Radio Free NJ

- Why I Really Don't Care About The Poor

2012-02-02T16:29:00.003-05:00

When my father in law came to this country from a refugee camp in Europe, he did so in accordance with the law. At the time, all he had to his name was $460 dollars, two suitcases, and the clothes on his, his wife's, and his then tween daughter's back.

The year was 1976.

His English was never great, and is still heavily accented. He had only a third grade 'formal' education - enough to read and write Hungarian, and just a little English. But he worked hard, saved his money, bought his bosses business from him, worked even harder, and retired 18 years later in 1994, as a multi-millioniare.

He says there is no excuse for being poor in this country, and I think he's absolutely right. You may not end up a billionaire, but I'm absolutely convinced that no one is really poor in this country unless they choose to be.

Too harsh? Tell it to someone who came from the rich side of the tracks.

- Putting The 'Duh' Back In Florida

2012-02-02T14:50:00.003-05:00

The title above is how my oldest friend, a long time resident of Sarasota, originally described the whole 'hanging chad' Bush Vs Gore recount debacle. I'm reminded of it today because it turns out the Newt Gingrich has all the class of St. Al.

Newt Gingrich’s campaign says it will challenge Florida’s delegation to the GOP national convention, and at least one member of the Republican National Committee thinks it has cause.

Cause or no, this seems petty and pointless to me. I know it's not the same thing, I know this is an intra-party issue that will be settled without the courts and won't involve calls for partial (Democrat counties only) recounts and partisan bickering. But I think the protest makes Gingrich look horribly petty and small... just like Al did.

- Size Matters

2012-02-02T11:13:00.002-05:00

Count me among the ranks of 'Bigger is Better" when it comes to concealed carry pistol rounds. I don't necessarily feel that way about rifles, but with pistols, I truly believe that a larger round has a better chance of doing what you need it to... making the person on the receiving end stop in his tracks.

The .380 has the virtue of being completely concealable. That's particularly important in the greater NYC are where you're almost certainly breaking the law if you carry concealed. But in my opinion it just doesn't do the job... or rather... it will do the job with too low a probability, for me to be comfortable.

Thanks to modern engineering, there are new just a few 9mm pistols which can also be as well concealed as the .380's. I'm personally a fan of the Diamondback DB9, and Vinny my Transfer agent, carries a Rohrbaugh R9. Both are concealable in a hip pocket and will look like nothing more than a bulky wallet with the right holster.

The cops I know (who don't have to fear NY/NJ handgun laws like the rest of us) all carry .45 acp's. For some jobs, size does matter.

- Not Completely Crazy

2012-02-01T06:01:00.005-05:00

This is really for my buddy Gary the Physicist, who thinks that over the very long term, hedging our planetary risk should be one of humanity's biggest priorities. He's right of course (he usually is). There is little doubt that sooner or later something big is going to hit the earth and when it does, it's going to hurt. If we have a self sustaining human colony someplace else, we hedge our risk as a species in a very big way.

That's one of those college dorm room conversations. But thanks to the costs when you talk about actually doing it, it immediately becomes a 'not today' sort of endeavor. But this idea appeals to the investment manager in me. It's a way to bring the constraints which are immediately applied by the free market to the space program, which has never really benefited from them. It's the difference between the way that Solyndra was built and the way that Amazon.com was built. The incentives for growth are all different.

Even with our current financial issues I personally wouldn't object to seeing a 5 or 10 billion dollar prize for 'big efforts' like this one. This is really the best way for government to get involved if they're going to. Public funded, not publicly provided.

But I still don't think it's an issue to run for President on.

- The Army We Have

2012-01-31T20:06:00.004-05:00

Mitt Romney is by no means my favorite potential Presidential candidate. But as the man said, you fight the war with the army you have, not the army you want. And I now believe that Mitt Romney, for better or worse, is going to be the Republican candidate for President. Since that’s so, I thought I’d scratch out some of my thoughts on the Army it seems we now have.

The Mormon Thing

I don’t know too terribly much about Mormonism, but I know a few Mormons. They have been to a man some of the most forthright, and respectable people I’ve ever met. They have a practical streak, and are extremely family focused. So if America wound up being more like the Mormons for having had one as President, I’d say that’s a good thing. Their religion may be nuts, but Global Warming is nuts too and lots of people believe that. At least when people believe in Mormonism, good things seem to come out of it.

I believe that although he has watered down his politics to get elected in a deep blue state, he still probably possesses a moral compass that points to something close true north. So I believe it will be his character to drift to the right of his past positions, not the other way around. Truth is though, that’s really anyone’s guess.

The Wall Street Thing

The issue of Romney’s history on Wall Street will really be a double edged sword. He will in fact understand economics and modern finance. After at least one (probably 2) presidents who didn’t understand it, I think that will be a relief. It’s important now too because if we don’t get some rapid economic growth, we’re in a heap of trouble. But on that front I think Romney is as good a candidate as is available. He knows what to do.

There is some question however if he’ll actually be able to do it. Both the populist right and the left have declared war on modern banking and the people who work there. So any move Romney makes that’s seen to be benefiting anyone in finance, and the media will be bludgeoning him as if he were piñata full of Chivas Regal minis. That will mean considerable pressure on him to stay clear of anything that helps Wall Street, even indirectly.

The ‘Rich Guy’ Thing

I wish he wasn’t quite so wooden about his defense of his success, but all in, I think this is the battle we should be having. If Obama wants to demonize him for being rich, I say “have at him”. This isn’t France, its America. We don’t hate the rich here; we want to BE the rich here. And the voters will see this as Obama showing his true socialist redistributive colors. I don't think that will win him any fans outside the union halls and deep blue districts, and they already love him because he's black.

The “Not A Real Conservative” Thing

Chris Christy is no conservative. He’s an unapologetically anti-gun, pro amnesty, pro gay marriage, northeastern governor of a deep blue state. But the same people who call Romney a liberal think Christy is a conservative. There may be substance to the complaint that Romney isn’t conservative enough, but the people making that complaint at the moment are talking out of their.... hats.

Besides, whatever his past sins, Romney is a lot more conservative than Obama, and in the end that’s the only real litmus test.

The “Wooden Debater” Thing

Newt Gingrich is a big puncher who is looking for an opportunity to land a haymaker and win the fight by knockout. But to do that, he’s going to have to take enormous chances. Those chances will lose the primary for him, and the fact that he would take those chances would make him a bad president even if he got lucky. I’m sorry, but I just don’t believe he has the right temperament for the job. Besdie that, he’s making arguments like a liberal – telling one side of things and hoping that the public are too stupid to understand the whole story.

Romney may not be the fiery orator that Newt is, but I think that speaks for him not against him. And the arguments he makes rely on the people being smart enough to understand the bigger picture. That’s a conservative argument to make if you ask me.

Look. I’m not a huge fan of the guy, but given my choices, he’s looking better and better. And he looks WAY better to me than 4 more years of Obama.

That’s all I’m saying.

- It's 58 Degrees Today At The Beach

2012-01-31T12:29:00.002-05:00

...I'm going to make the most of it, and run outside this afternoon. Maybe I'll drive over to the sand in my wife's CRV.

- More Liberal Mythology In Real Time

2012-01-31T09:35:00.002-05:00

The image above shows the 'Occupy Wall Street' crowd showing their patriotism in the traditional liberal manner by burning an American flag, which they had just stolen from the Oakland California City Hall. This, as we know from countless articles and news pieces on the subject, is the most important movement of 2011, and a movement which epitomizes the liberal belief in a better America for everyone. (well... everyone except the top 1%)

But if the people who represent the bottom 99% are busy stealing and subsequently burning flags, doesn't it stand to reason that at least some of the 99% must be stealing them from other parts of the 99%? Or is it the position of the leftist media that the only people who are actually buying and displaying American flags are the evil 1%?

The fact is, the very best of these OWS kids are deluded but harmless. But the vast majority of them are nothing but stupid and destructive. And although the official Democrat party positions are less openly contemptuous of America and American values, they are no less driven by the same envy, and hatred of the success of others.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion. But a great many people have opinions which are stupid. And once they demonstrate that fact, we should all stop pretending that they represent a valid position. The OWS movement is a farce of blatant anti-Americanism. So too is the largest part of the Democrat party - no matter how they may insist otherwise.

- Bad Extrapolation

2012-01-30T13:59:00.012-05:00

I have another somewhat more internal musing to offer while my second simulation of the day runs.

As I have mentioned numerous times, my only child is a daughter. But my friend has a son. I’ve had some experience with the boy, and he seems a bright and decent kid to me. Maybe while he’s at home he’s a villain, but I’ve never seen it. All in, I’d say he’s no more ill mannered or surly than any other teenager I’ve ever met. In my view he’s quite literally a normal, slightly quirky kid, who is by no means a horror to be around. And yet, my friend is very concerned about his son’s future.

I don’t mean to butt into my friend’s relationships with their kids, and knowing as little about good parenting as I do, I’m loath to give advice. But I do like to offer what help and entertainment I can. That’s what friends do right? I have access to Wall Street internships for college aged kids (which can be a real career advantage), and access to firearms and a firing range for kids of all ages. Many of my friends have taken up the latter, and a few now have gone for the former. And it’s made their kids a ‘sometimes’ topic of conversation.

So in talking to my friend about his son and some shooting and hunting related activity we’re planning, he expressed to me a worry that his son has a mild form of Asperger’s syndrome. He doesn’t think he needs treatment to function (or if he does, he didn’t say so to me). He just thinks the kid has a sort of emotional disconnection from world and that it speaks of some other broader problems. Personally I’m dubious.

I feel like I’m probably getting out of my area just a little here having never raised a boy. But he is not the only friend I have who has voiced a concern like that to me about their own son. And I wonder if that doesn’t speak to some trend in parenting rather than a trend in the kids. In my experience, teenage boys come in two flavors - those with highly developed social skills (heretofore called ‘charming’) and those without. My nephew is an example of a charming kid as was his father, my younger brother.

And on the opposing side, I myself was an example of a teenager who was utterly lacking in anything called charm. By the time I’d reached the age of my friend’s son I was deeply introverted, loaded down with severe self hatred, and unspeakably, impossibly shy. To anyone who paid attention I looked like a kid who was bright but ‘deeply troubled’, which in fact I probably was. That phrase found its way into a number of school related reports with my name at the top and if anything, I’m probably understating the impact it had on my teenage years. But eventually I grew up. And just as my brother’s copious charm hasn’t solved all the world’s problems for him, my complete lack of it turned out to be less debilitating than it seemed it would for me.

As I got out into the world and came to better understand my place in it, I got over my shyness, became more open with people, and learned that I wasn’t actually the worst human being ever born. I’m not saying it was easy for me, or that to be perfectly frank, it’s easy now. But no one meeting me today would ever recognize the teenager I was. I am, for all intents and purposes, fully recovered from my teenage angst. And it’s my expectation that however Asperger like my friend’s sons may be, I think they’ll probably get over theirs too.

My point is, I think we may be expecting too much from our teenage boys. Maybe it’s harder now with so many of society taboo’s burned in the hippie bonfires of the 60’s and abandoned to the ash heap of history. Most of those taboo's were designed to keep teenage boys in line, so maybe the world looks scarier to parents now that they're gone. But these kids look pretty normal to me even if their parents still have concerns. I just don’t think you can accurately extrapolate a period of life that’s difficult for everyone, and imagine that it will lead to a life of general decline.

Neither of the boys I’m talking about seem to me to be particularly cruel, or nasty. Neither has had much of a problem with peer group violence. They’re reasonably good students. Neither seems likely to join a gang, the Klan, Al-Qaeda, or to take up the crack pipe. They don't even seem like they'll vote Democrat. Maybe it’s easier for me since I don’t have such lofty hopes for them, but when I look at these kids I just don’t see a problem. Especially in the light of having recovered from my own much more serious social issues.

I get that a father wants his son to be more than him. I get that it’s a very difficult thing to look at your child and remember that they are not clay for you to mold. I know it’s tough to avoid disappointment at the idea that they are following a path that will lead them to be something other than what you would like them to be or that doesn't seem to lead to them fulfilling their potential. But speaking directly to my friends who have voiced a concern like this one, I’d like to point something out.

I may not be a billionaire, but I don’t think there is anyone out there who would call me a failure. I make a nice living in an interesting job with fantastic forward prospects; I have a happy wife, a happy child, and a number of intelligent, charming, and interesting friends. I’m a perfectly normal man who is doing pretty well all in, and I'm very happy with my place in the world.

But it is none the less true that my father badly wanted me to turn out differently than I have. And to this day he’s not only deeply disappointed in me, but at some levels he's thoroughly ashamed of how I turned out. While that doesn’t thrill me, I have made my peace with it. And the reason I was able to was that while I may not be many of the things that he hoped I'd be, I am many of the things that I hoped I’d be. And in the end we all find our own place.

Your boys seem fine to me - really much better than that. I can see nothing wrong with them that a few years and some experience finding their place in the world won’t fix. And I’m a living example that kids can climb back from much much worse.

So don’t panic.

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I guess the New York Times editors read my stuff too. If so, I should really speak to them about their economic view.

- Ender & The Hunger Games

2012-01-30T11:07:00.004-05:00

It’s a total aside, but in thinking and talking about the impending ‘Hunger Games’ movie with my daughter this weekend, I find I have another story on my mind. So while I'm waiting for my current simulation to finish running, I wanted to say something about my favorite scj-fi book of all time – “Ender’s Game”.

For those of you who haven’t read it (shame on you) Ender’s Game tells the story of a gifted boy who is sent to an orbital military training academy to learn to command the forces of earth in repelling a fleet of hostile aliens. Earth has developed captured alien technology to allow for instantaneous communication across any distance, but is still limited with regard to travel. So the human attack fleet has been sent generations ago, and while they travel across the galaxy, slowly aging at relativistic speeds, humankind has devoted itself to training the kinds of leaders it will need to command the fleet when it finally arrives. Ender is one of the candidates for that role.

In the past, I’ve talked a little about what it was like to grow up as an outlier. Ender is the epitome of that. Even in a “battle school” comprised of the global best, he’s lonely, isolated, and desperate for acceptance. He’s a sensitive kid, who out of necessity is being summarily tortured by his surroundings as the military commanders of the battle school struggle to meet their deadline. They know that what they’re doing to him is impossibly cruel – but with the survival of the human race at stake, they believe they have no alternative.

If there is a single issue that makes that story particularly gripping, it’s that one. The cruelest people in the book all have unimpeachable motives for their cruelty. Unlike the Hunger Games, there are no truly two dimensional villains in Ender's world. Fear and envy of Ender’s talents among his peers plays a small role, but it’s really the people who care the most about Ender who are the most horrible to him. In fact, even the aliens, who at their first meeting slaughtered humans with no more regard for life than a person would mourn for a trimmed fingernail, turn out to be quite sympathetic (in an involuntarily nightmare inducing way) in later books.

It’s a story of incredible depth, complexity and charm. There are heroes, villains, monsters, and friends. The heroes end up as the villains, the villians as heroes, and the line between victor and victim in nothing but blurred. I don’t know anyone who’s read it who hasn’t said that it’s among their all time favorites of sci-fi. So why I wonder has such a spectacularly wonderful book written all the way back in the 1985 not been made into a movie when, subsequent books have?

The answer seems to be politics.

The author, Orson Scott Card is a Mormon, and has been relatively plainspoken when it comes to political issues. But the thing that really seems to have annoyed the literary critics is that Card treats all the violence and cruelty in the book as justified. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t believe that violence isn’t justified sometimes, but Ender’s Game was published before Fox News and the internet, when a leftist worldview held a unilateral stranglehold on the voice of the media.

The very thing that made Card’s book rich and real to it's fans was the thing it was panned for among critics. And even as the 'Ender' fan base swelled to massive proportions and the book won award after award, it was very vocally criticized and Ender was compared to... (wait for it) ... Hitler. The upshot of it all seemed to be that in allowing Ender to be truly ‘better by birth’ and fairly violent besides, Card stepped on too many progressive toes.

Now though, A more balanced world view seems to be bubbling up in Hollywood and it seems that they are finally rethinking Ender. IMDB shows a 2013 release date for a film, and Card himself has been involved in a screenplay, so it’s unlikely to be too dumbed down. That's a good thing because the fans of this work will be almost as tough to please as those of Ayn Rand. Everyone who knows Ender already loves him and it would feel like a terrible betrayal to see a two dimensional Jonas Brother breaking into a song about being sent to command school. But hopefully it won't go that way.

IMDB shows Harrison Ford as Colonel Graff, and Ben Kingsley as Mazer Rackham. Asa Butterfield has been cast as Ender. I hope they all do the story justice.

As an aside, the United States Marine Corps lists “Ender’s Game” as part of it’s recommended reading for officer candidates. I find that not at all surprising.

- The Future Of Obamanomics

2012-01-29T10:10:00.010-05:00

Politicians no longer need to seize direct control of 'the means of production'. They can simply control the controllers with regulation. Once they put their regulatory infrastructure in place, they can tweak and tune that regulation to achieve all sorts of political goals. Selected bailouts and special case loans for politically appealing industries; punitive taxes and anti-competitive restrictions for industries that are not so politically appealing. We're no longer on a road to serfdom... now it's more of an escalator.

And of course... since you can't possibly hope to get the same amount of growth in an economy while giving special political favor to some people that the market wouldn't reward on it's own, that escalator only runs one direction... down.

This is the 21st century progressive view. And the cost of that view is low growth, high unemployment, and at least one lost generation. Make no mistake, if you're an Obama supporter, this is future for America that you are voting to achieve.

Someone has to decide who wins and who loses. If the free market truly is 'unfettered' then it's the consumer who decides. Private industry never forced anyone to buy a product... they only asked them to. But as you add layer upon layer of regulation, the people who decide who wins and loses are the politicians. And in that world - our world - if the politicians don't like you, it doesn't matter how well you do. You aren't going to be allowed to win.

That same gun that is being held to the head of big business (otherwise known as the people who used to give people like you a job) is at the moment, ordering them to focus on windmills and solar panels. But it can and will be turned on you the instant the wind changes.

- Party At Turtle Bay!

2012-01-26T19:45:00.002-05:00

According to a CBS News report, 30 pounds of cocaine was "inadvertently" delivered to the mailroom of the UN.

A UN spokesman was quoted as saying "What Cocaine? We don't know anything about hiding any cocaine!"

- Hollywood Making Hunting Look Cool

2012-01-25T14:31:00.008-05:00

My daughter is the perfect age for the ‘young adult’ range of literature, and one book she’s taken an interest in is original of the soon to be released movie “The Hunger Games”. Since I’ve started running again, I’ve taken to listening to audio-books and half out of genuine interest and half out of trying to stay in touch with what my daughter is reading, I put a copy of the audio version on my phone.

There is much to admire about the heroine of the book Katniss Everdeen, who is raised in Appalachian ‘Coal country” at a time not too far into the future. But for me the thing that was most impressive about her was her profound affinity for bow hunting. Not only does she use it to keep her family alive after her father’s untimely death in a mining accident, but her impressive skill inevitably saves her life and that of her friend as well.

I’ve tried to imagine how Hollywood could possibly make this movie without making Katniss’s hunting skills seem cool. I know they’d certainly like to … I mean if there is a single reliable villain in the left’s retinue of bogeymen it’s “the hunter”. It may be even more prominent than the rich banker, businessman or CEO, since you don’t see too many of those in animated films.

But Katniss’s skill can’t be extracted from the character without shattering the storyline of the book. To try will make a much worse movie, so it seems an awfully big price to pay to prove a political point. Leave it in and you get a 16 year old girl who is brave, assertive, talented and unique. Take it out and you have… what? I can’t imagine.

For this reason, I think it’s entirely possible that archery in general and bow hunting in particular might just get a boost from Hollywood when the film is released. My daughter, who has some modest experience with archery but none with hunting, is over the moon waiting for the movie. After listening to the first of the three book set (which was absolutely first rate in my opinion), I feel the same way.

%%%%%%%%%%UPDATE%%%%%%%%%%
Speaks for itself I think:

- The SOTU According To Mike Ramirez

2012-01-25T13:26:00.002-05:00

- Obama's Blue Pill

2012-01-25T09:35:00.002-05:00

I hate to rip off a user comment so blatantly (because I can’t credibly take personal credit for it so soon) but this really is a Red Pill – Blue Pill election.

The Blue Pill, is Obama’s vision for America where scarcity is a non issue, politicians can make decisions with the even more success and efficiency than people who know better, and the rich will happily be chained to the chariot of state, pulling whoever he says to pull and however fast he says to pull them. His worldview is based on so many falsehoods, errors in judgment, and contradictions of logic that one barely knows where to begin criticism. It’s as much a fantasy and has as little in common with the ‘real world’ as the Matrix ever did.

Meanwhile there is a Red Pill. In the world of the Red Pill, the costs of life are soaring out of control, and the world is rusty and decrepit. The lives of the people are hard, and only made harder by the proponents of the Matrix. They’re fighting a losing battle as the massive machine of the Matrix encroaches on them and their liberty a little more every day. The Red Pill paints a picture of hardship and of scarcity. The only advantage the Red Pill has over the Blue Pill is that it’s the truth.

The people who believe in the great machine of the Matrix are slaves. But they’re happy in their slavery. They prefer a live of delusion to one where they are forced to take personal responsibility for their hardships. And they would be perfectly happy to have the rest of humanity enslaved in the same way. If the Matrix told them they could no longer have their fantasy without the rest of humanity joining them, they would lobby for it and do all they could to make it happen.

In my last post a reader made the comment that “The Corner” at National Review was the “Red Pill.” I think it’s better to say that they are crew of the Nebuchadnezzar – passing out the Red Pills every chance they can. They don’t get everyone of course. But hopefully they get enough to preserve the liberty of the few who still value it. That’s where this election comes in. If Obama and the big machine win this one, there may be so few people left that the ‘Real world’ can’t maintain a critical mass. This election won’t be the end for the big machine, but it may very well be the end for those who prefer the Red Pill.

For the Red Pill to work on us, we each need to take it ourselves. We need to believe that a harsh world where we are in control of our own lives is a better one than a world full of soft fluffy promises, where we are little more than slaves to a big machine. Nothing could describe the Obama vision for America better. But unless you’ve already taken the Red Pill, it probably doesn’t look that way to you.

UPDATE:::::::::::::::::::::::::

I'd love to see this re-shot with some generic looking 'Neo' and Jonah Goldberg (as arguably the most recognizable face of NRO) in the role of Morpheus. I wonder what that would cost to do?

- We've Heard This Before....

2012-01-25T08:08:00.001-05:00

If you're a liberal, let me ask you something. Obama has been 'against the rich' and ready to 'punish big business' for the last three years. How's that been working out for ya?

