embedded by Embedded Video
YouTube Direkt
Daniel Hannan, a Member of the European Parliament, takes the floor to express his skepticism over Gordon Brown’s approach to solving the economic crisis. “You can’t borrow your way out of debt,” Hannan says. Unfortunately, Hannan is likely to have as much success as Nick had in trying to convince Gatsby that “you can’t repeat the past.” Gatsby’s famous reply on that occasion was, “Can’t repeat the past? Why of course you can! I’m going to fix everything just the way it was before.” Which was exactly the problem to begin with.
Fortunately American policymakers are smarter than Gordon Brown. Or are they?
Advertisement
wretchard,
You may have missed a typo:
Gatsby’s famous replay on that occasion was…
I think you intended reply.
Jamie Irons
Sure we can.
Let’s go back to the end of the cold war and this time rescue socialism from failure.
There’s a lot more to steal now. For then. Back then. Now.
Fixed.
Brown and Obama do indeed seem to be on the same page whereas the British Chancellor, the Bank of England, the British opposition, the governments of China, France and Germany, the ECB and the IMF are all now saying “enough already”.
When Brown is kicked out next year the Obama administration will be isolated as the only major government of a developed nation which sees fiscal irresponsibility as a virtue.
Why do so many think they intend to borrow their way out of debt? They are printing money to get out of debt.
@5. ash
Obtuse deliberately or is it in your makeup?
What do you think printing money (that are not backed up by anything, not even by a confidence) is than borrowing from the future or on backs of the future taxpayers?
I don’t think giving IOUs to the Chinese and printing up more “monopoly money” in order to rescue GM a few more months, stall the California govt bankruptcy a few more months, or to lend additional credence to housing speculators’ imaginary, overblown asset values is going to do anything in the long term except increase the debt load on the average honest guy whose government was dumb enough to throw good money after bad, like a gambler with an addiction.
Simple economic recovery, right? Keep the banks supplying credit to only worthy creditors, make sure that laws ensure transparency, and let those who make bad business decisions or choose unworthy loan applicants simply go under to be replaced by legitimate and productive businesses.
Unfortunately, certain opportunistic agenda-driven politicians will try to implement the DMV-ing of America as a red herring “solution” to a credit crunch which they have deliberately amplified.
Heres the game: Government creates a “bubble” with easy loans (education loans, housing loans, whatever). This creates a big run on demand, with limited supply. Prices skyrocket, creating a bubble. The politicians’ buddies make lots of money, and kick back some to the politicians. When prices get too high to be believable, the bottom falls out. But the politicians ensure that any buddies left in the game get bailed out at taxpayer expense — so there is no real loss for any big gameplayer. The politicians create a new bubble elsewhere. Repeat cycle.
2 x 4, there is a difference. If you are borrowing then you need issue Bonds that pay interest and need be paid back. If there is a lack of demand for those bonds then you need to increase the interest paid on those bonds to entice lenders to lend to you. You gotta have enough folks out there with money to lend as well.
If you print the money then you don’t need to issue all those bonds and find buyers for them. It isn’t painless though and you risk destroying the confidence folk have in your currency but it allows debtors to get out of debt easier. By printing money it is kind of a hail mary pass that policy makers hope will help us grow out of the predicament we are in. The general saw seem to be that we don’t have many policy options to counter deflation (aside from the printing press/stimulas) but we do have policy options to control inflation (raise interest rates)
the chinese (and the japanese) (artificially) lower the value of their currencies by buying immense quantities of US government bonds. their low value currency gives their products a competitive advantage over US products so they run a huge current account surplus with the US which they use to buy more US bonds.
So eventually the US runs out of buying power–which has happened now and the US prints up more money. Will this lower the value of the dollar against the Yuan?
The Chinese could keep the Yuan low but they would have to buy up still more US securities.
The Japanese have already gone into a current account deficit.
It didn’t.
Wretchard, if you would be so kind delete my comments 8 and 11.
Thanks.
Here’s an idea I’m promoting: Let’s turn it into a game show, “Who Wants to Buy a Toxic Asset?”
You show up with a bundle of “toxic” assets and it is valued by, say, ten groups of money men who are fronted by sexy models. But the first step is “Government roulette.” A wheel is spun, and purely by chance the government will offer you anything from 10 cents on the dollar to, say, 60 cents on the dollar (about a hundred to one shot for the high amount).
If you refuse the government offer, you then get to choose among the boxes that contain the offer of the various money men. You open the first three boxes at random. You get to choose the highest bid. If you open the next five, you get to choose the second highest bid but it is bought by the highest bidder. If you open the next two, you get the highest bid and the highest bidder buys it. But once you decide there, is no going back.
You might need the contestant to spin the wheel a few more times, and have cheering Wall Street types shouting advice. You know, to help the ratings.
Afterwards, it can be debated who got over on who. Hopefully, Bank ads will cover the cost.
You know and we know and you know that we know that it is nonsense
This will rank as one of the great political speeches to be studied for generations, I commented on Mr Hannan’s blog that he should post the full transcript so it will show up on Google searches.
Jim: You know Humphrey, I think government has got to be awfully careful about throttling small businesses.
Bernard: The bank isn’t actually a small business.
Jim: It will be if we throttle it, Bernard.
The reason the accounts between the US and the Chinese or others are out of balance is because they have been free riders on the US provided umbrella of security and lawful trade. What is needed is a mechanism that transfers the tenders of wealth back to the US to pay for the benefits that they received in return for toasters and athletic shoes.
The British tradition of facing one another when disagreeing is so refreshing. It seems such a contradiction that their society has lost their will to work or fight, yet our leaders can’t even look each other in the eye. As I often say, the fighting in Washington is not the problem… it is the lack of really GOOD fighting!
Are we at the point where the reactions to the crisis are driving events?
In other words, anything that happens from now on is a result of actions taken since October 08?
Derek
Argument for a more Parliamentary system, the example of the British and their Question Time. A system in which a Leader emerges after 20 years of being closely observed by jealous colleagues and tested by public interrogation is unlikely to produce an empty suit like Obama.
Argument against a more Parliamentary system, the example of the American Legislature. The peer elected leaders of the House and the Senate are Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid If that is the best that they can come up with then we may be better off selecting our leaders by random lot. That would be closer to the Athenian model.
Sure you can borrow your way out of debt. The govt. will just have to wind up taxing everything under the sun in order to repay the debt. We’ll enjoy high inflation and high taxes in the future.
The AIG executive Jake DeSantis responds to Obama. The American Mussolini of Mediocrity should find a rock to crawl under.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/25/opinion/25desantis.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all
Wretchard,
I approach this humbly and with the utmost respect but in the last thread you asked of us:
“I know that people can have strong opinions, but please try to be moderate in your comments”
It seems that when people repond to highly charged threads posted, threads that ultimately involve the life and death of one culture Islam over another culture, the freedom of the Infidels, that one is going to get nothing but passioate responses.
Moderation in dealing with a foe whose entire focus is to kill you tends to focus the mind in that way especially when they’ve been attacking your country since the Barbary pirate days of Jefferson and Adams time right up to today. I will comply with your wishes but it seems a might task.
Respectfully,
Habu
In Britain the Conservatives are poised to win the next election and try to put the fiscal house in order. Here, from a fiscal standpoint we have had a Liberal government for the past eight years (I said fiscal!, dammit) and have gone on to a Socialist government. Like the junky’s last binge, this is going to be hard to kick.
Question time is certainly a wonderful thing – I imagine a sop like G. Brown has to sit there and take it – watching Tony Blair slice up his questioners almost made you feel sorry for them.
Ya know, I am beginnig to have a problem with the whole “toxic asset” meme. The assets are not toxic, especially since much of it is real estate, and nobody will die from exposure. In fact many of the assets will provide shelter to someone, at some price. They have value.
As mentioned in a previous thread, the concern seems to be protecting balance sheets of big players. Why? In my opionion the big boys need to start cutting bait while the more prudent mid-size companies do a little fishing.
Real money will find the real value of real assets. The losses will be born by the cash flow from ongoing operations of the big guys, and loss of owner’s equity.
The derivatives, especially second and third tier, are another matter. Since derivatives beyond the first tier are gambles in the first place, I have no sympathy for anyone who risked their company, their economy or their nation on such fru-fru.
Cash flow is king. Cheap cash is a whore.
Another thought. In that some sort of confrontation with China is in the offing, their owning a large part of our debt is a potential weapon. In WWI the US assets of Bayer AG were taken over by the US and sold to US firms. Bayer USA was only recently reacquired (mid 90′s) from Bayer USA, for real money. When push comes to shove with China, what happens when with the debt and property related to that debt?
Select the members of the House by random lot, repeal the 17th Amendment (Senators go back to being selected by the State Legislature).
Term Limit Congress and the bureaucracy.
Make Impoundment an enumerated power of the Executive.
And, at least once every twenty years, we get to vote on continuing any part of the government not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution.
“You can’t borrow your way out of debt,” Hannan says.
Obama and his supporters argue that they are borrowing in order to invest. They are investing in education, in green technology, better health, etc. They simply stop using the word “expenditures” and replace it with the word “investments.”
So, that’s the argument that must be engaged. Is spending more money on, for example, early-childhood education an “expenditure” or is it an “investment”? If we accept that it might properly be called an “investment,” then is it a good or a bad investment?
The Democrats are framing the arguments now. So, Republicans must argue within that framework now.
In other words, it will not suffice for Republicans to simply denounce all these “expenditures” as long as the Democrats successfully are calling them “investments.”
Gotta love the Brits!! If nothing else they’ve just got a way of expressing themelves that’s uniquely dramatic.
As an American I can imagine our pundits describing Obama’s budget in any number of ways, but none will ever call it “…an unprecedented ENGORGEMENT of the unproductive…”
We Americans may have found Bobby Jindahl’s recent speech “boring” or “stilted”, only a Brit would say “wooden and perfunctory“. What can you say: it’s their language and, when pressed, they really know how to use it.
Hopefully this performance will turn out to be an economic “Norway Debate” and finish Brown as that debate finished Chamberalin.
@25. Simple answer. No.
1. Early Childhood education is a failure. More $ for education is a failure.
2. Health Care investment is code for taking over the system. Removal of government would improve the system
3. Green technology. Surely you jest…
Just listening to Rush and he highlights Mr. Hanna.
Sorry, I lost the “n” on the end of Mr. Hannan’s name. It was a toxic misspelling. I had to borrow an “n” using a debased “m” as collateral to do this correction.
The American Mussolini of Mediocrity
Great description. But I doubt he is even mediocre in anything but oratory skill (that is so overrated anyway).
EEEK!
And then you read Hannan’s blog a little further down and he’s a Tory for Obama, judiciously giving him some time before he reevaluates his support. Waiting for the next jerry can of petrol on the blaze before he decides whether O is an arsonist or a lost filling station attendant? Gimme a break!
What’s there to worry about? The Chinese oh come on. Silly Timmy Geithner says he is “open” to the Chinese world currency proposal, and once that happens, we could then go to the UN or some giant EU like group and beg for funding. That’l get us our of this mess for sure! http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0309/Geithner_open_to_China_proposal.html?showall
A few posts back Buddy opined that Geithner as head of the NY Fed might have been involved in setting up Lehman to go under. Could be, somethin ain’t right with that guy. I beginning to think that Geithner is a closet leftwingnut radical masquerading as a pro capitalist moderate.
I think the problem we face is that liberals want more spending while conservatives want lower taxes. The net effect is deficit spending.
As a reductio ad absurdum, one could ask why the United States shouldn’t both increase spending dramatically and eliminate taxes entirely, relying upon the Chinese and Saudi governments to foot the entire bill! If the Obama administration is so profligate, perhaps that is what American voters want.
Both liberals and conservatives are caught in traps of their own making. Among conservatives, the solution to every problem seems to be a tax cut. Among liberals, the solution to every problem seems to be government spending. The whole notion of lowering taxes to “starve the beast” does not work because it merely defers the cost to future generations; it doesn’t slow any increase in spending at all.
