to be fixed? Not by a long shot, and the shake out is going to be horrors, and shake out it must.
Statistics
In the midst of dismal news, this cheekiness:
Without record levels of welfare, unemployment and other government benefits as well as tax cuts last year, the income of U.S. households would have plunged by an astonishing $723 billion — more than four times the record $167 billion drop reported last month by the Commerce Department.
Matter of fact, U.S. household income DID plunge $723 billion last year. The full costs just haven't been booked, yet. With interest. I mean, the "welfare, unemployment and other government benefits" were sucked out of household incomes SOMEWHERE, right? (I'm not sure what "tax cuts" is doing in that list. Perhaps it's just an artifact of the journalist/government reflexive partnership.)
Even cuter, some of the rats are providing commentary as they try to get a feel for which way the hawsers run:
"The blizzards that affected much of the country during the last month are likely to distort the statistics. So it's going to be very important … to look past whatever the next figures are to gauge the underlying trends," Summers said in an interview with CNBC, according to a transcript.
Sounds like some more "unexpected" news is on the way.
February 26, 2010
Clown fight
The title above Steven Pearlstein's offering in the Washington Post:
At summit, Republicans prove they aren't putting America's health first
If only it were true, Steve, if only it were true. The Republicans are nearly as full of rotten ideas on how to meddle in health care as the Democrats, and it's all very sad. Their time would be better spent reigning in the abuses of their various security apparati and throwing out pages of the federal register in bulk. The whole thing is a disgrace beyond belief. In the United States of America.
February 25, 2010
“Ellen DeGeneres and Simon Cowell: friends or foes?”
That's a headline ripped from Google News, and it may actually have a story under it that is on that topic, but it seems more appropriate to the main stream media's current political reporting, as evidenced this week in numerous reports on the newly passed "jobs" bill. For example, here's the Washington Post:
The centerpiece of the jobs measure is a $13 billion program to give companies a break from paying Social Security taxes for the remainder of the year on new employees. If those workers remain on the payroll for at least a year, their employers would also get a $1,000 tax credit. In addition, the Senate bill includes a one-year reauthorization of the highway trust fund, which allows companies to write off equipment purchases, and an expansion of the Build America Bonds program.
That's paragraph thirteen, out of about twenty eight, and it's the only one speaking to the contents of the bill. The other twenty seven paragraphs are about whether Simon Cowell and Ellen DeGeneres are friends or foes.
Oops. In performing link checking, it appears the Washington Post has chopped about forty percent off the end of the original story sometime since I opened the window for it yesterday. A whole lot of the soap opera is gone. The dateline, and the title are changed. Funny business. And the point still stands.
Rubbish
I made it into the second paragraph of the long piece before disgust set in:
Bartlett’s basic argument is that we are in a Keynesian moment, that Keynes–contra conventional wisdom–was actually quite conservative, and put forth his theories and beliefs because he wanted to preserve social norms against fascism and socialism [...]
Who the fuck cares whether Keynes was a conservative or not? And who the fuck needs economic theories based on political aims?
How about putting forward theories for the sake of advancing descriptions of what happens when masses of people trade for the sake of that knowledge?
Geez.
