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Links 9/24/11

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Midwest Farmers Are on Alert Against Pig Thieves New York Times (hat tip reader furzy mouse)

As satellite slows, NASA works to peg crash site Washington Post

Neil Armstrong: US space program ’embarrassing’ The Register (hat tip reader John M)

China cancels dog meat festival after tens of thousands complain online McClatchy (hat tip Buzz Potamkin)

Radiation ‘drug’ cuts cancer BBC

An Aboriginal Australian Genome Reveals Separate Human Dispersals into Asia ScienceMag

I deleted my Facebook account Maxisentialism (hat tip reader Sieren)

Greece minister triggers default fears Financial Times

China’s chance to be our economic saviour Dean Baker Guardian (hat tip reader John M)

Global economy pushed to the brink Financial Times

Phone-hacking claims mount up at News International Guardian (hat tip Buzz Potamkin)

Dennis G. Jacobs: Case study in judicial pathology Glenn Greenwald, Salon

Kamala Harris a key player in settlement over mortgage crisis Los Angeles Times (hat tip reader James P). Harris is more bank friendly than this piece would lead you to believe.

#TwitterCensorship Blocks #OccupyWallStreet from Top Trending Topic Twice AmpedStatus

Don’t Believe Ron Suskind Jacob Weisberg, Slate (hat tip reader Carol B)

Obama To EU: Get Your S__t Together; Got An Election Next Year Testosterone Pit (hat tip reader Carol B)

Populist for a Day Alexander Cockburn, CounterPunch (hat tip reader Carol B)

Pensions, what pensions? digby (hat tip reader Carol B)

Operation Twist and the Limits of Monetary Policy in a Credit Economy Macroeconomic Resilience (hat tip Richard Smith)

The Price of Gold in the Year 2160 StatsGuy, Baseline Scenario

Antidote du jour:

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65 comments

  2. CB

    The story I read said Harris is cutting her own deal, undermining everybody else’s efforts, and ought to be ashamed of herself. Bet she isn’t. There was quite a lot of enthusiasm for Harris in Dem circles, proving, once again, that talk is dirt cheap. I gather Harris played to the liberal audience. You know, as dirt cheap as talk is, it’s a damn shame you can’t do anything with it.

  3. Jim Haygood

    Concluding paragraph of Glenn Greenwald’s essay about the chief appellate judge in the lawsuit against the disgraceful FISA Amendments Act:

    But the reason he’s worth examining is because he’s anything but aberrational. He’s the Chief Judge of the second- or third-most important court in the country. He works in a judicial system that more and more does the opposite of what it was ostensibly designed to do: it is now devoted to shielding political officials from legal accountability and transparency rather than exposing them to it, enabling rather than halting transgressions of the Constitutional limits imposed on them, and most of all, further empowering the most powerful factions against the least powerful rather than equalizing the playing field.

    In that regard, the life of Dennis G. Jacobs — and his slanderous, contemptuous outburst of yesterday — should be studied as a perfect embodiment of how the American judicial branch has become so corrupted as a tool for the nation’s most powerful factions.

    Greenwald doesn’t go on to mention it, but the sanction of impeachment can be invoked to remove life-tenured federal judges. Usually it’s only done in cases of corruption. But nothing prevents the remedy being extended to a hack-in-black who lacks a judicial temperament, as Jacobs clearly does.

    Impeach his sorry ass!

    1. citalopram

      Good luck with getting him impeached, especially since he’s got powerful friends in all the right places. Another nail in the coffin that the law means nothing.

    2. Fraud Guy

      How’d that work out with Scalia and his “hunting trips” with Cheney before Bush v. Gore?

      64 attempts since the founding, only 19 passing the House, and 8 convictions. Not bad in, what, 200+ years?

  4. Jim Haygood

    Britain’s conservative Telegraph launches a take-no-prisoners attack on the FT, which has attracted 1,250 comments. Excerpt:

    Pro-Europeans find themselves in the same situation as appeasers in 1940, or communists after the fall of the Berlin Wall. They are utterly busted.

    Let’s examine the case of the Financial Times, which claims to be Britain’s premier economic publication. About 25 years ago something went wrong with the FT. It ceased to be the dry, rigorous journal of economic record so respected under its great postwar editor Sir Gordon Newton.

    Turning its back on its readers, it was captured by a clique of left-wing journalists. Naturally it supported Britain’s entry to the Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1990. It has been wrong on every single major economic judgment over the past quarter century.