Furthermore, there is a disconnect between fixed expenses and investments. One could talk about “investing” in education in theory, but in reality most of education spending is a fixed cost. Even school computers are fixed costs because they need to be replaced on a regular basis. In contrast, there are capital infrastructure programs such as fiber optic cable networks, road and bridge improvements, magnetic levitation train networks, and the space program that would increase the economic power of the United States.
The main problem the United States faces is that our fixed expenses for entitlement spending are so high that we can’t afford them in the long run. AARP and the Gray Panthers may not like any solution to this problem, but the alternative is massive inflation. If pensions and retirement accounts get eaten up by inflation, go blame those people who obstructed any reform of entitlement spending!
@20 LOTM: thank for the link, what a great letter!
@28 michael hoskins, sub 3 “green technology” is an oxymoron.
@24 LarryD; as long as you’re getting started, here’s my list;
1. Voter must prove visible means of support: bank account or proof of employment or federal and state tax returns for 2 -3 years.
2. Voter must prove permanent address.
3. Voter must prove basic civics knowledge (e.g. a couple of paragraphs from the Constitution and the Declaration with the simple question: which document is this paragraph from, the C. or the D.?), and who is current President, Governor, Senators and Representative?
4. English only dammit!
That’s for starters. The demo’s have been cheapening the franchise for years, it’s time to start making it valuable rather than a license for looting.
Sounds like what the founders would be saying if they could speak to us now, or what a statesman would say, and we can’t have that now can we?
weSwinger,
The one limitation on the franchise that would make a difference would be to put it in the Constitution that no person who derived the majority of their sustenance from the public treasury at the federal level shall be eligible to vote in any election for Congress or for an Elector for President or any other Federal office and that no person who derives the majority of their sustenance from a State or States component(s) thereof shall vote for in any election at the State or local level. No such disability should apply to enlisted members of the armed forces or officers called to active duty during conflict.
Existing limitations on voting by felons, or persons certified by a court as incompetent, need to be enforced. Secure ID systems for registration and voting need to be instituted. The extreme libertarian objections to a national ID card have left us open to having the entire constitutional system hijacked.
Meant “or component(s) thereof”
“Yeah, that’s because its state-ist person, you sexist
manperson.”I know, I know. Me bad
25&35&377
Now there ya go…supplying planks for the new party platform, the “and if we survive” aftermath….
It does not appear that our market likes the idea of converting to the euroyuan. Or will it be called the gloabollar?
@37 LOTM; Your language, directly adopted at the Constitutional Convention the states will have to call for once the O admin implodes, has my vote.
Hey! This is the place for dreaming, at least in the Gospel according to Buddy.
sorry that should have been “globallor”..
The assets are toxic not due to the fact that the underlying asset is land but that after various grades of paper were bundled together and sold AND the original appraisals for the properties were fudged AND the prices inflated artificially AND the rating agencies misrepresented the grade of paer being sold the banks are unable to unravel the paper and determine anything close to it’s value; ergo they won’t touch it without a guarantee of the taxpayer being the underwriter of last resort.
The formulas attendant to the building of the securitized mortgage paper backed in all it’s various forms became so complex NO ONE to this day can figure it out. Everything that is being done now is purely a pallative ,not a curative. If they happen to get close to the upside they will declare victory. If they miss, as they have been so far, the Treasury will continue to print money thus placing the entire world in financial jeopardy.
We’re following them right down. Today, the government is having problem selling debt. Too much spending is going to destroy us.
Wow another doomed ship analogy, this time from the budget meeting this morning:
http://tinyurl.com/d22e5z
h/t to the guys at powerline
Habu. Just my point. Bundled derivatives are toxic, to the holder, and false value. The only solution, as both you and I have discussed variously, is to get back to the basics.
My position is, and I believe yours also, that the underlying value is the cash steams generated by “rents” and are the only viable valuation. Thus “toxic” only applies to the holders of the monetized, inflated paper. (Which via my 200.5(e) includes me) It is time to pay the piper. Now, not with more phony debt holding up phony paper.
Taking an additional step, I offer a thought experiment. One percent of unemployment is about 1.2 million soles. The average unemployment check is about $250 per week. So a percent of unemployment costs $300 million per week or 15.6 billion per year. The average Mexican remits less than $200 per week to the family back home. Make the following offer. If you sign up within the next 90 days, we will give you a bus ticket home and pay 50% unemployment for one year. (i.e. $125 per week for 52 weeks).
Now the math. Let’s go for 3% reduction in unemployment. 3.6 million at $125 per week for 52 weeks. A measley 23.4 Billion.
Of course, when signing up ID’s etc are established, return to US during the year becomes a BIG felony and, after the 90 day sign up period, we go hunting. If caught and deported you are out of luck…no money. And employers are hit hard as well. Hell, at two years 45 billion is a lot less than a Trillion.
Idle thoughts can be dangerous
souls, soles, “I don’t do no spellin’”
Michael @45…
I don’t know how it works in your state, but in California illegal immigrants cannot get unemployment benefits. The EDD is very careful about that, paranoid even. They got into a huge scandal some time back, IIRC they lost a big lawsuit, too.
As it stands, illegal Mexican immigrants are flooding the other way. It’s one of the reasons for all of the uncivil activity roiling Mexico. The cash flow stream from el norte has dried up.
To repeat yet again: the ONLY practical solution to the RMBS is to cash them out by refinancing the underlying mortgages.
A US Mortgage Resolution Bank issuing 3% 15 year term mortgages with FHA conforming metrics on a recourse basis would be a practical way to go. Appraisals would be based on real estate norms of 12 years ago.
At first the only properties that could be done would be well seasoned notes. Short sales and foreclosures also cash out the RMBS. Everything possible should be done to speed this process up, not slow it down. Prices need to get back to classic norms as fast as possible.
Government spending has to be cut back with particular emphasis on firemen, policemen and the education establishment. This is where the bloat is.
The number of souls wandering around schools but not actually teaching is an astonishing figure. There are many K-12 schools with teachers out-numbered by staff! That’s not how it was done when I was young, and the system worked better back then. My sister is a K-12 teacher and highly regarded by one and all. Her number one complaint: the tremendous expansion of Federal interference in her work life. That is, the tremendous amount of time she now must dedicate to cranking out paperwork so that federal bureaucrats can play with it; something like fifteen hours — unpaid — a week! And it keeps growing! And growing! This is demoralizing to teachers. It takes time away from the classroom.
I’d say H is going to take the national automobile Fast and Furiously into the wall. We’ve got Alfred E. Neuman at the wheel. Spool up Boogie Pimps!
michael hoskins,
Good assessment. We’re in the same camp.
weSwinger #33:
While we’re restricting the franchise, why not go ahead and add Heinlein’s voter qualifications to make the franchise still more restrictive:
1) Only honorably discharged veterans of military service or similarly self sacrificing public service (police, firefighters, etc) have the franchise.
2) Said voter must solve a quadratic equation correctly to open the door of the voting booth.
3) Voter fraud of any kind is summarily punishable by death!
Blert, understood. I say we change the law. “Mexifornia” would be a huge beneficiary. Note also, some unemployment money is already in the bank in that it is part of payroll costs each week.
You actually reinforce my thinking. (I.e I grew up in San Diego…)
47 Blert.
See also what happened in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. In eastern KY the school jobs were and still are political payoffs.
Ky Chief Justice Joe Lambert started looking at the school bus driver/ Janitor/ Cook/ Secretary to student ratios. The commonwealth issued warnings, then, in two or three counties took over the schools, forcing employment to state averages. The legal excuse was fraud, waste and abuse.
Joe still sits. Even though a D, he is a fair man.
To a degree, you can borrow your way out of debt.
If you have debt at 8%, but can borrow money at 1% to pay off the debt at 8%, then – good.
Right now, the interest on Treasury bonds is so low that it is almost free money coming in from overseas and funding the government bailouts.
Why would foreigners buy Treasury bonds that give almost no interest? Because other options are worse at the moment.
The Grandfather paradox…more than you ever wanted to know about this conundrum, or is it an enigma?
http://tinyurl.com/o7lx8
“You can’t borrow your way out of debt.”
No, you can.
This – basically – is the United States’ plan:
1) Borrow money from foreigners by selling them Treasury bonds at a very low rate of interest. They buy at this low rate of interest because other investments are worse at the moment.
2) Use that borrowed money to bail out the banking system.
3) Once the banking system is functioning (if the bailout succeeds), the economy should grow again.
4) If the economy grows strongly enough, then more tax revenue will be received from taxpayers – without having to raise tax rates.
5) Paying back the debt will also be assisted by growing the money supply (printing more money).
6) Once the economy returns to growth, Bernanke restricts the money supply, in an attempt to prevent out-of-control inflation.
That’s the plan. It seems reasonable to me. There are risks at each stage, however.
Ash I see understands Obama’s strategy, which is also Brown’s. Inflate past any meaning the deficit and debts.
Now, inflation helps big time debtors who have enough income in hard assets to shelter themselves from inflation. If you are big debtor nation, well inflating your currency allows you to repay it in worthless scrip.
Both Geithner and Austin Goolsbee today endorsed, stupidly, the idea that the US dollar be replaced by an international basket of currencies, floated by China.
That’s stupid. It would then make everything worse. Debts having to be repaid in “hard” currency and the dollar inflated to Weimar type levels. Without the ability to thumb one’s nose because there was no alternative.
Obama is not just anti-American, filled with racist rage against Whites, he’s monumentally STUPID. Having been given the reins of power of the greatest nation on earth, he wishes to destroy it to fulfill his racist rage, rather than make himself a “Great” President or even a good one.
Obama and his team of idiots are like Stalin mixed with Jim Jones. The results will be not very good for America or the world. New Age stupidity mixed with racist rage against America was never going to turn out well.
What’s going to happen, eventually, is either Obama is impeached and convicted, or is thrown out in four years, as the great majority of the people are impoverished by crushing inflation. Prices for everything going up and up and up. Then gold-backed dollars, and likely other currencies, as governments and nations struggle to find a bottom in the inflationary mess. To provide a fix for the inflationary mess. China likely will have to do this as well, with the Renmenbi also being inflated past reason.
But it will be remarkably ugly getting there. Working men and women will be hard pressed to survive, with gas, food, and other prices going up and up and up. We’ll see a lot off-the-books activity, disastrous for a nation, indicating a failed economy and culture. Much semi-legal but illicit in nature activities, and ugly stuff all around.
The classic definition of pre-Revolutionary situations is where a long run of good times is replaced by sudden hard times and downward income and mobility. Obama reminds me of Marie Antoinette. And the road outwards is likely to be with much pain and heartache.
Why would bundling mortgage debt be a problem?
When you bundle mortgages together, you gain diversification. If 10% of those mortgages are bad, then your investment is supported by the 90% that are good.
The complex way these mortgages have been bundled make it difficult to value them, but this is not impossible. Computers can do it, and sophistocated hedge funds have those computers and can calculate values.
These debts are “toxic” at the moment, because people are afraid to buy them. I will make a bet that they won’t be so toxic in five years, when investors have made money in them.
flash–coming up on Cavuto show (FoxBizNews), a feature on Daniel Hannan –show is on now, feature to come during, at some undefined near point –so, i guess, hurry if ya wanna see it.
The RMBS market is dead forever and cannot be revived this side of the second coming.
That’s the way it is.
Well, we’ve been waiting for someone to emerge. So he’s an Englishman, so what –at least he speaks English (and not the crazy-making varient we’re hearing over here).
onetailtest #56:
You’re quite right; the mortgages are diversified when bundled. That’s not the issue.
Basic trust is the issue. Most individual, and many institutional investors feel they’ve had the wool pulled over their eyes. They’ve seen the value of their assets roughly halved in a short period of time. Now, the powers that be keep changing the rules as they go along, and seem to be doing a pretty good amateur imitation of the clown car act from Ringling Brothers. As Geithner and Obamassiah have attempted to eliminate uncertainties in some parts of the economy, they’ve added many others simultaneously. They’ve done nothing to address the fundamental problems that caused this crash.
They are trying to re-inflate the bubble!
