So should the personal foibles of candidates and their immediate family be off limits in the campaign? The id of the tabloid media drives it to cover scandal in any form. The mainstream media would like to believe it has evolved from the era of William Randolph Hearst -- he of the infamous proclamation, "you furnish the pictures, I'll furnish the war." Yet, when a Republican VP nominee showed up with a pregnant teenage daughter, the mainstream media's superego disappeared faster than Dan Quayle at a spelling bee.
The people who eventually hold the highest office in this country face unfathomable challenges. In electing them we grasp for any clues to their judgment and character, signals as to how they will react, and the verisimilitude of what they will tell the American people. An affair, regardless of political affiliation, is a breach of private trust; lying about it to the American public signals a dangerous willingness to deceive when caught in tough situations.
While John Edwards and Sarah Palin have served as lightning rods for the debatable issue of how personal controversy affects public worthiness for leadership, the mainstream media vacillates between ignoring and rushing into these types of stories. New media, with its raucous pursuit of every salacious rumor, feels no such restraint. Inchoate ideas and suppositions find purchase on blogs from both sides of the political spectrum.
Inevitably the mainstream media, suffering from the corporate pressures of diminishing profits, will yield to new media and its populism. The two-newspaper city, once a staple of every metropolis, is already as rare as a grammatically correct sentence from George Bush.
So with apologies to John Edwards, Sarah Palin and untold other Democrats and Republicans, the tabloid media gladly accepts its role of covering the scandals, relying on the American public to decide if that information is relevant to job performance.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Irony of the day: Chief of the National Enquirer lectures the mainstream media
Quotes of the day
Economist Gary Burtless of the Brookings Institution recently discovered this astonishing data: on average, annual health spending per person -- from all private and government sources -- is equal for the poorest and the richest Americans. In 2003, it was $4,477 for the poorest fifth and $4,451 for the richest.--Robert Samuelson
Markets don't do better, over the long run, because people in the private sector are smarter or well meaning. They do better because they can be fired ... Schools that do to education what Bear Stearns did to mortgage bonds maybe get a stern talking to from the mayor, and in extraordinary circumstances, the principal may be fired. ... But the school itself keeps going no matter how bad a job it is doing.--Megan McArdle
How about that Barack Obama? They are saying “for the first time he’s starting to slip in the polls. But don’t worry. He’s got a plan. He’s going to go back to campaigning in Europe.--David Letterman
More and more it's becoming apparent that Palin's speech, although sent out to the world, had a target audience of one. The One! And boy, did she ever set up camp inside his head.--Jim Treacher
Governors have more qualification than Senators regardless of the size of their state, Obama should be but isn’t winning handily, and if Hillary were on the ticket Democrats wouldn’t be in a frenzy. With surrogates like this, it’s no wonder the Obama camp may need to go to Plan B. What is Plan B, by the way? Is there a Plan B?--Jennifer Rubin
Obama is struggling with working-class whites just like John Kerry, Al Gore, Bill Clinton, Michael Dukakis did, and Walter Mondale. He’s struggling with voters in the border-state South. And he’s struggling with an enormous wind at his back, a hatred for George Bush and a mainstream media that is little short of a chorus for his campaign.--anonymous Democratic strategist
Pimco's Bill Gross, who manages the world's biggest bond fund, had been agitating for weeks for a bailout. Asked about his Fannie and Freddie positions, a spokesman told us, "we don't discuss our holdings." Our guess is Mr. Gross is a lot richer after the bailout than he was last week. Ditto for Goldman Sachs, which also declined comment and where Mr. Paulson used to work.We hope someone on Capitol Hill asks Mr. Paulson for a list of these big winners, so taxpayers can understand who is getting richer on their dime.--WSJ Editorial Board
Senator Jim DeMint looks at the fiscal record of Palin and Obama
I think DeMint is the most fiscally responsible Senator alive. Those pesky earmarks don't just create capital inefficiencies in our economy; they put people in mortal danger.Mrs. [Sarah] Palin used her veto pen to slash more local projects than any other governor in the state's history. She cut nearly 10% of Alaska's budget this year, saving state residents $268 million. This included vetoing a $30,000 van for Campfire USA and $200,000 for a tennis court irrigation system. She succinctly justified these cuts by saying they were "not a state responsibility."
Meanwhile in Washington, Mr. [Barack] Obama voted for numerous wasteful earmarks last year, including: $12 million for bicycle paths, $450,000 for the International Peace Museum, $500,000 for a baseball stadium and $392,000 for a visitor's center in Louisiana.
Mrs. Palin cut Alaska's federal earmark requests in half last year, one of the strongest moves against earmarks by any governor. It took real leadership to buck Alaska's decades-long earmark addiction.
Mr. Obama delivered over $100 million in earmarks to Illinois last year and has requested nearly a billion dollars in pet projects since 2005. His running mate, Joe Biden, is still indulging in earmarks, securing over $90 million worth this year.
Mrs. Palin also killed the infamous Bridge to Nowhere in her own state. Yes, she once supported the project: But after witnessing the problems created by earmarks for her state and for the nation's budget, she did what others like me have done: She changed her position and saved taxpayers millions. Even the Alaska Democratic Party credits her with killing the bridge.
When the Senate had its chance to stop the Bridge to Nowhere and transfer the money to Katrina rebuilding, Messrs. Obama and Biden voted for the $223 million earmark, siding with the old boys' club in the Senate. And to date, they still have not publicly renounced their support for the infamous earmark.
Mrs. Palin has proven courageous by taking on big spenders in her own party. In March of this year, the Anchorage Daily News reported that, "Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens is aggravated about what he sees as Gov. Sarah Palin's antagonism toward the earmarks he uses to steer federal money to the state."
Mr. Obama had a chance to take on his party when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid offered a sham ethics bill, which was widely criticized by watchdog groups such as Citizens Against Government Waste for shielding earmarks from public scrutiny. But instead of standing with taxpayers, Mr. Obama voted for the bill. Today, he claims he helped write the bill that failed to clean up Washington.
Mr. Obama has shown little restraint on earmarks until this year, when he decided to co-sponsor an earmark moratorium authored by Mr. McCain and myself. Mr. Obama is vulnerable on this issue, and he knows it. That is why he is lashing out at Mrs. Palin and trying to hide his own record.
Mrs. Palin is one of the strongest antiearmark governors in America. If more governors around the country would do what she has done, we would be much closer to fixing our nation's fiscal problems than we are.
Some politicians seem woefully out of touch
South Carolina Democratic chairwoman Carol Fowler sharply attacked Sarah Palin today, saying John McCain had chosen a running mate "whose primary qualification seems to be that she hasn’t had an abortion.”Contrast these with what appears to be more mainstream America.
Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., Wednesday said that Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., might have been a better pick for the position than him.
A major Democratic fundraiser described it a good bit more starkly after digesting the polls of recent days: “I’m so depressed. It’s happening again. It’s a nightmare.”
... the Obama campaign seems to be struggling to find a consistent, cohesive economic message. One can understand why aides would not want to muddy his mantra of change and his image as a post-partisan, revolutionary figure. But blue-collar voters in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and Michigan likely won’t vote for Obama because of some meta-narrative or a series of fabulous speeches.
The campaign's ``novelty has worn off,'' said Representative Bill Pascrell, a New Jersey Democrat. The Obama campaign ``seems to have lost its speed, its response time.''
I think there is a really good chance that Sarah Palin could president. And I think that's a really scary thing because I don't know anything about her.--Matt Damon
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Pete Carroll LOVES Matt Cassel
This is the first game he's going to start in a long time because he's had the misfortune of being behind Heisman Trophy winners and then in the NFL behind the best quarterback that maybe ever lived. He's had to wait forever. This is a kid that never gave in to that, persevered through all of that and continues to believe in himself.Others who love MC.
Jennifer Rubin says that Barack Obama can no longer blame others for his challenges
Rubin also mentions several other stumbles in this piece. She packs a lot in a few punches.While Obama supporters flail about and bemoan the state of the race, here’s something to consider: the fix which Barack Obama is now in is entirely of his own making. The obvious blunder was in bypassing Hillary Clinton as VP. With Clinton, the frenzy of excitement would have been for the Democrats and Sarah Palin would be back in Alaska. But that is not Obama’s only flub, not by a long shot. Consider:
– Reneging on his public financing promise: Had he not done that, he might have saved his New Politics reputation and avoided his current money woes.
– Going on the Magical Mystery Tour: Had he not done that, we likely wouldn’t have had the “I still don’t think the surge was worth it” interview, there wouldn’t have been the priceless Berlin rally footage and he might have spent the summer at home talking about energy policy.
– Nixing the townhalls: Had he not done that, he — again — might have sustained the New Politics moniker and could have kept the focus on domestic issues and McCain’s association with George Bush.
The fruits of growing government
Bayes + Intrade + Mankiw
Still trying to figure out where Greg stands on "gambling", since he exploits Tradesports and Intrade data.
Graph of the day
The government can't control it's spending:
The real news in yesterday's Congressional Budget Office semiannual report is that federal expenditures on everything from roads to homeland security to health care will on present trends reach 21.5% of GDP next year. That's a larger share of national output than at anytime since 1992. If the cost of the federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac prove to be large and are taken into account, next year federal outlays could be higher as a share of the economy than at anytime since World War II. In this decade alone, federal spending has increased by almost $1.2 trillion, or 57%.Why should they get even more of our money?
I'd also like to note that, from 1993-2000, defense spending actually fell more than 20%, from 4.1% of GDP to 2.9%. Without these cuts, there would have been no surplus in the Nineties.
Science does not equal death
We last considered this question back in April.The Large Hadron Collider, the greatest atom smasher ever created, the world's biggest machine, was switched on today at CERN, the European nuclear research centre outside Geneva. And the result: rather less than earth shattering.
Protons streams were then introduced into more and more of the machine until less than an hour later - far earlier than predicted - a stream whizzed around the entire circumference of the particle accelerator at a shade under the speed of light. The LHC had passed its first crucial landmark.
A host of Jeremiahs have been predicting that the collider, costing £5bn and a quarter of a century in the making, will destroy the world by spawning mini black holes which will sink to the Earth's core before gobbling it up
LBJ joins Alan Greenspan and Andrew Cuomo
My recent musing on Greenspan and Cuomo here.Today's troubles began when President Lyndon Johnson was having a hard time delivering on his guns-and-butter promise. In January 1968, LBJ proposed to Congress both a war surtax and a change in government's bookkeeping. The Federal National Mortgage Association would move off-budget, nominally reducing federal borrowing. The new mortgage company, the New York Times reported, would be ``wholly privately owned.''
But not entirely private. For here is where Fannie's career as a swinger -- swinging between public and private, that is -- took off. Either at that point, or later, Fannie and its sibling, Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp., or Freddie Mac, enjoyed a number of government privileges.
But the Fannie fiasco matters for a less obvious reason. There are other accidents waiting to happen in the social entitlements whose costs also will jeopardize U.S. long-term growth. Social Security and Fannie aren't often spoken of in the same breath -- as programs go, we associate Social Security with the swinging-and-60-plus crowd, not the Swinging '60s.
What Social Security and Fannie have in common is that both have lived important segments of their lives off-budget. Tax increases are likely to pay for Fannie and Freddie. These increases will remind voters that being off-budget doesn't mean a program won't eventually penalize the taxpayer. Burned by Fannie, voters may get ready for entitlement reform.
That's hardly a consolation. Still, all that suggests the Treasury's acknowledgement of the GSEs' costs was a wise one. The first step to financial stability is getting swingers to stay on the books.
UPDATE: Greg Mankiw has a list of top recipients of Frannie gravy:
1. Dodd, Christopher J, D-CTI note that, for the presumptive Change Candidate, he runs with some pretty old school characters.
2. Kerry, John, D-MA
3. Obama, Barack, D-IL
4. Clinton, Hillary, D-NY
Camille Paglia and I agree on Sarah Palin
Conservative though she may be, I felt that Palin represented an explosion of a brand new style of muscular American feminism. At her startling debut on that day, she was combining male and female qualities in ways that I have never seen before. And she was somehow able to seem simultaneously reassuringly traditional and gung-ho futurist. In terms of redefining the persona for female authority and leadership, Palin has made the biggest step forward in feminism since Madonna channeled the dominatrix persona of high-glam Marlene Dietrich and rammed pro-sex, pro-beauty feminism down the throats of the prissy, victim-mongering, philistine feminist establishment.I said something similar a week ago: Sarah Palin may be the unlikely catalyst for expanding women's rights around the world in this century; the way Deng Xiaoping was for economic freedoms in the last.
As a dissident feminist, I have been arguing since my arrival on the scene nearly 20 years ago that young American women aspiring to political power should be studying military history rather than taking women's studies courses, with their rote agenda of never-ending grievances.
I am still waiting for substantive evidence that Sarah Palin is a dangerous extremist. I am perfectly willing to be convinced, but right now, she seems to be merely an optimistic pragmatist like Ronald Reagan, someone who pays lip service to religious piety without being in the least wedded to it. I don't see her arrival as portending the end of civil liberties or life as we know it.
