Weekend Open Thread
Judd Gregg decided he didn't want to be Obama's commerce secretary after all. Back to the drawing board for Mr. Obama.
And it looks like the stimulus package is out of conference and ready to be voted upon. If all goes as planned, the bill
should be on the President's desk before Monday.
Have a great weekend!
Submitted by stinerman on Fri, 2009-02-13 11:12
Tags:
Comments :
US Nuclear Weapons Lab Loses 67 Computers
"...with no less than 13 of them having disappeared over the past year alone."
In our society, people are rewarded for pretending to be certain about things they're clearly not certain about. -- Sam Harris,
Wonder who the "Prime Mover" was...?
...just asking? lol!
Underlying all arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. ~M. Friedman
Kanjorski exaggerated the "money market bank run" of September
Updates on the September "money market bank run
" meme that originated with Rep Kanjorski.
Apparently, Kanjorski was exaggerating and otherwise Making Shit Up (evidence provided by the above link).
Here's the take-home message:
In my expert opinion, you should do what I tell you to do.
SadlyNo links say there was a chain of events that caused
the run:
"Given the time frame mentioned by Kanjorski, he’s referring to the following sequence of events. On September 15, Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy. A major money market fund — the Reserve Primary Fund — held almost $785 million in IOUs from Lehman Brothers, causing a number of investors, both institutional and individual, to withdraw funds from the fund. The large volume of withdrawals cause the Fund to “break the buck,” meaning that each share was worth a few cents less than a dollar. Money market funds aren’t supposed to do this, and that prompted large transfers of funds from other money market funds to other investments and accounts"
Sounds plausible to me.
there was a run on money markets, but it was smaller and known
Reports from that week indicated that <$200 billion had been transferred out of money markets. The Congressman's problem is that he said it was >$500 billion, and that it could have grown to >$5 trillion (but there wasn't even that much money in all money market accounts) and that it would have broken the financial system.
The Congressman also suggests that this was secret information -- it wasn't.
In my expert opinion, you should do what I tell you to do.
These 'reports' you speak of....do you have evidence or
hear say?
news as it happens
Google: "money market september"
Hit: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/20/business/20moneys.html
Sept 19, 2008
In my expert opinion, you should do what I tell you to do.
I'd seen the 5.5 T figure a few places. That's why I'm
suspicious of the lower figure. I'm sure that kind of data is published somewhere but I wouldn't know what it's called to look for the timeline map.
To say Kanjorski was making [stuff] up is likely not accurate
What likely happened is that Kanjorski, while speaking contemporaneously on the subject of this Semptember meeting with Paulson and Bernanke, merely had an imperfect recollection of the amounts of money and timeframes that were involved. There's no reason to believe that he was actively making stuff up or exaggerating. I wrote a diary on the subject
on DailyKos last week and while I was writing it, it became clear to me that it was highly likely that there was nothing even approaching $550 billion of withdrawals from MMs in a couple of hours. I found an independent source that indicated a run of $150 billion in withdrawals over the course of a couple of days 
-- still quite significant, considering that normally, money is withdrawn from money markets at the rate of only a few billion a week. So the actual amounts aren't really all that critical in the story, because some important parts of the story still hold-- there was a run on money market funds that week, and Paulson and Bernanke made dire warnings to members of Congress about the end of our financial and political system as we know it as a result, including references to martial law and so forth. The dire predictions made by Paulson and Bernanke had already been revealed by Senator Inhofe 
, for instance.
Edit: upon reading the Portfolio article again, I think there exists another possibility: that Kanjorski is essentially accuate on his facts. A sell order is not an actual withdrawal until it is executed, so the amount of withdrawals does not have to match the amount of the sell orders. If a large institutional investor or investors-- say, foreign central banks-- issued huge sell orders on that Thursday that the money funds could not handle, and the Fed was contacted and intervened by asking the foreign central banks to hold off, there's no real conflict between the evidence brought up by Portfolio and Kanjorski's account. This especially makes sense considering the guarantees that the government set up for money funds that were announced immediately and unexpectedly.
As far as the "fishing" supposedly attributed to Kanjorski in his questioning of Paulson, that could just as easily be Kanjorski's attempt to get Paulson on the record in confirming facts that had to that point not been made public by a public official.
skymutt: accept no substitutes!
there are a number of suspicious things with Kanjorski
My doubt mainly arises from his failure to explain what he was talking about even after this video was being discussed everywhere, and a reporter had asked him to explain.
Watching the video, he seemed adament about the $550 billion figure, so I don't think he just failed to remember something clearly (if so, he was unaware of his own uncertainty, which is a problem in itself). Your theory about canceled orders seems plausible ... but I would have liked Kanjorski's office to confirm it. This still wouldn't explain why he was talking about $5 trillion (when money markets only have ~$3 trillion).
There's also this issue:
Do you think this might have actually happened, or did the Rep. just confuse this with some other action?
You had a nice diary over at Daily Kos.
I have a final question: would a run on money markets have destroyed the world economy within a day (presumably via destruction of the banking system)? I know that's a big question, but you seem to know a little more about these things than I do, and I'm not clear how big of a role these institutions play in day-to-day financial transactions. The Wikipedia article on money markets makes it sound like companies rely on these for their daily operating funds, but your article about the fraudulent money market that "broke the buck" makes it sound like they don't do much with commercial companies.
In my expert opinion, you should do what I tell you to do.
Okay, let's piece this together, making some assumptions
Keep in mind that I'm just a layman like you here and take the appropriate grains of salt with whatever I say ;-)
First of all, I do not believe he's lying or misleading people. I think it's unlikely that a congressman is going to lie about a non-political meeting in which there were multiple other congressmen and officials present who could refute his lies. So let's assume that he's telling the truth as he remembers.
