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.’

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.

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...

Breaking down the misery index

Addison Wiggin has your cheat sheet on the misery index.

Canadian activists

... are more professional.

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:

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.

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.

Well, that didn't take long

Shortest war on record.

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.

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.

MSNBC - what you think it is

MSNBC finally, publicly embraces its political identity.

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.

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?

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.