On Trumping Benedict Arnold

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The Best Judgment Of Experts

clipped from www.cashill.com The academics saw central control along scientific principles as a solution to a free and competitive market. At a Columbia University conference in1907, one Frank Vanderlip argued that a competitive, decentralized banking system caused the panic, “one of the great calamities in history.” “Small banks constitute a danger,” he told those gathered at Columbia in arguing for the benefits of European-style banking. Warburg, in fact, had a problem with the whole idea of a free, self-regulating market. He hoped to replace Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” with the “best judgment of experts,” himself high among them. In 1910, Warburg too took up duck hunting on Jekyll Island. They had just the man in mind. From 1914 until his death in 1928 their own Benjamin Strong would preside over the New York Federal Reserve and set the monetary policy for the nation.

Inmates Running The Assylum (Part 95,393)

clipped from pajamasmedia.com JOHN HINDERAKER offers us some Alcee Hastings history. “We are being ruled by people who should be behind bars.” UPDATE: Reader Kevin Greene emails: “As long as you’re waltzing down memory lane, how about some Robert Byrd history, courtesy of Tony Snow?”

The Deadliest Change

clipped from pajamasmedia.com CHANGE: “Without a location outside the United States for sending prisoners, the administration must resort to turning the suspects over to foreign governments, bringing them to the U.S. or even killing them. In one case last year, U.S. special operations forces killed an Al Qaeda-linked suspect named Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan in a helicopter attack in southern Somalia rather than trying to capture him, a U.S. official said. Officials had debated trying to take him alive but decided against doing so in part because of uncertainty over where to hold him, the official added.”

Matt Smith

clipped from yglesias.thinkprogress.org Matt Yglesias presents "An Influential Idea I Didn’t Get in a Book".  The gist - profit in perfectly competitive markets is zero (after returns for labor, capital, and presumed managerial expertise), so businessmen seek to create market imperfections: This competitive market sure looks like a horrible place! You might make a living there, but you sure as hell aren’t going to get rich. Think of the immigrant family that owns the dry cleaning shop around the corner—long hours, hard work, modest income. That’s your capitalism and it pretty much sucks. Dare I mention Adam Smith, who made that very point back in 1776? “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public Thirdly, we can scarcely wait for the day when Matt discovers (perhaps not by way of a book?) that Big Business is not automatically "conservative", but is often happy to ally itself with Big Government in the course of seeking rents.

For A Measly $700K

clipped from pajamasmedia.com HEALTH CARE GETS 219 VOTES, PASSES HOUSE. Stupak’s switch clearly made the difference. Posted at 10:46 pm by Glenn Reynolds   A STUPAK PAYOFF? “U.S. Congressman Bart Stupak (D-Menominee) announced three airports in northern Michigan have received grants totaling $726,409 for airport maintenance and improvements. The funding was provided by the U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Aviation Administration.” Probably just a coincidence. Posted at 10:09 pm by Glenn Reynolds

What Fresh Hell II: It Does Not Work

clipped from www.americanthinker.com Ironically, however, it was the major investment bankers like the House of Morgan that were diversified enough to weather the Depression. Royalism did not cause the great majority of bank failures. Regulation did. Some 90 percent of failures occurred in states whose "unit" banking laws forbade banks from branching out beyond their base. Canada, which had no such laws, had no such problems. In June 1933, Roosevelt signed into law the Glass-Steagall Act. Banks now had to choose between investment and deposit banking. They could not do both. A classic in political scapegoating, the act rewarded those banks that had done the worst and punished the banks that had done the best. It provided deposit insurance for the struggling banks and forced the successful ones to divest their investment banking operations. a bummed Morgenthau. "We are spending more money than we have ever spent before, and it does not work," he told a congressional hearing in 1939.