If you “…will make a bet that they won’t be so toxic in five years…” then go ahead and take YOUR money and invest in the market now. As for me, and apparently many others, I’ll wait until it looks like some of the fundamental underlying problems have worked themselves out, AND adult supervision has returned to the executive branch of government instead of pre-school like delusions of omnipotence, before I put my money back into the financial system.
Wretchard posed the question of the grandfather paradox, which, simply stated, asks if you can go back in time and kill your grandfather, would you then be born, and if not, how could you, never born, go back and kill your grandfather. The question on Wretchard’s part was rhetorical, and the thread dealt with matters other than killing one’s grandfather. Nonetheless, the answer to the question posed is yes, you can go back and kill your grandfather, or someone you have reason to believe is your grandfather, because quantum physics, the building block and recipe for modern science and technology, says we live in an infinity of alternate universes, the only argument apparently being what is the nature of those alternate universes, that is, are they all just like us, with identical replicas of each of us alive there, or are they completely different, with different people and thus different histories, different natural laws, different laws of physics.
My view is that each universe is side by side with other universes, sort of like a honeycomb, though, since time and space are curved, the face of the honeycomb is curved, like a wave form, meaning that each universe occupies its own place in time and space. Time is the point of an arrow, there is no such thing as traveling to one’s own past or future, one can only travel to the past or future of an alternate universe. It is thought that travel through a worm hole or black hole will fetch one up in an alternate universe, and if a close by alternate universe is similar to ours, it may have a similar history, and may seem much like the universe we live in, but that universe may be behind or ahead of our universe in time depending on its position on the wave form relative to our own.
So the answer to the age old question of can you go back and kill your grandfather and still be born is yes, because if you travel to the past of another universe and kill the man who in your universe would have been your grandfather, you would not have killed your grandfather, because you and he lived in another universe. So Gatsby was wrong, one cannot repeat or change the past, one can only change the present of one’s own universe, or, if lucky enough to survive the journey through a worm hole or black hole and arrive in an altrnate universe, one may, by one’s presence there, attempt to change the present and thus the future of that alternate universe.
“Senators go back to being selected by the State Legislature”
That would go over well in liberal California. Who would a liberal California state legislature select? Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer?
Shudder
Am I the only one remembering that back in 2004 the IMF successfully forced Paul Wolfowitz out when he started trying to implement reforms and track money and see who was giving what to whom?
That at that point, when every UN-related liberal in the world was saying very bad things about Mr. Wolfowitz, what he *did* succeed in uncovering stank very much like the UN’s uber-successful program Oil for Food.
Given the stench from IMF that has followed it from 2004, why on earth is it listed as any kind of an expert, or interested party, or ANY thing at all whatsoever in discussions about fixing the world’s economy, let alone being involved in America’s … unless, of course, IMF merely wants to position itself as being the bribable middleman once Obama starts distributing American tax-payer largesse to everyone else in the world.
The grandfather paradox in this context grows out of Gatsby’s desire to recreate the past. To some extent we don’t want to make things ‘like they were before’ in the economic realm. And yet to some extent, at least politically, some in the public and certaintly in the left, have a desire to pick up old threads; in extreme cases restart the progressive initiatives hijacked by the Reagan years, or more commonly to return to the Clinton era prosperity.
But as I’ve suggested in many comments, something about what we did in the past got us here, and making things just like they were is like returning to fall off the cliff again. In practical terms it goes to issue of whether we can we spend our way out of deflation or borrow our way out of debt?
If one could truly borrow money at 1% from the Chinese to pay off debts at 8% it would imply that the real rate of return for the term of the Chinese borrowings must also be 1% or else why would they lend at that rate if they could get higher returns elsewhere. Now this might make sense if the Chinese believed it could stave off a wildly inflated monetary supply, where a higher nominal return would represent a actual smaller real return. The 1% rate of return would represent the real expectation of how much better things would get.
Ultimately, lending money to the current economic system reflects a belief that it will ultimately provide a real return over time when you fold back the stream of cash inflows and outflows out into the future. It is the expected cash inflows, or the productivity of the economy, which is the ultimate driver of whether it makes sense to lend (and whether it makes sense to borrow) or not. That’s why all this talk about expenditures as “investments” is so dangerous. A real investment brings a real return. A handout to ACORN may be many things, but it is not an investment. And it’s one of the negative cash flows you have to think about when deciding “can I borrow my way out of [present] debt”.
I don’t think anyone anywhere is arguing that handing out money to ACORN is an investment.
The argument that Republicans need to address is about allocating more money into education, green technology, the health-care system, and so forth. Are those investments, and are they good investments?
a href=”http://www.reuters.com/article/ousivMolt/idUSTRE52H6ME20090318″>Reuters: AIG Chief Worried About Safety After Death Threats
wrechard #64:
Au contraire, “A handout to ACORN may be many things, but it is not an investment”
That very much depends upon how much you value ACORN’s product!
Obamassiah and his fellow socialist see that investment along with amnesty and citizenship for illegal aliens as their guarantors of continued political power. That is a return on investment beyond price in their view! Certainly other peoples money well spent….
So excited about my AIG Tour this afternoon, I can’t type a hyperlink!
On the economics it is plain that most green energy is a money pit.
Solar arrays on a roof-top are not cost effective. They entail excessive installation costs since they are retrofits. Maintenance is necessary, but expensive and risky — and beyond the keen of a normal homeowner. The small scale of the power manipulation electronics makes for lose-lose economics all the way around.
Solar arrays work best in space but getting the power down from orbit is wildly impractical for the foreseeable future.
Solar arrays in high southern deserts show promise but have crippling availability constraints. It may yet be that they can sustain a hydrogen economy, or at least a partial hydrogen economy.
Wind has been beaten to death and simply doesn’t have the horses to factor nationally — so forget it.
The one green power project that could really work would entail hydropower dams working the east face of the Andes in Peru, etc. The raw hydropower available in Peru is enough to power the ENTIRE western hemisphere — both electric power and liquid, sold, atomic fuels. Admittedly it would require mass production of hydro-turbines and run-of-the-river penstocks. But since these technical hurdles were passed 125 years ago, perhaps there is hope we can still do it.
There is a limit to this resource: some day the sun will blow up and before that the Andes will wear down. But until then water will rain down upon the mountainside 365 days a year.
Gee Walt, first epoch poems and now this space time warp back to the future thread.; “you would not have killed your grandfather, because you and he lived in another universe.”
Carl Sagan posited that if it took billions of years for intelligent life to evolve to the point that they could communicate millions of light years across the universe and their populations rose and fell at similar rates in time the likelihood of those two civilizations matching up were astronomically opposed. Alternately if time travel was possible by occupiers of alternately parallel universes (see professor Farnsworth’s box) it would seem likely that traces would show up in ours as unexplainable incontinuities. Like things suddenly appearing or disappearing, or …. Obama ’08.
Somewhere along the line when some of the dust settles we do need to go back to the INCEPTION of the FEDERAL RESERVE BANK and decide if a private stock company is what was intended by the Constitution and it’s authors to run the US monetary system.
It appaears to me that in spite of Alexander Hamiltons brilliance, his idea of a central bank was repudiated more than once. Then in total secrecy at Jekyll Island the foundations were put inot place and suddenly we had one.
The regnant question is now how well this organization is serving the American taxpayer, or is it serving another master?
education, green technology, the health-care system, and so forth. Are those investments … are they good investments?
That’s something that can only be answered on a case to case basis. It depends on the technology, the health care innovations, if innovations they be and the kind of education in question. But many of the budget items are now called “investments” where they really should be expenditures.
the wages of secular sin is debt, because that’s what you and all the rest of us will be in as we try and fail to (futilely) pay off theirs (The Well Fed Federal Government). So just who wants who’s policy “to fail” as this scenario unfolds?
” The argument that Republicans need to address is about allocating more money into education, green technology, the health-care system, and so forth. Are those investments, and are they good investments?”
That is the argument. I’ve been guilty of thinking that a nudge to greener energy could induce higher profits if the American consumer really believed in such green energy verses green dollars. Americans don’t, wont, and never will. We are a society of people who’d buy something for a dollar less if it was produced by coal-fired slave industry. That is why we as a nation do not produce anything real anymore. If we, ya know the majority, put our money where are mouth was it would be a different story.
As far as education is concerned, an investment in education keeps criminals off the streets and provides tremendous work capital to fuel our economy…. not. It takes some brains, will, and effort to be productive and as long as we begin adulthood by giving out government sponsored student loans to street raised trash who ‘gonna go to Devry ta get ther ejucation’ then all we are doing is underwrite dependence, mediocrity, and unbalanced expectations. Self-esteem doesn’t sustain itself on government promises. It is an investment in labor unions.
And health care, where do I start? How much for whom for how long? I sure don’t want triage in the hands of a bunch of ‘fine young cannibals’. I don’t think when deciding whether the world would be better off if I lived or died that I could trust them to make that decision. If I failed to secure my own future at least I am the master of my destiny. Isn’t that what life is supposed to be… to some extent, to be the master of your own destiny?
’bout regrets, I’ve had a few, bu………
Sorry about the bad link, still looking for Jindal youtube at Fundraiser opposite BHO.
Please post if found.
YouTube – Sweatin’ With the Socialists’
Re: alternate universes.
If there is an alternative universe we cannot know it, it cannot know us and we can’t, in any way, interact with it. This is so, for a couple of reasons:
1. Such an interaction would violate The Law of Conservation of Energy which states that energy cannot be created or destroyed and
2. that the total quantity of matter and energy available in the universe is a fixed amount and that there is never any more or any less of it at any time.
The existence of an alternate universe would violate of The Law of Conservation of Energy in both of the only ways possible:
Case 1. If we acted on another world we would transfer energy to it: a loss.
Case 2. If another world acted on us it would transfer energy to us: a gain.
Also, you might remember one of the axioms from geometry: things equal to the same thing are equal to each other. If an alternate world acted on us and we acted on it in a same way, we would be identical. Then the claim that an alternative universe exists becomes a distinction without a difference.
Furthermore, if there was an interaction between an alternative universe and ours, it would violate Aristotle’s Law of Identity, which demonstrates why things can be known.
The Law of Identity says “A” is “A”. It says this without qualification. “A” is “A” and is only “A”, all of the time. Things cannot “be” and “not be” at the same time. This means that things have a specific identity and because they have a specific identity they can be known
Therefore:
In case #1: “A” would then become “A minus”. This is a change in identity.
In case #2: “A” would become “A plus”. This is, also, a change in identity.
In practical terms: Any interaction between our universe and an alternative universe would result in the total energy supply of the universe being in constant flux.
The result of this would be that the fluctuating amount of energy and matter would upset the chain of “cause and effect” and would render the universe unknowable and systemically unworkable.
So, Grandfather, you can rest easy.
Annoy Mouse @70
Carl Sagan was positing a single universe of bilions of civilizations, and the slim to none chance of another civilization arriving at the brief moment of technology capable of communicating across vast distances at the same time we did. Sagan was right, those odds were and are daunting. But we are not talking here about Sagan’s single universe, but an infinite number of alternate/parallel universes, existing side by side, occupying the same space-time as ourselves. And you are quite correct, if there were alternate universes, traces would show up in ours as unexplainable incontinuities. And they have shown up, in double slit photon experiments for example, and what some people call ghosts for another. I have heard too many credible stories from credible people to totally dismiss the stories as fantasy, and so I tend to think that a ghost is simply an unexplainable incontinuity, where someone from a nearby alternate universe somehow bleeds into our universe, and is just as frightened and bewildered at encountering what would be to that person as an unexplainable incontinuity as we are at seeing what appears to be an apparition. Fanciful, I admit, and probably completely wrong, but if serious physicists believe there are an infinite number of alternate universes, and if, in an infinite universe, an infinite number of incontinuities is not only possible but certain, then somewhere in the infinity of universes everything that could possibly happen has already happened, is happening, or will happen. Even if that means in an infinite number of universes Obama was elected, the bright side is that in an infinite number of universes Obama was defeated. We are just infortunate to be in one of the unlucky universes.