Let's just assume the $550 billion figure is as I have guessed before-- a massive wave of sell orders from central banks and sovereign wealth funds that was never filled because the Fed intervened, called the various central banks involved, gaved assurances, begged, whatever, and the sell orders were cancelled.
The $5.5 trillion could easily have been a figure that was given to Kanjorski by Bernanke in that meeting as the total cost of non-intervention in the crisis, or the total amount of withdrawals from money markets plus other institutional investment accounts if there was no intervention and a panic. Kanjorski may have interpreted the figure wrong. He's clearly somewhat mistaken on this fact, given the fact that, as you say, there was less than $4 trillion in US money market accounts at that time. In fact, it appears that it was only a segment of all money market accounts that was affected by the run; specifically non-government institutional money market funds, which contained assets totalling arond $1.37 trillion
at the start of the crisis.
As for whether the Fed never froze any accounts-- we know that they never froze or shut down any RETAIL accounts, but I don't think that we have any confirmation that they did not at least intervene in some way in certain institutional accounts. Keep in mind that there was no widespread panic here amongst retail investors-- that's borne out by the evidence. So retail accounts-- the ones that the general public would have noticed-- most likely did not need to be frozen. Instead it was big institutional investors that were getting out. I think it's at least possible that the Fed could have intervened in these accounts without most of us ever finding out. The "freeze" could have been a simple matter of the Fed telling another central banker roughly "give me an hour to get this sorted out."
There's different kinds of money market funds, but a lot of them do hold a lot of commercial paper apparently. As they are a buyer of companies' debt, I suppose that a further run could have negatively affected various companies' ability to raise money.
I think the bigger immediate threat, though, probably would have been on the banks who would have had to raise cash to meet withdrawals in their funds. As I think I may have mentioned in my diary or in the comments, a lot of funds other than the Reserve Primary Fund would have broken the buck this year, except for the fact that they are run by banks or other financial institutions that have other sources of cash which they can infuse into their money market funds when the underlying assets in the fund lose value. But there's a limit to how much any institution would be able to spare to prop up a fund that was losing value internally. And in a run on a fund, the situation is exacerbated because the faster the fund has to sell its assets to meet redemptions, the lower the price it is going to get for those assets. With multiple funds selling the same kind of assets simultaneously, the situation is magnified more. I think It's likely that many banks would have failed because they would not have hadenough money to prop up their money fund and simultaneously maintain their capital requirements.
I really think that Kanjorski needs to reiterate and/or clarify his story, and add in any more details from the meeting that are relevant to the story. He may be reluctant to do so, however, because he does not want to be the cause of a panic. I don't know why he even revealed what he did, to be honest; it seems like something that could have been left behind closed doors.
skymutt: accept no substitutes!
Kanjorski revisited: skymutt's theories get some confirmation
First off, we have an independent confirmation that there were indeed somewhere in the neighborhood of $500 billion in money market sell orders on September 18th, but that Paulson intervened, and the sell orders were rescinded-- just as I had guessed above.
All pretty much exactly as I had already guessed in my comment above. And then Felix Salmon, who couldn't piece all this together and thought he had the "Kanjorski Meme" completely debunked and now is backpedaling a bit, puts forth this bit of speculation regarding the source of the redemption orders:
Maybe these guys ought to read skymutt's diaries
, eh? Some of us had this stuff figured out a week ago-- and actually found evidence of it ;-)
skymutt: accept no substitutes!
Kudos to the muttster
excellent work!
Yes who are these guys, and why on that day did they decide they need to make such a large redemption call. Why? That's what I want to know. Our world hasn't been the same since.
I'm only half stupid
<Takes bow>
I know it's not especially modest of me to pat myself on the back in cases like that, but that being said-- boy am a I right about stuff a huge percentage of the time!
As for the who, I say look no further than China for a start. We know that China has a huge pile of dollars. We know that China's ownership of treasuries rose from $518 billion at the end of July to $681 billion at the end of the year
... an increase of $163 billion in a 5 month period*. Compare that to the first 6 months of 2006, where they increased their holdings of treasuries by less than $30 billion-- probably a more or less normal rate due to their trade surplus with us. So if we say that less than $30 billion of their treasury purchase in the last half of the year was normal purchases of treauries due to their trade surplus, that leaves $130+ billion in treasuries that came from money that came from... somewhere. It's not unreasonable to speculate that China alone might have sold that whole $130 billion in CP-backed money market funds-- and wanted to sell a lot more at some point perhaps.
And of course we know that this one Chinese sovereign fund-- not all of China's dollar holdings by any means-- held an 11% stake in the fund that broke the buck. In the interest of not having excessive exposure to any one fund, let's assume that China had an average of an 11% stake in all similar funds-- probably not too unreasonable an assumption. The entire asset class had $1.37 trillion total assets before the crash. 11% of that would have been in the neighborhood of $150 billion. In other words, it's plausible that that this one Chinese Sovereign fund had over $130 billion in institutional non-gov money market funds before the crash, and funded this entire excess $130+ billion in treasuries out of the proceeds from those sales.
We know that China got burnt by the fund that broke the buck on Tuesday-- likely a subject of extreme concern to Beijing-- especially since they have a bad habit of getting burnt by their US investments... Blackrock, mortgage-backed securities... you don't want to stand with these guys under a tall tree in a thunderstorm, they have bad luck!
We now that it must have been just a few institutions at most with the bulk of the sell orders... if it was dozens of institutions placing sell orders, Paulson likely would not have been able to successfully intervene in such a short period of time.