What Fresh Hell?

clipped from www.americanthinker.com A year and a half later, Obama has indeed honored Time's bold prediction. The parallels between FDR and BHO are hard to miss: the eagerness to improvise, the impulse to control, the urge to scapegoat, the willingness to let business wonder what fresh hell tomorrow might bring. To understand the long-term effects of this style in the real world, it pays to revisit the past. If there is any one image that evokes the whimsy of the original New Deal, it is this one: FDR sitting in his bedroom with Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr., picking the daily price of gold. Just five years earlier, America had sat astride the economic world, the repository of most of its gold and even more of its hope. Businesses, Coolidge felt, could plan more confidently if they could trust their government not to jack with the law of the land.  the White House's hands-off approach to the sharp downturn of 1920 had allowed businesses to cut their losses, trim their payrolls, and get back to work quickly

March 21, 2010 Compendium

Obamacare:
Obamacare is a financial lie according to a former head of the CBO. To the tune of losing over $50B a year. Not to mention also being a lie in every other conceivable dimension of course.

History:
The fall of the Roman Republic: "While Cicero was what Dickinson called an “institutionalist,” Caesar was an “instrumentalist.” For Caesar the ends justified the means, subordinating institutional checks and balances in a quest for “results.”" Welcome to the soon to be feces stained results. (Welcome to your real Cuba.)
Economics of socialistic corruption:
Adventures in nationalization with the central bank of North Dakota. The North Dakota purchase and the nationalization of the student loan industry. Oh, and what group takes out lots of large student loans? Why that would be doctors of course...

Who owns the Federal Reserve? Why that would be O Duce of course.

Hiding in plain sight:
German central bank admits that money is created out of thin air. "Germany’s central bank – the Deutsche Bundesbank (German for German Federal Bank) – has admitted in writing that banks create credit out of thin air." Have you ever wondered why (if the loons are correct that we have a free market which is to blame for the recent collapse) the most important price in the economy -- the (discount) interest rate! -- is set by a central planning board called the Federal Reserve Board of Governors? Can you say "hiding in plain sight"?

Fiat Power

clipped from mises.org The next requirement that must be met for a "variable interest" is either an "obligation to absorb losses" or a "right to receive benefits." The statement that "about 95% of the Reserve Banks' net earnings have been paid into the Treasury since the Federal Reserve System began operations in 1914" says it well enough. It is an irrefutable fact that the federal government possesses the overwhelming "right to receive benefits." There is, however, no denying that the banks have tremendous vested interest in influencing the policies of the Fed, nor that the power being so narrowly vested in the president makes him a special target for influence. Still, the power to control the Fed is not in the hands of its "owners" but firmly in the hands of the federal government and the president of the United States.

Anchors Away!

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Howie Awakens

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Deadly Downgrades

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com For years, 999 calls in life-threatening situations like Mrs Masons's were accidentally "downgraded", with call handlers told not to send the most urgent response. ... The danger in the system was created by the country's most senior ambulance officials as they altered the program used by most control centres in an attempt to manage demand for 999 services. Most ambulance services use an international computerised system designed in America. In the US version, a fall of more than 6ft receives the maximum priority response. However, the government committee which governs its use in this country decided that such cases should be deemed less urgent, and excluded from an eight minute category A target response time. ... As a result, Mrs Mason lay unconscious for more than 38 minutes. Why on earth would anyone want health care decisions to be made by a centralized authority, least of all a "government committee"?

Collapse And Fantasy

clipped from ace.mu.nu Thought for the day is from Alexander Tytler : A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years. Today the Democrats may achieve their dream of filling in a hole in the goal of Cradle to Grave socialism. From SCHIP to ObamaCare and Medicare, government will control your health care. Of course that will just be a start. Once you start eating or doing things that cost to much, well, that will have to be regulated. Oh btw- The Democrats' budget numbers? Pure fantasy. God help us all.

Things Are Just Fab(ian)ulous

clipped from en.wikipedia.org The Fabian Society is a British intellectual socialist movement, whose purpose is to advance the principles of social democracy via gradualist and reformist, rather than revolutionary, means. It is best known for its initial ground-breaking work beginning late in the 19th century and continuing up to World War I. The society laid many of the foundations of the Labour Party and subsequently affected the policies of states emerging from the decolonisation of the British Empire, especially India. Today, the society is a vanguard "think tank" of the New Labour movement. It is one of 15 socialist societies affiliated to the Labour Party. Similar societies exist in Australia (the Australian Fabian Society), Canada (the Douglas-Coldwell Foundation and in past the League for Social Reconstruction) and New Zealand.

