Quotes of the day

When you wallpaper over termites, at first it looks good for awhile.--Rick Santelli, on CNBC a few moments ago, on the European economy and the markets

... she continues screaming, "Oh God, we're going to die." So the people on the plane are looking around. "Nobody's saying we're not going to die; maybe we are going to die." And so finally we land and they come off, and she gets off and she's very shaken. And she was sitting next to this kid who was just staring out the window the whole time, like, oh God, please don't. And so I say to that kid, I said wow that was some flight, huh? And the kid said, "This was my first time on an airplane. Is it always like this?" And I realized after three years in DC, I was that kid.--Austan Goolsbee, on his time as President Obama's chief economist

SAGAL: One last question, before we go to the game. How does it feel to be one of the men that salon dot com named one of the 15 sexiest men of 2010?
Mr. GOOLSBEE: I said at the time I didn't even know Salon was printed in Braille.
SAGAL: Very good.
SAGAL: That may be the funniest thing a government economist has ever said on this show.

Spending money on such boondoggles to create jobs relies on a faith in the fiscal multiplier, and the magic of spending to reduce debt. Bush II spent like a drunken sailor (wars, medicare) and this ended with a disaster even though it should have been no worse than the alien invasion expenditures suggested by Keynesian economists. It should be remembered that after independence India focused on jobs and the poor, as opposed to free trade and property rights, and they stagnated for decades. If governments could boost the economy spending on big top-down projects, countries like India would have done much better than countries that were less hands-on in their management.--Eric Falkenstein

... as Larry Summers famously described it, Keynesian countercyclical policy is "temporary, targeted, and timely." The Reagan tax cut was certainly not temporary. And it wasn't targeted either; it was across the board. And it wasn't timely because it lasted well beyond the recession and the recovery. In fact, it is just the kind of "permanent, pervasive, and predictable" policy that we need now.--John Taylor

One obvious step would be a cut in the taxation of income from corporate capital. According to a 2008 study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, “Corporate taxes are found to be most harmful for growth.” Tax reform that reduced the burden on capital income and shifted it toward consumption would improve prospects for long-run growth and, in so doing, encourage greater investment today. Yet it would be overly optimistic to think that any single public policy, by itself, could lead to the kind of robust investment spending seen in previous recoveries. Myriad government actions influence the expected future profitability of capital. These include not only policies concerning taxation but also those concerning trade and regulation. For example, passing the free trade agreement with South Korea, which has languished in Congress more than four years after first being negotiated, would be a step in the right direction. So would reining in the National Labor Relations Board; its decision to block Boeing from opening a nonunion plant in South Carolina may have been hailed by organized labor, but it surely did not hearten investors. Economists often rely on the convenient shortcut of separating long-run and short-run issues. Recessions are then viewed as short-run problems that require short-run solutions. That approach, however, may be simplistic. Lack of investment spending is a large part of the economy’s current difficulties, but capital investments are always made with an eye toward the future. The best fix for our short-run problems may be to focus on policies that will foster long-run growth as well.--Greg Mankiw

As I sat in my first Harvard economics lecture, listening to Greg Mankiw introduce himself to his new graduate class, my head was in a spin.  Could he really be a Republican Keynesian? And a Keynesian disciple of Milton Friedman? For a young Brit, just graduated from Oxford, this was revolutionary; what I thought was the conventional economic wisdom was being turned upside down.  ... Keynes himself must be turning in his grave. For – as that Greg Mankiw class highlighted to me, and has now been fully documented in Lord Skidelsky's biography – the real Keynes was no profligate tax-and-spender. His seminal 1930 Treatise on Money was as hawkish on inflation as Friedman decades later. His attitude to irresponsible wage bargaining in the 1920s was as unforgiving as Thatcher in the 1980s.--Ed Balls, Great Britain's shadow chancellor

If you have a luxury sports car, you don't put 87 in it. You put in 93. So why would I put 87 into my body? I want my body to run as efficiently as possible, so let me put good stuff in it and go out here and exercise. That's the key, and it's been working.--Damien Woody

I'm so proud of [Tom Brady] and what he’s done -- and the way that he’s done it. He's not only been one of the very best players in the league now for a long time, but he’s continued to handle himself with class, on and off the field. I’m really just proud of what he’s done and the way he’s led this team.--Drew Bledsoe

It's possible to overthink things. But thinking is what makes life interesting. It's why pure talent isn't necessarily as entertaining as doing more with less. ... We live in a celebrity culture, and that collective ideology drives sport as much as anything else. When we turn on the TV, we want to see famous people. Yet every athletic superstar is just another stand-in (both for the player who came before him and the player who'll come after). Life is a game, and we are the pawns. The only thing that matters is how the pieces move.--Chuck Klosterman

Physical courage is admirable, but in modern society it simply isn't as important as it was when philosophy developed 2500 years ago. Intellectual courage, the readiness to risk humiliation, is much harder, precisely because it is more ambiguous. Only with the virtue of hindsight of generations do we see intellectually courageous stands for what they were, what distinguishes the Churchills from the Maos, the Galileos from the Lysenkos. It is courage combined with prudence, not mere zealotry. Having something terrible happen to you generates instant sympathy. Our culture has moved from from celebrating accomplishment (Eisenhower) to suffering (McCain), where suffering has been expanded to include the indignity of growing up a non-asian minority. Thus, Obama's rather cushy Hawaiian life was transformed in his autobiography into something subtly oppressive because his biological father was African.--Eric Falkenstein

Readers of history may call to mind the Roman Empire, the Russian years under Communism, certain local churches, Christian universities, confessional seminaries, and on and on. They know that human institutions can never be so safely constructed that outcomes are guaranteed. For the heart of the human dilemma is so deeply rooted in personal sin that no structure can finally reform it. The lament for Israel’s princes becomes a lament for the human race, which desperately needs a solution far deeper and more effective than princes, presidents, and structures can ever provide.--Don Carson

Chart of the day: Dumbest class ever?

Source here, via Josh Brown.

Quotes of the day

Barack Obama's jobs plan may be one of the worst policy proposals I've ever seen.--John Carney

Let me get this straight: American companies can go overseas to China and create jobs, but they can't go to South Carolina and create jobs? Is this the kind of government we have?--John Boehner, on CNBC a few moments ago

In the American Physics Society it is ok to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible? The claim (how can you measure the average temperature of the whole earth for a whole year?) is that the temperature has changed from ~288.0 to ~288.8 degree Kelvin in about 150 years, which (if true) means to me is that the temperature has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this 'warming' period.--Ivar Giaever, Nobel Laureate 1973

Wow, a Nobel winner AND a true scientist? Pretty rare these days.--Cav

There are a lot of lessons to be learned [from the Magellan Fund], the first is that stepping into someone like Peter Lynch's shoes is basically a no-win situation, even after a decade or two have transpired. Lynch is Hercules and Michael Jordan and the Beatles all rolled in one when it comes to stock-picking and the mutual fund format, no one even touches him.--Josh Brown

It is essential to have the right connections when you have a good idea, more so the bigger the idea.--Eric Falkenstein

Next time Hollywood decries inequality

Turn the volume down. Or even boycott the players.