    The central historical error of the modern Financial Times concerns the euro. The FT flung itself headlong into the pro-euro camp, embracing the cause with an almost religious passion. Doubts were dismissed.

    Even as late as May 2008, when the fatal booms in Ireland and elsewhere were very obviously beginning to falter, the paper retained its faith: “European monetary union is a bumble bee that has taken flight,” asserted the newspaper’s leader column. “However improbable the celestial design, it has succeeded in real life.”

    For a paper with pretensions to authority in financial matters, its coverage of the single currency can be regarded as nothing short of a disaster.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/8780075/The-great-euro-swindle.html

    A pithier, condensed version of the theme can be found in this Guardian video of PJ Harvey, singing ‘The Last Living Rose’:

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/video/2011/apr/28/pj-harvey-live-session-last-living-rose

    Goddamned Europeans!
    Take me back to beautiful England
    And the grey, damp filthiness of ages
    And battered books

    And fog rolling down behind the mountains,
    And on the graveyards, and dead sea captains

    Let me walk through the stinking alleys
    To the music of drunken beatings
    Past the Thames River, glistening like gold
    Hastily sold for nothing … nothing!

    Let me watch night fall on the river
    The moon rise up and turn to silver
    The sky move, the ocean shimmer
    The hedge shake, the last living rose quiver

    Must be the eurocrats getting beaten up in them stinking alleys! She nailed last week’s gold collapse pretty good, too. ;-)

    1. Foppe

      I find the Telegraph’s suggestion that it was the “left” who wrote the Maastricht Treaty a pretty risible and/or naïve one, though.

  5. K Ackermann

    Did anyone notice the date on the facebook article? It’s one year old, and more relevant now than it was when written.

    I suspect it will be even more relevant next year.

    1. brave new world

      read the article and was a little miffed he got “Brave New World” wrong. It was about eugenics to create that wonderfully, docile servant populous. Apparently quite popular at the turn of the 20th century. Find it interesting that eugenics is abounding again (for designer babies) – was only in the 70’s that the US stopped forced sterilisations – in the name of “The Greater Good”.

      Fox, D 2007, ‘Silver spoons and golden genes: genetic engineering and the egalitarian ethos’, American Journal of Law and Medicine, vol. 33, no. 4, pp. 567 – 623
      If you can find it – it provides food for thought and had modern day creepiness about it.

      1. K Ackermann

        It wasn’t him who got it “wrong”. He was quoting Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman.

        I think looking at Brave New World as a statement about eugenics is too narrow an interpretation.

        1. brave new world

          had the book in my hand when wrote that – “The love of servitude cannot be established except as the result of a deep, personal revolution in human mind and bodies” ……..”a foolproof system of eugenics, designed to standardize the human product…” and then he goes on about some religious crap. So if you believe in some mystical figure, it will give you high morals – and you are very much manipulated by the govt. and your peers, by fear of reprisal.

          Not much difference today really – religious dogma is dictating political agenda. So we didn’t need eugenics – just same old propaganda for 50 yrs.

    2. Bill

      That appears to be a part of his abdomen being
      compressed and “pouched out” by the purple rung
      of the feeder just below. It’s caught by sunlight
      and the rest is in shade, making it look like it’s
      cut off from his body.

      1. F. Beard

        Then he doesn’t workout? Actually I think it a combination of his arm and his compressed gut now that you mention it.

  10. wunsacon

    Yves,

    Sorry for being OT and if this was already mentioned elsewhere (esp. on the thread where this comment would’ve been on-topic). But, regarding Monsanto’s “bad advice” to farmers leading to pest resistance to Monsanto’s GM products, isn’t that ultimately good for Monsanto? Patent protection runs only so long. From Monsanto’s perspective, isn’t it better for older products to become obsolete and for new pest threats to appear? Optimally, the cycle should be timed with the duration of patent protection.

    I.e., Monsanto is better off as a pest protection *service* (like, say, a software anti-virus service) rather than a product company. Let’s see if Monsanto comes out with a new product in a year or two, a product we just gotta have.

  11. tyaresun

    you don’t know how many closet bible lovers you are going to upset with that Australian genome link. You are upsetting the whole middle east as the birthplace of civilisation apple cart.

    1. SH

      Aside from the bible lover part, I don’t think this is news. There was a National Geographic special called “The Human Family Tree” which actually shows there was probably a period with lower sea levels where African ancestors crossed at the bottom of the Persian Gulf and were able to sea coast it all the way to Australia through the Polynesian islands. That video is date 2009 and is on Netflix. All the rest of us went up from Mesopotamia and traveled either to central Europe along the temperate growing climates or through Northern India all the way to China and then to Siberia and over the Bering straights. Old news.