The Smaller List

clipped from www.zerohedge.com In our view there is no stronger argument against permitting centralized control of industries, particularly finance, than the dynamic aptly demonstrated by the Bank of North Dakota gambit.  So long as government, state or otherwise, is permitted to translate political desire into market manipulation this sort of cronyism threatens. In the end capturing lending sectors that represent over 40% of the nation's economy accomplishes two things: First, the ability to disregard underwriting in favor of loans to this week's favored political class or pet project. Second, the creation of a significant body of subjects (to be distinguished from Citizens) beholden to the state.  Is it any wonder that health care, insurance and energy are next on the list? We don't really wonder what will be de facto nationalized next.  We wonder what is actually going to be left to nationalize.  The latter seems quickly becoming the smaller list.

Have You No Shame?

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Reality Check

clipped from www.shadowstats.com The SGS-Alternate GDP reflects the inflation-adjusted, or real, year-to-year GDP change, adjusted for distortions in government inflation usage and methodological changes that have resulted in a built-in upside bias to official reporting. Annual Growth (Year-to-Year Percent Change) in GDP is shown in the chart on the right. This is not the annualized quarterly rate of change that serves as the headline number for the series. Note: The GDP headline number refers to the most-recent quarter’s annualized quarter-to-quarter rate of change (what that quarter’s percent quarter-to-quarter change would translate into if compounded for four consecutive quarters). This can mean that the latest quarter can be reported with a positive annualized growth rate, while the actual annual rate of change is negative.  Such was the case for the 3rd quarter of 2009.

Welcome to alternate reality.

The World's Largest Banana Republic

clipped from www.qando.net Huzzah! No, not really – but I’m sure that’s the reaction on much of the “progressive” left.  Most of them figure without a public option the chance of actually swinging a government single payer system is a whole lot harder.   With it, they have a pretty good chance.  Harry Reid promises to oblige: Hoping to assuage progressive Democrats who remain disappointed with the content of the health care reform bill, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) committed on Friday to holding a separate vote on a public option in the coming months. And don’t expect Mr. Reid to follow the rules of the Senate when he does aides on the Hill are already looking to future reconciliation vehicles to which they can attach the public plan, which would, in turn, allow for it to pass via an up-or-down vote Welcome to the world’s largest Banana Republic.

Still Making Up The Rules

clipped from gatewaypundit.firstthings.com Key Democrat and impeached judge Rep. Alcee Hastings said this during a House Rules Meeting today in defense of the Democrats’ health care approach: “All this talk about rules. We make them up as we go along.” It should be noted that in 1981, Hastings was charged with accepting a $150,000 bribe in exchange for a lenient sentence. Hastings was impeached for bribery and perjury becoming only the sixth federal judge in the history of the United States to be removed from office by the Senate. He’s still making the rules as he goes along.

Capiche?

clipped from www.moonbattery.com Just in case you missed what all the fuss over Sunday's ObamaCare vote is about.

Messages

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com Barack Obama has recorded his second annual Nowruz message for Iran. The man is a nattering nabob of Nowruzianism. In his message Obama acknowledges Iran's right to peaceful use of nuclear energy. He purports to be mystified by the beliefs of "Iran's leaders." He must not be paying close attention. You will be pleased to note that the United States remains interested in "comprehensive diplomatic contact and dialogue." Without reviewing Obama's message in detail, let me note only that watching It is painful. Obama's Nowruz message to Iran contrasts markedly with the forthright and dignified message regarding Iran delivered by Neda's fiancé yesterday in Israel: The fiancé of Neda Agha-Soltan, who was killed during protests in Teheran following the Iranian elections last year, visited Israel as guest of Channel 2, the station reported Friday evening.

