Sunday, June 26, 2011
Cyberwars and Internet viruses
Evgeny Kaspersky: "... this war can't be won; it only has perpetrators and victims."
How to invest nowadays? "Think like a criminal"
Investment under Bernankenstein:
Think like a criminal. Look, it’s a matter of knowing what the Fed’s next move is going to be, and knowing the investment implications. You have to stay with the trend until the Fed sends signals that it is going to reverse. We’re at that inflection point. The issue is how much front running will there be? You definitely have to be out of your longs by now. When support fails after having succeeded, succeeded, succeeded, and every other previous retracement has held, then suddenly one doesn’t, it’s a huge signal.
Monarchist news
The Mad Monarchist has a nice roundup of news, including the trial balloons being floated against primogeniture in London.
Gay marriage will be mandatory
The right to gay marriage may become compulsion for gays to marry:
If the rollout of marriage equality in other states, like Massachusetts, is any guide, lesbian and gay people who have obtained health and other benefits for their domestic partners will be required by both public and private employers to marry their partners in order to keep those rights.I would look for the next push to be for "partner" benefits outside of gay marriage.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
"Government is institutionally blind to individual philanthropy"
Maybe. I would put it another way: government is efficient in developing new constituencies of need.
Tax all the young cripples
Private Eye: HM Revenue & Customs ... Having let Vodafone and Goldman Sachs off millions in tax ... it’s been commendably ruthless with a small charity for disabled children. [...] Now the charity has been whacked with a £16,000 tax bill, dating from an accounting error made in the early 1990s when the centre was run by completely different people. The charity has been given a year to find the cash, which will eat up the proceeds of dozens of the raffles, sponsored walks and coffee mornings that usually keep the service afloat.
Recycling dollars for gold
FOFOA notes that dollar holders who get tired of buying US treasuries can buy gold instead.
I have my own theory that the actual physical flow of gold into China corresponds to money that Ben Bernanke must now print that was previously being funded by the PBOC.Fascinating.
[...]
Buy gold (instead of Treasuries) with your excess dollars received from selling to products or oil to the US. As long as you buy on the open market (as opposed to dark pools as the Saudis used to do or from mines inside your own country) this drives up the price of gold and causes a physical inflow into your country. You no longer have to print equal amounts of your own currency so you have stopped your internal monetary inflation and, instead, channeled it into the price of gold (inflation only against gold, not life’s necessities). The Fed, in turn, is forced into “QE” which is essentially printing those dollars you would have given to Treasury since Congress can’t cut the budget. Also, those dollars you used to buy gold in London or Zurich will eventually find their way back into the US through private channels and add inflation on top of the printing the Fed is doing.
What would Eric Voegelin say?
Gnostic politics is self-defeating in so far as its disregard for the structure of reality leads to continuous warfare.
Politicians and their reading habits
Occasionally, during the last presidency, we were treated to lists of what nonfiction titles Bush and Cheney were reading. It was appalling, but nothing you wouldn't find at the bedside of a newspaper-reading, NPR-listening, highly credentialed suburban striver.
Very impressive to find a book reviewer who understands these fatal cultural deficits:
Very impressive to find a book reviewer who understands these fatal cultural deficits:
DAVID BROOKS is not the first contributor to the airport book stand to whom our leaders have turned for enlightenment and instruction. In the search for insight on the issues of the day, the politicians who are meant to be guiding us toward a better world have nudged, blinked, pirouetted on tipping points and anxiously pondered the wisdom of crowds. Yet none of these brightly packaged manuals has proved to have the practical usefulness that was promised. But not to worry, those who govern us are invincible positive thinkers who will never give up the hope of finding someone who will tell them how to conjure away all our problems.As a general rule, you want to watch out for people who express themselves in one and two syllable words. That's a way of saying, stay off the op-ed pages and stay away from political stumps.
[...]
ONE MIGHT be tempted to say that the political success of Brooks’s book is testimony to the callowness of our leaders, who have lost touch with the intellectual traditions that shaped Western cultures.
Beer archaeology - a social science we can support
On the one hand, polka teaches us "In heaven there is no beer," and "Enjoy yourself, it's later than you think." On the other hand:
Alcohol may be at the heart of human life, but the bulk of McGovern’s most significant samples come from tombs. Many bygone cultures seem to have viewed death as a last call of sorts, and mourners provisioned the dead with beverages and receptacles—agate drinking horns, straws of lapis lazuli and, in the case of a Celtic woman buried in Burgundy around the sixth century B.C., a 1,200-liter caldron—so they could continue to drink their fill in eternity.
And now a message from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
"When it does blow up it will be too late." - James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
You don't need to tell us
New cars with new features suffer more reliability problems than previous models with the old features. Yes? And?