- All The Insight... None Of The Trolls

2012-01-24T09:43:00.005-05:00

Much of what I comment on comes from the various nooks and crannies of National Review, but I try to restrict the direct cross posting to those things that I feel I can add something substantial to. You don't need me to repeat things you can as easily read for yourself in "The Corner".

I confess, the people there are so smart that they don't often leave a ton of meat on the bone. So there are occasions where I find myself so impressed with a an essay or a particular insight that I end up doing little more than pimping for them. If anyone were paying for any of this I'd feel worse about it. But as it is, I find my conscience can handle it. "Me being impressed" may not seem particularly substantive to you, but my friends send me stuff all the time, and I think of that as doing the same.

This item is a bit of an exception though because I think it casts the past two posts into particular relief. Here is Jonah Goldberg discussion the NRO "Corner" moving into it's second decade. I think most people view the corner as a big time serious intellectual powerhouse for the right. It's a place where intelligence and applied expertise are valued above all other things.

This offers an interesting contrast to a place like Freerepublic where the value of both intelligence and expertise has been discounted to something very near to zero. On Freerepublic, if you are a retired military non-com who has never done anything but soldiering, you are treated as if your opinions have the same weight on something like physics for example, as someone who has a Nobel Prize in the field.

This is the product of anonymity. Anonymous web posting takes away accountability. And just like liberal policies that do the same to real life, they foster so much unproductive behavior that finding productive things becomes harder not easier. In truth, that's why I started this blog. I wanted to be in a position to take a little more credit (or blame) for my ideas, without having to cope with all the unproductive (or really... counter-productive) noise of FR.

I don't write this blog anonymously, but I do make it tough to find me. My full name, town of residence, and employer can all be found in these pages if you take the time to look. I do that more out of paranoia springing from my mis-spent youth than anything else, but it does also cut down on the hate mail. And having received death threats in the past I like to at least make it take some effort to track me down.

But the broader point about the Web is that I think the age of anonymity in political discourse is coming to an end - or at least fading to an irrelevant sidebar. While places like FR which allow anonymous posting increasingly fade to backwaters, (where even supporting one of the two leading Republican candidates is considered too leftist for them), National Review and the corner have shown a greater diversity of opinion, and have gained substantially in influence.

Personally I think that can only be a good thing.

- The Folk Of The Far Fringe

2012-01-23T06:10:00.011-05:00

On the political left all the consequences are unintended. To say that they don’t think things through very well implies more cognitive effort than they usually put into things. It’s not about cold calculation to the left, it’s about their feelings. So when that turns out to be a poor way to plan policy, they are the only ones who are surprised. But that isn’t to say that the political right doesn’t have its own brand of foolishness as well.

I wrote this piece over the weekend. It seemed an interesting idea to me – Newt Gingrich as Vice president. The job seems custom made for both his skills and his weaknesses. People tune out the VP in many cases so only the things that really strike a tone are given attention. And while it would let him make a big contribution, it will insulate everyone else from any … idiosyncrasies he brings to the game.

I hadn’t seen anyone raise that issue so I popped it off in an email to a few journalist friends, and posted it on Freerepublic – the well known right wing forum. Freerepublic was never a particularly thoughtful forum, but the last time I checked it was still getting a fair amount of traffic. And I figured I could tune out the most ridiculous and hostile of the comments in the interest of getting the idea out there to the base.

The reaction I got in the 2 or 3 hours before the piece was pulled by administrators was pretty extraordinary. To me it made what’s left of the Freerepublic membership look profoundly paranoid and much more a part of the fringe than it’s ever been. Like I said – the forum always had an element of “shoot first – think later” about it. But this was more like “shoot first, shoot second, shoot some more, and then quick pull the thread before anyone else sees it and is unduly influenced”.

What I hadn’t realized was that at some point in the past, the FR founder had written an essay on why neither he nor his forum would ever support Mitt Romney. OK… fair enough. The truth is, since Freerepublic declared war on modern finance (and the people like me who work in that trade) back in 2008, I haven’t been paying much attention to them. I had already been thoroughly alienated and hadn’t been a regular reader there, so I didn’t realize that they now have very strict rules about the kind of ideas you can offer.

I have no beef with that. It’s their forum so they can do with it what they like. Like I said – it was never the most thoughtful place on the web. But I don’t think they realize that by setting themselves up as being the guardian’s of electoral purity so early in the process, all they’ve done is marginalize themselves. They are demanding that their remaining membership only be a part of a far fringe. And I personally don’t think that’s a way to convince anyone of anything.

I think anyone who looks at me and my ideas and the first thing out of their mouth is “typical liberal Yankee A-hole” is either not paying attention, or not thinking at all. That’s just one of the many … interesting, criticisms I got for that piece, but none of the others were any more substantive. One person even seemed to feel that all this stuff I've written - over 1000 essays and other bits of commentary over a period of several years, was all just a smokescreen set up to mask this moment when I would unleash my real goal of persuading a few military retirees and Evangelical Christians to switch over to the liberal side.

This of course, is OK. I have no deep need to impress any of those people. They don’t seem particularly persuadable to me anymore and they made it clear that someone like me (an accused liberal, Yankee, paper pushing, financial parasite) was no longer welcome there ages ago, so I’m perfectly content to let them go their way while I go mine.

But I think it’s a shame that in trying to differentiate themselves from the left, they ended up so much like them, and in the process have lived up to what the left thinks about everyone on the right. They now have the same thin skin, the same intolerance of dissent, and the same kind of thoughtlessness. They are under the impression that because they feel differently than the left, they are by nature ‘different’ from them. They’ll tell you that they are thinking while the left is feeling. But my moderate essay brought an awful lot of extremely angry ‘thinking’ from a great many of them in the short time before they pulled it…so I’m unconvinced.

It seems pretty clear to me that the Freerepublic membership has decided that they will be the guardians of electoral purity, even if it means they do it one electoral defeat at a time. That’s OK with me if they choose that role for themselves. I just hope it really is as marginalizing as it seems. I think it would be tragic if it really were a broader movement, because it may very well help Obama and the left. And it wouldn’t be the first time the fringe stood nose-less on the sidelines, telling everyone else they’re wrong about everything.

I don’t think this is a broader movement. I don’t think FR represents the Republican base anymore. And I don’t think the actual base will flee for the hills if Romney is the candidate, only to potentially give another victory to Obama. But really, what do I know. I’m no political handicapper and I’m wrong about these things at least as often as I’m right. I can only hang my hat on the idea that if those people are so far out there that someone like me is simply tuning them out, they can’t be very convincing to anyone else either.

- Newt For Vice President

2012-01-22T09:24:00.004-05:00

There have been a number of times in my life when I’ve realized that my instinct was contrary to my interests. It’s no easier for me to cope with than it is for anyone else. But if you want broader success (and I do) then the only option is to set aside those instincts and do the smart thing instead of the thing that feels best at the time. We all must do it sometimes. We’re conservatives after all. We aren’t some childish liberals only worried about intentions and sentiment. We are interested in actually accomplishing things and the only way that happens is if we keep our eyes on the prize.

My personal instinct is almost always the full frontal attack. Charge in, guns blazing and do my level best to decimate the enemy. Yell, scream, insult, attack, offend… do whatever it takes to make the enemy skulk away from the field of battle feeling less than he was when the argument began. My family has always fought this way for better or worse. (I attribute it to some Woad sentiment as yet un-purged from our bloodlines.) And while it may be a highly effective way to win the battle at hand, much of the time it means a loss of the broader war.

That frontal attack very often makes us enemies who may back away from the field of battle, but do so only to skulk in the background and strike back with subtlety when it’s more effective. In my career I’ve had people wait ages to get their vengeance on me. Some (I’m quite sure) are still out there waiting to slip their knife in my ribs for past moments when I failed to follow my own advice. If I’m lucky they’ll never get their chance – but I hate the idea of depending on my luck. These days, I try much harder to ignore my instincts and do what’s in my interests instead.

Right now, Newt Gingrich is doing what feels best to conservatives. We’re oh so sick of the smug and condescending liberal media telling us about how they are the middle of the road, and that we (the majority of the country) are fanatics. We’ve craved for decades for a conservative who would refuse to allow them to define the conversation in their “are you still beating your wife” type style. Newt has the experience, the intelligence and to be frank, the ego to do that. And the voters of South Carolina have rewarded him with their votes.

But I continue to believe that this tactic is contrary to our broader interests. Don’t get me wrong, it feels as good to me as anyone to see those A-holes take a good hard verbal fist in the chops, and I’m enjoying seeing Newt do it. But my goal is not to feel good, my goal is to see Obama beaten in the 2012 presidential election. Newt, for all his strengths, is a wild card. I continue to believe that in his arrogance, he’s going to say or do something profoundly stupid that may very well cost Republicans the broader election. Newt Gingrich’s worst enemy, is Newt Gingrich. And I’ve seen that movie before.

The media gave us Barack Obama as president, and he in turn has set off a wave of regulation and governance that has been unprecedented in its anti-Americanism. Had the media even remotely done their job of vetting candidate Obama, then his hard left sentiments would have been apparent, and we would have probably elected Hillary Clinton president. Maybe that would have been worse – (lord knows she couldn’t have been ‘less competent’) but I don’t think it would have been as openly Anti-American.

My point is, at this moment in history, the desire to smack around the lame stream media is very strong in conservatives. But we should try to find away to set aside our instincts about those condescending jerks from CNN, the networks, and the New York Times. We should focus on what we intellectually believe is in our best interests, not what feels best to us in the moment. We may win the battle that way, but I don’t believe this is how you win the war.

No one will change the minds of the media. They won’t ever be honest about what they believe or be truly objective in their reporting. That sort of honest introspection is completely beyond them. And since that’s so, Newt’s trashing of them, as good as it feels to us, is not in our interests because it accomplishes nothing. We owe ourselves better than that.

The best assessment of Mitt Romney that I’ve heard to date came from Greg Guttfeld, host of Fox News’s Redeye (I’m an insomniac so what do you expect). He said that “Romney is an alpha male who belongs to a religion that rejects Alpha behavior”. Romney’s lack of ‘fist in the gob’ media management is only one example of mildness that primary voters are finding disconcerting. He seems wooden and passionless in the debates and unwilling to berate the media like Newt has. But in truth, I think (not feel… but think) that will make him a better President than Newt Gingrich, who sure as the sunrise, is going to self destruct.

Tell me you want Newt for Vice President (assuming you could squeeze his massive ego into the job) and I’d be thrilled. That would leave his ideas in the mix, would keep him engaged with the media, and give us the benefit of his intelligence without the burden of his poor judgment. But force me to vote for one of the two front runners, (Santorum has no money and won’t be able to keep up in Florida) and I’m voting for Mitt.

In truth I think the job of Vice President is almost custom tailored for Newt’s strength and weaknesses. I mean, the media will never give Newt the kind of carte blanche for verbal foibles that they give to Joe Biden, but they won’t roast the whole administration over the coals whenever he speaks either. Vice president is a job where you are not taken seriously in public, but you are very much taken seriously in private. Newt would be perfect for it.

Bring him out from time to time and let him smack Maria Bartiromo around (verbally of course) and defend broad principles of conservatism. Let him take the CNN team to the woodshed now and then, and offer up his ideas behind the scenes. He’d be perfect for the role, but for the fact that you probably couldn’t get him to accept it.

Then again, politics makes strange bedfellows. After the funding issues in Florida, a Romney - Gingrich ticket might not look so bad to him. It certainly wouldn’t look bad to us.

- Prepper's Are Among Us!

2012-01-22T08:14:00.007-05:00

Reuters discovers the "Preppers", which I discussed to much fanfare a few weeks ago here and here, and that I began talking about in much broader terms (in what I humbly think was one of my most persuasive essays ever) here.

Reuters stops short of the conclusions that I came to, probably because they don't really have any idea how likely a 'total collapse' scenario is. But in their defense, it's taken me more than a few weeks to figure out how this will play out too. And the author is just some dumb journalist after all.

- A Few Little Items

2012-01-20T06:11:00.004-05:00

17 debates so far... 17. I'm about 11 debates past caring. None of them has anything new to say on anything. Mitt will be wooden, Newt will be clever (in spite of his narcissism) and if Ron Paul gets any time in front of a camera, he will act like a nut. Newt's ex-wife is still mad at him? I'm shocked. Wake me when the polls open in New Jersey.

Clemens, Churchill, and William F. Buckley (last I checked) were all still dead. And since that's so, there is no one who can reduce the world to 128 characters or less that I would care to listen to. On twitter everyone has the substance and profound insight of Snookie. (Take note... even this insight is far too long for twitter.)

The people I know who are most into Facebook, are people who use it instead of actual interaction with people. It doesn't bring people together, it lets people who want to be apart do so without completed cutting themselves off from the world. I'm sure Ted Kaczynski would have loved Facebook so much, that his shack in the woods would have been wired with wifi, in spite of his ambivalence about technology.

In a sense, the technology battles of the 21st century seems to be about willingness. If a company can make you willing (or even anxious) to share your personal details, they can use that for marketing purposes. That targeting and efficiency is what advertisers are paying for. That's why Facebook is easting Google's lunch this quarter. But if it makes all these autodialer calls go away, it will all be worth it to me.

By far the best political quite I've heard this election cycle is that the way the media feels about republicans is "A consensus not a conspiracy". Think about it.

- Building CheckPoint Mikey

2012-01-19T09:32:00.005-05:00

Mike Bloomberg, the itty bitty mayor of New York City, is reacting to the recent rash of mis-applications of the City's over the top gun laws by putting body scanners on selected streets. According to him, walking on a public street generates enough reasonable suspicion of your activities to justify the government giving you a body scan to see if you're packing.

If you find this to be somewhat excessive, you are not alone. Both the ACLU and NYCLU have raised concerns. It's no stretch to say that these groups have in the past considered second amendment issues to be ... well... secondary. So that they are raising objections is an indication of how far beyond the pale this particular totalitarian move is.

The scans will be put in place ostensibly to find people carrying guns illegally, but scans for salt, trans fats, and other dietary violations which have been so dear to his majesty, can't be too far behind.

The title of this blog came about from a conversation I had with a friend from Texas. I was explaining to him that New Jersey is like the East Germany of the United States. Now if Mikey get's his way, it looks like we'll even have our own Checkpoint Charlie. It should be at the Delaware river bridge - but it's no surprise that here, even that doesn't work right.

- Return Of The Confidence Fairy

2012-01-18T10:25:00.008-05:00

The "confidence fairy" is the amiably disparaging term my co-worker uses to describe the cause of my 2012 optimism.

We’re both Macro guys, but he tends to rely on the published economic statistics a little more than I do. I’ve told him that I think there is a roughly 15% to 18% "Romney premium" available in stock market valuations for 2012. And as the election begins to look negative for Obama, people will begin to price it in. But since the origin of this number isn’t apparent in the current economic statistics, he tells me that I’m betting on the confidence fairy.

I have to say, in some respects, he’s right. I absolutely agree that the economic statistics don’t show the origin of my optimism. But I think that’s so because the numbers deal with aggregate statistics and the aggregation hides some of the interesting detail. Let me explain.

The economy has not universally gone off a cliff. Some areas of the economy have been much more seriously impacted than others. Housing and construction have been hurt badly as has finance and Healthcare R&D, while things like accounting, regulatory compliance, and manufacturing automation really have not. But the economic statistics that are published tend to smooth out all those differences and talk about the economy only in the aggregate.

But what that masks is that when the emphasis of an economy changes to “risk taking” from “risk avoiding”, it tends to do so from the bottom of the deepest troughs first. Those are the areas where prices have been allowed to fall the most, and will therefore attract the most daring risk takers. So when the mindset changes, it’s the really devastated areas that will be most effected. I believe this will have an out-sized impact on the statistics, even though it isn’t clear from looking at only the averages.

Or to put it another way, right now we have tepid economic growth, but the growth only looks tepid because (as an example) some areas are growing at 3% and some areas are shrinking at 2% giving us a net of +1%. If the economy improves only in those areas where it’s currently shrinking, even if it’s only to bring them back to "flat", then the net effect will be to dramatically improve the aggregate number; much more so than would be apparent by looking at the individual data sets.

I’m exaggerating my point a little to make the point clear to non financial folk, but that is the essence the claim I’m making. The parts of the economy which have been doing worst are the parts which will improve the most through new risk taking, and the overall impact on the broader economy will be larger than expected.

I believe it will also have an outsized impact on how people 'feel' about the economy, which is the more traditional description of things like 'consumer confidence' statistics. The free market has always naturally caused money to flow to those areas which most desperately need it – that’s what happens when you allow prices to float instead being fixed by regulation. So when people take risks, they do so by taking their capital to the areas where it's needed the most. Unlike a government directed economy, it's a naturally efficient system.

None of this is to say that as Obama’s reelection prospects dim it’s straight back to the go-go 90’s. We still have enormous economic challenges to face down. But I figure that as Obama's re-election looks less likely, there is about a 15% to 18% gain that can be had simply because an irrational economic outlook is no longer being offered by our government. That’s what Obama and the far left have advocated – a completely irrational economic plan that is designed to achieve the opposite of what it ostensibly intends. Take that away, and it's like the moment when you stop banging your head against the wall. Fear of the risk takers will begin to subside, and the free market will begin responding as it should again.

Am I mistaken about the number? I dunno... maybe. But if it turns out to be 8% or 11% premium, will anybody be willing to call me out and out wrong? I doubt it. I think the confidence fairy wants to come back, and the real 'hope' for America, is getting rid of Obama and the far left. Then we can begin looking forward again, instead of continuing to cope with our 'managed decline'.

- You Too Can Be A Condescending D***Head!

2012-01-17T14:24:00.006-05:00

Here's a new social science metric that some guy at Slate thinks is brilliance. And although I think I'd be a slow adopter of it, in Manhattan, where everyone is always looking for a way to look down on everyone else, I think it might really take off.

I came to the Slate piece via Mike Potemra whose ramblings on Catholicism I find particularly poetic. It's made me pay attention to some of the other (arguably less worthy) things he says.

The Slate piece he linked has an interesting anti-pretense pretension about it. As if finding people annoying has it's own social hierarchy. It makes me wonder how much of an ACI the wine fans in the bar would call the author and his friend. There is probably some equally high CDH (condescending D***Head) metric that they are quietly mentioning between Pinot Noir references.

I don't care for cigars myself. I know enough about wine to tell the difference between what I like and what I don't (but the pricetag will probably tell me all I need to know), and my favorite single malt is actually Connemara Peated Irish whiskey. So I don't think I'm terribly on the ACI scale.

But what I may lack in pretension I more than make up for in unapologetic snobbery. I have no patience whatsoever for people who pretend to know things they actually don't. Ignorance is no sin in my book so long as you admit it, but shoot your mouth off half cocked and you'll get to see just how stupid I can make someone feel. There are people still holding grudges against me since the 80's for making them look stupid in public.

I guess that may make CDH metric fairly high if you ask the right people - but I probably could have told you that. I've always known that I was an easy guy to dislike if that's what you were in the market for.

In the immortal words of hedonism bot, "I apologize... for nothing".

- How Cute...

2012-01-15T15:42:00.003-05:00

Look what the kids have been up to...

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

I'm sorry, I just don't get the whole Jon Stewart thing. It's like he's the host of a news program for people who are too stupid or childish to worry about real solutions to problems. I don't find him particularly funny or clever. And in using his "I'm just a comedian" schtick, he gets to raise shallow childish arguments to problems and then duck behind his clown face whenever someone tries to give him an honest rebuttal.

In a way he's the perfect messenger for the new left. He's not a real thinker, he just pretends to be one on TV.

- Liberal Mythology In Real Time

2012-01-15T07:46:00.002-05:00

It isn’t every day you get to see liberal mythology being written in real time. Actually... maybe it is. But it's usually it’s an ex-post thing. I guess the Tea Party looks too threatening to the left to leave the ‘story’ until after the fact. I get the impression that liberal outlets like the New York Times have been waiting since the 2010 election to write the legend of the disappearing Tea Party, and to do it in a format that makes it seem that the entire movement was a momentary reaction that will be ancient history by the 2012 election. Lord knows they really need it to be.

But what liberals don’t get about the Tea Party is that the people involved are not political people. They don't dedicate their lives to community organizing or public protest. They devote their lives to running their businesses, taking their kids to soccer practice, and coaching little league teams. The left thinks that if there are no demonstrations, there’s no movement. With the Tea Party, nothing could be further from the truth.

The presidential election was always going to show a bit of mean reversion as the opinions of millions of people are aggregated into a single candidate. And with such a weak field in the running it was unlikely to produce a conservative messiah. All the Tea Party favorites, Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan, Bobby Jindal, Chris Christy, have all decided to give a presidential run a pass this year. But none of that means the movement’s influence won’t be paramount in the election.

There is a broad streak of practicality in the Tea Party, that venue’s like the Times never give them credit for. Scott Brown owes his election to the tea party movement, and he’s certainly no Barry Goldwater. But the tea party rightly figured that in that election, for that state, he was the best thing available. The same will be true of the Tea Party’s choice in the presidential election.

What’s more, if it is Mitt Romney who gets the Republican nod, it will be a more conservative leaning Mitt Romney who moves into the Whitehouse thanks to the Tea Party. He’ll know that his every step will be watched by an electorate that’s just waiting for an excuse to give him a primary challenger for his re-election bid. He’ll know that there is a grassroots movement that will require some tribute from him in the form of meaningfully smaller government. So even if his every move is dictated only by political expediency, all his flops to the right will be slightly bigger and more meaningful than his flips to the left.

The modern left lives in a fantasy world, and they spend much of their time trying to convince the rest of us that it’s reality. But the thing that is most frustrating for them about the Tea Party is that the movement represents a group of people who don’t need to be told what the truth is.

They don’t take their marching orders from Rush Limbaugh or some trilateral commission run by the Koch Brothers, the Queen and Colonel Sanders. Each person in the tea party has looked at reality and has independently come to the same conclusions about what path would be best to take. To liberals, who believe that even reality is subjective, that kind of verifiable objectivity seems like to big a coincidence, so they imagine it being secretly ruled from above. But it's just more liberal imagination.

The Tea Party doesn’t need a big rally to know who to vote for. They don’t need public displays of political might to have a focused message. In truth, the movement doesn’t even need a movement at all. We all know what we have to do and who we need to put pressure on. The Republican candidates can take their cues from the Times editorial pages and scoff at the tea party if they really want to. But they’ll only be able to do that once.

They need to remember that while the Democrat Senate majority leader may be able to eak out an election against a Tea party favorite, but no Republican can. And if they try, they’ll be doing it at their peril.