““You can’t borrow your way out of debt.”
No, you can.
This – basically – is the United States’ plan:”
Quick somebody get me Bernie’s rolodex! We need suckers and right now!!!
There I fixed it for you.
You are welcome.
Jim
Crisp, cutting, literate and accurate. Is this too much to ask for in an American conservative politician? All we seem to breed are diffident, eggshell-walking mush-mouths.
The evidence is building that the universe has eight dimensions.
Google e8…
All of the known sub-atomic particles map out with astounding symmetry in eight dimensions. A handful of undiscovered beasts will complete the map.
The odds are there is just us and what’s in this super-symmetric mathematical construct.
the way all this stuff will be funded will be that inheritance taxes will revert to 1 million allowance from there current 3-5 million. This will happen in 2011.
that will add an extra 1 trillion a year.
Wrong,
Every fat cat is going to die next year when the inheritance tax goes to zero.
Their heirs will help them pull the plug.
No one will want to live until 2011.
viktor silo @76
Entirely agree with your position that we could not interact with any alternate universes. The discussion among physicists currently is not are there alternate universes, there is general agreement there are, but on the nature of those alternate universes. Discussions of traveling to an alternate universe through a worm hole or black hole always ends, at least so far, with the statement that of course one is not likely to survive the journey. But just because current thinking says the conservation of matter and other long held beliefs of science say a thing is not possible, recall that when Max Planck conducted his black box experiments in 1900 and didn’t get the results his current physics said he should get, we did not get just another failed experiment, we got quantum physics, overturning just about everything everyone thought they knew about the nature of things. Who is to say another Max Planck will not come along and overturn everything we now think sacrosanct. Recall also that in 1925 every astromomer in the world thought the universe consisted of our galaxy and some outlying gas clouds, until Hubbell caught a cepheid variable on one of his plates and realized it was a long, long way off. So things, including science, have a way of changing, and it may be one day someone will discover a way around the conservation of matter. And thanks for the discussion.
on health care…the boomer’s retirements have been defunded–so they’ll have to work for an extra 10-15 years. Therefor I’m not against the 10 billion invested in gene research– as that work may well extend the productive life of the most experienced part of the work force.
The 10 billion for computerizing medical records is something that Newt Gingrich has advocated–because it makes the system much more efficient & cost effective.
The rest of the health care stuff may well be flim flam.
Blert @80
Last I heard the number of dimensions was up to 11, though not with general agreement. As for sub-atomic particles, have you ever wondered how it is that when someone goes looking for a predicted particle, it is always found? Never something unpredicted, never something almost, but not quite, as predicted, but always exactly as predicted. You say we should have a quark with 1/3 spin? Here, let me reach blindfolded into my toy box and see what I can pull out with the first thing I touch. Well whaddya know – a quark with 1/3 spin. Uncanny. There must be an explanation, and if you have one I’ll be pleased to hear it.
A Businesswoman called Rush to report that her employees will be paying 7% on the first dollar they earn this year.
Rush asked what it was last year: She said Zero, up to some dollar amount.
Bobby doesn’t look real good here:
Ben Smith’s Blog Jindal aides clarify Katrina story –
(but it was just a national address in response to Obama!)
Jeesh!
Agree with rrpjr, that is a terrific speech. No American politician would have the guts, let alone the erudition, to speak like that.
Pajamas TV – ZoNation – Why Be Mad About Obama on Leno – Video
walt/85; “… I’ll be pleased to hear it” How bout, the phenomemonon of the Self-Prophecy Fullfilling ?
Hey, our kids’s roommate is a part time professional Magician.
Dad, fulltime, and he’s black.
When kid’s 35, we’ll have our half-white hope ready to run!
Buddy
Exactly. The self prophecy fulfilling. You design an experiment to find a specific particle with specific qualities, and you quite naturally find it. It’s the finding it every time that concerns me. I’m sure these guys have all heard of Heisenberg, so how can they be so certain?
…born in Hawaii, too!
Or Yemen.
Unsk @ 31: I beginning to think that Geithner is a closet leftwingnut radical masquerading as a pro capitalist moderate.
Well look at his bio. His father worked at the Ford Foundation, overseeing the work of Mrs. Obama (the mother), among others. His mother is a pianist. Little Timmy went to high school at the International School in Bangkok and then on to Darthmouth. He married a woman who was a research assistant at Common Cause. And her father is a professor of French and comparative lit at Princeton, and her mother is an orchestra conductor. Timmy and the Mrs. were married by a minister from the United Church of Christ.
In other words, he is surrounded by academics, foundation types and “artists,” and his minister is from an uber-Liberal Protestant Church. Left, Left and more Left. He is culturally one of those obnoxious well-to-do Leftists you see in Woody Allen movies. He is even physically a Leftist, one of those dessicated girl-men, like an Alan Alda. Nothing in his bio suggests he is anything other than a run-of-the-mill East Coast progressive.
And in other business news…
IBM Corp. plans to lay off about 5,000 U.S. employees in a new round of job cuts, the Associated Press has learned. The move reflects IBM’s aggressiveness in shifting labor to lower-cost regions like India and keeping its profits aloft at a time when other technology companies’ earnings are tumbling…. In a sign of how quickly IBM is staffing up in emerging markets, last year IBM had nearly as many workers in Brazil, China, India and Russia — 113,000 — as it did in the U.S.
When do the bus tours start to bring people to the houses of IBM executives?
“if something is infinitely improbable then it will happen…”
Douglas Adams
We are just lucky to be in one of the unfortunate universes.
Corsi said Geithner thought the Chi-Com Currency idea sounded pretty good!
peterike:
Naw, he wasn’t affected by any of that.
Just like BHO wasn’t by his Commie Symp Grandad and Friend,
His father, his druggie friends, the drugs, Columbia, Dorhn and Hubby, Wright, the Socialist Party he ran with, Hyde Park and the Black Muslim “Police,” the Chicago Machine, and etc.
94. peterike,
Enjoyed tremendously the very apy physical description of Timmy as a girlie-man.
Diwn SOuth he would be a pencil neck geek.
Hear it: http://tinyurl.com/3o3lew
and follow along with the lyrics:
Pencil Neck Geek
Freddie Blassie
Back when I was a kid, life was going swell.
Till something happened, blew every thing to hell.
That night my daddy stumbled in, all pale and weak,
Said “A woman up the block just gave birth to a geek.”
Mom said, “Sell it to the circus, what the heck.”
Dad said, “Nope, this one’s a pencil neck.
And if there’s one thing lower than a side show freak,
It’s a grit eatin’, scum suckin’, pencil neck geek.”
You see if you take a pencil that won’t hold lead,
Looks like a pipe cleaner atached to a head,
Add a buggy whip body with a brain that leaks,
You got yourself a grit eatin’, pencil neck geek.
(chorus)
Pencil neck geek, grit eatin’ freak,
scum suckin’, pea head with a lousy physique.
He’s a one man, no gut, loosing streak.
Nothin’ but a pencil neck geek.
Soon the geeks were poppin’ up all over town.
You couldn’t hardly sneeze without knockin’ one down.
After a nice juicy steak, if you need a toothpick,
Just reach for a geek, they’ll do the trick.
One day we cut one up for fish bait.
Learned our lesson just a little bit late.
Soon as the geek hit the drink, the water turned red.
Next day, sure enough, all the fish were dead.
chorus
Most any night you know where I can be found.
Yeah, stomping some geek’s head into the ground.
So keep the faith ’cause in Blassie you can trust,
I won’t give up ’til the last geek bites the dust.
chorus
They say, “these geeks come a dime a dozen.”
I’m lookin’ for the guy who’s supplin’ the dimes.
Its gonna be real hard times for all of these
grit eatin’,
scum suckin’,
boot lickin’,
drop kickin’,
gut grindin’,
nail bitin’,
glue sniffin’,
scab pickin’,
butt scratchin’,
egg hatchin’,
sleezy,
smelly,
pepper bellied,
dirty, lousy, rotten, stinkin’, freaks.
Nothing but a pencil neck geek.
–
The “grandfather paradox” can get quite incestuous, if not Oedipal, if one considers the notion of Ouraboros.
Perhaps the Great Depression wasn’t created so much out of a lack of money in circulation, but rather by a crisis of confidence in the nature of the currency. When a currency has a crisis of confidence, printing money doesn’t actually bring it into circulation, but rather stores up inflation for some later time. For a currency to be effective, it must be a general medium of exchange, as opposed to being used as a means of control.
When a currency gets hoarded by a small group of people, it ceases to function as a medium of exchange and rather becomes a function of power exerted by the hoarders. If people gravitate toward a different currency in such a circumstance, the hoarders are left with a white elephant. So, if China seeks to unload dollars or subscribe to a Russian “global” currency, it will effectively lose the value of the dollars it holds. Although the Obama administration made a huge blunder when it asked China to buy more dollars (and thus advertised our weakness), any Chinese talk of a power play on our currency looks like bluster designed to frighten a paper tiger.
hey, maybe grampaw doug can help campaign! I can help too –just let me know –i do slogans & mottos. My own slogan & motto is “Always have a Slogan & Motto”.
Where, O Where, is the Daniel Hannan in these United States? Direct facts, calling a spade a spade, publicly…
@ 85. Walt
11 dims — yes.
Why 11? Because you can encapsulate with them everything. To explain would take a paper of a ream size, so I have to leave it at that.
The 11th is actually a control dim. You can call it God if you prefer. The odd dims are controlling too. For instance, you can call the 5th angels, the 7th archangels and the 9th thrones, if you prefer.
The universe is actually a multi-verse. There is no need for parallel universes or branes, it is all out there. You can imagine the discrete units which we call universe as phase-shifted instances. It is a very crude analogy, but would suffice, because how do you explain 720 degrees angles of the waveforms that form an instance? The angle is called “spin”. Spin is determined, but its phase-shift is governed by a bias, a pilot signal. I call the pilot signal “track”. The specific phase-shift I dubbed “charm”. Sometimes, nobody’s sure why, the track that governs an instance contracts or expands and two instances can temporarily merge or overlap. Fun ensues. How much fun depends how close they are in their charm. Quite close, not much fun, just some mild anomalies, else… can be very nasty fun. There may be ways how to deform a particular track locally. I call the mechanism “sigil”, because the tech needed to do that would look like pure magic to us. But it would be essentially a temporary control of the angel level. Temporary is again an analogy. The property we call time is on that level perpendicular to our time. You can conceptualize it as “now”. Past and future are now, too. The time property is an organizing property, a referential bias that functions as causality. There are higher level causalities, but they are hard to comprehend. They do not normally manifest in our world. Deformations of instances can cause causality anomaly. It wouldn’t be something like going back in time, but going outside time. Utter confusion. We are not built to grokk. Only in some altered states, we glimpse. Still utterly confused.
OK, enough, I am starting to confuse myself!
I’ll just relate how hard it was to make a living and support a family back in ’35.
Nothing more riveting than first-person accounts.
a bit O/T but important:
Today the US Givernment thru the Treasury & FED began to monitize the US debt by purchasing Treasury bonds. Normally this is done with money already in circulation and thus doesn’t require printing new money. But when the Fed buys a Treasury bond it creates the money to buy it…and thus the money supply increases. It’s called “monetizing the debt” – or converting debt into currency. Given the size of upcoming Treasury purchases, the total size of the U.S. monetary base is expected to increase 500% in the months ahead.
Let us begin with something that is true: that which must happen will happen.
When you increase the money supply, ceteris paribus, the price of money must go down.
So check that dollar in your pocket. Today as in many of the past days it is a wasting commodity, worth much less than it was yesterday.
The government is bankrupting each of us. Good luck.
Somebody on one of these belmont threads, about a month ago iirc, described ‘time’ from the pov that it did not actually exist. It was very charming, suffused with concrete images to replace the big nebulous gape in the mind’s eye. Wish i’d saved it dangit. Maybe the author will re cognize himself and do ‘er again. er…”Author, author!”
seems the chinese are buying euros and yens. somehow doing that sinks their currency relative to every other currency but the dollar. somehow their currency remains in line with the US dollar.
inflation is what the fed is trying to trigger. but so far they have not succeeded.
