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US economy: the policy solution series

For two or three years now, people have been after me to provide a series of recommendations for how the USA can get out of its negative economic trajectory and return to genuine economic growth. I resisted this idea because I see absolutely no chance whatsoever that anyone who matters is going to listen to me or that creating a list of policy measures will serve to do anything except inspire a copious amount of criticism from those who don’t understand the issues at hand.

However, after three years of seeing the financial and political powers-that-be repeatedly make the same mistakes again and again, I figure that it can’t hurt to suggest a series of political policies that would not necessarily fix anything in the short term, but would permit the USA to survive the global economic depression intact as a functioning political and economic entity… not that this is necessarily desirable. Just to be clear, I have zero expectations of anyone of any significance paying attention to these policy prescriptions and I remain entirely confident that the politicians and bankers will continue to make things worse and the USA will cease to exist in its present form by 2033.

So, over the next few days I will begin by posting my diagnosis of the more problematic aspects of the situation, followed by my recommendations for addressing those problems.

What could go wrong?

Some scientists really seem quixotically determined to convince the masses that it is in the best interests of humanity to turn scientist-hunting into a sport:

The bacterium that causes plague, Yersinia pestis, is still highly virulent today but has somewhat different symptoms, leading some historians to doubt that it was the agent of the Black Death.

Those doubts were laid to rest last year by detection of the bacterium’s DNA in plague victims. With the full genome now in hand, the researchers hope to recreate the microbe itself so as to understand what made the Black Death outbreak so deadly.

Full credit to science for nearly eliminating smallpox and polio. And I’m sure we all support the efforts to rid the world of cancer. But recreating the Black Death virus seems like an epically stupid idea. Of course, a member of the team says “the ancient plague would presumably be susceptible to antibiotics”. Presumably. That’s confidence-inspiring. The universities of the West should really consider making a semester in basic risk/benefit analysis a mandatory requirement for any science major.

Besides, if scientists are going to recreate something, i think they should bring back the dire wolf and the sabertooth tiger. Those would be cool and neither used to kill millions of people at a time.

The Republican debate

Stephen Green drunkblogs the Republican presidential debate, which is probably the only reason he managed to survive it:

5:24PM Cain can’t wait to “throw out the current tax code.” I’m with him on that, but the idea of giving the Feds a sales tax without taking away the income tax strikes me as dangerously naive thinking.

5:25PM Really, seriously, naive. Like, worse than my very first last call.

5:25PM To Romney: Europe is going to bring us down, huh?

5:26PM Romney: I’m not going to answer this question because it’s TOTALLY HYPOTHETICAL that Europe’s economy could effect ours.

Punter.

5:26PM Romney: “I’m not going to call up Tim Geithner and ask him how the economy works.”

5:27PM Romney is defending TARP. Meh, he wasn’t exactly counting on the Tea Party vote.

5:28PM Is Romney’s complaint with the GM bailout that the funds came from TARP instead of from some other place, or do I need to drink less — or more?

5:30PM Friedman totally stole that joke from Dorothy Parker, who said that if all the girls attending the Yale prom were laid end to end, she wouldn’t be at all surprised.

5:30PM To Cain: Is Romney right?

5:30PM Cain: Yes. TARP was a good idea, badly implemented. You listening, Tea Party?

Hey, you can’t say I didn’t warn you. Anyhow, this was my favorite part:

5:32PM To Paul: Would you get the government out of housing, or are you a dirty hypocrite?

5:32PM Paul: I would dig Keynes out of the grave just to hit him with the shovel.

It’s also worth noting that Paul went after Cain on his opposition to auditing the Federal Reserve. That is true greatness. America simply isn’t worthy of the man.

In the national interest

How does this sort of thing benefit the USA in any way? Why is this woman, much less her family, permitted to enter the US at all?

Ms Valles, 21, fled Mexico in fear of her life, hustling her parents, sisters, husband and one-year-old son into a 4 x 4 vehicle and hurtling across the border to seek asylum in the United States. They left just in time. That night a squad of hit men arrived at their small bungalow and ransacked the rooms.

“I would like to go back home,” she said. “But if I hadn’t left my country I wouldn’t be alive now.”

In spite of her diminutive size and sweet, girlish manner, Ms Valles had some powerful and vicious enemies. The criminology graduate was appointed chief of police in the small town of Praxedis G Guerrero, 50 miles east of Ciudad Juarez and a few miles from the US border.

In other words, because one liberal female idiot is incredibly stupid, the USA is expected to financially support an entire family of Mexicans dumb enough to think that the drug cartels were going to be impressed by a young criminology graduate riding herd on them. How does this make any sense at all?

And how long will it be before the cartels simply start striking across the border?

On the debate

I am afraid you will all have to wait a few more days for Round Four. I was traveling last week and got absolutely no writing of any kind done.

