Your Brain Can’t Handle the Moon Nautilus
Working Paper No. 529: Banks are not intermediaries of loanable funds – and why this matters Bank of England (furzy mouse).
A weighting game The Economist. Economic models and TPP.
Putting Economic Models in Their Place Brad DeLong, Project Syndicate
Manufacturing hub starts work on first zero-labor factory People’s Daily
The Sharing Economy Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond
Is Another Crisis Looming? Jacobin
Grexit?
Australia Issues Travel Advice on Banking for Greece Greek Reporter
Greek bank deposits hit decade low as bailout talks continue EU Observer
Panaritis appointed Greece’s IMF representative amid SYRIZA complaints Ekathimerini. Panaritis, former PASOK MP.
Greece open to compromise to seal deal this week: interior minister Reuters
Some blame EU Commission for Greek obstinacy in debt talks Ekathimerini
Greece, economy, bond purchases top agenda of ECB meet Agence France-Presse
German says no Greece breakthrough as US urges G7 to avoid economic ‘accident’ Australian Financial Review
Greek energy minister held gas pipeline talks in Moscow Reuters. Like clockwork, the pipeline stories.
Greek Energy min. Lafazanis: Greece Will Probably Submit Request to Participate in BRICS Bank Greek Reporter
Policies working, ECB must persist with purchase programs: Constancio Reuters
A View of Germany’s Economy from Die Linke, the Left Party In These Times
Towards a new municipal agenda in Spain? ROAR. With handy chart (and movie trailer).
Syraqistan
Report: At Least 4 Americans Held by Yemen’s Rebels AP
Assad Strikes Back Foreign Policy
Nepal’s Political Faultlines Crisis Group
Malaysia’s human traffickers adapt to survive – and are back in business Channel 4
Moody’s Sees Malaysia Soft Landing With 1MDB Pain Contained Bloomberg
Malaysians Seek Escape in Pulp Fiction as Government’s Grip Tightens NYT
FIFA
Blatter accuses US authorities and British press of campaign to topple him Guardian
FIFA Charges Instantly Earn Loretta Lynch Global Recognition NYT. Exactly like Eric Holder and the Big Banks. Oh, wait…
FIFA Scandal: Alleged Payments Suggest Link to Top Officials WSJ. Very useful to limit the definition of corruption to bribery.
FIFA Corruption Scandal: Follow The Money To Qatar Forbes
The FIFA corruption sideshow: Takedown of 1 percent crooks or strategic move against Putin? Salon
Arsenal crush Aston Villa to win FA Cup final 2015: as it happened Telegraph
Big Brother Is Watching You Watch
Rand Paul Vows to Force Expiration of Patriot Act National Journal
On Lindsey Graham’s Turf, Rand Paul Begins Patriot Act Endgame Bloomberg
Inside the Military-Police Center That Spies on Baltimore’s Rioters Gawker (furzy mouse). The headline is wrong — “protesters,” too, for starters — but it’s an interesting look inside a Fusion Center.
Patriot Act That Dennis Hastert Passed Led To His Indictment HuffPo
Dennis Hastert Fights To Locate, Save Neck The Onion (a classic).
Huge Pipeline Company Kinder Morgan Hired Off-Duty Cops to “Deter Protests” in Pennsylvania The Intercept
To Fill Budget Hole, Kansas G.O.P. Considers the Unthinkable: Raising Taxes NYT
Texas And Oklahoma Floods 2015: Flooded Properties In Central Texas Were Knowingly Built In Harm’s Way International Business Times
44% of Covered California customers report difficulty paying premiums Los Angeles Times
How Jessica Alba Built A $1 Billion Company, And $200 Million Fortune, Selling Parents Peace Of Mind Forbes
Behind the News, 11/20/14 Stitcher (Bob). Interview with Howie Hawkins on the Green Party starts at 24:40.
Class Warfare
Did a rich sports team owner jump the line for a liver transplant? Los Angeles Times
Medicine Hat becomes the first city in Canada to eliminate homelessness CBC
Google Is Hacking Our Clothes to Work Like Touchscreens Wired. I wish they’d put the smart people back on search, so it worked better.