Americans are suckers for aspirational technology. The not-quite-ready breakthrough. The consumer-as-beta-tester stuff. At the same time they are insane about reliability, the most repair and maintenance averse consumers in the world. Or so it seems.
Who on earth buys or drives these new cars anyway?
Friday, June 24, 2011
Summer is for polo
Briton Alev Scott is smitten with the Argentine polo scene, which reminds us: summer is for polo. If you can't play, go and watch.
Remember when people knew their own interests?
"The Democratic business-donor community is demoralized."
I cannot even conceive of a Democratic business-donor community. Not one that knows its interests, anyway.
I cannot even conceive of a Democratic business-donor community. Not one that knows its interests, anyway.
The Irish Game and the pundit game
The Los Angeles Times wonders if recently collared Boston crime kingpin Whitey Bulger can shed light on the art theft of the century (20th) - the Gardner swipe.
Rumors have long swirled that Bulger, the head of the city's powerful Irish American mob at the time, may have played a role -- or must have known who did. Some have speculated that he stashed the stolen masterpieces away to use as a "get out of jail free card" if he was ever caught. Others think he sent the paintings to allies in the Irish Republican Army to use as a bargaining chip.Don't tell the Times about the Irish Game - the circulation of stolen masterpieces as collateral in large-scale drug transactions. Don't tell them about Whitey's Irish or drug activities. Let instinctive journalism roll on.
Poll: Press campaigns actively for favorites
This is a healthy political awareness:
Likely U.S. Voters believe that most reporters, when covering a politician campaign, try to help the candidate they want to win. Only 21% think most reporters put the emphasis instead on trying to offer unbiased coverage. Twelve percent (12%) are not sure.
Forty-eight percent (48%) also believe that most reporters would hide any damaging information they learned to help the candidate they wanted to win. Twenty-nine percent (29%) disagree and 23% are not sure.
Left and Right converge on Greek crisis
Daniel Hannan notices When it comes to the bailouts, the hard Left is dead right:
The eurozone bailouts are, in essence, another transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. As this blog never tires of pointing out, the bailout money isn’t going to the people of Greece, Ireland or Portugal; it is going to bankers and bondholders who made bad investments.
[...]
Lefties are wrong about a lot of things. Their refusal to understand that excessive spending and borrowing were the cause of this crisis, and won’t be its solution, is almost heroic in its mulishness. But they are absolutely right about one thing: the policies being pursued by EU leaders are indeed a form of class war against working people, in effect if not intention.
Why the hammock?
I'll tell you why: Rocking synchronizes brain waves during a short nap.
Hammocks: the science is settled.
Hammocks: the science is settled.
Fake science = big money
Ask an environmentalist! Ask organized crime in Europe: Regulators scramble to recover millions of euros awarded to fake research projects.
The Army's bent COIN
With the projected handoff of counterinsurgency (COIN) operations to Afghanistan and the same having happened in Iraq, is it possible that the Army is done with COIN?
The very definition of a striver
A striver is someone who tells strangers the SAT scores of her sperm donor. See here.
Authority seekers are relentless, are they not?
Authority seekers are relentless, are they not?
Petraeus to be judged by his employees?
FP makes the point that after he takes CIA, Petraeus will be reading analysis judging his policies in Iraq and Afghanistan. Can he stay neutral or will the analysis tilt?
Romney - "free the banksters"
Why Romney would be a disaster in a nutshell: "Mitt Romney chose to unveil the economic plank of his campaign for the Republican nomination with a speech in Aurora, Colorado decrying banking regulation." Read the whole thing.
It's not that he learned nothing: he has chosen sides.
At the onset of the crisis, Romney was calling for end to mark-to-market valuation of assets, a clear sign that he was of the banksters, by the banksters (banksters wish to value their assets at prices that they are free to contrive - it makes the balance sheet so much prettier).
It's not that he learned nothing: he has chosen sides.
At the onset of the crisis, Romney was calling for end to mark-to-market valuation of assets, a clear sign that he was of the banksters, by the banksters (banksters wish to value their assets at prices that they are free to contrive - it makes the balance sheet so much prettier).
"A soft drachma will solve nothing"
Nice points from Detlev Schlichter including "The problem is not that the euro was too much of a straitjacket for Greece but that it was too little of a straitjacket."
The president lacks focus...
But we knew that already. And given what he believes, we welcome lack of focus.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Let's crack down on artists
If the artist throws live cats at McDonalds workers, copulates in public, and welds shut the doors of a restaurant currently in use, let us all join in on a police crackdown on this artist.
What would Albert Jay Nock say?
Useless knowledge can be made directly contributory to a force of sound and disinterested public opinion.