Today in that interview where Geithner mentioned that the IMF’s extant scrip known as ‘special drawing rights’ were China’s & Russia’s suggested modus of easing the Dollar out of world reserve currency role, he was also asked if it was wise to be attempting all theses financial reforms right in the middle of this banking crisi. He replied, agreeing with the premise that it was not a good time, but that we need to do the reforms now anyway, because “…as soon as the crisis is over no one will want to do them”.
I was eating a big piece of rye bread and that caught me in mid-swaller. If i hadn’t had so much butter all over it i’d a choked.
Rickles approaches Sinatra at the Brown Derby where he’s eating, he tells Sinatra the woman he’s dining with is a Freak for Frank, and asks him if he could come over and say hi to her.
Frank makes a big gesture of walking across the room and says,
“Hi, how are you tonite?”
Rickles looks up and says:
“Not now, Frank, I’m eating!”
—
Miller relating how Obambi gets treated by Iran.
Buddy, coulda been me, cuz I have that POV. I wish I saved it too.
When I talk “time”, I mean a bias that we interpret as causality. We have to, else we’d go insane. Although, one component of or psyche is disregarding time, it has no meaning to it. It was designated as Id, by that libido obsessed German dude.
BTW, there can be unbiased instances/tracks (in fact I’d bet on it), but they would remind of grey goo. Very inhospitable.
@ 109. buddy larsen
I can imagine. It is fascinating how sorta upfront they are about it, innit? And it’s like no one is listening. On nearly no one. That’s the bet. They can always say that they were quite audaciously upfront and that there was nary a peep.
Won’t do them any good in the long run. Houses of straw, pufff, puffff… are quickly gone.
A girl came skipping home from school one day. “Mommy, Mommy,”
she yelled, “we were counting today, and all the other kids could only
count to four, but I counted to 10. See? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9,
10!”
“Very good,” said her mother.
“Is it because I’m blonde?” the girl said.
“Yes, it’s because you’re blonde,” said the mommy.
The next day the girl came skipping home from school. “Mommy,
Mommy,” she yelled, “we were saying the alphabet today, and all the
other kids could only say it to D, but I said it to G. See? A, B, C, D, E, F, G!”
“Very good,” said her mother.
“Is it because I’m blonde, Mommy?”
“Yes, it’s because you’re blonde.”
The next day the girl came skipping home from school. “Mommy,
Mommy,” she yelled, “we were in gym class today, and when we showered,
all the other girls had flat chests, but I have these!” And she
lifted her tank top to reveal a fully developed chest.
“Very good,” said her embarrassed mother.
“Is it because I’m blonde, mommy?”
“No Honey, it’s because you’re 24.”
–inflation is what the fed is trying to trigger. but so far they have not succeeded.
Because the banks are hoarding. And that’s because they refuse to let the banks fail. So zombie banks need the hoarded capital to stay appropriately capitalized while they have the toxic waste on their books (and off balance sheets, too), and zombie banks have lost all information about who in the world would be a good credit risk to lend to, and everyone else is too afraid and is also hoarding. the velocity of money is still zero.
And because they won’t let the banks fail, the capital keeps going to the zombies rather than the good banks. So their own plan is failing failing failing. What bullets are left in their gun?
But when they actually do get that velocity up, the hyperinflation is going to destroy us all.
I feel guilty laughing that hard at times like these.
At least I know I got company with Chuckles as POTUS.
Axelrod must have read him the act after 60 Minutes,
sure did sober up.
Gotta get those Geithner Stress Tests finished, Allison.
Be patient!
Twobyfour,
The way I see time is as layers on a hypersphere (a four dimensional sphere with a three dimensional surface). One can visualize the universe as a hyper-onion (Ogres are not like onions). Each layer of the onion represents one quanta of time and is assembled asynchronously by chaos. The rules of assembly prohibit a new layer from forming until the current layer covers the entire hyper-onion. The radial outward assembly velocity of the hyper-onion (from the frame of an observer on the current layer) is the speed-of-light in a vacuum. The future comes from chaos by being formed upon the present while the past is buried by the present. The outer layer is created by chaos through a mechanism analogous to Conway’s Game of Life (see Wikipedia article) that assembles the outer layer as discrete cells.
114. Allison
“But when they actually do get that velocity up, the hyperinflation is going to destroy us all.”
Bingo!
Privation and war, the children of hyperinflation. Worldwide many people are going to die.
The answer…0bama chia head victory gardens.
Turns out not only Holbrooke but Chris Dodd’s wife is/was on the board of AIG. Mrs. Dodd also on board of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange –since 2001 (iirc from fast tv talk today).
CME, “the Merc”, obtaining around that time a special dispensation from the SEC (then passing under control of Bill Donaldson, partner in a then brand new London-based hedge fund with Credit Suisse) to trade the Credit Default Swaps which had been, in the year-before financial reforms, left deliberately unregulated by then Treasury deputy, now Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Gary Gensler. Donaldson is now in the new PERAB, the President’s Economic Recovery Advispory Board.
So AIG starts insuring this deadly financial instrument, the trade in which went parabolic in full view of the AIG Board, which happens to’ve been loaded with big Dems now in the O admin, became (via the CDS) the global too-big-to-fail which no one but no one could demand to let fail, because of the something or other that would be really bad and worse than the nation’s citizens losing their retirement accounts as unemployment swooped upward, as the national debt tripled, as the government took over the banking system, as the Dollar was set for certain hyperinflation as soon as the hyperdeflation is punched out?
Izzat it? So far?
Walt said:
“Carl Sagan was positing a single universe of bilions of civilizations, and the slim to none chance of another civilization arriving at the brief moment of technology capable of communicating across vast distances at the same time we did.”
I suspect Carl Sagan maybe one of the most overrated scientists in human history (he invented nuclear winter and set the stage for global warming) . However Sagan was pretty good at working the entertainment media and the MSM.
It is my own opinion that our galaxy has been traversed by at least one technological civilization (maybe by many). I believe that most F, G, K and maybe even M type stars in our galaxy have planets with biology. Most of these planets are “water worlds” and have only marine life. A small fraction have continents with more complex animals like ourselves (star systems with biology would tend to have gas giants and worlds with complex animals would tend to have very large moons). The small fraction of planets in our galaxy with complex animals would still number in the hundreds of millions. Many of these worlds with complex animals would eventually have a species that evolves into something capable of an advanced technology. If these beings are sufficiently clever they eventually develop an interstellar capability and encounter the more advanced civilizations that had already traversed the galaxy eons ago. That encounter exposes the younger civilization to a culture that is millions of years more advanced in all aspects. The younger civilization is then absorbed by the older one and its unique identity is lost forever. The loss of the younger civilizations unique identity makes it less interesting to the older civilization. Consequently, the older civilization does not go out of its way to reveal itself.
“Inflation is what the fed is trying to trigger, but so far has not succeeded – because the banks are hoarding money.”
Not only the banks. “Regular people” too, such as most of the people I know.
Lots of people want cash right now. People are selling stocks, withdrawing money from their mutual funds – and putting that money into cash or Treasury bonds or cds at the bank (insured by the FDIC).
I would argue that there are lots of better investments than buying Treasury bonds which give interest at a lower rate than inflation – thus guaranteeing that investors in Treasury bonds will lose money (after inflation); but most people disagree with me. They would rather have everything in cash. They are “getting out of the stock market” in hordes. I suggest this is mostly because of fear, and just following everyone else to the bottom. Because if everyone is pulling his money out, then I better do so too – this is the “analysis” that is being done.
Recently, though, investors have started returning to the stock market. Eventually, they will all return, afraid to “miss” the upswing.
Oh, and the head banking regulator, the New York Fed president who somehow even tho it was his main task to do so, did not know this situation was setting up, or else suerly he’d have taken steps to stop it –even might’ve gone so fart as the throw his weight behing the lonely GOP attempts to rein in an AIG and CME Board member’s hubby, then flying out of control like a bat in Fannie’s belfry.
So who was this head regulator, holder of the New York Fed’s portfolio?
Oh, that’s be Timothy Geithner, the guy who’s fixing, er, that’s a funny word suddenly, repairing ? ok, fixing, the thing that never was until it was the only thing that ever was.
unintentional typos, even THAT one.
Habu @ 106 -
That’s what I just can’t understand. Admittedly I’m just an average person with little economic acumen but how – HOW?!??!! – can the Fed just “create” money? I mean, what is the rationale for it? Since it represents no value, no production, just BAM suddenly it’s there. Nobody worked for it, nothing is produced, it’s simply conjured up out of thin air. Is there any way to explain this as sound fiscal action that a reasonable person could accept? I don’t think so.
Allison: “- inflation is what the fed is trying to trigger.” Is this why they pile crushing debt upon crushing debt so cavalierly?
Maybe I should go ahead with that little remodeling project after all. It would be nice to have a bathroom on the ground floor of this old house even amidst the Apocalypse.
Twobyfour @104
Indebted to you for the explanation. I notice the first person personal pronoun. It was you who coined the name charm? Feel humble just to have you talk to me. That was the clearest explanation of sub atomic properties I have ever read. Plus, I am sorry to learn the universe is really a multiverse, as alternate universes are very helpful to science fiction writers, who have to get a protagonist back to 1276 bc Hatti in order to watch the battle of Kadesh. Many thanks.
Eggplant @117
An interesting take on time. The onion layer reminds me of Olber’s paradox, and wonder how that comes into play, not so much as the accretion of light but as the accretion of volume in succeeding layers. I read James Gleich’s Chaos many years ago, and thought the theory now out of fashion, but I guess since everything is possible, nothing is really out of fashion,
Thank you both for enlightening a rank amateur, but one who likes to try to get it right when writing fiction.
karen, many folks facing an inflation go ahead and turn cash into useful things. just remember you can’t sell, barter, or eat that new bathroom.
TS Eliot: “And that’s how the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper.”
Timothy Geithner: “And that’s how the world ends, not with a whim, but a banker.”
Can’t eat a new bathroom, well, I must say that’s a good point Buddy. OTOH, I’ve been stockpiling food for 8 months now and am running out of storage room hee heee…
Eggplant @120
Agree completely with assessment of Sagan. Not sure we were ever visited, but some of the evidence that we were is interesting, if not compelling. Von Daniken makes a good case, especially with the Nazca lines, but Velikovsky made a good case for Mars passing within a whisker of Earth, too, to explain how the Red Sea parted to let the Israelites escape Egypt. I dunno. I would like to believe it, but if you can direct me to something a little more persuasive than Danekin I will give it a read.
@ 117. Eggplant
The way I see time is as layers on a hypersphere (a four dimensional sphere with a three dimensional surface). One can visualize the universe as a hyper-onion
It is your time and you can do whatever you want with it. As they say, it is not important what time or how much time you have, but what you do with the time you have.
procrastination is living as if immortal
“Time Flies Like an Arrow, Fruit Flies Like a Banana”
This should be very disturbing to everyone, even if you think the cases are non-sense.
‘Homeland Security’, Sheriff’s Department, Local Cops Shadow Eligibility Lawyer
Let us ask Ash, who used to complain about the civil rights being violated all across the nation by the Bush Administration, just what he thinks of this.
I think we got a budding totalitarian movement going in the country, the beginnings of one.
@ 125. Walt:
I notice the first person personal pronoun. It was you who coined the name charm?
Actually, there are two animals called charm. One is my moniker that I invented when I was 10 and pondered about the nature of universe. I was inspired by one Jane Roberts in choosing the moniker for the property I described. It was her book about Oversoul Seven, at the end where she describes how thing manifest. She was using it as a verb, to explain intent.
At approximately the same time, Sheldon Lee Glashow and James Bjorken, used the same moniker to describe a certain property of a quark. I actually learned about that some four years later.
There are two possibilities. Either we all did read Jane Roberts book before or when we pondered about the universe and its makeup, or there is some mechanism that allows resonance in diverse places–a non-linear transfer of concepts.