Whoops Again!

clipped from pajamasmedia.com MEGAN MCARDLE: Arizona Kills SCHIP, Puts Medicaid on a Diet. “On the eve of the possible passage of a health care bill, Arizona has provided a glimpse of our possible future by shutting down its SCHIP program and booting a bunch of people out of Medicaid. . . . The reason this is so troubling, of course, is that the new proposed health care plan gets about half of its coverage expansion through adding people to Medicaid. The state side of this expense doesn’t show up on the books as a government expenditure (neatly enabling the bill to get a lower CBO score), but someone in America has to be taxed to pay for it, and there is a big problem when tax revenues fall short of the required expenditure.”

Certainties

clipped from wattsupwiththat.com In fact, if you believe what you read in the scientific literature, you shouldn’t believe what you read in the scientific literature. “There is increasing concern,” declared epidemiologist John Ioannidis in a highly cited 2005 paper in PLoS Medicine, “that in modern research, false findings may be the majority or even the vast majority of published research claims.” Ioannidis claimed to prove that more than half of published findings are false, but his analysis came under fire for statistical shortcomings of its own. “It may be true, but he didn’t prove it,” says biostatistician Steven Goodman of the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health. On the other hand, says Goodman, the basic message stands. “There are more false claims made in the medical literature than anybody appreciates,” he says. “There’s no question about that.”

The Bursting Balloon

clipped from www.qando.net That aside, the numbers from the CBO are being widely panned as misleading.  Those aren’t the CBO’s numbers – they simply deal with what they’re given – they’re the numbers from the pending bill and reconciliation package.  The Weekly Standard gives them some pretty good context that all can understand: [It] is like the introductory price quoted by a cell phone provider.  It’s the price before you pay for minutes, fees, and overcharges — and before the price balloons after the introductory offer expires. If you need a more graphic representation, this will do: Of course, if you take the decade of 2014 to 2024 into account, the “introductory” offer doesn’t at all look so rosy or good.

Sycasuse

clipped from www.moonbattery.com Remember when the left mercilessly ridiculed Dan Quayle for mis-spelling potato? Remember when Sarah Palin was ridiculed for (correctly) noting that Alaska borders Russia? Remember how every George W. Bush gaffe got twenty minutes of air-time on The Daily Show and a SNL sketch? But when Dear Reader misspells "Syracuse" while filling out his NCAA brackets --- (a moment breathlessly hyped by the MSM, even as they ignore Demon Pass) --- his boyfriends in the MSM cover for him. They don't show Obama writing the word Syracuse, it is replaced with ESPN animation, (at 1:26). Obama comes in after the animation and says "we've got Syracuse here" (word Syracuse is already written). ESPN shows him write every team in the Sweet 16 except for Syracuse, which they edited out It's sad when the president is so dumb the media has to cover for him.

This Reeks

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It isn't every day I put up Jack Cafferty now is it?

O Idiots On Stilts

clipped from www.washingtonexaminer.com House Democrats say they will hold a vote on their national health care plan Sunday afternoon. But what are they actually doing between now and then? Behind the scenes, they're begging, offering bribes, threatening punishments, etc. But on the House floor, where lawmakers conduct their public business, the Democratic leadership is engaged in a days-long time-wasting effort to keep the House in session until the party can come up with enough votes to pass Obamacare. For example, Friday afternoon -- a time when the House would normally have adjourned and lawmakers gone home -- the House considered H.Res. 1040, "Honoring the life and accomplishments of [novelist] Donald Harrington for his contributions to literature in the United States." The Democratic leadership allotted 40 minutes of debate to the subject, which is just a bit less than will be given to national health care.

The Spirit Of Liberty

clipped from www2.timesdispatch.com This is not a blindingly new insight. During the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church raked in sackfuls of loot by selling indulgences to sinners. In a similar fashion, these days you can salve your environmental conscience by purchasing carbon offsets. That has worked out well for folks such as Al Gore, who says he counterbalances his jet-setting ways by "purchasing verifiable reductions in CO2 elsewhere." Yet the studies that purport to prove something about some people often simply restate what is true about most of them. It's not that only conservatives are judgmental and only environmentalists are inconsistent. Everybody is both, to varying degrees -- and when we laugh at the failings of our political opponents, we are also laughing at ourselves. The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right. --Judge Learned Hand.

