My grandfather was, in the words of one of the former Marine Corps Commandants, a Marine’s Marine. There’s even an Advanced Squad Leader counter commemorating him in Blood Reef: Tarawa. (It’s only an 8-0, but he was a definite 9-1 in real life.) I’ve never known a man who smiled more easily or more often, and some of the most delightful moments of my life were spent at his home, in his company.
With the exception of his wife, his family, and his God, there was nothing that my grandfather loved more than the Corps, especially his 2nd Marine Division.
So, Happy Birthday, USMC. And may you show yourself faithful and true, even when all others prove false.
The Federal Reserve is refusing to identify the recipients of almost $2 trillion of emergency loans from American taxpayers or the troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral. Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in September they would comply with congressional demands for transparency in a $700 billion bailout of the banking system. Two months later, as the Fed lends far more than that in separate rescue programs that didn’t require approval by Congress, Americans have no idea where their money is going or what securities the banks are pledging in return.
Keep in mind the amount of data the average American citizen has to turn over just to buy a $50 cell phone or open a bank account. You can’t even withdraw $5,000 of your own money from your savings account without a report being filled out and sent to the FBI, but the Federal Reserve is permitted to not report where $2,000,000,000 is going.
If Obama makes Summers his second pick, after Rahm Emmanuel, that’s basically a message that the neos (neoliberals and neocons) are in the house and they ain’t going anywhere.
One of the main areas that Obama’s supporters are going to get the Bush treatment is with the wars. I see no sign that Obama is going to depart from the Bush administration’s aggressive foreign policy; he may not put it on steroids like McCain would have, but he’s unlikely to withdraw troops from anywhere unless it’s to send them to Pakistan, Kenya, or the Congo.
They’re RELIABLY wrong. Always keep that in mind when Republican squishes like David Brooks offer advice as to how Republicans should go about reclaiming the political power they’ve squandered for the last eight years:
I’m dreaming of the successful presidency this country needs. I’m dreaming of an administration led by Barack Obama, but which stretches beyond the normal Democratic base. It makes time for moderate voters, suburban voters, rural voters and even people who voted for the other guy….
They’ll do things conservatives disagree with, but they’ll also show that they’re not toadies of the liberal interest groups. They’ll insist on merit pay and preserving No Child Left Behind’s accountability standards, no matter what the teachers’ unions say. They’ll postpone contentious fights on things like card check legislation. Most of all, they’ll take significant action on the problems facing the country without causing a mass freak-out among voters to the right of Nancy Pelosi.
On the same weekend Brooks wrote this, Obama’s transition team announced that they’re considering a series of executive orders in order to quickly flush out the influence of the previous administration while bypassing that unnecessary and annoying procedure otherwise known as “the legislative process”. Needless to say, this will almost certainly upset those “conservative” members of the commentariat who waxed enthusiastic about the Bush administration’s expansive view of the unitary executive theory.
UPDATE – Obama’s Chief of Staff confirms the next administration’s intent to push left and push hard: “US President-elect Barack Obama intends to push a comprehensive programme of social and economic reform beyond an immediate emergency stimulus package, Rahm Emanuel, the next White House chief of staff, indicated on Sunday. Mr Emanuel brushed aside concerns that an Obama administration would risk taking on too much when it takes office in January. He said Mr Obama saw the financial meltdown as an historic opportunity to deliver the large-scale investments that Democrats had promised for years.”
A socialist seeing historic opportunity in financial crisis? That would certainly be new. At least Americans can console themselves that Obama appears to be more of an international socialist than a national one.
48 Judean Peoples Front (4-5-0) 46 Masonville Marauders (3-5-1)
Big trade this week between the Meerkats and the Reverends. I traded two of my keepers, Peyton Manning and Colston, plus Frank Gore, for Kurt Warner, Clinton Portis, and DeSean Jackson. It looks like a dumb trade for me on paper, but Gore is the only one who has done anything for me this year, I didn’t need Portis this week, and having two pairs of WRs from Green Bay and New Orleans was a bit much. I may regret Colston, but I’m confident that I don’t need Manning, who I suspect is more seriously injured than is commonly understood. With a bad line, an aging Marvin Harrison and a departing Tony Dungy, I’m not confident that he’ll continue to be the superlative fantasy QB he’s been for the last three years, whereas I think Aaron Rodgers/Greg Jennings/Ryan Grant show real promise of becoming the Manning/Harrison/James of the future.
In the meantime, I’ll start Warner this week against a bad SF defense and either trade him before the deadline for a top WR to a team that’s interested or start him when I don’t like Rodger’s matchups.
UPDATE – Holy cats! We didn’t have the Vikes-Packers this week, so I finally broke down and got the NFL Game Pass. I went for the HD version, which is remarkably better than last year’s streamed video. It’s really an excellent solution for NFL fans outside the USA; I know more than one friend who would actually prefer this to the much-beloved Ticket. Here’s an unretouched screen cap from last week’s game against the Texans that shows how unbelievable the quality really is:
UPDATE – No matter how this game ends, you absolutely have to love Adrian Peterson. Forget his superlative talent, the man simply will not quit!