We also know that Paulson has heavy ties with China, made frequent visits there as Treasury Secretary, and likely would have been the one to intervene if China were the major catalyst in the mass rush to the exits that Thursday.
We also know that the sellers have not been revealed-- indicating the sensitive nature of that info.
It all fits for me...
* If you want to find other culprits, look for other countries who were furiously buying treauries at the end of the year-- UK and Caribbean banking centers in particular have unusual amounts of treausury purchases during the time in question. The oil exporting countries, Japan, Brazil, and Russia seem less likely culprits based on this evidence, though of course it is not conclusive.
skymutt: accept no substitutes!
thanks for following up (re Kanjorski)
Thanks for following up on this. It seems that Kanjorski's only failing was in public relations.
Interestingly, this information was apparently in public record
way back in September, but no reporter picked up on it. Given how popular Kanjorski's video is, it seems like someone missed a big opportunity to break a story.
FWIW, I didn't think that Kanjorky was brazenly lying about this -- I thought that he was spontaneously exaggerating to capture attention (either exaggerating the actual events, or he misremembered but exaggerated how sure he was about the course of events).
In my expert opinion, you should do what I tell you to do.
Posted this in Books
But it's good for general consumption
too.
Barry Said We Would Have Change We Could....
...Believe in?
Ha! Not one of these things has held true, and particularly not for the largest bill the federal government has ever passed in it's history, the stimulopulus.
For those of you who thought Barry was a post partisan, or post race, or post anything...get over yourselves, he's a slick talk'in liberal Chicago politician who successfully scammed you.
Underlying all arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. ~M. Friedman
Stop stealing Penn Jillette's thoughts well after the fact
Your talking about a lawyer that is now a politician. ie an illusionist.
It depends on what one's definition of 5 days is, if it was passed Friday, which it was, and he won't sign it 'til Tuesday, there are 5 days in that period.
The Stimulus Bill of 2009 isn't Kosher, 'cus it's almost all Pork, not really going to take out pork if it is geared towards the goal of the bill.
He didn't quantify how many/what percentage of meetings with lobbyist would be made public.
I'm sure Bush funded some non-faith-based initiatives too, that doesn't take the wind out of the wings of his Faith Base Initiative.
In our society, people are rewarded for pretending to be certain about things they're clearly not certain about. -- Sam Harris,
I have no idea what you're talking about w/ Penn, but...
...he's hired lobbyists and tax evaders, not only did the Dem's not make the pork obvious, they hid it, and dealt with it in a back room fashion without including Repub's, then they tried to reinstate the obvious BS that the Repubs had removed. It's a more of the same thing much more than change...
Not to mention, this is an unnecessary bill, at least in its size and content goes, and Obama is it's architect.
It's obscene.
Underlying all arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. ~M. Friedman
The irony is
that Democrats just passed the largest tax cut in American history with almost zero Republican support.
Do Republicans have any genuinely good ideas to put on the table as solutions to Americans pressing problems? The GOP mantra is tax cuts shrink government yet Republicans voted to obstruct.
I would like to see Lindsey Graham stick to his conservative principles and not take any money from the Recovery Package that he railed on and on against.
I'm only half stupid
They're just going all in
They're hoping the stimulus plan doesn't work so that they can use that issue in the midterms.
That is generally the strategy the minority party has used since...at least 2000. "Yeah, we don't have any ideas, but at least we're not the other guys!"
I never broke the law; I am the law! --
George W. BushJudge DreddI'm listening to...
Takes time to get the systems in place, bro ;-)
skymutt: accept no substitutes!
Killer Rabbits and such
"Like Monty Python's Killer Rabbit, cheap indoor antennas seem harmless to satellite and cable providers. But with the digital TV transition in the US, rabbit ears can suddenly provide digital-perfect pictures, many more channels, and even on-screen program guides"
In our society, people are rewarded for pretending to be certain about things they're clearly not certain about. -- Sam Harris,
Only if you put them in your attic
I have trouble getting reception with mine some of the time.
I never broke the law; I am the law! --
George W. BushJudge DreddI'm listening to...
An interesting 538 post
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/02/republican-governor-panders-on-ga...
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Living in a parallel universe
Conventional wisdom vs the American people.
Perception is reality, or maybe not. The talking heads, the editors of noteworthy papers and magazines and right wing radio, had all pronounced Obama's presidency dead due to the echo chambers assertion that spending during a time of a serious recession will destroy the economy, that only tax cuts, and..... doing nothing (!?) are, well I can't figure that one out?
Despite the partisan positioning of the GOP in obstruction to spending, out in the cities and towns of America, some people will gets jobs, some people will get their unemployment benefits extended, and some of those people will be Republicans. That's a bipartisan solution, in spite of the shrieking of the ideological opposition.
I'm only half stupid
How is a talking head OpEd
How is a talking head OpEd writer at the NYT any different than the talking heads you claim are full of it? I mean, it's not like he's employed better rhetoric, has he? By the way, you forgot a link.
In any case, I don't see how the Democrat's shreiking is any less partisan. It's just that they're in power. You're finding things where there is nothing. Just shut up an enjoy your stimulus. All you do is fuel the fire that's destroying the thing you pretend to want to see in Congress and our government, bipartisanship.
By the way, reminding us you can't figure out the logic behind any plan but the one you're in love with simply highlights your inability to think critically. So I guess thanks for that. It'll help in future discussions. (I suppose I'll call them that just to make you feel better about what you think you're doing here)
The cynicism
is duly noted.
No thanks on the shut up, btw.
No I am not in love with 'the plan'. I would prefer it had less tax cuts and more spending.
Your non-objective analysis is also duly noted. Thanks.
