Where is NOW when you really need them?

Saudi Girl, 8, Divorces Husband, 50.

My daughter is 8. Yuck!

Graph of the day

(Via Glenn Reynolds)

Universal healthcare is like splitting the restaurant bill with strangers

times a trillion or so. Overconsumption and overpayment are big issues.

Then, after the binge, no one can afford to eat (or live) anymore.

They say that looks don't count for much

... if so, there goes your proof.

Lyrics here.

Quotes of the day

Our automobile industry could be much more “American” if we really cared to make it so. But we don’t. Our behavior as investors and consumers is usually more rational than the claims we offer up in politics and in public discourse.--Tyler Cowen

We're Living In Odd Times When Miss California Gets Tougher Questions Than the President.--Dennis Miller

It's the Spock plot strands that give the new "Trek" its best shot at once again commanding the zeitgeist. Spock's cool, analytical nature feels more fascinating and topical than ever now that we've put a sort of Vulcan in the White House.--Steve Daly

I grew up on 'Star Trek'—I believe in the final frontier.--Barack Obama

The interesting caveat is [the Obama sensation] is a style of leadership more effective running a law review than running a country.--Ron Klain

But in a still-dangerous world, in which one's listeners now have names like Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong Il, Putin, Hu Jintao, Netanyahu, Sarkozy and Merkel, the costs for the rest of us of being "misinterpreted" for a compulsive lack of clarity could be high. As back in January 2007, the key question remains: Is this Hamlet-like style of leadership suited for conducting the presidency of the United States? More bluntly, is it leadership? As he heads towards the next 1,300 days, Mr. Obama might consider trying a different gift that served an earlier Democratic president, Harry Truman, quite well once in office: Plain speaking.--Daniel Henninger

[Jon Stewart] is certainly not the only American who would take that view [that dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima is a war crime], but it's a useful reminder that the most vocal and popular criticism of the Bush administration's war on terror policies comes from people who, if they were being as honest as Stewart, would also judge Lincoln (suspension of habeas), FDR (internment), and Truman (use of nuclear weapons) as war criminals or tyrants or worse.--Michael Goldfarb

I see these “revise and extend” stories most every time they let Biden out in front of the cameras.--Stephen Green

Jake, I understand what [Joe Biden] said. And I'm telling you what he meant to say.--Robert Gibbs, President Obama's press secretary

[Bill Clinton] is a fan of this [10 girls for every 1 guy] ratio.--Nouriel Roubini

Intrade Chrysler bankruptcy contract heating up

Contract details here.

Wrecks in the City

Good news: my neighborhood gets a little attention.

Bad news: it's a building collapse.

Pandemic tradeoffs

A draconian travel ban might delay pandemic by a few weeks and cost more than 1% of GDP.

Quotes of the day

I intend to propose a rule change which would preclude a future recurrence of a Senator’s change in parties, in midsession, organizing with the opposition, to cause the upheaval which is now resulting.--Arlen Specter, in 2001 during Jim Jeffords' party switch

Free-market dynamics have worked in virtually every other part of the economy, spurring production and innovation and helping us get more for less. Food is even more basic than health care. We don't have a third-party-payer system for food (except for food stamps). Result: Today people spend a smaller portion of their income for food than they did decades ago. And the variety of foods is greater than ever. Free markets can do the same with regard to health care; governments manifestly cannot.--Steve Forbes

Before you can torture anyone, you must first torture the law. When that happens, we are all on the rack.--Richard Cohen

Why does Friedrich Engels remind me

of Bill Clinton?

John Stossel speaks sanity to power

on credit cards (via Matt Welch):

To appreciate credit cards, it is worth recalling that before they came along, people got personal loans from banks, finance companies, pawnshops and loan sharks. Such loans were less convenient, and repayment was less flexible. Some people bought things on layaway, which meant they didn't take the goods home until they were paid for. Loan sharks sometimes broke people's legs.

Credit cards didn't create consumer debt -- they are merely a superior alternative to older methods.

As President Obama and other politicians demagogue this issue, keep two things in mind: Life would be more difficult without credit cards, and banks don't have to keep issuing them. Be careful what you ask for

...

I've never understood how the poor are helped by limiting their choices.

Hey, John, maybe those politicians promising to help the poor are more interested in helping themselves.

There's a little liquidity in Intrade's swine flu contracts

DISCLOSURE: I am short and long various contracts.

Rational doesn't mean omniscient

Less Antman comments:

Stock prices are, by necessity, single numbers at any point in time, but reflect the estimate of probabilistic futures. If I am holding a sealed box that has an equal probability of holding $10 or $30, the selling price of the box will be $20 right now, and after being opened there will be either an immediate 50% drop or an immediate 50% rise in price. The pricing was rational throughout, even though a radical change in price occurred after opening the box.

In 1987, there is some evidence that major moves were associated with the surprise introduction into a Congressional committee of legislation to make mergers much less favorable from a tax point of view, and activity the week of the crash could well be correlated with the best guess of the outcome. The fact that the legislation was withdrawn after (and perhaps as a result of) the crash could explain the absence of follow up and the recovery of the market.

Student achievement is flat over the last 4 decades, while per-student spending has doubled

and I suspect we have more students today than back in the Seventies. Economies of scale, anyone? Bueller?

We need a paradigm shift from the status quo. Vouchers anyone; anyone? Nah, that would give students and their families too much choice.

High school lack of progress reported here:

U.S. high-school students haven't achieved any significant gains in reading or math for nearly four decades, according to a new federal report that underscores the challenges the Obama administration faces as it pressures schools to raise standards to produce a more competitive work force.

...

On a zero-to-500-point scale, 17-year-olds scored an average of 286 points in reading in 2008, up one point from 1971. The NAEP report said students with such scores have "intermediate skills" and are able to make generalizations about what they read.

In math, the same group's average scores rose two points to 306 since 1973. The report said students scoring in that range are able to perform moderately complex procedures such as computing with decimals and simple fractions.

Spending tracked here:

Graph of the day (losing their religions)

(Via Donald Sensing)

UPDATE: Here is the, er, unrelated runner up:

Incomes and test scores as intergenerational predictors

Andrew Leigh notes:

So a 10% increase in parents’ income raises children’s income by 2%, but a 10% increase in parents’ test scores raises children’s test scores by 4.5%.

Intrade lists Swine Flu contracts

Announcement here.

DISCLOSURE: I am long and short various contracts.

Just like the vaccine killed more than the swine flu of the Seventies

I am wondering if the economic policies implmented in response to the credit crisis of this past year will be more harmful to the economy than the credit crisis itself.

UPDATE: Via Jim Harper, a retrospective at Gawker (of all places!)

The Sun also rises?

Seeing this was weird, as the last breath was supposedly breathed last September.

Question of the day

Isn’t Obama looking for ways to cut $100 million from the budget? What did this photo op cost? $25-50-$100K?

I know it takes a million dollars to get a fighter aircraft off the ground, and another million dollars per hour to keep it in the air. I think Air Force One might be an order of magnitude more than that.

Quotes of the day

The Gans family solved the problem for Child No. 3 by outsourcing potty training to daycare. If only we could do the same for Wall Street ...--Tim Harford

Scooter Libby went to prison for the "outing" of a desk-jockey CIA agent. He forgot conversations. Pelosi forgets briefings. And the outing of our entire intelligence apparatus by Democrats is OK.--IBD Editorial Board

Watching Dick Cheney defend the Bush administration’s interrogation policies, it’s been hard to escape the impression that both the Republican Party and the country would be better off today if Cheney, rather than John McCain, had been a candidate for president in 2008.--Ross Douthat

Mediocre people have an answer for everything and are astonished at nothing-- Eugène Delacroix

The ACLU began describing itself as a 'social justice organization,' and its non-partisan commitment to civil liberty shrank -- especially its commitment to free speech -- while its vision of equality expanded.--Wendy Kaminer

Of course [pianist Krystian] Zimerman, who is certainly old enough to have played the piano while Poland was under the totalitarian control of the USSR apparently never said a word at the time about the country that actually had "hands" on his country and controlled it completely, but instead blithely played on. The primary reason he's free to travel and insult this country is because our military stood in opposition to the USSR along the Iron Curtain for decades and faced down his real oppressor.--Bruce McQuain

You can run a farm or factory in relatively primitive societies. But the protection of intellectual property—of products as flimsy as sung words and crotchets and quavers—requires the most evolved form of capitalist society. The aristorockracy are the last people who want a revolution. Africa should do as Bono does, not as he says.--Mark Steyn

The selling of the green economy involves much economic make-believe. Environmentalists not only maximize the dangers of global warming -- from rising sea levels to advancing tropical diseases -- they also minimize the costs of dealing with it. Actually, no one involved in this debate really knows what the consequences or costs might be. All are inferred from models of uncertain reliability. Great schemes of economic and social engineering are proposed on shaky foundations of knowledge. Candor and common sense are in scarce supply.--Robert Samuelson

But, of course, attributing to Arlen Specter a coherent or consistent “political philosophy” is giving him more credit than he has ever deserved. Specter, who originally switched in from being a lifelong Democrat to a Republican in a 1965 move to be elected Philadelphia’s district attorney, is the quintessential opportunist.--Jonathan Tobin

If we lose my seat they have 60 Democrats, they will pass card check, you will have the Obama tax increases, they will carry out his big spending plans. So the 41st Republican, whose name is Arlen Specter is vital to stopping tax increases, passage of card check, and the Obama big spending plans....Those 41 seats are the only thing standing between a Democratic onslaught of higher taxes, more spending and card check.--Arlen Specter, just a couple of weeks ago

I'd say [Bill Belichick is] like the Hunchback of Notre Dame without the face and the hunchback. Rough exterior, but he has a kind heart and he means well. He just goes about it differently.--Ellis Hobbs

Which President had protestors outside the White House arrested, Obama or Bush?

Should the answer surprise us? Nah.

(Via Don Surber)

UPDATE: Also, which party's senator took federal flu pandemic countermeasures out of the budget?

Mixed signals on research and development

This is what President Obama says:

When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik a little more than a half century ago, Americans were stunned. The Russians had beaten us to space. And we had to make a choice: We could accept defeat or we could accept the challenge. And as always, we chose to accept the challenge.

