Sunday, December 27, 2009
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Friday, September 25, 2009
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Village People Populism
Frank Rich is good today.
"What provokes their angry and nonsensical cries of racism is sheer desperation: an entire country is changing faster than these white guys bargained for. We’ve been reminded repeatedly during Gatesgate that Cambridge’s mayor is a black lesbian. But a more representative window into the country’s transition might be that Dallas County, Tex., elected a Latina lesbian sheriff in 2004 (and re-elected her last year) and that the three serious candidates for mayor of Houston this fall include a black man and a white lesbian."
"What provokes their angry and nonsensical cries of racism is sheer desperation: an entire country is changing faster than these white guys bargained for. We’ve been reminded repeatedly during Gatesgate that Cambridge’s mayor is a black lesbian. But a more representative window into the country’s transition might be that Dallas County, Tex., elected a Latina lesbian sheriff in 2004 (and re-elected her last year) and that the three serious candidates for mayor of Houston this fall include a black man and a white lesbian."
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Friday, July 17, 2009
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Monday, July 6, 2009
Yep
Tbogg gets it right:
"Sarah Palin isn't smart in what we might call conventional ways, but she has grifter smarts and knows that she can make a better living working the wingnut welfare circuit preaching to the already converted than she can in politics. She'll never be President; you know it and she knows it. Everyone should know it. But there are a lot of rubes out there who think she's got a shot and they're just dumb enough to pay good money thinking it will happen. That is what she's counting on."
"Sarah Palin isn't smart in what we might call conventional ways, but she has grifter smarts and knows that she can make a better living working the wingnut welfare circuit preaching to the already converted than she can in politics. She'll never be President; you know it and she knows it. Everyone should know it. But there are a lot of rubes out there who think she's got a shot and they're just dumb enough to pay good money thinking it will happen. That is what she's counting on."
Friday, July 3, 2009
Things Are Always Bigger in Texas
From today's Dallas Morning News story about the local Tea Party:
"A promotional company director helped arrange T-shirt sales and donations. Others helped line up speakers and entertainment, such as former Monkee Mickey Dolenz.
'We wanted to go big,' Dennis said."
"A promotional company director helped arrange T-shirt sales and donations. Others helped line up speakers and entertainment, such as former Monkee Mickey Dolenz.
'We wanted to go big,' Dennis said."
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Sanford Emails
I kow some people are going to have a problem with TPM and other outlets publishing Sanford's emails. In most cases, I would have been opposed to releasing these very personal communicaotins. They are excruciating to read for a number of reasons. But this piece of crap has invaded and politicized the private lives of women and gays over choice and marriage equality, and he has damaged the lives of thousands of South Carolinians through his hard-hearted refusal to take the stimulus money. So anything that destroys his own life, both personal and political, is ok with me. No mercy. Not this time.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Yglesias on the Villagers
I know this is right:
[T]he kind of reporters who basically sit around and in virtue of the fact that their employers are important get to ask not-very-interesting questions of powerful politicians and then dutifully write the answers down (or record the answers on tape and have an intern transcribe them) are facing a kind of crisis of prestige and authority. It turns out lots of people can do the job perfectly well, even people who haven’t “paid their dues” or gotten a job at an established media outlet.
[T]he kind of reporters who basically sit around and in virtue of the fact that their employers are important get to ask not-very-interesting questions of powerful politicians and then dutifully write the answers down (or record the answers on tape and have an intern transcribe them) are facing a kind of crisis of prestige and authority. It turns out lots of people can do the job perfectly well, even people who haven’t “paid their dues” or gotten a job at an established media outlet.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Tony Auth Gets It
Unlike Toles (ses previous post), Tony Auth is strictly a Village kinda guy. So may be the idea that the crazies really are crazy is finally making it into those circles.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Ryan Avent Rules
Few people get to the basic dumbassery of the national press better than Ryan Avent. Read this to see why.
Friday, June 5, 2009
I Know That's Right
Worth remembering from Daniel Gross.