I may not agree a jot with her about basic principles, but I have immensely enjoyed Palin's boffo performances at her debut and at the Republican convention, where she astonishingly dealt with multiple technical malfunctions without missing a beat. A feminism that cannot admire the bravura under high pressure of the first woman governor of a frontier state isn't worth a warm bucket of spit.
Now that's the Sarah Palin brand of can-do, no-excuses, moose-hunting feminism -- a world away from the whining, sniping, wearily ironic mode of the establishment feminism represented by Gloria Steinem, a Hillary Clinton supporter whose shameless Democratic partisanship over the past four decades has severely limited American feminism and not allowed it to become the big tent it can and should be. Sarah Palin, if her reputation survives the punishing next two months, may be breaking down those barriers. Feminism, which should be about equal rights and equal opportunity, should not be a closed club requiring an ideological litmus test for membership.
The witch-trial hysteria of the past two incendiary weeks unfortunately reveals a disturbing trend in the Democratic Party, which has worsened over the past decade. Democrats are quick to attack the religiosity of Republicans, but Democratic ideology itself seems to have become a secular substitute religion. Since when did Democrats become so judgmental and intolerant?
... the pro-life position, whether or not it is based on religious orthodoxy, is more ethically highly evolved than my own tenet of unconstrained access to abortion on demand. My argument (as in my first book, "Sexual Personae,") has always been that nature has a master plan pushing every species toward procreation and that it is our right and even obligation as rational human beings to defy nature's fascism. Nature herself is a mass murderer, making casual, cruel experiments and condemning 10,000 to die so that one more fit will live and thrive.
Hence I have always frankly admitted that abortion is murder, the extermination of the powerless by the powerful. Liberals for the most part have shrunk from facing the ethical consequences of their embrace of abortion, which results in the annihilation of concrete individuals and not just clumps of insensate tissue.
What I am getting at here is that not until the Democratic Party stringently reexamines its own implicit assumptions and rhetorical formulas will it be able to deal effectively with the enduring and now escalating challenge from the pro-life right wing. Because pro-choice Democrats have been arguing from cold expedience, they have thus far been unable to make an effective ethical case for the right to abortion.
If Sarah Palin tries to intrude her conservative Christian values into secular government, then she must be opposed and stopped. But she has every right to express her views and to argue for society's acceptance of the high principle of the sanctity of human life.
There is plenty of room in modern thought for a pro-life feminism -- one in fact that would have far more appeal to third-world cultures where motherhood is still honored and where the Western model of the hard-driving, self-absorbed career woman is less admired.But the one fundamental precept that Democrats must stand for is independent thought and speech. When they become baying bloodhounds of rigid dogma, Democrats have committed political suicide.
I am impressed that Paglia has followed her Darwinian assumptions--natural selection and sexual selection--to their logical conclusions on the abortion issue (i.e. "I have always frankly admitted that abortion is murder; the extermination of the powerless by the powerful"). She is fiercely independent--too many feminists weaken their cause by carrying political water instead of expanding the rights and freedoms of women around the world (and even Bill Clinton's wife).
Quotes of the day
What's the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick.--Sarah Palin, Sep 3
You can put lipstick on a pig [long pause for laughter], but it’s still a pig.--Barack Obama, Sep 9
And, bottom line, when part of your defense is "I wasn't as bad as Frank Murkowski" isn't that a real sign of trouble?--Glenn Reynolds
In practice, the folks at Treasury figure that by doing this now, rather than waiting, at least they stop Fannie and Freddie from issuing debt that pays a risk premium when the Treasury knows that it's the taxpayers who will end up paying that risk premium. So the existing debtholders' profits are grandfathered in, but the hope is that you're not going to keep handing out money to the buyers of new GSE debt.The moral of the story is that Barney Frank's idea of a financial system, in which a very forgiving government-sponsored lender makes low down-payment loans in the name of "affordable housing," only works for a while. Eventually, it uses up a lot of money and a lot of time and effort on the part of the civil servants trying to put Humpty-Dumpty back together.--Arnold Kling
I do think Google has a pretty creepy corporate culture, not overly law abiding and respectful of the IP rights of others, and with imperial ambitions. They scare me, but golly, they do make good products. I do think it's wrong for them to keep all those brains they stole from orphans alive in vats underneath their server farm in Oregon just to alpha test their products, however, even if the technology is really impressive.--Tom Smith
[Football is] cruelest of the four major sports. You never know when the rug will get pulled out from under you.--Bill Simmons
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
Can the middle class be defined regionally by median home prices?
I'd guess that there's only a $70,000 median income difference, based on this 2005 copy of HUD data (couldn't find the original ... from Fannie Mae). But that's only 3 times the difference.
This score remains to be settled.
Koleman Strumpf weighs Tom Brady's value
Of course, if the Patriots success is driven by the coaching scheme and/or and personnel management more than Brady, then Matt Cassel should be good enough to lead the Patriots to the division title ...
Professional athletes and campaign donations
1. Sports figures don't want high marginal tax rates for the upper income brackets.
2. Currently the disproportionate representation of African-Americans in sports is throwing more support to Obama than a Democratic candidate normally would receive.
3. Perhaps athletes are less likely to come from coastal elites, who are becoming increasingly Democratic.
4. Republicans have historically shown less interest in regulating professional sports than have Democrats.
5. The sport of football most embodies the ethic of martial virtue and so football players and executives are especially drawn to McCain.
If Europe is so wonderful
Has any affirmative action program worked better than McDonald's?
Quotes of the day
In the United States, we have a huge inventory of unoccupied homes. We have trillions of dollars of mortgage debt. We need a government-sponsored enterprises to encourage more homebuilding and more debt about as much as we need a government enterprise to stimulate teenagers to want more sex.--Arnold Kling
There you have the Fannie Mae problem in profile. [Barney] Frank wants you to pick up the tab for its failures, while he still vows to block a reform that might prevent the same disaster from happening again ... the biggest payoff for Mr. Frank is the "affordable housing" trust fund he managed to push through as one political price for the recent Fannie reform bill. This fund siphons off a portion of Fannie and Freddie profits -- as much as $500 million a year each -- to a fund that politicians can then disburse to their favorite special interests.--WSJ Editorial Board
Enduring reform of Fannie and Freddie is a key first step. We will make sure that they are permanently restructured and downsized, and no longer use taxpayer backing to serve lobbyists, management, boards and shareholders.--John McCain and Sarah Palin
... what is Obama saying, he won't be bullied by a 44 year old hockey mom? Stand Tall, Barack - you won't be bullied by Sarah Palin! OMG, is this a secret plan to assassinate Putin by making him laugh so hard he gets an aneurysm?--Tom Macguire
When Obama says, "We need change, but . . .," he casts himself in the role of defender of the status quo. That is quite a turnaround.--James Taranto
My colleagues in the American liberal press had little to fear at the start of the week. . . . But instead of protecting their precious advantage, they succumbed to a spasm of hatred and threw the vase, the crockery, the cutlery and the kitchen sink at an obscure politician from Alaska ... Hatred is the most powerful emotion in politics. . . . Hate can sell better than hope. When a hate campaign goes wrong, however, disaster follows.--Nick Cohen
All 22 countries covered in the poll would prefer to see Senator Obama elected US president ahead of Republican John McCain. --BBC
Opening with Gen. Casey also says something about [Bob] Woodward. There's a case, I suppose, for using the general who opposed the surge to open what is hailed as the definitive account of that surge (not to mention using Robert McNamara, the Defense secretary who helped lose Vietnam to end the book). Surely, however, that would be the same case for wrapping the definitive account of the strategy that brought Robert E. Lee to Appomattox around Gen. McClellan.--William McGurn
McPalin gains on Jobama
John McCain has gained significantly, by getting Ohio to bend towards him, and by pulling Virginia and Colorado back to deadlocks. Barack Obama needs to regain the upper hand, perhaps in the upcoming debate on September 26.
