Sorry if I get my titles from the Daily Show.
The House passed the stimulus bill today with zero Republicans voting for it. Have they all become dittoheads (followers of the comic Rush Limbaugh) and are hoping the economy will get even worse so they can say they didn't vote for the "bad" economic stimulus. Reminds me of a bad joke where some thugs draw a circle and tell a fellow to stand in the middle of it while they bash his car. When they are done he is laughing and they ask why and he says that while they were away he stepped out of the circle. One of the things that was eliminated was money for family planning. And maybe condoms, but not sure.
Rach opened her show tonight talking about infrastructure and how a million people are without power across the east because of a winter storm. She also said that the American Society of Engineers estimated 2 trillion is needed to repair various infrastructure. Seems we started not maintaining things during the Reagan administration.
John Stewart was going on about half a billion of bonuses being paid to Merrill Lynch employees. As if they earned it.
BOA bonuses are being deferred to future years and it seems this cash flow problem is cramping a few lifestyles. Guess the Griswolds will be getting jam instead of that new pool.
We went to Reno today and discovered that both the VW service department and a body shop can take your car at any time as they have a dearth of customers. We also saw Slumdog Millionaire at a midday showing and can report that some old people are still going to the movies. Slumdog was difficult for me to watch as I am not entertained by human brutality, however, I recognize it as an important serious work that is deserving of all the praise it is getting. It is educational for Americans to see a film like this as I am sure most of us are clueless.
The World Economic Forum in Davos has commenced and it's payback time. China and Russia are looking for a few changes in the world order.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Week Two
President Obama started week two by going to Capitol Hill to gain support among Republicans for his stimulus package. As one might expect, the Republicans are playing the role of the opposition by opposing the plan, even though it contains things that Republicans usually vote for, like tax cuts.
Were I a member of Congress, I would be hard pressed to know what to support, as the so-called expert economists are not in agreement. In fact, they have started to get testy with one another, as this Mankiw post suggests.
The Jan 26, 2009 issue of the New Yorker (which we receive in Tahoe on Jan 26) has an article by Ben McGrath titled The Dystopians, which describes various current and past prognosticators who have raised alarms against the demise of life as we know it. In particular, he writes about his time with Jim Kunstler, an architectural critic, novelist, blogger, and general critic of the way-things-are-now-particularly-in-America. What gave me pause is that Mr. Kunstler makes a lot of sense to me. I am not sure if this is because his prescriptions for returning to a more sustainable lifestyle are just a good idea or they resonate with my 56-year-old brain that is yearning for simplicity.
The reason I mention this after bringing up the stimulus package before Congress is because, if you believe Kunstler, the stimulus package might put us back on the road that led to the crisis in the first place.
Doesn't anyone have a vision of what the world would be like in 25 years (2034) if our energy, environmental, and economic problems were solved?
Were I a member of Congress, I would be hard pressed to know what to support, as the so-called expert economists are not in agreement. In fact, they have started to get testy with one another, as this Mankiw post suggests.
The Jan 26, 2009 issue of the New Yorker (which we receive in Tahoe on Jan 26) has an article by Ben McGrath titled The Dystopians, which describes various current and past prognosticators who have raised alarms against the demise of life as we know it. In particular, he writes about his time with Jim Kunstler, an architectural critic, novelist, blogger, and general critic of the way-things-are-now-particularly-in-America. What gave me pause is that Mr. Kunstler makes a lot of sense to me. I am not sure if this is because his prescriptions for returning to a more sustainable lifestyle are just a good idea or they resonate with my 56-year-old brain that is yearning for simplicity.
The reason I mention this after bringing up the stimulus package before Congress is because, if you believe Kunstler, the stimulus package might put us back on the road that led to the crisis in the first place.
Doesn't anyone have a vision of what the world would be like in 25 years (2034) if our energy, environmental, and economic problems were solved?
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Day Four
Obama Reverses Rules on U.S. Abortion Aid
As mentioned in a prior post, giving women control over reproduction leads to peace on earth. Well done!