Via Carl Quintinilla.

Quotes of the day

I noticed one person missing in all the media mentions of NFL ceremonies running up to and during 9/11. Maybe it's because his death, and the ensuing coverup, were so shameful and messy. But he gave up his career -- and his life -- because of 9/11 and because of his sense of honor and duty and idealism. And while everyone was waving flags yesterday and all that, I was hearing him screaming his last words on that ridge in Afghanistan: 'I'm Pat ----ing Tillman!--Fred Fried

Why do the microwave and frozen dinner inexorably lead to obesity? According to the economists, the cheapness of calories (both in terms of price and time) has led us to dramatically boost consumption. Food stops being something we make and create — it doesn’t require very many lever presses, so to speak — and becomes something we simply ingest. Eating just gets easier. And then we get fatter. But maybe we’re not just consuming more calories because they’re available at such a low cost. Maybe we’re also consuming more calories because each calorie gives us less pleasure. The lesson ... after all, is that when we don’t work for our food — when it only requires a single press, or a few whirls of the microwave — it tastes much less delicious.--Jonah Lehrer

As for you punctuation nuts - relax. It's a blog not a dissertation.--buddy_girl

On September 12 President Obama sent his American Jobs Act to Congress. He called on Congress to pass a bill with additional spending of $447 billion, with an extension of payroll tax cuts and unemployment benefits, more infrastructure spending, and additional aid for state and local governments. Temporary tax reductions have limited effect in stimulating investment and economic growth. Since consumers and businesses know that the tax cuts are temporary, they do not make permanent changes in their behavior. This finding won Professor Milton Friedman the Nobel Prize in economics. In order to inspire confidence and change behavior, tax cuts have to be permanent. Similar solutions to unemployment were tried in 2009, as part of the $825 billion “stimulus.” The “stimulus” failed to spur GDP growth significantly and create jobs, despite record low interest rates and monetary stimulus from the Federal Reserve. If an $825 billion stimulus—plus cash for clunkers, auto bailouts, and mortgage forgiveness programs—resulted in an annualized GDP growth rate of only one percent two years after the end of the recovery, and succeeded only in raising the January 2009 unemployment rate of 7.6 percent, why would a package that is half the size reduce an unemployment rate that is now 9.1 percent?--Diana Furchtgott-Roth

The Obama White House tried to rush federal reviewers for a decision on a nearly half-billion-dollar loan to the solar-panel manufacturer Solyndra so Vice President Biden could announce the approval at a September 2009 groundbreaking for the company’s factory, newly obtained e-mails show.  The Silicon Valley company, a centerpiece in President Obama’s initiative to develop clean energy technologies, had been tentatively approved for the loan by the Energy Department but was awaiting a final financial review by the Office of Management and Budget. The August 2009 e-mails, released exclusively to The Washington Post, show White House officials repeatedly asking OMB reviewers when they would be able to decide on the federal loan and noting a looming press event at which they planned to announce the deal. In response, OMB officials expressed concern that they were being rushed to approve the company’s project without adequate time to assess the risk to taxpayers, according to information provided by Republican congressional investigators.  Solyndra collapsed two weeks ago, leaving taxpayers liable for the $535 million loan.--Joe Stephens and Carol D. Leonnig

The White House also noted to ABC News that the Bush administration was the first to consider Solyndra's application and that some executives at the company have a history of donating to Republicans. The results of the Congressional probe shared Tuesday with ABC News show that less than two weeks before President Bush left office, on January 9, 2009, the Energy Department's credit committee made a unanimous decision not to offer a loan commitment to Solyndra. Even after Obama took office on Jan. 20, 2009, analysts in the Energy Department and in the Office of Management and Budget were repeatedly questioning the wisdom of the loan. In one exchange, an Energy official wrote of "a major outstanding issue" -- namely, that Solyndra's numbers showed it would run out of cash in September 2011.--MATTHEW MOSK, BRIAN ROSS, and RONNIE GREENE

Legislators get more power when they define crimes more broadly because they reduce the role of judges in deciding who is guilty; and prosecutors have more power because they have more discretion about what and how to prosecute. As a result, legislators and prosecutors tacitly cooperate with each other, leading to both more law and less: more on the books, and less on the street, in the sense that the laws are so broad the police and prosecutors get to decide whom to go after and find guilty. Those decisions are about power. In the “rule of too much law,” [William] Stuntz advises, “too much law amounts to no law at all.” His solution to this set of problems is to replace the vicious cycle that creates them with a virtuous cycle based on cultivating a relationship between those who break the law (or are tempted to) and those who enforce it. For most of the twentieth century in the Northeast and Midwest, the ratio of police officers to prison inmates was two to one. Today, it is less than one to two. “More than any other statistic,” Stuntz writes, “that one captures what is most wrong with American criminal justice.” More cops mean more deterrence. More deterrence means fewer arrests and fewer convictions. In the 1990s, New York City had the biggest drop in urban crime during the decade. It also had the biggest increase in its police force. ... His hunger for more justice and mercy and, as a result, less crime and punishment made his work great. In this brave book, as contrarian as it is utopian, he constructs a powerful explanation about the vast and costly failure of the American criminal justice system and why the quest to reform it must be a high priority. He left an inspiring model of how.--Lincoln Caplan

Photo link here.

Thanks, Tedy

You are still doing some heavily lifting for your old team.

Appreciatively,
Cav

Photo link here.

UPDATE:  Rodney agrees.

UPDATE:  Troy, too.

Jumping the shark, Bachmann style

Preying on the fears of the 95% of the electorate who never studied science beyond a freshman college course is not cool.

Unless she's got a statistically significant double blind clinical trial up her sleeve.  I don't even think she has peer review (which doesn't really do much) on her side.

Her peers are now Jenny McCarthy and Fonzie.  Photo link here.

Buffoon of the day

Eric Mangini:  I didn't mean to instigate Spy Gate.

Can someone give this guy a hug and a pacifier? Photo link here.

Parody of the day

Source here, via Russ Roberts.

