Penguin kidnaps mortal enemy BBC
Woman seeks love for randy emu ABC (hat tip reader Nivethan)
Brain’s Problem-solving Function At Work When We Daydream Science News
Obama The Debt Meister Falenblog
BofA Urged by Regulators to Revamp Board of Directors Wall Street Journal
Rail Traffic Data Belies Recovery Credit Bubble Stocks
U.S. banking crisis may last until 2013: S&P Reuters
Authorities probe insider trading at SEC Reuters
The Unvarnished Truth Michael Panzner. A economic indicator I bet you never heard of.
Creditor to predator Financial Times
Treasury plans help for muni bond market Financial Times. And the insurers too. Who on the big end of town isn’t getting a bailout?
My Personal Credit Crisis Edmund Andrews, New York Times
Empire of Carbon Paul Krugman
CT Attorney General: “It’s Time To Shatter The Old Boys Club Of Rating Agencies” Tyler Durden
The happiest places on Earth are heavily taxed MarketWatch
Antidote du jour:
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tag: US dollar reserve currency threat watch
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/5325805/Chinas-yuan-set-to-usurp-US-dollar-as-worlds-reserve-currency.html
The Fed needs to understand its No.1 mission is a strong dollar. NOT talking – but ACTION
That means it must push Treasury and Congress to deliver balanced budgets. (A forlorn hope unfortunately)
@dOC h ThE SuRreAL,
Bon appetit my good friend:
http://www.ems1.com/ems-products/medical-products/articles/493481-Conn-chimp-that-mauled-woman-had-Xanax-in-system
Skippy…a nudge is all it takes to set the ball roalling.
Doc, must I entice you with drugs.
http://www.ems1.com/ems-products/medical-products/articles/496877-Pfizer-offers-free-drugs-to-unemployed-uninsured
Skippy, not to worry Richard K…well just get some recently unemployed individual to get us free gear…its party time.
Re happiness vis taxation:
It seems there are two strange attractors, one leading to the virtuous circle described in this article, where people decide to use some of their wealth to buy a decent society for everyone, and the result is the greater happiness of everyone, including the still-wealthy, who are only slightly less wealthy as a result of the higher taxes they pay, a tremendous bargain for the greater happiness and security they achieve with that small outlay;
the other brings on the vicious circle of a Hobbesian scorched earth free-fire zone, where no one is willing to pay a cent for anything but his own private indulgences, “taxes” are seen as evil, the safety net is slashed to pieces, and the result is the erosion of happiness, community, and security, where even the rich are not happy but angry and delirious, and where no amount of privately spent money can buy anything but greater discontent and paranoia.
And if anyone was thinking of slandering the word “freedom” by saying America has more of it than Scandinavia, that’s simply a lie. America does not have freedom but rather red-light license. And the only space available for anything has to be bought with money. By definition there cannot be freedom if something is rationed by wealth, and in America literally everything including the air (having to live with polluted air is part of an economic ghetto) is increasingly rationed by wealth.
YS:
The BofA story seems to be part of the Fed-Treasury war against Ken Lewis. Why would say Citigroup, which is full of financial geniuses need to add four financial experts to its board?
For what it’s worth, I’d rather have freedom than happiness (and I’d rather have freedom than security, and freedom than prosperity; in fact, give me freedom over pretty much everything else.)
But it’s not an especially relevant comparison. Note that the countries at the top of the list are relatively small and very homogenous. Better comparisons would be with individual states; and I would wager that the U.S. has individual states, including Hawai’i and Utah, that compete very effectively on the happiness scale while being significantly lower than Scandinavia on the tax scale.
But also, what do the northern European countries (and Canada) have in common? High levels of natural resources and low accessibility to immigrants. Put a solid natural resource economic base with a low level of “huddled masses” crossing the borders and straining the social support system, and you end up with a fairly cozy system. Throw in very low defense spending, and there’s plenty of money to go around for whatever social programs the public demands, for a few decades, at least.
Unfortunately, not every nation is so fortunate, particularly the larger (and more immigrant-accessible) ones. And as it turns out, the Scandinavian system may not quite be 100% sustainable. Iceland may have been the first to be kicked out of the Northern European Utopian Society Club, but I suspect they won’t be the last, particularly with retirement for Europe’s overwhelmingly middle-aged population just around the corner.
To Attempter:
Gimme a break.
It wasn’t a legitimate study. It was performed by the OECD.
It’s like a “study” showing the health benefits of beef…which just happened to have been sponsored by the American Dairy and Cattle Group.
A “scientific” study on happiness. I love it.
Gosh…do you think that maybe…just maybe…the word “happiness” has no primary connotation and means different things to different people?
Assuming your answer is “Yes”..which we both know it is…do you think, then, that such studies about words with malleable connotations are apt to be self-serving and spurious?
And here you are prattling about “virtuous circles resulting in the greater happiness”.
If possible, try to move the phrase “brings on the vicious circle of a Hobbesian scorched earth free-fire zone…” down just one line. This way, the entire post would be perfectly centered around the one phrase you really wanted to write.
I can hardly blame you, though: “The vicious circle of Hobbesian scorched earth free-fire zone” is pretty darn cool.
University of Michigan’s endowment drops 27%
The University of Michigan lost about $2 billion from its endowment by the end of 2008, a drop of nearly 27 percent in value.