- Romney Is a Vulture Among Penguins

2012-01-14T07:34:00.006-05:00

Once again I find that the man who best describes my feelings on the current state of the GOP primary is an Ex-Englishman, immigrant, Atheist, Mathematician in his mid 60's who writes with irreducible logic, and is described by his kids as "squidward".

Go figure.

In this weeks Radio Derb, among the many other clever quips that we can repeat around the water cooler as if they were our own, we learn that if Mitt Romney really is a vulture then in the Republican field he's a vulture among penguins.

This Weeks Radio Derb. Download it.

- What I'm Thinking About Today...

2012-01-13T07:20:00.005-05:00

I'm traveling home today, so instead of writing a long rambling blog post about how much more dovish the new Fed is I will have anxiety about getting lost, being late, and the long desperate search for a gas station to fill the rental car tank, somewhere near the airport. But a theme has popped into my head that I'm anxious to write something about.

Obama and other progressives want to reinvent how the world works, but they can't. People are very little more than the product of their decisions, no matter if powerful people want it to be otherwise or not. You really can't make a sow's ear into a silk purse. And Obama and his fellow travelers can't make men of poor character into champions.

That is... someone else can't change you, but you very much can change yourself. You can decide to do things differently, and in the process either prove your character or provide evidence of your lack of it. The government can't make winners into losers and losers into winners, but we can each do it for ourselves. In a sense... what I'm thinking is that you really can't keep a good man down.

If you are someone who has made mistakes (as we all certainly have) but have recently made the decision to change the way you do things, this has been a very frustrating time. Thanks to the hopey-changey way the rules have been redefined, there hasn't been as much of a payoff for you as there normally would be. But I'm increasingly convinced that we're entering a time where doing the "right thing" will be rewarded again - not punished. So have faith my friends. I truly believe that the dawn approach-eth.

All this week I've been making the argument that the economy will improve more than the aggregate economic statistics indicate, as a function of the falling political risk. In other words, I believe that as Obama's re-election looks less secure, the penalty currently suppressing the future value of risk taking will fall, increasing it's appeal. Risk takers will begin to take chances and hire people, but since they'll be doing it in the industries that have been most negatively effected by Team Obama's "brave new world', it will have more of an effect on aggregate statistics than we all expect. We won't be on a rocket to the moon, but we will decisively pick ourselves up off the mat.

All of this will take time to analyze and report of course. Don't expect it all to make headlines until well after the end of Obama's ("Insha'Allah" only) term. But I think if you look at your life instead of the newspaper you'll see increased optimism, and the people you know will be doing marginally better.

- A Growing Share Of A Shrinking Market

2012-01-12T17:43:00.002-05:00

This clip is from the movie "Other People's Money". This was back before Gordon Gecko got out of prison and politically favored companies got taxpayer funded bailouts. It was from when America still believed in a free market. Back before hatred of the finance industry became America's only truly bi-partisan issue.

It's worth your time to watch the whole thing.

- 7 Moving "Loyal Dog" Stories

2012-01-12T14:34:00.003-05:00

Like many hunters, I'm also a dog guy. Our current dog is a tiny little King Charles Spaniel who is the single most affectionate creature I've ever seen. But she won't flinch for a second at the idea of chasing a Deer through the yard or standing up to a much larger animal. Like All spaniels, she's fearless. Some would say that she (like her owner) has more courage than sense.

Go through all of these dog stories. I find the one pictured above particularly moving.

Seven incredibly loyal Dogs

- They Want Meredith Graves To Go Away Quietly

2012-01-11T15:37:00.005-05:00

I guess the press they got over the bureaucratic stupidity demonstrated when Meredith Graves was arrested on a gun charge has proven embarrassing. They are trying to make a deal with her to make the whole thing go away.

Shame. I'd love to see Bloomberg dragged into civil court over it all. But god bless to Meredith who won't probably won't have to go to prison after all. Good for her.

And three cheers for the few media outlets and journalists who called so much attention to this story and made it clear just how stupid the New York City government and little Mayor whats-his-face were behaving on the whole thing.

- Why US Manufacturing Loses

2012-01-11T11:55:00.004-05:00

This is video of a 30 story Hotel being constructed in China. From start to finish it took 15 days. In the same amount of time the useless union hacks we hired were only able to redo the drywall my basement by being so sloppy that they did several thousand in damage.

We're now replacing one of our furnaces and doing some other light plumbing etc., and at this point you can make your reservations on the skating rink in hell before a union laborer will get dollar one from me.

- How We Treat Outliers

2012-01-11T07:41:00.004-05:00

In our culture, we say that we admire intelligence and like smart people, but the truth is that most of us really don't. For most people, when they meet someone like that all that happens is that they feel insecure and vulnerable. They'll react to those feelings by ridiculing the person they see as a threat to their ego, and try to tear that person down a few pegs. Eventually of course, Bill Gates get's to fire all the bullies who gave him a hard time in middle school. The benefits of intelligence outweigh the disadvantages. But as a kid, it makes being much smarter than your peers particularly tough.

I was that smart kid. I was an outlier. I was not only smarter than virtually all of the other kids, but I was also smarter than my parents, and my teachers. And what's worse, everyone knew it. So people being people, some of them reacted to that better than others.

My buddy Gary was in a similar situation in his childhood. He and I have had occasion to discuss it and the commonalities have surprised even us. For instance, one thing that we both had in common was that school (that is - the lesson plans and instruction) was incredibly, unspeakably boring to both of us, and we reacted to that in a similar way.

The subject came up because Gary's oldest son, like the two of us, is an outlier too. And just like us, he's receiving an education which isn't exactly structured to challenge a kid like him. The schools in our area are quite good for public schools, but they are particularly awful when it comes to handling the highly intelligent outliers. Their goal isn't to get as much from each student as they can, but to get the same from everyone regardless of their ability. And since you can't get the slower kids to speed up, instead, the schools force the brightest kids to slow down.

The WSJ has noticed this, but I don't know that an article on the topic makes much difference. So long as we allow the government to be the provider of education as well as the financier of it, they will solve problems the way that government does. In the real world if something isn't working you stop, and try something else. In government if something doesn't work you do more of it, by giving it more funding and more resources. If that still doesn't work, you add more money again.

Most public school teachers (to me anyway) seem very well intentioned and sincere in their desire to help kids learn. But they also seem like pretty dim bulbs. Even the brightest of them wouldn't last 15 minutes in my world. And giving someone like that more funding will not address the issue of how we treat outliers.

- "I Like To Fire People!"

2012-01-10T12:35:00.004-05:00

I know it won't happen, but what I'd really love is to hear Romney grab the knife from their hands and own this phrase. I'd love to hear him say it 50 times a day - everywhere he goes. I'd like him to say it and re-say it so many times that the left will look like idiots for trying to misrepresent it.

But the truth is, I can't handicap politics, and he'd probably be a fool to take my advice on this. Still - as a guy who really doesn't mind firing people who deserve it, (and who would love to fire say... the entire department of education) I'd love to see it.

- NYC Get's One More Gun Criminal

2012-01-10T11:30:00.002-05:00

Yet another citizen with no criminal record is finding themselves the target of Mayor Bloomberg's mania concerning the second amendment

To be clear, this mans only crime is to do something which is perfectly legal for him to do, virtually everywhere else in the country. He may not be as pretty as Meredith Graves (I can only assume) but he's just as guiltless in my opinion.

- The FINAL Final Word On OWS

2012-01-09T07:53:00.004-05:00

Some of you may remember Charles CW Cooke's brilliantly documented adventures among the (literally) unwashed of the OWS movement. Now he provides what I think will be the FINAL final words on the future of the movement.

I said a few words about OWS in my end of year message, and how the Democrats in power view them as somehow more virtuous than the bourgeois masses. Their only product is political activity. Well with an election coming up, that particular product is one whose value is falling doe to excess supply. So no one is going to want what they're selling - at least until he election is over.

If the Republicans win the Whitehouse, the question is will the mainstream media at least wait until a transition team is put in place before turning on the Washington establishment like a pack of wild dogs. OWS clearly won't wait. As far as they're concerned, they're doing all their waiting now.

- Sounds Pretty Slanderous to Me

2012-01-06T20:35:00.006-05:00

I'll defer to the legal minds to define the actual terms, but it seems to me that there is a reason people keep including the word 'alleged' when describing someone who hasn't been convicted yet.

The powder in Meredith Grave's purse was NOT cocaine or any other illegal substance. In light of the tone, I think it's pretty clear that Bloomberg's intention was to cast Meredith Graves in as negative a light as possible, whatever the facts. And I don't think his status as a public figure should exempt him from liability for his false public statements.

Maybe Bloomberg will end up paying Meredith Grave's legal bills and then some. Wouldn't that be divine justice.

- I Am Meredith Graves Too

2012-01-06T05:29:00.011-05:00

Kevin D. Williamson relates one of his many "concealed carry" stories from his days as a Newspaper Editor in Philadelphia, and at the risk of setting off an "I am Spartacus" sort of movement, declares that he too is Meredith Graves.

Kevin is now a resident of New York City, as I was for a decade and a half, and as are many people who would otherwise be gun owners. We are no less responsible for having lived there. We are no less capable of safe handling of a firearm. And yet, New York City writes it's gun laws to accommodate a Napoleonic little butt-insky of a mayor who famously feels capable of directing the diet of his constituency, instead of his otherwise responsible and very much law abiding constituents.

There is an echo in Kevin's piece of the recent VDH article I mentioned where Prof. Hanson explained that the police in California's San Joaquin valley have stopped arresting felons because it costs the system too much, and instead spend their time handing out traffic tickets to law abiding citizens because it still generates income for the state. This NYC gun law too is a law that is selectively enforced, and only those people with something to lose are forced to comply with it.

New York city's gun laws aren't used to give mandatory 3.5 year sentences to every felon arrested with a gun, but they are used to constrain the behavior of law abiding citizens like Kevin and I, and to throw the less cautious of us like Meredith Graves in jail. The simple fact is, law abiding citizens would be in no greater danger if Kevin Williamson were allowed to carry a firearm. They would be in no greater danger if I were allowed to. (On the contrary - the data indicates they would probably be safer) And they were in no greater danger because Meredith Graves did.

I don't mean to cast a disparaging eye toward policemen, almost all of whom are in my experience pro-gun. But in some respects I think this may be a question of courage.

Democrats are famous for being cowards, and Democrat politicians, especially so. A white, middle class, southern woman like Meredith Graves looks like a soft target to someone like Bloomberg. There is no ACLU or southern poverty law center to defend her. There is no "La Raza" or racial grievance industry to back her up and help with her defense. She's a woman alone - forced to bear her own costs in her fight against the bureaucratic behemoth. So she's a good target for enforcement of an unjust law.

To a politician like Bloomberg, she represent a small political risk. Policemen are not politicians, but they do work for politicians. Put them in a circumstance where 'some people' are OK to arrest and others are less so, and they do figure out the lay of the land pretty quickly. I still hear stories about people who were to be 'left alone' during the Dinkins administration.

The prosecutors that the police work with are usually managing their own political careers, so they want victory not justice. And since success is the drum that law enforcement marches to, the most stringent enforcement of the law will naturally gravitate to the easiest marks - those that best serve the political interest of those controlling the state. Where NYC gun laws are concerned, those are middle class law abiding citizens.

All this says nothing to the fact that New York City's gun laws are in place contrary to all the latest data on gun safety. Let someone like Kevin Williamson (or in all humility me) carry a gun, and you make New Yorkers safer not put them at greater risk. But Bloomberg, and all the judges in New Jersey don't care about that. Safety isn't really the issue. the issue for them, it seems to me, is to keep the relationship of the people and the government one where the government retains all control.

It's been suggested, by both readers of this blog and elsewhere, that Ms. Graves circumstance was a setup, designed to put public pressure on Congress to approve the federal concealed carry reciprocity act. I'm unpersuaded. Ms. Graves isn't acting like someone interested in making a public stand and neither is her attorney. She's acting like someone who now knows she acted foolishly, but doesn't deserve the treatment she's getting from Mike Bloomberg's law enforcement bureaucracy. I think she's far more victim than criminal, and represents a perfectly honest place for an "I am Spartacus" movement to begin.

These laws should be changed both in NY and NJ. They don't accomplish the goal they set out to, and they are being arbitrarily enforced against people who represent no danger to the general public. That's the very definition of injustice. And that's been made abundantly clear by both the academic data and the steady news flow of stories of people being unjustly treated. How many law abiding Americans have to go to jail before Mike Bloomberg and his anti-gun political allow the law to be changed?

An Open Letter To Young Job Seekers

2012-01-05T14:37:00.002-05:00

In the next 12 months, I’m going to need to hire at least one person. If things go well with my business, I could end up needing to hire four or five people. But in this economy that seems unlikely. Without a clearer picture of the future I wouldn’t take that kind of chance. So I will probably only be hiring one this year – and hopefully the rest in the next year or three.

Almost all of the positions I’ll be filling will be entry level positions for people with a college degree. Experience in the field will not be required. But any experience which demonstrates your persistence, your attention to detail, and your ability to solve problems or to act independently will be considered. It can be in any field or process. I’m really just interested in learning about your character.

If you majored in Education, English, Journalism, Sociology or any of the “studies” (Ethnic Studies, Women’s Studies, etc) then you won’t be considered for this position. You've already told me everything about your character that I need to know. If you’re one of those people, working in Finance probably wouldn’t suit you anyway or you would have majored in something else. Besides, as far as I’m concerned people with Math, Finance, or Engineering degrees have learned ‘real things’ while those with the majors listed above, really have not. I know you probably feel differently – but I’m the one doing the hiring.

The job I’m filling will not have a huge salary by Wall Street standards – entry level jobs never do. But it will be a way to begin a career. I know many people who started out with similar positions and ended up making millions. So it’s definitely considered a position with a future if you do it right. You’ll need to be very good at it, and to be frank, you’ll also need a little luck. Everyone on Wall Street is above average, so you’ll need to do better than them. But it is definitely a position that can lead to a six figure income – maybe much more.

In this position, you’ll take on all the tedious, annoying and dull tasks of my job while I spend more time on the fun, interesting, and intellectually challenging tasks. It doesn’t work that way because I have more power than you – it works that way because I know how to do the more complicated and subtle tasks and you don’t. But if do the tedious parts of your job well and convince me that you would be worth the investment in time and effort, I’ll teach you the interesting parts too. They’ll become part of your portable skill set and will make you more marketable, leading to more money for you.

You may have gotten it in your head that the perfect job would be working for some non-profit group. You may even think of working at a hedge fund as being morally repugnant somehow. You may have heard in the media that we cater only to the rich, and that we are a secretive industry that tries to avoid being regulated. That may have made you suspicious of our motives or make you believe that we are out to take advantage of the unsuspecting in some way.

But the truth is, what we do in the Hedge Fund industry is as close to an unambiguous good for society as anything ever gets. We provide a very rare and valuable service for our investors, and only make money if they do. Our investors are usually pension funds and other professional investors who are as informed about what we do as we are, so we take advantage of absolutely no one in the process of performing our jobs. That’s more than many retail stockbrokers or financial analysts can say. More than that… we are not too big to fail, and never have been. And of all the areas of finance, the Hedge Fund industry is the only one I can think of, which can make all those claims.

A friend once asked me what the best way is to get to a senior role on Wall Street. I’ll repeat exactly what I told him for you. I said:

“Be a useful tool, to rich and powerful men.”

If you are the kind of person that someone rich and powerful can rely on to make things happen the way they want them to, then you will eventually be rewarded for it. Finding reliable people is the hardest task in the world for men of influence. And if they find one in you, they will help you get ahead... just like someone almost certainly once did for them. The truth is, no one does it all alone… even the people who want you to think that they did. And if you are destined to get ahead, then you won’t do it alone either.

But none of that really applies to an entry level staffer. At an entry level you want to demonstrate your good reliable character, and learn as much from others as you can. No one expects you to have all the answers – they don’t even expect you to have all the questions. They just expect you to perform your assigned tasks without any serious screw-ups, to keep your eyes and ears open, and have a good attitude. I know in the schools you’ve been told that you’re one in a million, but that means there are a thousand people in China who are just like you. And like it or not, until you build some useful skills, they are all your competition.

If you learn fast – that will help. If you learn correctly, that will help too. And over time, the opportunity to stand out will come to you. Time is on your side when you’re young. So be patient, and be ready to rise to the occasion when the occasion demands it. It does eventually for everyone who really deserves it.

- Stupidity In The Pro-Gun Blogosphere

2012-01-04T08:30:00.003-05:00

I’m a gun guy. I’m very public about it. My friends all know that it’s a first principles issue with me. I believe that law abiding citizens should be able to arm themselves with only a minimum of intrusion into the decision by the government. In other words, unless you have already given us all some reason to believe that you are unreliable or irresponsible (and even that bar should be set pretty high), then you should be allowed to carry a weapon for self defense.

I consider myself an active member of the subculture which is made up of hunters, sport shooters and gun owners of various stripes. Put the phrase “buying a shotgun” into google and my article on the topic is either first or second on the list. I’ve taken hundreds of non-shooters from the New York area for their first shooting session, and I’ve made more than a few converts to the cause. The pheasant hunting and sporting clays shoots that I host semi-annually draw dozens of participants – virtually none of whom have ever handled a firearm before they met me.

I think my pro-gun, pro second amendment bonafides are well established. I don’t think anyone would believe that I’m an advocate for a restrictionist view or that I’m secretly harboring some government control sentiment. I’m not. So with all that said, let me toss out a few words about the web-talk on the Meredith Graves case.

As you probably know, Meredith Graves is a 39 year old Tennessee woman who tried to check her legally owned pistol while going to see the 9-11 memorial in NYC. She was immediately arrested, and is now facing a 3.5 year mandatory sentence for illegal possession of a firearm in NY. Mike Bloomberg, totalitarian wanna-be that he is, also accused her in his press conference of being in possession of cocaine – a statement which proved to be false.

To people like Mike Bloomberg and to be frank, many other people in greater NYC, ownership of a firearm is in and of itself evidence of intent to commit a crime. So punishing possession of a firearm as if it’s a violent act, makes perfect sense to them. “Why posses a gun unless you intend violence?” They’ll ask. They make no distinction between a law abiding citizen operating within the law to defend themselves and their family, and a gang banger trying to rob a bodega to buy crack.

This is stupid, and the prevailing political opinion in the country reflects that. As the data continues to support the ‘more guns less crime’ thesis, support for gun control is falling rapidly - even in NYC. And those that continue to support it are increasingly viewed as unreasonable. Even devoted leftists like Obama are staying away from the gun control debate because they know it represents political death for them. And it’s entirely possible that Mike Bloomberg’s position as the last anti-gun zealot prepared to ignore the evidence to the last, is the main reason he will never be a Democrat candidate for the Whitehouse.

But the stupidity on the blogosphere from the right has been palpable on this issue too, and I find that troubling. The people on the left have had their minds so polluted by straw men that they can’t tell the difference between fantasy and reality. But the people on the right have no such excuse. They’re just being stupid. What’s worse, they aren’t even being polemic in a constructive way. They’re just being plain old idiots. And that idiocy is hurting the cause of changing bad gun law by confirming the biases of the only people left to persuade.

The stupidity of the right on this issue falls into two broad groups. They are the ‘run away’ contingent, and the ‘Alamo’ contingent.

“Who would ever want to go to NYC anyway?!” say the runaway contingent. “I’d never go to a horrible place like that! Whoever lives there should move away to a wonderful place like where I live.” While I can appreciate a feeling of loyalty to your home, this is a stupid argument.

10 million people work in Manahattan and nearly 30 million live within commuting distance of it. The average income in this area is substantially higher than almost anywhere else in the country – much higher than anywhere that has less restrictive gun laws. Life is about trade-offs. And it’s possible that some of us are willing to accept a bit more personal risk in exchange for a higher income. Think of us as the pioneers who braved hostile Indians and a harsh environment to make our way. The only difference is that our risks are imposed by the government instead of the wilderness.

What’s more, if some of us don’t tough it out here, there will be no one clear thinking enough to change the bad law. So if you can’t find it in yourself to support us in our efforts, at least do us the courtesy of shutting your pie hole and not making it easier for our mutual opponents. You aren’t convincing anyone of anything.

The “Alamo” contingent takes a different stance. They all say that Meredith Graves should adopt a course of action that will sacrifice her personally to the broader principles that they think are most important. She should ‘stand and fight’ or “sue Bloomberg”, or some such, even though it will all but certainly mean a loss for her and jail time. They see that personal sacrifice on her part as a small price to pay if it will prove a point for the rights of gun owners. This is obviously idiotic advice, and thankfully, Ms. Graves attorney will never let her follow it.

What Ms. Graves should really do is make any deal she can which lets her escape NY with a minimum of cost and inconvenience. Beyond that I leave it to her lawyers who know the terrain much better than I to give her specific advice. As a full time resident of one of the most tyrannical state government’s in the country, I’m not a believer in sacrificing one self to make a point; especially when the bad laws will almost certainly be changed in the near future anyway.

I see no need to climb up on that cross when they are about to ban crucifixion. Laws aren’t changed by self sacrifice and I don't believe in martyrdom - especially for the one who would be martyred. Although few will admit it, the bureaucracy prides itself on its ability to steamroll individuals, and I see no point in fighting losing battles. Shut up... nod... and live to fight another day when you stand a better chance of winning. That's my take on it.

New York’s gun laws are going to be changed for two reasons. First they don’t accomplish the goals of minimum ‘gun violence’ that gun banners have hitched their ‘control of everyone’ wagons to. Most people, even in New York City, only view government control of their lives as a reasonable cost if it accomplishes something. If it doesn’t, then they’d rather be left alone. More and more that's the prevailing view in New York City regarding gun control.

Second, I think they step over the line with regard to constitutionality, (certainly they violate the spirit of it as applied) but that’s a subject for legal debate. Either way though, I can read the tea leaves and tell what’s coming. The laws are going to change. The trend has been going that way since the Clinton Administration, and it shows no sign of reversing. Gun banners are increasingly marginalized and rightly so. So it does no one any good to offer up stupid arguments. All we do is confirm the biases of people sympathetic to a gun ban position, and delay the inevitable victory for our side.

- A Caucus Note

2012-01-03T10:19:00.003-05:00

I didn't know anyone who was going to vote for John McCain in the primary. His squishiness was well known and he didn't inspire anyone. After he had won, I was at the gun club milling around with the other shotgunnners, almost all of whom were a minimum of 20 years older than me, and I started asking around.

"Who did you vote for?" I asked one guy I knew.

"John McCain" he said. "Me too's" sprang up all around the room.