"[T]he notion that the market is telling us something—anything—ultimately rests on the erroneous assumption that financial markets represent the collective wisdom of rational actors processing information efficiently . . . The markets resemble the Star Wars bar scene more than they do the economics faculty lounge at Princeton."
"[T]he notion that the market is telling us something—anything—ultimately rests on the erroneous assumption that financial markets represent the collective wisdom of rational actors processing information efficiently . . . The markets resemble the Star Wars bar scene more than they do the economics faculty lounge at Princeton."
Monday, June 1, 2009
Making Sense
Worth reading from James Surowiecki. Here's the takwaway:
[M]ost of the people predicting disaster as a result of higher interest rates don’t think there was ever a hope of recovery to begin with.
[M]ost of the people predicting disaster as a result of higher interest rates don’t think there was ever a hope of recovery to begin with.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Onward, Christian Soldiers
From The Wichita Eagle:
George Tiller, the Wichita doctor who became a national lightning rod in the debate over abortion, was shot to death Sunday morning as he walked into church services.
George Tiller, the Wichita doctor who became a national lightning rod in the debate over abortion, was shot to death Sunday morning as he walked into church services.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Good Point
The excellent Felix Salmon has a good point here, and one that's worth remembering.
"Bill Gross seems to have caused a bit of an uproar with his off-the-cuff comment to Reuters:
Asked what is driving the market declines, Gross told Reuters via email that investors fear the U.S. is “going the way of the U.K. — losing AAA rating which affects all financial assets and the dollar.”
On the one hand, as ex post explanations for market declines go, this one’s quite good: if true, it helps explains why both stocks and bonds are going down on the same day. What’s more, it tidily fits in to a news story — that S&P has downgraded the UK’s triple-A outlook — and journalists love any explanation for a market move which makes it seem that it’s some predictable result of an event in the news.
But let’s get some perspective here. The Dow and the S&P 500 closed down 1.5% and 1.9% respectively, which by recent standards is a perfectly normal move, well within the range of what you’d expect on any given day. What’s more, S&P putting the UK on watch for a possible downgrade is a decision prompted by economic fundamentals. Any such move with the US, by contrast, would be entirely political, and in any event would say much more about S&P than it did about Treasuries.
The most important thing to remember here, however, is that ratings agencies don’t matter any more. They lost their credibility when structured finance blew up, and the number of people buying Treasuries because S&P says that they’re triple-A rated is exactly zero.
There are lots of triple-A rated securities; people buy Treasuries because they’re liquid. The US triple-A may or may not disappear at some point, but if and when that happens it’ll be a lagging indicator, and there will already be a select group of alternative securities which are trading at lower yields in dollars. So long as Treasuries have the lowest yields in the dollar-denominated world, they will retain their triple-A, and there are much more important things to worry about."
"Bill Gross seems to have caused a bit of an uproar with his off-the-cuff comment to Reuters:
Asked what is driving the market declines, Gross told Reuters via email that investors fear the U.S. is “going the way of the U.K. — losing AAA rating which affects all financial assets and the dollar.”
On the one hand, as ex post explanations for market declines go, this one’s quite good: if true, it helps explains why both stocks and bonds are going down on the same day. What’s more, it tidily fits in to a news story — that S&P has downgraded the UK’s triple-A outlook — and journalists love any explanation for a market move which makes it seem that it’s some predictable result of an event in the news.
But let’s get some perspective here. The Dow and the S&P 500 closed down 1.5% and 1.9% respectively, which by recent standards is a perfectly normal move, well within the range of what you’d expect on any given day. What’s more, S&P putting the UK on watch for a possible downgrade is a decision prompted by economic fundamentals. Any such move with the US, by contrast, would be entirely political, and in any event would say much more about S&P than it did about Treasuries.
The most important thing to remember here, however, is that ratings agencies don’t matter any more. They lost their credibility when structured finance blew up, and the number of people buying Treasuries because S&P says that they’re triple-A rated is exactly zero.