Day four also included work on the next federal stimulus to improve the economy. Rachel reported that President Obama will now be receiving daily economic briefings in addition to his daily intelligence briefing. Nice to know the POTUS is paying attention.
What continues to annoy me is the lack of agreement among economists about what measures will work.
My main sources of economic news/education come from Greg Mankiw's blog and Safe Haven. Mankiw is a Harvard economics professor who worked in the Bush administration. He links to articles across the political spectrum and has a disarming sense of humor concerning his profession. His own economic prescription is sometimes hard to discern, as Krugman points out, but it is safe to say that he is big on tax cuts.
Safe Haven is a nexus of doomsdayers, skeptics, and gold hoarders, the most celbrated contributor being Peter Schiff, famous for predicted the current global economic disaster. If you read this site, you will find those that believe hyper-inflation is in our future due to the recent gigantic increase in the US money supply, that the housing crisis had its roots in the early nineties when congress/HUD interjected politics into the mortgage business by mandating "affordable housing", and that the demise of the US auto industry is due to auto workers with a undeserved since of entitlement and auto execs in pursuit of perks with little regard for consumers or the competition.
So what comes of all these economic readings?
When one considers a financial stimulus, one must think ahead to what is to be improved. Economists and government officials who wish to improve the gross domestic product and the employment rate tend to favor government spending. This is because the formula for GDP is
GDP = consumption + investment + gov spending + (exports - imports)
As people are not consuming, companies are not investing, and our trade balance is negative, the only way to up the GDP is through government spending. To the extent that said spending creates jobs, then employment data is improved, and that is something that looks good on the news.
People that are looking to improve their net worth tend to be for tax cuts, as this is personal. Anyone who has taxable income will benefit, and to the extent that the cuts extend towards lower incomes, more people benefit. There is no telling what people will do with their recovered taxes, but the expectation is that some of it contributes to the consumption part of GDP.
Economists frequently mention multipliers, that is, the way when a dollar is spent, the recepient of that dollar then spends it again, and so on. The problem seems to be that economists don't really know what the mulitpliers are for different scenarios and spend a lot of time discussing methodology. This is an important issue because huge economic decisions are made based on whose numbers you believe. It appears that all must be taken with a grain of salt.
The bottom line for me is that bad (perhaps unintended) consequences happen when government tries to save us all from financial doom. Somewhere I read that the seed of our current financial crisis, as it relates to Wall Street, occurred when the Federal Reserve supervised the bailout of Long Term Capital Management, a hedge-fund that was considered too big to fail. This created a huge so-called "moral hazard", that is, an incentive for people to behave in extremely risky ways because the upside is huge and the downside is tempered by the promise of a bailout. The probability of a bailout increases with the amount of money you owe to others, so you are motivated to assume even more risk (debt) in an attempt to become too big too fail.
In hindsight, the proper role of government should be to let people experience the full consequences of risky behavior, while enforcing regulations that protect the regular investor.
Last I heard, the next phase of the stimulus will be a mixed bag: some tax cuts, some funding of local and state budgets, and some public works (17%). So there will be a little for everyone and know one knows if it will really work, but everyone knows that my childern and grandchildren will be paying for it.
As mentioned in a prior post, giving women control over reproduction leads to peace on earth. Well done!
Day four also included work on the next federal stimulus to improve the economy. Rachel reported that President Obama will now be receiving daily economic briefings in addition to his daily intelligence briefing. Nice to know the POTUS is paying attention.
What continues to annoy me is the lack of agreement among economists about what measures will work.
My main sources of economic news/education come from Greg Mankiw's blog and Safe Haven. Mankiw is a Harvard economics professor who worked in the Bush administration. He links to articles across the political spectrum and has a disarming sense of humor concerning his profession. His own economic prescription is sometimes hard to discern, as Krugman points out, but it is safe to say that he is big on tax cuts.
