Hubble spots a planet-eating star BBC
Second Iceland volcano could erupt in near future: experts PhysOrg
Apple is world’s biggest tech company by value Financial Times
BP Used Riskier Method to Seal Oil Well Before Blast New York Times
BP Deepwater Horizon operations were six weeks behind schedule, documents say NOLA
Unusual Decisions Set Stage for BP Disaster Wall Street Journal. A detailed account
Oil spill may reach Bahamas by weekend Nassau Guardian (hat tip reader John D)
Obama Skips Presidential Visit to Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day Jesse. I assume the logic is that dead soldiers don’t vote.
Sending Troops to the Border Won’t Bring Conservative Support jamellebouie
Barnier in call for Europe-wide bank tax and bailout fund Independent
US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner calls for European action as EU is divided over bank reforms Telegraph (hat tip reader Swedish Lex)
Kraft rebuked for broken pledge over Cadbury factory Guardian
“The Economics of Immigration Are Not What You Think” Mark Thoma
Fiscal policy worked – evidence billy blog
US money supply plunges at 1930s pace as Obama eyes fresh stimulus Telegraph
Antidote du jour:
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When I heard that Obama wasn’t going to Arlington National Cemetery for Memorial Day, the first explanation that popped into my head was that Michelle is only proud of Americans who voted for her husband, and she got to choose where they would spend the weekend.
This is a hard, cold slap in the face.
Obama keeps digging his hole deeper, violating the first rule of holes – when in one, stop digging! Whew…
Actually, I eat crow and walk back my criticism. I was under the impression he was blowing it off entirely. But he’ll be vacationing in Chicago, and attending a ceremony at a military cemetery outside Chicago. That works.
Still, the guy’s an astute politician – I’d have thought he’d be a little less tone deaf….
Pretty quick on the draw to condemn Obama, compared to the slack given to GW Bush to start his continuing wars, which still send many daily to their graves.
Some people still care about Iraq- but not the US news media, who no longer report about the wars,.
Who needs an informed public?
Not the US Military,judging from the non-reporting of the Wars.
http://warnewstoday.blogspot.com/
What’s that? Another year gone already? time to buy another wreath…
In a time of peace it *might* be acceptable to drop by the local military cemetery while on vacation.
However, the US is still fighting two wars, one in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. Obama is a war time president, and that made it shockingly tone deaf.
W did indeed start the wars, and I was critical of that at the time. But at this stage in his term of office, with so many promises broken, Obama owns them both. He is no longer running for office, he is the commander-in-chief.
The story here is the amazing insensitivity to the American people by the one who was held up as the man of the people, the reformer, versus the man of business and the powerful, his predecessor.
The real story is the lack of difference, despite the knee jerk defenses from both sides of the aisles for ‘their guy.’
“In a time of peace it *might* be acceptable to drop by the local military cemetery while on vacation.”
Lincoln is a national cemetery.
“The story here is the amazing insensitivity to the American people”
No it isn’t. The story is about people searching for a reason to be offended. It’s about people using Memorial Day not as a day to honor the dead, but as a cheap political weapon. there is amazing insensitivity here, but it is not on the part of Obama.
Well, between you and Jesse, I, for one, do not know what to believe on this subject… But, thanks for the perspectives.
I think the November elections will show that the people of the US are increasingly dissatisfied in the extreme by the incumbents by both of their parties.
So why debate it? Get out and vote your choices.
But when the shocks continue to come in the results and the polls, then even the most hard core supporters, right and left, will come to realize the truth.
I agree with Jesse…There is not a nickle’s worth of difference between the two parties. They are both bought and paid for by Wall St.
Bush should have been hung for his disrespect of the Constitution, which was nothing if not treason.
…and Obama, ‘Change we can believe in’? Where?…Oh, wait…Illinois is bankrupt and that is change…and since bankruptcy is a function of math we can certainly believe in it!