Central planning cranks are living it up
America's ever-popular middle class parlor game of you-can-be-a-central-planner is hard to take in the best of times. The play seems more intense in the economic crisis (sorry, recovery), as culturally and intellectually impoverished people generate endless suggestion on how to "grow jobs" and "get the economy moving" again. I love the breadth and scope of this:
Bicycling infrastructure creates the most jobs for a given level of spending: For each $1 million, the cycling projects in this study create a total of 11.4 jobs within the state where the project is located.Future candidates for same treatment: Recycling creates more jobs; watching PBS creates more jobs; driving Mini-Coopers creates more jobs; patronizing coffee shops multiple times per day creates more jobs; attending diversity training creates more jobs; etc.
Imagine a gene for every crime!
Amazing justice: "Gary L. Sharpe of Federal District Court in Albany, was quoted as saying, 'It is a gene you were born with. And it’s not a gene you can get rid of,' before he sentenced the defendant [for posessing child pornography]."
Russian monarchists continue pushing their cause
Nice roundup of Russian legitimism. The Russian monarchists even have their own media guy, Anton Liubich. H/T Russian Monarchist's Blog.
Whatever happened to Clinton bashing?
If you are nostalgic for some good-old-fashioned Clinton bashing, Stella Paul can help. The notes on Abedin and Panetta are worth the trip.
"Putin, Corruption" seized
Police have cracked down on dissidents in St. Petersburg and reportedly seized 5,000 copies of their publication "Putin, Corruption." The tract was "co-written by opposition politicians and former deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov."
But what is it with tracts? There must be a Russian Wikileaks out there somewhere...
Meanwhile, lest provincialism lead you to tut-tutting those Russians, consider this.
But what is it with tracts? There must be a Russian Wikileaks out there somewhere...
Meanwhile, lest provincialism lead you to tut-tutting those Russians, consider this.
Low regards to all
Policy decisions obviously have econonomic effects. Edwin Leap notes that high gas prices represent a low regard for rural culture.
Personally, I think we're dealing with an imperial middle class that cannot transcend its own narrow concerns and interests. Its provincialism is documented in every new edition of the New York Times and Washington Post, every new episonde of "Morning Edition" and every evening newscast across the nation.
To flip from rural to urban: consider the poor families in tiny apartments who have to allocate 25 square feet or more to various kinds of recycling containers as they satisfy a purely middle-class recycling fantasy?
"Low regard" and "no regard" emanate from champions of "diversity" and "multiculturalism".
Personally, I think we're dealing with an imperial middle class that cannot transcend its own narrow concerns and interests. Its provincialism is documented in every new edition of the New York Times and Washington Post, every new episonde of "Morning Edition" and every evening newscast across the nation.
To flip from rural to urban: consider the poor families in tiny apartments who have to allocate 25 square feet or more to various kinds of recycling containers as they satisfy a purely middle-class recycling fantasy?
"Low regard" and "no regard" emanate from champions of "diversity" and "multiculturalism".
IP-based narcissism: look more to boomers
Ron Liddle singles out the boomers as more addicted to Facebook and Twitter than other demographics. He particularly objects to Stephen Fry.
Fry seems to me morphing into one of his own characters while shedding the reticence. He made his gay "coming out" a national media event and has not let up since.
Fry seems to me morphing into one of his own characters while shedding the reticence. He made his gay "coming out" a national media event and has not let up since.
Mistah Speakah! How many moah...
As yet another Massachussetts speaker of the house heads off to prison, Howie Carr tallies them up.
Know the Bay State, know epic corruption.
Know the Bay State, know epic corruption.
The race for octopus expertise
German scientists, presumably marine biologists, are looking for an octopus that can predict soccer match winners. Their previous octopus with this specialty expired.
One shudders to think what might happen should the Taliban or Qaddafi discover such a marine creature first.
One shudders to think what might happen should the Taliban or Qaddafi discover such a marine creature first.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
"The Myth of Precision-Guided Coercion"
Good to see Franklin Spinney is still active and in good form:
What passes for a war strategy in Libya is now a comic opera starring NATO as an understrength, self-referencing techno bully, who acts as if he is now so fearsome that he does not even need a carrot to go with his stick.
[...]
In fact, the US version of technological supremacy eliminates the need for cleverness in a military strategist. The mental labors of a Sun Tzu, Napoleon, Grant, or a Manstein are no longer needed, because they can be displaced by silver bullets spit out by machines. All that is needed in a 'strategist' is the ability to construct coarse threats, even when, as in the case of Libya, the bullies making those threats are manifestly out of altitude, airspeed, and ideas.
Dog bites man
Oh, look, another deeply corrupt environmentalist! (Are we allowed to say that?) Working for that paragon of ethical agencies, NASA!
Euro: safer than the dollar?
The dollar holds more risk than the euro, says this European portfolio manager. Surprise: your money market fund is holding European bank commercial paper, including banks heavily exposed to Greek debt. Prediction: The Fed will spend resources to prop up foreign banks to keep your money markets solvent.