Quotes of the day

A Craigslist search shows women aren't after the bankers.--John Carney

[Sallie Krawcheck] should really be an insurance or financial industry expert and talking-head on CNBC—like Dick Bove. She hasn’t got the operational leadership chops to lead the IT unit that manages Merrill’s Thundering Herd Desk-Top. Would Ike have put a Company Commander in charge of the pivot to Bastogne? Hell no! He asked Patton to do it!--unnamed commenter

I raised $30 million and if you’re saying I can be bought for $5,000, I’m offended.--Rick Perry

I’m offended for all the little girls and parents who didn’t have a choice.--Michelle Bachmann

What does it mean to be a man? No one really knows, but it makes for some damn good television. In the first decade of the 21st century, a critical consensus formed that we're currently living in the golden era of television. ...When you list out the great shows that make up this television renaissance, certain commonalities emerge: high production values, a greater investment in acting talent, and complex plotting that assumes an audience that never misses an episode. But with the sole exception of True Blood—which has camp enough to put it into a genre of its own—all these shows share something else. Every other non-vampire show centers around a modern man struggling with the limitations of his outlook in a world full of complexity and changes that prevent survival through simple reliance on old gender norms. If you want to make a critically acclaimed drama, you need to build up a patriarch, preferably in a highly masculine environment, and then start to peel away his certainty about the way the world works and what it means to be a man in this world. ... Americans can't get enough of watching powerful men run into walls created by the limits of narrow, traditional masculinity. ... The irony is that these new shows about men mine territory familiar to feminism, and could even be described in many cases as explicitly feminist. But for all the feminism on TV, high quality dramas about women haven't taken off. Women get plenty of meaty, complex roles in these top tier shows, but only as supporting characters in shows centered around men's gender drama. ... I blame the nation's inability to deal directly with women engaged in complex, dramatic struggles that call gender roles into question. We are, after all, a country where people can go on TV and call Sarah Palin a feminist without choking on their own tongue. Perhaps the absurdities of being female in this modern era don't lend themselves well to drama, but have to be approached sideways, through comedy. Women do very well heading up some of the best comedy on TV--Amanda Marcotte

Champagne Super Novak.--Brian Phillips

... approximately 40 percent of sunlike stars have at least one low-mass planet orbiting around it. On the other hand, the majority of alien planets with a mass similar to Neptune appear to be in systems with multiple planets, researchers said.--Denise Chow

... how did [analysts] get the 50,000 [additional jobs from the White House plan] number? A preliminary analysis. By whom? When? Using what assumptions? And where did the [New York] Times get that estimate? From the White House press team? But the number 50,000 is treated as something like a fact. One reason it’s not close to a fact is that there’s no way of verifying whether this “estimate” is accurate after the fact. So what’s the meaning of this estimate? None. It’s a meaningless statement. But the media treats it like it’s science. It’s not science. It’s fake science. It’s scientism.--Russ Roberts

... there probably is no market for unbiased media. There is definitely a market for hard-core right-wing opinions. There is definitely a market for what we call mainstream media, where both the opinions and the reporting are biased to the left. There is also a market for something like the Washington Post, where the editorials are pretty centrist while the reporting strikes me as showing zero understanding of anything right of center. --Arnold Kling

Modern research on teacher quality makes clear that the factors used to determine a teacher’s compensation tell us little to nothing about how well the teacher will perform in the classroom. That consistent finding has (or should have) enormous implications for the future of the current system. The results of an employment policy based entirely on credentials uncorrelated to student achievement are obvious: we see wide variation in the quality of public school teachers.--Marcus Winters

The argument for large and expensive efforts to prevent or reduce global warming has three parts, in principle separable: Global temperature is trending up, the reason is human activity, and the consequences of the trend continuing are very bad. Almost all arguments, pro and con, focus on the first two. The third, although necessary to support the conclusion, is for the most part ignored by both sides.--David Friedman

It is a crisis of capitalism because our economic model and policy settings cannot produce sustainable growth, adequate income formation or employment creation. We have lost the housing, financial services and credit creation growth drivers and been left with excessive levels of personal and government debt to unwind, a dysfunctional financial system, and weak labour markets. The capacity to produce and sell goods and services has outstripped that of consumers to borrow and spend. Without credit and jobs, other fault lines have been exposed, including the long stagnation of real wages and extremes of inequality. It is truly a crisis of aggregate demand.--George Magnus

Diversity undermines solidarity. People don't mind paying high taxes to support people "like them." But free money for "the other" leads to resentment and political pushback. If you're a social democrat, this implies a tragic trade-off between social justice for natives and social justice for potential immigrants. But if you're a libertarian, the opposite is true. The welfare state doesn't make open borders impossible. It's open borders that makes the eventual abolition of the welfare state imaginable.--Bryan Caplan

My philosophy is that losers have goals and winners have systems.--Scott Adams

Nice remembrance of Lee Roy Selmon

by Tony Dungy.

Animation of the day: Galileo's observations of Jupiter's moons

Coolest thing from 398 years ago that I've seen. Via John Hempton.

Quotes of the day

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.--Laurence Binyon

There are always groups trying to get America to change the anthem. It's a hard song filled with violence and questions and
exceedingly high notes. But, our anthem tells a uniquely American story. No, it does not go on about fruited plains or home sweet home or Captain Washington on a slapping stallion. It just says very simply that through the night, through the fire, through the bombings, the flag was still there. They won't play games this weekend as New York still burns and America takes tentative first steps back to everyday life. That's OK. The games will be back soon enough. We should still play and sing the national anthem this weekend, loud enough for everyone to hear. Yes, it's a much scarier world today that it was before Tuesday. But it's also been 187 years since Francis Scott Key saw the dawn's early light. The flag is still there.--Joe Posnanski, just after 9/11, 2001

Once upon a time, you see, I lost something, and prayed to get it back, but when I lost it the second time, I didn't, and now this was it, the missing word, the unuttered promise, the prayer I'd been waiting to say a very long time.--Tom Junod

This book haunts me a month after I finished it. I can’t fritter away time on the internet anymore with a clear conscience. I wake up earlier so I can take time to write and focus my thoughts for the day. I find myself trying harder and doing more work at work. It sucks. I miss my life as a slacker.--slamb817

I’m very close to thinking the United States shouldn’t be in Basel any more. I would not have agreed to rules that are blatantly anti-American. Our regulators should go there and say: ‘If it’s not in the interests of the United States, we’re not doing it’.--Jamie Dimon

The board was so spooked by being cast as the worst board in the country. Now they’re trying to show that they’re not the doofuses that they are.--Carol Bartz, former Yahoo CEO

16. Non-Disparagement. You agree, other than with regard to employees in the good faith performance of your duties with the Company while employed by the Company, both during and for five (5) years after your employment with the Company terminates, not to knowingly disparage the Company or its officers, directors, employees or agents in any manner likely to be harmful to it or them or its or their business, business reputation or personal reputation.--Carol Bartz's employment agreement with Yahoo

From the failed Microsoft sale negotiations, to a subsequent bungled and disappointing search deal with Microsoft, through a series of misguided CEO selections, and most recently the Alipay debacle, this Board’s failures have destroyed value for all Yahoo stakeholders. Ms. Bartz’s exit and Mr. Morse’s elevation to interim CEO makes him Yahoo’s fourth CEO in four years and further demonstrates the poor corporate governance Yahoo investors have been saddled with for too long. Even before Ms. Bartz’s hire, Yahoo’s shares materially underperformed the market and their peer group, as graphically evidenced in the Company’s most recent 10-K. Against this background, it is evident that merely replacing the Company’s CEO – yet again – will not be enough to alter the direction of the Company. Instead, a reconstituted Board with new Directors who will bring fresh eyes, relevant industry expertise and increased investor alignment to the table is immediately necessary.--Dan Loeb