Abandoning the treacherous Tories

A former Conservative Party treasurer switches to UKIP:

Alexander Hesketh’s life has been synonymous with the Tory Party. He first canvassed for it at the 1959 election, aged nine. He was a minister in several departments under Mrs Thatcher, and John Major’s chief whip in the House of Lords for three years. He later became Conservative Treasurer.

So to announce that he is to join UKIP as a high-profile campaigner and fund-raiser is no ordinary political defection.

‘I’ve left for a number of reasons,’ he tells me in his West London home. A key factor is his strong belief that Europe has betrayed this country’s working people.

There is absolutely no excuse for the Tories betrayal of the British people. It is quite literal treachery.

Mailvox: they have eyes

But they really don’t want to see. LH writes about a response to yesterday’s column:

I forwarded your most recent article to a friend of mine who happens to be a supporter of Herman Cain. Rather than address issues listed in your article, his response went ad hominem.

That WND commentator…. likes to hear himself talk… what exactly did he say? I quit reading him long ago… he laid out a pretty good outline with no substantiation. He’s a Libertarian AND a Southern Baptist who claims Italian residency… a pot-smoking, tax-evading foreigner who plays church??? LOL… (I deduced that from his bio) 🙂

I do agree Cain needs to come more clearly on his involvement with the Fed… and I question his objection to a full audit, but he did not say he was against an audit… only that a “full” audit would be cost prohibitive and is not necessary… and I can agreee with that… whenever the government goes on a witch hunt, someone ends up being a scapegoat and it is not usually the one whose head should be offed. By setting parameters to the audit, the field of potential scapegoats is narrowed… I believe that is what he was alluding to…

I totally agree with Cain on whose fault it is if companies succedd or fail… in the context of “it’s not government’s place to decide…” I think the commentator got that one wrong in the end analysis.

keep watching…. The more popular Cain becomes, the more you’ll hear about his faults… Did we hear much of him before the Florida Straw Pole?. Funny how they ignore Santorum. I see a pattern.

The pattern is that if you can’t even win a Senate race, most people will conclude that your national appeal isn’t likely to be significant. There’s nothing funny about it. But it is funny how the Cain supporter cannot see that Cain is contradicting himself by claiming it’s not the government’s job to decide who wins and who loses while he is defending Wall Street and the banking bailouts.

By the way, here’s the final Facebook score from yesterday’s WND columns:

Day on Cain: 40 Likes
Cain on Cain: 823 Likes

Remember this the next time you are wondering how Wall Street and the big banks managed to get bailed out yet again by Republicans in the future. The lesson, as always, MPAI.

Notes on the European economy

Three observations from conversations I had over the last few days.

Spain: The sort of clean-cut pretty college-age girls who a few years ago would be seen working at Estee Lauder counters, at high-end restaurants, and as models or shot girls can now be seen working the suburban streets as prostitutes during the day. According to my Spanish taxi driver, the basic hourly rates haven’t changed, but both the quality and the quantity of the labor available has significantly increased. This suggests that the rates for the previous supply of street hookers have dropped dramatically.

Switzerland: In speaking to a Swiss friend, I learned that car examinations, which are required every two years for older cars, now have a waiting list of up to eighteen months. This waiting list was nonexistent two years ago. The delay indicates that increasing numbers of Swiss are keeping their old cars rather than turning them in as soon as the lease is expired, as had been their previous custom.

Germany: A police acquaintance from the gym returned from Oktoberfest in Stuttgart last week. After hastening to assure me that his interest in such matters was purely professional, he told me that he was astonished by the youth, beauty, and low rates of the nightclub girls, who apparently now go for 30 Euros, down from 70 Euros for less attractive women two years ago.

Lest the obvious escape one, these are all very bad economic signals. In a growing economy, the street whores are toothless old crack addicts working the bus stops at night and the few pretty young girls who aren’t working in some easy retail job are very expensive escorts.

WND column

The Magic Negro, Part II: Republican edition

It is completely understandable why Republicans are increasingly enthusiastic about Herman Cain. First and foremost, he isn’t Mitt Romney. The Republican Party elite has been trying to force the mercurial Mormon down the throats of the party’s grass roots for two election cycles, but despite his elegant coiffure and vast money-raising capacity, the average Republican voter wants nothing to do with the man. They quite rightly regard him as less trustworthy and more slippery than Bill Clinton.

UPDATE: I note that Cain’s comments, as highlighted on the Drudge Report, are particularly ironic in light of the government bailouts of Wall Street and General Motors.

Republican presidential contender Herman Cain amplified his criticism Sunday of the growing Occupy Wall Street movement, calling the protesters “jealous’ Americans who “play the victim card” and want to “take somebody else’s” Cadillac.