H/t to Rocky Vega.
Update: ZH and Jim Grant have much more to say on this.
Grant: "The Fed has embarked on something new: to enforce the symptoms of prosperity [stock and bond market health] rather than prosperity." "Either it owns the stock market or the stock market owns the Fed." "We have exchanged the gold standard for the PhD standard, a very bad trade."
Safe to say that the member (owner) banks of the Fed have considerable stock and bond market exposure which the Fed's practices are designed to aid.
H/t to Rocky Vega.
Update: ZH and Jim Grant have much more to say on this.
Grant: "The Fed has embarked on something new: to enforce the symptoms of prosperity [stock and bond market health] rather than prosperity." "Either it owns the stock market or the stock market owns the Fed." "We have exchanged the gold standard for the PhD standard, a very bad trade."
Safe to say that the member (owner) banks of the Fed have considerable stock and bond market exposure which the Fed's practices are designed to aid.
Is liberty (or Libertarianism) a "scam"?
Stephen Metcalf says yes. Julian Sanchez says no.
Hat tip to A&LD.
The conservative objection to Libertariansim, in a nutshell, is L's indifference to the pernicious social effects of certain types of voluntary contracts. This puts it in the difficult position of sitting in the same camp as liberalism and drawing lines of distinctions regarding which effects are worth regulating some liberty for.
Hat tip to A&LD.
The conservative objection to Libertariansim, in a nutshell, is L's indifference to the pernicious social effects of certain types of voluntary contracts. This puts it in the difficult position of sitting in the same camp as liberalism and drawing lines of distinctions regarding which effects are worth regulating some liberty for.
A meditation on wealth
Stories of the rich are a staple of the corporate media. Here's one we can look at together.One of the oddities of American thought is the general confusion about wealth and what it is.
Wealth is property; it is value stored in precious metals, land, resources; it is rentier (not labor) income; it is “money at rest”; and it can be “savings” that are noncontingent.
Wealth is not and can never be wages earned by an employee through labor. Wealth is not money in a checking account. Wages might become wealth after they stop being wages, but this is a very problematic transition, more on which in a moment.
In the US I am always surprised to find high income earners called “wealthy” and their income called “wealth.”
The publicly-owned company’s CEO, an at-will employee, sits atop the wage-slave pyramid, no matter how big the paycheck. He (she) is not an owner and the earned income stream realized by this person is negotiated in the labor market where time and expertise is bought and sold.
Think about public company CEOs you may know (who were not company founders). I have never known one or heard of one who started a company (other than a consulting firm) after losing the CEO position. These people are helots with no ownership in them. They do not even have it within themselves to invest their own wages that they may have saved, relying on the Madoffs of the world.
They are superbly credentialed strivers overcoming modest family backgrounds who rather resemble lottery winners except that they go broke at a slower rate.
Would we call a lottery winner “wealthy,” BTW? And yet for the year or two that he can hold on to it, the lottery winner’s money “rests” while the CEO’s money is constantly working, or leveraged, or gone away due to high living.
Do you think owners, and in particular the real wealthy, even break bread with this high income crowd? Why would they? What have they to learn from on-the-make hirelings? The master does not socialize with his factors. It’s the difference between Beverly Hills and Beverly Farms.
The ongoing confusion about wealth in this country is very helpful to the bona fide rich. Their status and possessions are never threatened. No one even conceives of wealth in non-income terms. If you are accumulating wealth, be encouraged.
“Tax the rich” means “tax income” not “tax property.”
“Spread the wealth” means “redistribute income,” not wealth.
“Income equality” is a battle cry that leaves the wealthy on the sidelines.
When you look at the orientation of the class warfare Left, they are focused on earners. This is a sad little dogfight among lowly wage slaves (and tax consumers) observed from afar by the wealthy.
One of the amusing things Grub Street likes to do is tally numbers of rich. Since newspapers can only parrot academic “expertise,” they fall into the polemic trap of repeating tiny totals for the “wealthy” because academics minimize these figures to serve a rhetorical purpose: to emphasize inequality through magnitude of comparison.
First, let me say, the rich are all around you. You can take that tenth of a percent or whatever number the professors are peddling (through their wretched ink-stained friends) and send it back whence it came. It may be that a tenth of a percent is earning a million a year but that has nothing to do with the percentage of the population that is wealthy.
Look around your street, your town, your office. Someone has to own all that.
Thirty years ago I was an infantry officer living the in the sad-sack town of Phenix City. I went to the landlord’s office to pick up my security deposit. One of his clerks looked up the street address of my apartment in his properties register, a tome six inches thick with one property per line, a dozen or two dozen lines per page. There may have been some leverage there, but there was an awful lot of property too. The man dressed like a used car salesman and spoke with an impenetrable Alabama brogue. You would brush past him on the street. Perhaps today, he has a Harvard PhD pressing his slacks.