Democrat: 260 [-26]
Republican: 247 [+20]
Dead Heat: 31 [+6]
Total: 538 (270 to win)
Back in August, I noted Ezra Klein's view that:
This election, in other words, is becoming a contest to decide which type of elite voters hate -- or fear, or mistrust -- more: A social elite or an economic elite?
It appears that Sarah Palin has countered the perception of elitism quite effectively.
James Taranto does some digging on Obama's community organizer experience
Another way of putting this might be that Obama left community organizing because he wanted a job in which he had actual responsibilities (and, of course, earned more money).
But Obama did not decide only that "community organizing" was not for him. Judis reports the future senator took part in a September 1989 symposium in which he "rejected the guiding principles of community organizing: the elevation of self-interest over moral vision; the disdain for charismatic leaders and their movements; and the suspicion of politics itself." Later, Obama "would begin to construct a political identity for himself that was not simply different from his identity as a community organizer--but was, in fact, its very opposite."
Read the whole thing.
Monday, September 08, 2008
A dialogue with John Delaney, Intrade CEO
I think it's great that Todd is advocating for better service, and that John is directly responding to him, and that we can also be part of the process. This may be a positive harbinger for prediction markets.
If Intrade can continually prove to be the best prediction exchange, then it will certainly continue to retain my business and support. Like any other market, some more liquidity would be the rising tide that lifted all boats.
Wow, Charlie Rangel paid 0% interest on his mortgage?
And once again, we get insight into the Rangel household and his capacity to represent his constituents. We further learn that Rangel had no clue that he was paying no interest on this mortgage. That's after we learned yesterday that he didn't have a clue that he was supposed to claim the income from that property. And that's after we learned that Rangel didn't know that rent stabilization guidelines prohibited him from using such apartments as offices. He's the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee in the House, and yet he doesn't know tax laws or care to follow them.Via Glenn Reynolds. Charlie just keeps coming back for more. No wonder approval ratings for Congress are only half Dubya's.
It's also interesting that Rangel claims that his wife was responsible for taking care of the family finances and tax records. I think we just saw Charlie attempt throw his wife under the bus, but if Charlie signed those tax records, he's just as liable as she is.
What we do see here is a pattern of impropriety, where Rangel not only takes advantage of the system (as per the apartments), but clearly abuses the system and avoids paying taxes on income.
Levitt looks at NFL compensation
1) As Michael Lewis argued, starting left tackles are indeed paid more on average than any other position on the field except for quarterbacks. The average starting quarterback makes about $5 million a year. The average starting left tackle gets $4 million. Defensive linemen and wide receivers also do pretty well.
2) There aren’t enough left-handed quarterbacks to do a rigorous analysis, but the blind-side theory is supported by the sparse data that exist on lefty quarterbacks. On those teams, right tackles tend to get paid much more than left tackles. Overall, the median blind-side tackles get paid over twice as much as the median non-blind-side tackles.
3) Punters and kickers make the least money — then safeties.
4) Perhaps the biggest surprise to me is how little running backs make. They are down toward the bottom of the list; I would guess that the wear and tear they face tends to shorten their careers, so they have fewer years over which to earn.
The New York Times actually SUPPORTED Sarah Palin's candidacy
Where is it written that only senators are qualified to become President? Surely Ronald Reagan does not subscribe to that maxim. Or where is it written that mere representatives aren't qualified, like Geraldine Ferraro of Queens?UPDATE: Wow, Nancy Pelosi, too!...Where is it written that governors and mayors, like Dianne Feinstein of San Francisco, are too local, too provincial? That didn't stop Richard Nixon from picking Spiro Agnew, a suburban politician who became Governor of Maryland. Remember the main foreign affairs credential of Georgia's Governor Carter: He was a member of the Trilateral Commission.
...What a splendid system, we say to ourselves, that takes little-known men, tests them in high office and permits them to grow into statesmen. This rationale may even be right, but then let it also be fair. Why shouldn't a little-known woman have the same opportunity to grow?
Once again, Intrade markets do not agree with the polls
I am triumphantly vindicated in my opinion that the Obama campaign's in trouble. This is not adequate to still my deep regret that John McCain might actually be our next president.But Obama makes progress where it counts: in electoral votes. Virginia is now looking to be in his corner.
Democrat: 286 [+13]
Republican: 227
Dead Heat: 25 [-13]
Total: 538 (270 to win)
Given the superior track record of Intrade's state primary predictions, I give the prediction market much more weight.
UPDATE: Stephen Green pushes the envelope with this doomsday scenario:
In this case, it would go to the House of Representatives. If the GOP members failed to show up for the vote, then Dick Cheney would be President!
I nominate Arnold Kling to backup Ben Bernanke
Arnold writes today:
As fantasy mortgage czar, I value stability of housing markets and financial institutions more than raising the home ownership rate.