There are lots of triple-A rated securities; people buy Treasuries because they’re liquid. The US triple-A may or may not disappear at some point, but if and when that happens it’ll be a lagging indicator, and there will already be a select group of alternative securities which are trading at lower yields in dollars. So long as Treasuries have the lowest yields in the dollar-denominated world, they will retain their triple-A, and there are much more important things to worry about."
Monday, May 18, 2009
Obama Fu
Re: Obama's Notre Dame commencement address and its attendant "controversy."
Another way to describe this appearance would be to say that BO wiped the floor with these assholes, enjoyed doing it, and came off looking better than they ever could. Once again, this guy proves to me that he knows more about what he's doing than I do. Remarkable.
Another way to describe this appearance would be to say that BO wiped the floor with these assholes, enjoyed doing it, and came off looking better than they ever could. Once again, this guy proves to me that he knows more about what he's doing than I do. Remarkable.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Good Read
This from Ryan Avent is worth posting in its entirety.
So, the economic news today hasn’t been all that great — retail sales were off a bit in April, foreclosures filings were at a record in April for a second straight month, and Chinese industrial production and export figures disappointed. This has led every clever pundit to say something clever like “the green shoots are turning brown,” or “the green shoots are withering,” etc. This has annoyed me.
It occurs to me that the problem may be in the vagueness of the phrase “green shoots” — that we’re all thinking about different things. Picture the path of economic output as a sine wave tilted slightly upward, after each peak, the path begins to decline. Initially, it is declining at an increasing rate. Then an inflection point is hit and it begins declining at a decreasing rate. Eventually, the rate of decline hits zero, a trough is reached, and output begins to increase but remains well below the level of the previous peak. Finally, output surpasses the long run trendline and begins heading toward yet another peak. So what part of this curve is green shootish?
For some people, only a return to previous output levels will count as green shoots. For others, only an end to actual contraction — where the rate of decline hits zero — is a marker of the greening of various shoots. Still others might herald the inflection point at which contraction slows as green, a harbinger of better times to come. When I speak about green shoots in the economy, I’m using this last interpretation. This is quickly dismissed by pessimists who say things like, “Things are just getting worse more slowly!” Quite so. That is exactly how one moves from things getting worse more quickly to things getting better. And I think it’s quite difficult to argue that we have not hit and passed the inflection point. The economy being a big, complex, unwieldy thing, we shouldn’t expect every datapoint to describe a perfect curve; we’re going to have good months and bad months in the data all the way through the recovery. But the trends in the data seem clear — a bottom is approaching.
Now others have voiced different complaints vis-a-vis green shoots, namely, that they’ll be rather stumpy for a long time to come. This is an argument over the shape of recession: V-shaped (a recovery as steep as the decline), U-shaped (a bit more laggardly), or L-shaped (very weak growth and a stubbornly high unemployment rate). I have some thoughts about this that I’ll get to later, but insofar as the green shoot debate concerns whether a bottom is near or not, the shape of the upslope is irrelevant.
And we ought to expect that the end of contraction is near. Megan makes some points about the Great Depression here, writing:
"I don’t want to push the Great Depression analogy too far, but what’s surprising when you go back to primary sources from 1930 is the optimism. I don’t mean to imply that everyone thinks things are just swell. But while you know that they are facing the worst economic decade of the twentieth century, they don’t. They’re expecting something more like the recession that followed World War I. People are cutting back, but they’re still spending, particularly because companies are slashing prices to move inventory. It was the long grind of the years that followed, and the catastrophe of the second banking crisis, that scarred them permanently. And this shows up in the economics stats and the stock market, which did not, as we like to imagine, simply decline in a straight line."
Two important things to note. First, we give the Depression the modifier “great” because it was so remarkably unusual in its depth and length. Second, policymakers worked extremely hard to make the Depression long and deep. The lesson there, to me, is that only very rarely do economies contract longer and deeper than the current downturn, and when they do it is generally because policymakers are actively pursuing pro-cyclical policies. Otherwise, they pull themselves out of their nosedives long before they get into Depression-like levels of output and unemployment.