Safe Haven is a nexus of doomsdayers, skeptics, and gold hoarders, the most celbrated contributor being Peter Schiff, famous for predicted the current global economic disaster. If you read this site, you will find those that believe hyper-inflation is in our future due to the recent gigantic increase in the US money supply, that the housing crisis had its roots in the early nineties when congress/HUD interjected politics into the mortgage business by mandating "affordable housing", and that the demise of the US auto industry is due to auto workers with a undeserved since of entitlement and auto execs in pursuit of perks with little regard for consumers or the competition.
So what comes of all these economic readings?
When one considers a financial stimulus, one must think ahead to what is to be improved. Economists and government officials who wish to improve the gross domestic product and the employment rate tend to favor government spending. This is because the formula for GDP is
GDP = consumption + investment + gov spending + (exports - imports)
As people are not consuming, companies are not investing, and our trade balance is negative, the only way to up the GDP is through government spending. To the extent that said spending creates jobs, then employment data is improved, and that is something that looks good on the news.
People that are looking to improve their net worth tend to be for tax cuts, as this is personal. Anyone who has taxable income will benefit, and to the extent that the cuts extend towards lower incomes, more people benefit. There is no telling what people will do with their recovered taxes, but the expectation is that some of it contributes to the consumption part of GDP.
Economists frequently mention multipliers, that is, the way when a dollar is spent, the recepient of that dollar then spends it again, and so on. The problem seems to be that economists don't really know what the mulitpliers are for different scenarios and spend a lot of time discussing methodology. This is an important issue because huge economic decisions are made based on whose numbers you believe. It appears that all must be taken with a grain of salt.
The bottom line for me is that bad (perhaps unintended) consequences happen when government tries to save us all from financial doom. Somewhere I read that the seed of our current financial crisis, as it relates to Wall Street, occurred when the Federal Reserve supervised the bailout of Long Term Capital Management, a hedge-fund that was considered too big to fail. This created a huge so-called "moral hazard", that is, an incentive for people to behave in extremely risky ways because the upside is huge and the downside is tempered by the promise of a bailout. The probability of a bailout increases with the amount of money you owe to others, so you are motivated to assume even more risk (debt) in an attempt to become too big too fail.
In hindsight, the proper role of government should be to let people experience the full consequences of risky behavior, while enforcing regulations that protect the regular investor.
Last I heard, the next phase of the stimulus will be a mixed bag: some tax cuts, some funding of local and state budgets, and some public works (17%). So there will be a little for everyone and know one knows if it will really work, but everyone knows that my childern and grandchildren will be paying for it.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Day Three
No more torture!
Closing Gitmo!
Thank you Mr. President. This is getting good.
I recently finished Sex and War: How Biology Explains Warfare and Terrorism and Offers a Path to a Safer World by Malcolm Potts and Thomas Hayden and nowhere did the authors suggest that torturing people or detaining them forever in Cuba was part of the terrorism solution.
Actually, the key to peace on earth may rest with a woman's right to make her own reproductive choices. As women take their role as equals in society, nations become less likely to engage in team aggression. When women can choose to limit family size, the age demographics of society are more conducive to economic success. Why be a terrorist when you have other attractive options?
Closing Gitmo!
Thank you Mr. President. This is getting good.
I recently finished Sex and War: How Biology Explains Warfare and Terrorism and Offers a Path to a Safer World by Malcolm Potts and Thomas Hayden and nowhere did the authors suggest that torturing people or detaining them forever in Cuba was part of the terrorism solution.
Actually, the key to peace on earth may rest with a woman's right to make her own reproductive choices. As women take their role as equals in society, nations become less likely to engage in team aggression. When women can choose to limit family size, the age demographics of society are more conducive to economic success. Why be a terrorist when you have other attractive options?
Day Two
Our 44th President was in the oval office by 8:30am on day two. Does he need sleep?
The final inaugural event is National Prayer Service at the National Cathedral. On "The West Wing", President Bartlett reflects on the irony of such a practice in a country that prides itself on the separation of church of state. Of course, the word "separation" appears nowhere in the First Amendment. The scholar Margaret R. Miles believes the phrase "independence of church and state" is more accurate. Religion and government coexist but operate independently.