Quotes of the day
How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.--Benjamin Disraeli
I contend that reducing the role of money of politics in order to make politics more honest is like trying to make airplanes safer by reducing the role of gravity. Let's get money out of politics by making politicians less powerful.--Russell Roberts
Democratic government in the United States today offers neither adequate exit nor adequate voice to its constituents. Just as our economy is characterized by extreme inequality of income and wealth, our political system is one in which power is very unevenly distributed.--Arnold Kling
I am saddened whenever any private profit-seeking enterprise gets bailed out, whether it is Chrysler, Long-term Capital Management, Bear Stearns, or the GSEs. Such bailouts sow the seeds of the next financial crisis by fostering expectations of future bailouts and encouraging excessive risk-taking. (And before anyone emails me that the GSE equity holders are not exactly getting a good deal here, let me point out that the debt holders are. In a capitalist system, you want those extending both debt and equity finance to bear the consequences of the risks they undertake. If the taxpayer is chipping in, someone is being insulated from risk.)--Greg Mankiw
I also think there's no way to develop any direct test of media bias that will satisfy people who want to disbelieve in it.--Megan McArdle
Obviously, we should rush to drill now if we expected oil prices to decline sharply in the future, because then the reserve would be rapidly depreciating while it is left in the ground. But that does not seem to be the argument of the bozos on either side of the aisle.--Giacomo Ponzetto
The real legacy of the Bush Administration may turn out to be Washington's invasion of financial markets. Five years from now, we could find ourselves with no exit strategy. My guess is that we'll be pretty much out of Iraq by then. But it would not surprise me to see Freddie and Fannie still in limbo. And who knows whether the Fed's portfolio, which took on some unusual assets with the Bear Stearns rescue, will look more or less exotic than it does today?--Arnold Kling
On the issue of dividend taxation, Barack Obama may be the candidate with the best chance of preserving George Bush’s legacy.--Greg Mankiw
If you’ve got a gun in your house, I’m not taking it. Even if I want to take them away, I don’t have the votes in Congress. This can’t be the reason not to vote for me. Can everyone hear me in the back? I see a couple of sportsmen back there. I’m not going to take away your guns.--Barack Obama
Hence the weird anger emanating from social liberals at the religious right's failure to tar and feather the Palins and run them out of GOP politics on a rail: They're mad that religious conservatives aren't fitting neatly into the stereotypes that liberals have spent years cultivating.--Ross Douthat
... children who lived in cities that gave them more exposure to television in early childhood performed better on the tests than those with less exposure.--Justin Lahart
We now realize that the overall policy of promoting home ownership was carried to excess. Even taking as given the goal of expanding home ownership, the public policy case for subsidizing mortgage finance was weak. The case for using the GSEs as a vehicle to subsidize mortgage finance was weaker still. The GSE structure serves to privatize profits and socialize losses. And even if one thought that home ownership was worth encouraging, mortgage debt was worth subsidizing, and the GSE structure was viable, allowing the GSEs to assume a dominant role in mortgage finance was a mistake. The larger they grew, the more precarious our financial markets became.--Arnold Kling
The right solution is the advancement of politicians, in either party but particularly the Republicans, who are wedded, as a matter of principle, to pro-growth policies and to the spirit of dynamism that is New York's greatest asset. This means candidates who fight for low taxation, modest government, deregulation, free trade, and more open immigration. And who appreciate the role of our city's biggest crop, which is capital gains.--NY Sun Editorial Board
The Giants finish either 7-9, 6-10 or 5-11.--Bill Simmons
Fair should be fair. They got me, point blank. I don’t want to get singled out. Don’t make me feel like I’m getting singled out. If you’re going to do a job, be consistent at what you do. This falls into the same category as mine, no if’s, and’s or but’s. He hit the quarterback below the waist. I hit a quarterback below the waist. I got fined. I got flagged. He didn’t get flagged. And from what I’m hearing, he didn’t get fined.--Vince Wilfork, on the hit to Tom Brady
I suffer from Commercial Syndrome
Here are Wolfgang Kasper's conclusions:
Do-gooders who simply offer alms may indeed cause harm if they entrench dependency and a claimant mentality among people trapped in the ‘Malthusian mindset.’ Clark hints often at a suspicion that the shortsighted, lazy Malthusian psychology may even be genetically anchored. Of that, I am not (yet?) convinced, but we should keep our minds open that even this may be an obstacle to development.
Is this a counsel of despair? I think not. I have worked and watched in enough backward societies to know that even fundamental attitudes can be adapted. People often learn them best through association with others (openness) and when the material incentives are stark and clear. If we stick to this insight, the people of developing countries will become more responsive to the maxims of modern commercial culture. It sometimes happens faster than despairing observers think. Even the Germans managed the necessary cultural change.
My advice to development activists in govern-ments and NGOs is to insist on the need for cultural change—no cultural relativism, please! Whatever the immediate consequences, they should not cause harm by protecting people from the consequences of their shortsightedness and irresponsibility. Taking such a Hippocratic oath seems a tough but necessary moral imperative.
(via Arnold Kling).
Dear Chuck Schumer, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, and Bruce Wasserstein:
But I think Alan Greenspan and Andrew Cuomo are the ones who started the mortgage fire.
We told you so. Please listen and change. For the children.
Jets fans LOVE Matt Cassel
Pull quarterback Daunte Culpepper out of retirement and sign him. I know a wide receiver on your team that would love the move--Clark Judge
UPDATE: Yeah, New York is NOT my kind of town sometimes (scroll down to see lots of cheeky comments).
DISCLOSURE: I am (unfortunately) long NFL.PATRIOTS. Also short COLTS and CHARGERS.
Friday, September 05, 2008
Community organizing is lame, even to Obama
But Obama was also worried about something else. He told Kellman that he feared community organizing would never allow him “to make major changes in poverty or discrimination.” To do that, he said, “you either had to be an elected official or be influential with elected officials.” … And so, Obama told Kellman, he had decided to leave community organizing and go to law school. Kellman, who was already thinking of leaving organizing himself, found no reason to argue with him. “Organizing,” Kellman tells me, as we sit in a Chicago restaurant down the street from the Catholic church where he now works as a lay minister, “is always a lost cause.” Obama, circa late 1987, might or might not have put it quite that strongly. But he had clearly developed serious doubts about the career he was pursuing. …Yet, two decades later, to hear Obama the presidential candidate tell it, those years in Chicago as a community organizer shaped the person–and the politician–he has become. Campaigning in Iowa last year, he declared that community organizing was “the best education I ever had, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School.”
I’ve given health care to kids who didn’t have it
Well, Senator, if you gave your own money, you can say that.
But, if you took government money, which used to be the taxpayers' money, you can't. Why do I find myself thinking that you are not giving credit where credit is due?
Some people think population replacement is not required
I am not one of those people. You should not be either, unless you are ready to shut down programs like Social Security, Medicare, and the Defense Department. (If you follow the link, be sure to read the comments).
Joke of the day
“What's the difference between Sarah Palin and Barack Obama?”
“One is a well turned-out, good-looking, and let's be honest, pretty sexy piece of eye-candy.
“The other kills her own food.