So when Matt says:
"I will say that I think the greatest objective economic risk at this point is policymaker over-optimism. We need the European Central bank to continue loosening monetary policy, and it wouldn’t hurt if some of the world’s lesser central banks followed suit. We could use more stimulus in the United States and elsewhere in the developed world. We need corporate executives to understand the main risk to their interests to be coming from a lack of adequate economic recovery efforts rather than from losing small-bore political arguments with congressional Democrats. We need smart growth policy in terms of tax reform and trade. We need, in short, policymakers to continue to be worried. If they’re worried, and if they act on those worries, then more likely than not things won’t stay too bad for too long. But if they feel confident, then we might really be in trouble."
I say that an outright reversal of countercyclical policies — monetary tightening and deficit slashing — would kick us back into an accelerating downturn situation, but merely holding steady will at most delay a bottom for a few months and flatten the recovery. And even if policymakers hold steady, policy will continue to improve. As financial markets relax — and credit indicators do continue to improve — loose monetary policy will increase in potency. And of course, fiscal stimulus has only begun to trickle out (and simply by dint of the broader downturn, the federal deficit is growing, which is stimulative).
Caveats apply — some new shoe could drop or Congress could lose its mind and enact a spending freeze. But I don’t really see how people can avoid concluding that the worst declines are behind us.
http://www.ryanavent.com/blog/?p=2039
So, the economic news today hasn’t been all that great — retail sales were off a bit in April, foreclosures filings were at a record in April for a second straight month, and Chinese industrial production and export figures disappointed. This has led every clever pundit to say something clever like “the green shoots are turning brown,” or “the green shoots are withering,” etc. This has annoyed me.
It occurs to me that the problem may be in the vagueness of the phrase “green shoots” — that we’re all thinking about different things. Picture the path of economic output as a sine wave tilted slightly upward, after each peak, the path begins to decline. Initially, it is declining at an increasing rate. Then an inflection point is hit and it begins declining at a decreasing rate. Eventually, the rate of decline hits zero, a trough is reached, and output begins to increase but remains well below the level of the previous peak. Finally, output surpasses the long run trendline and begins heading toward yet another peak. So what part of this curve is green shootish?
For some people, only a return to previous output levels will count as green shoots. For others, only an end to actual contraction — where the rate of decline hits zero — is a marker of the greening of various shoots. Still others might herald the inflection point at which contraction slows as green, a harbinger of better times to come. When I speak about green shoots in the economy, I’m using this last interpretation. This is quickly dismissed by pessimists who say things like, “Things are just getting worse more slowly!” Quite so. That is exactly how one moves from things getting worse more quickly to things getting better. And I think it’s quite difficult to argue that we have not hit and passed the inflection point. The economy being a big, complex, unwieldy thing, we shouldn’t expect every datapoint to describe a perfect curve; we’re going to have good months and bad months in the data all the way through the recovery. But the trends in the data seem clear — a bottom is approaching.
Now others have voiced different complaints vis-a-vis green shoots, namely, that they’ll be rather stumpy for a long time to come. This is an argument over the shape of recession: V-shaped (a recovery as steep as the decline), U-shaped (a bit more laggardly), or L-shaped (very weak growth and a stubbornly high unemployment rate). I have some thoughts about this that I’ll get to later, but insofar as the green shoot debate concerns whether a bottom is near or not, the shape of the upslope is irrelevant.
And we ought to expect that the end of contraction is near. Megan makes some points about the Great Depression here, writing:
"I don’t want to push the Great Depression analogy too far, but what’s surprising when you go back to primary sources from 1930 is the optimism. I don’t mean to imply that everyone thinks things are just swell. But while you know that they are facing the worst economic decade of the twentieth century, they don’t. They’re expecting something more like the recession that followed World War I. People are cutting back, but they’re still spending, particularly because companies are slashing prices to move inventory. It was the long grind of the years that followed, and the catastrophe of the second banking crisis, that scarred them permanently. And this shows up in the economics stats and the stock market, which did not, as we like to imagine, simply decline in a straight line."