President Eisenhower signed legislation to create NASA and to invest in science and math education, from grade school to graduate school. And just a few years later, a month after his address to the 1961 Annual Meeting of the National Academy of Sciences, President Kennedy boldly declared before a joint session of Congress that the United States would send a man to the moon and return him safely to the Earth.

This is what his senior economic adviser, Austan Goolsbee, says:

... there is a serious problem with such government efforts to increase inventive activity. The majority of R&D spending is actually just salary payments for R&D workers. Their labor supply, however, is quite inelastic so when the government funds R&D, a significant fraction of the increased spending goes directly into higher wages. ... The results also imply that by altering the wages of scientists and engineers even for firms not receiving federal support, government funding directly crowds out private inventive activity.

(Via Greg Mankiw)

This was historic

Howard Anderson also bashes the MBA

So maybe the Harvard Business School should save their students about $150,000 and two years of their lives. Just give them the [Godfather] book or the movies and go from there.

Previous MBA spankdown here.

I give the Patriots an A-minus for their draft

in contrast to Mel Kiper, who gave them a B-plus:

They had Donald Brown and Clay Matthews right there for them. That surprised me. I thought a running back was something they would target. And I certainly thought a young outside linebacker like Matthews with the bloodlines and all that was somebody they would target, they didn’t. That’s just my opinion. Obviously, they thought otherwise.

I think, given the rookie pay scale against the salary cap, it just might be worth paying 60% in the second or third round for someone who is 95% as good as a first rounder.

But hey, I've never had to go and try to win a Super Bowl. (Unlike Mel Kiper?)

Here is the team's first pick, 34th overall, 212-lb safety Patrick Chung, #15 and wearing white, who you can see knocking down a 313-lb lineman and then a 296-lb lineman within 3 seconds of each other. He enters the frame on the upper left side, about 9 seconds in.



UPDATE: Here is Ron Borges' take:

NFL Players Association figures indicate in 2008 a first-round pick’s average guaranteed money was $11,924,000, including base salary, signing, roster and option bonuses. A second-round pick averaged $1,932,000 in guarantees. Those numbers are skewed some because of the presence of a quarterback like Matt Ryan near the top of the draft but they still are a reasonable measuring stick for analysis and what they say is that for roughly $4 million less than what the average first-round pick got a year ago, the Patriots got four second-round players.

Unions put kids at risk

by protecting teachers who are unsafe.

Ron Sims, candidate for HUD deputy

does not have the cleanest of records (via Glenn Reynolds).

In Great Britain, this pregnant woman was denied universal healthcare

because she does not appear pregnant:

Universal healthcare is neither universal, nor about healthcare. It's just about driving costs down on everyone, by taking healthcare away from everyone.

BCWUW4: Be Careful What You Wish For.

The result of inbreeding in Western Europe

What else could it be?

Frank Rose with a nice retrospective on Steve Jobs

here (via Chris Masse):

The lesson of Jobs’s ouster and redemption is twofold. First, never count anyone out — certainly not anyone as determined and intelligent as Jobs. In pulling off one of the greatest second acts in American business, he has not merely confounded his critics, he has induced mass amnesia. Second, savor authenticity. The Jobs who led the Macintosh crew in 1984 was self-centered, imperious, arrogant, unyielding, and flawed in myriad other ways — but more importantly, he had genuine passion and the crucial ability to instill it in others. This made him far more compelling and ultimately more successful than the string of glossy-tongued managers who followed. Rough edges, it turns out, are there for a reason.

From personal experience, may I say that the first 5 traits are much easier to acheive than the last two?

Fannie Mae loses millions in additional irresponsible loans

so it can defer billions in losses for a bit longer.

Great job, Barney.

Jets in the City

This is not change I can believe in:

Military jets chasing commercial jet buzz my neighborhood:

The Federal Aviation Administration confirmed that two F-16s escorting a Boeing 747 -- which CBS 2 confirmed is also used as an Air Force One -- were part of the Department of Defense photo shoot.

UPDATE: Erin Burnett on CNBC reporting that Mayor Bloomberg is furious. Good. I'm thinking he would make a better President than some.

UPDATE: WSJ has a compilation of video.

UPDATE: I want some butts!!! At least one.

Stephen Walt wonders about skewed influence in the international relations arena

here. Those that punch above their weight:

1. Sweden.

With a population of only 9 million, one wouldn’t expect Sweden to cast much of a shadow, despite its advanced industrial economy. Yet for its size and population, Sweden has been a significant international player. Its welfare state and other social policies have been widely-studied and a model for others, and diplomats such as Dag Hammarskjold, Folke Bernadotte, and Olof Palme were all important international voices. Sweden still devotes a higher percentage of its GDP to foreign aid than any other country, and institutions such as the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute have amplified Sweden's visibility on major issues of arms control and disarmament. Awarding the Nobel Prizes probably doesn't hurt either.

2. North Korea.

With a small population (22 million), an obsolete military machine, a bankrupt ideology, and an economy that exposes its citizens to periodic famine, one wouldn’t expect North Korea to get much attention at all. Indeed, on most measures North Korea is an under-achiever (especially when compared with its neighbor to the south). But Pyongyang's leaders are past masters at commanding international attention, usually by threatening to do something undesirable (and then sometimes going ahead and doing it). North Korea is hardly an inspiring model for anyone, but it shows how sheer cussedness can enable a country to punch well above their weight.

3. Canada.

America’s northern neighbor has the world's second largest land mass but a relatively small population (only 32 million) and only modest military assets. Yet Canada has been a consistent proponent of multilateralism, ranks ninth in the world as a provider of foreign aid, and has been an enthusiastic participant in international peacekeeping missions. Indeed, Canada has lost 117 soldiers fighting in Afghanistan, the highest per capita figure of any ISAF participant.

4. Israel.

For a country whose total population is less than that of New York City, Israel generates a lot more attention than one would expect. To be sure, some of this reflects Israel’s economic success (which includes advanced hi-tech sector and a significant arms industry) not to mention its nuclear arsenal and overall military power. And then there's the occupation and the violence that it has produced over the years. Regardless of one's views on that thorny subject, it's hard to argue that Israel doesn't exert a lot of influence on the global agenda, especially given its very modest size.

5. Singapore.

For a city-state with a population of only 4.4 million, which gained independence only in 1965, Singapore's international prominence marks it as an obvious outlier, even when one allows for its advanced economy and high per capita income. In addition to its economic achievements, Singapore has been a major force behind regional cooperation in Southeast Asia, an energetic promoter of institutions such as ASEAN, and its leaders have rarely been bashful about offering their views on major international issues.

Under-acheivers also listed at the link.

Pete Singer is wrong (yet again)

WHAT IS IT like to be a baby? For centuries, this question would have seemed absurd: behind that adorable facade was a mostly empty head. A baby, after all, is missing most of the capabilities that define the human mind, such as language and the ability to reason. Rene Descartes argued that the young child was entirely bound by sensation, hopelessly trapped in the confusing rush of the here and now. A newborn, in this sense, is just a lump of need, a bundle of reflexes that can only eat and cry. To think like a baby is to not think at all.

Modern science has largely agreed, spending decades outlining all the things that babies couldn't do because their brains had yet to develop. They were unable to focus, delay gratification, or even express their desires. The Princeton philosopher Peter Singer famously suggested that "killing a disabled infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Very often it is not wrong at all."

Now, however, scientists have begun to dramatically revise their concept of a baby's mind. By using new research techniques and tools, they've revealed that the baby brain is abuzz with activity, capable of learning astonishing amounts of information in a relatively short time. Unlike the adult mind, which restricts itself to a narrow slice of reality, babies can take in a much wider spectrum of sensation - they are, in an important sense, more aware of the world than we are.

It is clear

that Congress suffers from a lack of understanding of even the most rudimentary economics.--Peter Orszag

That is why Congress should not be seated, except for national emergencies.

UPDATE: Congress is incompetent for its part in foreign policy, too?

Quotes of the day

... it was so galling last month when the Democratic Congress passed a budget with such big deficits that it makes the United States literally ineligible to join France in the European Union.--Lamar Alexander

In the name of containing "systemic risk," our regulators spread it. In order to keep Mr. Lewis quiet, they all but ordered him to deceive his own shareholders. And in the name of restoring financial confidence, they have so mistreated Bank of America that bank executives everywhere have concluded that neither Treasury nor the Federal Reserve can be trusted.--WSJ Editorial Board

The problem originated with mortgages, but it’s now spread well beyond. Say you initially got sick from something but then the illness is throughout your whole body. The infection has spread throughout your whole body! You can’t just go back and fix the hole in your arm.--Peter Orszag

They’re like Sotheby’s and Christie’s, [Moody's and Standard & Poor's]. I’m not sure that “criminal” isn’t too strong a word for the way in which they offer no real alternative to each other, instead chosing to ape whatever the other one does.--Felix Salmon

It's long been obvious that the stress tests are like those kindergarten field days where everyone gets a prize for participating.--Megan McArdle

It is true that the belief in both tighter bank regulation and a larger welfare state cluster on the left, but if social democracy is some sort of preventative cure-all, how come the US economy is outperforming places like Denmark, Sweden, and Germany, not to mention the OECD as a whole? Why, if the problem is "American style capitalism", are the biggest GDP declines found elsewhere?--Megan McArdle

After 9/11, we blamed the CIA for not knowing. Now we blame the CIA for finding out.--Don Surber

As a father, I never imagined that the argumentative, young boy who grew up in my house, eating my food and using my name would be my future employer. But that's what happened.--William Gates, Sr.

... the Bible is actually a much livelier, more entertaining, more approachable read than the experts tell us it is.--David Plotz

Youkilis's walk total went from 91 to 77 to 62 from 2006-2008, but his on-base percentage has increased. The simple explanation is that Youkilis’s batting average has gone up, which is to say that his bat has become as great a weapon as his keen eye.--Tony Massarotti

Last year, I predicted a gentle demise to Goldman Sachs

here, theorizing that Fischer Black had provided GS an outperforming advantage, and he passed away in 1995, so a reversion to the mean was just a matter of time.

Now, Duff McDonald notes that Goldman has fallen significantly behind JPMorgan.