Jim Lindgren measures the Obama and Palin speeches
If one compares Palin’s speech to Obama’s, it appears to me that they used similar amounts of sarcasm (not much), but Obama made considerably more extensive negative comments about McCain and Republican administrations than Palin did about Obama and Democrats. Palin’s negative comments, however, were on balance funnier, better written, and more pointed than Obama’s. Neither candidate’s comments were entirely fair in every characterization of their opponents’ positions.By continuing to spread false memes about the nature of Sarah Palin's speech as if they were true, the press marches forward in the most biased season of political reporting I've seen since at least 1998.
Quotes of the day
The words "I fought corruption" should never pass the lips of a charter member of the Keating Five.
McCain claims he'll cut government spending. I'll believe it when I see it.--Megan McArdle
Rudy is a liberal who hates liberals. John McCain is a conservative who hates conservatives.--Rick Brookhiser
Microsoft only wanted all of our money. Increasingly, it seems that Google wants all of our data. In running away from the Evil Empire, have we now instead rushed into the arms of Big Brother?--Michael Malone
... society works best where the need for policemen is least. Precisely because in self-regulating societies individuals regulate themselves, these societies can afford more freedom and the benefits that come with it. But self regulation is only possible where most citizens agree with the rules that govern them. The key, then, is to increase the extent of social agreement underlying the rules that govern society.
By depoliticizing decisions — making more of them private choices instead of public ones — we can strengthen the consensual basis of American government, and hopefully enhance social agreement over the rules we have.--Peter Leeson
Uh Oh: Unemployment rate up to 6.1%
If this rate pops up past 7%, I think we are in for some tough times.
S&P500 dropped 1.5% after the 8:30am announcement.
Thursday, September 04, 2008
Andrea Mitchell, NBC correspondent, is really despondent
Earlier that evening, when Governor Palin was talking about how the media elites covering Washington did not like her, the delegates accusingly chanted "NBC! NBC!".
I couldn't find a video of Mitchell yelling "whoowee! whoowee!" during the DNC.
At least she's married to a really great guy.
As the Goldman Sachs elites miss their soul, Fischer Black, so NBC misses Tim Russert. I miss both.
Today, Intrade sees the opportunity to list a BIDEN.VP.WITHDRAWN contract
Meanwhile, my PALIN.VP.WITHDRAWN short is doing just fine, thank you:
Gas price triangulation
If inflation is understated as part of a massive government conspiracy, then it would have cost Richie Cunningham much, much more to fill up his Lemon. If real income per capita has not risen materially in the last half a century, then it would have cost Laverne and Shirley much, much more to make all their dreams come true.
And if we are truly worse off than our baby boomer forbears, then there really aren't problems with oil-based energy, since gasoline costs us virtually nothing now.
Bashers of the economy, even the occasional Nobel laureate, cannot stand in the face of math and facts.
My fantasy football teams this year
| 14-team auction | 12-team snake (12th pick) | |
| QB | Derek Anderson | Tony Romo |
| RB | Joseph Addai | Marion Barber |
| RB | Ahman Green | Reggie Bush |
| WR | Wes Welker | Jerricho Cotchery |
| WR | Santana Moss | Derrick Mason |
| WR | Derrick Mason | Jabar Gaffney |
| TE | Chris Cooley | Dallas Clark |
Would love to hear your comments on either or both teams, and my skill or idiocy in drafting.
Sarah Palin may be the unlikely catalyst for expanding women's rights around the world in this century
Both of them can probably trace some lineage back to Adam Smith and David Hume (and more recently, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher).
Palin probably is not as tough or smart as Thatcher (I mean, name just one person in leadership today who is), but she may be more accessible and appealing to a broader audience.
Yesterday, I told my 7-year-old daughter that we might be looking at the first woman President of the USA. My firstborn has already made me proud, by adopting daddy's Red Sox and Patriots loyalties (without pressure from dad), which she puts on the line every day at her elementary school in New York City.
Can somebody cue Peter Gabriel's Shaking the Tree?
Not even Wonder Woman could push spot crude down 10%
but perhaps Sarah Palin can:
I also learned about a confirmed Hillary Soccer Mom who is now pulling for McCain because of Palin. Time for the Obama machine to earn it's keep.
Quotes of the day
... 'change' is not a destination ... just as "hope" is not a strategy.--Rudy Giuliani
I hope for his sake, Joe Biden got that VP thing in writing.--Rudy Giuliani
What can I say? Sometimes sexism works in womens' favor.--Megan McArdle
The world shook; the world trembled.--Sarah Palin RNC video
I know, I know, it sounds nihilistic. But in some sense it's liberating: If no-one truly knows anything -- beyond the simplistic bromides, like plant your corn early, avoid excessive leverage, etc. -- then the world is your Etch-a-Sketch, isn't it?--Paul Kedrosky
The wise man has eyes in his head,
while the fool walks in the darkness;
but I came to realize
that the same fate overtakes them both.--King Solomon
Palin touched on the ideology of the soccer mom - the belief that they are tough as nails, that they would fight to the death for their kids, that men underestimate them, that their job is just as hard as any man's. Michelle [Obama] missed the boat on that one.--Laura McKenna
When a man agonizes that a woman is 'brutally cutting,' I reach for my Freud ...--Ann Althouse
Obama's spokesman just rebutted Palin ['s speech] by saying that George Bush’s former speechwriter wrote the speech. That’s a good way to ensure the total irrelevance of your statement. Palin: Obama is unfit to lead. Obama: I don’t approve of your speechwriter.--Noah Pollak
Unlike the wife of another political candidate who shall remain nameless, [Cindy McCain] didn’t come [to cohost The View] with a list of topics we weren’t allowed to touch.”--Elizabeth Hasselbeck
The Sara[h] Palin speech generated 37.2 million viewers, just a 1.1 million viewers short of Barak Obama’s record-breaking speech on Day 4 of the Democratic Convention. The Palin speech was carried on only six networks while the Obama speech was carried on ten (including BET, TV One, Univision and Telemundo).--A.C. Nielsen
... the coastal elites earn the revulsion of Middle America. They don't, to coin a phrase, hate us for our freedoms--our homosexual coddling, abortion loving ways. They hate us because we act like we think we deserve to rule them.--Megan McArdle
The way you explore complex ecosystems is you just try lots and lots and lots of things, and you hope that everybody who fails fails informatively so that you can at least find a skull on a pikestaff near where you're going. That's the phase we're in now.--Clay Shirky, on the "cognitive surplus" of participative media
Hamas has an image problem, and it's getting worse. It's gotten so bad that the 30 year old son (Mosab Yousef) of one of the Hamas founders (Hassan Yousef) has not only renounced Hamas, but has become a Christian. Mosab is fed up with the terrorism/"destroy Israel" approach the Arab world has embraced over the last sixty years. Mosad notes, as have many other Arabs, that this has not worked. --StrategyPage
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
Ironies of the day
Gloria Steinem, pioneering feminist and Hillary Clinton supporter, argued that the contest had revealed that gender was “probably the most restricting force in American life”. She illustrated her point by imagining a female version of Barack Obama and contending that no woman with such a slender biography would be considered seriously for the presidency.And if vetting is more your cup of tea ...It is now clear that Ms Steinem was right – although proof comes not from the treatment of the Democratic lioness Mrs Clinton but from the responses, particularly on the left, to the Republican newcomer Sarah Palin.