    1. doom

      Interesting. As a social-network Luddite I’ve been idly curious about alternative social networks for privacy refugees but when I see that Pravda’s involved, I wouldn’t touch this one with a ten-foot pole.

      There are half a dozen decent applications for setting up user-defined social networks. No reason why social networks can’t be as decentralized as weblogs.

      Facebook’s only advantage is the network externality – and nobody wants to interact with a billion people anyway. As Facebook drops the pretence of being a communications medium and refines their effectiveness as a surveillance tool, Facebook will go the way of AOL.

      1. eff

        Sorry, I don’t see where Pravda is involved. Could you point me to some reference where you’re getting this information?

        1. doom

          Ah. By ‘Pravda’ I mean the Times. If the actual Russian Pravda were involved I would not be so suspicious, because I trust them more.

          1. eff

            I don’t think they have anything to do with it other than reporting on it. Is that what you are objecting to?

          3. doom

            Ah. I see. Those are just links to media coverage, then?
            Still, I think I’d rather wait for Activix or Riseup to build one.

  14. Foppe

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-23/germany-has-5-trillion-euros-of-hidden-debt-handelsblatt-says.html

    Germany’s public debt is much higher than officially shown, Handelsblatt reported, citing calculations by Bernd Raffelhueschen, an economics professor at Freiburg University.

    Apart from 2 trillion euros ($2.7 trillion) of public debt, there are liabilities of another 5 trillion euros because of shortfalls in the social security and pension funds, according to Raffelhueschen, the newspaper said.

    1. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

      I understand Germany recently ended their World War I reparations. So, you have to subtract that from their liabilities.

      But what about the ones from the Battle of Teutoburg Forest?

    1. craazyman

      I can’t imagine following anyone. I can’t even follow myself.

      But sometimes I think I’m like the feather-headed chief in a primitive south Pacific village when shown a telephone by an anthropologist. He wasn’t impressed. “Who would I call?” he said. I think he had a good point.

      Still, I’m mot sure if he was a comedian, a genius or a fool. As with Facebook and Twitter and all that nonsense, I’m not sure either.

  16. MikeJake

    I quit Facebook nearly 2 years ago and never looked back. Does anyone really have any business being surprised at the direction it’s taken?

  17. Jim Haygood

    Greek weekend! From Ed Conway, economics editor of Sky News:

    Exclusive: G20 now preparing itself for Greek default after October – Sky sources. Will be on Sky News imminently with more

    G20 sources: all efforts behind the scenes (by G20 members) are now going into recapitalising banks, preparing economies for default.

    G20 sources: default not expected until after Cannes G20 early November. Emergency funding should still keep Greece afloat thru October

    G20 sources: No suggestion Greek default need imply country leaving the euro

    G20 sources: @ Washington summit marked difference in attitude. Confident euro members edging closer to recapitalising banks, expanding EFSF

    http://twitter.com/#!/EdConwaySky

    I would expect a relief rally in markets, except in Greece, and possibly other peripheral areas (contagion effect).

    Staying in the euro zone just means more dependence, more deflation, more depression … until Greece finally gets on its bike and pedals off to stop the pain.

    While Greece remains euro-bound, foreign investors will shun it, anticipating a future devaluation … as well as deflation, escalating credit risk and social unrest while awaiting the inevitable.

    If Greece won’t grab the first-mover advantage, somebody will.

    1. Typing Monkey

      G20 sources: all efforts behind the scenes (by G20 members) are now going into recapitalising banks, preparing economies for default.

      Recapitalising them with what money??????

    2. Jim Haygood

      Claims from the Telegraph become yet more pointed:

      Europe’s banks would have to be recapitalised with many tens of billions of euros to reassure markets that a Greek or Portuguese default would not precipitate a systemic financial crisis. The recapitalisation plan would go much further than the €2.5bn (£2.2bn) required by regulators following the European bank stress tests in July and crucially would include the under-pressure French lenders.

      Officials are working on a way to leverage the EFSF through the European Central Bank. The complex deal would see the EFSF provide a loss-bearing “equity” tranche of any bail-out fund and the ECB the rest in protected “debt”. If the EFSF bore the first 20pc of any loss, the fund’s warchest would effectively be bolstered to Eu2 trillion.