Mysterious Earthen Rings Predate Amazon Rainforest Live Science
Inside the largest tribal gathering in the world: Amazing photos capture explosion of colour and feathers as thousands of tribespeople meet in Papua New Guinea Daily Mail. Bigger even than the Democratic and Republican national conventions!
The Myers-Briggs Personality Test Is Bunk But I Don’t Care Wired
Judith Miller’s Comeback Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
By Their Questions Shall You Know Them Medium
A flaw in the design WaPo. Internet security.
Finding the Original Source in a World of Aggregators, Shares, and Reposts Metabunk
Antidote du jour:
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
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I see The Onion re-designed their site. It takes about 10 times longer to load and doesn’t work on a desktop without a bunch of scrolling. Headlines and links that all fit on the front page now require four pages or more of scrolling. I won’t be clicking on Onion links anymore.
Aren’t there still a billion or so people using PCs?
I thought they were putting it on our clothes now, no? I’ve been examining my shirt buttons just in case; nothing yet…or at least nothing I can see.
they can monitor my underwear all they want; i’ve got nothing to hide.
The I-Hole and A-Hole(Android) mobile devices are so passé it’s surprising the Onion is designing for them at all. But it would be nice if they told us what part of the clothing they are targeting for web site display. Lord help us if it’s the pants zipper; the next Onion article will be: 300 million Americans incarcerated 5/31/2015 for lewd behavior. In unrelated story, web design for zippers only has been fully implemented since 5/30/2015
The I-Hole and A-Hole referring to the devices/inventors, lest there be any doubt.
Thanks for Bloomberg/Rand Paul link. I forgot to go see him at the locally famous greasy spoon but sounds like he is preaching the right sermon. Carly was also in town last week and said she would do for America what she did for HP (lay off everybody?). Quite the cockpit of history….
Against spying and for toxic “trade” deals; a gem with an incy wincy bitsy flaw.
antidote: …an we humans figure progress Begins with one brick in the wall at a time.
a few heads up: what’s with the new round of City school layoffs? http://www.dailyjobcuts.com/
as people ‘living out’ are pushed toward the cities…why close cities schools now?
yesterday my sister (an All Credit Card user) did her first cash transaction in 7mos….Two TWENTIES were counter fit. 2008, 09 & 10 i had to watch for 50’s & 100’s but 20’s is a bit of a run. another sure way to absorb that cash Lambert :/
“I hired a counterfeiter the other day. I told him, “As for your salary, how much you make is really up to you.” I love a business model where the employee pays the employer.” Kintz
oops/counterfeit…nuff coffee aby.
Investigators see local spike in counterfeit US money
http://www.570news.com/2015/03/13/investigators-see-spike-in-counterfeit-us-money-locally/
It’s QE for the people! At least the counterfeit stuff actually adds to demand in the economy…until some spoil-sport goes and notifies the authorities…
¡vaya!
And that’s what is so totally depressing about it…you aren’t telling a joke.
The banks get all the “legally” counterfeit money they want. What’s a poor, starving 99%er to do?
Flooding the globe with counterfeit currency makes converting to all-digital money much more appealing, to those who cannot think beyond Step 1….
Casual sex apps blamed for rise in STDs – report
http://rt.com/usa/263405-sex-apps-blamed-disease/
huh? are condoms gold now? i feel confusion settling in Again.
me ponders the affordable obamacare in all this….just say’n
people have sex with their phones?
Surely Kinsey would have noted this aspect of human sexuality had there been “smart” phones in his time.
No, Putin’s just gotta do his god-and-country line to distinguish himself and his nation from the godless libertines. The boot is on the other foot, in other words.
Thanks…makes since why fox is distinguishing themselves from senior viewers
http://insider.foxnews.com/2014/01/20/report-stds-rise-among-america%E2%80%99s-senior-citizens
hehehe
I like what Rand Paul is saying … but I think he will chicken out at the last minute … after his secret quid pro quo is met by the RINOS. Hope I am proven wrong. On the other hand, we already had the false termination of TIA in 2003 … when NSA simply changed the name and continued on was they wished. So this Patriot Act sunsetting might well be fake too. I fear that if anyone really tried to cut back on the Deep State, they would have a fatal accident.
Maybe it’s Byzantine Kabuki*.
Could be why Hilary, Sanders and Warren have not even auditioned at all.