Two important things to note. First, we give the Depression the modifier “great” because it was so remarkably unusual in its depth and length. Second, policymakers worked extremely hard to make the Depression long and deep. The lesson there, to me, is that only very rarely do economies contract longer and deeper than the current downturn, and when they do it is generally because policymakers are actively pursuing pro-cyclical policies. Otherwise, they pull themselves out of their nosedives long before they get into Depression-like levels of output and unemployment.
So when Matt says:
"I will say that I think the greatest objective economic risk at this point is policymaker over-optimism. We need the European Central bank to continue loosening monetary policy, and it wouldn’t hurt if some of the world’s lesser central banks followed suit. We could use more stimulus in the United States and elsewhere in the developed world. We need corporate executives to understand the main risk to their interests to be coming from a lack of adequate economic recovery efforts rather than from losing small-bore political arguments with congressional Democrats. We need smart growth policy in terms of tax reform and trade. We need, in short, policymakers to continue to be worried. If they’re worried, and if they act on those worries, then more likely than not things won’t stay too bad for too long. But if they feel confident, then we might really be in trouble."
I say that an outright reversal of countercyclical policies — monetary tightening and deficit slashing — would kick us back into an accelerating downturn situation, but merely holding steady will at most delay a bottom for a few months and flatten the recovery. And even if policymakers hold steady, policy will continue to improve. As financial markets relax — and credit indicators do continue to improve — loose monetary policy will increase in potency. And of course, fiscal stimulus has only begun to trickle out (and simply by dint of the broader downturn, the federal deficit is growing, which is stimulative).
Caveats apply — some new shoe could drop or Congress could lose its mind and enact a spending freeze. But I don’t really see how people can avoid concluding that the worst declines are behind us.
http://www.ryanavent.com/blog/?p=2039
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Good Advice
From Ryan Avent:
If every piece of bad news is definitive evidence that the economy is not moving toward recovery, then surely every piece of good news is definitive evidence that it is.
http://www.ryanavent.com/blog/?p=2037
If every piece of bad news is definitive evidence that the economy is not moving toward recovery, then surely every piece of good news is definitive evidence that it is.
http://www.ryanavent.com/blog/?p=2037
Monday, May 11, 2009
Rooms to Let, Fifty Cents
Dallas voters will rue the day they followed their exuberantly mendacious mayor down the path of his ambition. But at least the voters in District 13 had the good sense to send Tom Hicks sock puppet Brint Ryan home to look for his speeding tickets (I'll bet he got there before anybody else did). So the day wasn't a total loss.
Friday, May 1, 2009
Monday, April 27, 2009
Friday, April 24, 2009
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Still Clueless
Here'a another economist with his view on the latest unemployment numbers released thius morning. It's a good example of the kind of emptiness these guys usually display.
“After the unexpected Easter-related drop in claims last week we expected a bigger rebound, taking claims back to their highs of around 670K. The failure to rise that high suggests either that the trend in claims is peaking or that the data are still affected by seasonal problems related to the holiday,” writes Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics."
Shorter Ian Sheperdson: I have no idea what these figures mean, but I'm sure they mean something!
http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2009/04/23/never-mind-the-economy-killer-apps/
“After the unexpected Easter-related drop in claims last week we expected a bigger rebound, taking claims back to their highs of around 670K. The failure to rise that high suggests either that the trend in claims is peaking or that the data are still affected by seasonal problems related to the holiday,” writes Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics."
Shorter Ian Sheperdson: I have no idea what these figures mean, but I'm sure they mean something!
http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2009/04/23/never-mind-the-economy-killer-apps/
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Sludge Rising
In the early 90s, I listened regularly to a short-wave radio station called WWCR (World Wide Christian Radio)—500,000 watts from Nashville. They carried programs like Radio Free America and The Hour of the Time, farragoes of black helicopter, FEMA, New World Order-fueled paranoia that managed to be hilarious and terrifying. But this was short wave, fringe broadcasting that few people ever heard. Now, I hear the same stuff on Fox News. It’s mainstreamed and even in some quarters acceptable. I once heard Chris Matthews mention “the wonderful Michael Savage” on Hardball. Now that’s scary, and it’s not hilarious any more.