      As quid pro quo for an enhanced bail-out, the Germans are understood to be demanding a managed default by Greece but for the country to remain within the eurozone. Under the plan, private sector creditors would bear a loss of as much as 50pc – more than double the 21pc proposal currently on the table. A new bail-out programme would then be devised for Greece.

      http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/8786665/Multi-trillion-plan-to-save-the-eurozone-being-prepared.html

      I will assert once more that Greece remaining within the eurozone is still a form of can-kicking — a very long kick, to be sure: one which could hang in the air for months, or even a couple of years.

      But with a 50 percent debt haircut and the euro as its currency, Greece is still doomed to a decade of depression, not to mention losing its sovereignty to the euro-committee which will dictate the terms of its ongoing external financing.

      Not gonna work, mates …

  18. PQS

    Had a friend who tried Facebook. Told me it was “like being haunted by ghosts” from his past.

    I know I’ve lived too long in a place when I dread the idea of running into people I don’t want to. Facebook seems like that to me.

  19. barrisj

    A remarkable document has been placed today on the “London Banker” blogsite, the testimony of Marriner Eccles to the Senate Finance Committee in early 1933. His testimony later was rewarded by President Roosevelt by bringing Eccles to Washington to help write or draft several seminal laws that essentially saved US capitalism from itself. In fact, “London Banker” highlighted this particular passage from Eccles’ testimony:

    It is utterly impossible, as this country has demonstrated again and again, for the rich to save as much as they have been trying to save, and save anything that is worth saving. They can save idle factories and useless railroad coaches; they can save empty office buildings and closed banks; they can save paper evidences of foreign loans; but as a class they can not save anything that is worth saving, above and beyond the amount that is made profitable by the increase of consumer buying. It is for the interests of the well to do – to protect them from the results of their own folly – that we should take from them a sufficient amount of their surplus to enable consumers to consume and business to operate at a profit. This is not “soaking the rich”; it is saving the rich. Incidentally, it is the only way to assure them the serenity and security which they do not have at the present moment..

    Where are people such as Marriner Eccles today?

    http://londonbanker.blogspot.com/2011/09/testimony-of-marriner-eccles-to.html

  20. Typing Monkey

    From the FT link:

    European Union officials are warming to the idea that the EFSF could be “leveraged” to increase its strength, perhaps by guaranteeing larger European Central Bank purchases of Spanish and Italian sovereign debt, in an effort to isolate the two countries from the more intractable Greek debt crisis.

    Pipe dream. If this is the only thing they are considering, they are toast.

    Investors are bracing themselves for more ECB action, possibly next week or in early October. JPMorgan analysts predicted the ECB would cut interest rates by 50 basis points at its October meeting, while members of the ECB’s governing council hinted they could reintroduce 12-month loans to eurozone banks.

    “I am very confident they’re going to move in the direction of expanding (their) effective financial capacity,” added Tim Geithner

    1. And how exactly is the SNB going to maintain its peg in such an event?

    2. I am very clearly missing something here. How is his supposed to help? Will the extra 50bps make Greek debt more attractive to current bank depositors? Will the reduction suddenly create a flow of deposits to banks who need it? Will the 50bps suddenly and significantly stimulate the economy so that debt is no longer a problem (overnight)?

    I’m obviously missing the point on this proposal, because it makes absolutely no sense to me…

    1. Typing Monkey

      Incidentally, nothing unexpected is occurring. Since 2007, even the most braindead, half-assed market watcher could see that this was coming. And if they couldn’t. then the whole PIIGS acronym in 2008 (I think) should have clearly tipped them off (?)

      So why didn’t any planning occur since then? I’m really confused on this point. Nobody really thought that this problem was going to go away. And yet the S&P is still over 1100, oil is flirting with $80 (nobody seems to comment on this…), and European ministers are only now considering options as to what they should do when the PIGS start to default?!?!?

      I just really, really don’t get it.

      ____

      On a side note, I want to see Bernanke or Greenspan come out again and say that CBs shouldn’t try to prevent bubbles, but should only clean them up after they’ve burst. Hey, what harm could such a policy do?

      1. Hugh

        It’s all extend and pretend. Nothing is fixed. The casino stays open. If there is a crash, they will loot that. Kleptocrats really don’t have the same goals or fears as the rest of us. From our point of view, it’s nuts, but then our point of view doesn’t count.

  21. kingbadger

    re: Obama to EU: Get Your S__t Together; Got An Election Next Year

    Inflation in goods and services is getting ugly

    Isn’t this just repeating a standard myth? That site also uses a linear chart of the national debt and calls it “scary”. Yes, all linear charts look scary to people who don’t understand how misleading they are.

