Author: VD

World Cup Day 2

Korea dominated Greece. Just dominated them. They looked fast, sharp, and capable of pestering the elite teams. I can’t see them winning the group but they should go through easily.

Argentina toyed with Nigeria. It wasn’t anywhere nearly as close as the 1-0 score indicated. Messi was absolutely awful and should have had at least two goals. He was shooting so badly that I kept thinking he was a midfielder.

England was better than the USA throughout, but the USA should have actually won it. The referee showed himself to be England’s 12th man when Jamie Carragher wasn’t given a red card after pulling down the US player by his neck on a through ball at the end of the game. Both teams should go through without any trouble. The US midfield played too defensively for my liking, but the defense was sturdy and did a great job of controlling both Heskey and Rooney.

I got your “recovery” right here

The Federal Reserve Z1 report came out on Friday and the only surprise was that the decline in Household debt has not kept pace with the decline in Financial debt.  However, the pattern to which I alerted you in RGD has continued; Federal debt has grown an astounding 48% since Q2 2008 while overall debt has fallen by 0.6%.  Since G (government spending) is a primary component of GDP, this proves that there is no private economic growth, there is only a massive amount of government borrowing and spending being used to temporarily prop up the economy. 

Note to inflationistas.  Remember that the formal M2 money supply is only $8 trillion, so the central bank manages about 13% of the debt+M2 money supply in the US debt-money system.  Even with the refusal to recognize tens of thousands of home mortgage defaults, (which is why household sector debt hasn’t declined as much as one would expect), private sector debt has fallen $2.5 trillion.  As Robert Prechter has explained, debt is deflating faster than the central bank and federal government can inflate.  This is exactly the process described in RGD as the Great Depression 2.0 scenario.

A few notes. First, notice that the 2010 Q1 decline in financial sector debt is HUGE. At -4.4%, it’s more than TWICE the -2.15% average quarterly decline since the sector debt growth turned negative in Q1 2009. Second, this is even bigger when you realize that 2%+ quarterly debt growth was normal for decades. Second, the rate of federal debt expansion is slowing. It was only 6% in the previous quarter, down from nearly 10% the second half of 2008. As I have repeatedly written, the federal strategy of replacing private debt with public can only work in the very short term; 6% of $8 trillion is less than 4% of $15 trillion. Third, the WSJ reported last week that the relatively small 1.75% cumulative decline in household debt is ENTIRELY the result of debt defaults, not reductions in the level of debt. So, we can expect the -0.44% average quarterly decline in that sector to shrink faster in the coming quarters. Fourth, the inability of state and local governments to even maintain their debt levels at their 2% pre-2008 norm is what prompted Obama’s call to provide $50 billion to them today. So, federal debt isn’t merely supposed to cover the decline in financial and household sector debt, but now has to make up for the lack of growth in state and local government debt too.

Needless to say, it simply is not going to work. My guess is that the public perception of the Great Depression 2.0 will take effect when household sector debt declines by more than 2% per quarter. RGD readers will remember that I expect this to take place in Q4 2010.

World Cup Day 1

I thought South Africa was a little better than I expected them to be and Mexico was downright lazy. Neither team has a striker capable of finishing; Mexico in particular was plagued by the dread Midfielder’s Disease. There must have been five or six occasions when a Mexican player passed up the opportunity to make a shot in search of the perfect opening, the defense closed, and the ball was lost without ever a shot being fired. A good result for South Africa and a poor one for Mexico. Based on the talent difference and Mexican control of the ball, it should have been 2-0 or 3-1.

Although Nicola Anelka had one great season for Arsenal about 12 years ago, I have long considered him to be a downright negative. France would have been better playing with 10 players than starting him up front. I’ve never seen a player at the International level ignore more passing opportunities in favor of trying to beat three defenders at once. He’s a physical specimen, fast and strong, and still less than worthless on the pitch. Once the ball went to Anelka, it was as good as turned over to Uruguay. Given the red card, it was a great result for Uruguay and disastrous for France. Even England after Rooney’s injury last time around looked more capable of scoring than this French team.

A perfect summary

It isn’t often that I find myself wishing I’d written something someone else wrote, but this comment by Alexa Menos is the most flawless description and indictment of current female confusion that I have ever read. And I quote:

“Why don’t men in a matriarchal, polyamorous society behave as if they’re living in a patriarchal, monogamous society?”

If you change the rules of the game, don’t be surprised when the players begin to play it differently than before.

NB: Cocomment appears to be down so I’ve turned on Blogger comments.

I am agog

Frankly, I’d have been less shocked if a picture of Nate wearing leather chaps commando in the Folsom Street parade appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle.

A while ago on Facebook, regular reader and contributor Nathan Cherolis posed an interesting question for downtime in the NFL with the World Cup approaching. It went something like this: If you could take one guy from each AFC South roster to train intensively for one year to be a World Cup goalkeeper, who would it be?