I'm only half stupid
Barney Frank: Captain Obvious
Peter Boettke remarks
on Barney's appearance this morning on the Sunday Talk Show Circuit:
Oh Barney...sigh.
Oh Barney.... sigh
It sounds like a crush! ;-) John, John, John...... sigh
One could argue that there is plenty of incentive to stay in a relatively high paying job. If you find the pay unacceptable, then certainly in this job market there are plenty of highly qualified people looking for work that would be willing to take your place.
Equating the practices of loose lending standards of the credit market to compensation for the productivity of ones labor is a disengenious moral equivocation at best.
It would have been nice if Alan Greenspan knew what you describe as that basic lesson of economics before making the sales pitch that all was well in the lending and credit markets as he cheered for the DOW!
When Greenspan speaks people listen! Lowering lending standards, really, and who promoted that? Why Alan Greenspan did on Feb. 23, 2004
http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/speeches/2004/20040223/
I'm only half stupid
Barney's not my type. ;)
Even if I were gay, his raspy speech is more irrirtating to listen to than John McCain. I would never work.
As for this and what preceded it:
I have no idea what that really means or what it has to do with the post. Nobody's talking about compensation...nor implying it. It has nothing to do with the point.
As for Greenspan, well, I've already covered this many, many times. Greenspan ignored the basics. Barney doesn't even know them. I suppose that makes Greenspan's role more egregious since he written things before heading the Fed that show it knows better. Talk is cheap, though.
Of course, Greenspan's folly doesn't erase Frank's. They're both at fault and both had a hand.
It's so liberating when you just call a spade a spade instead of trying to defend/ accuse people (or inaccurate perceptions of them) for silly reasons and partisan labels. You should try it. ;)
I am saying that
The perverse incentive was low risk model used by Greenspan (Ayn Rand acolyte) in an effort to spread the glories of his capitalistic free market ideals throughout the land.
Sub-prime loans were paid off dutifully by happy home owners for a long time, until the free market types, like Phil Graham pushed to change the structure of the banks to allow them to play high risk games with the debt from both sub-prime and prime loans.
You can call all this perverse incentive, but you could also say that raw capitalism is by it's very nature a perverse incentive. Who ever has the most money can rig the game, whether they are in or out of government. Which is why I advocate for some regulations to check the raw power of capitalism, in spite of the fact that there are often unforeseen consequences that later need correction.
I'm only half stupid
LOL...
You just don't get it, do you? "
The perverse incentive was low risk model used by Greenspan (Ayn Rand acolyte) in an effort to spread the glories of his capitalistic free market ideals throughout the land.
Being a Rand acolyte has less than nothing to do with Greenspan's role in perverting incentives. Nothing. Zip. Nada. NOTHING. You throw that in there as if it has any relevance whatsoever. It doesn't.
That's like throwing in the fact that Hitler was an alter boy and considered the priesthood in his youth when talking about his atrocities against mankind...as if the two are related. They are not.
Besides..."perverting incentives" and "free market ideals" don't belong in the same sentence unless there's some negation like "not" or isn't" in between them. We've covered this.
Notice that I said "inaccurate perceptions" with a specific reason. And there you showed it.
Yes I do get it
Hitler being an alter boy has nothing to do with his philosophy of governing. Whom he admired, what he read and how that affected his thinking and his philosophical beliefs does.
That Greenspan admired and touted Ayn Rand says something about his philosophy and his approach to governing through economic policies.
Free market ideals are a form of perverted incentive with the goal of liberating people and making them accountable for their own behavior by isolating reward or punishment to market forces only without outside interference of government screwing up the enlightened perfection of pure markets as the best teacher on earth.
Trying to layer free market ideals upon an already existing system as a way of liberation is in fact a form of manipulating incentive.
See the paradox there.
Free market idealists seek to impose a perfect system on society as a means of manipulating society.
The goals and intentions may be good and even noble, but to suggest that the philosophy of market fundamentalism is not a form of persuasion ie: incentive, seeking to alter, manipulate, rationalize or enlighten human behavior, therefore governments, is simply incorrect.
I'm only half stupid
Really?
Sure, that's why 2/3's of the federal budget is spent on free market programs to manipulate society...LOL!
Oh wait, I'm sorry, it's 2/3's of the federal governments budget is actually spent on entitlement programs as a means of manipulating society....right.
You were saying ML?
Underlying all arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. ~M. Friedman
I find myself agreeing with RW here
Very odd feeling, that.
I never broke the law; I am the law! --
George W. BushJudge DreddI'm listening to...
Mean...
We agree an a lot I thought...
Geeze...;-/
Underlying all arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. ~M. Friedman
Not usually on economics
But we do generally agree on the meta issues. Federalism, etc.
I never broke the law; I am the law! --
George W. BushJudge DreddI'm listening to...
True....
n/t
Underlying all arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. ~M. Friedman
I am saying
open your eyes.
The attempt at regime change by the free marketeers layered over our existing system has been shoved in place with the goal of socially re-engineering our society. (What you claim to hate) The goals of each side may be different but it is social engineering none the less.
After looking at the overall economic health of our society as a measure of the success of this free market deregulatory push, can you say the effort was successful.
The CRA did not blow up our financial system. It was in existence for decades.
It wasn't until the insistence that private markets inject themselves deeper into the process to capitalize on investment opportunities of credit swapping, under the guise of 'shrinking government' and exporting 'capital investment' ( see toxic assets) that problems started to show up. One could even go so far as to say exporting (free market) capitalism ( in the form of SIVs, CDS's ) was the toxin that poisoned our system or to put it more simply, unregulated free market capitalism is a toxic.
I'm only half stupid
All government is social engineering, ML. All of them.
n/t
and how is your
revolutionary movement any different?