I was blown away. McCain inspired no one. But these guys had all been in the military back when there was still a draft, and his military record meant something to them. So they lined up and voted for McCain, even though I don't the he ever had a real chance of winning anything. I didn't realize this because the only elderly people I talked to regularly were my in-laws, and they grew up in post WW2 Transylvania, which might have been the 15th century for all it had in common with Americans of a similar age.

It occurred to me that the elderly have a very different perspective on America than the rest of us. They don't see the decay of the culture or the apocalyptic fiscal mismanagement in Washington. Their idea of the future, is next winter. And they voted for McCain for the same reason they voted for Eisenhower.

Pollsters say they account for those differences, but I'm unconvinced. this year (I hear) the elderly like Romney. I hear there will be a big turnout. I'm awful at predicting these things, (like Freddie Prinz used to say... its not my job) but I think that will help Romney.

- Making The Most Of The Carter Legacy

2012-01-03T07:04:00.007-05:00

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a creation of Jimmy Carter. He catapulted to local prominence when he and his compatriots stormed the US embassy in Tehran taking a number of hostages. Carter then spent a few years flailing about ineptly, trying to micromanage some action to free them, but to no avail. Ahmadinejad used that fame as the first steps to the Iranian presidency, where he continues to Treat America as if Carter is in charge.

Now, the Iranian president seems to be reading the American political tea leaves and trying to take more ground while a devotee of the Carter School is still in the Whitehouse. Mitt Romney is no Ronald Reagan. But being tougher with our enemies than Jimmy Carter or Barack Obama (otherwise referred to on this blog as 'our first woman president') is no great challenege.

Here's the thing. It's one thing to say "I will crush the American Navy" and another thing to actually do it. I imagine the admirals reading the latest Iranian press release, looking at each other, and then bursting out laughing at the idea. I don't think anyone (apart from Barack Obama) believes that the Iranians would have a chance.

But Obama is devoted to the idea of taking America down a peg, and if that means Iran gains a peg or two, that's OK with him. He'd see the virtue of a retreat in the interest of not 'antagonizing' the Iranians. But the Iranian Navy won't be shooting at Barak OBama, they'll be shooting at the US Navy. And just because their leader has all the toughness of a teenage girl, doesn't mean he's leading teenage girls.

They may be willing to get a political victory out of this from Obama, but I'm sure they know that an actual military victory is not within their grasp. I'm betting this whole thing blows over without a shot fired.

- The School Of Short-Term-Ism

2012-01-03T05:31:00.004-05:00

Broadly speaking, you can think of the two dominant economic schools this way:

Keynesians practice the art of the short term. It's advocates think (and generally talk) only of the first and most direct effect of any policy and any other effects are thought of as something that happens way off in the mists of the future - where some other equally omniscient being like them will address them as if they were 'primary' effects.

Austrian Economists are the ultimate long term thinkers. The Austrian school is the only one that will be correct about absolutely everything it predicts... eventually. But it's so naturally far sighted a discipline and it's so focused on the visible endpoint, that although it can say absolutely whether a thing will happen, it can't possibly say when.

This tells you something about the people who advocate for each of these schools as well. Austrians tend to toward Apocalyptic (over a long enough time line everyone's survival rate falls to zero), while Keynesians tend to always choose to have another drink - and hangover or for that matter the drive home be damned. Austrians choose early mornings and exercise even though it feels bad, and Keynesians choose Sweet Tea Vodka in big gulp cups (and in your case probably a Roofie) because they feel so good.

Get a room full of Economists drunk, and by about 3AM, they all start sounding like Paul Krugman. Krugman's particular poison is 'power and influence'. That's what he's really after. It's no secret that he goes to sleep at night dreaming of a world where Economists dictate the actions of the masses following a grand plan that only they can fathom. Good idea - bad idea ... Krugman doesn't care. So long as it's his idea, and everyone is commanded to follow it, until he changes his mind.

If you imagine that the difference between these two schools of thought should be evident to anyone with a Nobel prize in economics, then I personally would agree with you. But if you believe that, then the only conclusion you can come to is that Paul Krugman must be more interested in spreading shadow than light. Actually, he's probably interested in spreading anything at all so long as it leads to greater influence for him. Thankfully for the rest of us, he thinks the New York Times and it's collapsing readership is a path to that power.

The simple fact is, if you still take him seriously as a thinker or writer, then you either have something in common with him, or you are a useful idiot for him. You are either passing out the roofies, or slugging them down.

- Meredith Graves, Meet Mike Bloomberg

2012-01-02T08:19:00.006-05:00

The laws concerning concealed carry of a firearm are a jumble, and there has been some very timely confusion of this issue recently. While a law which will use federal authority to 'force' states to recognize concealed carry permits issued by other states is working it's way through the congress, a pretty 39 year old medical student from Tennesee has been arrested for trying to check her legally owned firearm while visiting the 9-11 memorial.

In New Jersey, where it is expressly illegal to be in possession of a firearm except under very limited and specifically defined circumstances, we in the firearms community have no choice but to have an understanding of the law. What's more, the laws were written to be ambiguous - giving maximum legal flexibility to the arresting officer and prosecuting attorney. So we not only need to know the law, but we need to know how the law is 'likely' to be enforced.

But in the rest of the country that isn't the case at all. In fact, in the vast majority of the United States they feel that 'shall not be infringed' actually means what it says, and that law enforcement is there to protect the law abiding, not punish them. The Net result is that a great many firearm owners who live in other parts of the country don't realize that in this part of the country, firearms are almost completely illegal.

Meredith Graves didn't know it. And because this obviously law abiding woman wasn't a better lawyer and more familiar with the various ins and outs of New York City's laws concerning firearm ownership, she's very likely going to spend three plus years in the NY penitentiary system.

Personally, I tend to view stories like this with suspicion. Ms. Graves is an attractive woman who was so obviously without criminal intent that even anti-gun politicians in New York are saying so. As such, I think she'll illicit much sympathy from a jury. And she'll also make an appealing example of someone being unjustly treated by the current law - underlining the need for the new concealed carry reciprocity act. This was all so obvious that I instantly suspected a setup.

But facing three years in prison if convicted is a big chance to take to prove a point. And after hearing how she tried to check her gun before going into the memorial, I tend to believe that she was just a foolish woman who was under the mistaken impression that law enforcement in the greater New York City area is there to protect people like her.

The map of above indicates that NY, NJ, California and a few others all fall under the description of 'may issue' with regard to carry permits. The long and short of that is that's it's at the discretion of the issuing authority, whether you are allowed to carry a concealed firearm. In New York City, that means that you must be famous, well connected politically, or be a big political contributor. In New Jersey it's simply a disguise for a procedural ban.

But if the concealed carry reciprocity act goes through (and I'm hearing that it may actually do just that), then in a place like New Jersey where no permits are ever issued, people from other states will be able to carry their firearms here, while New Jersey citizens will not. So it will be a great way to pressure the local legislature.

Bloomberg and the few remaining anti-gun politicians out there are on the losing side of history. The law will change eventually, I'm convinced of it. The only question now is, will it change fast enough to keep Meredith Graves out of prison.

- Another Year In Obama's Paradise

2011-12-30T09:11:00.005-05:00

It’s been a very tough year, but it’s tough to feel sorry for myself.

In April my profitable trading strategy was shut down by my employer of three years. But it wasn’t a risk decision; it was a decision of the legal department. I was profitable and outperforming my peers when the they discovered a potential liability issue in my employment contract, and (in my opinion) massively over-reacted by shutting down the strategies of all of us who had been hired on similar terms.

My boss was very conciliatory about the whole thing. He liked me personally and respected my contribution to both his P&L, and the firm’s intellectual discourse. He felt terrible about having to shut down something which he viewed so positively, but at the time he thought it was a temporary thing.

It was his assumption that once legal defined a new process for him which shed the liability issue, I and the other profitable managers would be rehired on new terms. As evidence of his sincerity, he not only honored my contract and paid me all I was owed, but also paid me a premium on top of that with the instructions that although he couldn’t in good conscience ask me not to speak to other firms, I shouldn’t accept a position from anyone until he has a chance to get his ducks in a row and make a counter offer.

So although he had no choice, he did the equivalent of setting me adrift in the north Atlantic with some fresh water, a few extra rations and a signal lamp. I sat there bobbing around in the dinghy for a moment trying to form a plan. And I’d only just begun to fret abut the cold and dark when I watched the firm steaming away at top speed, run headlong into an iceberg. That firm is very big – with a peak capitalization in the 20 billion dollar range, and it’s still afloat. But it’s listing badly to port, taking on lots of water, and several of its trading strategies have had to be killed. I suspect that more than one career will be ending there, thanks to this very difficult year.

In the meantime, I’ve been scooped out of the water but a much smaller but much more fleet and nimble craft. I’ve restarted my strategy, and my annualized return for 2011 has been an enviable 15.35%. It’s been a damned inconvenient year professionally, and it didn’t go the way I expected. But given the alternatives and the number of craft that have been sent to the bottom, it’s hard to feel too badly about how it’s worked out.

It’s been a tough year at rancho RFNJ too. We had a hurricane, during which our generator died, leaving us without power for a week. In the process, our basement flooded destroying all the drywall. Then while making the ‘repairs’, the drywall contractor did several thousand in damage to various appliances, furniture, and plumbing. Finally, when they brought in a plumber to fix the damage, they re-flooded the basement again, setting us almost back to square one.

As ridiculous as that sounds, I think it's another example of my personal life echoing the broader economy. Meanwhile, if anyone knows a drywall contractor who works in the Colts Neck area, we’re in the market for new one. We might maybe also need a lawyer too. I’ll keep you all updated.

So the personal and professional foibles have been many this year. And just surviving has been a triumph, made even more glorious when you think about how many people didn’t manage to. But it’s hard to be too thrilled when you’re marginally worse off than you were before. “It could be worse”, or “At least I’m not that guy.” aren't phrases that lead to much consolation.

And all the personal issues I've had in 2011 really pale when compared to the political changes in America.

This is still the long dark night of the Obama era – where losing is treated like winning, and winning is treated like a felony. This is the Shangri-la they dream of in the teacher’s lounge. It’s the paradise of the political, where fairness is dictated to us by our betters in Washington, and the only justice available to anyone is ‘social justice’.

I’m reminded of the sci-fi movie “Serenity” and the nameless villain brilliantly played by British actor Chewy Ejiofor (pictured above). In the movie he did things he knew to be monstrous but he was resigned to them because he believed that he and his masters were trying to build a better world – a world without sin. This is what I think Obama, believes too. Obama believes that he’s fundamentally transforming America into a better place - free from the sins of competition, and the avarice of capitalism.

In the movie, their experiments to make a better world transformed the humans they subjected to them into psychotic animals called reavers. The reavers then went on a bloody cannibalistic rampage, perfectly filling the nightmare role of bogeymen. As a much milder parallel, Obama’s experiments in government imposed fairness have given us the publicly defecating anarchist's circus of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement.

The OWS movement has nothing productive to give any of us. But measured on the scale that Obama and his ilk think matters most, that makes them better not worse. They toil not, nor do they spin. They are creatures whose whole participation in American society is political. They are defined by it – they exist for no other purpose. And in the eyes of Obama and the people of the left, that makes them something superior to the rest of us because they are free from what they view as "sin".

To me the OWS movement honestly feels like an endpoint. They are an ultimate expression of the ideals of people like Obama. They are fully outside the system that the hard left feels is the cause of America's problems. And since that's so, I think they're a momentum endpoint as well. The fact that they are present in the world means that the pendulum has reached it's azimuth and will begin to head back toward what we in the private sector believe is best describes as 'rationality'.

I was still a child when Jimmy Carter tried to reinvent America in his way, so I can’t recall how similar this feeling is to what adults felt back then. But I was old enough to remember what it felt like when Reagan won the Whitehouse. I can remember that particular morning in America. And although it’s still cold and dark today, I can feel the impending dawn again. Against all reason and rationality I find myself modestly hopeful for the future.

I know this isn’t much of an uplifting year end message, and I wish I could do better. But in light of the past three years, I suppose there is quite a bit to be said for the feeling that it really can’t get any worse.

- HOPE!

2011-12-29T12:00:00.003-05:00

Election Poll 2012:

Romney 45%, Obama 39%

- A Real Intelectual

2011-12-29T11:19:00.007-05:00

The other day John Derbyshire sent me an email in which among other things, he asked me if I read a particular right leaning science blogger he knows. I responded that apart from him (the Derb) and a few of the other NRO'nicks, I don't read anyone regularly but I was familiar with the work of the blogger he mentioned - and was generally impressed with his work.

There are a lot of bright people out there who aren't consistent enough in their brightness to hold my devoted attention, but come up with a stellar piece now and then. I suppose for many of you, I'm probably one of those people too. It's OK... even my own brother has said as much. As an excuse I tell myself that it's only because I do this part time for free - but I digress.

One person however who I am always impressed with is Charles Murray. Virtually everything he writes strikes me as brilliant. Not only is it insightful, but to stay on topic for the day (see my last post), the man has a talent for purging his personal biases from his research and drawing conclusions from the data that are most strongly supported by it.

We all see people who analyze data in order to produce results which match their pre-conceived political conclusions. Liberals are famous for this kind of distortion, but they are not alone in it. But Mr. Murray's conclusions are so persuasive specifically because it's clear he doesn't do that. Whenever I read his stuff, I find myself thinking, "This is what a real intellectual sounds like."

If you're interested in societal trends, his every written word should be worth your attention IMHO.

Charles Murray: Keep Locking Em Up.

- Mistaking Everyone Else's Motives

2011-12-29T08:12:00.005-05:00

One of my big ideas that I don't hear from others very often, is the concept that we each think, that everyone else also 'thinks', just like we do. We all individually operate from the base assumption, that everyone else is operating with the same base assumptions that we are, and that their decision making follows the same processes that ours does.

As a result, highly analytical people always seem to believe that others are following an analytical decision making process, and then conclude that if someone disagrees with them, it can only be because they’re stupid. Highly sentimental people think everyone is deciding things based on sentiment, and if someone disagrees with them it must be because that person is an unfeeling monster. This maps onto our political choices fairly well. But that fact only highlights that the one thing we all have in common, is something which we all have absolutely wrong.

In truth, monitoring people's behavior tells you almost nothing about their motivations or decision making until you give up that particular bias. But the second you do, it's like turning on the light in an otherwise dark room. Suddenly what everyone is doing and why they're doing it, becomes instantly transparent. You see who they are, where they are in their life, and what they hope for the future as revealing tons about how they think and how they decide. And knowing that, you can form very solid conclusions about what they will likely decide in the future when faced with various choices.

I made that realization many years ago, and have since found a way to base not just a personal philosophy on it, but an entire business model as well. For the last 15 years virtually all I do, is monitor and examine the decision making behavior of people and the ways that it differs not just from my own, but from each other’s.

I’ve met people over the years that have transcended that ‘decision making assignment bias’, but they are very rare. Even the people who analyze group behavior don’t often do it. The key is that this isn’t a generalization; it’s a personal issue. This is a metric which can be applied accurately to individual people, and from there it can also be scaled up to group behavior as well. But there is almost no way to breach the ego’s defenses to make the realization from the opposite direction - going from groups down to individuals, and inevitably to the examination of your own personal biases.

I think the times when this is most easy to remember, is when you’re listening to news media gazing into the Petri-dish of Republican politics to talk about what’s motivating various conservative sub-groups. The news media is overwhelmingly liberal, so the things that motivate liberals are the things they attribute to various groups on the right.

Evangelicals don’t like Romney? It must be because of his religion. Libertarians don’t like Newt Gingrich? It must be because seeing photos of him with Nancy Pelosi changed their feelings. Tea Partiers don’t like Huntsman? It must be their racism and the fact that Huntsman worked for a Black President. I’ve listened to each of those theories being offered as an absolute certainty. But I’m equally certain that none of the people whose motivations are being examined would claim those as their primary one. It’s just the talking head assigning his or her personal decision making bias to others.

Being truly objective is tough for anyone even on a single issue. Being objective consistently is all but impossible. You can try, but it’s tough to succeed, even for the best of us. And since that’s so, I think it would be really great if the News Media would recognize that fact, and start behaving accordingly.

It would be too much to expect them to do the kind of self examination to transcend this particular bias. They aren’t nearly smart enough. But I for one would think it’s more then enough if they simply accept that the bias exists and that they aren’t immune from it. Do that, and I’d be willing to give them a pass on many more of their errors in attribution.

- The New Anti-Gun Bogeyman!

2011-12-29T06:05:00.007-05:00

The New York Times has published another editorial against the principle of private citizens being allowed to own firearms, even with considerable federal regulation in place. I know... you're saying "Of course not! The NYTimes thinks Americans are too stupid to run their own lives, so what would you expect?"

I agree - this editorial is old news in many ways, and it drags out all the old distortions for the purpose of convincing the few upper west siders who still know no better, that their position is right. They dredge up the (totally fictitious and invented from whole cloth) gun show loophole, the Brady campaigns distorted statistics, and they represent the microscopic but vocal minority that still ignores enough of the data to agree with them as a movement which represents the majority.

This is actually good news for gun owners. The few anti-gun lobbyists who are still out there don't just represent a movement on the cutting edge of the 1970's, but a movement that is so far beyond the mainstream that they can't even manage new verbal bogeymen. Well that's not right exactly... they try. But their recent efforts are laughable, and it indicates a movement that is all but dying out.

Their new 'catch phrase' designed to light a fire under public opinion and terrify America into bold new legislative action is the anti-gun lobbyists new 33-round 'assault clip'. You and I know that they mean "high capacity magazines", but anti-gun people don't know much about guns so please don't fault them for trying to regulate something out of existence without any real understanding of it.

The image above shows an actual 'high capacity magazine', which under NJ law, is any magazine which holds more than 15 rounds. As you can see, it's much MUCH more dangerous than the one beside it. What's that? you can't tell which one is the high capacity magazine? Precisely.

If they didn't represent the most direct and transparent threat to the liberty of individual Americans, I'd feel bad for the anti-gun movement. Theirs is a movement which is withering on the vine. There is too much actual data out there now for Americans to be further persuaded by their distortions. (Except maybe for the few thousand people who still take the Times editorial page seriously).

They've responded to this like any liberal child - they've become more shrill and ridiculous, and they sound that way to everyone but themselves. Like any responsible parent, we should refuse to give in to their demands and just wait for them to calm down before getting on with our lives.

Americans are already onto the Brady Campaign. We already know that they don't want to prevent gun violence, they only want to prevent gun ownership. And in the end the only people they can prevent from gun ownership are those people who will obey gun laws - law abiding citizens. Criminals won't care about their stupid laws, and will actually prefer a disarmed populace to prey upon.

So if banning guns means more actual gun violence (like all the scientific data indicates), the Brady campaign still says "So be it". Americans know this, and are bored with listening to them. Based on the tone of this editorial, it sound like they know it too.

- SHTF 2: Revenge Of The Anti-Social

2011-12-24T08:26:00.010-05:00

I drafted this as a response to a comment left here, but it was really a comment about this post. Here then is my response:

First of all, I think your statement about community is absolutely right. I don’t think having a bolt hole to run to is a sound idea, but I think living in a small rural community already is a GREAT idea. Your neighbors already know you. You aren’t some A-hole from the city in a diesel SUV showing up with a rifle you’ve never fired, a backseat full of gold coins, and no useful skills. What’s more, when he gets to his ‘bolt hole’ the local teenagers will have cleaned it out of everything of value already anyway. You can’t hide anything so well that a determined rural teenager can’t find it first.

But in a community, you can cooperate and specialize. You can all help each other. Man has been organizing that way for thousands of years – maybe forever. That’s a much more workable long term solution than a cabin on a mountaintop someplace where hoodlums can just roast you inside it and pick through the ashes for things of value. Being a part of a community is really the only way to get through a prolonged period of difficulty. All these fools who think they can do it alone for more than a few weeks are simply kidding themselves.

I’d go to the sticks tomorrow if I could, and not just because it suits me better than the burbs. I’d find a town with less than 8,000 people that produces more calories than it consumes, and is more than 1 day walk from the nearest city. I’d probably buy a place in town (since I’m not much of a farmer) and I’d make a point of getting to know my neighbors and making a good impression. I'd make a particular point of being the kind of guy that people know they can rely on when they need it, or even when they don't.

My job now can be done from anywhere so I’d probably keep doing it so long as someone was willing to pay me. But beyond that, I’d also buy a local business that meets a local need and isn’t dependent on imported products. Preferably something where I already had a skill to apply to it and didn't have to start from scratch.

I don’t know if you’re a regular reader, but if you are you’d already know that I’m an avid hunter. My feet are resting right now on a Deer hide that I skinned and tanned. I can do first rate carpentry work, I can make a pretty clean weld, I can fix both gas and diesel engines that are simple enough to not require computers. I’ve done plastering, concrete, tile and brickwork, and although I’m not really great with heights, I’ve done plenty of roofing and painting.

I have a safe full of guns but I have them because shooting and hunting are my hobby. Even in NJ (My area is about 40% farmland - mostly horses and apple orchards) I have an alternate power supply, a secondary water supply, and enough stored consumable to last several weeks. But I have them for convenience rather than survival. We see a lot of storms in this area, and even now I lose power about 12 days per year. I’m preparing for that or other short term shutdowns, not the apocalypse.

The thing is, the real fantasy most of those preppers have is for a world without people. I think most of them would prefer doing without all the complicated give and take between people that comes with modernity. They see people who do something that they can't appreciate or understand the value in, and they dream of a world where the value of that task is set back to zero - as they think it should be now. This is why I think hedge fund guys (for example) are so hated on Freerepublic. Because so many of them there don't see the thing we do as having any real value.

For the preppers I think it's really a fantasy about control. They dream of a circumstance where they can at least be masters of their own lives once and for all. They don't really think about the fact that people don't survive well alone, even people like them. Not for any real length of time. This fantasy doesn't apply to all of them of course, but far more of them I think than would ever cop to it. A good rule of thumb would be ... the angrier they are that I said something like this, the more true it is for them.

With all that said though, I’m all but certain that the vast majority of us will never have to go through a period of prolonged difficulty. Barring new natural disasters, a couple of weeks is all any of us will ever have to worry about. People are more adaptable than you think. (well… not YOU think… but you know what I mean) even the people on the coasts.

One example of breathtaking underestimation I saw on FR was: “The cash registers don’t work so no one can buy anything”. A problem like that will take about 30 seconds to solve temporarily, and a permanent long term solution will take a couple of days at most. But these ‘preppers’ are basing their entire plan on the idea that the ancient and mysterious secret to the art of ‘making change’ will disappear from America when the central air conditioning goes off, and make further commerce impossible. Clueless.