Welcome to the Euro side, Nate. We’ll have you drinking Blue Hawaiians in no time.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Teachers aren’t just stupid, they’re increasingly dishonest to boot:

Of all the forms of academic cheating, none may be as startling as educators tampering with children’s standardized tests. But investigations in Georgia, Indiana, Massachusetts, Nevada, Virginia and elsewhere this year have pointed to cheating by educators.

Needless to say, this behavior was not only entirely predictable, it was predicted by many on both sides of the test standards issue. Personally, I don’t care either way. As far as I’m concerned, attempting to fine-tune mass public education through technical measures falls well into the lipstick-on-a-pig category.

The only interesting thing is how easily corruptible the great influencers of tomorrow’s leaders have turned out to be. At least the great destroyers of the global economy were playing for personal millions. These petty thieves were willing to sell out their charges for less than $3,000!

World Cup 2010

The quadrennial carnival starts tomorrow and it promises more excitement off the pitch than on it. Here are my predictions:

1) The USA upsets England and wins Group C.
2) The number of World Cup-related deaths in South Africa exceeds the number of goals scored.
3) South Africa will not get past the group stage.
4) Australia will finish last in Group D after being upset by Ghana.
5) The Italians will argue vociferously over which strikers should be starting and who was substituted too soon/late. Before and after every game.
6) Holland will finally claim the Cup.

There is no birth certificate

Well, if nothing else, the election clerk’s testimony would certainly explain Obama’s difficulty in producing one.

A college instructor who worked as a senior elections clerk for the city and county of Honolulu in 2008 is making the stunning claim Barack Obama was definitely not born in Hawaii as the White House maintains, and that a long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate for Obama does not even exist in the Aloha State.

“There is no birth certificate,” said Tim Adams, a graduate assistant who teaches English at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Ky. “It’s like an open secret. There isn’t one. Everyone in the government there knows this.”

At the time, there were conflicting reports that Obama had been born at the Queen’s Medical Center in Honolulu, as well as the Kapi’olani Medical Center for Women and Children across town. So Adams says his office checked with both facilities.

“They told us, ‘We don’t have a birth certificate for him,'” he said. “They told my supervisor, either by phone or by e-mail, neither one has a document that a doctor signed off on saying they were present at this man’s birth.”

I don’t think this will faze the remaining Obama die-hards at all. They’ll just cite it as proof of his birth in a manger. Of a virgin.

Mailvox: Game recommendations

DP requests advice:

Hello Vox, greatly enjoy your blog and articles. In ref. to your post on gaming, the article got me thinking that perhaps from a ‘reaction time’ and ‘mental sharpness’ standpoint, I should invest in something for my aging mind too.

So I am looking for some guidance (without having to ask the local teenagers) on platform and game choices. I am a 47 yr old guy with young kids (boy 8, girl 10) and obviously grew up with Space Invaders, and never really touch them since. The kids have a DS each, but no big game setup (xBox, etc.).

I have deliberately not bought anything to avoid having slugs for children, but now starting to think there may be some advantages to a controlled, limited use (and maybe some fun family time to boot).

So, questions:

1. Platform suggestion? (don’t really have the money to buy new, but perhaps last year’s model from the local pawn shop?)
2. Games? (We are attempting to bring our children up in a Christian household, so the beloved wife will not support a blood fest, but perhaps there are combat or ‘pilot’ type games that help with mental sharpness/reflexes, but keep the gore down?)
3. Any other suggestions or comments.

1. PlayStation 2. The games aren’t very different than the so-called nexgen ones, and in fact, some new games are still being released for it. You can buy one used for around $50 and excellent games for as little as $5. And, of course, download D-Fend Reloaded for playing great old DOS game like Wing Commander and TIE Fighter.

2. Madden 2008 for PS/2 is still fun and I prefer it to the newer X360 versions. NCAA Football is good too, but I don’t know what year is best since I haven’t played NTSC games in years. Some of the classic Arcade compilations are really good. Downloading MAME and classics like Ms Pac-man, Donkey Kong, and Sprint 2 is free and the games can be played on any system bought within the last five or six years.

3. Check out the emu scene and don’t be afraid to dig deep. There are tons of great games that no one plays anymore but are still great fun. Games like Pilot Wings 64 or Castle Wolfenstein aren’t any less fun even if they are technologically outmoded.

A degree in unicorn riding

Maureen Dowd argues for more female fantasy in education:

Time for a curriculum overhaul. Young men everywhere must be taught, beyond platitudes, that young women are not prey.

Regardless of whether you are a materialist or a dualist, whether you believe Man is driven by his evolved genes or his fallen nature, you should be able to recognize the abject stupidity of Dowd’s plaintive assertion. Young women ARE the prey of young men… in fact they are their primary prey. Dowd might as reasonably call for teaching cats everywhere that birds are not prey.

And the sooner that a young woman learns that she is prey, the better her chances become of avoiding an undesirable fate.