…
What Democrats, and progressives generally, will have a harder time accepting is that Gov Palin’s nomination could be a milestone for American women: in many ways she is an even better feminist icon than America’s reigning top gal Hillary Clinton. In contrast with Mrs Clinton, whose most important political decision was whom she married, Mrs Palin is a genuinely self-made woman, who broke into politics without the head start of a powerful husband or father. Moreover, like Sen Clinton, Gov Palin is a working mother role model, giving birth to her fifth child less than five months ago, going back to work three days later.
Or experience perhaps. Executive experience, at that.
Quotes of the day
They say they are not going to take any water out of your side of the bucket, just the "other" side of the bucket! That’s their idea of tax reform.--Fred Thompson
The trouble with the press is that it believes the press actually knows what is going on.--Don Surber
We now know far more about Sarah Palin in just four days than we've learned about Barack Obama in 17 months. That is just sad. It's a pathetic reflection of the mainstream media's unwillingness to do their jobs for fear of finding stories that would hurt the candidate so many of them openly desire to win.--Bob Owens
Is it just me or has Bristol Palin gotten more 'ink' than Joe Biden's lobbyist son? Imagine if the roles were reversed. I think we all know how that would be perceived.--Paul Jackson
Senator, you’re the one who boycotted us. We’re not the ones who boycotted you. Nor did we retaliate for your boycott.--Roger Ailes to Barack Obama
Liberal values are supposed to be about giving people space to make their own moral decisions, not forcing your own on them. I thought that's what we were supposed to hate about conservatives.--Megan McArdle
HOW THEY COULD HAVE KEPT THE PALIN PREGNANCY STORY OUT OF THE PRESS: Leaked it that John Edwards was the father.--Glenn Reynolds
We want to cultivate in them an intellectual breadth and curiosity that public schools no longer offer.--Tony Woodlief
If the 2001-2007 US economy is the Grapes Of Wrath Redux
U.S. output has expanded faster than in most advanced economies since 2000. The IMF reports that real U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) grew at an average annual rate of 2.2% over the period 2001-2008 (including its forecast for the current year). President Bush will leave to his successor an economy 19% larger than the one he inherited from President Clinton. This U.S. expansion compares with 14% by France, 13% by Japan and just 8% by Italy and Germany over the same period.For anyone in leadership, facts are your friends.The latest ICP findings, published by the World Bank in its World Development Indicators 2008, also show that GDP per capita in the U.S. reached $41,813 (in purchasing power parity dollars) in 2005. This was a third higher than the United Kingdom's, 37% above Germany's and 38% more than Japan's.
The U.S. spends easily the highest amount per capita ($6,657 in 2005) on health, more than double that in Britain. But because of private funding (55% of the total) the burden on the U.S. taxpayer (9.1% of GDP) is kept to similar levels as France and Germany. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that 84.7% of the U.S. population was covered by health insurance in 2007, an increase of 3.6 million people over 2006. The uninsured can receive treatment in hospitals at the expense of private insurance holders.
While life expectancy is influenced by lifestyles and not just access to health services, the World Bank nevertheless reports that average life expectancy in the U.S. rose to 78 years in 2006 (the same as Germany's), from 77 in 2000.
The latest World Bank estimates show that the richest 20% of U.S. households had a 45.8% share of total income in 2000, similar to the levels in the U.K. (44.0%) and Israel (44.9%). In 65 other countries the richest quintile had a larger share than in the U.S.
Investment has been buoyant under President Bush. According to the ICP, outlays on additions to the fixed assets (machinery and buildings, etc.) of the U.S. economy amounted to $8,018 per capita in 2005 compared to $4,963 in Germany and $4,937 in the U.K. Higher taxes on the upper-income Americans, as proposed by Mr. Obama, are likely to result in lower saving and investment, less entrepreneurial activity and reduced availability of bank credit. Lower-income Americans would be among the losers.
When considering the distribution of income and wealth in the U.S., another factor that should be taken into account is the sharp rise in the number of immigrants. The stock of international migrants (those born in other countries) in the U.S. grew by nearly 10 million from 1995 to 2005, reaching a total of 38.5 million according to the World Bank.
The inflow of migrants may have restrained the growth of average income levels in the bottom quintiles. Nevertheless, their earnings still allowed immigrants to remit $42 billion to their families abroad in 2006, double the level in 1995. So the benefits are widely spread among the families of immigrants remaining abroad -- an important U.S. contribution to the reduction of poverty in these countries.
The U.S. employment rate, measured by the percentage of people of working age (16-65 years) in jobs, has remained high by international standards. The latest OECD figures show a rate of 71.7% in 2006. This was more than five percentage points above the average for the euro area.
The U.S. unemployment rate averaged 4.7% from 2001-2007. This compares with a 5.2% average rate during President Clinton's term of office, and is well below the euro zone average of 8.3% since 2000.
The IMF reports that the interest cost of servicing general government debt in the U.S. has averaged 2.0% of GDP annually from 2001-2008, compared with 2.7% in the euro zone. It averaged 3.2% annually when President Clinton was in office.
The cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has been largely absorbed in a relatively small increase in the defense budget (to 4.1% of GDP in 2006 from 3.8% in 1995). A much higher proportion of U.S. income was devoted to the military during World War II and the Korean War.
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
Quotes of the day
My own experiences lead me to believe that if two kids have identical test scores, high school grades, etc., then the less privileged of the two has accomplished more and has greater long-term potential. Class-based affirmative action helps create equality of opportunity, in my opinion, and I think that is a goal worth pursuing.--Steven Levitt
Rightly or wrongly, many American voters will view Palin's stint as mayor of small town, her background in sports, her role in a beauty contest (yes), her trials raising teenage children, and her decision to stick with her priinciples and have a Downs Syndrome baby as all very valuable and relevant forms of experience. The more the word "experience" is repeated, no matter what the context, the more it will hurt Obama.--Tyler Cowen
... without families like [Sarah Palin's] our nation would have no chance of affording the social welfare programs proposed by the Democratic Party.--Tyler CowenDuring the eight years of FDR's first two terms as president, there were only two years in which unemployment was lower than it had been under Herbert Hoover-- and not by much. World War II has been credited by some with getting the United States out of the Great Depression. What the war did was put an end to the New Deal, as national survival became the top priority and replaced FDR's anti-business and class warfare rhetoric--Thomas Sowell
The moralist and political scientist naturally cultivate fluency because their contact with the public is mainly through spoken words. The historian cultivates elegance and can hardly get started before the third volume, and the sociologist is quite as bad a model because he starts with Adam and seldom gets past Moses.--Simon Patten
Clear evidence that the Palins are smarter than the Obamas
Of course, Obama would be the ultimate genius in this particular contest if he knew that the government would radically raise taxes on 401(k) assets or withdrawals ...