Re Troops to the Border:
For anyone who still tries to parse the proportion of corporate ideology to flat out stupidity and cowardice in Obama’s make-up, here it seems we have a clear example of the latter.
So far as I can see, it doesn’t help any of his favored rackets. Rather, it’s once again trying to appease right-wing sentiment, something this idiot should have known was hopeless right from the start, but which he’s insisted on trying many times, failing every time. So he’s not just evil, but incompetent and stupid.
Re Arlington:
Since his great hero is Reagan, I guess he’d feel more comfortable visiting Bitberg.
attempter, your comment is divorced from reality.
Obama is not trying to appease “right wing” sentiment. He is bowing to the overwhelming will of the American people.
“A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey indicates that nearly nine out of ten Americans want to beef up U.S. law enforcement along the border with Mexico.” http://tinyurl.com/38ujrcl
I believe this is mostly for show. But nevertheless, Obama had to do something to *appear* concerned. From the same CNN page: “Forty-one percent of people questioned in the survey say all illegal immigrants currently in the country should be removed, up 15 points from 2008.” That’s not just the right wing! “…three-quarters say that the number of illegal immigrants should be reduced.”
This is broad middle-of-the-road American opinion. Enforce the border, get the illegals out.
Nobody other than on the hard right would make this a major part of his voting decision, and none of them are ever going to vote for this clown no matter what he does.
And to do this right smack dab in the middle of the flap over the show-your-papers law (I thought libertarians hate the idea of “papers” – they just never can get their story straight, can they?) reeks of appeasement.
What happened to the Posse Comitatus Act of 1868 and the Stafford Act?
http://www.semp.us/publications/biot_reader.php?BiotID=268
It’s amazing how quickly the libertarians toss their hallowed liberties, freedoms and the-rule-of-law to the wind when those aren’t being used to protect the rich and powerful.
libertarian = 24ct hypocrite
Agree. Most libertarians I’ve ever known were just intellectual Republicans. Meaning, generally, no imaginary friend.
and 10 out of 10 people want security beefed up around elementary schools.
also, 10 out of 10 people want their cake and eat it, too.
Just curious – if the “right-wing sentiment” is that countries have the right to control their borders, what is the “left-wing sentiment” on that?
If I took my American passport and just snuck into any country I wanted to without obtaining that country’s permission, in every case, I’d be deported – and in many cases, I’d be jailed.
When they jail me, should I scream at them about how racist they are? Will the “left-wing” organize a rally for me?
Your questions are foolish.
What do you think?
I understand that many Americans now have to carry their passport with them at all times, to avoid being arrested in Arizona for not having their “papers inorder”.
“Your papers please”….sound familiar?
Left wing familiar, or Nazi familiar?
Good point, which is exactly why we need proper enforcement of existing federal labor and immigration law. Failing to address a problem all too often leads people to seek more extreme solutions.
Left wing familiar, or Nazi familiar?
Well I don’t know about those, but it’s certainly apartheid familiar:
In August of 1906, the Transvaal Legislature announced a so-called Asiatic Law Amendment Ordinance. Its main provision required all Indians above the age of eight to be registered with ten fingerprints and to carry a residency permit thereafter, on pain of fine, prison, or deportation.
–Jonathan Schell, The Unconquerable World
Yeah butt. This is what happens when a serious problem (illegal immigration) is ignored. If we had a functional democratic process perhaps the problem of border control would have been solved 30 years ago. But now, the extreme position is the only “solution”.
It’s the same with all problems in the US. There’s no sane middle-ground. Just pissed-off people wanting fixes for problem that were decades in the making.
There’s no right and left wing, there’s people who know the facts and there’s ignoramuses.
(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each State.
(2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.
UDHR Article 13. It’s customary international law binding on all nations. Suck on it.
Exactly who complained about either of those points?