I claim you are trying to destroy my retirement by getting rid of social security. I consider that social engineering. Your radical anti-government movement is trying to break a contract to steal something I have earned.
You may as well just embrace anarchy, with the best intentions of some utopian ideal, which is what you may well be trying to do if you consider all government to be 'evil'.
I hope you accept the reality that anarchy is a pretty fringe movement.
I'm only half stupid
Pretty fringe, yep
but we have the benefit of being right :)
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
In your
own mind. :-)
Seriously I can appreciate the true anarchist. They don't seem intent on causing me harm.
Some sects of libertarian movement on the other hand........... !
I'm only half stupid
Are you seriously questioning
intent here?
Examining ideas in good faith and on their own merits elevates discussion.
Questioning motives does the opposite.
Elevating discussion?
You guys always elevate discussion... you "elevate" it all the way over to the blue border on the right side of the page ;-)
skymutt: accept no substitutes!
Thanks
I'll take that as a compliment.
Of course, if MissL stayed on topic the way you and others do and finished points...regardless of her POV...the threads wouldn't go to the blue bar. ;)
Ending social
safety nets, or wasteful taxation, for those judged to be unproductive citizens, such as unemployment, food stamps (food surplus put to use) and social security, in my view threatens me with potential harm. Especially since I have already paid for this safety net, and think it is a measure of a civilized society.
I am well aware that there are catches and glitches and unforeseen consequences, in all of these safety nets, yet on balance they are practical.
And yes I would still like to go to the publicly funded library and have my mail delivered by the post office, and have my drinking water tested for safety by an agency that is accountable to the people that pay for it, thank you very much.
I'm only half stupid
OK.
But anyway...
I'll ask again:
Are you seriously questioning intent here?
Finally. Something meaningful from you.
I would never advocate the tear-down of SS without first paying back all those, in full, for what they paid in. And I think we simply disagree on the measure, not the measurement of civilized society. In my view, a society is not "civlized" when it's members must be told, and are then forced, to help others. Likewise I also do not see civilization in a society that does not value caution, preparation, and forethought so that dire situations are avoided rather than lived-through.
I like those things as well. And, as it turns out, I see no problem with them on a locally funded level. And the mail is constitutional anyway, so what the heck are you worried about? And unless you have some evidence that, for a recent example, corrupt companies that subvert safety proceedures somehow get off light... Well, I think there's been enough talk of that in the news lately. Maybe if you find some evidence they are getting off lightly you'd share it.
You are bizarre. You have
You are bizarre. You have this ability to completely ignore the discussion and go off on unrelated tangets to keep from dealing with the topic at hand.
You think that I, personally, am devoting all my efforts toward destroying your wealth that you "created" because I don't agree with Social Security and yet you lack the ability to understand that someone else might see Social Security as the detroyer of wealth. It's absolutely incredible how narrow minded you continue to prove you really are.
I can't wait for your rebuttle. I might have to start a website dedicated to off-tanget ML quotes for posterity.
Let's try this again. All governments are social engineering. If you wouldn't mind, either acknolwleding that fact or providing a related counter-argument. Thanks.
Happy to be a source
of inspiration.
All I am saying is that you are encompassing a paradox.
Trying to destroy government (or whatever) with your austrian revolution is just as much a form of social engineering as that which you claim to be trying to defeat.
Paradox: a seemingly absurd or contradictory statement that upon further investigation is well founded and proves to be true. The case where opposites are true. ie: my husband is the man i love to hate. i only hate him because i love him so much. It's a paradox.
I'm only half stupid
destroy?
Or whatever?
Such a strawman
The only thing being destroyed is any point worth discussing.
Not really.
But then again you've got no idea since you've never bothered to understand anything that doesn't immediately make you feel good. I don't want no government. I just think less of it is better. The destruction of government is not the aim of Austrian economic theory. Here, I'll make it easier for you to develop some kind of informed argument in the future with a relatively short read.
http://www.mises.org/mofase.asp
Actually,
Austrian Economics is just that...economics.
It's not political theory. That's a not-so-fine line being blurred here.
While Austrian Economists may have their own opinions about political arrangements and government, Austrian Economics does not.
Not buying that one
Not even a little...
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Here we go again...
Okay, you've baited me. Why not?
Specifically why do you feel the divide between Austrian economic theory and the libertarian view of governance are inseparable such that all Austrian economists must necessarily be libertarian and vice versa?
Don't bite.
It's plainly obvious that many libertarians are not Austrians.
Milton Friedman comes to mind. The list goes on.
I'm not saying that
I'm just saying the various "schools" of economics have political foundations. You might even go so far as to say they were founded with an intent to prove their presupposed political views. You might say that...
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
You don't need to buy it. There's nothing to buy.
I'm not selling anything.
Go read about it and tell me what you find.
BTW, I'm referring to economics. Not the political writings and opinion.
Yes thank you.
The fallacy you present here is that you believe with all your heart, that if people only understood austrian economics they would automatically become converts.
I appreciate the good intentions of the theory, I just don't agree with it.
Government has been defiled for so many years, (thanks ronnie) that people have forgotten that the call to public service isn't something that should be a joke, but an honor. (my idealism is showing)
I'm only half stupid
What parts of the theory
do you disagree with?
I thought we discussed this
at length (into the blue) when I had to ask over and over for a definition of rationalizations, and never ever got a clearly defined answer.
It's late. I'm down for the count.
I'm only half stupid
lol
and she does it again!
SwordsCrossed's first Law.
ML, whenever confronted with a subject unfamiliar, will tend toward obfuscation such that any ongoing conversation will, after that point, no longer qualify as a conversation but instead as an aimless, baseless rant.
