If you are down under, pet a roo for me today!
Partnered in the struggle for a place to call home Boston Globe
Here comes the new cell phone etiquette ComputerWorld
Consequences of the Mass. Election Bruce Krasting
Fallout Is Wide in Failed Deal for Stuyvesant Town New York Times
Funding Public Health Care With a Publicly Owned Bank: How Canada Did It Ellen Brown, Huffington Post (hat tip reader joebhed)
How to bypass populism and tackle banking Arthur Levitt, Financial Times. I hate the title (so populism is now dirty word?) but the substance is solid.
Wall Street Journal Questions Bernanke’s Credibility and Political Will Mike Shedlock
This Is Such a Disaster in the Making II Brad DeLong On Obama’s lastest “all hat, no cattle” move, his budget freeze that includes very little of the Federal budget. Is Obama constitutionally incapable of doing anything that lives up to its billing?
Dustbin of History Looking Increasingly Attractive to the Obama Administration Tim Bozzo Angry Bear
The Democrat’s Circular Firing Squad Set To Go Into Hyper-Mode After News Of Obama’s Spending Freeze Clusterstock
“Greek crisis over” Eurointelligence
The Press Angle of the Fed’s Backdoor-Bailout Cover-up Columbia Journalism Review
Antidote du jour. From Bill R, who writes:
This is “T,” short for Tyler. He is a rescue Norwegian Elkhound. We got him from the owner through the Elkhound Rescue Association. He is the smartest we have ever owned.
T and I have walked hunderds of miles together while I am out of work (2+ years) in Michigan. I sometimes have him run with me. When I had pneumonia, he would crawl up on top of me and lay on me as while I was under 4 blankets from being cold. He is a rescue Elk Hound, 3 years old in this picture, and a source of comfort. This is the 3rd Elkhound I have owned since 1977. Great family dogs, great with kids and women, and they love the snow and cold weather.
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Yves,
What a lovely antidote! The antidote du jour always is my first stop on Naked Cap; I especially love to read the sometimes-included stories;
Thank you Bill R for sharing your Norwegian Elkhound with us
Tim in Sugar Hill
I am a sucker for all the antidotes, but I particularly liked this one too!
welcome.
Bruce Krasting is convinced that the Mass. election brings a close to the bailout nation and the public now wants an end to D.C. handing out billions of wasted dollars; I doubt it!
Won’t see the Congress rushing to enact any War Taxes or cut out the various taxpayer RE tax breaks not to mention the SBA, AG,eduction,Defense well its a very long list and no the public is not interested in ending the free ride.
Bruce Krasting is convinced that any issue with the bond market and/or Wall Street should be bought and paid for by Main Street. He appears to have great difficulty in explaining, by himself, how his contentions are solid and why SS and other assorted programs should be cut to save the bond market.
Maggie Mahar has a two part article on the impact of the last MA election here: http://www.healthbeatblog.com/2010/01/in-the-wake-of-the-mass-massacrebipartisan-reform-or-the-senate-bill.html In the Wake of the MA Massacre and here: http://www.healthbeatblog.com/2010/01/who-voted-for-brown-in-massachusettsand-why-voters-cannot-oppose-legislation-if-they-dont-understand-it.html Who Voted for Brown.
She adds perspective to the healthcare argument and details what the vote was really about in MA.
I’ll be darned if I’ll sign up at HuffPo to comment on complete economic illiteracy like that Ellen Brown mash, so please let me have my say here.
The overall thrust is that, hey, the central bank can just print the money to pay for universal health care. Yes, they could, but the cost would be inflation. Ellen Brown is being facile when she writes, “Contrary to popular belief, adding to the money supply in this way would not be inflationary. Inflation results when “demand” (“money”) exceeds “supply” (goods and services). In this case the new money would be used to create new goods and services, so supply would be kept in balance with demand.”
This is patent nonsense. The feds printing money did not create hospitals or doctors or nurses or pharma from thin air in Canada, and could not do so in the US either.