Your ruling regime of Bircher crackers had to crawl for the Human Rights Committee in Geneva, babbling and stammering and trying to explain that they really, really do comply with the treaties they signed, supreme law of their land. And this year it happens all over again, your ruling regime of Bircher crackers and a token black guy will crawl for the Human Rights Council, eating shit and babbling and swearing that they really, really do comply with their own solemn pledge on migrants’ rights, and then the experts are going to skewer them and embarrass them and make them look like fools, point by point. You can watch the live feed, it’s gonna be a blast. Watch your precious american citizenship become a stigma, a class marker like NASCAR or obesity.
You are right about there being no “Left and Right”. There’s authority worship and authority distrusting component of human behavior (vertical axis) and an inclusive of outsiders and excluding of outsiders component of human behavior (horizontal axis). What is commonly called left (socialist) and right (fascist) is simply the upper two quadrants of authority worshipers (who, btw, hate each other’s authority). The true Libertarians and old-school liberals distrust authority, and are in the bottom two quadrants. This group has very few members.
Jessy has a circular diagram showing roughly the same thing. Personally I like the grid diagram, but Jessy’s shows the absolute truism that at the top (the most authority worshipping extreme) there’s no difference between the left and right.
Most dumbass peasants worship authority which is why we have a disfunctional two-Party state run by morons; the peasant’s brains can comprehend no other form of government.
Only an idiot would think this can possibly help “control the borders”. It’s pure theater. (Very expensive and proto-tyrannical theater at that. Again, what’s with these “libertarians”? I thought they hate wasting public money. And I thought they don’t like having troops gallivanting around the domestic countryside. I sure don’t.)
Of course anyone who wants to control the borders would start by getting rid of NAFTA.
NAFTA enabled American corporations to move into Mexico and undercut its small business owners, especially its small farmers, leading to massive unemployment throughout Mexico. So NAFTA deserves most of the blame for our immigration problem. Free trade agreements, such as the one we have with Mexico and Canada, only work with minimal disruption between bordering countries whose wage rates for workers are roughly equivalent to each other. This is why our free trade agreement with Canada didn’t lead to a flood of illegal immigrants coming across our northern border.
NAFTA enabled American corporations to move into Mexico and undercut its small business owners, especially its small farmers…
Don’t forget those massive subsidies the US government lavishes on US farmers, which gives them one hell of a competitive advantage.
If you didn’t already know, the growth in the underground economy far outstrips the growth in the economy that’s above ground. In fact, if you had all your riches tied up in the underground economy, you’d be richer than all the vampire squids on Wall Street combined!
This is why I think that we should legalize all illegal activities which are classified as victimless crimes — such as the use of illegal immigrants in the workplace, adult drug use, and prostitution between consenting adults. Then the US would be able to collect taxes on these activities, enabling us to fund our growing demand for public services and facilities. And if we delay in doing this, our nation will soon become so hollowed out that it too will become a victim of very wealthy and powerful criminals in the underground economy that lack any ties, much less any loyalties, to any nation on earth.
Nils Gilman goes into much greater detail about the enormous rise of the underground economy and how it’s hollowing out nations across the globe:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3173247273890946684#
And if we delay in doing this, our nation will soon become so hollowed out that it too will become a victim of very wealthy and powerful criminals in the underground economy that lack any ties, much less any loyalties, to any nation on earth.
Ah no. American exceptionalism will prevent that from happening. Those kinds of things only happen in Banana Republics like Mexico.
It’s the attempt to control the borders that matter. If you don’t have borders you don’t have a country.
I like to show my passport much better than my driver’s license.
A driver’s license biases against children who can’t have them. A driver’s license pre-supposes you own a car or have a desire to drive one, or presumed that, before the arrival of electric car, you were a significant greenhouse gas-emitter.
If Big Brother imposes that we all have a walker’s license, instead of driver’s license, regardless of age, and that means it’s required even for infant crawlers (sorry nor crawler’s license), I will at least consider that as a fairer replacement.
A passport can be obtained by any citizen of any country. There is no age discrimination. And it doesn’t have the hideous sumbliminal brainwashing by the automobile-petroleum iundustiral complex.