I love DSK. I love his wife. They are great people and when they came back to Paris I sent them flowers. But you know, for people in politics, it’s very embarrassing. On the left they had hoped he wouldn’t come back, because I think other people want his job. And on the other side…but even in America, Clinton survived his blow job. But there was not a lot of doubt that that was consensual. They all do it in the political world. They get horny from politics, from power. And he had unbelievable charms. He is really charming. He’s fun, he’s great. He’s a sweet guy—as long as you’re not a woman. That’s the problem.--Karl Lagerfeld

... [JFK] never missed church one Sunday that we were married or all that, but you could see partly — I often used to think whether it was superstition or not — I mean, he wasn’t quite sure, but if it was that way, he wanted to have that on his side. He would say his prayers kneeling on the edge of the bed, taking about three seconds and crossing himself. It was just like a little childish mannerism, I suppose like brushing your teeth or something. But I thought that was so sweet. It used to amuse me so, standing there.--Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

By the end of my two minutes in the private room with the TSA, I was essentially standing in a pool of my own sweat. I’m not sure what you are supposed to call being groped against your will, but somehow I found myself remembering my Crim Law professor lecturing on sexual battery. The thought of my wife going through the same thing made me violently angry, yet I was terrified of even appearing concerned about what was happening, lest they determine that I’m resisting and cast me down with the sodomites. And I had what I think was a pretty standard TSA experience. Consider what happened ... Do you think a TSA administrator would want his wife to go through that? Do you think the Secret Service would allow the President to be touched in that manner by any person other than his doctor or the First Lady?--Elie Mystal

... Greek data are further from the Benford distribution than that of any other European Union member state. Romania, Latvia and Belgium also have abnormally distributed data, while Portugal, Italy and Spain have a clean bill of health. Would a Benford-style analysis have helped spot Greece’s problems? In principle, yes. In practice, one wonders whether politics would have trumped statistics. A shame: according to Benford’s Law, Greece’s data were particularly odd in 2000, just before it joined the euro.--Tim Harford

I have no idea how closely [Moneyball] hews to reality, but ultimately, what I took away from this wasn't a particular feeling this way or that about Beane or the A's or even baseball. I just walked away invigorated by the idea that it pays to gamble sometimes, and that just because something is done a certain way, there's no reason to think it can't be done better. This is a film about faith and risk and the enormous rewards of both, and it is somehow far more commercial and inviting than I would have imagined possible. It's a major accomplishment. Yes… I'd even call it a home run.--Drew McWeeny

[Football] has a role to play, a small role. It's a unifying role. Rich and poor, liberals and conservatives, love football. We just need to show we're all together.--Jason Garrett

... the greatest contests, the ones whose outcomes are most exalting for the winners and most devastating for the losers, are the ones most likely to be decided by infinitesimal turns of luck.--Brian Phillips

The cut in payroll taxes is supposed to have two positive effects on the economy. It would temporarily reduce the cost of labor to companies and thereby encourage them to hire more workers, and it would increase the spending of workers through increasing their take home pay. Such temporary cuts in wage costs to employers will increase employment only a little, and it will be mainly for low skilled low wage jobs that can be easily eliminated after the cuts expire. Since spending by households responds much more to their long term income prospects than to short run changes in their incomes, households would tend to save rather than spend most of their higher incomes due to a temporary cut in social security taxes. Therefore, the employment bang for the buck will be small per dollar of tax cut.--Gary Becker

9/11 feels just as surreal to me, 10 years later

But seeing footage on the History Channel and news outlets is a little easier now than even a couple of years ago.

I remember the conversations with my wife that day. Our apartment looked out at the Twin Towers, and she called me at work to tell me one of the towers was burning. I told her that the news wasn't reporting this; was she sure? She saw the second plane hit, feeling the impact under her feet. Another phone call about whether she should take our infant and mother, who was over visiting, and leave the neighborhood for her parents' apartment. The phones stopped working.  Later I found out that they just turned east off of Broadway when seconds later, the first tower collapsed and the wave of debris and smoke rushed up that street.

Strangely, I remember little about walking home from work. Except for the National Guard Humvee at a seemingly random intersection, with a .50 caliber Browning mounted on it, locked and loaded.

In hindsight, it was good that we drove up to my parents' home in New England for a week.

I didn't get to move back into my apartment for nearly a month afterwards.

I am glad that my colleague's wife was late getting to her job at Cantor Fitzgerald; she's still here for her two kids. And I am sad for my business acquaintance's family who was attending a conference on a high WTC floor that day, as well as for the other victim's families. So many widows, widowers and orphans from that day.

I hope our country can continue to mature in its perspective, culture, and policy formation as a result of this horror. We've taken a few steps forward, and a couple of steps backward, too.

There is a time to mourn, and a time to dance, and I am suspended somewhere in between.

Photo link here.  And a good speech:



Quotes that popped out at me, some already familiar:

Evil is real. And so is courage.

Greater love hath no man than he give his life for his friends.

we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.

From Hope and Change

to Stasis and Ambivalence.

Quotes of the day

Late in the morning of the Tuesday that changed everything, Lt. Heather “Lucky” Penney was on a runway at Andrews Air Force Base and ready to fly. She had her hand on the throttle of an F-16 and she had her orders: Bring down United Airlines Flight 93. The day’s fourth hijacked airliner seemed to be hurtling toward Washington. Penney, one of the first two combat pilots in the air that morning, was told to stop it.  The one thing she didn’t have as she roared into the crystalline sky was live ammunition. Or missiles. Or anything at all to throw at a hostile aircraft.  Except her own plane. So that was the plan  Because the surprise attacks were unfolding, in that innocent age, faster than they could arm war planes, Penney and her commanding officer went up to fly their jets straight into a Boeing 757.--Steve Hendrix

We wouldn’t be shooting it down. We’d be ramming the aircraft. I would essentially be a kamikaze pilot.--Heather Penney

Photo link here.

Quotes of the day: Bill Simmons NFL edition

Important note: I am never, ever right.--Bill Simmons

Remove my homersexuality from the equation.--Bill Simmons

And for some of his bold predictions:

1. New England, Green Bay, Pittsburgh and New Orleans will win 48 regular-season games combined.
2. Tampa makes the playoffs, Atlanta and Detroit do not.
3. By April 2012, Todd Haley will be the offensive coordinator for the New York Jets.
4. Tennessee vaults Indy, wins 10 games and takes the AFC South.
5. The Browns will be one of our two 2011 sleepers and sneak out a wild card ahead of Baltimore.
6. The Rams go on to win the NFC West.
7. The Redskins will win more games than the New York Football Giants.
8. Everyone who bet Phil Rivers at 12-to-1 as MVP cashes in.
9. Everyone who bet Dallas to win the NFC East at +300 cashes in.
10. Tony Sparano is the first 2011 coach to be fired.
11. a Packers-Steelers Superbowl rematch that Pittsburgh wins in a shootout, 37-34. Yes, even Super Bowl XLVI will have continuity.

Quotes of the day

Look, [playing for Team USA']s just not wearing a cool jersey and playing for yourself.--Trot Nixon

Yeah, I know, it's playing for my country.--Trot Nixon's 9-year-old son, born on 9/11

Bimbo Alert: Mila Kunis

I feel like, in our generation, people don't read.