Quotes of the day

What will the landscape of journalism look like in five or ten years, as the dinosaurs of print journalism breath their last. Well, when the dinosaurs disappeared from the earth, the earth became overrun with rodents.--Rick Brookstaber

Could it be that the Times doesn’t want this story [about undemocratic corporate governance and executive pay] told about itself, even as it sold the story on others? Just asking.--Larry Ribstein

I can't believe I am about to type this

Paul Krugman concedes that Arthur Laffer was right.

Club For Growth's 2008 Scorecard

The Scorecard attempts to measure how each Senator is supportive or resistant to economic growth in America, based on respective votes on legislation for the year. Some results:

Most pro-growth: Jim DeMint, SC

Most anti-growth: Five-way tie between Joe Biden, DE; Barbara Milkulski, MD; Frank Lautenberg, NJ; Robert Menedez, NJ; Chuck Schumer, NY

Least pro-growth Republican: Olympia Snowe, ME

Least anti-growth Democrat: Mary Landrieu, NO

This was also quite disturbing

Shannon Love's analysis and prediction of leftist accusations of military crimes, followed by pardons.

The latest case for privatization: The Post Office

Can't keep up with snack and drink providers.

Quotes of the day

President Obama could have saved at least 9,116 gallons of fuel by giving his [Earth Day] speech at the White House – but no wind turbines are manufactured here. --Mark Knoeller

Surprisingly, the effects of atmospheric pollution seem to have enhanced global plant productivity by as much as a quarter from 1960 to 1999. This resulted in a net ten percent increase in the amount of carbon stored by the land.--Linda Mercado

... when people are choosing where to live, they consistently underestimate the pain of a long commute. This leads people to mistakenly believe that the McMansion in the suburbs, with its extra bedroom and sprawling lawn, will make them happier, even though it might force them to drive an additional forty-five minutes to work. It turns out, however, that traffic is torture, and the big house isn't worth it.--Jonah Lehrer

Every culture, gender, class, city, field of work, etc., has its own idols. Idolatry is anything I look at and say, "If I have that, my life has value." Anything that is so central to your life that you feel you can't live without it is an idol. Idolatry is making a good thing an ultimate thing.--Tim Keller

President Chávez is a character, and notwithstanding his hard-line ideology that I am a firm opponent of — be under no illusion about that — he’s actually an affable and gregarious and open personality. And for whatever reason, he seems in a particularly good mood this weekend, and we’re all grateful for that.--Stephen Harper

New York is the only one out of the sixteen largest cities in the northeastern or midwestern states whose population is larger than it was fifty years ago.--Alan Beattie

Obama's clarity is our confusion

President Barack Obama’s attempt to project legal and moral clarity on coercive CIA interrogation methods has instead done the opposite — creating confusion and political vulnerability over an issue that has inflamed both the left and right.

In the most recent instance, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair acknowledged in a memo to the intelligence community that Bush-era interrogation practices yielded had "high-value information,” then omitted that admission from a public version of his assessment.

That leaves a top Obama administration official appearing to validate claims by former Vice President Dick Cheney that waterboarding and other techniques the White House regards as torture were effective in preventing terrorist attacks. And the press release created the impression the administration was trying to suppress this conclusion.

(Via Don Surber)

Out of bounds (of capitalism)

This is disturbing:

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and then-Treasury Department chief Henry Paulson pressured Bank of America Corp. to not discuss its increasingly troubled plan to buy Merrill Lynch & Co. -- a deal that later triggered a government bailout of BofA -- according to testimony by Kenneth Lewis, the bank's chief executive.

Mr. Lewis, testifying under oath before New York's attorney general in February, told prosecutors that he believed Messrs. Paulson and Bernanke were instructing him to keep silent about deepening financial difficulties at Merrill, the struggling brokerage giant. As part of his testimony, a transcript of which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Lewis said the government wanted him to keep quiet while the two sides negotiated government funding to help BofA absorb Merrill and its huge losses.

UPDATE: Matthew Wurtzel is also disturbed.

UPDATE: Megan McArdle, is among other feelings, deeply troubled.

NFL draft value chart

With the NFL draft weekend coming up, I thought this may be of interest to some. Bill Belichick referred to it here, in speaking about how teams model relative pick values and trade them.

The left column for each round is the pick number; the right column the number of points. It shows that, for instance, the first pick of the first round is worth about 5 times as much as the first pick of the second round.

Round 1		Round 2		Round 3		Round 4		Round 5		Round 6		Round 7
1	3,000	33	580	65	265	97	112	129	43	161	27	193	14.2
2	2,600	34	560	66	260	98	108	130	42	162	26.6	194	13.8
3	2,200	35	550	67	255	99	104	131	41	163	26.2	195	13.4

UPDATE: Stephen Dubner just posted on how the top NFL draft pick is overvalued. I think that is a bit imprecise. I would counter that it's the rookie pay scale, especially for the first 10 or 15 picks in the draft.

Quotes of the day

Poverty has no causes; wealth has causes.--Peter Bauer

As their wealth grows, people consume more energy, but they move to more efficient and cleaner sources — from wood to coal and oil, and then to natural gas and nuclear power, progressively emitting less carbon per unit of energy.--John Tierney

Everybody is a product of what they’ve done. I have high respect for bureaucrats, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to have the leadership quality needed when they get to be something like secretary of the Treasury—particularly now.--Bill Seidman

If I had better foresight, maybe I could have improved things a little bit…But frankly, if I had perfect foresight, I would never have taken this job in the first place.--Richard Syron, former Freddie Mac CEO

I didn’t hear the outrage when Joe Biden said that he and Barack Obama are against gay marriage. No incendiary language, no insults, no four letter obscenities. Why is it acceptable for Obama and Biden to have this opinion but not a conservative female?--Andrea Tantaros

Green jobs mythology

debunked (via Glenn Reynolds).

Yelling "Theater!" in a crowded fire

The ratings agencies and the First Amendment:

U.S. regulators and lawmakers are considering stricter oversight of credit-rating firms, including changing the way the firms are paid, in an effort to minimize potential conflicts. A recent 10-month study by the Securities and Exchange Commission found that rating firms put profits ahead of quality when determining ratings for mortgage-backed securities.

Yet to succeed in court, investors may need to navigate a thorny constitutional issue: Are the ratings that the services give securities -- ranging from triple-A to junk -- simply "opinion" that is protected by the First Amendment? Traditionally, the answer has been yes.

Rating firms generally enjoy a free-speech right to "make informed, thoughtful predictions about the future," says UCLA School of Law professor Eugene Volokh, a First Amendment expert. "That is no different from what newspapers or scholars do."

I'm about to ask Intrade to list real U.S. GDP contracts

Why. Here's why.

Quotes of the day

The most enthusiastic fans say that sports are compelling because they imitate life -- which they certainly do in some ways. But at a time when political conversation, to name one crucial form of public communication, is getting steadily dumbed down, John Madden's retirement should remind us that we can do better. His demanding and fruitful style represents a way that life can and should imitate sports. How often does that happen?--Leonard Cassuto

... [environmental] groups are putting local environmental concerns first and the planet second. Wind farms, nuclear power plants and hydroelectric dams are ways of providing clean energy, which would reduce carbon emissions and the threat of global warming.--Ed Glaeser

In hot, humid Houston or frigid Minneapolis, people use plenty of energy to artificially recreate what California has naturally. Environmentalists should, presumably, be out there lobbying for more homes in coastal California, but instead, for more than four decades, California environmental groups, such as Save the Bay, have fought new construction in the most temperate, lowest carbon-emission area of the country. --Ed Glaeser

The optimal capital structure evolves constantly, and successful corporate leaders must constantly consider six factors -- the company and its management, industry dynamics, the state of capital markets, the economy, government regulation and social trends. When these six factors indicate rising business risk, even a dollar of debt may be too much for some companies. Over the past four decades, many companies have struggled with the wrong capital structures. During cycles of credit expansion, companies have often failed to build enough liquidity to survive the inevitable contractions.--Michael Milken

You were talking about an appropriations bill a few weeks ago about $8 billion being minuscule -- $8 billion in earmarks. We were talking about that and you said that that $100 million is a lot but $8 billion is small?--Jake Tapper

We've come to [the brink of a backdoor bank nationalization] in part because the Obama Administration is afraid to ask Congress for the money for a meaningful bank recapitalization. And it may need that money now in part because Mr. Paulson's Treasury insisted on buying preferred stock in all the big banks instead of looking at each case on its merits. That decision last fall squandered TARP money on banks that probably didn't need it and left the Administration short of funds for banks that really do.--WSJ Editorial Board

The good news is that Mr. Obama is smart enough to know that the relative obscurity of Bagram, not to mention the approval he has received on Guantanamo, enables him to do the right thing here without, as Mr. Greenwald notes, worrying too much that he will be called to account for a substantive about-face. The bad news is that we seem to have reached the point where our best hope for sensible war policy now depends largely on presidential cynicism.--William McGurn

One of the things that I find a little bit disturbing about this recent disclosure is they put out the legal memos, the memos that the CIA got from the Office of Legal Counsel, but they didn't put out the memos that showed the success of the effort. And there are reports that show specifically what we gained as a result of this activity. They have not been declassified.--Dick Cheney

Eureka!

The source of global warming finally uncovered.

No wonder my representative has been laying low. Here is where I'm trading.

President Obama swings for the budget fences

He instructs his cabinet to cut 0.003% from the federal budget.

That's change I can hope in!

UPDATE: Nice graphic:

The End of Poverty would be more aptly named The End of Honesty

Tyler Cowen writes a beautiful critique.