Since Mexico, at the insistence of and with the full complicity of the United States government, has been turned into a Libertarian-Austrian-Neoliberal hellhole, I consider the undocumented immigrants in some ways to be like civil disobedients:
And I submit that the individual who disobeys the law, whose conscience tells him it is unjust and who is willing to accept the penalty by staying in jail until that law is altered, is expressing at the moment the very highest respect for law.
–Martin Luther King, Jr., “Love, Law and Civil Disobedience,” New South, December 1961
So, DownSouth, if you agree with MLK’s words then you are saying than anyone who enters this country illegally (and by so doing is commiting and act of civil disobedience) should be willingly jailed.
Gee, and some people are getting outraged that some of them might only be returned back to their country if the’re caught!
Man, you are one HARSH dude! :-)
“Billy Blog Alternative Economic Thinking”
No name at the top of an article is reason enough to discount the content…In this case the author has declared a win for fiscal response to the train wreck in progress at mid melt down. The article contains so much cherry picked data that it would take me all day to destroy it and, frankly, it is not worth my time and effort.
One of the responders to the article at the site (Benedict@Large) points out that the backing for the Billy Blog ‘research’ comes from Mercatus Center (George Mason U.), where Wendy Gramm is now in residence after her gig at Enron went away. While at the CFTC Wendy horsed thru an administrative ruling preventing her commission from regulating derivatives and her husband Phil got her ruling on derivatives set into law a few years later.
After her CFTC job went away Wendy was out of work, and when you’ve been a good little Republican operative and served the ideology well, there is always another (good) job waiting for you. And so it was with Wendy, who promptly accepted an appointment to the BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF ENRON. In fact, Wendy was placed on the Audit Committee of the Board, where she was responsible for approving Enron’s accounting practices for the next nine or so years until Enron imploded because of (you guessed it!) derivatives. (Phil of course by this time had moved on to a Vice Chairmanship at UBS, something that UBS no longer makes any noise about since they were caught pilfering US taxes for 3,000 of their clients.)
By this time, Wendy’s paycheck from Enron had totaled up nicely. Estimates vary, but $12 million is probably real close. Trouble was, Wendy had now been named in a shareholder lawsuit seeking damages for Enron’s implosion. The specific details of the subsequent settlement are sketchy, but 16 board members actually paid into a damage pool, and their average payments were $12 million each. So it’s quite possible that Wendy worked for Enron all of those years for absolutely nothing. Which is probably what she deserved.
It is always a good idea to check out the sources of funding behind blogs…Often the same names crop up again and again. Good luck Wendy and I hope you are satisfied with the results of your valiant efforts to block regulation of derivatives.
A very heart felt thank you to Benedict@Large for his/her efforts to expose the institutions and people behind the article.
That’s quite a misreading of both the article and the comment that in no way refers to the writer of the article but to Tyler Cowen’s anti-stimulus argument against the article’s position in favor of stimulus and quotes him as follows:
“Cowen went onto attack pro-stimulus economists:
‘Writing polemics against market-oriented economists, …’
Well I wonder what Cowen calls the Post World War II period up until the mid-1970s?”
“Well I wonder what Cowen calls the Post World War II period up until the mid-1970s?”
The post WW2 period up until the mid 70s was dominated by US manufacturing because the manufacturing capacity of most of the remainder of the world was a pile of bombed out rubble and our competitors were in the process of rebuilding capacity. Fiscal policy would have worked almost totally irrespective of what it consisted of.
“What about substance, rather than personality, as a basis for discussions of policy?”
As I pointed out, there is no substance to discuss…the article is total bs. The most interesting part of the article was where it originated and that is also what I pointed out. Do you believe that the current fiscal policy has accomplished anything? If so, you are delusional and spend too much time watching the bobble heads on tv, cheerleading for the latest fiscal/monetary idiocy.
“Yeah, way to smear Bill Blog.
Idiot.”