In reality, there are separate classes of disaster. Natural disasters like what hit New Orleans are sudden and displace people, but there are no natural disasters that can affect the entire US all at once. Katrina is as bad as something like that gets, and we still survived it. What’s more, if you were a prepper in the part of New Orleans that was flooded, the National Guard still disarmed and evicted you. So the best prep for natural disasters is to live somewhere else.

That leaves only three things that can hit everything at once: financial collapse, disease, or war.

With regard to disease, that isn’t really “all at once”, but its close enough for discussion. I don’t know much about the odds of something like that. But whatever the odds, I think we’re probably in a better position to handle a genuine pandemic now than the world ever has been. And the solution to that is a community thing. What's more, a genuine pandemic will take longer to address than any of these people are preparing for anyway. So in that instance the preppers are as likely to come walking up my driveway as the other way around.

As for war, the US is an un-occupiable country. Even a glance at military history will tell you that. In theory we could have a civil war but if we do, then isolating yourself as a ‘prepper’ probably makes things worse for you not better. No individual could ever hope to hold out against an organized military like ours. A militia is a slightly different story, and a well organized underground resistance is another entirely. But one guy alone in the woods with an AK, a bunch of gold coins and some freeze dried food (who also has an anti-social tendency and is widely thought of by his neighbors as ‘that crazy guy’) is just a target for confiscation and harassment.

A financial collapse, unlike all these others, is fairly likely. I’d go so far as to call the kind of thing I’ve described as all but certain. But a collapse like that won’t have the effect on people that the “prepper’s” are setting themselves up for. That’s what I was trying to get across. A financial collapse doesn’t black out an entire region or leave no food on the shelves. It doesn’t set 100,000 refugees out onto America’s interstates. It’s rust, not an explosion. The worst areas go off the edge, the good parts get slightly worse, and the best (richest) parts, don’t even notice.

As to your worries about something more global, I hope I can put you a little more at ease. Think of it this way:

A financial collapse is really just a paper collapse. The people most affected by it will be those who deal in only paper. The financial sector performs a real service, but after a financial collapse fewer people will need it. Those in government produce nothing at all so they will become REALLY unnecessary. Don't so much think of your local policeman, think instead of an assistant deputy director of diversity compliance enforcement, at the HHS. Times will be tougher for all the lawyers, accountants and other people whose jobs are most abstracted from the world of real things.

But if you do import - export, or make air conditioners or some other product not so. If you repair things of any kind - not so. Farmer is the one absolutely indispensable service that always has, and always will have an inherent value. And even the people who help them manage their paper will still be around. That’s much fewer than we have now, but still some. There is nothing that will drive us back to the 18th century. George Zoros and all my billionaire former bosses will still take private jets everywhere they go no matter what happens in the future.

We will lose a considerable amount of productive efficiency, so things will cost more and there will be fewer of them. But the only people who will be utterly denied a more or less comfortable modern life are the people you would expect. The desperately poor, the welfare queens, the people who contribute little or nothing. They are the ones who should be REALLY worried, not the productive American middle class.

If there is only 1 cargo ship full of rice in the world, no one is going to take it to China where a billion rioters (or more likely the Army) will steal it. You’re going to take it where you can get the most for it, have the best chance of actually getting paid, and the best chance of actually getting to keep your payment. North America.

We’re still going to be ‘the place to be’ because of who we are and what we can do. And even if Europe and China, and the US all fall apart on the same day, it’s all just paper. There will be no actual break, no explosion. Only the paper will be changing. The people will still be there, and still be willing to do things in exchange for value. No one will need a gun put to their head. Not here anyway. Your talents, knowledge and skills are your real wealth. And until they make you a slave, no one can take them from you.

I’ll tell you something Galvez once told me when I mentioned a worry that I had which was similar to yours. We were talking about the future for our kids, and how there was no wilderness left to run to anymore. He said:

“Don’t worry Tomas, we’ll be fine. They have always needed smart people to do things for them, and they always will.”

He comes from a very old family of Castilian nobility. He can trace his direct ancestors by name back to the battle of Tours in 732. So when he said ‘always’, it carried some weight with me. I hope it does the same with you.

- Hedge Fund 2011 Returns

2011-12-23T16:37:00.005-05:00

I'll probably make someone angry by using a metaphor like this, but looking at these numbers makes me feel like one of the guys that survived on D-Day. The dead and dying careers are everywhere I look. These number are horrible, and for more than one person I think the linked report on the Zerohedge page will be the the final item on their resume.

Many of my former co-workers are listed here and a few of my friends are listed by name. That's got to be tough. Their numbers are all catastrophic. And thanks to the recent rise of economic populism, that will bring cheers of 'good riddance' from places like Freerepublic and the bastions of the far left.

But that's wrong. Even on the right people don't understand the value that Wall Street adds anymore, and the way things are going they'll all live to regret that lack of knowledge. These days wishing for the demise of anyone who works on Wall Street is the only real non partisan issue.

Not accounting for personal lives (where I can't speak for anyone but myself) the only sin that all these guys are guilty of is succeeding. And for far too many people these days, that's sin enough. But these aren't too big to fail banks. They're small private companies - the very largest of them no more than a few hundred people. And more than one will certainly be failing now.

I'm posting a gain this year - about 5% give or take a breath if things go close to expectations next week, but with a big chunk cut out of the middle of the year while I changed jobs. Annualize my daily or monthly returns and it works out to more like a 12% year, which is closer to my historic average.

But numbers are numbers, and that makes this the second 'single digit' up year of my career (the first was 2008). I still have never had a down one. The prospects are also looking great for me for next year. I'm in as strong a position as I've ever been career wise, working with people I like in a position that I'm well suited to. It can all be in flames in a minute, but all things considered the future looks bright for me personally.

But it's hard to be too jubilant. At best it feels like all I've done is survive when far too many didn't. What's worse, I've survived in an environment where many people out there would rather I had died with the rest of them.

Man. It's really been very a tough year.

- What If The S*** Never Hits The Fan ?

2011-12-23T11:06:00.004-05:00

Man there are a lot of crazy people out there.

I honestly don’t understand the romantic appeal some of these people have for preparing for the end of the world. They call themselves ‘preppers’ and talk about being ready for when society collapses. And although I tend to agree with them that things will get much worse in America before they get better, they don’t have any realistic sense of scope about it.

Go to youtube and punch in the anagram SHTF which as you know stands for S*** hitting the fan. You’ll be buried under images of wild eyed people telling you how you’re going to suffer in the future and how they don’t care. Some are laughable (albeit unintentionally), others are terrifying, and they all seem to be absolutely serious about it.

These people all seem to imagine waking up one morning to wholesale nationwide pandemonium all around them. A common theme describes their initial reaction to that as ‘bugging out’ quickly with their box of SKS rifles and 50 gallon drum of diesel fuel in tow, to some unnamed place in “the country”. From there they will hunker down and try to survive the decades to come while we enter a new medieval period which they seem to think will closely resemble “The Book Of Eli”.

If they're doing it strictly for fun then fair enough, but most of them are serious. That isn’t just nuts, it’s also horrible planning.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe things will get worse in America for many people in the coming decades. For the poor and those on a fixed income or that live on government largess, I believe it will get much worse. But an economy with 300 million people will not shut down - ever. It may go underground, or off the books or turn into some sort of barter system. Living standards will fall and whole neighborhoods may begin to crumble. Infrastructure will become undependable and the bureaucracy will become sclerotic and begin to attack itself. Things might even get bad enough in some places to cause periodic local rioting.

But this is a very rich country. And even if the government were to loot every penny of wealth from everyone everywhere, it would still be a rich country. Because the one thing that each of us always has that’s available to sell is our labor and know how. That’s this country’s greatest resource by far, and it can’t be devalued by the government, taxed away and wasted, or exported to the Chinese and Arabs. Places like Yemen and Sierra Leone and Tanzania aren’t poor because of a lack of resources; they’re poor because they don’t know how to do things. We do.

So long as you are willing and able to add value in some way, there will be someone somewhere who will be willing to pay you to do it. They may not pay you as much as you’d like, or enough for you to have the kind of comfort you want. They may pay you in silver, or rice, but they’ll pay you. In this country the economy - that is – some form of a modern economy will continue. Food, energy and other essential resources will be much more expensive relative to income, but they will still be available. There may be local shortages of some goods here and there, and some might become impossible to get for a short time. But the United States of America will not transform into Serb occupied Croatia – ever. Even if we have another civil war.

The truth is, we are a highly civilized people who would all rather work together than duke it out. This is not West Africa. It’s not the Hindu Kush. We will not be dividing into tribes and engaging in internecine clan warfare. It’s not who we are. We’re at the top of the global pyramid for a reason. And that reason is our work ethic, our good manners, our respect for our fellow man, and our ability to come together in spite of our differences to work toward a common goal.

I don’t mean a “common goal” the way Obama or that union thug from the AFLCIO says it, where they choose the goal and the rest of us are ordered to pull their chariot toward it whether we like it or not. I mean a goal that we all agree to of our own free will. One that we know will benefit each of us individually. Even that kind of basic cooperation is more than many around the globe can manage. Imagine trying to get Hamas to cooperate with Israel’s Hassidic Jews. Now imagine trying to make a Gay and Lesbian community group from San Francisco work with a Baptist ministry outreach program from Alabama. There is an order of magnitude difference there.

But there are still a lot of crazy people out there who are ignoring all that, and preparing for the end of everything all the same.

Look, my criticism obviously doesn’t apply to everyone. Some of those people with SHTF videos on Youtube are lucid and actually quite helpful. One set of videos from a Tennessee nurse I found had lots of advice that I thought was really helpful, or at least might be. But frankly she was an exception. Most of those people were simply nuts.

I understand about being afraid of the future. I understand about how a person can feel like we’re speeding toward the cliff’s edge and that there is nothing we can do to stop it. But I hope all those people will take my word for it when I tell them not to be quite so afraid. I’m a gun guy. I believe in insurance against extreme events. But I know that insurance against events that won’t happen is more than just a waste. It gives you a false sense of security that makes things worse for you not better. So I hope you all will take my advice when I tell you that you need to get some perspective.

In a very real way I predict the future for a living. I spend 90% of my waking hours trying to figure out what’s coming around the next bend in the financial markets. I’ve built a long list of skills and tools to help me forecast what’s coming, and since I only get paid when I’m right about it, in all humility I think I’ve gotten pretty good at it. So maybe I can give you a more realistic look into what’s coming down the pipe than you’ve heard up to now. Judging from the videos, I certainly don’t think I can make it any worse.

Of course, looking too far into the future is virtually impossible to do with any accuracy. But if I can help thin the fog a little (even if I can’t completely sweep it away), maybe that will help you limit your preparation to those things you can both do something about, and that you might actually need.

The thing about a bureaucratic collapse of the state is that it’s usually right in front of you even if you can’t actually see it. You sort of have to look out of the corner of your eye. For example, the Victor Davis Hanson piece I mentioned a few days ago talked about how the cops in California’s central valley don’t bother to arrest and prosecute felons any more because they can't afford it. They would rather spend their time in what they view as more productive pursuits like writing tickets for productive middle class folks who are more likely to pay their fines.

That’s an important sign. It means that the government is no longer a service to the public and is now preying upon it instead. In that VDH piece the scale of that burden is still very small, but it will only get worse. And as soon as the that happens, the government becomes a force for disorder instead of order. California is in the beginning stage of that, and it will likely spread. Because of their poor finances New York, Illinois, New Jersey, Michigan and Connecticut are only inches behind them.

But don't go thinking there are safe areas. The pressures on the system are global so they will hit everyone eventually. Inflation for example is now a global story which is being systematically misunderstood by most analysts. The domestic tools we use for measuring inflation currently show it as modest and under control, but prices of imported goods are rising much more rapidly than the statistics would indicate.

Those rising prices, particularly of essentials like food an energy, will eventually make it impossible for the poor and working poor to make their way honestly. So apart from simply resorting to criminal activity, even the law abiding will cheat on their taxes and working off the books will become much more common place. That may seem like a small thing too, but over time it will contribute greatly to the breakdown of law and order in many poor areas.

Illegal aliens don’t report labor disputes; they don’t go to police when they are harassed by criminals. And when everyone begins to realize that the police and the government aren’t there for them either (or in the early stages - that dealing with them is more trouble than it's worth), even natural born citizens will begin to cope the same way that illegals do.

So the irony is that while the bloated bureaucracy struggles to keep it's bills paid by making everything that isn’t mandatory prohibited, going forward, less and less of it will continue to be enforceable.

You’ll know the end game of that breakdown has arrived when it becomes impossible for a policeman to pay his way on his salary alone. When that happens, he’ll naturally find other ways to supplement his income. Mexican policemen have been famous for decades regarding their ‘flexible’ revenue generation tactics. It’s easy to imagine the same thing happening here. But that isn’t to imply that there will be no more law and order whatsoever. If you believe you will be able to simply shoot people when they come to rob you and get away with it, you’re absolutely mistaken.

For rich and middle class America there will still be a functioning society of sorts. At least, they will still have to operate as if society was still functioning in every way. The state will still have access to vast resources - far more than enough to punish people that it sees an interest in punishing. And in the “up is down” world of government bureaucracy, that means that if you’re an otherwise productive citizen then it’s their interest to use the law as an excuse to come get what you have.

If you aren't poor, and therefore have something to lose, you’re going to be arrested and brought to court however minor the infraction. The rich will simply buy off the people they need to, to make things go away. But the middle class will have no choice but to bear the burden of what will amount to government sponsored injustice. The rule of law will become a randomly enforced and capriciously applied thing, but it will still be there; exactly as it is in much of the third world.

We will also eventually end up with no-go zones for the police, just as there are in Caracas or Sao Paolo. These will be poor crime infested neighborhoods where the gangs will enforce the only semblance of order. And as our society becomes increasingly stratified, personal security will become the explosive growth industry of the 21st century. Kidnapping will become a much more common crime, and private guard services will take on the work of keeping order (if not enforcing the law) as the police become more and more useless. All viable communities will become gated communities.

As our living standard falls, much of America will begin to look like the third world as well. Water and power will be less certain, but a complete and sustained breakdown will be rare. More likely will be rolling brown and blackouts while the EPA and the environmental groups duke it out with the energy lobby over who is bribing who.

But you ‘preppers’ out there should remember that while the third world is more violent and dangerous than the first world, it isn’t pandemonium. The violence and crime will for the most part be limited to those areas that any reasonable person will easily avoid. Don’t go to Bed-Sty, avoid South Central, and stay out of pretty much all of Camden or it's equivalent in other metro areas, and you’ll be 90% of the way protected from most of the new crime in third world America.

And when the crime reaches out to get you in your first world homes, put bars on your windows, get a big dog, and carry a gun to protect against muggings or kidnappings. Then don’t stop at red lights unless the traffic demands it, don’t ever travel alone, and you’ll be insulated from another 9.5% of the rest of the problems Americans will face. In the future 99.5% protection will be the very best anyone can expect.

As for the “waterfall moment” with regard to our poor public finances, I think what we’re facing is more the rapids than the waterfall. We’ll be bumped and bruised and bleeding before its finished and certainly much worse off than when we started. But I think we’ll survive it.

I recently did a back of the envelope calculation, and as of November 2011, in order to print enough money to pay off 100% of all our federally accumulated debt and unfunded liabilities, I figured that the purchasing power of a dollar would have to be reduced to roughly 1/3 of what it is now. Cumulatively that’s roughly 300% inflation. (I can furnish the math if forced, but for now take my word for it.)

That means that if you make 75K per year today, imagine the lifestyle you’d have if you were forced to live on 25K. That’s what the future will hold for you if the government decided to use inflation to buy down the debt. Of course, that’s just addressing the federal liabilities, not the state or local ones. And it also assumes that we’ll stop adding billions of dollars to our problems each and every single day, or that the government won’t actually default on a bunch of foreign held debt, which many people think we’re likely to do. But we have to start somewhere. And at least we know that our worst case isn’t going to be like Zimbabwe. Not yet anyway.

We won’t become Somalia… more likely we’ll become Poland or Lithuania. And since that so, by far the best preparation someone could possibly make for when the SHTF would be to work hard, save your money in a form that will be undiluted by inflation, and get really, really good at a skill that will continue to have a demand whatever the economic conditions. Even today we’ve already begun to dispel the myth that someone who can’t handle basic algebra but has a masters in ‘Ethnic Studies’ has an education. They don’t. And that will become more and more obvious in the future.

The truth is, I know I’m shouting into the wind here. When you see a video of some 30 year old guy waving around an AK who is 150lbs overweight and looks like he couldn’t run from the refrigerator to the couch, he isn’t really preparing for the end no matter what the says. What he’s really doing is mental masturbation. He’s making himself feel better about his life not going the way he wants it to today, by worrying about something else that he can imagine will be worse. If he were really preparing for the scenario he imagines, he’d give up beer tomorrow and you’d never get him off the treadmill.

But if you’re the guy in that video, I don’t mean to ruin your fun. Hell I have an AK too (well… a WASR… but you know what I mean). I love the thing and have great fun with it. You should too. Familiarity with firearms never hurt anyone. And neither I think did imagining a future that’s worse than what we have. Dungeons and Dragons doesn’t work for some people I guess, and you don’t get to fire your guns while you’re playing that game.

What’s more, you don’t have to believe me if you don’t want to. I’m cool with that. Continue to stock those MRE’s if it makes you feel better. Everything I’ve said here is speculation (albeit informed speculation from a professional speculator), and my goal isn’t to lure you into some future vulnerability. But if you decide that you’d like to work with the facts more than the fantasy, I hope you’ll remember what I’ve said here.

I don’t think there is any debate that things will be worse for most Americans in the future than they are right now. But like most things, you really have to keep that in perspective. Preparing for a rainstorm doesn’t require the same thing as preparing for a flood. And it seems to me you'd really be best off making your life better instead of building an Ark in your front yard.

- Arguing For More Waste, Fraud And Abuse

2011-12-23T05:36:00.004-05:00

The primary rule of bureaucrats is that the more of them you get, the more of them you get. Self justification is the absolute first priority of the bureaucracy, and the law enforcement arms of the government are no different. Triple the budget for the DEA as an example, and the very first thing those new DEA agents will do is go forth and find reasons to triple the budget again. Leave it to their discretion and they will be investigating every band aid, aspirin and ice pack in the continental US. It’s simply how the bureaucracy works.

The result of that bureaucratic bloating has another name come election time. When pols go out on the campaign trail they refer to it (or at least the results of it) as ‘waste, fraud and abuse” which everyone is always against, but no one ever seems able to eliminate. The reason is that it’s contrary to the nature of the bureaucracy. Nothing ever gets eliminated, no matter how wasteful, fraudulent or abusive.

Take the recent example of the ATF. This is the department who was responsible for buying thousands of guns illegally and allowing those guns to be sold into the drug war that’s being raged just across our southern border in Mexico. It was money wasted, involving a fraudulent practice, and an abuse of federal authority. What’s even worse in this case was that both Americans and American law enforcement officials have been killed by the very guns that the ATF knowingly sold to criminals, and before their fraud was discovered, ATF officials tried to use those sales as a political foil to justify even greater regulation of firearms.

In my world we were refer to that as a massive cluster-***k, but in the bureaucracy it’s just another day as usual.

Seizing this moment as an opportunity to stay firmly on the wrong side of history and to cheer the further erosion of American liberty, disco era ex-Manhattan district attorney Robert Morgenthau (the crypt keeper) has decided that this is the moment he needs to come out in the WSJ and insist that very same people that brought you the ‘Fast And Furious’ gunwalker scandal need even greater funding. Even when the tendency of liberals to be 180 degrees wrong is considered, this has to strike any reasonable person as flawlessly poor timing.

Morgenthau is 91 years old, so calling him ‘stuck in the past’ with regard to gun control gives insult to people like our own disco era politician, Frank Lautenberg, who himself is still as firmly committed as ever to the policy prescriptions of 1977. It's Lautenbergs assertion that so long as we keep throwing gobs of taxpayer money at the problem, we're bound to start making progress on it eventually. Give it another 40 years and things should start going our way.

But Morgenthau was a middle aged man when he was appointed to be a US federal attorney by John F. Kennedy, so when Lautenberg came on the political scene Morganthau was already and old man whose ideas were 20 years behind the times. Now he makes even "throw more money at it" Lautenberg seem like a forward thinker.

At this point, he’s simply beyond parody.

%%%%%UPDATE%%%%%

I think it's worth remembering that there is no such thing as an 'illegal gun' any more than there is such a thing as an 'illegal hammer', or an 'illegal chainsaw'. It's not the gun which is illegal but the means by which it was bought or sold. And although the reasons for this literary sloppiness by the media is transparent, we should make a point of calling them on it so they quit it.

- Someone Please Ping Karl With This...

2011-12-22T08:59:00.002-05:00

My buddy Karl used to think it was hysterical to see me flipping out over Jimmy Carter's legacy. My disgust with the man was what he thought was funny. In fact Karl has always been a clear eyed sort, especially for a New Englander.

Even Obama has had a hard time matching Carter in his determination to work against American interest. In fact, it's usually only when Obama has been at his worst that the comparison has been made at all (what with Obama's media sainthood and all).

Well Karl, here's another one for your growing file of Carter embarrassments which has to rank right up there with ex Carter Era "embassy hostage taker" Mahmoud Ahmadinejad being elevated to local fame and eventually becoming President of Iran.:

Ex-President Carter sends condolences to Kim Jong-un

- Morning Dope

2011-12-22T05:27:00.003-05:00

I know you've never seen MSNBC's 'Morning Joe'. Almost no one has. It features rino ex Florida congressman Joe Scarborogh talking about how brilliant and insightful he is, and his empty headed blonde sidekick Mika Brzezinski acting as his liberal foil. Mika is arguably the dumbest woman on television, but it's not really her fault. None of her ideas are her own, so it probably isn't fair to blame her for them.

She may be a very nice person... it's tough to tell. She's certainly not a brilliant one. The general principle of the show (I think) is that squishy lefty Joe repeats some middle of the road Republican boilerplate and Mika challenges it from the position of the far left without bruising Joe's bloated ego. This is the kind of thing that passes for insightful dialog in the circles where Rachel Maddow is considered a deep thinker, and Ed Schultz is depicted as an philosopher statesman.

Mika's wooden expressions and comical repetition of what the New York Times editorial pages told her to think that day are fun to watch for about 8 seconds - long enough to hear Chris Christy nicely explain to her what an dope she is. But the one thought that jumps off the screen at you while watching this car wreck is that it's astounding how low the media will set the bar if your chatter is 'the right' chatter and you have a father who's well connected.

If there ever comes a day where liberal self congratulation gets the public ridicule it deserves, Mika will have no choice but to become a hermit - or at the very least, take a vow of silence. Until then though, if you want a textbook example of why nothing liberals ever try seems to work out the way they intend, take a look at Mika. No one that stupid would ever be able to do anything for a living but talk. And in Mika's case, she barely manages to do that right.