Quotes of the day

BusinessWeek's cover story this week, "What Good Are Economists, Anyway," slams the economic industry for failing to predict and explain the economic crisis, which is weird because that's exactly what any non-economist could say about the business journalism industry.--Derek Thompson

Small cars simply are not as safe as bigger cars, and they can't be made safer by yelling at people who insist on believing in the laws of physics. ... Even hybrids rely at least in part on making the car lighter. On the other hand, running a massive uncontrolled experiment on the global climate seems kind of dangerous too.--Megan McArdle

I say that Americans make extravagant use of medical procedures with high costs and low benefits. But that is only a social problem to the extent that we socialize it.--Arnold Kling

I can only report that The End of Poverty, narrated throughout by Martin Sheen, puts Ayn Rand back on the map as an accurate and indeed insightful cultural commentator. If you were to take the most overdone and most caricatured cocktail-party scenes from Atlas Shrugged, if you were to put the content of Rand’s “whiners” on the screen, mixed in with at least halfway competent production values, you would get something resembling The End of Poverty. If you ever thought that Rand’s nemeses were pure caricature, this film will show you that they are not (if the stalking presence of Naomi Klein has not already done so). If you are looking to benchmark this judgment, consider this: I would not say anything similar even about the movies of Michael Moore.--Tyler Cowen

...the U.S. by far remains the world's leading manufacturer, producing goods valued at a record $1.6 trillion in 2007 — nearly double the $811 billion produced a decade earlier. For every $1 of value produced in China's factories [in 2007], America generated $2.50. Not bad for a country that doesn't produce anything anymore.--Stephen Manning and Harold Sirkin

But there’s a downside [to the elimination of polio]: job loss. How many workers, who played by the rules, lost their jobs as a result of this development? People who built wheelchairs and crutches, who helped manufacture iron-lung machines, and who specialized in nursing polio victims – many of these people were thrown out of work by the product supplied by Dr. Salk and Dr. Sabin. Some of these workers surely found comparable alternative employment quickly. Others took longer to do so. And probably some others were obliged to accept jobs at much lower pay. Maybe some of these workers never found new jobs.--Don Boudreaux

Congress with some doosy legislation

Joe Price, the CFO of Bank of America, says:

... the Community Reinvestment Act* book accounts for 7% of the total in residential mortgages, but 24% of the losses.

Congress needs to take a looong vacation.

*The act was designed to encourage more minority lending, and though it doesn't require banks to lend out to shaky borrowers, banks make certain CRA commitments in order to get regulatory approval for acquisitions.

A possible effect of this is that banks wishing to grow via acquisition end up with an outsize volume of these commitments.

Nature, data, science really not cooperating with the global warming alarmists

And they mock my faith? You've got to be kidding.

Dissent: Patriotism or Racism?

I guess it depends on who's president.

William Jacobson really called it last week.

UPDATE: Stephen Green notes:

I’m glad to see Janeane has made a full recovery after spending all those months taking money to be Jack Bauer’s biatch.

UPDATE: Megan McArdle comments as well.

It WAS a great ride

Thanks, John.

Photo link here.

UPDATE: Michael David Smith captures Al Michaels' thoughts on Madden.

Kimberly Strassel picks up on the scandal that is Congress' alternative energy legislation

(first mentioned here back on April 3, linking to Christopher Hayes' piece).

Kim's update lists out in greater detail the horrible unintended consequences of what George Bush and Congress passed in 2005:

This is the tale of how a supposedly innocuous federal subsidy to encourage "alternative energy" has, in a few short years, ballooned into a huge taxpayer liability and a potential trade dispute, even as it has distorted markets and led to greater fossil-fuel use.
...
If Congress is going to lard up the tax code with thousands of complex provisions designed to "encourage" behavior, it shouldn't be surprised when those already practicing said behavior line up for their reward, too.
...
Happy as industry is to have this new federal lifeline in the middle of a recession, it is the only one smiling. Foreign competitors are screaming that the subsidy is unfairly propping up the U.S. industry in tough times. They claim the U.S. industry is ramping up production simply to realize more tax money. Canadian forestry firms are already demanding their government file a trade complaint.

In order to qualify for the credit, alternative fuel must be mixed with a taxable one. (The government might want to encourage alternative fuels, but not to the extent that it loses its gas-tax revenue.) This means that to qualify, the paper industry must mix some diesel with its black liquor. This has sent environmentalists around the bend. They have accused the industry of burning fossil fuels that it didn't used to burn, simply to get the tax dollars. (The industry has not been clear on whether it is, in fact, using more diesel.)
...
And then there's Congress, which is suddenly looking at billions more in red ink than expected. In 2007 it estimated a 15-month extension of the credit would cost taxpayers $333 million. It has since revised those numbers to take into account black liquor and is now figuring a one-year cost of more than $3 billion. Wall Street analysts are talking $6 billion.
...

But this, in turn, has tossed up uncomfortable questions. The paper industry argues that if the government is going to be in the business of rewarding good behavior, it ought to do it equally. Is green policy only to be aimed at dirty or economically unviable actors? Is black liquor any less useful than ethanol or biodiesel, and if so why? If not, shouldn't Washington encourage its use? Isn't every green subsidy in fact the basis for a trade dispute? These are questions Congress has no interest in confronting, since it would expose the muddle that is its entire green-energy program.

Quotes of the day

One Fannie Mae debacle ought to be enough for any career, but Mr. Frank wants taxpayers to double down on his political guarantees. There are currently some $1.7 trillion in municipal bonds held by the public, and Barney thinks we can insure them at "zero cost." Considering the source, and the potential size of the bill, someone in Congress needs to sound the alarm.--WSJ Editorial Board

As Milton Friedman often pointed out, the real measure of taxes is not what the government calls taxes but what government spends. Government spending is financed by current taxes, future taxes, or inflation.--David Henderson

Every government attempt to manage energy markets has resulted in similar disarray [as encouraging alternative fuels usage]. Look at the havoc that came from the energy price controls, regulations and subsidies of the 1970s. Or look, more recently, at the ethanol fiasco, and the accompanying soaring food costs. Energy powers the economy. Mess with energy markets, and mess with everything else. When will Washington learn?--Kim Strassel

During [2000-2005], Spitzer repeatedly attacked Wall Street for graft and pressured Wall Street executives to cut deals with his office. Yet, he never once bothered to look into the actions of those within the NYS government who were trusted with overseeing the $122 billion pension plan and whether any irregularities were involved.--lawhawk

While the ends do not necessarily justify the means

I think that President Obama needs to give more weight to Jack Bauer:

The Obama administration has declassified and released opinions of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) given in 2005 and earlier that analyze the legality of interrogation techniques authorized for use by the CIA. Those techniques were applied only when expressly permitted by the director, and are described in these opinions in detail, along with their limits and the safeguards applied to them.
...
Moreover, disclosure of the details of the program pre-empts the study of the president's task force and assures that the suspension imposed by the president's executive order is effectively permanent. There would be little point in the president authorizing measures whose nature and precise limits have already been disclosed in detail to those whose resolve we hope to overcome. This conflicts with the sworn promise of the current director of the CIA, Leon Panetta, who testified in aid of securing Senate confirmation that if he thought he needed additional authority to conduct interrogation to get necessary information, he would seek it from the president. By allowing this disclosure, President Obama has tied not only his own hands but also the hands of any future administration faced with the prospect of attack.
...
In his book "The Terror Presidency," Jack Goldsmith describes the phenomenon we are now experiencing, and its inevitable effect, referring to what he calls "cycles of timidity and aggression" that have weakened intelligence gathering in the past. Politicians pressure the intelligence community to push to the legal limit, and then cast accusations when aggressiveness goes out of style, thereby encouraging risk aversion, and then, as occurred in the wake of 9/11, criticizing the intelligence community for feckless timidity. He calls these cycles "a terrible problem for our national security." Indeed they are, and the precipitous release of these OLC opinions simply makes the problem worse.

UPDATE: Oh, maybe the President is:

President Barack Obama absolved CIA officers from prosecution for harsh, painful interrogation of terror suspects Thursday, even as his administration released Bush-era memos graphically detailing — and authorizing — such grim tactics as slamming detainees against walls, waterboarding them and keeping them naked and cold for long periods.

UMass Amherst suppresses freedom of speech and press

FIRE report here.

Hmph, William Jacobson was just blogging about this.

Wow, I wasn't thinking Weimar Republic or anything

but maybe Ralph Peters has a point:

Let's not quibble about little things like evidence. The Obama administration just knows that vets are all racist, Jew-hating crazies waiting to explode. Thank God, DHS has a fearless leader, Janet-from-another-planet Napolitano, who isn't afraid to call white trash "white trash."

In this administration's published opinion, those who've served in our military are a menace to society and the state. And DHS's racist, bigoted implication is that the only danger comes from white, Christian vets (there's not a whisper about minority violence).

Thanks for bringing us together, Mr. President

Racism is racism. The left-wing propaganda document published officially by your government under the title "Right-wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment" may be the shabbiest US Government publication of our time.

...

Our first minority president just took a giant step toward creating the most bigoted administration since that of arch-segregationist Woodrow Wilson.

Apologize to our veterans, Mr. President. And send Ms. Napolitano back to the minors.

Ralph Peters is so stupid he served in our military for almost 22 years.

If healthcare is a right

then why are people charged for it? Unlike speech or religion, for example.

So asks Michael Cannon, on CNBC a minute ago.

NYC Tea Party photos

Here (via Glenn Reynolds).

I live within earshot of City Hall, and that party went well into the dark hours last night.

Yummy

That Obama Burger sure sounds better than Baracky Road Ice Cream.

Has Congress exempted some of its selected legislation from the Freedom Of Information Act?

Apparently, yes.

Why is Bush more charitable than Obama

and Cheney more than Biden?

Ursa Minor, vs Ursa Major and a couple of cubs

(via Paul Kedrosky)

Stinking to high heaven

the plaintiff attorney's strategy aka Bribery and Job Destruction:

As we reported, [F. Kenneth] Bailey made repeated donations to [Gov. Ed] Rendell's 2006 re-election campaign in the months before his law firm was given a no-bid, contingency-fee contract to sue Janssen Pharmaceuticals on the state's behalf. Mr. Rendell told the Philadelphia Inquirer -- whose reporters have roused from their slumbers -- that "there wasn't the slightest bit of pay-to-play here." But the Governor was obliged to acknowledge that Mr. Bailey had approached the state about suing Janssen. Normally, the state Attorney General would handle such legal matters, but the AG rebuffed Mr. Bailey. Mr. Rendell's office then decided to hire the law firm that was also his major campaign donor. Smile if you think the two were related.

The episode speaks volumes about Mr. Rendell's political ethics, but more important is what it reveals about the plaintiffs bar's latest "business" model. Mr. Bailey's Janssen suit is part of a national pay-to-sue operation, as he and his Bailey, Perrin & Bailey law firm have taken their pre-packaged lawsuit to many states. Janssen's complaint asking the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to dismiss Bailey Perrin from the suit notes that the firm has "taken on numerous engagements similar to this action, including representation in the states of Louisiana, South Carolina, Arkansas, Mississippi and New Mexico."