You got that right.  Too many scripts, too few CB posts.  Or maybe a day with The Road To Serfdom.  That book should be mandatory high school reading.  But why would public schools let anything interfere with the brainwashing?

Source here, via Christian Toto.

Quote of the day

Play hard. Eat well. And don't forget to share.--Lee Roy Selmon

Chart of the day: European bailout cost flows (among Legos)

Source here, via Dealbreaker.

Quotes of the day

We got to keep an eye on the battle that we face: The war on workers. And you see it everywhere, it is the Tea Party. And you know, there is only one way to beat and win that war. The one thing about working people is we like a good fight. And you know what? They’ve got a war, they got a war with us and there’s only going to be one winner. It’s going to be the workers of Michigan, and America. We’re going to win that war. President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march… Everybody here’s got a vote…Let’s take these sons of bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong.--Jimmy Hoffa

We have Saddam Hussein, this is the Mother of All Wars we’ve got in the next 18 months. For the life or death of this country.--Charles Koch

Can we all go back to then candidate for Senate Barack Obama's "One America" convention speech?  Could the President lead us there?--Cav

People like Rick, they don’t die old men. They aren’t destined for that and it isn’t right for them to do so. It just isn’t right, by God, for them to become feeble, old, and helpless sons of bitches. There are certain men born in this world, and they’re supposed to die setting an example for the rest of the weak bastards we’re surrounded with.--Dan Hill

Consider it a form of horse trading — tax cuts for jobs. There is only one small problem with this strategy: temporary tax cuts rarely result in new jobs and always result in less tax revenue.--Andrew Ross Sorkin

After running up billions of dollars in losses subsidized by the federal government from 1942-71, the postal service was made a quasi-independent non-profit enterprise (the United States Postal Service, or USPS) that no longer receives any direct government subsidy. Financially, USPS held its own until 2007, but since then cumulative losses have amounted to about $20 billion, and it is expected to lose another $8 billion this fiscal year. Obviously, this cannot continue much longer without a resumption of government subsidies, so this is an excellent time to consider major changes in the postal service and the economic environment in which it operates. ... Sometimes, as with the military, there is no good substitute for a government enterprise. Fortunately, that is not the case with mail delivery since competition could be easily introduced by taking away the legal monopoly given to the USPS, eliminating the many restrictions imposed politically on its operations, and forcing it to operate like a for-profit company. These changes will not be easy politically, although New Zealand and many European countries have either privatized or greatly liberalized their postal systems. But radical changes in competition and the regulatory environment are the only way to improve efficiency in mail delivery while trying to meet the major challenges posed by the Internet.--Gary Becker

Photo link here.

I love Bill Simmons and Joe Posnanski

But I think Joe has just out-Grantlanded The Sports Guy.

Excerpting P-R:

Pearl Jam: As you probably know, they were named "Mookie Blaylock" but changed it, apparently worrying that Mookie Blaylock would object. There has been some disagreement about how they came up with Pearl Jam, but realistically that seems like a pretty pointless argument: Great band, pedestrian name. Mookie Blaylock, however, was inspired.

Pink Floyd: Named for a couple of early century Southern blues artists -- Pink Anderson and Floyd Council -- I think it's a pretty good name, though you could imagine a band called Pink Floyd sounding very different.

Queen: Perfect name for that band, both for its regal splendor and, as Freddie Mercury himself said, its "gay connotations." I've always loved bands that went for glory in their names. The Supremes, for instance.

R.E.M.: This was not supposed to turn into a "how bands got their name" post, but you know how it goes here. I was searching and found that R.E.M. had three other name options: "Cans of Piss," "Negro Wives" and "Twisted Kites." They obviously took the right turn, but just the fact that those three were even considered just goes to show you that some musical geniuses should probably not be allowed to name themselves.

The Ramones: I love that Joey Ramone's name isn't Joey Ramone. He was Jeffrey Hyman. He and the other band members called themselves Ramone because Paul McCartney used to go the pseudonym Ramon.

The Rolling Stones: They pulled the name out of a Muddy Waters song, which is great, but the name Rolling Stones could easily be a folk group wearing flower power outfits.

Quotes of the day

Originalism--the theory that we should Interpret the Constitution according to the public meaning of its words at the time of its ratification--serves important instrumental goals. It promises to give relatively clear and objective definitions to crucial but contestable terms, such as “cruel and unusual” or “due process of law,” by recurring to the linguistic usage of those who ratified the Constitution. That interpretive process, though hardly easy, at least protects us from the sort of judicial casuistry that threatens to drain all fixed meaning from the Constitution’s words. ... Originalism has another instrumental virtue: It tends to generate such substantively attractive results as limited government, the rule of law, and respect for individual rights. For that, we can credit not just the sound political judgments of the Founders but also, and more generally, the supermajoritarian constraints imposed on Constitutional ratification. Because the ratification process has to satisfy so many parties, who have many conflicting interests, the Constitution and its amendments tend to support universal values. Contemporary judges, because they do not face those similar constraints, risk following the twists and turns of case law toward unlimited government, arbitrary laws, and disregard for individual rights. Originalism, by recurring to the Constitutional meanings that won ratification, offers a way (though not the only or necessarily best way) to stave off that ugly outcome.--Tom Bell

I understand why Dr. Roubini, who is an academic, would want to re-read Marx. I can see where Mr. Magnus would feel that, in order to make his real argument to the state and the people, he could get better traction by saying something a little scary. I’m not surprised, really, that the same medium that circulates videos of cats playing the piano also re-circulates and resuscitates long-dead and discredited ideas like Marxism. Bringing Marx back from the grave is not helpful, though. Marx was wrong because his model society, of human behavior, was wrong. Haven’t we had enough of the wrong models already?--Infinite Guest

Beijing tells foreigners that they can understand the city, that we have the same sort of buildings: the Bird’s Nest, the CCTV tower. Officials who wear a suit and tie like you say we are the same and we can do business. But they deny us basic rights. You will see migrants’ schools closed. You will see hospitals where they give patients stitches—and when they find the patients don’t have any money, they pull the stitches out. It’s a city of violence.--Ai Weiwei

Newly obtained emails show that the White House was better informed about a failed gun-tracking operation on the border with Mexico than was previously known. Three White House national security officials were given some details about the operation, dubbed Fast and Furious. The operation allowed firearms to be illegally purchased, with the goal of tracking them to Mexican drug cartels. But the effort went out of control after agents lost track of many of the weapons. The supervisor of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives operation in Phoenix specifically mentioned Fast and Furious in at least one email to a White House national security official, and two other White House colleagues were briefed on reports from the supervisor, according to White House emails and a senior administration official. But the senior administration official said the emails, obtained Thursday by The Times, did not prove that anyone in the White House was aware of the covert "investigative tactics" of the operation.--Richard Serrano