Like I said
it's kind of unfair.
That IS funny
What is the rationale that merits playing the victim here? That's a bit absurd.
I'm only half stupid
Like I said,
...
Thats why after 6 months I'm out...
...of trying to pursue dialogue with ML that is...
It's useless!
Underlying all arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. ~M. Friedman
That's not the theory
That's your quibble over semantics with Magilson.
I'm asking what in the theory you disagree with.
I'll throw you a bone.
Personally, I struggle with the nature of profit. It's very hazy and a bit tough to follow.
But then again, I'm not very well read in it. Very cursory.
But one of the most profoundly lucid points is one which totally defies mainstream neo-classical:
The rejection of equilibrium. Sounds crazy but the explanaton is stronger to me than any mathematical model-based explanation I have seen or defense of equilibrium on math grounds.
The nature of interest (time preference) is pretty easy to follow. The implications are complicated.
Hmmm......where's the part of government??? I've only scratched the surface. Sadly, I can't go much deeper being that I'm not an economist.
Words aren't important
meanings of words are to be dismissed as rationalizations. That's another good one.
In theory I disagree with the justification for valuating humans by judging their worth or decency by only monetary standards of productivity, by using words like rationalizing behavior without defining what rationalization means.
This statement still leaves me scratching my head, but I don't expect an explanation for this double talk, since it might taint the purity of the theory.
I'm only half stupid
So again,
What in the theory do you disagree with?
You were given an explanation
.
Wrong again.
As I said previously, I am not asking you not to be a liberal. I am just asking you to know what the heck you're talking about when trying to make arguments against an economic theory you obviously know next to nothing about. If you are going to continue to keep your signature and participate in economic discussion, the least you could do is know what you're talking about. I'm just asking for consistency.
It's kind of unfair
isn't it?
Sounds more like...
...the liberal agenda. The stimulus package. Project housing. etc. ad-infinitum...
If we are "layering" our agenda over the "real" agenda...why is it we want the "original" agenda to remain, and you and your policies ubiquitously want to change the constitution, or interpret it, or need jurors prudence to justify your positions?
Who is layering what on who my dear?
Underlying all arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. ~M. Friedman
No. I don't think you really do.
No. It doesn't. Again, well covered stuff. What people claim to support when shooting the breeze or coffee over signaling with rhetoric is one thing. What they actually do when the power to affect policy is in their hands is another...especially when the two contradict each other.
The thing is though that whether we stay on the very specfic and precise black and white original point (which you are not...because the point is too obvious and you are wrong) or even if I entertain your opinionated and convoluted tangent, you are on very weak ground.
The original point speaks for itself...as evidenced by your dodging of it.
Your tangent is rather weak and misguided because even this:
First of all, you're really reaching and I'm not going there. Secondly, the first clause of that sentence about "layering" doesn't even apply in the matter of Greenspan. Greenspan didn't apply free market ideals onto an already existing system. He broke with any notion of such ideals. There's no liberation...at least not in a free market sense. But yes, there was a manipluation of incentives.
That's rich
The original point speaks for itself.... as evidenced by your dodging it? (!!!)
Sheesh. Nice try.
I'm only half stupid
Face it. You didn't. You really didn't
I think magilson put it well:
Seriously, where did you address it? Show me.
The post was about Barney Frank. Pretty clear. You said nothing about that point.
But even if we accept your response as the starting point with some point about Greenspan mislabled free market ideals, you still didn't.
At each step you keep muddling the point and making the discussion broader, more murky and a diversion away from simple statements of fact about Frank or Greenspan into untractable meta discussions based on your conjectures and extrapolations of your own opinions rather than where the matter began.
In a way, the more I write, the more you do this.
I tried to address
the gist of what you labeled a perverse incentive, by providing a different perspective on your definition.
I'm only half stupid
No.
You avoided the simple objective gist of what IS a perverse incentive and instead tried to provide a totally different discussion based on your highly subjective perspective on tangential and gray areas...which I have no interest in addressing until the initial points are wrapped up.
I disagree
Something you don't seem capable of accepting is that someone could possibly disagree with your definitions.
I'm only half stupid
No.
I'm quite capable of accepting disagreement.
But in this case, it is not my defintion. It's the real definition. I'm simply abiding by it.
You are wrong on this....something you don't seem capable of accepting.
Rather than torture this to death. Why not simply keep your defnitions and find the correct terms to go with them?? Corporatism works. Crony capitalist is another. state-run capitalist is yet another. These are just ideas.
I see it all the time on poscasts of discussions and places like blogging heads.
Somebody makes that error of labels. The other person corrects it and clarifies. The point is noted and the statement is rephrased. There's a genuine desire to be correct and accurate. There's a sense of good faith and intellecutal honesty.
The person doesn't respond with something to the effect of:
"Well, I don't care. You KNOW what I mean...it's all the same to me....besides, it interferes with my point."
No. They do quite the opposite. And they adjust their rhetoric and clean up the resulting loose ends...even if means fine tuning their points.
You seem to post with the ever-present caricature of that example quote. Unhelpful.
Ah Full ML circle...
...Once you dial it in...she regresses?
Such a waste of time?
Underlying all arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. ~M. Friedman
I love his voice
That and his quick wit is what'd turn me on. Of course he's a bit too old for me. And has the wrong equipment. And isn't all that attractive.
I never broke the law; I am the law! --
George W. BushJudge DreddI'm listening to...
75% of the sub prime mortgages were sold by Brokers, not Banks
or Freddie or Fannie. How is it that you aren't holding the actual people/companies who made the loans to people they KNEW were terrible risks accountable?