That was the clearest explanation of sub atomic properties I have ever read.
If you look at particle physics, you’d find it quite a menagerie of particles, a list that is growing almost by leaps every few years. The problem is that what is considered as discrete particles are in fact states that can be ultimately described by handful of properties. You can devise a math that would account for the observed traces, and it would work pretty well to encapsulate it all, but so were epicycles. What would be an apt analogy… Say you have a ball, a carton of milk and a high speed camera. You start pouring milk into the ball and take pictures. You’d see a whole forest of shapes, spires and bubbles, that form on impact. What does that mean? When all said and done, you still have milk. It was just making interesting forms when changing its state.
There really are no subatomic particles. A perception of a particle is really a collapse of wave function and for a fleeting moment only. We can look for all sorts of particles and we’ll find them. It’s just… that is how we can make a sense of the world on that level. In reality, we are chasing ghosts. It needs to be remembered that this branch of physics, as every other science is just a model of reality, not the reality itself.
Even on the atomic level, we are not entirely clear what we are dealing with. The models we have are workable, in the sense that they do give us a good approximation or descriptive of what is happening and have predictive component that enables us to do all sorts of tricks. We are just very good at epicycles, that is all.
Plus, I am sorry to learn the universe is really a multiverse, as alternate universes are very helpful to science fiction writers, who have to get a protagonist back to 1276 bc Hatti in order to watch the battle of Kadesh.
You can still do it with the multiverse. In fact it may be even easier to view the real thing instead of something approximate in its own parallel universe.
twobyfour @133
We are just very good at epicycles, that is all.
An interesting descriptive choice. Epicycles described the universe as it appeared to Aristotle, and quantum physics describes the universe as it appears to us, but ultimately all is epicycles. Kind of like the little girl who insisted the world rested on the back of a turtle, and when asked what held up the turtle, she said it was turtles all the way down. Epicycles, quantum physics or turtles, it’s all the same, for no one really knows the reality of the universe. On the other hand, late at night, in the stillness of the dark, I often hear the music of the spheres.
What did you say about procrastination, Buddy?
I can’t hear you.
la la la, tra la la, tra la la,
I still can’t hear you.
(choose “oldest first,” I got the first comment in on the thread)
@ 128. Walt:
Not sure we were ever visited, but some of the evidence that we were is interesting, if not compelling. Von Daniken makes a good case, especially with the Nazca lines,
Zecharia Sitchin is probably more compelling than Erich Von Daniken. But problem with both is that they try to fit the data to their paradigm. In many instances, it actually can be used as a counterargument, to trash whatever they posit.
EVD got somewhat better since 90′s, he’s more into asking questions than giving answers.
Sitchin got a good start with his Earth Chronicles but of late went on a tangent and got into a flight of fancy.
However, if one reads Kramer’s translations of Sumerian literature, not Sitchin’s reinterpretations, there is still quite a bit of material that is hard to explain. Indian epics, too, have components that are not easily explained as reflection of Venus in swamp gas.
but Velikovsky made a good case for Mars passing within a whisker of Earth, too, to explain how the Red Sea parted to let the Israelites escape Egypt.
Venus, circa 1500 BCE. Mars and Venus about 750 BCE. In both these periods, a major shit happened, that is certain. The first one was at the root of religions that indulged in human sacrifice. That trivia may give some bearings how major it was when that was the result. Moses notwithstanding, despite the fact that the whole exodus resulted in substantial loss of live (one survivor for each 50 Israelites), he endowed a religion of life, not of death as was so common at the time.
I would like to believe it,
Why? I’d rather if you consider the evidence than be persuaded.
Maybe in few years I’ll finish what In started a decade ago, and give you the the opportunity to take a shot at it.
Sorry, they deleted, it.
Guess it wasn’t helpful:
My answer was “Procrastinate”
The question:
readers’ comments
An Orderly Office? That’s PersonalBack to Article »
Just as a given diet will not work for all people, differences in work styles often call for customized approaches to organizing the home office.
What are your tips for organizing a home office?
.
Would that they/we were all as resourceful in extremis:
—
Northwest of New Jack City sits a somewhat less grim encampment. It is sometimes called Taco Flats or Little Tijuana because of the large number of Latino residents, many of whom were drawn to Fresno on the promise of agricultural jobs, which have dried up in the face of the poor economy and a three-year drought.
Guillermo Flores, 32, said he had looked for work in the fields and in fast food, but had found nothing. For the last eight months, he has collected cans, recycling them for $5 to $10 a day, and lived in a hand-built, three-room shack, a home that he takes pride in, with a door, clean sheets on his bed and a bowl full of fresh apples in his propane-powered kitchen area.
“I just built it because I need it,” said Mr. Flores, as he cooked a dinner of chili peppers, eggs and onions over a fire. “The only problem I have is the spiders.”
Advice to Timmy re: The Siren Song of his beloved banks.
Ugh, should have previewed that post.
“let me reach blindfolded into my toy box….”
some sub atomic particles can be found with a Ronco, ‘Lil’Atom-Smasher’. Amaz e your friends….
zome day sum one is going to pull a cosmic rabbit out of that hat… or maybe a giant space goat.
I’m also in favor of spending 5 billion for high speed networks for the country and towns of the USA.
Currently culture flows heavily from cities to towns and country. But much of the real strength of the USA resides in the small towns and country of the USA. So high speed access might even up the flow of gulture culture.
Besides the more places I can work outside of the city–the better I like it.
The washington times this morning is calling geitner’s comment a gaffe but Lordy it appears he meant it. That’s really bad news.
George Soros says the Eurpeans need to reflate their economies especially for the sake of the outer fringe countries. He thinks the US is doing the right thing.
If George is for it–does that mean we’re agin it?
I think that Bernake is sharp enough to change monetary policy at the first sign of inflation. But so far there is no inflation to speak of.
Does anyone have a good link to currency graphs. How are the major currencies doing against each other?
ok I listened to Hannan on Drudge. If geitner/obama has his way they’ll take the US the same way as the brits.
How do you set up a fax campaign to bombard the Congress with notices not to follow geitner on nationalization. NumbersUSA has mastered the technology.
A post by Pat
You think things are bad where you are? Look what’s happening in Michigan. This state was once a great manufacturing center. The car capital of the world. And now? The Michigan economy has gotten so bad machinery is turning to prostitution to make a living.
Man gets 90 days in jail in vacuum sex act case
A man who police said was arrested for performing a sex act with a car wash vacuum was sentenced to 90 days in jail on Wednesday and ordered to submit to drug testing. The 29-year-old man pleaded no contest to indecent exposure last month.
Police said the man was arrested after a resident called officers early on Oct. 16 to report suspicious activity at a car wash in Thomas Township, about 90 miles northwest of Detroit.
What next?
Robots lurking around Fast Eddie’s Quickie Oil Change?
- Tammy Bruce
…where is Google Street View when we need it?
House Republicans have begun unveiling detailed alternatives to President Barack Obama’s policies — a concerted effort to push back against Democratic efforts to label them “the Party of No.”
Something to consider, least we go to far afield…
http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/196965.php
As bad as things are, it could get much, MUCH worse. Discussion is good, centering your thoughts is equally good.
I’ll tease you with this quote:
“Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another–their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.
Read it, and pass it along.
Here is a twist on the usual blond Joke:
An attractive blonde from the Ukraine arrived at the casino and bet twenty-thousand dollars on a single roll of the dice.
She said, ‘I hope you don’t mind, but I feel much luckier when I’m completely nude’.
With that, she stripped from the neck down ……….. rolled the dice and yelled, ‘Come on, baby, Mama needs new clothes!’
As the dice came to a stop, she jumped up and down and squealed… ‘YES, YES, I WON, I WON!’
She hugged each of the dealers and then picked up her winnings and her clothes and quickly departed. The dealers stared at each other dumbfounded.
Finally, one of them asked, ‘What did she roll?’
The other answered, ‘I don’t know – I thought you were watching.’
MORAL OF THE STORY
Not all Ukrainians are stupid.
Not all blondes are dumb,
But all men are men.
Let us begin with something that is true: that which must happen will happen.
When you increase the money supply, ceteris paribus, the price of money must go down.
If the great hyperinflation to come is entirely planned — because even a teenager like Obama must know it will happen — then why? Because it gives them the ultimate power over all wealth. Let the hyperinflation come, let a loaf of bread cost a million dollars. Then simply declare dollars are no long the currency of the United States, and starting tomorrow only new Barrack-Bucks are valid currency. Please bring your dollars to your local Bank of the US Government (the only bank in town) and exchange them at one-per-million. Oh and there’s a maximum limit of 10,000 new B-Bucks for everyone no matter how many dollars you bring with you (except certain persons deemed critical by the Party who can have all the B-Bucks they need because, well because they’re so critical).
And there you have it, all wealth effectively confiscated and put into the hands of the Nomenklatura. Ration coupons will be distributed starting at 3 p.m. Please get in line.
It’s continues to amaze me how it’s impossible to be TOO paranoid with this administration. Every time I ratchet up my worry, they justify it and then some.
The attempt to inflate our way out of the problems has been going on for a long time and really gained a head of steam with TARP 1 under Bush. Why you ask? I think it is based on the standard analysis of the policy mistakes done during the great depression coupled with the extreme nature of the current problem. It appears that the problems run so deep that if these major companies (AIG, Citi Group, Bank of America, ect.) aren’t bailed out they will all fail in a cascade of dominoes. So, it seems, the results of letting them fail would be disastrous so they seem to be doing a hail Mary pass ignoring all the past pontifications of the US economy being a dynamic open market where creative destruction is viewed as a good thing and passing out the cash to all and sundry (well not the little guys, just the big ones). Panic…desperation…damn the torpedoes. No more borrowing on the backs of future generations because that policy option has already been done and the chickens have come home to roost. The future is now.
since this is turned into a bit of an open thread, allow me to go off topic. so it looks like the Chinese don’t mind firing their own shot in a trade war. perhaps the first reaction to our Administration’s “Buy American” proposal. This guy is going to realize at some point that words matter.
SHANGHAI, March 26 (Reuters) – The tax rebate on some Chinese aluminium products is likely to rise to 13 percent after the government announced an increase to protect domestic industry, the official Shanghai Securities News reported on Thursday. The tax rebate on exports of high-grade aluminium foil, profile, sheets and plates is expected to rise to 13 percent from 5 percent, while some aluminium products that currently have zero tax rebate on export are likely to enjoy a 13 percent tax rebate
from April 1, the paper cited an unnamed source as saying. It was also possible that tax rebates on high-precision copper tube, plate and sheet will be raised, and on aluminium alloy products rise to 5 percent, according to the source. The State Council, China’s cabinet, announced on Wednesday that China will raise tax rebates on exports of some textiles, iron and steel, non-ferrous metals, petrochemicals, electronic information and light industrial goods, but did not give details. China just increased the export tax rebate for textile and garment makers to 15 percent from 14 percent in February. A source familiar with the situation said that Beijing is likely to further raise the tax rebate to 17 percent. The tax rebate on 16 petrochemical products, including synthetic resin and synthetic rubber, is likely to rise to 11 percent, from currently 5 percent, as proposed by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the paper said.
The China Iron & Steel Association has proposed raising the tax rebate on exports of hot-rolled coil, galvanised and alloy steel to 17 percent from 5 percent, a source with the association told the paper. CISA also suggested tax rebate on exports of hot-rolled coil, which suffers from serious overcapacity, should rise to 17 percent from zero, according to the source, who added that the actual tax rebate hike may be lower than CISA’s proposal.
And here’s something light-hearted to make up for my previous link…
http://thepeoplescube.com/red/viewtopic.php?t=3154
I wouldn’t want y’all thinking I’m a total wet blanket. The quiz at the bottom of the article is also good for a chuckle.
doug re yr query for home orffice organismation, do it by aphorism, or phonetic-wise, “afore-ism”. IOW, afore every decision, even which of two paperclips to grab out of the paper clip thing, try to get a feel for which one will have its feelinigs hurt the least if you should choose the other. And that’s not just for paperclips but for all things. Experts call this “the Wholeistic Approach” in reference to the ‘whole world’ clearly.