It's some racket. The plaintiffs attorneys come up with novel legal theories under which to sue companies or entire industries. They then solicit state AGs (or cash-hungry Governors like Mr. Rendell) to retain them to bring cases on behalf of the government on a contingency-fee basis. Motley Rice and Lieff Cabraser are among the firms that have targeted drug companies as well as makers of cigarettes, paint and guns.
...

The biggest losers here are the cause of justice and the principle of prosecutorial neutrality. When outside lawyers are hired to do the government's business, and then given a financial stake in the outcome, it creates irreconcilable conflicts of interest. The state delegates key decisions -- about whether and whom to sue, what legal theory to pursue, whether to settle and what remedy to propose -- to private lawyers motivated by profit rather than the public interest.

Meanwhile, the pay-to-sue nature of the transaction means that politicians have an incentive to promote frivolous litigation that makes it even harder for American business to prosper and create jobs. If Governors like Ed Rendell won't stop this legal-political collusion, state legislators should.

Quotes of the day

...people who frown in photos are five times more likely to get a divorce than people who smile.--Clara Moskowitz

TARP has become a little bit of a scarlet letter.--Jamie Dimon

But picture Isaac Newton scribbling down the laws of physics every day, and every night God comes in and erases the scribblings, changes the laws, and fiddles with the constants. That is what macro is like.--Arnold Kling

Days after North Korea launched, Mr. Obama announced he wants to reduce our nuclear arms inventory so as to "give us a greater moral authority to say to Iran, don't develop a nuclear weapon; to say to North Korea, don't proliferate nuclear weapons." Who would ever invoke "moral authority" with Somalia's pirates? So why North Korea or the others?--Daniel Henninger

Garnering affection

is usually not as important as garnering respect:

Mr Sarkozy is pouring cold water on President Obama's efforts to recast American leadership on the world stage, depicting them as unoriginal, unsubstantial and overrated. Behind leaks and briefings from the Elysée Palace lies Mr Sarkozy's irritation at the rock-star welcome that Europe gave Mr Obama on his Europan tour earlier this month.

The American President's call "to free the world of the menace of a nuclear nightmare" was hot air, Mr Sarkozy's diplomatic staff told him in a report. "It was rhetoric – not a speech on American security policy but an export model aimed at improving the image of the United States," they said. Most of Mr Obama's proposals had already been made by the Bush administration and Washington was dragging its feet on disarmament and treaties against nuclear proliferation, the leaked report said.

Personal pique and French politics are also behind the souring of Mr Sarkozy's self-promoted honeymoon with the United States. On the personal side, the French President is needled by the adulation for an unproven US leader whose stardom has eclipsed what he sees as his established record as a world troubleshooter. "The President is annoyed by what he sees as the naivety and the herd mentality of the media," said a journalist who is privy to Elysée thinking.

Mr Sarkozy has put out a version of the proceedings at the London G20 economic summit which casts him as hero, in the classic French role of intransigent defender of principle in the face of the American steamroller. This is to counter last week's reports of Mr Obama saving the day by persuading President Hu of China to accept Mr Sarkozy's demands for naming tax havens.

According to the leaks, Mr Sarkozy shamed Mr Obama into intervening: "You were elected to build a new world. Tax havens are the embodiment of the old world," he is quoted as saying. He also reprimanded Mr Obama for setting US goals for climate change that were inferior to Europe's, according to his staff.

Again, according to the Sarkozy version, at the Nato summit in Strasbourg, Mr Obama was meekly yielding to Turkey's refusal to endorse Anders Fogh Rasmussen as the alliance's new Secretary-General. It took pressure from Mr Sarkozy and Chancellor Merkel of Germany to stiffen him up and change his mind, say the French.

Is Obama Carter II, Clinton II, or Dubya II? A significant dosage of each, it seems.

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds notes that affection is on the decline, too:

I thought the world was going to love us!

Wesley Clark, like Benedict Arnold

should have quit when he was still ahead.

Woulda, coulda, shoulda.

Kinda sorta like Nassim (see immediately below).

Q. Who is fundamentally dumb?

A. Regulators
B. Nassim Taleb
C. All of the above

Cheap shot or not?

Suppose the only people in the world are Hannibal the millionaire, a slave trader, and 10,000 penniless orphan slaves. The slave trader has no direct use for his slaves, but likes money; Hannibal, on the other hand, is a ravenous cannibal. According to Robin, the "optimal outcome" is for Hannibal to get all 10,000 orphans and eat them.

Canada's healthcare looks green

only because the wealthy can loophole into the American system, and all northern neighbors can free-ride on medical innovation here. (Just compare the market capitalization of medical technology and drug providers in Canada vs. the US).

Quotes of the day

But [North Korea's] existence is profound, confirming that an Orwellian state is possible.--Tim Kane

Like it or not, Goldman is a central part of the financial system, which means that it’s a central part of any bailout strategy. It can’t unilaterally say no to that, and I hope that it gets slapped down by Treasury as definitively as it was slapped down by the stock market yesterday.--Felix Salmon

First, we should close down as promptly as possible Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. There never was a reason for those two institutions, other than to avoid the congressional budget process. The benefit that people got from Fannie and Freddie came from the subsidy to the mortgage interest rate. Congress could have passed that subsidy over and over again. They avoided passing it by taking the program off budget.--Allan Metzer

And now, with his donor base shrinking, Dodd has to face the first tough Senate race of his career with the mortgage scandal, the AIG bonus scandal, the pardon for a felonious friend scandal, the Irish cottage scandal and, as an extra, added distraction, the charge he was AWOL as chairman of the banking committee while the economy was collapsing. It's not hard to see why Dodd is redesigning himself as an outraged fixer of the financial mess that evolved while he was running for president.--Dick Ahles

Of course, I find [Walt Disney] interesting because it’s a form of self-flattery: he managed to make legit both sappy nostalgia and starry whiz-bang futurism. He loved the small town and the moon base.--James Lileks

A righteous anger

Epicurean Dealmaker is frustrated by the intellectual laziness of the day (colorful language at the link).

I thought dramatic talent was more artistically valued than comedic ability

but Robin Hanson makes me think I was wrong.

I needed to put this somewhere

where I could get to it later. (Via Don Boudreaux)


F.A. Hayek Interviewed By John O'Sullivan from FEE on Vimeo.

UPDATE: Arnold Kling says:

Very rewarding to listen. For example, a bit over an hour into it, he makes the point that unions that force up wages in one industry will divert capital into that industry, taking it away from workers in other industries. Earlier, his thoughts on the three sources of social norms--instinct, tradition, and intellectual theory--are well articulated, also.

Tom Maguire spanks Ezra Klein on taxes

and good.

There are worse things than bankruptcy

No bankruptcy, for instance.

Oh

that's where our taxes go.

Bob Hall and Susan Woodward suggest a free lunch

here.

David Beckworth exposes why even when brilliant and esteemed folks wish a free lunch, none exists.

Via Greg Mankiw and Tyler Cowen.

Save Darfur could have lost Darfur

Check out William Easterly's book critique.

We were pre-screened, asked by officials “Who voted for Obama?”

and then those who raised their hands were shuffled to the front of the receiving line.

Quotes of the day

Only in a highly politicized bureaucracy could the Constitution be viewed as a subversive manifesto.--William Jacobson

In countries where a woman has a virtually unfettered right to choose abortion, the result is that women overwhelmingly choose to abort female fetuses.--William Jacobson

And indeed, the political battle over health care is infused with the belief that you shouldn't have to think about cost--that it is immoral to deny anyone a treatment that might help them.--Megan McArdle

By [Douglas McIntyre's] numbers, total pirate loot for this year will probably be somewhere around $200 million. Of course they have various expenses, such as boats, GPS equipment and most importantly protection -- some would liken that to a mafia payoff, though in developed economies we'd call it "taxation."--Joe Weisenthal

And, indeed, what is the State anyway but organized banditry? What is taxation but theft on a gigantic, unchecked, scale? What is war but mass murder on a scale impossible by private police forces? What is conscription but mass enslavement? Can anyone envision a private police force getting away with a tiny fraction of what States get away with, and do habitually, year after year, century after century?--Murray Rothbard

Many union members, whose dues are being used to fund this odd alliance [with environmental groups], might be shocked to find out they were paying to hasten the demise of the industries employing them.--Jennifer Rubin

At least with regard to sex, MIT economics majors are not putting the freak in Freakonomics.--Ian Ayers

Steven Bainbridge spanks Norman Ornstein

and good.

There appears to be no escape

from Facebook.

Why healthcare reform is hard

Our cultural attitudes about medical services.

In a secularized culture with a Christianesque patina

There’s little left to say about evil.

Hmm, do more women convert to Judaism than men?

I suspect so.

Timothy, you get props. Thank God for grace.

Contrarian sign of a stock market top

I still stand by this, but after seeing the picture below, I got a little worried:

Astroturf vs. grassroots

according to Jon Henke.

I need to start thinking about what to do when I grow up

The Way We Get By - Trailer from The Way We Get By on Vimeo.

(Via Don Surber)

Don Surber imagines Barack Obama back in elementary school

Here's a bit of it:

His math skills seem to be slightly deficient. The other day, in preparation for the standardized test, I asked the students the usual “Train Leaving Chicago” question. He said the answer was to bail out both railroads.

When I told him this was far from the correct answer, he said that this was a problem left over from George, who was a student who transferred to Texas during the semester break when your grandson transferred in.

He refused to say another word until I brought the lectern to his desk. After that he seemed happy. I decided that he does better with the lectern, so that explains why it now sits next to his desk.

He calls it LOTUS.

Must be some sort of family joke that I don’t get.

...

The coach said he is a fine addition to the basketball team. The only drawback is he cannot seem to understand that when he makes a basket, it counts the same as a basket made by anyone else.

I am not so sure that he is quite as aware as he should be about American culture. The other day, our sixth-grade team traveled to another school to play its rival. He quickly became popular with the members of the other team by apologizing for our team’s past victories.

Then he did not seem to understand why they elbowed him and pushed him around during the game anyway.

We absorbed our worst drubbing in years.

For some reason, he has become a Pittsburgh Pirates fan this spring.

Except for these small things, your grandson is adjusting well and he is an excellent student who makes friends quite easily.