The Fremont, Calif. firm, [Solyndra], which promised two years ago that it could help create new clean-tech jobs, announced Wednesday it was closing its doors and laying off workers. Taxpayers might now be responsible for repaying Solyndra’s loan, part of an estimated $80 billion in subsidies the Obama administration had committed to clean technology projects and innovation in this country since 2009. In 2009, Solyndra received the Energy Department’s first loan under the new administration’s program to spur clean technology innovation. Obama and Energy Secretary Steven Chu had visited Solyndra’s plant, and Vice President Biden spoke at its groundbreaking via live video. Each touted the company as a model of the administration’s effort to grow a “green” industry and create millions of new American jobs.--Carol Leonnig and Joe Stephens

[President Obama]’s having his own teachable moment between campaigning and experienced governing. First, he blamed the Bush administration, then he blamed Congress, and now he’s saying [to voters], ‘It’s your fault for expecting too much of me.’ The last thing voters want to hear are excuses or whining. You can’t offer excuses and then be an inspirational leader.--Ron Bonjean

A 9.1 percent unemployment rate is a serious handicap for an incumbent. But it’s not too late for President Obama to change course and make America a friendlier environment for job creation by changing regulations. His cabinet secretaries control regulations that are now discouraging growth. A few examples. President Obama could ask EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to hold off on new environmental regulations until unemployment goes down. He could ask the NLRB acting general counsel to drop the charges against Boeing for opening a new plant in South Carolina. He could ask Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to speed up on drilling permits. He could ask Labor Department Secretary Hilda Solis to go slow on new dust regulations that will result in closure of coal mines, and new regulations on federal contractors for hiring veterans that will cause endless paperwork. There’s Dodd-Frank regulations too. The list goes on, it’s just up to the president….--Diana Furchtgott-Roth

All said and done, I’d give that [$100 million contract, $41 million guaranteed] back [to the Washington Redskins] and I’d come here [to the New England Patriots].--Albert Haynesworth

Photo link here.

As if Paul Krugman couldn't get any smaller

Steve Landsburg has a recap.

Bigger bubble than gold?

Here, via @crampell.

Chart of the day: Another inequality feminists will be loathe to address

Source here.

Quotes of the day

I've never been 100% sure whether patents help or hinder technological progress. When I was a kid I thought they helped. I thought they protected inventors from having their ideas stolen by big companies. Maybe that was truer in the past, when more things were physical. But regardless of whether patents are in general a good thing, there do seem to be bad ways of using them. And since bad uses of patents seem to be increasing, there is an increasing call for patent reform. The problem with patent reform is that it has to go through the government. That tends to be slow. But recently I realized we can also attack the problem downstream. As well as pinching off the stream of patents at the point where they're issued, we may in some cases be able to pinch it off at the point where they're used. One way of using patents that clearly does not encourage innovation is when established companies with bad products use patents to suppress small competitors with good products. This is the type of abuse we may be able to decrease without having to go through the government. The way to do it is to get the companies that are above pulling this sort of trick to pledge publicly not to. Then the ones that won't make such a pledge will be very conspicuous. Potential employees won't want to work for them. And investors, too, will be able to see that they're the sort of company that competes by litigation rather than by making good products.--Paul Graham

The Buffett investment just might turn out to erode, not increase, confidence. And not only for Bank of America, but for the banking sector as a whole.--Jesse Eisinger

To show her support for American workers, President Obama's labor secretary, Hilda Solis, has junked the standard black limo and purchased a new Chevrolet Equinox to ride around Washington in. The problem: the crossover SUV is built and assembled in Canada from parts also made in Canada.--Paul Bedard

Let's hope that labor economist Alan Krueger, as he assumes his new position as Chief Economist to the President, remembers that demand curves really do slope downward, despite his original flawed findings based on faulty survey data.--Mark Perry

If you add up all the promises that have been made for spending obligations, including defense expenditures, and you subtract all the taxes that we expect to collect, the difference is $211 trillion. That's the fiscal gap," he says. "That's our true indebtedness.--Laurence Kolitkoff

Bias matters not because liberals deliberately slant their stories, but because they are much more likely to interrogate the facts that contradict their ideological beliefs, than the ones that support them.  When they come across an uncomfortable fact, they'll go out of their way to figure out why it isn't really true.  When they come across a fact that confirms what they believe, they'll be more likely to accept it at face value.  I'm not claiming that liberals do this more than conservatives (I think that being human, they're equally prone to this phenomenon)--only that in the media, liberal bias is mostly what matters, because the media is overwhelmingly somewhere to the left of the American center.  Even if you have a conservative reporter prone to insufficient interrogation of convenient facts, those same facts are going to set off alarm bells with his editors, who are quite likely to question the whole story.  This is why I think liberal media bias is worrisome--not because it's a vast conspiracy, but because it creates a giant store of pseudofacts that "everyone knows", like all those ludicrous statistics about abortion and domestic violence that used to appear everywhere.  And new pseudofacts are being created, or resurrected, all the time.  Longtime readers of the blog have endured my jeremiads against Republicans who say that cutting tax rates raises revenue.  A few weeks ago I was flabbergasted to find out that a very smart left-of-center blogger I admire seemed to think it was common knowledge that there's really no evidence that tax cuts provide stimulus . . . a belief that I then find out seems to be common among some of the left commentariat.  This is not at all what any mainstream economist I'm aware of believes (the debate is over the relative size of secondary and tertiary effects of various kinds of stimulus, not whether tax cuts are stimulative at all.)  But somehow this belief had become common . . . presumably because in the milieu where it was transmitted, no one was disposed to question something that fit so neatly with what they already believed.  Add in a few hundred repeitions from people you like, and voila, "Everyone knows . . . "--Megan McArdle

Everything here [in Afghanistan] was difficult, and the longer we remained the more army officials from air conditioned lairs on high pronounced an increasingly complex series of edicts, lest someone had to explain the actions of a unit actually in contact with the enemy. Winning in the traditional sense, any one could see was not the goal. The months here, had resolved the entire project into the madness of so-called “nation building.” Trouble was there was no nation to build. There never really had been. ... With absolute clarity I see the awful meaning of war. The sand is bright red. Discarded crimson stained bandages fly away in the wind and we hold no illusions about what has happened here. Governments and chains of command are pale compared with these events. Philosophical discourse is of no consequence. It is a confusing moment of sadness and urgency.--Michael Woodard

Chart of the day: U.S. ancestry

Fugettabout the Manchurian Candidate--I am overrun by Bavarians.

Via Tyler Cowen.