I think the way out isn't just to throw money at the banks. I think as companies become undercapitalized the FDIC should go in and take over the companies, just like they are supposed to. Then the FDIC will sell off what is good and at least identify what is bad in the way of paper owned.
On a side note...it's been rainin' & blustery all weekend out here in CA. Been able to pull windows out of it to run the dogs & enjoy some, but I for one am sure glad we're getting rain. We need it badly.
The other irony
is that this public private partnership that is blamed as the crux of this credit mess is exactly the business model that Cheney Republicans have spread throughout the land in order to decrease the size of government.
If you will notice that the Peanut Butter business has circumvented the FDA, by hiring private microbiology labs to test samples for safety. If a test comes back that tests positive for salmonella, then the company can send out for another test that is negative and use that to represent the safety of their food. None of these private companies are required to report positive results for disease to the FDA. It's a win win for the zero accountability crowd. The company can sell poison food. Private industry gets work, and the FDA a government agency that is seen by the free marketeers as unfriendly to business is castrated. Meanwhile thousands have lost their jobs in the peanut butter plants, tax revenue has been lost in Texas and Georgia, people have died, the company has declared bankruptcy forcing the stores that bought their products to take them out of circulation even though they paid for them and won't get compensated. It would have been much better for business and the community all around if they FDA had been able to isolate the problem and prevent this mess. Oh but the FDA is government and government is bad. <sarcasm
This private public partnership permeates government services, and is promoted.
I'm only half stupid
Who said I wasn't?
Our points are not mutually exclusive. I'm simply looking at the policy level...the deeper level...,which precedes what the economic actors do. Remember, we're talking about perverse incentives.
Any discussion about perverse incentives necessarily implies harmful action from people who operate under those incentives. The point is to mind what incentives the policy in question creates. Once bad incentives are in place, the bad results will come...it's just a matter of time.
the rest of the world is SO messed up
Ongoing events remind me that for all the problems that we have here in the USA, the reset of the world has it worse.
First, the financial crisis: While the main events of the crisis occurred in NYC, it is foreigners who are really feeling the brunt. For instance, manufacturing in East Asia (except China) has really taken a hit (If you want details, peruse the Economist
website, and this chart of output, prices, and jobs 
). Eastern Europe 
has been faring poorly also, with across the board currency devaluations and the effective expulsion of Russia from the international credit market 
.
Russia's problems bring us to the second issue: the fate of the petro-electoral dictatorships in Russia, Venezuela, and Iran. All of them face serious economic problems since oil exports can no longer subsidize their dysfunctional domestic institutions. This doesn't seem to have cowed their tyrants: the Russians still kill independent journalists
, Chavez is still seeking to be dictator for life 
, and the Iranians are still developing new rockets. If oil prices stay low, economic problems are nearly inevitable. Will it empower the democratic opposition, or reinforce totalitarian leaders who promise to solve all problems?
Third and finally, even in countries that we often think of as generally reasonable and democratic, there is still the stink of totalitarian nationalist ideologies. A "Hindu Taliban
" has emerged in India, deploying vigilante mobs to enforce their version of traditional morality. Let's not get into the fact that the original Taliban controls the Swat valley 
in Pakistan, or the general dysfunction in the Middle East. In Israel, the "right" (i.e. hawks) has made sizable gains in recent elections. The big news is that Ariel Sharon's Kadima is essentially a "left" party now while the Labor party has dropped to being the fourth-largest party. The new up-and-comer is Yisrael Beiteinu 
led by Avigdor Lieberman 
. While some Israelis view Lieberman as a fascist 
, he calls for a strange mix of "with us or against us" nationalism, Europhilia, and an end to state privileges to effectively racist religious leaders. Given that last tenet, and the problems it is causing with forming a right-wing coalition 
with Shas 
, Lieberman seems downright progressive.
p.s. Beiteinu is unlike any political movement that I can think of. The only thing it brings to mind is the political system in Starship Troopers.
In my expert opinion, you should do what I tell you to do.
Fascinating yet
disturbing.
I wonder if this sort of stuff has always gone on but now that the world has shrunk due to lightening speed communication. Also the new global nature of trade, markets and commerce.
I'm only half stupid
Lieberman's claim to fame
is that he generally wants to expel all Arab Israelis.
His political ideology isn't all that odd considering how traditional right-wing populism works in Europe. They aren't all that excited about religion because it threatens their elevation of the state above all.
We are the weird ones. I don't think anywhere else in the world do the social conservatives make a coalition with market liberals.
I never broke the law; I am the law! --
George W. BushJudge DreddI'm listening to...
an article on the petro-czars
Conditions in Iran, Russia, and Venezuela
:
Of course, these problems are teh result of oil being <$40 per barrel. I expect that prices will shoot up rather quickly once oil consumers get their house in order. If that doesn't happen before the end of next year, these countries will face some very tough times (based on analysis in the above article)
In my expert opinion, you should do what I tell you to do.
Chavez won
Darn. There don't even seem to be accusations of fraud.
http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-02-16-voa6.cfm
The other day, NPR ran a story about how his thugs have occupied local government offices after Chavez's party lost some elections.
In my expert opinion, you should do what I tell you to do.
I fully support their rights to screw themselves over
I never broke the law; I am the law! --
George W. BushJudge DreddI'm listening to...
I've said it before
andI'll say it again:
Chavez is probably a huge S.O.B. but at least he drives the right people absolutely nuts (not you adam).
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Chavez, and his effect on nuts
But he seems to energize them rather than exhaust them.
In my expert opinion, you should do what I tell you to do.
Harper's has an article "Former Gitmo Guard Tells All".