- When The Vandals Arrive...

2011-12-21T08:46:00.016-05:00

As a gun guy, one of the very few in my well to do greater NYC sewing circle, people ask me often if I intend to run away to a ‘bolt hole’ in the country if things hit the fan. I always tell them no. I’d rather be in semi-rural NJ where I can be one of the very few armed people in an area where guns have been all but illegal for a generation, than cope with shooting my way into (and potentially out of) a country bolt hole.

Stories from post collapse Argentina have filtered up to me of people in the country trying to cope with thieves. It paints a very different picture than the hit and run – ‘never stop at the red light unless traffic demands it’ image of crime in the more populated areas. The thieves are in no hurry out there in the wilderness. They know that no one will be along to help. So they take their time and consume everything available like locusts, before raping and killing their hosts.

That’s the thing I’ve tried to get across for ages. When you’re out in the wilderness you MUST protect yourself, because there won’t be anyone else to do it. In the suburbs you only have to hold out until help arrives - and it usually will eventually. But in the wilderness, you have to stay awake forever and pick off strangers at a distance, even if the stranger turns out to just be the neighbor’s boy trying to ask for help fixing their well pump. Oh, and don’t go asking the neighbors for help with your well pump, because they may be feeling the same way about you.

But between the fair trade non-fat Carmel mocchiato of a university campus where coping with reality is a remote and almost irrelevant thing, and being forced to fight ‘blaster’ in the thunderdome for the planet's last gallon of gasoline, is a very long, bumpy, garbage strewn road where institutions fail a little at a time.

Crime is the first thing to arrive; lots and lots of crime. And I’ve invested a lot of energy into trying to figure out what that crime will look like when it arrives for me. Will it be gangs settimg up toll booths on I95, or carpet installers selling maps to the inside of my house to their criminal buddies? Now Victor Davis Hanson has saved me wondering about all those questions, because it’s already happening around his home in California’s once prosperous central valley.

His is an essay which I fear will be one looked back upon decades from now as describing ‘the moment when’. for me it conjures that imagined image of the sailing ship tipping off the edge of the world. I can’t tell if that’s what he meant or if it’s just a product of his writing sounding like what he’s been reading. But if you translated his essay into Latin (with appropriate backdating… references to cars transformed into horses, power lines to aqueducts etc etc), scratched it onto Velum and told people that you dug it up in some 5th century cisalpine settlement, you’d get people to believe it. His is a story of a once prosperous society in the midst of a tragic bureaucratic decline:

The city of Fresno is now under siege. Hundreds of street lights are out, their copper wire stripped away. In desperation, workers are now cementing the bases of all the poles — as if the original steel access doors were not necessary to service the wiring. How sad the synergy! Since darkness begets crime, the thieves achieve a twofer: The more copper they steal, the easier under cover of spreading night it is to steal more. Yet do thieves themselves at home with their wives and children not sometimes appreciate light in the darkness? Do they vandalize the street lights in front of their own homes?

The soft spoken classicist cum farmer has lived on his family farm for all but small parts of his life. And as graphic as his description is (it was a real challenge for me in figuring out which paragraph to excerpt) I have even more trouble wondering what this must feel like to him. I have never lived more than 30 miles from an oil refinery. Even as my personal prosperity has increased, being around the bombed out urban blight and the human scavengers that pick at it has always been more comfortable for me than many. To be honest I usually feel better when I see the human vultures overhead because I don’t have to wonder where they’re hiding – or what they may be plotting.

But for him it really must feel like the end. What’s more, since his knowledge of history is substantial, he must know that the chance of reversing this decline and returning to former prosperity is somewhere between slim and none.

I’ve been a great admirer of Augustine of Hippo (St. Augustine to we papists) all my life. VDH must feel a tragic commonality to the great man. Augustine penned his two monumentally important works ‘Confessions” and “City of God”, between 397 and 410 AD. In the year 410, the Visigoths sacked the city of Rome, and the empire’s decline went into high gear. This I think tells you as much about how professor Hanson feels watching civilization crumble around him, as anything else.

Don't miss this essay. It's depressing, but I think it blows away a little of the mist of the future.

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%UPDATE%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

I've been reading the comments on Dr. Hanson's post over at NR and I've got to tell you, the only conclusion I can come to from reading them is that very few people seem interested in the reality of the situation as much as they are some political mythology.

By far the most delusional post was the one by one of NR's resident liberal trolls who wrote an eloquent apologists creed (which even cited the federalist papers) explaining that all this was as a result of the failure of California to be liberal enough. Personally I think he should lay off the ganga.

To be fully honest, the rest are almost as bad - conservatives too. There are dozens of people advocating various forms of individual violence from posse formation to trap laying and homicide. California may be broken, but it's not that broken, not yet anyway. And if Dr. Hanson and his neighbors start shooting up the San Joaquin criminal element, the police will only discover that there are some felons worth prosecuting after all. Oh what glee the LA times and the network news people would spout for the chance to see someone like Victor Davis Hanson charged with the murder of a minority criminal. What nobility they would find in the that particular dead guy.

Those commenters don't seen to realize that this is a Napoleonic issue. It's a question of the vulnerability of the fixed fortifications. So long as you're in one place and your enemy is mobile, you lose. It won't be possible to keep the criminals from looting the central valley until until the system changes or completely falls apart.

One commenter did get it exactly right when he said that this is PRECISELY what the liberal policies of California have been aiming for. No rule of law, no private property protection, punish the productive to subsidize the unproductive, throw open the borders, and ignore all crime. They shouldn't be surprised it's worked out this way, they should be high five-ing each other and celebrating a job well done. These consequences may be unintended on the whole, but in each of it's small parts it's exactly what they intended.

The situation in California is tragic, but at this point inevitable. And unfortunately the future is already certain. People like Dr. Hanson will be able to preserve their their family farms, but only at a cost. Very soon, it will no longer be profitable for anyone. Meanwhile, the lifestyle he remembers of a free people in a free land can no longer be saved at all. It's already gone. Because the people of California are no longer a moral enough people to be fit for self rule. No liberal anywhere is.

- Newt's Bad Lipreading

2011-12-20T14:43:00.002-05:00

"NEWT GINGRICH" — a Bad Lip Reading Soundbite - watch more funny videos

I think it would be funnier if I could be a little more certain that it wasn't what he was really saying.

- Tea Party Patriots Gun Posession Arrest

2011-12-20T08:21:00.005-05:00

A co-founder of the conservative Tea Party Patriots group was arrested at a New York airport on Thursday for gun possession, authorities said.

This is another obviously bogus gun arrest. He was following the rules for safe transport of a firearm. It was unloaded, and locked in a case along with 19 cartridges. He's only being charged with a crime because of a technicality having to do with federal nature of firearms regulation.

He had a California permit, but no NY permit. How he came to be boarding a plane in NY is a mystery un-described by the Reuters piece, who didn't feel it was an important detail of the story. He could very well have been changing planes while going from LA to North Carolina, two locations where his possession of a gun in that manner would be perfectly legal.

I think it begs the question of political motivation for the arrest, but read the article and decide for yourself.

BTW a national right to carry law would prevent this kind of BS.

%%%%%%%%%%UPDATE%%%%%%%%%%

There is already a federal law designed to prevent this sort of thing, but apparently vociferously anti-gun Mayor Bloomberg has encouraged his police force to ignore it.

Here is the relevant portion of the FOPA (firearm Owners Protection Act):

One of the law's provisions was that persons traveling from one place to another cannot be incarcerated for a firearms offense in a state that has strict gun control laws if the traveler is just passing through (short stops for food and gas) and the firearms and ammunition are not immediately accessible, unloaded and, in the case of a vehicle without a compartment separate from the driver’s compartment, in a locked container.[7]

An example of this would be that someone driving from Virginia to a competition in Vermont with a locked hard case containing an unloaded handgun and a box of ammunition in the trunk could not be prosecuted in New Jersey or New York City for illegal possession of a handgun provided that they did not stop in New Jersey or New York for an extended period of time.

- Choosing Life In The Dependent Underclass

2011-12-20T06:57:00.004-05:00

There is a very interesting article on Poverty here by Megan Mcardle, the essence of which can be found here:

If poor people did the stuff that middle class people do, it's possible--maybe probable--that they wouldn't be poor. But this is much harder than it sounds. As John Scalzi once memorably put it, "Being poor is having to live with choices you didn't know you made when you were 14 years old." Which often means, he might have added, spending your whole life doing the sort of jobs that middle class people sometimes do when they're 14. It isn't that people can't get out of this: they do it quite frequently. But in order to do so, you need the will and the skill--and the luck--to execute perfectly. There is no margin for error in the lives of the working poor.

I find it a particularly interesting piece because she criticizes both the liberal and conservative belief that if we get the policy levers just right, this is a problem that can be fixed. 'Poor people make choices' she says irreducibly.

But for myself I'm not convinced of the hopelessness of the situation. If you really believe that poverty itself is the problem and not the hardship that springs from it, then make it it worse and fewer people will choose it. Of course, this would involve hardening your heart to the increase in suffering that would result. But if 'bad' choices are made worse then fewer people will choose them.

Or you could as easily raise the 'upside' of doing things right. If you were to increase the gap between rich and poor not decrease it, then the greater benefit of being 'rich' would be attractive to more people. And if poor is made worse, then more people will choose the former than the latter. This is really beyond debate.

Many people rise from poverty. It's not easy, but it's still more possible here than it has been at any time in human history. Even with the recent reversion to the mean that's come from the Obama policies designed to prevent success and increase government dependency. And true to liberal form, his goal of 'reducing the gap' between rich and poor will be more destructive to the people he's trying to help than those he's trying to hurt.

But I do think Megan is right about one thing. You can't force people to be middle class. You can't (or at least shouldn't) force them to work hard and fret about their child's education. You can't compel them by force to be upwardly mobile. If they don't want it, they don't have to have it.

This obviously doesn't fall across strictly racial lines, but I think there is a case to be made that some portion of every population would simply rather be slaves.

- The "Unthinkable" Euro Breakup

2011-12-20T05:21:00.004-05:00

A lot of the Euro-crats have declared the breakup of the euro an "unthinkable" concept. But the nearly universal reaction of those of us in the finance markets has been to say "Well we're thinking about it, so I guess it isn't unthinkable after all." But what if we're making a categorical error here? What if they mean that it isn't an unthinkable concept for them, but instead are telling us that it should be an unthinkable concept for us?

What if they're actually trying to tell us that we aren't allowed to consider it, and if we do we'll be punished? Suppose they mean that they intend to co-opt the banks and the financial markets as much as is necessary to make them say what they want them to? What if what they're saying is that they have absolutely no intention of allowing the Euro to breakup whatever the cost? Every day that ticks by, one more pleb gets bored with the story. Every time they add another layer of derivative complexity to the funding plan one more journalist gets confused away. Pretty soon they start calling Eurosceptics 'maniac's' in the Euro friendly leftist media, and then it's all down hill from there.

We in business are goal oriented, but politicians are not. We look at the Euro and rightly say "This can't possibly go on for ever." But maybe it doesn't have to last forever... it only has to last longer than us.

Maybe the temporary patch has become a permanent policy, where nothing ever gets 'fixed'. Look at Japan, entering it's second decade of being broken. When we look at that situation we see a an economy that has spent nearly an entire generation hobbling along, barely keeping up. Lackluster growth, sclerotic personal income and minimal opportunity for anyone have just been something the Japanese have gotten used to. It's a limp, lame, sickly thing the Japanese economy.

But that's not what they Euro-crats see when they look at Japan. Instead what they see is a docile populace that is grateful for whatever crumbs they're given by their betters, and is supremely ready to be ruled. They see a population that has learned to cope. That's precisely what they want in Europe. Much has been made of how it's impossible to get the northern and southern Europeans to take an equivalent view of the world. But according to the Eurocrats, the Greeks and the Britains, and the Lithuanians don't have to feel the same, they only have to act the same.

These are not people who will ever accept that markets are an objective lens through which to view reality. They are people who believe that they must "reestablish the primacy of politics over markets", and 'reality' be damned.

- My Kind Of Crazy

2011-12-19T11:17:00.002-05:00

This is an attribution heavy post. Jonah Goldberg made the original comment that Newt might be a good candidate to rise to the call if you think these are crazy times. I read the original piece but found it unpersuasive. The way that Mark Steyn put it this AM made it somewhat more convincing. But it seems to me that if you really do think these are extraordinary times, then there is really only one guy you should consider voting for.

Personally I am not a Paul supporter. I think he's VERY helpful to the debate, but like most extreme libertarians, I don't think he's thought through the consequences of his policies very well. You can have too much of a good thing, and in his case that may very well be what we get. He'll overturn so many apple carts that he'll probably get himself impeached, or be target of a military coup or something.

But if you really do believe that anything less that a radical take on politics won't be enough given our peculiar times, then it seems to me that only he can deliver it. Newt will try to build monuments to Newt. Ron Paul would rather let his monument be the way he tears down all the others.

And I would vote for Dr. Paul in a minute before seeing Obama re-elected.

- A NSFW Kim Jong Il Comment

2011-12-19T06:05:00.002-05:00

He was more of a cartoon character than the NYTimes would have us believe. Regrettably, the nuclear weapons he had were real enough. If only we could have sent him another couple of hundred billion dollars in aid. I'm sure that would have been enough to convince him not build them.

I was watching Kevin Williamson intellectually batter some poor dumb socialist from the LATimes a few months back on a blogginheads post and he said something like the following:

Socialism is either the most unlucky ideology in all of history or there is really something wrong with it as a belief system because everyone it seems to attract turns out to be such monsters.

Hard to find a better description of Kim Jong Il that that. I'll say this much, he certainly lived the dream when it came to totalitarian socialism. He actually did all the things that people like Andy Stern and Van Jones would have us do here. He might not have conquered a continent or exported his socialism across the globe, but no one can say he didn't try it all at home.

Now someone has dropped house on him or something. Good riddance.

- Hitchens RIP And A Short Note On Atheism

2011-12-16T10:38:00.005-05:00

Christopher Hitches, famous for his thoughtful and articulate criticisms of religion and faith in an afterlife, has died of cancer. Most of the notices I’ve read have wished him a ‘glorious surprise’. Although I don’t know that my meager level of faith justifies it, I see no harm in wishing him the same. I didn’t know him at all – never met him. But the people I know who did all spoke well of him, even while disagreeing vehemently with his ideas.

I personally, am not very religious. I’m a Roman Catholic, but not a very good one. That’s more because I have such a big problem being a ‘joiner’ than any specific reservations about the church. In fact, I’m a fairly ardent supporter of the Church of Rome in principle, if not in actual practice. A civilization should have it’s guardians of tradition, and in the west I think the Roman Church has filled that role quite well.

Most of the self declared Atheist I know find that concept very offensive, and are quick to raise the recent sexual scandals or a vague reference to the crusades as a counterpoint. But most of them don’t really understand either of those events in context. The whole point of religion is to set a moral guide post for civilization as a whole. Any religion, all religions, are a means of communicating the principle of what is right and what is wrong, to subsequent generations. And while those examples may provide an example of specific people disregarding the morality of Christianity, neither of them invalidates the Christian moral ethic in any way.

The sexual scandals were sins of men. It’s true the sins were committed by members of the church, but the institution of the church made it clear that it didn’t approve. When a policeman takes a bribe we don’t declare all police departments invalid. Not even if the person taking the bribe was a person of power an influence in the force. What’s more, we don’t reject the concept of law, crime and punishment. In other words, we blame the individual for the sin, not the institution. That’s how it works in the west.

As for the crusades, they only look bad in the post-colonial light of the modern western university. Taken in proper historical context they really don’t seem such a great sin at all. Yes, people died, and many individual sins were probably committed between here and there. But I would venture to speculate that there were no more (as a percentage) than the sins committed in ‘good wars’ that post colonial western intellectuals approve of. The animosity that the modern western university has to Christian institutions is certainly well known. So all their criticisms need to be viewed in that context, particularly those pertaining to history where their propensity for applying modern standard to ancient events is well known.

Ask your average self described Atheist, and they’ll tell you that they reject Christianity completely. But ask them if they think killing someone (as an example) is a moral act and they will unambiguously say no. On the other hand a devout Muslim, would answer the same question as ‘maybe’, since there are lots of circumstances where killing someone under Muslim morality is perfectly fine.

My point is, someone who calls themselves an atheist is usually someone who has rejected the mysticism of western religion but continued to embrace the morality of it. But the morality is the meat of the message, the mysticism is really just a tool used to communicate it. So in that way I don’t think they are quite as ‘non-believing’, as they like to present themselves. In most cases I think they simply don’t realize the role that faith plays in the lives of every human. They are like fish who have declared themselves free from the pernicious effects of drinking water. It never occurs to them that the fluid that surrounds them in every direction is the very same stuff.

It’s very tough to establish an institution of any kind and make it last as long as the Church of Rome has. Simply being able to communicate the same moral message to the profoundly changing masses over that long a time frame is testimony to the strength of it. But that isn’t to say that the means of communication hasn’t been profoundly changed between its beginning and now. In many circles, the parables and mysticism that were so effective at spreading the moral code in the late Roman Empire are now discarded as ‘spaghetti monster’ nonsense. But if you query those very same people about their moral code, it’s clear the message has been received by all but a very few of them – even as they utterly reject the old means of its communication. Go figure.

In my experience, the vast majority of Atheists are so consumed with themselves that it never occurs to them that their personal moral code is anything but a permanent fixture of the universe. They don’t realize its origins or the mechanism by which it was transmitted to them. What’s more, it never occurs to them that someone who has a difference with their moral code, your devout Muslim for example might see it any other way. In other words, in most cases atheism is less about not believing, and more about not thinking.

But one could never say that about Christopher Hitches. If absolutely nothing else he was thoughtful and articulate. But that isn’t to say that this thinking wasn’t deeply flawed. He was a socialist, so his attempts at intellectual consistency can’t really be faulted. So rather than saying his fault was a lack of depth like so many Atheists, I’d say his fault was one of perspective. The atheist, even someone like Hitchens, believes that his universe begins and ends with his experience of it; while the view of the faithful, even someone who is poor a practitioner as me, has more continuity across time than that.

It’s not just the concept of an afterlife that gives solace to the believer, but the idea of playing a small part in something more permanent and continuous than ourselves. The society we build by applying our moral code to the game theory of human relationships outlasts us. And when we consider the thought of our children or grandchildren growing up and raising families long after our departure, while subscribing to the same beliefs about right and wrong, we can get comfort from it.

But if honest about it, the true Atheist is denied that comfort. Their moral code can be seen only as something to be utterly reinvented both by them, and by the next and every subsequent generation. If throwing out the baby and the bathwater is the right thing to do for them, then they shouldn’t be surprised when those that follow their example do the same with their morality however it's defined. In that constant state of reinvention of the ‘truth’, the connection between the present and both the past and future, is totally severed.

Atheist usually respond to this by claiming that theirs is a belief only in the objective and permanently verifiable. They claim their view is the scientific method applied to the full human condition. But their moral differences to the aforementioned pious Muslim show the falsehood of that statement. Your western Atheist will oppose honor killing as an example, not for issues of game theory where it works out just fine, but for reasons of western morality. They think its wrong – even if they can’t adequately explain exactly why exactly they feel that way. The point is, they believe the moral message of Christianity, even as they reject the messenger. Even as they dispute the very existence of the message, they continue to believe it.

Hitchens was a clever and thoughtful man, and I wish nothing but peace and comfort to those who feel his loss. Sometimes having a strong opponent makes you a better combatant. And in that way I’m sure his efforts dramatically improved the modern discourse on the role of faith in society. In that way we are all better for his having passed this way. Even if it may not be in a way that he intended.

- Yahoo Mail's Last Straw

2011-12-15T12:41:00.003-05:00

Yahoo's contempt for their customer base is well known. But you know how it is with email accounts - you'd rather not change it if you can avoid the hassle, so the threshold for the amount of crap you'll take is set pretty high. All the same, I think Yahoo Mail has finally reached that last straw with many of it's customers.

Over the last few days, Yahoo has begun forcing it's customers to upgrade to it's latest version of web based mail. This gives them better tracking, or more control or more something - honestly I have no idea. But it must give them something they want or they wouldn't have forced me along with the rest of their customers to upgrade.

Now it turns out that the upgrade has also caused all Blackberry devices to no longer be able to access yahoo mail. I've been on the phone with a combination of AT&T, Rim and Rim Server support all day. In the interim, I've found a hack that let me downgrade my version of web mail back to the old version (which is a relief) but it hasn't changed the fact that my blackberry access no longer works.

So if you need to reach me over the next few days, send me a text. In the meantime, it looks like I'm going to begin the long hard slog to change over from yahoo to gmail for my personal mail. I don't want to do it, but the way I see it, yahoo has given me no choice.

- A Squawk Box Note

2011-12-15T07:14:00.005-05:00

This is one quick note for all of you guys watching Squawk Box right now. If they have a 'professional investor' on who starts talking about the things that government does right, then as sure as the night follows the day, he's got at least one deal that depends on government funding. It's shameful, but regrettably true.

If you remember who their names are (instead of blocking them out like I do) then in the future you'll know who is 'talking up their book' and who isn't.

PS I have a good friend who has been working on the 'control systems' theory to be applied to smart grids. It's fairly complicated stuff for the average Joe, and to be completely honest about it, he's only given my the 50K foot view. But the upshot of it all is that making it work involves allowing the government to have complete discretionary control of your energy usage.
No thanks.

- NJ Commuter Relocation Guide

2011-12-14T08:37:00.003-05:00

I'm re-posting this in light of the awesome map (posted above) that has since been created. It provides a little more data, and I've woven it into the actual texts.

Presidential rhetoric notwithstanding, most of the people on Wall Street don’t make all that much more than everyone else. And that means that they can’t afford to both live in Manhattan and have a family. My buddy Rob does pretty well, but he’s in that range (like most of us) and is considering moving his happy family to this side of the river. So in the interest of helping him out, I thought I’d write up a little guide for those Wall Streeter’s looking to crossover to the land of the ugly license plate.

The central issue of moving to any one of New Jersey’s commuting towns is, as you would imagine, the length of the commute. When I lived in Manhattan and was working at Moore Capital I lived right around the corner, so my commute was further vertically than horizontally. When my wife talked me into leaving town, I didn’t want to cope with a long lonely train ride. And spoiled as I was, I had this fantasy that I could move out of town and have a roughly 1 hour door to door commute. But in practice that doesn’t really work out very well.