If Billy Blog wants to avoid smearing then they should refrain from publishing garbage generated by an outfit that employs Wendy Gramm.
You are all idiots for sticking up for fiscal folly…Which you will find out soon enough in the real world economic collapse…not in the virtual blogsphere world of make believe.
The Economist news magazine does not attribute its news articles either: so no person to attack with ad hominem arguments, like yours.
What about substance, rather than personality, as a basis for discussions of policy?
Yeah, way to smear Bill Blog.
Idiot.
I enjotythese ad hominem attacks.
If they are not from the right, they are often from righties disguised as lefties –
ANYTHING to avoid a discussion of substance and policy.
It’s all about personality, not issues, eh?
That too seems tailor-made for dictatorship.
You want substance? Here is substance that Billy Blog does not want published:
“Evans-Pritchard (Telegraph) quotes Tim Congdon of International Monetary Research”: “The plunge in M3 has no precedent since the Great Depression. The dominant reason for this is that regulators across the world are pressing banks to raise capital asset ratios and to shrink their risk assets. This is why the US is not recovering properly. FISCAL POLICY DOES NOT WORK (caps mine). The US has just tried the biggest fiscal experiment in history and it has failed. What matters is the quantity of money and in extremis that can be increased easily by quantitative easing. If the Fed doesn’t act, a double-dip recession is a virtual certainty.”
That does not prove it failed. That does not prove that any other policy would have worked better.
All that “substance” proves is that it didn’t work as well as some people wished it to have.
the name is Bill Mitchell.
To Anonymous Jones…
“That does not prove it failed. That does not prove that any other policy would have worked better.
All that “substance” proves is that it didn’t work as well as some people wished it to have.”
You have completely missed the point; Billy Blog’s article is claiming total success for the fiscal policy employed since the current debacle began. The truth is that for every dollar spent by US fiscal policy decision the GDP increase has been 20 cents. If you claim fiscal policy success with a losing dollar ratio of 5:1, at what point would you declare a fiscal policy a failure? If the damned government spent a dollar and got no GDP increase at all, would you classify that as fiscal policy failure? Well, I got news for you…When the fight to stop deflation is lost by the Fed you will see NEGATIVE GDP growth per dollar of fiscal policy funds misallocation…and make no mistake, all that fiscal policy has accomplished so far is misallocation of taxpayer money. Of course, the fraudsters on Wall St have a different point of view…They have made out like bandits on the taxpayers dollars via DC fiscal policy.
That there is any debate on ‘rule of law’ amazes me. I don’t follow the illegal immigration debate for that reason.
American people are such patsies, or their media is for Orwellian and politically correct speech that every pressure group and cause has its own propaganda machine.
There is no argument to justify 20,000,000 + people illegally in any country under any form of government. And it doesn’t occur except in time of war. Ergo, the only conclusion is that the American government authorities are at war with the American people causing conflict among them or no intelligent debate permitted.
Lou Dobbs was finally driven off TV. He was right, not in every detail, but right to defend the American people against a peaceful invasion encouraged by authorities that keeps wages down for our own underemployed and unskilled without regard for harm done to the American people or the people here working without legal protection.
So, the debate against debate employs personal insults and slurs such as racist and anti immigrant. There is no debate.
America is a nation of immigrants.
Anti-immigrant = anti-American, in the most real sense..
Preparing the populace for war.
Pro birth control = anti-child.
The planet is a planet of humans. At what point do we stop breeding.
Does population control = anti human?
Your argument for ever increasing population in the US is like the perpetual growth arguments. At some point less is good too.
TV?
Are they still making that crap?
Free movement of capital = to be applauded and encouraged
Free movement of people = crime to punish severely, using deadly force
Hmmmmm
Agreed. Time to do something about that free movement of capital.
I like to exchange inanimate objectss with my neighbors, but not living things, not even cats or dogs.
“Lou Dobbs was finally driven off TV. He was right, not in every detail, but right to defend the American people against a peaceful invasion encouraged by authorities that keeps wages down for our own underemployed and unskilled without regard for harm done to the American people or the people here working without legal protection.”