The battering taken by the financial markets was reflected in a report in the agenda materials for the monthly meeting of the U-M Board of Regents, held Thursday at the Dearborn campus.
The report indicates the endowment, valued at $7.6 billion on June 30, dropped to about $5.6 billion by Dec. 31. The report includes the university’s investments in stocks and bonds, plus other types of more complex investments that include hedge funds and private equity agreements valued only on a quarterly basis…..blah, blah, blah
Also see: You may well have known that Michigan has the nation’s highest unemployment rate, that the state’s largest industry is in major trouble, and that General Motors may go bankrupt.
You may even have known that the state is facing enormous budget deficits.
But now for the really bad news.
Michigan is falling apart.
The infrastructure, that is; the roads and bridges and dams and water systems.
Though it was virtually ignored by the state’s media, the American Society of Civil Engineers’ Michigan chapter released a report Tuesday.
http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090515/COLUMNIST17/905150331/-1/NEWS14
Also see:
“Consumer confidence rose in early May as consumers became increasingly convinced that the economy is in its final stages of contraction, and paradoxically, that their personal finances would remain dismal and keep their spending at reduced levels for the foreseeable future,” the Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers said in a statement.
Telephone interviews are conducted with a national probability sample of approximately 500 individuals each month. In addition to 30 core questions, each monthly survey includes special question modules designed to assess public attitudes about a wide range of topics, including the use of investment accounts, mortgages, credit cards and other types of debt, and the public’s understanding of the risks of the various accounts, tax policy, labor force decisions, and organ donations, to name just a few recent topics. Special question modules have also addressed issues in survey methodology, including response rates, the effects of question order, and comparisons of telephone versus internet survey results.
“Michigan is falling apart.
The infrastructure, that is; the roads and bridges and dams and water systems.”
This is right on target. I live in Ann Arbor. I was absolutely amazed on a recent trip to see how bad things are getting. I went north on US-23, which is a controlled access expressway here. On the stretch from I-96 to M-59, about 8 miles, almost the entire right lane was pretty much unusable. There were even temporary signs saying “Rough Pavement” or some such. No one was using that lane; it was too bombed out. I didn’t go any farther north, so it may have continued.
However, at the same time, we’re building extra lanes to nowhere west of Ann Arbor. The politically influential township has created plans from the housing bubble era to put in a four-lane boulevard. Except that the bubble has burst, and now they’re continuing to convert the low-volume two lane road to a four-lane boulevard for miles to make room for sprawl that won’t happen for decades. It might not be needed, but it’s shovel-ready!
Could the Penguin brooding article be the basis of evolution? Say the Skua chick was closer in biology to the penguin and grew to adult size. And if it were able to mate with a penguin, would could happen if the skua was familiar with the social customs, you would have a hybrid species. This hybrid may thrive or die off, but the catalyst could simple be adoption of close or random species and eventual reproduction. Interesting.
Gosh…do you think that maybe…just maybe…the word “happiness” has no primary connotation and means different things to different people?
Assuming your answer is “Yes”..which we both know it is…do you think, then, that such studies about words with malleable connotations are apt to be self-serving and spurious?
And here you are prattling about “virtuous circles resulting in the greater happiness”..
Nothing could possibly be more “self-serving and spurious” than the meaningless GDP measure, which is the epitome of measuring the “price of everything and the value of nothing”, and nothing could “prattle” more than the kind of gutter mercenary who espouses it.
Compared to that, even the most utopian measure of “happiness” would grab with Aristotelian logical rigor.
Perhaps no attempt to rigorously measure happiness has yet succeeded, but at least the attempt is heading in the right direction.
I, of course, was simply referring to a normal baseline sense of well-being and contentment, which is indisputably in short supply in America (thus the omnipresent materialism, greed, and anger), while Scandinavia reports a high level of it.
I suppose you’re going to say you’re perfectly “happy” as a rigged-market fundamentalist, but you sure don’t sound happy. My experience is that trolls who go around personally insulting people online are angry little twerps who can’t even be happy when their side is winning, as yours has been for way too long.
Or are you worried that the tide is turning?
Attempter:
What does the meaningless GDP measure have to do with the fact that OECD’s study is garbage?
Then you write:
“Perhaps no attempt to rigorously measure happiness has yet succeeded, but at least the attempt is heading in the right direction.”
That’s absurd: You don’t even know what the “attempt” is? How do you know what direction it’s headed in?
Was what I wrote in the first post really that insulting to you?
I suppose I could have used a different word than “prattle”. But you have to admit: You were prattling just a bit….
And OK, the idea that you should move your Hobbseian flourish to the center might have been borderline uncalled for…But really–Was it that bad that you had to go all “angry little twerp” on me?
Since you are so touchy…and since you had to resort to name calling, I will now proceed to get my money’s worth.
Dear Attempter
Your moniker certainly pre-explains your prose:
“…even the most utopian measure of “happiness” would grab with Aristotelian logical rigor….”
As in:
“Hi, My name is Attempter. Today I shall attempt to appear seriously intellectual.”
You done did good you little Leviathan, you!
http://www.edge.org/
Eric Weinstein set the stage with a statement on his talk, which began the proceedings:
An unexpected economic crisis provides an excellent opportunity to better understand the state of Economic theory as a science. While there appears to have been a broad systemic failure within the community of professional economists to predict the current collapse, it must be noted that there have been scattered successes which appear striking and demand our attention.