As if most American 401ks hadn’t already taken a serious blow:
Democrats in the U.S. House have been conducting hearings on proposals to confiscate workers’ personal retirement accounts — including 401(k)s and IRAs — and convert them to accounts managed by the Social Security Administration. Triggered by the financial crisis the past two months, the hearings reportedly were meant to stem losses incurred by many workers and retirees whose 401(k) and IRA balances have been shrinking rapidly.
I’m sort of curious. Should this be taken as an indication that these Democrats never previously consider the possibility that the stock markets – or even the stocks held in any specific 401k plan – might go down? I doubt it. Most likely, they’re merely being opportunistic. Although, as pessimistic as I am about stocks, one of the few things I’d actually value less is the vague promise of a future stipend from the federal government.
This reading covered Rothbard’s explication of Austrian business cycle theory. Please take the quiz first, then post any questions or observations you might have in the comments here. And in light of the week’s reading, isn’t it a relief to learn the new president-elect is so well-versed in economic history?
Next week’s reading will be Chapter II, pp 37-55, on the Keynesian critiques. There’s no hurry and I’d like for those who are interested to be able to have this down cold by the time we finish.
First banking, now cars again. One wonders how many industries Obama will have to nationalize before it becomes apparent that if he wasn’t a socialist before, he has become one whether he wanted to or not:
General Motors Corp. said Friday it lost $2.5 billion in the third quarter and warned that it could run out of cash in 2009 if the U.S. economic slump continues and it doesn’t get government aid. The automaker said its cash burn for the quarter accelerated to $6.9 billion, and government aid will be “essential” because of the slow economy and credit crisis.
The move comes hours after Ford Motor Co. said it lost $129 million for its third quarter and will cut about 2,260 more white-collar workers in North America as the industry tries to weather the worst economic downturn in decades. As U.S. and global economies have rapidly deteriorated, auto sales have nearly shut down.
GM said government aid is “essential” to help the U.S. auto industry through the downturn.
This comes as absolutely no surprise to me, as a few months ago, a friend called me up about some automotive paper that he’d been offered which was paying almost 20 percent annually. The only risk was that the automaker wouldn’t go under before the end of 2009. We kicked it around for a while and decided that it was probably too risky.
This was before the Freddie and Fannie fiasco. Now, we figure they’re probably paying 30 percent, but he’s not even interested enough to bother calling and finding out. If you are having trouble understanding the Austrian concept of misallocation aka malinvestment, investing in American automakers making more cars in 2009 is about as perfect an example as one can ever hope to find.
It’s not secret that I find the notion often put forth by evolutionists, particularly those who have actual training in biology, that they are more educated and intellectually sophisticated than all potential detractors, to be ironic in the extreme. However, it occurs to me that they not only don’t understand what I mean by the backtesting problem that reliably leads them into error, more than a few of my critics have appeared to think that this objection is a misguided and whacky concept that I have somehow conceived on my own.
So, it was with some amusement that I re-read the beginning to Chapter 4 and realized that Rothbard had spelled out the essential problem in simpler terms than I ever have:
Most writers on the 1929 depression make the same grave mistake that plagues economic studies in general—the use of historical statistics to “test” the validity of economic theory. We have tried to indicate that this is a radically defective methodology for economic science, and that theory can only be confirmed or refuted on prior grounds. – Rothbard, p. 85
Needless to say, what is a radically defective methodology for economic science does not magically become any less defective when applied to any other science, including biology. Unfortunately for all of us, we appear to be on the verge of testing both his theories and Ben Bernanke’s regarding the Great Depression in real time now. No one likes to be wrong, but I have to admit, this would be a very opportune moment to discovery that Austrian theory is incorrect.
As expected, the media version of the election was an inaccurate one, as shown by this study (PDF) from the Center for the Study of the American Electorate:
A downturn in the number and percentage of Republican voters going to the polls seemed to be the primary explanation for the lower than predicted turnout. The percentage of eligible citizens voting Republican declined to 28.7 percent down 1.3 percentage points from 2004. Democratic turnout increased by 2.6 percentage points from 28.7 percent of eligibles to 31.3 percent. It was the seventh straight increase in the Democratic share of the eligible vote since the party’s share dropped to 22.7 percent of eligibles in 1980.
Note that the historical table shows bigger increases in the percentage of voters in 1992, 2000 and 2004 than in 2008. While one might conclude that Americans are simply less interested in liberty than before, given the low 0.032 percent vote for the Libertarian and Constitution parties combined, I think the threefold increase in non-voters seen on this blog shows that the decline is probably more indicative of a loss of faith in the representative vote as an effective method for restoring liberty to a nation. Voting these days primarily concerns how the spoils of government revenue will be divided, an act of little interest to the libertarian.
As Nate has pointed out in the past, it is almost impossible to think of a single historical situation where freedom from government control has come about through the peaceful means of voting. (By all means, do feel free to propose any examples in the comments.) Men have voted away their liberties since Gaius Marius was first elected to an unprecedented third term as consul, but they seldom seem to ever see fit to vote themselves more freedom.