You are ticked that the Mexicans are reclaiming the lands that were stolen from them by the US? Why don’t you devote a little time to the study of history prior to airing your ignorance?
It’s a very convenient way for the socialist wing of the Republicrat Party to keep its dumbasses pissed off (and voting for the Party bosses).
If the peasants ever realized that the ONLY issue that matters is who control the loot both Parties would collapse. Note, there’s no danger of this happening as the fascist wing of the Republicrat Party as fornicating-harlots and “those people” to keep their dumbasses on edge. The socialist wing of the Republicrat Party has “the poor” and global warming.
Unsolvable problems recycled for years and years. Peasants are dumbasses, no way `round it.
Unfortunately you are right. Most of the fools think they are watching a freakin football game; reds vs blues, and when it is over they will go home…fat, dumb, and more or less happy.
Meanwhile the theives in DC (both reds and blues) and Wall St are robbing them blind.
“Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.”
John Kenneth Galbraith
Sending twelve hundred troops to the “border” is not going to make a difference. Today the border is meaningless. We should be sending tens of thousands of troops south to a point where a meaningful border can be established.
Attack!!
Have you tried to cross that “meaningless border” recently?
I have. I used my two feet and proper identification. Pretty easy really. Judging by the numbers the proper identification part is optional.
jDid they let you start a business while you were Mexico, hire a crew of local Mexican teenage women to stand at your grocery’s counter to work bagging groceries for no pay and tips?
Associated Foods in New York City did that for years.
Sending troops to the border is political theater. Unless Pancho Villa returns this is a law enforcement issue, not a military one. Let the border patrol take care of it. Troops are not trained, equipped or organized for it. You don’t need Apache helicopters or Abrams tanks to intercept somebody walking through the desert. Nor will they use them. Judging by what was done in the past the troops won’t, probably can’t, and certainly shouldn’t do much more than hang out there.
I’m strongly opposed to our de facto tolerance of illegal aliens, but this theater won’t help. The key is enforcement of employment law. I was heartened when they enforced the law against 2000 illegal aliens working at American Apparel, but since then haven’t heard much about serious employment law enforcement. The theater continues. Act II will be after intermission.
Granting US citizenship to illegals would be a great way to expand the tax base in America, thereby providing us with the necessary funds to pay for better public services and facilities for all Americans. As it now stands, the only people who benefit by keeping illegals illegal are wealthy individuals and corporations who hire them to do work at below market wages. And they sure as hell will never provide them with health and retirement benefits. So whenever any of our hard-working illegals ever get hurt on the job or ever get sick for whatever reason, we the taxpayers get stuck with their health-care bills. This is just another example of the wealthy in America having the best of socialism and capitalism all rolled into one, enabling them to get away with privatizing their profits, while socializing their losses.
As it now stands, the only people who benefit by keeping illegals illegal are wealthy individuals and corporations who hire them to do work at below market wages.
Cynthia,
It’s always been that way:
There was no question among Anglo settlers in South Texas that a major asset of the region consisted of its cheap labor pool. Agribusinessmen, their chamber of commerce, and local county newspapers constantly emphasized this great advantage of the area. One land prospectus in the Winter Garden region, for example, pushed the “sell” in a succinct statement: “The cheapest farm labor in the United States is to be had in this section.” Newspapers like the “Galveston News” and the “Corpus Christi Caller” likewise invited prospective agribusinessmen and industrialists to invest in South Texas, citing the presence of ample cheap labor. So cheap was Mexican labor, in fact, that the introduction of mechanization on commercial farms was effectively retarded by the higher costs and less profitable returns from machines. The degree to which these wages were depressed surfaces clearly when the Mexican wage scale in Texas is compared with those in neighboring states. According to the information compiled in a 1926-1927 study of Mexicans in the United States, the average wage of Mexican laborers working cotton in the southern and southwestern states was lowest in Texas. A Mexican picker working Texas cotton received a daily wage of $1.75. In Arizona the Mexican cotton picker received $2.75; in California, $3.25; in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, $4.00.