Monday, April 6, 2009
Spitzer Rehab
Over at Talking Points Memo, David Kurtz writes "Spitzer is so good on financial issues that I alternate between sadness and anger for his stupidity." This is exactly the wrong response. The correct response is anger at the idiocy of a system and at the hypocrisy of a media that would banish this guy while allowing David Vitter (and other sleazy wingnuts) to continue their careers as though nothing happened.
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2009/04/spitzer_rehab_tour_continues.php
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2009/04/spitzer_rehab_tour_continues.php
Friday, April 3, 2009
Voting Rights
It's a gosh darn shame the crummy bond markets prevented Mayor Leppert from starting his hotel project before the taxpayers had a chance to voice their opinion of it.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Can't Dance, Can't Sing . . .
I found this clip on You Tube. It's a must see for lameness fans.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPiamDHia1s
When two sixty year-old guys have better dance moves than you do, it is time perhaps to dance no more.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPiamDHia1s
When two sixty year-old guys have better dance moves than you do, it is time perhaps to dance no more.
Friday, March 27, 2009
You Say You Want a Revolution?
Cong. Michele Bachmann (R-Looney Bin) has been all over the teevee lately with her especially hilarous brand of wingnuttery. First, she grilled Tim Geithner and Ben Bernanke about a non-existant Chinese plot to replace the dollar with a "world currency" (Bernanke was clearly saying something like "Who is this idiot?" to himself during her questioning). Then she went on Hannity's show to promote sedition. TPM has more:
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/03/bachmann-blasts-obamas-economic-marxism-calls-for-revolution-to-save-freedom.php
The business about a one world currency is a primary thread in Christian extremist end times mythology, so this Chinese statement was right in her wheelhouse.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/03/bachmann-blasts-obamas-economic-marxism-calls-for-revolution-to-save-freedom.php
The business about a one world currency is a primary thread in Christian extremist end times mythology, so this Chinese statement was right in her wheelhouse.
Self-defense
The Dallas Morning News yesterday ran a response from Managing Editor George Rodrique regarding Michael Lindenburger's recent story about Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert's um, shall we say, less than honest statements during the Trinity Tollroad campaign. In short, our oleaginous Mayor's a bald-faced liar. Rodrique's spirited defense of his paper, which has consistently and unflinchingly endorsed this Dallas version of Boston's infamous Big Dig, certainly had some amusing moments. The sneering condescension toward the Dallas Observer and its "tiny staff" is pretty funny, when you consider that Rodrique's own staff is getting tinier all the time. And self-congratulating professions about the nobility of its journalistic enterprise from the paper that continues to employ Alan Peppard while it jettisons Ed Bark, Phil Wuntch, Jerome Weeks, David Dillon and Gerry Fraley (along with hundreds of others) are always good for a laugh. But the best part was the statement that "we don't write propaganda." Bwahahahahahah!
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/askeditor/stories/032709dnediasktheeditor.72a272dc.html
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/askeditor/stories/032709dnediasktheeditor.72a272dc.html
Thursday, March 26, 2009
The Right Move
My pal Greg Sargent has an update describing Obama's latest attempt to counter the baleful influence of the Village media whores. This is absolutely the right move, and not just for his own political benefits. The hold the corrupt, shallow and decadent Village media has on the national discourse must be broken, completely and permanently.
http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/democratic-national-committee/obama-raps-cable-tv-chatter-hits-dc-culture-as-petty/
http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/democratic-national-committee/obama-raps-cable-tv-chatter-hits-dc-culture-as-petty/
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
"It's Bipartisan!"
Following the lead of our Village betters, I think we should begin to use "bipartisan" as a universal term of praise, as in," Great dinner tonight, honey. Really bipartisan!" or "wow, that new dress makes you look bipartisan!" or "You're the most bipartisanest little kitty cat in the whole wide world!" This usage makes about as much sense as any usage I've heard from Broder and his pals. In fact, I think this is the most bipartisan idea I've ever had.