Quotes of the day

Many ask whether high-income countries are at risk of a “double dip” recession. My answer is: no, because the first one did not end. The question is, rather, how much deeper and longer this recession or “contraction” might become.--Martin Wolf

Money, it turns out, is incredibly hard to reason about in a systematic and rational way (even for highly educated individuals). Risk is even harder.--Dan Ariely

In poker, volatility is a weapon. It can be an especially powerful weapon in the hands of the deranged. The ones who wield it most effectively either 1) have a very large stack relative to yours, or 2) have minimal personal regard for their own financial well being. To wit, if your opponent doesn’t care about fragging his own chip stack in pursuit of yours, he can use that as an advantage. Even insanity can be an edge — temporarily at least.--Jack "Mercenary Trader" Sparrow

A massive refinancing effort is likely to have little impact on the economy or foreclosures or housing prices. What it would do, however, is hurt our government’s already precarious balance sheet by reducing the payments on its vast mortgage portfolio. Fannie and Freddie should focus on reducing public losses with sensible, limited mortgage modifications and by selling foreclosed homes reasonably slowly.--Edward Glaeser

... Obama and his advisors predicted the economy would do better — much better — than it has, and those predictions were wrong. The president blames events: the European debt crisis, the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, the political tsunami of the 2010 elections. Some of that is plausible, but the two years of anemic job and economic growth that preceded those events can hardly be blamed on them. And it's that economic performance that has scuttled Obama's plans for an easy reelection in 2012. That sluggish growth seemed to catch a lot of people by surprise. ... prediction is hard. Experts — in politics, economics, climate — are very, very bad at telling people what will happen tomorrow, let alone next year or the next century. How many of the economists who tell us what to do now failed to see the mortgage debt crisis coming? Nearly all of them. ... The cult of experts has acolytes in all ideological camps, but its most institutionalized following is on the left. The left needs to believe in the authority of experts because without that authority, almost no economic intervention can be justified. If you concede that you have no idea whether your remedy will work, it's going to be hard to sell it to the patient. Market-based ideologies don't have that problem because markets expect events in ways experts never can. No president since Woodrow Wilson or Franklin Roosevelt has been more enamored with the cult of expertise than Obama. That none of his economic predictions have panned out is not surprising. What is surprising is that so many people are surprised.--Jonah Goldberg

The context is Eric Cantor’s demand that any federal disaster relief in the wake of Irene be offset by spending cuts elsewhere. Krugman thinks this is silly, and proves his point with an appeal to the standard Ricardian theory of public finance. According to that theory, which all economists understand and accept, if you’ve got to bear a cost, it’s best to spread that cost out over as many activities as possible. So ideally, you’d pay for disaster relief partly through spending cuts, partly through (current) tax increases, and partly through an increase in the deficit. Therefore says Krugman, “the bottom line is that basic, regular economics says that Cantor isn’t making sense.” ... Unless you believe that everything is perfect to begin with, the Ricardian argument fails, leaving you with no reason to believe that the cost of new spending should be spread widely. Instead, you should start by cutting back on your least wise activities. Cantor and Krugman probably have some legitimate disagreement about what those least wise activities are, but neither of them has any reason that I know of to believe that all activities are currently equally wise at the margin. I’m guessing that if Cantor had proposed paying for disaster relief entirely through an tax increase on the very rich, that Krugman would not have been so quick to dissent with an appeal to Ricardian public finance. (Come to think of it, if Krugman took his own point seriously, he’d be forced to conclude that every tax increase should be spread across all income groups, and accompanied by cuts in all expenditure categories. This would mark yet another radical change in several of his previous positions.) Then there’s the separate point that comes from public choice: Sometimes it’s a good idea to constrain people from doing things they want to do until they improve their behavior elsewhere. Even if you approve of the Congress’s intention to provide disaster relief, it can still make sense to hamstring that intention until they get some other stuff right — just like with the kid whose prom plans you approve, but who is still required to finish his chores first.--Steve Landsburg

A recent abortion kerfuffle occurred when Virginia's Department of Health proposed regulations for abortion clinics that consistent with the construction of new hospitals and all the sudden liberals realized how insanely onerous these regulations are. The bottom line is that regulations are very costly, and they are growing, as Obama is pushing for more EPA regulations based on fanciful savings to health care costs. Unfortunately, for Keynesians there's no interest in the effects of regulations on aggregate demand.--Eric Falkenstein

It’s not clear what we’ve “won” in Libya. But it is clear what we’ve lost: whatever’s left of the quaint notions that America should wage war only in defense of our vital interests and that presidential uses of military force can and should be constrained by law.--Gene Healy

... outside the academy, theory encounters a little something called the marketplace, where it turns out that courses like “Queering the Alamo,” say, can’t compete with “Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition.” ... the educational market works very differently inside the academy and outside it, and the consumers of university education are largely to blame. Almost no one comparison-shops for colleges based on curricula. Parents and children select the school that will deliver the most prestigious credentials and social connections. Presumably, some of those parents are Great Courses customers themselves—discerning buyers regarding their own continuing education, but passive check writers when it comes to their children’s. Employers, too, ignore universities’ curricula when they decide where to send recruiters, focusing only on the degree of IQ-sorting that each college exercises sub rosa. Universities are certainly doing very well for themselves, despite ignoring their students’ latent demand for traditional learning. But they would better fulfill their mission if they took note of the Great Courses’ wild success in teaching the classics. “I wasn’t trying to fix something that was broken in starting the company,” Rollins says. “I was just trying to create something beautiful.” Colleges should replicate that impulse.--Heather MacDonald

If there is indeed a market in sexual favors—where sex is exchanged for economic support, emotional commitment, and the like—then it is by definition a two-way market. Assume, for a minute, that women are the “producers” in this market, and men are the “consumers.” (We all know what the product is.) Assume, as well, with Ms Hakim that there is an artificially restricted supply of this product. In aggregate, demand exceeds supply. To whose benefit does this market imbalance accrue? Cui bono?   Why, the producers, of course. Women. Duh.  To whose benefit would a removal of these restrictions accrue? The consumers. Men. A complete liberalization of the market for erotic capital—deregulation, in other words—would lower the scarcity, price, and value of sexual favors across the entire market. Men could presumably purchase or acquire by other means all the sexual satisfaction they desired at a going rate likely to be well below the standard price exacted today. At the margin (and perhaps well beyond that), marriage, committed fatherhood, and men’s financial and emotional support to their women and children would likely decline materially. Is that what women want? Really?   I will presume to speak for the fairer sex now: Of course not.   This is why the argument that sexual repression of women arises solely from patriarchy makes no sense to me.  ... consciously or not, I believe most women understand [that women’s erotic capital depreciates over time] extremely well. In fact, it has been my experience that women are the primary carriers of cultural and social values in this sphere. You don’t usually hear men or fathers making a big deal about loose women, adultery, prostitution, and the like; it is the wives and mothers. Why? Because it affects them directly. Patriarchal socioeconomic structures or not, it is usually women who set, monitor, and enforce basic social and sexual mores and expectations.  It’s in their own self interest. --TED

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.  ... Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.--Steve Jobs


... suicide is more than twice as common as homicide.--Stephen Dubner

Interesting Lord of The Flies experiment from 1954

here.

Video of the day

Via Josh Spear.

Can you imagine if we had walked all the way?

I can never think the same way about The Lord of The Rings again. Think twice before watching this.



Via Bryan Caplan.