On day one, I attended a late afternoon yoga class taught by a wonderful yogi who also teaches first grade (qualifying her as a saint, in my book). She said the children were so excited that anyone can now be President.
Almost. Just as people are born into their skin and sex, they are also born into the religion of their family. Who will break out of the glass cathedral? When will a viable presidential candidate be a non-Christian? When can we elect a Jew, or a Muslim, or heaven forbid, one who finds no evidence for the God hypothesis.
To clear up any possible constitutional issues, President Obama took the oath again in the map room of the White House, administered by the Chief Justice. There was no bible this time, as the Constitution does not require one and they had probably already returned Lincoln's book to the Smithsonian.
The final inaugural event is National Prayer Service at the National Cathedral. On "The West Wing", President Bartlett reflects on the irony of such a practice in a country that prides itself on the separation of church of state. Of course, the word "separation" appears nowhere in the First Amendment. The scholar Margaret R. Miles believes the phrase "independence of church and state" is more accurate. Religion and government coexist but operate independently.
On day one, I attended a late afternoon yoga class taught by a wonderful yogi who also teaches first grade (qualifying her as a saint, in my book). She said the children were so excited that anyone can now be President.
Almost. Just as people are born into their skin and sex, they are also born into the religion of their family. Who will break out of the glass cathedral? When will a viable presidential candidate be a non-Christian? When can we elect a Jew, or a Muslim, or heaven forbid, one who finds no evidence for the God hypothesis.
To clear up any possible constitutional issues, President Obama took the oath again in the map room of the White House, administered by the Chief Justice. There was no bible this time, as the Constitution does not require one and they had probably already returned Lincoln's book to the Smithsonian.
Day One
Following the Fortran array indexing convention (Fortran is a classic computer programming language), the first day of the 44th presidency is day one, not day zero.
The GeoEye image of the inauguration shows an interesting distribution of people on the mall. I had thought that they would be more or less solid back to the Washington Monument, but not so. Rather, people seemed to be clustered in front of the jumbotrons, leaving plenty of walking room around the crowds. Evidently, the crowd problems involved ticket holders for spots closer to the Capitol. As the areas filled, people were turned away.
What was Chief Justice John Roberts thinking? Was it a simple lack of any preparation for administering the presidential oath that caused his flub? Or do you subscribe to the conspiracy theory? I'm going with the "who needs to rehearse the oath" theory.
Biden was back with the big family bible, which Stephen Colbert believes is actually the Hogwart's spell book. Could be.
So cutting to the chase, what did I think of Michelle's inauguration gown? First, it is wonderful that she wore something by Jason Wu, who is young, talented, and deserves a break. In an interview, he said that he had no idea she had selected it until he saw her on TV. Fashion is not my game but I am a huge Project Runway fan and think that Heidi and Tim rule. And my nephew John Renaud is a senior fashion design student at Brooklyn's Pratt Institute, so fashion is a big topic in our family. Overall, the gown was just OK for me, not a knockout. The best part of the dress was what it did for her shoulders and arms. Our First Lady has a very fit and athletic body and the gown played to that. The choice of white was not ideal, as under the intense lights of the media, the gown morphed into a white blob on HD TV screens across the world. This was a bit unfair to Mr. Wu, as his gown had rich texture and fine detail. Perhaps a beautiful shade of blue or perhaps a metallic tone would have worked better. The bottom portion of the gown was full and flowing and worked well. Not so much for part above the hips. A ball gown should leave no doubt that a woman is underneath, and this one did nothing to flatter her curves.
If I could have given the First Lady one piece of advice, it would have been to wear the most comfortable shoes possible.
The media coverage of the various balls was lacking. I was watching CNN, MSNBC, and a little Fox, all of whom kept their talking heads going the whole time. Hey, it's time to par-tee. Where is E!? Where is the TV Guide channel? We want fashion, celebs, performers, and shots of the first couple that don't appear to be on a loop.