There was, of course, a sharp distinction between “white wages” and “Mexican wages.”
–David Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836-1986
Bloomberg reporting that the LA Times is reporting that Admiral Thad Allen is reporting that BP is reporting that the top kill worked.
If true, Hooray!
NOW the criticism REALLY starts…
Yeah, like why in the hell did they wait so long!
I apologize but I am going back a few days to an Antidote du jour — Scott’s cat D’Artagnan.
I loved the picture of the cat, but it raised some questions where it was taken. My bet was the Blue Ridge Mountains. Does anyone know. Beautiful area.
Sorry about the questions but a number of people who I sent the picture to have asked me.
I agree with Alex. Sending 1200 Guardsmen to the border is political theater. Do the math. How many of these are support? How many would actually be boots on the border? They have to eat and sleep like the rest of us. So how many shifts for how many hours would they be running? How long would they be deployed? You know they have jobs, hopefully, that they won’t be at. How will that affect them, their employers, their families? Again run the numbers. Look at cost vs efficacy. It’s theater.
There is a lot of anti-immigrant feeling in the country. Pols in Arizona are seeking to capitalize on it. So is the right-leaning Obama Administration. Of course, it’s unclear if those who are so upset by illegals would really be up for paying the higher costs for their groceries (harvesting fruits and vegetables and meatpacking), restaurant meals (cooks and staff), motel stays (housekeeping), construction, and maid and lawnwork. This is the schizophrenia that has always characterized this subject. We want their work, just not them.
Taking a longer view, it is always very difficult to bet against demographics. You can draw a political line or border anywhere you want but it is unlikely that the Latino culture on either side of it will recognize. Still what goes largely unrecognized is that the best way to alleviate illegals looking for jobs in this country is to help create them at home. This means development funds for countries like Mexico, but this too is an unpopular subject. Finally, there is the demographic fact that we have around 12-15 million illegals in this country. Short of something approaching genocide removing most or all of them, forget the economic costs, is a physical impossibility. It is certainly something that a photo-op 1200 National Guardsmen deployment is not going to effect.
The Improbability of Life
So, you have the financial black hole created when the old families promoted agency to implement family law globally, cutting off access to the voltage presented by natural new family formation, which feeds small business in the food chain, increasing efficiency in the short-term to maximize relative revenue, through the protected labor (education/healthcare) agency nexus, which has a negative relationship with economic profit, hiding true costs with GDP, which places government in the numerator, adds consumption instead of subtracting it, and replaces real investment, which cannot be measured directly, with government supply-side demand, exponentially driving up false short-term revenue and hiding long-term costs, within artificial demographic acceleration, trying to stay ahead of exponential collapse, in an efficiency relativity circuit, of virtual expansion into a hidden derivative insurance market, carving out the long-term labor economy, and replacing it with economic slave ownership within geographic camps, through the exploitation of “illegal” immigrants, dependent H1B1s, and outsourcing, becoming increasingly dependent on efficiency, in order to hide from evolution, exactly what you would expect gravity to do.
For those who have not had a chance to connect the dots, below $65/barrel is the solvency trap. Above $65 is the liquidity trap, in which unprotected labor has been fully discharged within the efficiency relativity circuit, leaving only the protected labor conduit (fuse) into the center of the nucleus (bomb), for further liquidation. Agency must now break all internal promises, resulting in gravity turning in on itself, which is the behavior you are beginning to observe among the participants, which will increase along an exponential curve, as the container shrinks and the pressure increases. The walls are caving in, due to demographic backlash. The higher the price, the faster taxpayers are liquidated; the lower the price, the faster governments become insolvent. Either way, the cliff approaches. $65 is the inherent momentum of the system. The brake is shorted to the accelerator.