  22. Ming

    I usually like Dean Baker’s articles, put today’s work was pure crap. He should change the articles title from ‘How China can save the world’ to ‘How China can save the German and French Banks, from their shitty decisions’.

    But seriously, it was with reckless abandon that these banks made government and consummer loans inthose countries, resulting in a asset bubble and a false sense of prosperity. Now it is political maneuvering of the French and German banks, along with the supine complicity of their local politicians to impose these ‘hairshirt policies on the entire populations of Ireland, Greece, Spain and Italy…. These banks are now a corrupt group of loan sharks, who are cooperating to gradually squeeze those countires for concessions and assets (at distressed prices of course). If china acts out of compassion or out of enlightened self interest, china should make sure that they only need to save the people and the nation states, and let the banks and hedgefunds and insurance companies ‘reap what they have sowed’.

  23. bob

    From the “I deleted my facebook account”

    “If you don’t pay for a service, chances are you are not the customer – you’re the product being sold.”

    YOU are being sold.

  24. Mark P.

    Plenty of posters here take strong positions based on closed ideological postures — like, say, F Beard or, maybe, Hugh. But in their cases one sees that minds are actually engaging there. F Beard, for instance, brings us a worthwhile viewpoint that probably wouldn’t get expressed here otherwise, and produces intelligent, idiosyncratic responses to questions about the ramifications of his beliefs.

    Conversely, boilerplate formulations designed to remove the burden of actually thinking were all that Attempter endlessly shoveled out here. When anyone even questioned him out about real-world specifics, we got only more of the same fairly mindless verbiage, delivered as if from on high. I just ignored Attempter’s posts, but if Yves wants to limit his presence here that’s no bad thing.

    1. bertram

      Attempter was a really smart and original thinker. However, he got into endless arguments where he lost his temper and couldn’t see straight, which ended up with him looking like he was bullying when he was just trying ram his ideas somewhere. It seemed that Yves wasn’t banning him for his ideas, which were pretty good on the whole, but for the way he was behaving here.

  25. Foppe

    Something changed, I believe.

    It sort of eludes me why a “drop+bucket->spillage” explanation does not suffice. Yet for whatever reason, malicious intent of some sort was read into Skippy’s criticism at the time, and from there on the conflict escalated/kept going.

  26. Everythings Jake

    Make sure to read the correction at the end of the Weisberg’s Slate article. Priceless, hung on his own bloviating.

    1. Yves Smith Post author

      Yes, he’s a Rubinite, so nothing here is as it seems. While there are reasons to doubt Suskind’s narrative, Weisberg has his own agenda.

  27. Valissa

    IMF: We Will Stop Financial Crisis http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZS465E6GfA&feature=player_embedded

    Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Chairman of Internatinoal Monetary and Finacial Committe, speaks

    According to him the problem is a “lack of confidence in the credibility of policy actions” [bwahahahahaha….].

    He thinks they need to solve that problem by having more resolve (re-solve), which I found quite hilarious (I love infinite loop puns!). btw, the misspelling of the word international above was actually on the news clip (though I really shouldn’t make fun of that since I am very typo prone myself).

  28. craazyman

    I hope all youzed guys can lighten up, I mean Oy Vey man, what is this, Sunday School?

    attempter is correct but he’s such a powerful writer that it comes at you like a fist or like some raging old testament dude. I wouldn’t have pushed that billionaire button either & I also want peace on earth. Why the hell would anyone want to be a billionaire? I can’t figure that one. A millionaire? Yes. I can see that, with a few good trades and then the ascension into the Abisnthe Bar. I look at my life and I figure if I just leave people alone I’m being a good samaritan. If I can help them somehow, so much the better, but first “Do no harm.” I can think of a few I’d take back. Cant we all.

    and skippy. I think skippy said he was in the Special Forces, which makes me think he can take care of himself.

    If the temperature gets too hot, try this, this is what I do. Take a few shots of Jack Daniels and 1.0 mg of Xanax and look in the mirror. You’ll probably start laughing at what you see. ECCE HOMO. And ewl get back on track. :)

      1. F. Beard

        I would rather have seen Shirley Jones. Ah, but those were the days when vice was holes in a billiard table.

        1. skippy

          Beardy, romanticism is quaint soft fuzzy blanket, although lets not forget pornography is the best selling stuff on the planet…historically.

          Skippy…first usages of the printing press were[?], political propaganda and porn, not necessarily in that order.