It's ugly. www.harpers.org/archive/2009/02/hbc-90004409
"Army Private Brandon Neely served as a prison guard at Guantánamo in the first years the facility was in operation. With the Bush Administration, and thus the threat of retaliation against him, now gone, Neely decided to step forward and tell his story. “The stuff I did and the stuff I saw was just wrong,” he told the Associated Press.
Neely describes the arrival of detainees in full sensory-deprivation garb, he details their sexual abuse by medical personnel, torture by other medical personnel, brutal beatings out of frustration, fear, and retribution...Neely’s testimony makes clear that IRF was understood by everyone, including the prison guards who applied it, as a subterfuge for beating and mistreating prisoners—and that it had nothing to do with the need to preserve discipline and order in the prison...He describes body searches undertaken for no legitimate security purpose, simply to sexually invade and humiliate the prisoners. This was a standardized Bush Administration tactic–the importance of which became apparent to me when I participated in some Capitol Hill negotiations with White House representatives relating to legislation creating criminal law accountability for contractors. The Bush White House vehemently objected to provisions of the law dealing with rape by instrumentality. When House negotiators pressed to know why, they were met first with silence and then an embarrassed acknowledgement that a key part of the Bush program included invasion of the bodies of prisoners in a way that might be deemed rape by instrumentality under existing federal and state criminal statutes."
Sorry it's long. What if we convicted a whole bunch from the bush43 years on stuff like torture, fraud & other felonies. What would the conservatives here say if we took dubya, Darth, Yoo, Addington, and a few others and subjected them to this kind of treatment? Would you complain?
This was all done in our name. We are just as complicit. We give credence to the distortions our enemies say about us. There was no excuse....not one that's any good.
Eye for an eye speak out of a
Eye for an eye speak out of a liberal? ;) Although it would be a really effective method of preventing such abuses in the futre... The thought that you might be accountable for your actions in the same way you commited the offense. Is that justice, though? Could be, I suppose.
Laws, though. We definately need more laws to keep people from doing things (that were already illegal).
I love it!
LOL!
Underlying all arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. ~M. Friedman
No doubt there
I remember the Democrats' capitulation on FISA. FISA was already the exclusive means of domestic surveillance, but Bush decided to ignore it. So the Democrats made it extra doubly exclusive so Bush (or any other President) couldn't break it.
I've always enjoyed the idea that if someone breaks a law that isn't enforced, that means we need more laws to fix the problem. Cases in point: illegal immigration/border security and, of course, FISA.
Not shoveling one's sidewalk in Sandusky, Ohio carries a penalty which may include jail time. However, almost no one on my block shoveled their sidewalks. Better up the penalty so they start doing so...even though I don't think anyone's ever been arrested for a slippery sidewalk.
I never broke the law; I am the law! --
George W. BushJudge DreddI'm listening to...
Does anyone else find it amusing
that the NRO's list of best conservative movies doesn't go any further back than 1984 (the year)? Most ofthe movies are from the late 90s or post 2000.
http://nrd.nationalreview.com/article/?q=YWQ4MDlhMWRkZDQ5YmViMDM1Yzc0MTE...
How very fanboy...
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
I have #23 on reserve at the library
However, I think the folks at NRO go way overboard on what constitutes a conservative movie. A "conservative movie" would be one where there is an active attempt to show conservative values as king. Sorry, The Incredibles is not a "conservative movie". Its just a movie...
I never broke the law; I am the law! --
George W. BushJudge DreddI'm listening to...
Well, yeah
I thought it went withough saying that the list was unintended comedy. They compare Bush to Batman for god's sake.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Is this guy serious?
300? That movie felt like a 3 lackluster Saturday morning cartoons, put back-to-back-back.
The Neo-Cons would hate The Dark Knight, the "good guys" failed to kill the hostages that were dressed like bad guys. And the prison boat wasn't blown up in the name of a preemptive strike to those convicts maybe possibly working with the joker in the future.
I would hate to see a screenplay written by the contributors, it'd something about vampire zombie liberal Nazi's try to build a oppressive utopia until Rowdy Roddy Piper can come an save the day and reinforce sodomy laws.
I'm seriously surprised that Demolition Man or Judge Dredd didn't make the list.
How Saving Private Ryan doesn't make a list, but 300 does is beyond comprehension.
In our society, people are rewarded for pretending to be certain about things they're clearly not certain about. -- Sam Harris,
I quite liked the 300
but I think they missed that in applying that film to the war on terror its a lot easier to see Bush as Xerxes rather than Leonidas. Bush afterall was the one with the vast military war machine being brought to bear.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
300 was the bomb at that moment in cinema...
...for that alone it was cool...
Why must Bush and conservatives be vilified...
Well, stay tuned for Obama's version of warfare...it's due in theater's soon!
Underlying all arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. ~M. Friedman
Why must bush be villified?
Because I was talking about a list where the NRO guys went to extreme lengths to try and make Bush appear heroic, hence pointing out how that is opposite of reality is germaine.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Tolkien was an anarchist
I had the same impression with Lord of the Rings -- much of the movie (and the book) could be read as a leftist morality play ... the bad guys cut down all the trees (and are rewarded with a flood), while the good guys have to learn to defeat evil without grasping for power in the processes.
Tolkien was a conservative, but he also had strong sympathies with anarchism. I think his brand of conservative anarchism was reflected in the Hobbit society.
In my expert opinion, you should do what I tell you to do.
Ever notice how...
...the kelly blue book only goes back 20 years...
Need I go on?
Underlying all arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. ~M. Friedman
You probably should go on
if you want me to have any idea what you mean...
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
satelites collide, nuclear subs collide...
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/02/16/Subs_could_have_had_radioactive_r...
In my expert opinion, you should do what I tell you to do.