Vox Popoli

Forget the poor guy who just lost his job. The real problem is the terrible pressure to provide for the family this now puts on his working wife!

When she first heard the news, “there was a sinking in the pit of my stomach — and tears,” she says. “It was just devastating. It’s completely outside your power, and now you’re responsible for the entire family,” says Janosek, who like many wives who work, brought in roughly one-third of the family’s income but is now the principal breadwinner. “You worry about losing everything. It’s just overwhelmingly scary — and there are no resources for spouses.” Janosek was able to increase her work hours, and her husband now has some contract work, which has helped — but it hardly solves the problem. “I am still angry about it,” she says.

Stories like this demonstrate what a complete crock the whole equality charade is. Why in the name of Betty Friedan should anyone feel any sympathy whatsoever for a married woman suddenly being handed the same responsibility borne by most married men throughout the entire history of civilization?

It’s rather like the classic joke about The New York Times headline about the world ending: Women and Minorities To Suffer Most.

From the World Economic Outlook: Preliminary Edition

OECD activity now looks to be approaching its nadir, following the deepest decline in post-war history. The ensuing recovery is likely to be both weak and fragile for some time. And the negative economic and social consequences of the crisis will be long-lasting. Yet, it could have been worse. Thanks to a strong economic policy effort an even darker scenario seems to have been avoided.

The next six months will make for a nice test of neo-Keynesian contra-cyclical doctrine. According to the same mainstream economists who didn’t see it coming in the first place, the various stimulus packages concocted by the US, EU, Japanese, and Chinese governments are just about to take effect and return the global economy to delicate, but definite growth. Needless to say, I don’t buy it, but we after the next few weeks of correction we should see another wave of positive emotion during the summer doldrums that will take us to the fall. That’s when it promises to get interesting.

It’s also worth noting something that everyone seems to have conveniently forgotten. Obama’s was the second stimulus package. The one presently under whispered discussion would be the third.

After lamenting the lack of recently deceased freak show coverage on this blog, Witrack wonders if I have any interest in the living versions:

Are you going to comment on Al Franken now being a United States Senator?

I don’t really have much to say about it, except that I recently received an email from Chad the Elder of the Fraters Libertas, who reminded me that I was sufficiently familiar with the fragile Minnesota psyche back in May 2004 to know that the ex-comedian’s candidacy was no laughing matter:

I’d like to luxuriate in the joys of what Jonah Goldberg calls Frankenfreude as Air America loses executives and misses payrolls. But that’s not possible now that Alice is bruiting about the idea of running for the Senate. In any other state, that might be laughable, but not in Minnesota. It’s the one state where he could actually win. Do the words “Gov. Jesse Ventura” ring a bell?

First, Minnesota is one of the most reliably leftist states in the country. Second, the Star & Sickle, otherwise known as the Star Tribune, already loves Alice to distraction. Third, never underestimate the desperate Minneapolitan appetite for celebrity. You can’t appreciate the meaning of trying too hard until you’ve read a local columnist hyperventilating over Minneapolis being compared to Des Moines instead of Paris. Fourth, Paul Wellstone. It could happen. And frankly, socionomics appears to predict it. I can’t think of anyone, short of the Lizard Queen herself, better suited to help that grand supercycle wave get rolling.

That last sentence is rather fortuitous, seeing as how it’s turned out to be Franken who gives the Senate Democrats a filibuster-proof majority, enabling Obama to torch the economy at will with an increasingly expansionary fiscal policy.

Thus spake the Magic Negro:

The future does not belong to those who gather armies on a field of battle or bury missiles in the ground.

Someone has told him that he is the nominal Commander-in-Chief of one of the world’s largest armies and largest buriers of missiles in the ground, right? Perhaps Mr. Teleprompter needs the history module installed.

The future belongs to those who show up for it.

It’s probably easier to make a case for shutting down Goldman Sachs as a threat to national security than bailing them out again:

The collective message of all this – the AIG bailout, the swift approval for its bank-holding conversion, the TARP funds – is that when it comes to Goldman Sachs, there isn’t a free market at all. The government might let other players on the market die, but it simply will not allow Goldman to fail under any circumstances. Its edge in the market has suddenly become an open declaration of supreme privilege. “In the past it was an implicit advantage,” says Simon Johnson, an economics professor at MIT and former official at the International Monetary Fund, who compares the bailout to the crony capitalism he has seen in Third World countries. “Now it’s more of an explicit advantage.” …

And here’s the real punch line. After playing an intimate role in four historic bubble catastrophes, after helping $5 trillion in wealth disappear from the NASDAQ, after pawning off thousands of toxic mortgages on pensioners and cities, after helping to drive the price of gas up to $4 a gallon and to push 100 million people around the world into hunger, after securing tens of billions of taxpayer dollars through a series of bailouts overseen by its former CEO, what did Goldman Sachs give back to the people of the United States in 2008?

Fourteen million dollars.

This is a remarkable tale of parasitical bankers living up to and exceeding every nasty stereotype of evil bankers. If I worked for Goldman Sachs, I’d be retiring before the end of the year and moving very far away from New York City. Once the depression hits in full force next year, a lot of Americans are going to be very, very unhappy. And thanks to Henry Paulson, they’ll have a pretty good idea of who is at least somewhat responsible for their dire straits.