Nowadays, if I just count the number of polo players in my county, factor in the cost of owning and maintaining at least four ponies per player, plus the cost of stable, groomsman, etc., the newspaperman’s miserable fractions crumble fast. If I add in the local fox hunters and their enormous horse and hound costs, the newspaper numbers become more ludicrous still.
Of course, all these horse and dog owners live outside of the wage economy, so they are invisible to professor and pundit alike. Being invisible, they can’t possible exist. Rather like Iraqi WMDs!
Ownership does not show up on W2s. Gold or jewelry in a safe deposit box is invisible to would be counters. Overseas realty is something you’ll never see. The wealthy hide their wealth; they dissimulate in public; they may drive dirty pickups, they may live poorly, they may travel constantly, they are a moving target far beyond the capability of today’s press-release-dependent reporters. They would be poor soon enough if they called attention to themselves.
Active business owners, meanwhile, are phantoms surrounded by entities in other people’s names. Tax avoidance has created elaborate fictions in the form of trusts, and shell companies, holding companies, and 501(c)3s.
You cannot count the rich. If you counted them, they’re not rich.
And why exactly would they want to talk to you anyway?
(Note: The dotcom CEOs are exceptional in that they include owner-founders who continue forming and joining companies. They transcend wage slavery when great blocks of stock are extracted from public markets. They tend to be nouveau riche employers of helot-class CEOs.)
Poland celebrates Reagan
Poland is celebrating Reagan's centennial. "Ronald Reagan is a Polish hero!" Look and learn, mediacrats.
Electric cars are losers
Aside from being chock full of toxic chemicals, having traveled the world during piecemeal manufacture, and being dependent on rising electricity prices, there are other reasons for loathing the electric car:
An electric car owner would have to drive at least 129,000km before producing a net saving in CO2.
[...]
Many electric cars are expected to need a replacement battery after a few years. Once the emissions from producing the second battery are added in, the total CO2 from producing an electric car rises to 12.6 tonnes, compared with 5.6 tonnes for a petrol car.
[...]
...drivers wanting to minimise emissions could be better off buying a small, efficient petrol or diesel car...
Why a Democrat?
They don't have answers. Good try here, but that's not going to change anything.
I spoke to a deeply committed Democrat of many decades recently and she had no earthly idea that corporations donated to Democrats and would not believe that Obama had received any money at all from banks. She had never heard of Corzine, Blankfein, Paulson, Rubin, Dimond, Immelt, et al.
For most Democrats, it will always remain 1967.
I spoke to a deeply committed Democrat of many decades recently and she had no earthly idea that corporations donated to Democrats and would not believe that Obama had received any money at all from banks. She had never heard of Corzine, Blankfein, Paulson, Rubin, Dimond, Immelt, et al.
For most Democrats, it will always remain 1967.
The rats and their cocaine pellets
Charles Hugh Smith, on a roll:
If the nation had to pay a historically average rate of interest on its debts, the economy would quickly implode like a supernova star.If bankers are the main employers of economists, economists will likely not renounce a thoroughly financialized economy.
[...]
The "borrow more, we need more demand!" thumpings of "liberal" economists like Krugman and Reich are completely blind to the fact that the borrowing they demand is precisely what has sold the nation down the river and handed control to the banks and Wall Street.
[...]
Hey, what's a trillion dollars at zero interest? You and I could make the interest-only payments each month, because they're zero.
[...]
This is the basis of the current stock, bond and commodities booms in the global economy: push trillions of dollars in "free money" to financial players, and guess what, that hot money flows out seeking a fat return.
[...]
The Keynesians and other economists have no ideas for confronting the reality of a post-consumerist debt economy and society. Like frenzied rats in a cage, they only have one lever to push to release the cocaine-laced pellets, and so they've been pushing it for 40 years.
California = Greece
Bill Bonner in good form:
Consumers are correcting 60 years of credit expansion. In many ways, this is a worse problem than Europe’s sovereign debt crisis. In Europe, the problem could be solved by letting a few banks and speculators go broke. It would teach the rest of them a lesson. Most likely, Europe could get back to work soon after. But America’s consumer debt problem will take many years to solve. Household debt is down to 115% of disposable income
Poem of the day
Seamus Heaney is marvelous. A new translation from from Aeneid VI - The Sibyl:
‘O you who survived,
In the end, the sea’s dangers (though worse still await
On the land), you and your Trojans will come
Into the realm of Lavinium: have no fear of that.
But the day is one you will rue. I see wars,
Atrocious wars, and the Tiber surging with blood.