P.S. The cafeteria lady would like to have a word with you. It seems your grandson insists on buying everyone’s lunch and the bill is getting quite high. I’m sure you are good for the money.

21st century man "insufficiently astute" to appreciate a few good 18th century men

writes Don Boudreaux.

Congress plus the Ivy League

A coarsened mix, I suspect commenter Harold Hecuba would say (but in a coarser way, of course).

Oh, that's why some do that

Chicago streetwalkers earn $25 to $30 an hour, four times what they'd get in other jobs available to them. Venkatesh has also tried to assess the value of having a pimp versus self-managing, which he calls "a classic business school, industrial organization question." Prostitutes who work with pimps, it turns out, appear to earn more and get arrested less frequently. The Chicago prostitution study, which continues, will be written up in the sequel to Freakonomics, to be published in a year or so.

I commend President Obama's use of force on the Somali pirates

and hope that he can be just as resolved with a thousand or million lives at stake.

UPDATE: Stephen Green says:

The missing context is this — the might and will of the United States were held hostage, until one brave civilian captain took matters into his own hands. Philips risked his life escaping, and opened the door for the Navy SEALs — who ought to be in the business of kicking doors down.

This particular event ended well, due largely to the actions of Captain Phillips. Next time we might not be so lucky.

UPDATE: Will Collier would probably agree with my proposal to unseat Congress as much as possible.

UPDATE: Tom Baldwin says that Obama has laid some Carteresque doubts to rest. Hope.

UPDATE: Jules Crittenden begs to differ:

The success yesterday was due to a military that has been equipped, configured and trained for this kind of action since the Reagan years, and has seen a great deal of it in combat against America’s enemies in the last decade. The Carter analogy kicks in not so much with the happy, violent ending to a single incident, but with the follow-through. What are you going to do about, Obama?

UPDATE: So does William Jacobson:

The problem is not in this case, which ended successfully, but in the next hostage taking situation. If one is going to follow a negotiation approach, the trust of the hostage takers in the negotiation process is key. If hostage takers believe negotiation is a ruse, then the hostage is in more danger. Words cannot be just words in a negotiation.

So negotiating as a ruse is the worst of all alternatives. It does not have the deterrent effect of the Israeli approach, or the hostage-safety effect of the negotiation approach.

UPDATE: Richard Fernandez looks ahead:

In the coming months, some merchant crew may try to imitate the actions of the Maersk Alabama and suffer terribly at the hands of pirates who may be determined to inflict an object lesson on the shipowners. With their humiliation at the hands of the USN, the pirates have temporarily lost their most powerful weapon: terror. They will be eager to regain it.

Jeremy Seigel responds to his stock valuation critics

here (via Greg Mankiw). I've cherry picked a couple of his thoughts:

1. Liabilities do indeed cross the divisions of a single firm, and that is why the New Products Division of AIG tanked the many other profitable divisions of the insurance giant. But these losses do not cancel the earnings of profitable firms.
2. Back in 2002 the aggregate earnings of the S&P 500 Index also plummeted when a few firms, such as AOL and JDS Uniphase, took huge writedowns on some of their Internet investments. Reported P/E ratios soared into the 60s in the second quarter of 2002, yet rather than being overvalued, the market was just approaching its bear market low.

Keith Hennessey breaks down the medically uninsured

Subsidizing Lemons

Josh Hendrickson is more worried about the Geithner plan than the Paulson plan.

Me too.

Economist factories

summed up by Greg Mankiw.

What is health insurance?

It might not be what you think.

Quotes of the day

The idea that we can continue to raise revenue, while shifting more of the burden onto fewer and fewer people is a pipe dream. Think of the grand scale of the government's ambitions, from fighting wars to providing universal healthcare. Are we really to believe that all this can be done via a tax increase on the top 2%? That's obviously hogwash. What's more is that top 2% is getting sharply poorer fast, given the collapse of the financial industry.--Joe Weisenthal

My preferred story, in contrast, is just that once in a century, we get a once-in-a-century economic disaster. These disasters are hard for anyone to foresee, no matter how smart he is. The trick is just to keep the rarity of such disasters in perspective, stay calm, and let things get back to normal. Sigh.--Bryan Caplan

But I’m not sure proponents of [short sales] restrictions even care about these arguments. They don’t like short-selling because it tells the truth.--Larry Ribstein

For the bottom 40% [of income tax filers], the redistribution deal is even better. In 2001, these 43 million Americans, who earn less than $30,500, made 13.5% of the nation's income but paid no income tax. Instead, they received checks from their taxpaying neighbors worth $16.3 billion. By 2005, those checks totaled $33.3 billion.--Ari Fleischer

But in an increasingly specialized society, those skills are increasingly specific,. The more skills you have, the fewer jobs there are that match them.--Megan McArdle

Remember the good old days, when economists used to write papers about how firms -- most of all public utilities -- would under-report profits, to minimize regulation and control? These days we have firms over-reporting profits to minimize regulation and control.--Tyler Cowen

The people who just want to know things because they need to make important decisions, in contrast, usually say little about their love of truth; they are too busy trying to figure stuff out. These are the "truth lovers" I most respect in the sense of trusting their efforts to be directly targeted to actually uncovering truth. Sellers, hobbyists, and do-gooders are instead more likely to pretend to seek truth while actually seeking cash or respect.--Robin Hanson

... why does Brad DeLong make up fake statistics? Is he afraid the truth won't support his orthodoxy? He claims twice -- not once, but twice! -- that it is unfair to say the New Deal was ineffective, because "unemployment did fall from 23% in 1932 to 11% in 1939." Yet the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that unemployment as 17% in 1939.--Don Luskin

I believe that computers have taken over the world. I believe that they have in many ways ruined our children. I believe that kids used to love to go out and play. I believe that social graces are gone because manners are gone because all people do is sit around and text. I think it’s obnoxious.--Steve Nicks

The wheel is also a bad idea.--Don Surber

The challenge now for [Tom] Brady is to do what Tiger Woods has done – keep his personal life private while remaining the premier player in his sport.--Jim Donaldson

Dancing with the Stars is like life itself, only stupider-looking. So you sympathize with the contestants. Because they suck in the same way we suck. Because they succeed in the same way we succeed. They work hard. And they either get it or they don't. As Lawrence Taylor goes, so may I go. So may all of us go. In dancing, as in life.--Ross McCammon

Typical

Texas lawmaker: Asians should change their names to make them ‘easier for Americans to deal with.’

Off for the long weekend

Will resume posting on Monday.

Oh boy, where will it end

Obama looks at climate engineering

Discuss: "Quality Care" is neither about quality nor care

JEROME GROOPMAN and PAMELA HARTZBAND write:

The Obama administration is working with Congress to mandate that all Medicare payments be tied to "quality metrics." But an analysis of this drive for better health care reveals a fundamental flaw in how quality is defined and metrics applied. In too many cases, the quality measures have been hastily adopted, only to be proven wrong and even potentially dangerous to patients.
...
How did we get here? Initially, the quality improvement initiatives focused on patient safety and public-health measures. The hospital was seen as a large factory where systems needed to be standardized to prevent avoidable errors. A shocking degree of sloppiness existed with respect to hand washing, for example, and this largely has been remedied with implementation of standardized protocols. Similarly, the risk of infection when inserting an intravenous catheter has fallen sharply since doctors and nurses now abide by guidelines. Buoyed by these successes, governmental and private insurance regulators now have overreached. They've turned clinical guidelines for complex diseases into iron-clad rules, to deleterious effect.

Maybe Congress should not even convene in times of national emergency

I mean, they are creating the national emergency:

Barney Frank who earlier started war on mark-to-market and republicans, has added a new front to his offensive: Moody's rating agency. The reason: Frank's displeasure with the possibility that Moody's will downgrade America's municipalities as this "action will raise interest rates on cities and towns making it more expensive to borrow funds for infrastructure developments." As a result Frank threatens to hold a hearing in May to explore "the unfair treatment of full faith and credit general obligation bonds."

Fake quote

I did not have salutational relations with that man, King Abdullah.

History may not repeat itself

but there's a 75 year spin cycle:

Orwellian outcomes: universal healthcare

Tony Blankley peers into a possible future:

After first squeezing the private insurance policies by undercutting their offerings with a subsidized federal government health insurance, the government then could undercut the private insurance further by denying the insurers tax deductibility unless they complied with federal health service regulations. As only the wealthiest could afford to buy private health insurance if the cost were not deductible, private health insurance companies would be compelled to follow federal benefits and cost regulations.

At that point, almost all Americans would get their health care pursuant to federally regulated systems. Then the president would be able to begin to deliver on his twin pledges to reduce the cost of entitlements and make health care overall contribute to lower deficits.

The federal regulators could do merely what the British regulators do currently:

--Constantly reduce the compensation of doctors and all other skilled health care providers. (As domestically trained American doctors became scarcer, more not-as-well-trained foreign doctors would be needed.)

--Limit the availability of medical technology. (In Canada, patients have to wait for months for MRIs, so those who can come to America for immediate diagnostic services.)

--Ration available treatment to fit the federal budget requirements. The universal digitalized health data could be used to justify non-treatment on a cost-benefit basis. For example, hip replacement for older people may be denied because they are not likely to live long enough to justify the expense.

At that point, Americans would (too late) understand more fully what happens when health care is a right rather than a service purchased by a sturdy, free people in an unfettered free market.

BCWUW4: be careful what you wish for.

Bob Dylan on President Obama

As featured in TimesOnline:

He’s got an interesting background. He’s like a fictional character, but he’s real. First off, his mother was a Kansas girl. Never lived in Kansas though, but with deep roots. You know, like Kansas bloody Kansas. John Brown the insurrectionist. Jesse James and Quantrill. Bushwhackers, Guerillas. Wizard of Oz Kansas. I think Barack has Jefferson Davis back there in his ancestry someplace. And then his father. An African intellectual. Bantu, Masai, Griot type heritage - cattle raiders, lion killers. I mean it’s just so incongruous that these two people would meet and fall in love. You kind of get past that though. And then you’re into his story. Like an odyssey except in reverse.
...
He’ll be the best president he can be. Most of those guys come into office with the best of intentions and leave as beaten men. Johnson would be a good example of that … Nixon, Clinton in a way, Truman, all the rest of them going back. You know, it’s like they all fly too close to the sun and get burned.