I note also her baloney conspiracy theory that the 1970s inflation in Canada arose from some Kissinger finagling and then Ottawa starting to borrow instead of print, the end result being that health spending is now being starved in order to pay interest to banksters. Interest on the public debt is now the single largest federal expenditure, according to Brown.
Well, it ain’t. Ottawa spends about $30bn a year on debt service. Meanwhile it ships $35bn a year to seniors, another $35bn a year to the provinces for health spending (in Canada, a provincial responsibility, so WTF is going on there?), and blows $100bn on “direct program spending” (translated: the salaries and benefits of federal public servants).
“► Dustbin of History Looking Increasingly Attractive to the Obama Administration” Tim Bozzo Angry Bear
and
► “The Democrat’s Circular Firing Squad Set To Go Into Hyper-Mode After News Of Obama’s Spending Freeze” Clusterstock
This may be stating the obvious for most NC readers, but there is empirical evidence that substantial cognitive dissonance exists within the ranks of the deficit hawks. When it comes to redistributive spending, they are indeed deficit hawks. But when it comes to defense spending, they can be downright prodigal:
According to this tax-cost hypothesis, if beliefs that income is caused by factors under individual control decrease demand for redistribution, then they should decrease demand for other kinds of tax-funded expenditures (including defense spending) as well. But there is no evidence that tax cost concerns adversely affect the demand for public expenditures. Using the 1990 General Social Survey, we estimate ordered probit regressions predicting support for spending on welfare, national defense, halting the rising crime rate, and dealing with drug addiction, respectively. The independent variables are beliefs that the poor are poor because of lack of effort, and five demographic variables (income, education, race, sex, and age). In the samples reported above the belief that the lack of effort causes poverty has a highly significant negative effect on support for redistribution. However, these same beliefs have no effect on support for spending on crime or drug addiction, and they have a significant positive effect on support for spending on defense.
–Herbert Gintis et al, Moral Sentiments and Material Interests
Yves, I was dismayed that you endorsed Levitt’s article. It may have good ideas but what about TODAY ? TODAY we are being strangled by the TBTF sitting on all our money . This situation has been strangling us for 2 years.. we dont need Congress to set up a resolution authority; we need them to chop up at least Citigroup and BofA today, Now, not in some indefinite 2011-2013 timeframe.. Where has all the discussion of the TOXIC JUNK strangling them and therefore Us gone ? I thought you were of the mind that this is an Insolvency Crisis and if so then it demands immediate action. The everyday economy here in Springfield Missouri needs the TBTF at least Cit and bankAmerica to be killed Post-Haste. We need that liquidity that they are sitting on. I am confused by this lengthy Berananke discussion..Get rid of him or not, big deal…What about the place of residence of all that liquidity, in the Dead Zone of the TBTF scumbuckets or will we get that liquidity out into the General Economy ?
I don’t know what to make of this BBG story, but your readers may be interested.
Banks Reviving Synthetic Bets as Volcker Blasts Default Swaps
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aCb6JDT0sOWc&pos=10
cell phone radiation causes brain tumors:
http://www.gq.com/cars-gear/gear-and-gadgets/201002/warning-cell-phone-radiation?printable=true
But even more interesting:
“Frey says his work on radar microwaves and the blood-brain barrier soon came under assault from the government. Scientists hired and funded by the Pentagon claimed they’d failed to replicate his findings, yet they also refused to share the data or methodology behind their research (“a most unusual action in science,” Frey wrote at the time). For more than fifteen years, Frey had received almost unrestricted funding from the Office of Naval Research. Now he was told to conceal his blood-brain-barrier work or his contract would be canceled.”
I am sorry for posting this but it is better that we know:
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2010/1/26/1264512401786/Caged-cats-after-being-re-001.jpg
Chinese legal experts call for ban on eating cats and dogs
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/26/dog-meat-china
James:
After eating snake, turtle, grasshoppers, etc. in China; dog would not be so bad. Not into monkey brains though. You need to travel.
yves:
Thank you. Did you attend William P. Gray?
Nope.