Great trading advice

from Douglas Hirschorn:

• Making money is easy, keeping it is hard
• You can have a 1000 reasons to get in a trade, but you only need 1 reason to get out
• Focus on the process (quality of your trades), not the outcome (profits/losses)
• Know what your edge is (what your pitch looks like) and trade only when you have edge (swing only when your pitch appears).

and:

• In sports, you are NOT supposed to think, "What if I mess up this shot?" In trading that is called risk management.
•  In sports, when you miss a shot, you don't lose points. In trading, when you get a trade wrong, you lose money.
•  In sports, the opponent adjusts to what YOU do. In trading, the market does not know or care about YOU.
•  In sports, you focus on improving weaknesses. In trading, your strengths are your weaknesses and vice-versa.
•  In sports, if you get poor results, you need to practice harder, put in more effort. In trading, effort is not positively correlated to improved performance.

 finally:

1. Recognize when fear is present
2. Welcome it (normalize it)
3. Implement a behavior modification program (with real consequences) to prevent you from acting on it

Quotes of the day

Deeply bizarre and deeply creepy.--David Arnott, on Gadhafi's Condoleeza Rice photo album

Next week, I will be laying out a series of steps that Congress can take immediately to put more money in the pockets of working families and middle-class families, to make it easier for small businesses to hire people, to put construction crews to work rebuilding our nation’s roads and railways and airports, and all the other measures that can help to grow this economy.--President Obama, August 2011

I’ve got things right now before Congress that we should move immediately, and I said so before I went on vacation, and I’ll keep on saying it now that I’m back. There are a whole host of measures we could take – no single element of which is a magic bullet – but cumulatively can start continuing to build momentum for the recovery.--President Obama, August 2010

Congress can repeal ObamaCare and its supposed beneficiaries won’t even care.--Michael Cannon

After under preparing for the big snowstorm in December 2010, Mayor Bloomberg over prepared for Hurricane Irene, which left New York City with pretty minor damage. This pattern is rather typical, because the cost/benefit ratio for over hyping a disaster clearly favors over-reacting after under reacting. Bad events are usually really damaging only when we totally do not see them coming.--Eric Falkenstein

You see slack in some sectors as a “general glut”
But some sectors are healthy, only some in a rut
So spending’s not free – that’s the heart of the matter
Too much is wasted as cronies get fatter.--Russ Roberts

[Bill Breit] from [Trinity] University picked up [Paul Samuelson] at his hotel. On the way out the door, [Samuelson] mentioned that he had a headache, so they stopped into the hotel store to buy some aspirin. "$4.95 a bottle!" the Nobel laureate complained, "I can get this for $2.50 in my town." "Let's go find a regular drug store," he demanded. Because they were already running late, [Breit] said, "It's your lucky day. I'll pay." This professor could see that the real cost of the elusive $2.50 bottle of aspirin was far higher than the cost of the $4.95 bottle in front of them because of the extra search time involved. The professor was happy to spend the extra money to ensure that he got what he valued more: a relaxed economist giving a good talk and some time to socialize beforehand. Does the irony in this story jump out at you? It is, of course, the Nobel prize-winning economist who should have offered such a solution. He should have seen that, given his situation, the $4.95 bottle, available then and there, was much more valuable than the $2.50 bottle across town.--David Henderson

Do I wish I had more Treasuries? Yeah, that’s pretty obvious. I get that it was my/our mistake in thinking that the US economy can chug along at 2 per cent real growth rates. It doesn’t look like it can.--Bill Gross

Music journalists like Elvis Costello because music journalists look like Elvis Costello.--David Lee Roth

I designed it with a bite for scale, so people get that it was an apple not a cherry.--Rob Janoff

[150 years ago] today John C. Frémont issued a proclamation declaring the slaves in his military district free. Frémont was a famous explorer, and earned the name “The Pathfinder” for mapping a trail across the Rocky Mountains. Although he was from Georgia, he was the first presidential candidate of the Republican party. The Republican party was founded on the idea of opposing slavery. He lost the election, but four years later Lincoln won the election. Frémont was appointed a Major General, and appointed commander of the Department of the West, with his attention focused on the fighting in Missouri. Today Frémont issued a proclamation declaring martial law in Missouri.--Joshua Horn

So the military says this: Go ahead and tar our servicemen with your broad brushes of ignorance and bile if you’d like. Just don’t expect us to underwrite your smear campaigns. Or: Work with us to ensure that 1) you get to make your money so long as the portrayal of our forces is fair, and so long as it fits within the normal training and operation of the force. We’ll bend over backwards, in other words. We just won’t bend over forwards. Which to me seems fair. Mr. Sirota’s angst apparently has something to do with Gerry Bruckheimer’s forgettable 1986 movie “Top Gun“, which he believes somehow altered the American viewpoint to the extent that we actually “love war”. Because of Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis. And that. Despite the fact that there wasn’t any actual, you know: War. In the movie Top Gun. Just a little beach volleyball, and a couple of splashed MiGs to go with two crashed Tomcats. The problem for Mr. Sirota isn’t that there haven’t been any anti-war films in this generation. The problem would be that they haven’t been very commercially successful, and thus have failed to shift public opinion in the direction Mr. Sirota would like to see it moved. In fact, they pretty much sucked. Perhaps Mr. Sirota believes that if the military had allowed the directors of anti-Iraq war movies Redacted and In The Valley of Elah (just to name two) to use actual military equipment, those movies wouldn’t have failed so abysmally at the box office. Perhaps. But perhaps it’s true that the American people simply don’t like Hollywood elites and their media allies trying to tell them that the actions of a despicable few – as depicted by those with no personal understanding of heroism or sacrifice – reflect the valor, endurance and patriotism of the forces sent to fight, no matter who it was that sent them.--Neptunus Lex

Photo links here and here.

Darth Vader unmasked on the Today Show, in his own words

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Looking a little peaked, in a Steve Jobs kinda way.  He sure beats the stuffing out of Robert McNamara.

Steve Conover schools Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Michelle Bachmann, Sarah Palin, a few Tea Partiers

here:

• Printing money is the Fed’s tool to fight deflation.

• The Fed can also “unprint” money rapidly.

• Unprinting money is the Fed’s tool to fight inflation.

• Deflation can be triggered or fueled by insufficient money to support the potential production of goods and services.

• When newly-printed money is just sitting there not “chasing” anything, it doesn’t cause inflation or cure deflation.

• Deflation is bad; it hurts borrowers, frequently forcing them to default on their loans – which in turn hurts lenders as well.

Billionaires and charitable giving

Aaron Ross Sorkin has a thoughtful roundup.

Michael Pettis makes some bold economic predictions about China, Germany, the U.S.

and other countries, including:

• Over the next two years Chinese household consumption will continue declining as a share of GDP. Chinese debt levels will continue to rise quickly over the rest of this year and next. Chinese growth will begin to slow sharply by 2013-14 and will hit an average of 3% well before the end of the decade. Within three years Beijing will be seriously examining large-scale privatization as part of its adjustment policy.

• Spain and several countries, perhaps even Italy (but probably not France) will be forced to leave the euro and restructure their debt with significant debt forgiveness.

• Germany will stubbornly (and foolishly) refuse to bear its share of the burden of the European adjustment, and the subsequent retaliation by the deficit countries will cause German growth to drop to zero or negative for many years.

• Trade protection sentiment in the US will rise inexorably and unemployment stays high for a few more years.