A second Simois river, a second Xanthus,
A second enemy camp lie ahead. And already
In Latium a second Achilles comes forth, he too
The son of a goddess. Nor will Trojans ever be free
Of Juno’s harrassments, while you, without allies,
Dependent, will go through Italia petitioning
Cities and peoples. And again the cause of such pain
And disaster for Trojans will be as before: a bride
Culled in a host country, an outlander groom.
But whatever disasters befall, do not flinch.
Go all the bolder to face them, follow your fate
To the limit. A road will open to safety
From the last place you would expect: a city of Greeks.’
‘O you who survived,
In the end, the sea’s dangers (though worse still await
On the land), you and your Trojans will come
Into the realm of Lavinium: have no fear of that.
But the day is one you will rue. I see wars,
Atrocious wars, and the Tiber surging with blood.
A second Simois river, a second Xanthus,
A second enemy camp lie ahead. And already
In Latium a second Achilles comes forth, he too
The son of a goddess. Nor will Trojans ever be free
Of Juno’s harrassments, while you, without allies,
Dependent, will go through Italia petitioning
Cities and peoples. And again the cause of such pain
And disaster for Trojans will be as before: a bride
Culled in a host country, an outlander groom.
But whatever disasters befall, do not flinch.
Go all the bolder to face them, follow your fate
To the limit. A road will open to safety
From the last place you would expect: a city of Greeks.’
If we're going to import foreign nuke waste
.. why not crank up a few reactors of our own? We can put them in Tennessee.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Kaliningrad's Prussian past
The Orthodox Church is taking custody of Lutheran and Catholic ruins and historical structures in the Russian part of East Prussia (Kaliningrad); some people don't like it (see here and here).
Personally, it seems to me that the historical character of these sites can still be preserved and the Orthodox hierarchy can be appealed to if a wrong turn is taken. This is not like the secretive Turkish leveling of Armenian sites...
Personally, it seems to me that the historical character of these sites can still be preserved and the Orthodox hierarchy can be appealed to if a wrong turn is taken. This is not like the secretive Turkish leveling of Armenian sites...
Saving the tigers - who pays, who benefits?
There was an episode of a sketch comedy show, Big Train, I think, where people had set up tables and were collecting signatures for tiger extinction. The hapless signers were finding out that the signature was on a petition to kill more tigers - these animals are very dangerous.
It was an amusing way to state a serious point:
It was an amusing way to state a serious point:
There is a mismatch between who pays the costs and who gets to benefit from tiger conservation.
Games central bankers play
That Belgium would lease out its gold supply for a miserable Euro or two is not surprising, given central bankers' value system. What would be interesting to see how much more leverage has been extracted from the same loaned gold by its borrower.
The fractional reserve habit is hard to kick.
The fractional reserve habit is hard to kick.
Marshall McLuhan, Catholic thinker
Jonathan Miller (he of Beyond the Fringe) read McLuhan and was appalled by the Catholicism informing the text:
McLuhan found it necessary to elaborate a psychological theory which owes considerably more to the unacknowledged authority of St. Thomas Aquinas than it does to any of the scientific sources he openly refers to.That was 40 years ago and the rest of us now need to catch up.
Car of the day
A 1957 Bentley Continental S1. Body by Mulliner. The straight six might even give something close to economical mileage, should you be on a pension or under some sort of income restriction. (Frank Dale & Stepsons)
What would Douglas MacArthur say?
It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear.
A headline to love
"The IPCC: Greenpeace's glove puppet" and "Governments pay hippies to lobby them."
These headlines appear on The Register's splash page today, though not over the story concerned.
These headlines appear on The Register's splash page today, though not over the story concerned.
That sweet song that CEOs love to sing
The CEOs of America know very few songs but those they know they sing often and with gusto.
Here's one of my all time favorites: the "Labor Shortage Blues." Remember that one? Bill Gates used to sing that as a medley with "Gimme Some H1B Lovin', Uncle Sam." The business press just loved those tunes.
Well, with U6 at 20%, audiences just don't clap as hard for the "Labor Shortage Blues," so some new songwriter has come up with the "The Labor Market Mismatch Boogie." You can still sing that in medley with "Gimme Some H1B Lovin', Uncle Sam." Labor market mismatch, oh labor market mismatch, good rhythm, good chorus.
Here's another new song you'll be hearing a lot of: "You Got the Wrong Training Baby and You're Education Ain't No Good." Oh yeah. See how that one also goes great with "Gimme Some H1B Lovin', Uncle Sam."
You'll find these great tunes and others in the new Siemens American Labor Songbook. Everybody, join in!
p.s. All fooling aside, why not just pay the damn wages the market requires? "Siemens had been forced to use more than 30 recruiters and hire staff from other companies to find the workers it needed ..." - yes, at the price it wants to pay! You've got some HR pay scale determined by "surveys" and you'll go any lengths to preserve that absurd scale. Hint: if you have to have 30 recruiters and then special training for the marginal employees and the rejects that you hire, your pay scale stinks and your business model is wrong. Likewise, if you're bringing in workers from overseas, you don't have a business model, you have an arbitrage model.