A one hour commute to Penn Station New York will leave you in some of New Jersey’s most undesirable towns. No upper middle class Wall Street staffer is going to raise a family in Newark, or East Orange or Union City. There are nice towns with good schools within 1 hour of midtown, but for reasons I’ll discuss below you will probably want to stay away from them. You can get much more for your money if you are willing to travel about another half hour like the rest of us.

In terms of a door to door trip to midtown, you should really be thinking about a 1.5 hour commute. Further if you can stand it. But at a minimum, you’re really looking at roughly a 1 hour train or bus ride, and whatever driving and scurrying you need to do to get to and from mass transit. That opens up lots of possibilities, but eliminates some others. Basically you’re stuck to the north – east part of the state, and there are some other filters you can apply to winnow them down further. In the interest of brevity, I’ve broken them down by county:

Bergen County:
(This is shown on the map as Republican 'Christie country". It may seem that way to a Democrat, but as a conservative let me say that this is really the only part of the map I dispute. There is no part of NJ above the Turnpike that is conservative as it's understood in the rest of the country. And my personal experience is that Bergen county is at best a split.)

Commute: The problem with commuting to Bergen county is that the trains only go to Hoboken. From there you have to switch to the comparatively seedy looking PATH trains. Personally I find the trip depressing, but even more than that, it adds 30 minutes onto the length of your trip, so you can’t get very far out of town with your remaining time. This leaves you more subject to the snows and traffic on the bus or in your car.

Worst Part: The lack of trains to NY and abysmal public schools. Plan on sending the kids to private school, in which case you might as well move back to Manhattan.

Best Part: It’s a pretty, if somewhat crowded area that’s more like Rockland County NY.

Taxes: High. Excluding the actual state house in Trenton, this is the most pro-tax (liberal) area in the state. They are simply thrilled to have taxes go up and naturally, they always do.

Aesthetics: I like it…. If you go far enough out of town it can be quite pretty. Like I said, it’s a lot like Rockland county New York.

Value: Poor. It’s crowded, and that means that if you want to live in a nice house with a nice yard and a pool you’ll have to really pay up. In terms of what you get for the money almost anywhere else that meets your minimums will be better.

Passaic County:
(This is a mix between "friendly white families" and "rednecks and retired hippies". With that said, let me say this, all things are relative. NJ is a sort of mecca for rudeness and it absolutely permeates everything we do. Out governor is famous for it. So 'friendly' is the relative term here. the rest sounds about right to me.)

Commute: The trains still only go to Hoboken, leaving you on the depressing PATH trains or stuck in traffic.

Worst Part: Paterson. It’s been a depressed city for years and shows no signs of improving. The proximity of such a low income area to relatively high income areas also causes a higher crime rate relative to other towns. The public schools are still awful in all the areas where you can realistically commute.

Best Part: If you don’t mind commuting further and driving a lot, there are really nice towns in the north where you won’t even know you’re in New Jersey. Rent a movie called ‘the station agent’ to get a look at some.

Taxes: High. If you live in a county that contains an economic sink hole like Paterson, everyone else’s taxes have to rise to compensate for all the theft, graft, extortion and union malfeasance that go along with NJ cities.

Aesthetics: this is Tony Soprano country. If you liked the way the scenery looked on the Soprano’s TV show, then you’ll like the look of the nicer parts of Passaic county. Personally most of it looks to me like a low rent version of Bergen County. Like the difference between the upper east side, and queens.

Value: Actually pretty good. The high crime rate and difficult commute drives down home prices relative to other areas. But you probably have to be more than 1.5 hours away to make it really work.

Hudson County:
(This is shown as a mix of "Hipsters" and "Poor minorities". Think gentrified urbana, without the wealth.)

Commute: From most of the county it’s quite good, but it has all the same problems that living in Manhattan does.

Worst Part: Jersey City. It’s a sink hole in every way.

Best Part: Hoboken… if you’re a 25 year old analyst who can’t afford to live in town.

Taxes: Ridiculous

Aesthetics: Like I said, if you’re single it works… otherwise…look elsewhere.

Value: Be serious. This isn’t a suitable location for raising a family. Move further away or tough it out in town. You’ll thank me.

Essex County:
(This is "The Melting Pot" and "Poor Minorities". My description is more helpful if you ask me.)

Commute: First rate.

Worst Part: Newark and much of the surrounding area. If you need me to explain this you have bigger problems than I can solve for you.

Best Part: There are some towns like Short Hills which exist as upper middle class islands surrounded by a sea of urban blight. But you will pay more in those towns than anywhere else in the state. The contrast in how little you get for the dollar is breathtaking.

Taxes: Preposterous...even by New Jersey standards. Newark and the surrounding area are the corruption capital of America. You’ll pay and pay and pay, and get virtually nothing for it.

Aesthetics: This is the area that NJ gets its reputation from. I’ve described it in the past as an urban madmax set. Most of it is simply horrible.

Value: Horrendous. If you buy in one of the islands like Short hills, you will get less for your money than you will anywhere else in the state. And for your trouble you’ll have a higher crime rate, and taxes that would make a socialist grumble.

Union County:
(This is "Russians, Polacks and Toxic Fumes". They forget all the Cubans in Elizabeth, and the 'islands like Westfield, but the rest isn't far off.)

Commute: Like Essex county, Much of Union County is easily accessible. But none of the areas where you want to live will be.

Worst Part: Actually I lied; the city of Elizabeth is the town that gives NJ its reputation. It has all the charm of Jersey City with the government efficiency of Newark. I get uncomfortable just driving though it.

Best Part: Westfield or Summit. Like Essex county, union has it’s ‘islands’, and they have the same problems but to a somewhat lesser degree. The western parts of the county are quite nice too, but are really stretching the limit in terms of commute time.

Taxes: Lofty, but not choking like Essex county.

Aesthetics: The western parts like Gillette and Stirling are quite nice. The islands are a little crowded for my tastes.

Value: Westfield and surrounding area are still delivering very little for your money relative to the other areas, but aren’t shocking like Short Hills. Taxes are steep and you can’t get a parking space at the train station. The wait list for it extends decades into the future.

Middlesex County:
(This is shown as a mix of "Indians, Jews, and Drunk Rutgers Students" The western most part pokes into the McMansion area.)

Commute: Well that depends. The places that are easy to commute from like Woodbridge are undesirable for other reasons and the best areas are further. On the whole I’d call it largely accessible, but mostly by bus.

Worst Part: New Brunswick, but that still isn’t so bad. Its home to Rutgers of course, and has a high crime rate and is a sink hole by and large, but very little of it overflows into the surrounding areas.

Best Part: Most of Middlesex County isn’t bad, but it isn’t all that great either. It’s largely a blue collar area that is without major vice or virtue. As usual, the western parts are the most upper of the upper middle class suburbs. If you’re an Indian immigrant (as many wall streeter’s are) then you probably know that Edison NJ has the highest concentration of Indians in all of North America.

Taxes: Passable - you know… for New Jersey.

Aesthetics: Being a blue collar area, much of it is less than gorgeous. But it’s not the thunderdome like blight of Essex or Union Counties either. For the most part it’s clean and relatively safe.

Value: Not bad, but there aren’t a ton of place to choose from. You’ll probably end up looking in North, South, or East Brunswick. But once again, these towns will put you on the bus and at the mercy of the weather and traffic.

Somerset County:
(Somerset County is half "Raritan Valley Commuters" and half "Executives in Mansions." In defense of my buddy Vishnu who left a comment on the original post, Morris county is all "Mansions" and is just to the north.)

Commute: The nice parts of Somerset county involve changing trains in Newark, and that places most of them outside the 1.5 hour limit. Even the busses are very limited.

Worst Part: In truth, apart from the commuting distance, I don’t think Somerset County really has one. If only it were a little closer.

Best Part: Again, there are so many truly beautiful areas that it’s hard to choose. For my money I think the area around the national equestrian center in Far Hills is about as pretty as any countryside in the world. Anywhere from Branchburg north qualifies as truly beautiful.

Taxes: the schools in Somerset county are first rate, and come with a first rate tax bill. They are lower than breathtaking Short Hills, but higher than most everywhere else in the country. But you have to live somewhere. Taxes aren’t the reason to avoid Somerset county, the distance is.

Aesthetics: Honestly beautiful, almost everywhere.

Value: You get a lot for your dollar but you pay for it in commuting time. But if you can live with 2 hours each way you get a lot for it here.

Monmouth County:
("Banker's And Businessmen" is the bulk of the country, with a fringe poked into all of the others around the periphery.)

Commute: Most of the county is unreachable in 1.5 hours. But there are several nice towns inside the 1.5 hour limit. Full disclosure, this is where my wife and I chose to live.

Worst Part: Like Somerset County, there aren’t really any big problems in Monouth county…. Maybe Asbury Park, but that’s too far to commute. The traffic on Rt 9 might be a problem for some.

Best Part: Colts Neck. It’s pricier than the other commuter towns, but that’s because the taxes are lower. It’s the most upper of the upper middle class areas. The town of Rumson is as nice as Beverly Hills, but if you can afford to live there, then you can afford to live anywhere.

Taxes: It ain’t cheap but there are worse in New Jersey. The lower income towns in Monmouth County have a high percentage of illegal immigrants, and they don’t draw a lot in social services so it’s cheaper than other areas.

Aesthetics: My town is all horse farms and apple orchards and we’re 20 minutes from the beach. I think Somerset County is prettier, but Monmouth has its advantages. One of them is that the weather pattern is solidly mid-Atlantic, making the weather more like Baltimore than Boston. The Connecticut suburbs are firmly in New England so there is quite a spread in temperature between here and there. That was what pushed my wife over the top.

Value: Actually pretty good all things considered. And there is probably more breadth and diversity in the housing market here than in any other commuter accessible area.

There are other nice parts of the state too but they aren’t generally commutable. I knew a guy once who commuted to New York from Allentown Pennsylvania, so it can be done. But it’s not going to be a good fit for most people. With that said though, Morris and Hunterdon, and Eastern Mercer counties offer all the benefits of Somerset County with lower home prices and taxes. But 2 hours or more each way seems a bit much to me. Some people can make that work and if you can, include them in your search too.

These are some very broad brush strokes, and they leave out many important details. There are 'less nice' places in Somerset county and beautiful places in Essex. It's not all homogeneous (except for Middlesex county where decent blue collar homogeneity is sort of the point.) But on the whole, New Jersey is one of America’s best kept secrets. But for the government it would be a really terrific place. I'm sure if you give it a fair chance you'll come to see that the same as I have.

%%%%%% Out Of State Addendum %%%%%%%

For you folks reading this from out of state, there is a peculiarity of NJ public finance I need to explain. The public schools here are funded ONLY though property taxes. There are some complications to that, but for the most part it means that if your taxes are higher, your schools are at least better funded. In Bergen and Essex counties the institutionalized corruption means that more money equals more money wasted and the school performance won't improve at all. There are other complications too like Abbot districts where the taxes of a rich town are given to other impoverished towns for their school boards to steal.

If you want good public schools you should realistically be looking at Somerset, Eastern Morris, and Northern Monmouth counties, or the far western portion of Middlesex county.

- Time's Person Of The Year

2011-12-14T08:16:00.002-05:00

In order to lend legitimacy to their praise of the Occupy Wall Street movement, Time has chosen "The Protester" as the 2011 person of the year. I guess if you pretend the Arab spring will be a good thing for the region, then it offers enough support of the principle of public protest that pretending that it's still 1968 won't cost you any more of your waning credibility.

The Occupy Wall Street movement wasn't important. Children have been calling their parents unfair since time immemorial, and that's all that was. The only important aspect of it was when the liberal media lifted their kimono to show us that they don't give a $hit about telling the truth if there is a chance to advance the liberal mythology.

This is why I think we'll be well rid of the boomers. They're too sad and predictable to be funny.

- Newtzilla...

2011-12-14T07:15:00.002-05:00

Jonah Goldberg explains how virtually all my political instincts are dead wrong.
(Past experience would not contradict him.)

As an Aside, I think the name Obama does sound vaguely like one of those Japanese sci-fi monsters. Maybe a creature that's some sort of undersea leviathan with one part squid and another part solar panels and windmills or something with a hundred thousand unionized legs and an urge to crush anything productive.

- Corzine Knew About Customer Funds?!

2011-12-14T05:59:00.007-05:00

I'm bumping up against the line here, so let me be perfectly clear. All I'm doing in the title of this post is repeating what's in the attached video, I have no new allegations about Corzine's activities.

Now, let me say this. That sounds pretty damning, but having an unnamed MFGlobal employee allege that Corzine knew about something is a long LONG way from actually proving it. The employee could have easily been mistaken. Given the pandemonium that must have been the MFGlobal clearing department in the days up to the bankruptcy, that would be an easy mistake to make. We need a lot more info before we can say anything definitive about Corzine's future.

But Duffy (pictured) from the CME has said that the they reported this information to the justice department, and the last time I checked, Jon Corzine wasn't black. So if all this is true, it's not totally impossible that Eric Holder might actually end up prosecuting him.

But if it's true, then the odds of another Democrat governor going to jail has just been ticked up a notch. I wonder what the intrade odds say.

A lot of the committee meeting was spent asking farmers and investors what it would take to make them feel safe again. As a burned investor, I can offer a comment there.

What I would want is a clawback from the parent company of 100% of all customer funds; every last penny. We should not be included in the broader bankruptcy we should be paid first. I didn't have a bank account with them I had the equivalent of a safe deposit box. And the debtors of MF Global do not have the right to take my cash (even a portion of it) because MFGlobal screwed up.

Think of it this way. Suppose a man wanted to speculate in the debt market, so he went and took out a bunch of second mortgages to raise capital. When he lost money in the market and they went to repossess, it turned out that he didn't actually own all the collateral he put up. That does not give the right to his creditors to dispossess the people in those properties he never owned. But according to what I'm told, that is EXACTLY what the other MFGlobal creditors have alleged.

Now that could be mistaken too. We'll have to wait and see. But it's all been so badly done that I would want more than just the money back. I'd want a scalp. I'd want the person responsible to be made an example of, with a nice long federal prison stay and a variety of other sanctions. I don't care that he was a big fundraiser for the Democrat party. You want to make me feel better, make an example of the guy who broke the very first rule of all financial management. You never touch the customer's money without getting them to say it's OK first.

- Awesome NJ Map!!

2011-12-13T11:44:00.004-05:00

This actually isn't so bad. As many of you know, I live on the line between "McMansions!!" and "Banker's And Businessmen." Or maybe just a touch into the "Bankers And Businessmen" section.

But I really love the two exclamations after McMansions!!.

- NJ Firearms Laws

2011-12-13T08:10:00.003-05:00

A bunch of us went out Pheasant hunting this past Saturday. 10 people in total came out this year to a lovely preserve in central Pennsylvania. My elaborate and detailed plans were all FUBAR of course, but I think it worked out well enough. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.

We are forced to do all our hunting in Pennsylvania because NJ is so idiotic regarding gun laws and firearms ownership in general. the above video explains the details. I've posted it before, but since I'm on the subject, I thought I'd post it again.

- If You're a Fan Of Newt...

2011-12-13T07:03:00.005-05:00

Look, I get the Newt thing, I really do. I've said something like it myself. "If we're all F***'ed anyway why not have some fun?" And what would be more fun that letting Newt show Obama for the empty suit full of warmed over Carter Era socialism that he is?

But this story tells the tale where Newt is concerned.

He has gained ground by bashing the media; a group of people well known for their vindictiveness and willingness to misrepresent the truth to achieve THEIR political goals. And their goals are universally leftist.

Remember Clarence Thomas, and Robert Bork. The problem with Newt is that unlike Justice Thomas or Robert Bork, much of what they say will actually be true. But don't imagine for a minute that they will stop there. By the time they're done there will be photo-shopped photos of Newt cleaning his teeth with the sun bleached thigh bone of an African orphan, above the fold on the front page of the New York times.

There will be hundreds of 11 year old boys (and their deeply leftist parents) claiming that Newt sold them into sexual slavery. Numerous people will claim to have just escaped from his basement where he forced them to eat nothing but high fructose corn syrup deep fried in poly unsaturated fats, while reading the minutes of John Birch society meetings. Dozens of Klan hoods with his name stitched into them will magically materialize like blue dresses.

He will be charges with every moral, social, and political turpitude that the left can conceive of - far more than I can. Some will be simple and obvious slander, and some will be creative, subtle and effective. Like most devout leftists, they don't care about their credibility, and they don't have any shame. And they will use that shamelessness to pound Newt into political mush. They hate him unlike any congressional politician of the last two decades - maybe even more than George Bush.

If Newt is the Republican candidate, it will be another election where the interest of the American people will be pitted against the American media. I think the media will win that bout because they will be more unified, more persistent, and utterly shameless. They will let no lie go untold to prevent him from being elected. And although hey may well do the same thing to Romney or another candidate, they won't do it with the same vigor.

- A Must Read From Charles C. W. Cooke

2011-12-12T07:41:00.004-05:00

Proving brevity really is the soul of wit, Charles C. Cooke has written a brilliant little commentary on the fact that New York University has begun teaching not just one, but two courses in "Occupy Wall Street".

His sparkling little literary bauble begins thus:

With a dull inevitability and a scandalous absence of shame, New York University announced Thursday that next semester it will offer two for-credit classes on the subject of Occupy Wall Street.

The first, for undergraduates, will be entitled, “Why Occupy Wall Street? The History and Politics of Debt and Finance” and taught by Lisa Duggan, a professor of social and cultural analysis, whose long list of “teaching interests” is a veritable masterpiece of satire, including such gems as Gender and Cultural History, Social Theories of Citizenship, Critical Historiographies/Queer Historiographies, Constructions of Whiteness in the United States, Studying Sex, Studying Gender, and the indispensable Introduction to Lesbian/Gay Studies: Queer Critique.

Brilliant. Don't miss the rest at the link.

- More Baggage Than Louis Vuitton...

2011-12-11T20:26:00.009-05:00

From my perspective it looks like the conservative talking head-o-sphere is in total meltdown panic mode over the concept of Newt Gingrich being the standard bearer for the Republican party. These are people whose opinions I respect, and the list of anti Newt-onians includes several friends of mine. These are most certainly not the kind of people who are going to be upset because Newt is too conservative - quite the contrary. But they are still freaking out.

The fact of the matter is, they are afraid he can't win. They're afraid that when all of Newt's vaguely remembered skeletons are dragged out of the closet and back onto the front lawn by a giddy left wing media, Newt will end up losing to (arguably) the most anti-American chief executive ever elected. And although my personal view of Newt is that if he has learned from past mistakes I could probably get past it, it's getting too difficult to ignore all of whats being said, and all the places people are saying it. Where there is smoke there is usually fire, and I smell plenty of smoke.

Romney was my least favorite of the Republican nominees - as was McCain before him. But if he's the only way that we can get rid of his majesty, then I'm just about ready to sign on. I sure as hell don't want to go through what we went through last time. Newt's boldness has it's appeal, but sometimes the best thing to do is simply stand by and pick up the pieces after the train has wrecked on it's own.

Obama's record is disastrous and he can't hide from the American people like last time. Hi's condescension, his detachment, his profound lack of charm, his delusional economic worldview that is anti-"American interests" even if it may not fully be anti-American itself, and his class war on American business and American success, will leave him on the trash heap of history unless we on the right screw up badly. Newt might do that very thing, while I doubt that Romney will.

What's more - with his abysmal record, Obama has no choice but to run a campaign based entirely on character assassination. Romney's personal life is as lacking in controversy as any presidential candidate since Washington. that takes away Obama's only useful stick. With Romney, there will be no surprises.

Just to be perfectly clear, I'll say it again. I don't like Romney. He's too liberal for me in a dozen areas, and has no core convictions. I'm annoyed at how the Republicans seem to reliably choose the presidential candidate that I like the least. but with all that said, I'd happily cast my vote for Daffy Duck or Pee Wee Herman, if it were the only way I could ensure that America would finally be rid of Obama and his handlers from the labor unions.

I can't say I'm for Romney, but I've pretty much decided that I'm not for Newt.

- Gone Hunting (Be Back Soon)

2011-12-09T15:37:00.004-05:00

My mind has already shifted into weekend mode.

Be back Sunday.

- It's All Just Words... Empty Useless Words.

2011-12-09T09:53:00.004-05:00

I had a friend who once tried to set up a factoring firm. A factor is really only about one step above a loan shark. If you have a small business, the factor will buy your receivables at a discount, and then when the money is paid in, he keeps it all. This can be a big help to some small businesses who have trouble getting lines of credit for operating cash, but it comes at a steep price. The rates they charge are hefty.

Anyway, he was looking to set up this factoring firm. He was a fairly prominent Houston area lawyer and had lots of appropriate sized business contacts and an office staff that could manage the work. He was looking for a very small investment, and he was my friend. We had made money on other small deals together so when he asked me about this one, I was happy to sign on.

A few months went by and I asked him how it was going?

“Great” he said. “I’ve bought some receivables, we got lucky and they’ve all been paid, and the cash has been rolled over several times, with a double digit return each time. We’re well on our way to a multiple on the original capital”.

“Awesome” I said, “Can I see the numbers on it?”

“Sure … Stop by anytime and I’ll show you the paperwork.”

I saw him a week or so later and I had to admit, except for the fact that most of the business had been done with a just a couple of customers (which was really quite understandable given how young the business was) he was doing very well.

“I’ve got to tell ya buddy – this looks pretty good. How are you keeping the cash separate from your legal practice – is it just going in a separate account?”

“What do you mean?” he said

In my mind the red light went on even if the sirens didn’t go off.

Well you can’t just put the money from this firm in the account with the income from your legal practice – frankly I’m shocked you don’t already know this.” I told him.

“I’m not sure I understand.” He said.

“Well… what exactly are you doing with the money that is paid when you collect the receivable?”

“Oh we’re not doing the collection… the client does that.”

“What?!” I gasped (then the sirens began...)

“Well I gave the cash to XXX in exchange for their receivables, and when they told me that the money had been collected I marked it paid. But they had other receivable and still needed operating capital, so instead of them writing a check and then me turning right around and writing them another one, we just agreed to roll the money over right there.”

The long and short of all this story is that he had been had. There were no receivables. The businesses he had bought the receivable from had taken his check and tried to turn it into income in a couple of different ways – none of which worked out. In the meantime they were keeping the wolf away from the door by giving him more fictitious receivables, and as soon as I got on the phone and tried to verify even a little bit of the story, the whole thing fell apart.

It wasn’t much money and I wasn’t upset about the loss. He was a friend, and we had made money on other small deals. Net on net, he was still a winner for me by a wide margin. But he learned an important lesson that I thought was absolutely transparent already. It’s all about the money.