It's a free ride

when you've already paid:

When French foes of capitalism want to mount an effective protest, they phone Xavier Renou.

As one of France's top protest consultants, Mr. Renou teaches activists how to chain themselves to trees, damage genetically modified crops and withstand police interrogations. These days, his phone is ringing off the hook, as the tumult in the global financial system has led to a boom in protests.

Despite a surge in demand for his services, Mr. Renou, 35 years old, is struggling to capitalize on the travails of capitalism. He charges students as much as €50 ($67) a head in his weekend protest course, writes books and has produced board games with left-wing themes.

Every Rose has its thorns

Steve Derion, film critic extraordinaire:

Kate Winslet's character, Rose, was one of the vilest and most disgusting characters ever to grace the silver screen. From beginning to end, she displayed nothing but character flaws and a lack of concern for everyone else around her. As the movie starts, she is a rich brat who is depressed that she has to marry an incredibly rich and handsome man because he treats her badly. Perhaps she should have taken into account his personality rather than his bank account when she accepted his proposal.

Rather than take responsibility for her own actions, stand up to her mother, and tell him to his face that she is not in love with him, she instead decides to take the easy way out and kill herself. Now, the whole world would be better had she just jumped off the back of that damn boat. Instead, our boy Leonardo DiCaprio talks her down from the ledge, and she sees him and thinks, "Ooh, cute poor boy." So then she decides to slum it for the weekend and hook up with the cute poor kid. Then, to prove her total lack of morals, she decides that she will ask Jack to "draw her" -- naked, of course.

So, while engaged to someone else (because she never had the decency to call it off), she decides to get naked for a guy she has known for all of about 24 hours. Immediately afterward it's time to consummate the hours-old relationship in the back of a car that is not theirs. Wow, that's a real "moral" Victorian woman for you! Of course, that is not enough. The ship hits the iceberg (we didn't see that one coming). By the way, she was on deck when that happened. I wonder if our lookout was too busy snooping on her and Jack to notice the iceberg. Maybe it's actually her fault the ship sinks in the first place.

Anyway, our hero Jack puts Rose on a lifeboat. Of course, being safe is not enough, so she jumps back onto the sinking ship -- a prime example of great decision-making. After it goes down, Jack is safe on a door of some sort, but he has to give up his spot to save Rose. Now Rose is on the door, and Jack is stuck in the freezing waters. So in a sense she kills Jack in a slow, frigid, painful way -- sort of like the experience I felt while watching this movie. She holds on to Jack's shivering hand, telling him, "I'll never let go, Jack, I'll never let go." Of course, after a few minutes in Arctic waters, Jack's hand is no longer shivering. Winslet, in tears, continues, "I'll never let go, Jack, I'll never let go." Around then, the lifeboat arrives, and Winslet immediately lets go, "Hey, I'm over here!" Jack sinks to the bottom of the ocean, and Ms. Winslet grabs a spot on the lifeboat. Real nice, Kate, real nice: Whatever happened to never letting go?

We then hear the rest of Winslet's life. Her fiancé loses his mind and ends up killing himself (you're two for two, Kate). However, she finds a nice man, marries him, and lives a great life. Eventually, he dies (I wonder what she did to make that happen), and we see Winslet's Rose again at age -- I don't know, let's say 126 -- with her granddaughter or whoever is on the ship trying to find the Titanic's wreckage. At the end of the film, Rose walks to the back of the ship and takes the priceless diamond necklace that she could give to her grandchildren, which would set her family up for generations, but instead she throws the freaking necklace into the ocean! Queue overplayed, overhyped and over-sung Celine Dion song (I mean, seriously, by the end she is practically screaming the lyrics -- like Celine, we get it, you have a great voice, stop assaulting us with it already).

Back to throwing the fancy necklace: She might as well have thrown three generations of her family over the side of the ship. Could she possibly be more selfish? Well, yes, she could, because then, apparently Rose dies, and we see her in heaven. For some reason, heaven is the Titanic (not exactly what I picture paradise to be). She opens up a stateroom door, and there is Leonardo's Jack waiting for her in bed. Not her actual husband, mind you, but Jack. So she is even cheating on her husband in heaven.

I rest my case. The vilest, most horrifying character in cinematic history. An Academy Award for playing the she-devil would be one of the greatest travesties in mankind's history since ... the actual Titanic.

Photo link here.

Cockroaches: the latest special-interest group advocating global warming mythology

It's not us, it's the carbon emissions. Really. (Via Megan McArdle)

Quotes of the day

Every man serves a useful purpose. A miser, for example, makes a wonderful ancestor.--Laurence Peter

From a libertarian perspective, your generosity is reflected in what you do with your own money, not in what you do with other people's money. If I give a lot of money to charity, then I am generous. If you give a smaller fraction of your money to charity, then you are less generous. But if you want to tax me in order to give my money to charity, that does not make you generous.--Arnold Kling

We are rapidly approaching an ethos of No Company Left Behind or Too Small to Fail. Neither of those concepts works particularly well in K-12 education, where social promotion and other factors have only led to grade inflation and overblown sense of self--Nick Gillespie

Think of government as a charity. From a libertarian perspective, it is a charity run by the Mafia, which will break your knuckles if you don't make your donations. It is also a badly mismanaged charity. It funnels lots of money into questionable causes, and even when the causes are good the programs that it funds tend to be very wasteful.--Arnold Kling

How much longer will Tim Geithner be able to keep ignoring this fatal flaw in his bailout plan? Or will he just decide to ban economic studies by current Harvard and Princeton professors? (Presumably, former Harvard and Princeton professors--Summers and Bernanke--will still enjoy the First Amendment.)--John Carney

Bloomberg News just announced that the SEC is talking about bringing back the Uptick Rule, which prevents people from shortselling while the stock is on its way down. I don't understand why the Commission doesn't focus on something more effective, like installing lavish statues of Mammon on trading floors so that traders can better propitiate him. --Megan McArdle

So, if I've got this clear, Mugabe's family has the Ark if the Covenant, which doesn't melt people, but does grant the power to direct cholera against political opponents?--Amanda Taub

It kind of sucks some of the gravitas out of Obama’s moral preening on Guantanamo Bay when he hires a guy who made a stoner comedy about the place.--Abe Greenwald

Obama prefers to think of himself as Lincoln but, striving for Carterdom, is lucky if he looks like Clinton on a good day.--Jules Crittenden

... this is classic Obama rhetoric: Say you're open-minded, try not to impugn your critics' motives, and then move forward with the standard demagogic approach.--Bryan Caplan

State prosecutors are supposed to be motivated by a sense of public responsibility for the interests of justice. Law firms have other motivations, and no-bid contingency-fee deals encourage lawyers with a financial stake in a case to try meritless claims or ask for exorbitant awards. That serves neither taxpayers nor justice, though in this case it sure did help [Governor Ed] Rendell's re-election campaign.--WSJ Editorial Board

In a deposition for his $10 million suit against American Apparel, Woody Allen described the clothing company's ads as "sleazy," "adolescent" and "infantile." Yes, the same Woody Allen who sleazily started an affair with his quasi-stepdaughter, who was an adolescent at the time.--Cityfile

Three things go up in recessions: church attendance, bar attendance, and movie attendance. Why those three things? They represent the three things people are looking for: meaning, connection, and relief.--Rick Warren

Larry Reed spanks Adam Nossiter

and good:

Imagine a thief who spends an afternoon pick pocketing a sizable crowd. In a few hours, he’s nabbed thousands of dollars in cash and a bag full of credit cards. He then spends a small fortune at some jewelry stores and makes off with the loot as a suspicious citizen who recognizes him cries “Stop!”

If Nossiter were covering this little episode, the story in the Times the next day would read as follows: “A Good Samaritan yesterday gave several gem shops a big boost when he bought more diamonds than the stores usually sell in a month. The benefits of the spending binge were confirmed by no less an authority than the store owners themselves, who promise to hire more employees if the generous customer comes back regularly. An obviously disgruntled passerby attempted to interfere in the matter by shouting as the customer left, but he was told by an angry store manager to leave well enough alone. Meanwhile, economists at the nearby state university are hailing the increase in local GDP.”

Make these substitutions and you have the gist of the actual Nossiter story in the April 5 Times: The Good Samaritan is the federal government, the jewelry store is Louisiana and the passerby who tried to rain on their parade is Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal. Oh, I almost forgot: the people in the crowd whose pockets got picked are representative of the taxpayers of America but it doesn’t matter because they’re not mentioned in Nossiter’s story anyway.

(Via Don Boudreaux)

US Banking: Nothing right on the left; nothing left on the right

Via Felix Salmon:

Bill Belichick, Personnel Arbitrageur

Rich Gosselin writes:

If quarterback alone could deliver a championship, the Miami Dolphins would have six Lombardi Trophies to show for the Dan Marino era. Instead, they have none.

That's what makes Belichick the best in the business right now. Tom Brady takes up only one roster spot. It's what Belichick has done with those other 52 roster spots that have forged the Patriots into the NFL's team of the decade

On Feb. 5, Belichick placed a franchise tag on his backup quarterback Matt Cassel. That ensured the Patriots could keep him on their roster in 2009 at a cost of $14.6 million. Brady was already on the books for $8 million in 2009.

The two quarterbacks combined for almost one-fifth of New England's $125 million salary cap money for 2009. That squeezed the Patriots under the cap. They no longer had any wiggle room.

But Belichick had no intention of keeping Cassel. He understood the value of a starting NFL quarterback and slapped the franchise tag on him to protect the team's investment of time and money in Cassel.

On Feb. 28, Belichick created wiggle room, sending Cassel and aging linebacker Mike Vrabel to the Kansas City Chiefs for a second-round draft pick. That created almost $18 million in salary-cap space and gave Belichick the financial freedom to add 16 veteran players since March 21.

Belichick invested that $18 million in re-signing eight of his own players plus eight free agents. Five of those free agents were NFL starters in 2008: running back Fred Taylor, cornerbacks Leigh Bodden and Shawn Springs, wide receiver Joey Galloway and tight end Chris Baker. Belichick also signed deep snapper Nathan Hodel away from the NFC champion Arizona Cardinals.

The Patriots could go to training camp tomorrow with the deepest, most talented roster in the NFL. Belichick would have no glaring holes in his depth chart.