The voltage potentials add up to 0. The efficiency relativity circuit is balanced by the effectiveness relativity circuit, and the latter can step off the fulcrum at will. Whether you diffuse the bomb for them, or let it blow up, is up to you. A bridge to somewhere, instead of to nowhere, will be required, and gravity has absolutely no idea where it is going. It doesn’t have a steering wheel. Gravity is not personal; it just is.
Passive investors, represented by agency, whether they recognize it or not, are seeking to maximize return on no work. In order to be an active investor, individual investors must be able to affect corporate agency, in a feedback loop, which is ruled out by Graham’s closely held utility pyramid structure. The market is not allocating capital. The market is measuring how fast the passive investors are bankrupting themselves as a group, in both directions, to feed gravity. There is a time to feed gravity, a time to starve it, and a time to leave it alone.
The market is now a ward of the taxpayers, which must accelerate debt, in order to increase taxes, on themselves, being locked into spending by GDP, economic activity they can see, chasing money with debt, and getting exponentially farther behind everyday.
When you rule everything else out, what remains is the answer, no matter how improbable, plus the entire rest of the universe, which is full of improbabilities / demand yet to be solved / supplied, in a relative recursive open loop. The vortex is whatever you choose it to be. The fulcrum of fulcrums, the helix of helices, in the symbiotic relativity circuit, will balance, regardless of where you place the looking glass.
Choose … and learn, to have confidence in the unknowable, by doing … and watch out for turtles. They move very slowly when you are watching them, but very quickly when you are not, because they can ride the current, beyond the knowledge of gravity. Play with circuits, look at the economy. Play with circuits, look at the economy. The turtle carries the looking glass, which is why the rabbit has no idea where it is going, but expends a tremendous amount of energy getting there.
So, we’re talking and she says, “I’m paying $60 every three days to put gas in my truck (SUV); the price of gas is ridiculous.”
So now they have Hubble peeking at people playing pacman video games?
Hi Yves,
The Edge 319 edition has an interview of Emanuel Derman, the author of ‘My Life as a Quant’. Very mild in tone, but quite revealing. Since I couldn’t figure out how to contact you, I am sending this as a comment here. The only relevance is this also appeared on line today.
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge319.html
Unless I am just having a bad day, the article cited by Mark Thoma just does not compute.
No one reasonable disputes the fact that legal immigrants are a plus for this country. So quoting facts about this group seems so what.
It is the flood of illegal immigrants that has been flooding the US by way of the Mexican border
which is at issue here. So if one wants to show the economic advantages of this group please do so.
2.Arizona. It has been known since IIRC Heraclitus the Obscure that any action that goes too far to the extreme will cause an reaction in the opposite direction.
So one must look at Arizona’s actions within the larger scope of dreadful inaction on a national level for many years. It has brought the problem into a sharper focus then any other action in the past 20 years.
3.I am sorry that the high level of discussion this site had in the past is disappearing. Many responders seem to be as ill-informed as call-ins on Sports Radio.This seems true about the country of origin for the illegal Hispanics. Certainly many perhaps a third are from countries south of Mexico.In trying to check this out it quickly became appalling how poor data (at least that available on-line)is.
4 One thing not often mentioned is how unfair it is to the multitudes outside the Western hemisphere. Why should it be easier for say an Ecuadorian to become an illegal then it is for say a Philippino.
To be fair concessions for sections of our of our Southern border should be available for illegal immigration from other nations of the world.
Excuse me, but before everyone starts acting like fools over Obama “missing” Arlington (he is attending a similar service elsewhere), perhaps you all might check out the records of other recent Presidents of same. I know that Michael Savage said no one else has ever done this, but since when do we rely on Mr. Savage for historical accuracy?
Bush II missed several.
Clinton had a perfect record.
Bush I never made a single one of his four, attending a similar ceremony elsewhere once, and spending three in Kenneybunkport on vacation.
Reagan, everyone’s Mr. Perfect, missed four of his eight.
Don’t you all feel like fools now? You got chumped by Michael Savage.