What this has to do with the world is this:

The Euro leaders have a deal that includes sanctions and other political devices for the member countries that don’t play by the rules. And in as much as they put any faith in them at all, they remind me very much of my friend.

It’s all about enforcement. It’s all about the money. Italians will be collecting Italian taxes and throwing tax cheats into Italian jails. (you know… theoretically.) There will be no ‘actual’ enforcement from Brussels - and that means that Brussels cannot actually make the rules. They will have no guns, no troops and no jails – just politicians. And whatever the words they agree to say or mean, until they change the fact that they have no specific enforcement capabilty, it won’t be worth the paper it’s printed on.

I wonder if my lawyer buddy would like to set up a deal setting “Treaty of Lisbon” toilet paper. It should do great so long as we can find an inexpensive way to translate the Ad copy.

- Simply Brilliant!

2011-12-09T08:16:00.005-05:00

I've been a fan of Mike Ramirez for years. He has the unique talent to reduce complex ideas to simple images that incorporate his clear view of the world with his biting sense of humor. That visual reductionist tendency literally puts truth to the phrase 'worth a thousand words'.

I've been thinking about trying to write something about how Obama's view of the world (what he 'thinks is happening') seems to be very different from what's actually happening. It's not just a product of his political isolation. Liberals much more than conservatives tend to ignore evidence that they don't like or cherry pick only the evidence they do. But even among leftists Obama seems to be truly unique in his detachment. 'Delusional' and 'Clueless' are the most commonly heard adjectives when discussing his policies in my world.

And now that the election cycle has begun, Obama seems to looking back on the decisions that have so greatly contributed to this shipwreck, and touting them with pride. I know several people who see that from him and wonder out loud if he isn't intentionally trying to destroy America. He's not of course. He's just exceptionally clueless and detached.

Mike Ramirez said all that with three words, and a drawing of what happens when a transmission blows itself apart. The man is simply brilliant. He's clearly one of the America's sharpest and most insightful political voices - but most people have never heard of him.

- Everyone Now See's Through It...

2011-12-09T06:04:00.004-05:00

Even Hitler knows about the future of the Euro.

Except for Hitler's abundance of charisma as a public figure, this is a surprisingly good fit if you ask me.

HT Zerohedge.

- I Meant Fish...

2011-12-08T14:49:00.001-05:00

- Chicks With Guns

2011-12-08T12:01:00.002-05:00

Sports Illustrated is doing a little preview of a book of Photography by Lindsay McCrum.

Worth a gander.

- Jim Kramer on Jon Corzine:

2011-12-08T09:13:00.002-05:00

"I've never seen anyone take the fifth, who wasn't guilty."

Just wearing my media hat - reporting the news. That's all for now.

- Corzine and MF Global

2011-12-07T11:56:00.002-05:00

I'm told via email that there are several readers out there who are wondering why I haven't had much to say on Jon Corzine and the MFGlobal bankruptcy.

Well there is an obvious reason for that - it's cost me some money. Not a ton. There won't be any lifestyle changes or anything. But there is enough of my money missing (at the moment anyway) to buy a very nice car. And since that's so, we've decided it's best for me to just shut up about the whole thing until we know exactly how it will all fall out.

I have plenty to say... oh... believe me... I have LOTS to say about it. But for once in my life I'm going to shut up when it's in my interest to - at least until the final numbers come in.

- A European Commerce Clause

2011-12-07T09:31:00.004-05:00

You remember a few weeks back I accused the Euro-crats of trying to find a way to snatch power from the voting public, and looking for a commerce clause that would empower them to change things as they saw fit without having to ask permission of the plebs? Well here it is. From the EUObserver care of Andrew Stuttaford at NRO under the title "The Voters Are the Enemy":

BRUSSELS – The European Union may be able to winkle out of the fraught process of a full treaty change via a clever legal trick, EU Council President Herman van Rompuy has suggested.

According to a two-page report from the Belgian EU chief submitted to national capitals on Tuesday (6 December), by amending a protocol attached to the Lisbon Treaty rather than changing the treaty itself, the lengthy and politically uncertain path of referendums and ratification by national parliaments can be avoided entirely.

Instead, so long as EU leaders unanimously back a redrafting of a single protocol, the changes can be achieved almost instantly, following consultations with the European Central Bank and the European Parliament, both of which would be formalities.

That's it. That's what they were after. A way to change things without asking the plebs. If this goes through, buy Silver.

(I wonder what Dan Hannan will have to say about this.)

- Obama's Shared Sacrifice

2011-12-07T07:33:00.002-05:00

This is the image that pops into my mind every time Obama starts talking about 'shared sacrifice'. The Aztecs thought of this as a shared sacrifice too. The crowd absolutely loved it. It made great political sense to do it and made their leaders very popular with the mob. But tell all that to the guy who is lying on the table.

Now imagine that the guy who is being held down on the table used to run a business that employed 200 people, is being held in place by union negotiators, and the guy holding the knife is actually Lisa Jackson, head of the EPA. Obama, of course, is wearing the crown. That's the full image in my mind.

It looks to me like Obama will never learn that we cannot sacrifice ourselves into a new prosperity. Government is an anchor, not an engine. It cannot lead us to a new future, only to a dark past. And all this 'sacrifice' business has been tried before. Obama is nothing more than Jimmy Carter without the charm.

Thank god we have an election coming.

- The Tragedy Of Hyper-Regulation

2011-12-06T21:39:00.003-05:00

My daughter, taking her cue from her greedy 1%’er parents, made her number 1 “to die for” item on he Christmas list this year… a youtube account. Actually, she already has a youtube account that she uses for commenting on her friends stuff. What she actually wanted for Christmas was permission to post videos.

She would never consider doing it without getting specific permission from us. To give you an idea of the kind of kid she is, even if she’s the only one in the living room, she’ll search our house high and low to ask someone if she has permission to change the TV channel. The only time I ever heard her swear was when she was 15 months old and copying her mother as the second plane hit the south tower. She covers her eyes whenever the Simpson’s or Futurama gets too risqué. She’s such a good kid – the kind of daughter everyone hopes for.Are we a little overprotective? Probably. But it hasn’t exactly done her a lot of damage so far.

We gave her permission on the Youtube thing of course, but not as a Christmas gift. She’s done really well in school and she’s been so responsible lately, that we felt she’s earned it. That’s the way the world is supposed to work; you don’t get the trust of your parents as a gift under the tree, you earn it. And we both felt that she has. But the hyper regulatory state required that we lay some ground rules first.

In our house we treat the internet like a loaded weapon where my daughter is concerned. She knows she’s not allowed to tell anyone her real name or where she lives. She knows that someone pretending to be an 11 year old girl may in fact be some sleazy guy who’s looking to harm her. We’ve been over the rules more times than she needs, and the truth is, she’s really great about it. But now we’ve also told her to be careful not to say anything mean about any of the kids at school, even if it’s true. Because if she did, some bureaucrat somewhere may decide she’s an online bully and throw her in jail.

(or at least try to...they’ll have to come to whatever country we’ve run to first, and when they do they’ll have to shoot their way in… but that’s really another topic.)

My daughter is a sweet, innocent, and surprisingly well adjusted kid who has never had so much as a cruel thought. She is one of those girls who everyone likes, and is at an age where she and her friends have not yet started to compete for boys. And yet if she says the wrong thing online, it’s not impossible that some idiot nanny state regulator will accuse of harming someone’s self esteem and brand her a criminal.

My daughter makes fun of the diversitoids in her school, and knows to give the teachers the answers they want to hear, even if the truth is different. She makes fun of global warming (and laughs at her friends who believe in it) calls recycling a waste of time, and thinks accusing someone of being a racist if they so much as ask for black coffee, is the funniest joke in the world. And now she also knows that she has to fear the state. She knows that the law in NJ has become an arbitrary and capricious thing that has as much to do with how other people feel as it does with facts.

I don’t have any emotional stake in Dodd-Frank, or Obamacare, or using the tax code as a weapon in class warfare. I don’t have hurt feelings about gutting the military or emboldening our enemies or letting Solyndra and GE loot the Treasury. I’m not a fan of any of that stuff because it’s contrary to our interest, but I don’t take any of it personally. To be perfectly frank, I’ve always known that if I wanted to succeed I had to do it over the objections of basically everyone and that the government and all their leftist enablers would stand in the way wherever they could. The deck has always been stacked against someone like me, so stacking it a little deeper won’t stop me now.

But when it comes to the fact that my daughter has to start watching her back at age 11 for fear of breaking some idiotic law designed to protect some kid’s self esteem, I really do get upset about it. How perverse and twisted our hyper-regulatory world has become when a sweet kid like my daughter should have to be burdened by something like that. How tragic it is to watch a once great nation rot from the inside out – one idiotic little leftist rule change at a time.

- Darwin Joins Occupy Wall Street

2011-12-05T17:25:00.003-05:00

The OWS hunger strike begins.

I'd like to salute the occupy crowd for taking this important final step toward improving the American gene pool. As an American, I can only hope that these people manage to maintain the courage of their convictions right to the end. In fact, I think we should all do our part by refusing to give them any food whatsoever - even if they weaken and ask for some. It's the very least we can do to support their brave and determined movement.

Jeez... what idiots. If you couldn't tell... I'm really pulling for Darwin on this one. Is there any way we can get their union brethren to join in again?

- No Free Lunch

2011-12-05T16:17:00.002-05:00

Dr. Friedman debunking the myth of the free lunch.

Someone posted a piece of that speech he gave at Cornell in 1978 in the corner, where the hippie socialist kids got up and tried to explain to him how wrong he was everything. He very politely made minced meat of them of course. but it got me looking around to see if anything new was posted on youtube and I found this.

I have to admit, I found the youtube comments for this clip really disturbing. I hope it's just high school kids or crazy OWS people who don't know any better. I'd hate to think that they represents any sort of reasonable sample of Americans. If so, then we should all start lobbying to eliminate teacher's unions immediately, because they have raised an illiterate generation - utterly incapable of rational thought.

One comment poster went out of his way to try to associate Dr. Friedman with Augusto Pinochet - the Chilean strongman who took power in a military coup during the 70's. Marxists and socialists don't have any problem with military coups per se, so long as it's their military coup. Che Guevara killed plenty of people and they put him on a T-shirt, so we know that's no big deal to them. The thing that bothers them is that Pinochet didn't embrace their economic ideas and as a result, Chile has had a period of relative stability and growth, totally unprecedented in the region.

It's still Latin America so they'll screw it up eventually. It's really only a matter of time. But while the socialist nations in the region declare bankruptcy, and wash back and forth from hyperinflation to deflationary crisis, the Chilean model is continuing to get deeply under socialists skin by succeeding at creating relative prosperity where they've always failed.

The funny thing is, except for the fact that the staff at Chile's Catholic university all learned economics at the university of Chicago, Dr. Friedman didn't have anything specifically to do with Chile or Pinochet. But you know socialists - they don't care about facts. The people leaving youtube comments are no different.

Shame that. They cheat themselves of some brilliant ideas.

- The Newt, and The Chameleon

2011-12-04T17:41:00.008-05:00

Ugh... Really?! This is the best we could do? Mitt Romney, who for all his personally admirable qualities can't manage to answer any policy question the same way twice in a row, and Newt Gingrich who tows behind him a wagon train of personal wreckage wider and longer than the muddy Mississippi?

Well one thing is absolutely certain... no one will ever say that these guys don't want it enough. They want it. They want nothing else. It's all they want. The idea consumes them. They would sacrifice anything that they absolutely have to, in order to get this job. That's the real reason these guys probably shouldn't get it. No one who craves power like that should ever be allowed to have it. God knows what they might do with it. For god's sake, that how Obama see's the job.

Remember that WF Buckley quote about preferring to be ruled by the first 500 names in the Boston phonebook than the staff at Harvard University? Well you could walk into the Heritage foundation, Cato Institute, or even the NRA and grab the first guy you see - an intern - whoever, and his character is probably better suited to the job of president than either of these guys.

They are so hungry for this office, they are almost as bad as Democrats.

I say 'almost' of course because either of them and virtually anyone else for that matter, would be better than Obama. Anything would be better that 4 more years of coping with Democrat experiments from the teacher's lounge and more 'change', be it for better or for worse. And to be honest they'd both be better than John McCain.

But good god, are we this stupid? Is this really all we can put up? These walking examples of political rapaciousness? How tragic that a great nation is reduced to a choice between Obama, and one of these two.

Tell me the truth - is it really, REALLY too late to draft Paul Ryan?

Make me choose today and I would lean toward Newt, simply because it would be so much fun watching him bitch slap Obama in a debate. Obama is such a girl, that Newt may make him cry. And that's something I would be willing to pay money to see. Thanks to gerrymandering, our political system is broken enough so that we probably can't pull back from the brink at this point anyway - so I guess it's six, twice three; so we might as well enjoy ourselves.

But god - I'm really horrified that anyone worth a damn seems to have fled from this contest and left only these two reptiles... the Chameleon, and the Newt. How tragic and deeply disappointing it all is.

- Greed 2.0

2011-12-03T14:14:00.002-05:00

I don't have any advertising on this blog, but to be honest, that's really for my sake and not yours. If I had advertising then I'd feel compelled to produce more content and promote it etc. It would at that point become a business. And if it's going to be a business, you can be damned sure I'd make it a successful one.

But instead it's a hobby or a pass-time. It's a sort literary temper tantrum by a guy who's always had far more courage than sense, and has often lacked the judgment to keep his yap shut when it's been in his interest to. So instead, what my employers, and clients, and elected representatives (not to mention local policemen, building inspectors, civil court judges etc.) are all spared, you must endure.

That means I only put new content up when I feel like it (which is often - as it turns out). But I've rationalized this by convincing myself that it helps to keep the writing more personal. And while I wouldn't go so far as to say that makes it 'good', I do think it makes it slightly 'better', so we're all a little better off for it. (Or maybe not... I don't know... but I do KNOW that I'm definitely better off for it, and since this isn't a business... that's enough for me.)

Anyway, I clearly don't write for a living, but some of my friends do. And since they do, I thought I'd drop a one time plug to promote a specific story.

The cover story for the edition of NationalReview pictured above, is a story by Kevin Williamson about how Washington and Wall Street working together, can sometimes be bent and twisted to make 'the right' people rich. I've gotten just a little advanced knowledge on the piece and it's well worth reading. Honestly, everything Kevin writes is worth reading, but this piece is particularly so. And I say that from the perspective of a guy who does know a bit about how Wall Street works.

So if you aren't already a NRDT (NationalReview Dead Tree) reader, you should run right to their website and subscribe. And... since that probably won't be fast enough to get you this issue, you should also stop at the newsstand in your commuter station of choice and buy yourself a copy.

I don't mention stuff like this often so please take my word for it, this one is worth going to the trouble. It will be worth your while.

- The Wolf Is Always At The Door

2011-12-02T08:14:00.003-05:00

The thing about incrementalism, which progressives rely on to slowly erode the rights of citizens and increase the power of those running the government, is that the wolf is always at the door. Taxes always go up, individual freedom is always diminished, and the rights of citizens are never expanded.

There is only one political organization on the right that seems to be fully aware of that , and it's the NRA. This makes liberals very angry. They don't like it when they sneak around to the back of the house looking for a window to slip in through, only to find an organization standing vigilant, ready to push back.

Timothy Egan (from the NYTimes) is hoping a little sneering will shame the NRA into not being quite so determined about things.

Not a chance. That's not how the NRA works. They always think the wolf is at the door, and they have been right too many times to unlearn that lesson, simply because the wolf would like them to.

- Don't Shoot The Dog!

2011-12-01T12:26:00.003-05:00

... and naturally vice versa.

- Also Not An Imbecile....

2011-12-01T06:07:00.003-05:00

Watch Does U.S. Economic Inequality Have a Good Side? on PBS. See more from PBS NEWSHOUR.

He may lack Dr. Friedman's elven charm, but he makes good sense. One reliable tip-off that someone doesn't know (or isn't interested in) how things work is they talk about aggregates. Households don't tell you the story nearly as clearly as individual people for instance.

Thanks to Mark for dropping this into the comment section.

- Wise Words...

2011-11-30T15:23:00.004-05:00

A coworker and I have been going back and forth all day about the Fed's new dollar swaps rate reduction. The long and short of it all is that it doesn't bode well for the future of the Euro (which is toast) and no, that sound you hear is not thunder. I don't expect it to last to 2012, and it might not make it to the weekend.

But at one point he found a "Center For Economic and Policy Research" study that was demanding (as is so common with liberals) that the Fed go out immediately and start buying Italian and Greek debt directly in order to 'save the Euro'. I told him that even if it were legal and a good idea (I don't think it's either... and for the record neither does he) in this political environment it would be impossible because if he tried, someone would end up taking a shot at him. "That threat of violence is a powerful dis-incentive." I said.

He looked at me, quite seriously and said "Learn from my mistakes. Never be in a position to lose money because of something that you think Ben Bernanke will never do."

- Run From The Union Label Part: 8,756,565,934

2011-11-30T11:08:00.005-05:00

Unions have walked out of their jobs at Heathrow airport in order to protest.... honestly... who cares what they were protesting. It's Britain. It's always the same greedy/lazy leftist dribble anyway, and we have our own unions to worry abut.

But I think it's hysterical that the effect of their walkout has been that wait times at the airport have IMPROVED!

Now if only we could get NJ's civil servants to do the same.

- The Greatest Invention In the History Of The Web!!!

2011-11-29T16:14:00.004-05:00

You know those incredibly annoying flash movies that seize control of your browser every time you accidentally drag your mouse over the Ad? Well someone has invented a tool to disable them.

Take that "Cosmopolitan Hotel in Vegas"!

- Dan Hannan Is Not An Imbecile

2011-11-29T15:44:00.001-05:00

And here he is proving it:

10 things Evil Capitalists Really Believe.

- Lets See Tom Friedman Cheer This Move....

2011-11-29T15:11:00.003-05:00

NYTimes writer Tom Friedman, is an imbecile. But he's an imbecile who simply loves the totalitarian Chinese state for it's 'practicality'. Every time you turn around he's talking about how wonderful it would be if we could simply shut down our archaic and tradition based institutions like the separation of powers and voting, so that we could get some of that great top down thinking that the Chinese are so good at.

Well here's a little change the Chinese have made. Lets see him cheer this one:

A little noticed Associated Press news story last week reported that China now plans to phase out college majors that consistently produce unemployable graduates. Any program in which 60% of the graduates failed to find work for two consecutive years would face funding reductions until supply was brought back into balance with demand.

More at the link.

- The Corrupt Local Political Machine

2011-11-29T10:49:00.002-05:00

At a glance this seems like silly story, but there may be something more to it. The chronological events go this way:

The Tea Part held a rally in a government owned park in Richmond Va. Called Kanawha Plaza. They paid all of their own costs for public services provided to this rally which amounted to about $8,500 in police, portable toilets, park fees and permits. No big deal. Tea Party people pay their own way. Certainly no story here so far.

Time rolls along, and the local ‘occupy’ people show up and begin squatting in that same public park. Democrat Mayor Dwight Jones not only allows them to break the law by remaining in the public space, but also provides them with free police, portable toilets, trash pickup (the Tea Party famously leaves no trash behind so that’s unnecessary in their case) and waives their park fees and permits. The city marked the costs for the squatters as about $7,000.

This is obviously providing a meaningfully preferential treatment for one political group over another. When asked about it, Richmond City councilman Bruce W. Tyler was quoted as saying: ““I guess we’ll be writing a check to the Tea Party people. You can’t treat one group different from the other. It’s unfair.” So the Tea Party submitted a bill to the city for its costs – you know, just to make things ‘fair’.

Mayor Jones decides that not only ducks the issue, but immediately responds by ordering an audit of the Tea Party for non-payment of their local taxes. The whole thing is here.

There are no huge numbers involved so this may not seem like a big deal, but it’s an example of how the process of self-rule has been degraded. when one group is treated better than others, things are unjust and the rule of law has become the rule of "Whatever I say it is boy!"

In NJ we deal with this all the time. Local government in NJ is all about being able to extract a favor and get special treatment from a friend, or trying to avoid being on someone’s list and getting unjust penalties. Justice isn't even a secondary concern - it's simply not a part of the equation. And no one can mess with you and your home, and your life, like a local government official.

When the end comes, the first place I’ll be trying to point the mob with their torches and pitchforks is toward my local building permit department.

- 10 Great Milton Friedman Quotes

2011-11-29T08:11:00.002-05:00

From John Hawkings at Townhall.com

(Another example of the full employment fallacy is this. If you want 0% unemployment it's a simple thing, simply make the use of a computer punishable by 15 years in prison. Tough a keyboard or a touch screen - go to jail. Once the riots are put down the unemployment rate will be zero.)

- Euro Bailout: Bailing Water From A Burning Boat...

2011-11-28T15:52:00.004-05:00

OK... here is the 'funding plan' from the last post that woke me with such a great laugh this morning. The basic idea is that the IMF (using mostly US taxpayer money) will 'bail out' Spain and Italy, circumventing those nefarious market forces that are attempting to value those bonds objectively.

But it says nothing of the perverse incentives that would be put in place by the 'bail-out'. And that means that no matter how you structure this, it will be the good actors paying for the bad, so the bad actors will have absolutely no interest in modifying their behavior to prevent the next round of fiscal profligacy and corresponding bailouts.

To bail out the euro countries is literally to bail the water from the bottom of a burning boat. Bail as fast as you like - you won't save it. You wont even address the real problem... which is the tendency of social welfare states to spend money they don't now, nor will ever have.

And for the record, if you think this news was what was driving the US equity markets today, I have 30 Trillion dollars worth of European sovereign debt I'd like to sell you. Either that...or a lovely bridge... your choice. (But if you buy both... you get free egg roll.)

- A Rumor Of A Funding Plan...

2011-11-28T06:03:00.002-05:00

Thanks to the pretty Indian girl from CNBC for giving me a good hearty belly laugh to wake up to this morning. She said that today's soaring market is as a result of 'A rumor of a funding plan" for Europe and the troubled Euro members. I'm sure she's right. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the mean reverting tendency of non-linear dynamic systems otherwise known in industry circles as 'the dead cat bounce".

Let me explain the hard reality of public sector finance in the sunset age of the social welfare state:

If you can tax it, it's so narrow that it isn't enough to fix anything. If it's enough to fix anything, it's so broad and far reaching that you can't tax it.

The hard fact is that the future of this debt is known. Either the countries involved steal it from savers by printing vast amounts of currency, or they steal it from debt holders by defaulting. There is no financial Rube Goldberg device with a bunch of letters before it's name that get's you there.

And to be fair, Worldwide Exchange is by far the best financial show that CNBC airs. The pretty Indian girl was just saying what was on the teleprompter.