Here's one of my all time favorites: the "Labor Shortage Blues." Remember that one? Bill Gates used to sing that as a medley with "Gimme Some H1B Lovin', Uncle Sam." The business press just loved those tunes.
Well, with U6 at 20%, audiences just don't clap as hard for the "Labor Shortage Blues," so some new songwriter has come up with the "The Labor Market Mismatch Boogie." You can still sing that in medley with "Gimme Some H1B Lovin', Uncle Sam." Labor market mismatch, oh labor market mismatch, good rhythm, good chorus.
Here's another new song you'll be hearing a lot of: "You Got the Wrong Training Baby and You're Education Ain't No Good." Oh yeah. See how that one also goes great with "Gimme Some H1B Lovin', Uncle Sam."
You'll find these great tunes and others in the new Siemens American Labor Songbook. Everybody, join in!
p.s. All fooling aside, why not just pay the damn wages the market requires? "Siemens had been forced to use more than 30 recruiters and hire staff from other companies to find the workers it needed ..." - yes, at the price it wants to pay! You've got some HR pay scale determined by "surveys" and you'll go any lengths to preserve that absurd scale. Hint: if you have to have 30 recruiters and then special training for the marginal employees and the rejects that you hire, your pay scale stinks and your business model is wrong. Likewise, if you're bringing in workers from overseas, you don't have a business model, you have an arbitrage model.
MSNBC - what you think it is
MSNBC finally, publicly embraces its political identity.
This should clear the way for some GE stockholder activism.
This should clear the way for some GE stockholder activism.
If Perry enters the race...
There will be two Texan candidates for presdient. One will present the respectable face of Republicanism, the other certain extreme tendencies. That's how the cards will be played, don't you think?
Incentives for genocide
If Sudan is slated to divide into North and South and the North wants to maximize its territory, it has an incentive to ethnically "cleanse" mixed border areas.
This is an old story, usually accompanied by violent population exchanges. Worth noting, in any case.
This is an old story, usually accompanied by violent population exchanges. Worth noting, in any case.
Nobody loves Goldman
Coca-Cola, et al, are now piling on Goldman. But here's a question: If Goldman owns the store of metals in question, why speak of manipulation? Is it manipulation beause they don't sell into demand?
Why isn't Coca-Cola an owner of metals? Why doesn't it hedge metal prices in its treasury department?
Why isn't Coca-Cola an owner of metals? Why doesn't it hedge metal prices in its treasury department?
Monday, June 20, 2011
Barnett: Don't fear US cyberpolicy
Barnett has an interesting take on the new cyberstrategy:
So there's no reason to fear America's decision to fold the cyber realm into this overall deterrence posture, just as there is no reason to fear the continuing unwillingness of authoritarian regimes to submit to our desired rule-sets on this subject. Time remains on America's side in all these structural evolutions, and globalization remains our winning hand.
Hackers declared war today
In case you missed it: "I wonder if this may very well be the beginning of our May 1968."
Anarchists who issue press releases? Not as menacing as the other kind.
Anarchists who issue press releases? Not as menacing as the other kind.
Strauss and Schmitt - symbiosis?
Michael Presley remembers Heinrich Meier's study, which
demonstrates how Carl Schmitt, due to his own exigencies, was unable to exoterically collaborate with Leo Strauss, but at the same time used Strauss' criticisms to modify and refine his own thinking.This puts a very interesting light on Schmitt - but it requires you to be up-to-date in your Schmitt reading.
Buchanan: Romney as Taft
Is this an analogy too far?
While front-runner Mitt Romney said he would listen to the generals about when it is safe to get out of Afghanistan, he spoke out against any more wars to win independence for nations not vital to the United States. This is straight out of the Robert Taft tradition that America does not fight other countries’ wars or pay other countries’ bills.But "not vital" is an escape clause, isn't it?
Credit crisis a boon to European centralization
Boris Johnson has a point rarely made:
Indeed, there is a sense in which the slow-motion disaster of the PIGS - Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain - has been terrific for the federalist cause. Bit by bit we seem to be creating a fiscal as well as a monetary union, in which huge sums - including about £20 billion of UK bail-out cash - are being transferred from the richer to the poorer parts of the EU. [...] These profligate and improvident countries would be obliged, in return, to submit to a kind of economic supervision that is now proposed for Greece. Taxes, spending, benefits - all the panoply of economic independence - would then be subject to agreement with Berlin and Brussels. I sometimes think Kohl, Mitterrand, Delors and co instinctively knew that this would happen.
RIP, Yelena Bonner
Yelena Bonner has died, another link to the lost world of anticommunism. Bonner was seen by Reds as a kind of Yoko Ono figure, misleading Andrei Sakharov.