*All Edo-period (after 1629) Kabuki players were male. Even today, though not here. We can have both.
For over five years, illegal wiretaps conducted by the NSA and its telco collaborators piled up a mountain of felony violations of FISA, the Wiretap Act, the Communications Act, and the Stored Communications Act.
But Congress passed the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 to grant retroactive immunity to all concerned. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama voted for the immunity bill and helped block a filibuster.
As the October 2001 martial law coup d’etat approaches its 14th anniversary, the unaccountable executive branch feels entitled to simply ignore Congress. If necessary, they can dip into ‘black budget’ funds, since rank-and-file members do not have a clue what these tens of billions are used for.
Soon enough, despite the laudable efforts of Rand Paul, a sufficient majority of our 535 well-coiffed rubber stamps will dutifully ‘legalize’ any violations, so as not to end up like their former colleague Denny Hastert: charged with ‘lying,’ or ‘structuring,’ or felony jaywalking. Fighting terrorism is no joke, comrades.
the unaccountable ignoring the unaccountable.
Re: Google search
So I’m not the only one who has noticed that it seems to not provide great results like it used to provide?
I’ve just recently switched to duckduckgo.com. Benefit, it doesn’t track you.
DDG is my browser default, but find for the harder nuts google provides more tools and results to sift through. Google is still the most powerful search tool, but there is still huge room for improvement.
I remember when the google first came up on my radar as a new component of a metasearch engine I used then called Dogpile. It was then clearly superior at delivering results to all the alternatives then and there is now definitely room for something/someone to unseat google and be the next. Not that anyone really seems interested in seriously trying–which is odd because there are squillions to be made doing so and the entry barriers for new competitors are extremely low compared to a lot of large businesses.
Correspondingly, Google Maps have turned to garbage. There’s no longer detailed aerial photos, the ability to vary the compass direction you view from and other features. Bing Maps, sadly, are now better than Google used to be.
Google has made two major changes to their results page.
One is that the usual 10-results page now begins with three sponsored ads, then an “encyclopedia” entry if applicable (like a Wikipedia page for your search term) followed by 6 or 7 results. But not “organic results” as we used to understand the term.
Two is that your search results are personalized for your interests, not “organic results” based entirely on keyword relevance and website authority. This means that everyone sees their own set of results. The ads you see as the first three results and the search results you see below on the page are tailored to be more relevant to all your previous searches.
If you want to see organic results based on search relevance alone, with no ads, use http://www.duckduckgo.com, which scrapes Google results entirely according to website relevance, and skips the sponsored ads. Or, turn off personalized search results in Google, which you can readily find out how to do by Googling it. It’s a simple switch.
This is Google making search results more profitable for them, and more personally relevant to you. Because Google knows way more about you than you do.
No seriously. They do.
It’s a win-win for everyone?!?
Thanks for the good info. I don’t hate Google like some but do try to cut down on their prying as much as possible.
Looks like Google only personalizes results only when you are logged into a Google account. So stay signed out (something I’ve always done anyway) and you should be good. This may be trickier on Android. You can also “Private Browse.”
http://www.cnet.com/how-to/five-ways-to-depersonalize-google-search-results/
Sounds like mental incest to me.
San Marcos’ mayor used the threat of a lawsuit to justify rezoning a floodplain for a 306-unit housing complex.
On the international level, “free trade” gives corporations the leverage they need for regulatory chill.
The Jessica Alba link points to page two. Here’s page one:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2015/05/27/how-jessica-alba-built-a-1-billion-company-and-200-million-fortune-selling-parents-peace-of-mind/
FIFA Scandal
Richard Silverstein has a long article on Israel’s extensive efforts to block the Palestinian vote, even suggesting money changed hands for votes.
http://www.richardsilverstein.com/2015/05/30/did-israel-buy-its-way-out-of-fifa-suspension/
“Israeli media have begun to chronicle the massive propaganda campaign they launched to topple the Palestinian initiative. ”
“One of the most provocative items in the Israeli report is that among the IEFA officials present in Zurich for the deliberations was its chief financial officer, Dodi Gil. One wonders why a soccer federation preparing for a vote needs its accountant. Think of it this way: accountants handle money. They receive it. They disburse it. Why might Israel be disbursing money or favors during the deliberations? Given the context of massive bribery and fraud outlined above, my question almost answers itself. If you review the history of Israel’s relationships with countries it needed for various purposes, the blandishments range from cash, trade, weapons. We can rule out weapons as part of Israel’s FIFA arsenal. But we can’t rule out much else.”