  30. financial matters

    Operation Twist and the Limits of Monetary Policy in a Credit Economy Macroeconomic Resilience (hat tip Richard Smith)

    “””The problem in a credit economy is not so much excess savings but as Borio and Disyatat put it, excess elasticity. Elasticity is defined as

    the degree to which the monetary and financial regimes constrain the credit creation process, and the availability of external funding more generally. Weak constraints imply a high elasticity. A high elasticity can facilitate expenditures and production, much like a rubber band that stretches easily. But by the same token it can also accommodate the build-up of financial imbalances, whenever economic agents are not perfectly informed and their incentives are not aligned with the public good (“externalities”). The band stretches too far, and at some point inevitably snaps….In other words, to reduce the likelihood and severity of financial crises, the main policy issue is how to address the “excess elasticity” of the overall system, not “excess saving” in some jurisdictions.

    Snap-backs are inevitable – the question is simply whether the snap-backs are “normal” or catastrophic. What is commonly referred to as the ‘Minsky Moment’ is the almost instantaneous process of the elastic snapping back. As Minsky has documented, the history of macroeconomic interventions post-WW2 has been the history of prevention of even the smallest snap-backs that are inherent to the process of creative destruction. The result is our current financial system which is as taut as it can be, in a state of fragility where any snap-back will be catastrophic.

    So is there no way out that does not involve a deflationary collapse of the economy? I argue that there is but that this requires a radical change in focus. The deflationary collapse of the current shadow money and credit superstructure and correspondingly much of the incumbent corporate structure adapted to this “taut rubber-band” is inevitable and if anything needs to be encouraged and accelerated. But this does not imply that the macroeconomy should suffer from a deflationary contraction. The effects of this snap-back can be mitigated in a simple and effective manner with a system of direct transfers to individuals as Steve Waldman has outlined. In fact, it is the deflationary collapse of the incumbent system that provides the leeway for significant fiscal intervention to be undertaken without sacrificing the central bank’s inflation targets. This solution also has the benefit of reversing the flow of rents that have exacerbated inequality over the past few decades, as well as tackling the cronyism and demosclerosis that is crippling our system today. Of course, the collapse of incumbent crony interests inherent to this policy approach means that it will not be implemented anytime soon.”””

  31. Skippy

    People who are diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder use splitting (black and white thinking) as a central defense mechanism. They do this to preserve their self-esteem, by seeing the self as purely good and the others as purely bad. The use of splitting also implies the use of other defense mechanisms, namely devaluation, idealization and denial.[12]
    [edit] Relationship to shame

    It has been suggested that narcissistic personality disorder may be related to defenses against shame.[13]

    Psychiatrist Glen Gabbard suggested NPD could be broken down into two subtypes.[14] He saw the “oblivious” subtype as being grandiose, arrogant, and thick-skinned and the “hypervigilant” subtype as being easily hurt, oversensitive, and ashamed. In his view, the oblivious subtype presents for admiration, envy, and appreciation a powerful, grandiose self that is the antithesis of a weak internalized self, which hides in shame, while the hypervigilant subtype neutralizes devaluation by seeing others as unjust abusers.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disorder

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealization_and_devaluation

    In psychoanalytic theory, when an individual is unable to integrate difficult feelings, specific defenses are mobilized to overcome what the individual perceives as an unbearable situation. The defense that helps in this process is called splitting. Splitting is the tendency to view events or people as either all bad or all good.[1] When viewing people as all good, the individual is said to be using the defense mechanism idealization: a mental mechanism in which the person attributes exaggeratedly positive qualities to the self or others. When viewing people as all bad, the individual employs devaluation: attributing exaggeratedly negative qualities to the self or others.

    In child development idealization and devaluation are quite normal. During the childhood development stage, individuals become capable of perceiving others as complex structures, containing both good and bad components. If the development stage is interrupted (by early childhood trauma, for example), these defense mechanisms may persist into adulthood.

    Denial of responsibility

    This form of denial involves avoiding personal responsibility by:

    blaming – a direct statement shifting culpability and may overlap with denial of fact
    minimizing – an attempt to make the effects or results of an action appear to be less harmful than they may actually be, or
    justifying – when someone takes a choice and attempts to make that choice look okay due to their perception of what is “right” in a situation.

    Someone using denial of responsibility is usually attempting to avoid potential harm or pain by shifting attention away from themselves.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial

    Skippy…everyone should ask questions and evaluate for them selves.

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