One exception to my "talking heads" comment is Rachel Maddow. Those who know me know that Ms. Maddow is the best thing that has happened to my TV machine since they started showing space shots in the 60's. Rachel, I hope you are on my TV/internet tube for a long time. And I love it when you say "infrastructure".
The GeoEye image of the inauguration shows an interesting distribution of people on the mall. I had thought that they would be more or less solid back to the Washington Monument, but not so. Rather, people seemed to be clustered in front of the jumbotrons, leaving plenty of walking room around the crowds. Evidently, the crowd problems involved ticket holders for spots closer to the Capitol. As the areas filled, people were turned away.
What was Chief Justice John Roberts thinking? Was it a simple lack of any preparation for administering the presidential oath that caused his flub? Or do you subscribe to the conspiracy theory? I'm going with the "who needs to rehearse the oath" theory.
Biden was back with the big family bible, which Stephen Colbert believes is actually the Hogwart's spell book. Could be.
So cutting to the chase, what did I think of Michelle's inauguration gown? First, it is wonderful that she wore something by Jason Wu, who is young, talented, and deserves a break. In an interview, he said that he had no idea she had selected it until he saw her on TV. Fashion is not my game but I am a huge Project Runway fan and think that Heidi and Tim rule. And my nephew John Renaud is a senior fashion design student at Brooklyn's Pratt Institute, so fashion is a big topic in our family. Overall, the gown was just OK for me, not a knockout. The best part of the dress was what it did for her shoulders and arms. Our First Lady has a very fit and athletic body and the gown played to that. The choice of white was not ideal, as under the intense lights of the media, the gown morphed into a white blob on HD TV screens across the world. This was a bit unfair to Mr. Wu, as his gown had rich texture and fine detail. Perhaps a beautiful shade of blue or perhaps a metallic tone would have worked better. The bottom portion of the gown was full and flowing and worked well. Not so much for part above the hips. A ball gown should leave no doubt that a woman is underneath, and this one did nothing to flatter her curves.
If I could have given the First Lady one piece of advice, it would have been to wear the most comfortable shoes possible.
The media coverage of the various balls was lacking. I was watching CNN, MSNBC, and a little Fox, all of whom kept their talking heads going the whole time. Hey, it's time to par-tee. Where is E!? Where is the TV Guide channel? We want fashion, celebs, performers, and shots of the first couple that don't appear to be on a loop.
One exception to my "talking heads" comment is Rachel Maddow. Those who know me know that Ms. Maddow is the best thing that has happened to my TV machine since they started showing space shots in the 60's. Rachel, I hope you are on my TV/internet tube for a long time. And I love it when you say "infrastructure".
Day Minus Two
It's nice to be inspired and the presidency of Barack Obama has inspired me to write this blog. My daughters, Jane and Julia, who have been hearing me go on about things for some time, suggested the same.
The "We Are One: the Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial" occurred on day minus two, that is, two days before the inauguaration. Can an event of the federal government be any better? The music was fun, the remarks appropriate, and the clothes were fun to watch. For a while I was wondering if everyone over 30 was color coordinated... blacks, browns, and earth tones. Then there was Renee Flemming in red with red on top of red... guess not.
Garth Brooks was the most suprising act for me, him being a country star and all. But Obama's got a big tent so there was plenty of room for the big hat. The act that hit home emotionally was James Taylor, performing with friends. And Stevie, of course.
The "We Are One: the Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial" occurred on day minus two, that is, two days before the inauguaration. Can an event of the federal government be any better? The music was fun, the remarks appropriate, and the clothes were fun to watch. For a while I was wondering if everyone over 30 was color coordinated... blacks, browns, and earth tones. Then there was Renee Flemming in red with red on top of red... guess not.
Garth Brooks was the most suprising act for me, him being a country star and all. But Obama's got a big tent so there was plenty of room for the big hat. The act that hit home emotionally was James Taylor, performing with friends. And Stevie, of course.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