Irrational Finance
“The public in many countries is understandably concerned by the commitment of substantial government resources to aid the financial industry when other industries receive little or no assistance. This disparate treatment, unappealing as it is, appears unavoidable. Our economic system is critically dependent on the free flow of credit, and the consequences for the broader economy of financial instability are thus powerful and quickly felt.”
– Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jan. 13, 2009

One of the more remarkable things about the expansion of the subprime financial crisis into a general economic contraction is the Federal Reserve System’s narcissistic focus on itself. In his speeches, Ben Bernanke spends more time talking about the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet and how stupendously fabulous it continues to be despite the vast quantities of loans it is making to shore up various aspects of the financial system than he does about the unemployment rate or the expected effects of economic contraction on the public.

I don’t know about you, but I found Chapter Three to be the best and most informative thus far. Next week’s reading is Chapter Four: Franklin Roosevelt’s Fascist New Deal and the quiz for it will be posted on Saturday, July 11th.

The New York Times hosts an open debate on the value of a graduate degree:

“As an M.A. student in English, I don’t think I’ve met one person in my program, or one professor for that matter, who has expressed that he or she is “in it for the money.” In fact, most people, including myself, are there because they are genuinely interested in the subject matter, and in discourse with others who have similar interests… For M.A. students like myself, the benefits have little to do with money.”

“What if knowledge itself is what you seek? Master’s of Arts and Liberal Arts degrees are not designed to get you a high paying career.”

“The reason I went for my MLA (graduated in June 1997) was because I was fascinated by the subject matter. Has it paid off for me financially? No. In fact, I am no longer even employed. I have never even paid off my student loans, nor do I believe that will ever happen. Do I regret earning that MLA? No…. Learning how to learn appears to be the single, greatest lesson one can learn in going for the advanced degree.”

“If you measure graduate degrees in dollars, mine Ph.D. is worthless. I earned less money with each graduate degree. If, however, you measure it in terms of quality of life, understanding of the world, personal satisfaction and the accomplishment of non-monetary goals, it is priceless.”

One thing I’ve noticed is that no one contemplating spending thousands of dollars on a graduate degree ever admits that it’s of no probable monetary value BEFORE they make the decision to go to grad school. Those who actually think the expense of a monetarily worthless graduate degree was worth it tend to fall into two categories. The first are grad students still in school who are enjoying the process and have neither begun paying the costs nor genuinely understand the consequences of being deeper in debt with no marketable job skill. I suppose that men utilizing the services of prostitutes also believe said services are worth the expense while in the midst of obtaining them. But they may well think otherwise upon discovering that their wallet is missing, learning that the test results are positive, or being handcuffed and reminded of their rights.

The second type are the sort who believe that their personal enjoyment trumps all concerns about expense. It should come as little surprise that these people usually also mention the importance of learning how to learn. In other words, these are the individuals who are dumb enough to genuinely require at least 17 years in school in order to learn how to learn, so the value of their opinion is quite high if taken in the negative.

It’s fine if you genuinely enjoy taking classes so much that you’re willing to spend thousands of dollars on them. But understand that doesn’t make you any different than someone who enjoys spending thousands of dollars on cars, drugs, or professional women. The only significant difference is that the car, drug, or escort aficionado seldom believes he will become a better person through paying for his pleasures.

One of the saner, if sadder, perspectives on the matter was expressed by one recent purchaser of an advanced piece of paper from an advanced paper seller: “As one of the many now-graduated, now-unemployed Masters of Fine Arts, I have felt that this great accomplishment is akin to opening up a nicely-wrapped gift box, only to discover that it was empty.” Except, of course, it wasn’t exactly a gift….

Maureen Dowd considers Sarah Palin’s resignation with all the intelligence and political astuteness we have learned to expect from her, colored by the emotional temperance of a head cheerleader forced to confront the reality of a new and prettier transfer student:

Caribou Barbie is one nutty puppy…. As Alaskans settled in to enjoy holiday salmon bakes and the post-solstice thaw, their governor had a solipsistic meltdown so strange it made Sparky Sanford look like a model of stability.

It’s entirely possible that Palin resigned for reasons that are narcissistic, ambitious, greedy, or insane. But we simply don’t know. The fact that she was smart enough not to offer an explanation when none short of imminent death from cancer would be considered sympathetic indicates that lunacy is the least plausible reason.

What I find most interesting is that two of the leading contenders for the GOP nomination appear, at least for the moment, to have taken themselves out of the running. If one considers this from the economic perspective of 2010 being 1931, it suggests that the prospect of being forced to deal with the challenges ahead is a daunting one. Unfortunately, these are the circumstances in which the human predators of the world tend to see their opportunities; to paraphrase Rahm Emmanuel, one never wants to waste a crisis.

I don’t pretend to know why Palin resigned. Not being a supporter, I can’t even say I particularly care. But I do know that it’s far too soon to dig her political grave, as many in both the Republican and the Democratic parties are now attempting. As both Ronald Reagan, Hillary Clinton and even Newt Gingrich have demonstrated, it’s always dangerous to assume a politician is finished. As a class, they’re very much like zombies; never count one out entirely until you’ve actually seen it dismembered and burned.