Rule by technocracy
In our authority-loving, authority-driven culture, the highly credentialled groupthinkers have great sway, no matter who wins an election: The junta of experts tells us:
‘Vote how you like, but policies cannot change'
... a junta has installed itself nonetheless, a junta of ‘experts', technocrats, those educated in the knowledge of What Needs To Be Done.
These are the experts who, in the words in May of the president of the Eurogroup of states and Luxembourgish Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, believe that fiscal policy (that is to say almost all government endeavours involved in spending money that touch most citizens apart from home affairs and foreign policy) is "too important" for voters to have a say over, that would be better be agreed, again, in his words, in "dark, secret debates."
...
But wherever these masters of the European universe happen to be hovering at any one moment, the refrain in effect is the same: ‘Of course, there is no question that you are still allowed to vote however you like. Nevertheless, the policies absolutely cannot change even if the government does.'
Obama rejects draft missile deal with Russia
This is very interesting. It looks like the president quashed a sellout engineered by Hillary.
Sorry to get all newsy on you.
Sorry to get all newsy on you.
Bilderberg - a media non-event
Taki's editors notice the sound of silence around Bilderberg, this year and every year.
And only a lunatic would suggest that bringing together avowed globalists such as David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger alongside such globalist and quasi-globalist organizations as the Council on Foreign Relations, the European Commission, the European Council, the Center for Global Economy and Geopolitics, and the United Nations World Food Programme would have anything to do with attempts to shape a global agenda.
Have you considered a crisis vacation this year?
That's the spirit!
Greece is in trouble, Fellow Reckoner…which means it’s almost time for the crisis vacationer to book a few weeks lounging on her splendid islands.And the Arab Spring has brought about art collecting opportunities as well.
Vote for the imbecile
Looking at the Republican field, Alexander Cockburn remembers an Auberon Waugh quote that encapsulates the upcoming 2012 election:
Years ago I remember Auberon Waugh electioneering in Fulham in a challenge to the Labour and Conservative candidates. Waugh was outraged by the betrayal of Biafra, a chunk of Nigeria that had dared to secede in the late 1960s. Catholics, from the Pope to Waugh backed Biafra. Not the Labour Government, whose foreign secretary Michael Stewart, MP for Fulham, stuck firmly to stentorian support for oil-producing Nigeria. About a million people died. "People of Fulham," I remember Auberon bellowing to a modest throng, "An awful choice confronts you, the choice between a mass murderer and an imbecile."Should be an easy choice, whatever imbecile wins these primaries.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Bitcoins - deep thoughts from FOFOA
The quality of analysis normally given to Gold is being applied to the Bitcoin situation by FOFOA ("Friend of a Friend of Another"). After a coupe of open forums, FOFO dives in on Open Forum 3 and concludes:
See Open Forum 1, Open Forum 2, and Open Forum 3.
One of the reasons gold is money is that, of all the physical elements that meet other monetary requirements, gold is the one that comes closest to achieving the perfection of this monetary property that Bitcoin achieves, being completely worthless aside from its monetary uses. Bitcoin is truly an artificial, purely symbolic currency, which makes it, you guessed it, just like all the fiat currencies in the world today. Except there is one big difference: Bitcoin has a limited supply!FOFOA is wrong about silver, he may be wrong about Bitcoin. Worth reading as always.
What this means in practical terms is that Bitcoin is a hard currency. And remember, hard means difficult and inelastic. Today Bitcoin is trading as an asset backed only by the speculation that eventually it will be sufficiently accepted and adopted as a medium of exchange. Let's be clear about this. Today Bitcoin is not widely (or sufficiently) accepted and adopted as a medium of exchange. Today it is a speculative asset backed by nothing more than being a neat idea mixed with a little misguided hope and speculation. As strictly a medium of exchange, today, Bitcoin is redundant and superfluous.
See Open Forum 1, Open Forum 2, and Open Forum 3.
The new economic model in a nutshell
This has more the taste of truth than of mere analysis:
Government deficit spending, financed with paper money creation, has replaced debt-funded private consumption as the principal source of global growth.
Housing woes
Everytime I think I'm ready to move out of the paleolithic age, an irresistibly attractive cave goes on sale.
McLuhan's 100th
There will be 15 conferences on McLuhan in Europe this year commemorating 100 years since his birth. Very little seems to be happening in the USA, however. Will have to post a few things. Here's a mini-eulogy.
Sunday joke
A shipwrecked man is washed ashore where he meets a castaway. After an excited exchange, the shipwrecked survivor points to a shape in the distance and says, "What's that?" The castaway says "I built it myself. That's my church." The shipwreck survivor points at another shape nearby and says, "What's that then?" The castaway answers "I built that too. That's the church I used to belong to."
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