Fixing The System

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Face To Face

clipped from www.dailymail.co.uk Children who are hooked on computer games, the internet and mobile phones are to be offered help at what is thought to be the first dedicated technology addiction service for young people in Britain. The Capio Nightingale Hospital in central London - where singer Amy Winehouse was treated for drug addiction - launched the new service for patients as young as 12 following calls from parents concerned about their children's obsession. Youngsters will be weaned off their gadgets in a residential unit and will also be taught face-to-face social skills.

The Russians Are Coming

clipped from washingtontimes.com The Obama administration is poised to ban offshore oil drilling on the outer continental shelf until 2012 or beyond. Meanwhile, Russia is making a bold strategic leap to begin drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico. While the United States attempts to shift gears to alternative fuels to battle the purported evils of carbon emissions, Russia will erect oil derricks off the Cuban coast.

Belief

clipped from pajamasmedia.com WHY DID WE HAVE A FINANCIAL CRISIS? Because regulators didn’t believe in efficient markets. “If regulators had been true believers in efficiency, they would have been considerably more skeptical about some of the consistently high returns being reported by various financial institutions. If the capital market is fiercely competitive, there is a good chance that high returns are attributable to high leverage, high risk, inside information, or dishonest accounting. True believers in efficiency would have looked more closely at the leverage and risk-taking positions of Lehman Brothers, Bear Sterns, AIG, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and banks and investment banks generally. They might have questioned the source of the trading profits of hedge funds like Galleon, and discovered some using inside information. And they would have been exceptionally skeptical of the surreally high and stable returns reported over an extended period by Bernie Madoff.”

As Soon As I Return

clipped from gregmankiw.blogspot.com Imagine you have a friend who has a budget problem.  Every month he spends more than he earns.  His credit card bills are piling up.  He is clearly on an unsustainable path.  Then one day he comes to you with an idea. Friend: I am going to take off a few days from work and fly down to Bermuda for a quick vacation. You: But isn't that expensive?  Won't that just add to your growing debts? Friend: Yes, it is expensive.  But my plan is deficit-neutral.  I have decided to give up that half-caf, extra-shot caramel macchiato I order at Starbucks twice every day.  I really don't need that expensive drink.  And if I give it up for the next three years, it will pay for my Bermuda trip. You: Well, then, how are you going to solve the problem of your growing debts? Friend: I am going to figure that out as soon as I return from Bermuda.

Perfect Ending

clipped from pajamasmedia.com CBO SCORE PRELIMINARY, final numbers not available until Saturday or Sunday — perhaps after the vote? Plus this: “If it kicked in right away, the decade-long estimate would obviously be well into the trillions. So they simply stalled it for four years, incurring just $17 billion in costs — or 1.8 percent of the total 10-year estimate — through 2013 so that wavering Democrats could go back to their districts and tell baldfaced lies to their constituents about the pricetag. A perfect ending to this travesty.”

Now We're Getting Warm

clipped from pajamasmedia.com WHO NEEDS A CONTRACT WITH AMERICA? Congressional Candidate Gives Supporters Permission To Hang Him. “‘If I don’t do what I say, I’ll give you my address, and you can bring a rope and you can hang me,’ Fincher told the crowd.” I like that.

Denied

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Wow

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com Cole was a child prodigy on the piano. He took it up at age 4 and played by ear until he was 12, when he began taking lessons. By age 15 he had dropped out of high school to become a full-time professional musician. William Ruhlmann tells the rest of the story here.

The 4 Year Countdown

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com Tim Cahill is the state treasurer of Massachusetts. He recently bolted the Democratic Party to run for governor. The Boston Globe reports Cahill's pointed comments on Obamacare as with a local twist: State Treasurer Timothy P. Cahill, an independent candidate for governor, today offered a wide-ranging and scathing criticism of the state's universal health care law, saying it is bankrupting Massachusetts and will do the same nationally, if a similar plan is passed in Congress. "If President Obama and the Democrats repeat the mistake of the health insurance reform here in Massachusetts on a national level, they will threaten to wipe out the American economy within four years," Cahill said in a press conference in his office.