CORRECTING MAUREEN DOWD: “If you’re going to worry that comments plant the wrong ideas in people’s heads, you should be more careful about the ideas you plant. Dowd took a Limbaugh phrase out of context. (Hey! Remember last month, when we were hyper-sensitive about the problem of taking quotes out of context?)” That was last month.
Archive for 2010
August 22, 2010
DANIEL HANNAN: The Internet is dragging Britain away from Europe and towards the Anglosphere.
The EU is being made redundant by technological change. In the 1950s, a regional trade association arguably made sense. But in a world where capital surges around the globe at the touch of a button, physical proximity becomes irrelevant. When deciding whether to invest in a country, corporations will consider many factors – tax rates, regulation, language, corruptibility of public officials – before they worry about geography.
The Internet makes it as easy for my constituents to do business with a company in New Zealand as with a company in Belgium. Easier, indeed, because the Kiwi company shares our common law, accountancy practices, commercial traditions and language. . . . The Internet, as Douglas Carswell argues, is ironing out a kink in our cultural and political alignment, whereby a small elite artificially reoriented our foreign policy, our trade and even our news cycle away from our old alliances and towards Europe. That’s the great thing about the web (or, from a Europhile perspective, the disagreeable thing): it democratises.
Shockingly, The Guardian contains expressions of unhappiness about this trend. But Jim Bennett, who popularized the term “Anglosphere,” emails: “Faster!”
MARK TAPSCOTT: Obama knew Gulf drilling ban would cost at least 23,000 jobs. Obama knew, jobs were few. . . .
HOT SAUCE THAT WILL push you to the limit.
A HERD, NOT A PACK: “They actually do their work for other journalists and for the regime.”
THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR JOHN MCCAIN WE’D SEE POLITICS BEATING OUT SCIENCE. AND THEY WERE RIGHT! Politics, Not Science, Drove White House to Release Rosy Gulf Oil Report.
MEGAN MCARDLE: More Reasons to Shun 401(k) Loans. “In general, the point at which you’re kiting debt–using home equity or the 401(k) to pay off credit cards or bad car loans–is the point at which you are in serious financial trouble. While transforming the debt to lower-interest rate forms can seem like salvation, it’s not the answer. For one thing, the lower interest rates come with greater risk–of losing the house or your retirement savings, rather than your credit rating. For another, it won’t work unless you get serious about controlling your money. I’ve watched colleagues do it (not at the Atlantic), and invariably after they refinanced the house, the credit card debt started to creep up again. Many financial counselors and personal finance gurus say the same thing.”
A BIRTHDAY GIFT FROM PAUL KRUGMAN: “At first glance, the column hardly seems like a gift: it’s long on nastiness, short on thoughtfulness, and misleading (all Krugman standards, sadly). But it offers such a poor defense of the Social Security status quo that I suspect readers will be more skeptical of the program after seeing the column, not less. Hence, Krugman’s gift.”
August 21, 2010
THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR JOHN MCCAIN, YOU’D HAVE TO SIGN A LOYALTY OATH TO WORK AT A UNIVERSITY. And they were right!
A PREDICTION: “Watch for panic over the UNEXPECTED collapse in home sales next week. Now that the federal credits have expired, Texas monthly home sales have fallen 25% to the lowest July level since 1997.” Well, stay tuned.
CHANGE: Illinois Fiscal Meltdown: A Continuing Series. “Even though Harris resigned in 2008, Park District officials confirmed that he was paid the remaining $185,120 left on his three-year contract. The district also gave him a sport utility vehicle while his compensation without the SUV in 2008 still totaled $339,302 for eight months on the job, officials said.”
MARKDOWNS ON cellphones and accessories.
LESSONS FROM an unlicensed barber. “The government licensing and regulation of barbers, like other hair stylists, is driven by the self-interest of the profession. Licenses restrict entry and reduce competition, enabling those with licenses to capture more rents. This is actually the case with most licensing regimes, even those that appear to serve a greater public interest than barber licenses.”
ODD TRAFFIC from Pandagon. There’s another kind?
ABOVE THE LAW: Dear Law Firms: Canceling Summer Programs After People Bid on Those Programs Is Bad Form. “In this market, interview slots are extremely valuable for law school students. There are not enough jobs to go around, and students know it. When they bid on your firm for an interview, that’s one less bid they have for some other firm. When you pull the rug out from under them this late in the process, you’ve essentially taken away one of their few chances to get a summer job. It might not matter to the law firm — they’ll get more than enough applicants for the summer positions they have — but for the individual student it’s a huge problem.”
A VACCINATION CAMPAIGN at this year’s DragonCon.
RECOVERY SUMMER! With consumers slow to spend, businesses are slow to hire.
PATTY MURRAY now trailing Dino Rossi by 7% in Washington Senate race. Nice polls, kid. Don’t get cocky.
DOES SLEEPING AROUND make people happier?
TODAY ONLY: Another cheap external hard drive.
MALINVESTMENT STRIKES AGAIN? China’s Looming Real-Estate Bubble: A massive Keynesian spending program has misallocated capital and set the stage for a crisis. “Beijing is in a dilemma. It can cut spending and rein in its monetary expansion, releasing over time capital for more productive endeavors (especially if it opens up hitherto closed investment options) and putting the economy on a healthier footing. However, that would mean slower growth, lower home values, rising unemployment and potential political unrest. Alternatively, it can buy a few more years of faux-growth and stability by propping up the real-estate market—and risk making the day of reckoning far worse when it arrives.”
UPDATE: Reader R.M. Jones writes: “My observation during the month (April 2010) I spent in China, in several large and small cities, they’ve got more buildings under construction and dead in the water than we do here in Las Vegas. Driving around Hangzhou and Shanghai there were hundreds of multistory building shells and nobody working.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: More happy news: Fund Flows Show An Enormous Panic.
MORE: Reader Jim Beall writes:
Those massive fund flows are not a panic. It is clear rational thought on the part of main street investors. There is the potential for deflation and there is the possibility of a recession. You are better off paying down debt for either of those scenarios. The stock market has credibility issues of being biased against the individual investor with the flash crash and high frequency trading being no small part of the problem. Bonds at the very least will provide some income and have performed very well this year, certainly better than the stock market.
The only people panicking are the stock fund money managers. They are seeing a huge drop in revenue and assets.
I’m not sure that makes me feel better.
FROM TIM BLAIR, an Australian election roundup. Also here. And Jim Bennett emails: “BTW, remember that Kevin Rudd’s 2007 victory in Australia was taken to presage a general swing to the left in the English-speaking world, and forecast a Dem victory in the US for 08? Will we hear the same sort of predictive arguments from today’s election, in which the Left defected to the Greens and the right was energized? Not from the same people, I think.”
UPDATE: Thoughts from Michael Barone.
IN RESPONSE TO MY EARLIER BREATHALYZER POST, reader Rich Andrews sends this: How Breathalyzers Work (and Why They Don’t). By the way, Lawrence Taylor’s DUI Blog is an interesting resource, if you’ve never checked it out.
STUFF WHITE PEOPLE LIKE: “Reading upbeat articles about the curious indigenous customs of authentic ethic brown people and their authentic, mysterious, exotic religious beliefs makes New York Times readers feel good about themselves in an abstract way, unlike those upsetting articles about terrifying armies of white American Jesus terrorists.” Heh.