Martin Feldstein & John Taylor like McCain's tax plan
They don't make 'em much better than Taylor and Feldstein.John McCain's tax policies are designed to create jobs, increase wages and allow all Americans -- especially those in the hard-pressed middle class -- to keep more of what they earn. His plan achieves these goals in three important ways.
First, he proposes a package of tax incentives that will create jobs and raise earnings by inducing firms to invest more in the U.S. Second, he is strongly committed to blocking any increase in tax rates while doubling the personal exemptions for families with children, which will reduce the tax burden on working Americans. Third, he proposes a new, refundable tax credit that will increase health-care coverage, reduce the cost of health care, and provide more funds for families and individuals to purchase health care.
Mr. McCain's tax policy stands in strong contrast to Mr. Obama's ever-changing tax proposals. Although it is difficult to know just what Mr. Obama would do if he were elected, it is clear that he wants to raise taxes on personal incomes, on dividends, on capital gains, on payroll income and on businesses -- all of which will hurt the U.S. economy. He regards the tax system as a way to redistribute income, and disregards the resulting adverse incentive effects that reduce employment and economic growth.
Mr. Obama's claim to being a big tax cutter defies credibility. His assertion that he would cut taxes on 95% of families reflects his one-time $1,000 rebate payouts, and a variety of new government spending handed out through the tax system.
Mr. McCain, on the other hand, has been clear that he wants to preserve the favorable incentive effects of the existing low tax rates -- and to reduce taxes in other ways that will strengthen the economy, create jobs and help current taxpayers, including those without health insurance.
People who believe in evolution
UPDATE: Felix has an Eureka! moment. Maybe he will eventually come around on middle class constitution.
Don Boudreaux makes sense about global oil supplies
Imagine, Russ says, a room full of pistachio nuts. You love pistachios and can eat all that you wish as long as you throw each empty shell back into the room whenever you eat a nut. You might suppose that you'll eventually devour all of the nuts in the room. Their number, after all, is finite.But some thought reveals this conclusion to be, well, nutty. At the start it's easy to find pistachio shells containing nuts. The more you eat, though, the more difficult it becomes to find uneaten nuts among the increasing number of empty shells. Eventually, it will not be worth the time and effort required to search amidst the empty shells for the relatively few remaining nuts. You'll voluntarily leave uneaten pistachios in the room.
And so it is with oil. As we continue using oil, getting more of it becomes increasingly difficult. This increasing difficulty of finding and extracting oil is reflected in its higher price -- a phenomenon that prompts consumers to consume oil more carefully and prompts producers to explore for alternatives.
Also, just as it would be absurd to estimate your household's lifetime supply of food based only upon the stock in your pantry, it's absurd to estimate the world's long-term supply of oil based only upon today's proven reserves of that resource. There simply is no good way to know how much oil exists in the Earth beyond the always-limited amounts that oil producers have proven to exist through their economically constrained explorations.
Another anecdote proving why Jamie Dimon
The subprime call--literally, a call to the head of structured products who was on vacation--came from Dimon after a meeting discussing the performance of the retail bank. In October 2006, the mortgage servicing business was reporting that late payments on subprime mortgages were rising at an alarming rate. Dimon and his team concluded that quality control had slipped at the originator level and decided to slash its holdings of subprime debt. It was this leap from the granular details to the bigger picture that enabled JP Morgan to make the right call on subprime while so many others were still rushing headlong into what was one of the hottest businesses on Wall Street.
We can't help but wonder if there are, in the Dimon and subprime story, the seeds of an even greater story defending the efficacy of the mega-bank. After all, it was the fact from a retail business that tipped Dimon off to a strategic change at the investment level. A smaller brokerage or investment bank would not have had access to this data. Maybe its not the model of mega-banks that's broken, after all.
My $250,000 Manhattan middle class debate
My earlier thoughts here and here.
Monday, September 01, 2008
Mark Steyn on Sarah Palin
First, Governor Palin is not merely, as Jay describes her, "all-American", but hyper-American. What other country in the developed world produces beauty queens who hunt caribou and serve up a terrific moose stew? As an immigrant, I'm not saying I came to the United States purely to meet chicks like that, but it was certainly high on my list of priorities.The Goody Two Shoes music video did spring to mind.
Second, it can't be in Senator Obama's interest for the punditocracy to spends its time arguing about whether the Republicans' vice-presidential pick is "even more" inexperienced than the Democrats' presidential one.
Third, real people don't define "experience" as appearing on unwatched Sunday-morning talk shows every week for 35 years and having been around long enough to have got both the War on Terror and the Cold War wrong ... Sarah Palin and Barack Obama are more or less the same age, but Governor Palin has run a state and a town and a commercial fishing operation, whereas (to reprise a famous line on the Rev Jackson) Senator Obama ain't run nothin' but his mouth. She's done the stuff he's merely a poseur about. Post-partisan? She took on her own party's corrupt political culture directly while Obama was sucking up to Wright and Ayers and being just another get-along Chicago machine pol (see his campaign's thuggish attempt to throttle Stanley Kurtz and Milt Rosenberg on WGN the other night).Fourth, Governor Palin has what the British Labour Party politician Denis Healy likes to call a "hinterland" - a life beyond politics. Whenever Senator Obama attempts anything non-political (such as bowling), he comes over like a visiting dignitary to a foreign country getting shanghaied into some impenetrable local folk ritual. Sarah Palin isn't just on the right side of the issues intellectually. She won't need the usual stage-managed "hunting" trip to reassure gun owners: she's lived the Second Amendment all her life. Likewise, on abortion, we're often told it's easy to be against it in principle but what if you were a woman facing a difficult birth or a handicapped child? Been there, done that.
Fifth, she complicates all the laziest Democrat pieties. Energy? Unlike Biden and Obama, she's been to ANWR and, like most Alaskans, supports drilling there.
Sixth (see Kathleen's link to Craig Ferguson below), I kinda like the whole naughty librarian vibe
Quote of the day
That was the best political speech I have ever seen delivered by an American woman politician.--Camille Paglia, on Sarah Palin