Specifically, “it’s the filing system, stupid”. Allow me to add emphasis: It’s the Filing System, you Stupid Bastard.
Most small business founder’s filing systems flounder systemically for failure to “Fling The I Out Filing” (careful with this afore-ism, as should you use ‘file’ rather than ‘filing’ and then fling out the I, you get the not-very-helpful ‘fle’ which can even make you more of a flounder (do NOT picture the fish, remember you are already “too” busy ass is) in trying to recall if it is a mnemonic device say, or some symbol, or what it really is, just a jabberwocky spark from your short circuiting nervous system). But onward.
Taking the “I” out of filing leaves with ‘fling’ and poses the only relephant question: “Why –spacifically why, can’t I just fling this (IOW, throw this away)?”
Well, hope that helped heal. it’s all part of the hoop, the magic serkle.
You are confusing me with all this talk of onion skins of time and subatomic particles. Please stick to something easily understood like CDOs.
yup, it’s starting to dawn.
Wretchard, may I politely ask why my comment was moderated?
Death of the Obama dream
127. Karen Yvonne:
Your stockpiling is the proper thing to do since on of the first depletions in a societal breakdown will be foodstuff at the grocery. There will be no resupplying those stores either. The trucks will be hijacked by criminals
HOWEVER do not tell people you are doing this. A desperate neighbor can turn into a maurauding theif in bad times…and for heavens sakes get a gun, learn to use it, and buy lots of ammo cause you’re going to need it.
121. onetailtest:
“Inflation is what the fed is trying to trigger, but so far has not succeeded – because the banks are hoarding money.”
I agree totally but once the toothpaste is out of the tube it get’s might hard to put it back in the tube.
131. buddy larsen:
“Time Flies Like an Arrow, Fruit Flies Like a Banana”
Fruit flies like bananas because they have a peel.
147. CPT. Charles:
So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another–their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.
“Power grows out of the barrel of a gun”
Chairman Mao
Granfather paradox..ok let’s go back in time.
9/10 …the DAY BEFORE ..no what lesson have attaached themselves to our survival mode..preemption works. But then there’s this.
Gen. Richard Myers: U.S. Enemies Seek WMDs to End ‘Our Way of Life’
Wednesday, March 25, 2009 5:51 PM
Former top military commander Gen. Richard Myers tells Newsmax that America’s enemies in the war on terror are “ruthless” and “relentless” and will not hesitate to use nuclear or biological weapons if they obtain them.
“They want to do away with our way of life,” Myers tells Newsmax TV’s Ashley Martella. “They could bring great harm to this country and our friends and allies.”
Myers, who served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from October 2001 until September 2005, tells Newsmax that the U.S. focused too narrowly on tactical battles and failed to develop a long-rang strategy to battle terrorism.
“After 9/11 we had some things we had to do right away,” said Myers, author of the new book, “Eyes on the Horizon: Serving on the Front Lines of National Security.”
“Afghanistan was one of them. Then we went into Iraq. But the development of a strategy to deal with the whole issue of violent extremism — we didn’t take the time to do that because we were so busy with the day to day.
Myers said the further America gets from the events of 9/11, the more complacent it gets, and the more danger the country is in.
“I’m not an alarmist but I did spend four years right after 9/11 looking at all this intelligence from violent extremists,” he says. “ They could [attack America] through biological weapons. God forbid if they get their hands on nuclear materials, they could do it that way as well. And they’re ruthless so we know they’d use them.”
Martella asked Myers about a new official British government report warning that the threat of a terrorist attack using a weapon of mass destruction, such as a nuclear or biological weapon, on a major city is higher than ever.
“I don’t see the intelligence on a daily basis anymore, but I do think the threat is very high,” Myers responded.
“It wasn’t that long ago, just a little more than a year ago, when that plot to bring airliners down over the North Atlantic [was thwarted]. I think there were 10 or 20 airliners involved in that plot. If that hadn’t been thwarted we’d be talking about 2,000 dead potentially from that.
“So like I said, they’re relentless, they’re ruthless. If they can get their hands on dangerous material, nuclear material, biological weapons, they wouldn’t hesitate to use them. They want to bring down the United States in particular and the West in general.”
An the Iranian threat, Myers declared: “Any country that sponsors terrorism, which Iran does, that doesn’t believe in the existence of the state of Israel, that is aggressively pursuing nuclear weapons — this is not a good thing.”
Asked if it would be a mistake for the Barack Obama administration to abandon plans for a U.S. missile defense system in Eastern Europe.
“One thing is for certain: The only country in the world that can build an effective missile defense system is the United States of America,” said Myers, a former fighter pilot who also served as Commander in Chief of the North American Aerospace Defense Command.
“Implicit in that is the obligation to at least offer our allies and our friends our ability to protect them from the rogue nations that can develop missiles now and could possibly threaten them.”
First strike…preempt Iranian nuclear weapons.
Know what lessons..duh
Grandfather paradox ..heck on this one I want to use:
Peabody and Sherman Wayback Machine where they traveled back in time on.. The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle •
First we” go back to Hitler’s SS being established. Now uplink to today:
Obama style community organizer immortalized in HR 1388
Everybody becomes a community organizer in Barack Obama’s America. Everybody meaning the roughly 7 million people called to public duty in the $6 billion National Service effort.
Read the remainder; http://tinyurl.com/d9n9t3
Non Testatum, but what if?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090324/ts_alt_afp/usscienceenergynuclear
Today’s Iraq. Bless W!
http://tinyurl.com/cnkn35
The New York Times circles the drain
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090326/ap_on_bi_ge/the_new_york_times_layoffs_3
165. twobyfour
Cold fusion. That would be wonderful and give each Miss America’s dream of “whirrled peas” a new meaning.
Now that the FED/Treasury is monetizing the debt don’t forget this weekend to set your 401K and all other investments back another 50%. MET…..Money Evaporation Time.
Easy on the caffiene Habu.
Walt said:
“An interesting take on time. The onion layer reminds me of Olber’s paradox, and wonder how that comes into play, not so much as the accretion of light but as the accretion of volume in succeeding layers. I read James Gleich’s Chaos many years ago, and thought the theory now out of fashion, but I guess since everything is possible, nothing is really out of fashion”
I think(?) the hyper-onion avoids Olber’s Paradox because the onion’s three-dimensional surface is constantly growing. IMHO, any valid theory describing the root basis of time and space must be very simple (can be modeled with Boolean arithmetic) and chaos driven. I reject string theory (without understanding it) because it is too complicated. I hold the admittedly arrogant (stupid?) belief that if a theory is so complicated that I can not understand it then the theory is probably wrong.
“Thank you both for enlightening a rank amateur, but one who likes to try to get it right when writing fiction.”
I’m also a rank amateur and very ignorant. If I was a more serious/responsible person I’d spend more time earning money for my family and less time wool gathering and posting stuff on the Internet.
Walt also said:
“Not sure we were ever visited, but some of the evidence that we were is interesting, … but Velikovsky made a good case for Mars passing within a whisker of Earth”
I’m very skeptical about Velikovsky (his theories contradict what we know about orbital mechanics). IMHO, the place to look for alien artifacts is the Saturn system. The rings of Saturn are mostly water ice and would contain large quantities of deuterium. A starship entering the Solar System would need to do a full refit and refuel before it could proceed to its next destination (think about Sir Francis Drake and the Golden Hind on the coast of California). The Saturn system is the logical place to do that. The process of refitting a starship would leave behind artifacts, i.e. old transfer stages, mining hardware, broken von Neumann machines, etc. I’ve been watching the results of the Cassini mission closely in the hope that something might come up. The equatorial ridge of Iapetus (one of Saturn’s moons) raises a flag but is probably too big to be an artifact. Also the asteroid “216 Kleopatra” raises a flag as a possible transfer stage but is also too big (google it).
LOTM…
You must have caught the Washington Posts woes: they’re bleeding heavy and are chopping flesh, too.
It’s just tragic.
I see that most people here are warning about the dangers of inflation. But what about deflation, specifically debt deflation? Since America ultimately has a 45 trillion dollar liability in the form of entitlements deflation will kill us. I think that re-inflating our economy now (short term) and then defaulting on the promises made to the boomers is the best course of action for us.
@ 164. Habu
Sometimes I see patterns where there aren’t. Or aren’t they?
Like the bill HR 1388. 13 is an unlucky number (sometimes representing death) and 88 stands for SS. Sturmabteilung, to be specific. Not the brown shirts, but the black shirts and tottenkopf.
Maybe some higher power intervened, to give a sign, a warning.
Deflation,reflation,inflation …..I hate to be so terribly atavistic as to propose we allow the “invisible hand” of Adam Smith to take part in any of this. Heaven forfend, for it would mean that each individual would have an influence on the economy.
I get queazy when “the best and the brightest” attempt to fill the syringe with just the proper amount of antidote.
Perhaps the numbers have gotten so mind numbingly astronomical that rational comprehension of what’s being done is triggering a suspension of belief that the “cures” being attempted are worse than the disease ever was.
blert said:
“You must have caught the Washington Posts woes: they’re bleeding heavy and are chopping flesh, too. It’s just tragic.”
CNN is also losing market share.
Looks like the MSM got a cork jammed up its hind end and is about to explode into a cloud of excrement. Most tragic…..
174. twobyfour:
@ 164. Habu
Absolutely great observation. Whether it be coincidence, a sign, or whatever that fact is, as you are keenly aware that he is going full bore to develope a corps dedicated to himself and being funded by billions of dollars aiming for what 7 million acolytes?
It’s would be too much to believe it’s all just benign goodwill.
I figure the “invisible hand” will guide us (whack us, whatever) despite all the fine proscriptions of mere mortals. ‘oh lordy, just one more boom, PLEASE, so’s I can get out whole again’
@ 171 Eggplant
I’m very skeptical about Velikovsky (his theories contradict what we know about orbital mechanics).
And yet, some of our spacecraft deviate substantially from their calculated path, and scientists are puzzled. Yet we know what is it to know about orbital mechanics.
Not too long ago, the orbital mechanics failed to explain why the galaxies do not fly apart. A darkwing duck, err… pardon me, dark matter had to be introduced as a compensation factor so the galaxies can spiral their course intact.
The sliver of what we know is nothing compared to what we don’t know and it is a shapeshifting sliver anyway, subject to change without notice.
173. Captain Ramen:
” I think that re-inflating our economy now (short term) and then defaulting on the promises made to the boomers is the best course of action for us.”
Defaulting on the promises made to the boomers…you must be attempting to chart the shortest distance between peace and civil war. Not a sane idea in the least.
Captain Ramen @ 173…
Study up on Keen:
http://tinyurl.com/chexbw
It’s a bit long but Keen demonstrates that Timmy and Ben haven’t got a hope in hell of inflating this bubble painlessly away.
The price of significant assets is decided by the credit circulating in the economy. That can only happen when asset values are within microeconomic norms.
The collapse can only stop when the mis-pricing of real estate ( specifically land ) is corrected.
Both the owner and the lender take hits upon a price decline, with the owner standing in front.
The system has reached an unstable state because it is impossible for anyone, I mean ANYONE, to figure out where the values are.
That’s why Timmy’s scheme is engineered to fail. Only a handful of major financial firms at the center of Wall Street have an information advantage. So we’re looking at crony capitalism and mega-corruption shoved right in our face!
Any notion that Ben and Timmy have any idea of what to do is impeached by their every utterance.
“The China Iron & Steel Association has proposed raising the tax rebate on exports of hot-rolled coil,”
Holy cow. Now the masters of the universe of finance here in the US are breaking gound for a controlled economy and the Chinese are giving tax rebates.
Maybe selling out to the Chinese isn’t that bad after all.
32 Alexis:
I’ll see your reductio ad absurbum and reverse it: what would happen if taxes were 100%–do you think the government would get more revenues next year? Maybe. But how about ten years after that?