Press Corps Clown Car
That the Village media is a national disgrace was again in evidence last night during Obama's press conference. Asking people who are already sacrificing to make sacrifices? Too bad that press conference decorum prohibits the only answer such a question really deserves: "That is the stupidest question I've ever heard, you stupid moron." But the winner for my money was the odious Major Garret from Fox News (natch) with his idiotic framing of a question about monetary policy and our European allies: "OMG!!! Communists!!! Socialists!!! Left of center!!!" What a maroon.
Friday, March 20, 2009
History Lesson
One of my favorite guys, Zach Karabell, has an excellent column in the WSJ offering some historical perspective on our boom-and-bust cycle past. Zach is a very smart guy. The fact that he's a regular contributor on CNBC shouldn't be held against him. He's no wingnut like most of those loons.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123742239255278903.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123742239255278903.html
A Little Calm, Please
Terence Samuel has a good article in The American Prospect (Web only) about the AIG stink. Everybody needs to take a deep breath.
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=tell_us_a_story_mr_president
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=tell_us_a_story_mr_president
Retire This!
When the recession is over, whenever that is, I hope I never again hear the term "cliff-diving."
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Coulter on Kudlow
Ann Coulter climbed out of the Kudlow Klown Kar on CNBC tonight. She looked and sounded . . . not insane. She was wearing soft, pastel colors, her make-up softened her harsh, skanky features, she sat behind a desk so those spindly legs weren't shoved in the audience's face, and she spoke calmly and sensibly, offering some fairly ordinary lawyerly remarks about the Madoff case. Not a trace of the crazed wingnut at all. It was very strange. Could she be modifying her marketing strategy to accomodate the new realities?
The Oracle
I'm continually puzzled by the uncritical acceptance Nouriel Roubini's predictions receive, especially from some elements in the blogosphere who are otherwise usually pretty skeptical of such persons. Roubini made a good call two years ago. But that doesn't mean his every pronouncement since then has any more predictive value than anyone else's. The idea that he possesses some superior insight or that he is some kind of disinterested commentator is silly. He's just talking his book. That's what they all do.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
A Little Daylight
One of my favorite guys, Zach Karabell, has a good column in Newsweek. He's always worth a read. http://www.newsweek.com/id/188170
Are You Depressed yet?
The excellent and always informative Calculated Risk answers this question: http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2009/03/what-is-depression.html
"Some people argue the duration of the economic slump defines a depression - and the current recession is already 15 months old. That is longer than the recessions of '90/'91 and '01. The '73-'75 recession lasted 16 months peak to trough, and the early '80s recession (a double dip) was classified as a 6 month recession followed by a 16 month recession (22 months total). Those earlier periods weren't "depressions", so if duration is the key measure, the current recession still has a ways to go... Even though the current recession is already one of the worst since 1947, it is only about 1/3 of the way to a depression (assuming a terrible Q1). To reach a depression, the economy would have to decline at about a 6.6% annual rate each quarter for the next year... I still think a depression is very unlikely. More likely the economy will bottom later this year or at least the rate of economic decline will slow sharply. I also still believe that the eventual recovery will be very sluggish, and it will take some time to return to normal growth."
"Some people argue the duration of the economic slump defines a depression - and the current recession is already 15 months old. That is longer than the recessions of '90/'91 and '01. The '73-'75 recession lasted 16 months peak to trough, and the early '80s recession (a double dip) was classified as a 6 month recession followed by a 16 month recession (22 months total). Those earlier periods weren't "depressions", so if duration is the key measure, the current recession still has a ways to go... Even though the current recession is already one of the worst since 1947, it is only about 1/3 of the way to a depression (assuming a terrible Q1). To reach a depression, the economy would have to decline at about a 6.6% annual rate each quarter for the next year... I still think a depression is very unlikely. More likely the economy will bottom later this year or at least the rate of economic decline will slow sharply. I also still believe that the eventual recovery will be very sluggish, and it will take some time to return to normal growth."
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Monday, March 9, 2009
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