But, wait, it gets better for the Patriots. New England has an NFL runner-up 11 selections in the 2009 draft, including a league-high six premium picks in the first three rounds. The Patriots have the 23rd overall pick of the draft, three second-rounders and two thirds.

On April 1, the Patriots had the best roster in the NFL. By May 1, it will be even better. Champions are crowned in the NFL every February. But championship teams are built in March and April. Right now, no one does it better than Belichick.

Mario Gabelli gives Mohammed El-Erian some gentle swats on the backside

and good.

Is healthcare getting more difficult to provide?

Megan McArdle says:

Fifty years ago, with the FDA pressing ever harder on efficacy, the most important thing in a pharma chief was probably knowing what went into making an effective drug. Twenty years ago, you needed to know how to market it to get the most money out of a very narrow patent window. These days, you need to be able to negotiate a fearsome political and regulatory environment.

I'm thinking about skyrocketing malpractice insurance premiums for some doctors, and believe that sick people may not be being optimally served.

Why am I not surprised?

I was born in a neurotic state, raised in a neurotic state, educated in neurotic states, employed in neurotic states, married in a neurotic state, and am now raising my children in an a neurotic state.
My next vacation is also taking place in a neurotic state.

Which is more embarrassing: Quayle's Latin in Latin America

or Obama's Austrian to an austrian?

They strike me as very close. Maybe I should work on a Similarities Between Dan Quayle and Barack Obama list.

Greg Newton, who foresaw the credit derivatives crisis back in September 2005

has passed away. Condolences to his family.

UPDATE: His publication also drew skepticism to Bernie Madoff. Back in 2001.

Quotes of the day

Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don’t give it any value.--Dean Steacy, Canadian Human Rights Commissioner

Funny how those who are always lecturing on “human rights” are so quick to ignore Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It’s as if they’re really more concerned with power than with rights.--Glenn Reynolds

George Orwell once observed, brilliantly, that every joke is a tiny revolution. So are the best political blogs – that’s why so many powerful people want to silence them.--Stabroek News Editorial Board

Bill Gates' April Fools joke is not very funny.--Donald Sensing

As the popular saying goes, they told me if I voted for McCain … there would be no end to the hated Bush Constitution-stomping policies, and they were right! Obama admin moves to thwart a lawsuit on NSA eavesdropping.--Jules Crittenden

Top 1% Earned 19% of Income, Paid 28% of All Taxes. And got 1% of the vote.--Glenn Reynolds

It turns out that financial regulation is not like a math problem, which can be solved once and stays solved. Instead, financial regulation is like a chess game, in which moves and counter-moves proceed continually, eventually changing the board in ways that players have not anticipated.--Arnold Kling

... does Barney Frank really think that the next crisis -- and you know we'll see plenty more -- is going to look like the last? Does Frank really anticipate that if things got back to normal, banks would immediately start ignoring homeowner credit risk.--Joe Weisenthal

Maybe I’m overly cynical, but trusting a politician’s conscience seems a bit like trusting a prostitute’s sense of propriety.--Tony Woodlief

The Boston Globe finds itself having to live up to the ideals it espoused for others, facing the threat that it mocked and denied. The stalwart defender of unions must now wrest back concessions from its own unions.--J.G. Thayer

It turns out St. Paul might have been a precursor of Norman Vincent Peale and Dr. Ruth. (Well, he did say it was better to marry than to burn.)--K.J. Webb

Sure, my boxed trifecta might not come in, but I think it's worth six bucks to threaten a horse with a trip to the glue factory. (I'm not sure what emoticon to add here to indicate that I actually love horses and that was Soviet-level black humor. Maybe a smiley Dostoevsky?)--Jesse Livermore

Last night I convinced Caleb that instead of saving up money to buy an expensive, super-complicated Star Wars Death Star Lego kit, he should spend that money on a motorbike. I’m fairly certain that as a result I’ve rescued him from a lifetime of involuntary virginity.--Tony Woodlief

Conor Clarke posts an update of the tax picture in the US

Inequality and progressivity are in the eye of the beholder, but here are a few highlights:

--The 2006 average effective federal tax rate is 20.7%. In 1979 (the year the data set starts) it was 22.2%. The 2006 average rate for the bottom quintile of households is 4.3%; for the highest quintile it's 25.8%. In 1979 it was 8% and 27.5%, respectively.

--The 2006 average effective rate for the top 1% of households is 31.2%. It fell slightly since 2005, when it was 31.6%. In 1979 it was 37%.

--The bottom quintile of households pay 0.8% of all federal tax liabilities. The top quintile pays 69.35.

--The average pretax income for the bottom quintile is $17,200. For the top quintile it's $248,400. After-tax, it's $16,500 and $184,400.

The Obama Administration HATES children?

It's not just about the debt our kids will inherit; it's also about the education they will not be able to receive (sans union meddling):

Voucher recipients were tested last spring. The scores were analyzed in the late summer and early fall, and in November preliminary results were presented to a team of advisers who work with the Education Department to produce the annual evaluation. Since Education officials are intimately involved in this process, they had to know what was in this evaluation even as Democrats passed (and Mr. Obama signed) language that ends the program after next year.

Opponents of school choice for poor children have long claimed they'd support vouchers if there was evidence that they work. While running for President last year, Mr. Obama told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that if he saw more proof that they were successful, he would "not allow my predisposition to stand in the way of making sure that our kids can learn . . . You do what works for the kids." Except, apparently, when what works is opposed by unions.

Mr. Duncan's office spurned our repeated calls and emails asking what and when he and his aides knew about these results. We do know the Administration prohibited anyone involved with the evaluation from discussing it publicly. You'd think we were talking about nuclear secrets, not about a taxpayer-funded pilot program. A reasonable conclusion is that Mr. Duncan's department didn't want proof of voucher success to interfere with Senator Dick Durbin's campaign to kill vouchers at the behest of the teachers unions.

The decision to let 1,700 poor kids get tossed from private schools is a moral disgrace. It also exposes the ugly politics that lies beneath union and liberal efforts across the country to undermine mayoral control, charter schools, vouchers or any reform that threatens their monopoly over public education dollars and jobs. The Sheldon Silver-Dick Durbin Democrats aren't worried that school choice doesn't work. They're worried that it does, and if Messrs. Obama and Duncan want to succeed as reformers they need to say so consistently.

Oh, and it looks like the better outcomes were had at a quarter of the cost.

Another whistleblower

another tragedy in deafness:

Back in 2002, a new employee of Harvard University’s endowment manager named Iris Mack wrote a letter to the school’s president, Lawrence Summers, that would ultimately get her fired.

In the letter, dated May 12 of that year, Mack told Summers that she was “deeply troubled and surprised” by things she had seen in her new job as a quantitative analyst at Harvard Management Co.

She would go on to say, in later e-mails and conversations, that she felt the endowment was taking on too much risk in derivatives investments, and that she suspected some of her colleagues were engaging in insider trading, according to a separate letter written by her lawyer that summarized the correspondence.

On July 2 Mack was fired. But six years later, the kinds of investments she allegedly warned about did blow up on Harvard. The endowment plunged 22 percent last summer, in part due to the collapse of the credit markets. As a result, the school is cutting costs and under criticism that it took on too much risk in its investment portfolio.

Baracky Road: a new ice cream flavor

is a blend of half Vanilla, half Chocolate, and surrounded by Nuts and Flakes.

The Vanilla portion of the mix is not openly advertised and usually denied as an ingredient. The Nuts and Flakes are all very bitter and hard to swallow. The cost is $100.00 per scoop.

When purchased it will be presented to you in a large beautiful cone, but then the Ice Cream is taken away and given to the person in line behind you.

Thus you are left with:

• an empty wallet,
  
• no change,
  
• an empty cone,
  
• with no hope of getting any ice cream

from my favorite broker.

Geithner's Big Scam

is actually not a bug, but a feature, according to Joe Weisenthal:

Look, the government's actions all revolve around one overriding strategy: Moving more and more of our private debt to the public ledger. That's it! There's nothing more to it. The bet is that the public balance sheet can withstand a lot more leverage before it busts, and that a delevered private sector can return to health.

Thus all these bailout efforts are meant to be gamed. If there were no gaming going on, the schemes wouldn't be living up to their full potential, because that would represent debt staying in the private sector.

Of course this strategy has drawbacks. For one thing, it's totally dishonest, because it's not being sold this way. It also is rewarding failure, maintaining a status quo that's proven to be unsustainable. And what's more, if Washington is wrong, and the public balance sheet can't withstand more leverage, the effects could be catastrophic.

But really, for the bailouts to work, the private sector -- and, yes that includes homeowners who are figuring out ways to scam the mortgage mods -- needs to "game" the system as much as possible.

After the big transfer is done, we just need to default on our Social Security payments and cut military spending and voila, problem solved.

I'm still thinking it's a big bug. Photo link here.

Why might free prediction markets be a matter of life or death?

Experts can be gamed by government:

An Italian scientist predicted a major earthquake around L'Aquila weeks before disaster struck the city on Monday, killing dozens of people, but was reported to authorities for spreading panic among the population.

Any other questions?

Quotes of the day

My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.--President Obama, to bank CEOs

Say, can we get a list of Fannie Mae / Freddie Mac bonus recipients? I mean, since Congress’s need for the AIG names was so urgent.--Glenn Reynolds

Well, [Bill Maher's] lips say he’s still for free speech, except dissent has been downgraded from patriotic to dangerous.--Don Surber

[President Obama] has now gotten himself so entangled in the car business that he is personally guaranteeing your muffler. (Upon reflection, a job best left to the congenitally unmuffled Joe Biden.)--Charles Krauthammer

You don’t want a messianic apocalyptic cult controlling atomic bombs. When the wide-eyed believer gets hold of the reins of power and the weapons of mass death, then the entire world should start worrying, and that is what is happening in Iran.--Benjamin Netanyahu

I'd much rather have a sports world littered with [Curt] Schillings than Vijay Singhs.--Bill Simmons

Medicare: You don't get what you don't pay for

Not so obvious to everyone.

Reducing carbon emissions organically

Plants and trees are growing faster because of rising carbon dioxide levels.

Uh oh, all this expansion of flora could lead us to global cooling!

The scarcity of freedom

at the G-20.