The whole point of lower taxes is that they generally *increase* revenues to the government by encouraging economic activity and discouraging shelters. It happened when Kennedy reduced taxes, when Reagan reduced taxes, when Clinton reduced taxes, and when W. reduced taxes.
How about this: we’ve raised taxes and raised spending, and we’ve lowered taxes and raised spending. Why not lower taxes and spending at the same time? Think it would be worse than what we’re doing now?
twobyfour said:
“And yet, some of our spacecraft deviate substantially from their calculated path, and scientists are puzzled. Yet we know what is it to know about orbital mechanics.”
I assume you’re talking about the “Pioneer Anomaly”. It’s a very small deviation but extremely interesting. My own suspicion is the Pioneer Anomaly is the gravitational analog to magnetism.
Orbital mechanics is the oldest of the analytic sciences but there is still lots that we don’t understand, e.g. is the Solar System stable?
All right Habu;
“Everybody becomes a community organizer in Barack Obama’s America. Everybody meaning the roughly 7 million people called to public duty in the $6 billion National Service effort.”
“Defaulting on the promises made to the boomers…you must be attempting to chart the shortest distance between peace and civil war. Not a sane idea in the least.”
Rugged individualists will never flock. 7 million armed fanatical backers of the One will run roughshod over every corner of the land, lest the military cracks; and that is not in their genetic make up. Maybe the only hold outs will be those so far into the sticks that they are not worth ferreting out.
Boomers will never retire.
twoby/174; i typed search ”what happened in 1388?” (on the strength of your delightfully wigged-out speculation) and this was near top –there’s two amendments –wonder who wrote the bill, and the two amendments?
@ 184. Eggplant
An order of 100k km (386000, to be more precise) a small deviation? I guess it is a matter of opinion.
Magnetism? Just hanging out there like that?
Re: Solar system stable. Bare the instances of instability, it has been stable. For the most part, as Solar system goes. It was also the case with the Heliacal system before it became unstable.
What do you mean by they are the same? Ancient Greeks would passionately disagree. Helios was not a name for Sol, Helios was a name for Saturn!
everybody knows 13, but didja know it’s origin is in the so-called Masonic Conspiracy? the Knights Templar (original masons) ended up in defensible Switzerland (look at the flag) where they continued as (cough) secret bankers. And twoby is right, 88 is a nazi symbol. look it up. 1388 IS a creepy number, alright. What a symbol.
Once you create National Service Reserve Corps you can pass any laws to protect your babies. An army by the children for the children and their lord savior, the one.
Buddy @ 188
Not only that. You know that the Iranian New Year, Nowruz, happened just a few days ago, right? Do you want to know what year it is now according to their calendar? Take a guess, I give you one choice.
Interesting little breakdown on how multiple references to “camps” was systematically cleansed from 1388 and replaced with “campus” and other less, ummm, resonant words.
http://www.e3gazette.com/2009/03/hr-1388-is-arbeit-macht-frei-too-strong.html
It’s funny. Funny in a kind of end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it way.
It doesn’t take much imagination to understand the destructiveness of inflation (a form of looting wealth) but I’ve never seen a convincing explanation for the claim that deflation is so horrible. Is there one?
buddy larsen,
Doesn’t strike me as a big deal. Just Ron Paul supporters mouth breathing over standard stuff.
1) The Red Cross trains people as a reserve force, other organizations also, in an disaster, say a “man made disaster” shhh that means a terrorist attack, civilian support volunteers will be mobilized.
2) Government funds can not be used to lobby the government, organize for a union or advertise for a private management. Never should, seems normal to insert a clause to that effect.
Ever since 8-11 I have felt that it was foolish to close military bases and National Guard armories.
1) We will need them to respond to another attack.
2) We could use them to conduct Civil Defense training.
3) We should use them to triple the size of the military.
Obama is not supportive of the last.
@ 76. viktor silo:
Unfortunately Aristotle and quantum mechanics don’t agree. At the quantum level something can “be” and “not be” at the same time.
While I tend to agree that we probably can’t interact with alternate universes, I think the reason why is due to an even more fundamental law that we have yet to understand. All in all it may prove to be entirely academic. If we cannot interact with alternate universes at all we will never be able to prove or disprove their existence. Last time I checked theories that cannot be proven or disproven are not scientific theories at all.
twobyfour said:
“An order of 100k km (386000, to be more precise) a small deviation? I guess it is a matter of opinion.”
We maybe talking about different things. The Pioneer Anomaly represents an error of about 400 km.
“Magnetism? Just hanging out there like that?”
It’s believed the “Pioneer Anomaly” and the “Flyby Anomaly” are due to the same physical phenomena. The basic phenomena is the spacecraft’s trajectory is modified by two different gravitational fields as the vehicle flies along a hyperbolic trajectory. In the case of the Flyby Anomaly the two gravitational fields are the Sun’s (which can be thought of as fixed in inertial space) and the Earth’s (which is moving with respect to the Sun). If you move a charged particle then it produces a magnetic field. The magnetic analog to gravity would be the Earth’s gravitational field moving with respect to the Sun’s.
The trajectory variations seen with the Pioneer Anomaly are so small that people can provide arm waving explanations, e.g. one side of the spacecraft was warmer than the other due to the radioactive thermal generators (RTGs) thus causing a photon pressure imbalance. However there really are no simple arm waving explanations for the Flyby Anomaly.
twobyfour said:
“Re: Solar system stable. Bare the instances of instability, it has been stable.”
“Stability” in this context means the actual planetary trajectories are more or less conic section trajectories and the system isn’t chaotic. It so happens that 3-body and N-body systems can be chaotic. No one has proven that the planetary trajectories of the Solar System are not chaotic. Of course it’s a pretty safe bet that the Solar System must be fairly stable or we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
And it can’t really be totally stable since we keep having meteorites, and the really big ones make for great movies.
@ 196. Eggplant
The Pioneer Anomaly represents an error of about 400 km.
Wikipedia? Well they have it wrong! (Did not they teach you at school that you can’t use wikipedia as a reference?
)
The annual deviation for both 10 and 11 was about 5000 miles. The figure represents not only a trajectory deviation, but also a time deviation (staying behind the expected position). The figure that I gave is a cumulative figure.
It is not an insignificant number. The gravitational components are known and are calculated precisely and are factored in. So, that is not what is the cause of error.
Some possible explanations that have been proposed cover only a fragment of the total deviation.
Re stability. Yes, at present. But there are no guarantees that at some point the solar system may not become temporarily chaotic, it is governed by processes that are galactic in origin. In say temporarily because there is tendency to reestablish the stable state, albeit it may differ from the previous stable state. I don’t have time to elaborate, maybe on some other occasion.
Is the mass of the asteroid belt really that well known?
Perhaps there is some error in the mass calculations for the giant planets which due to inverse square nature of gravity have more effect than expected.
The gravity plane at such a far remove requires but a slight change in momentum to exhibit a hefty change in position.
I earlier said:
“The Pioneer Anomaly represents an error of about 400 km.”
Twobyfour replied:
“Wikipedia? Well they have it wrong!”
—> I stand corrected! <—
Stupid of me to quote from Wikipedia!!
I looked up the “Physics Review” paper titled:
“Study of the anomalous acceleration of Pioneer 10 and 11″ by Anderson, Laiag, et al.
The acceleration due to the Pioneer Anomaly is 8.74e-13 km/sec^2. Doing the calculation myself, this represents an annual distance variation of 435 km. Pioneer 10 was launched on 2 March 1972 or almost 37 years ago. Assuming the Pioneer Anomaly was constant from the time of launch, the current total distance variation would be 5.96e5 km. Twobyfour’s value of 3.86e5 km must have come from a publication made years ago or used different assumptions.
Lesson relearned:
Only use Wikipedia to get started but NEVER trust it.
blert said:
“And it can’t really be totally stable since we keep having meteorites, and the really big ones make for great movies.”
Many meteor swarms are typically debris from broken up and gassed out comets. Comets originate from the Kuiper Belt and Oort cloud. It’s my understanding that the Kuiper Belt and Oort cloud are relics from the Solar System’s formation, i.e. matter blown off by the Sun after it achieved nuclear ignition. Many “long period comets” have an eccentricity only slightly geater than 1.0 and only pass through the Solar System once. An object traveling with an eccentricity of one is following a parabolic orbit. If you pick up an object and let it fall straight down, it is following a very short parabolic orbit. Comets were initially just sitting stationary in the Oort cloud and then something (a passing star?) perturbed the comet so it started slowly drifting towards the Sun. An interesting gee-wiz discovery from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft was that many comets fall straight into the Sun, i.e. they finally return to their point of origin after hanging out in the Oort cloud for almost four billion years.
And if you’re really lucky the impact will be a huge and glancing blow from an nickel-iron body which triggers a hyper solar flare able to flip the Earth’s poles.
Of course, such an event is both rare and way harsh. It would really disturb earth’s mellow. Can you say reset?
Paradox? Oh yes I heard a story about them, I think it started like this.
One day the Urologist Dr Feldstein and the Proctologist Dr Goldfarb were passing Clancy’s Bar ….
The bartender peers at the crowd that has just come in. At one end of the bar stood a traveling salesman and a farmer’s daughter. Next to them, a lawyer and a doctor. Next to those two, a priest, a rabbi, and a preacher. Then came a blonde and a mechanic. Last, at the other end of the bar, two cannibals and a missionary.
The bartender frowns, exclaims “Okay, what is this –some kind of joke?”
Just then the Democratic Senator came in with his Madame and his Finance chair, but I repeat myself, and spotted a reporter at the other end of the bar.
The joint emptied on the spot.
after being spotted by the senator, the reporter reportedly sprinted to the nearby hospital ER, where a full set of tests revealed that with bed rest and plenty of fluids the spots in time would heal.
At the hospital the unfortunate reporter was spotted by the two Docs who got into a heated argument over who would get to justify their budget by including the spotty reporter in their data sets. The union orderlies solved the problem by dumping all samples into a common bucket and an administrator discovered that they could save vast sums by simply never changing the needle between blood tests.
Justin #195
“Unfortunately Aristotle and quantum mechanics don’t agree. At the quantum level something can “be” and “not be” at the same time.”
Your understanding of quantum mechanics is different from mine. Let me rewrite your second sentence: “At the quantum level something can exist and not exist at the same time.”
Without intending to give offence, Justin, I tell you that your statement is nonsense. It stands logic on its head.
It is impossible to go into much detail in a forum like this but I will try to point you in the right direction.
Just because things are in a continual state of transition doesn’t mean that they don’t have a set of defining characteristics at any point in time. One may be uncertain of what these characteristics are, indeed, it may not even be possible to know what these characteristics are but you may be sure that they exist.
If you have any respect for logic, Justin, you must re-examine your views on this matter.
@180 Habu,
That may or may not be true, but how can we possibly keep these promises to the boomers when they didn’t have enough children and didn’t save enough?
Hyperinflation? That’s the same as defaulting on everything.
Territorial expansion? We could pay the boomers back by stealing wealth from someone else. Don’t think they’ll take to kindly to that though.
There’s another method of territorial expansion – taking land that belongs to no one, like say L4/L5 or the moon. i think space colonization is the ultimate way out of this. Unfortunately our leaders are not that visionary.
@ 208. viktor silo
He did read into the shroedingers cat paradox somewhat more than is there, he’s not the first, he’s not the last. It’s not that the cat is both alive and dead, it’s just that we don’t know which option is the case. By looking, we don’t collapse the wave function, bare beary Barry Ogabe — he’s the 0 ne.
@ 209. Captain Ramen
But remember, Moon Is A Harsh Mistress.
(I like though the concept of lunar “stone” age technology, there is a handful juicy prime targets I have on my mind)
Such a catapult would make all minor powers completely vulnerable to a first launch.
Speakin of cats… anyone for a sting theory?
Whaddaya mean by minor powers, blert?
Afterwards?
213. twobyfour
That would be “string theory”. I think I need better glasses.
But I was not sirius, anyway.
cat won’t like dog star
Any nation that has but a limited number of critical nodes would be a strategically minor target…
That’s all that I meant.
Only a very few nations would not fit such a constraint.