“Note as well that Israel’s largest financial institution, Bank HaPoalim’s Swiss branch is accused in the U.S. indictment of funneling nearly $15-million (roughly 10% of all the bribery money involved in the entire FIFA corruption scandal) to those FIFA officials on the take.”
re: FIFA corruption sideshow…..Salon
So the four year DOJ investigation starts just around the time Russia wins the 2018 WC bid:
“Buried in the initial New York Times report on the case, in fact, we find the intriguing suggestion that the FBI’s four-year FIFA investigation “grew out of an unrelated inquiry into aspects of Russian organized crime.” I would be very curious to learn how “unrelated” it really was, and what aspects of the Russian mob led the Feds into the murky waters of international soccer”.
….I mostly agree with this take Obama/Holder/Lynch motivations:
“I think the simplest explanation of why Obama and Lynch chose this particular high-value target is because they could. Sepp Blatter is a powerful dude, all right, but he has little or no constituency among the American corporate or political elite. (Chuck Blazer, who barely registered on the scale of American super-affluence, struck a plea deal and turned federal informant some time ago.) To this point, the indictments seem constructed to strip away much of Blatter’s inner circle without touching him directly. Most of the people who have been charged in the FIFA case, or who might still be, are the bush-league rich: millionaires from less powerful countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, not billionaires with Wall Street connections”
I would add Obama and friends dramatically overestimate the popularity of the U.S. world wide. There was an expectation the U.S. would be praised by the non-NATO countries from saving them from the tyranny of the villain who expanded soccer and didn’t use fifa as a glorified minor league to bring the best players to Europe without paying for it, much like how the NFL uses colleges.
I had my doubts about this writer’s take on the FIFA sideshow, but he completely lost all credibility with me with his “Putin’s invasion of Ukraine” remark. Um. Putin alone did not nor with Russian tanks and planes invade Ukraine. I sometimes think articles like this that speculate on and on and then embed “Putin did it” are meant for only that purpose i.e. to attempt to stick it to Putin and to fool the American reader. One commenter actually bought the statement that Putin invaded Ukraine and then said, ‘So what? We do it all the time.” Crazy making.
Re Judy Miller. Even with Taibbi’s lively style the eyes glaze over reading about this dreadful woman and her many excuses. However I do think she may have a point in saying that it was the Times itself that was in the tank and not just her. For example before the invasion John Burns would regularly go on Charlie Rose or the Newshour and imply that the Iraqi people secretly wanted us to invade and the result would be all flowers and chocolates. It was the same phenomenon we see now with Ukraine (and even the same reporter when Michael Gordon). Perhaps the editors didn’t put these words in their reporters’ mouths, but they hired them and chose to run their stories. The reason most charitably was group think–less charitably something more deep state-y. One hopes someday a writer with more credibility than Miller will publish a book about exactly what does go on at that building just off the eponymous Times Square.
Her acceptance into the CFR is mystifying to me. From what little i’ve garnered about the current membership, via the council’s membership page, it appears to be composed of the renowned scholars, diplomats, politicians…Is membership a rubbing-shoulders based qualification or some certain expertise brought to the table??
I dunno seems like a rogues gallery to me but opinions may vary.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_on_Foreign_Relations
NYT’s John Burns and “flowers and chocolates” has a prequel, to some degree, with this May 1989 NYT piece on Panamanians desiring a U.S. invasion. The invasion did take place 7-8 months later. Panama wasn’t Iraq, but interesting how the NYT had essentially another a pro-invasion piece 14 years earlier.
”The majority of the people will clap and wave the troops on,” said a former aide to Arnulfo Arias Madrid, who built a legendary political career here out of populist anti-American campaigns. ”They’ll give them water, coffee and sandwiches.”
http://www.nytimes.com/1989/05/16/world/us-invasion-is-debated-in-panama.html
It’s what they do. If I recall correctly NYT had an editorial applauding the brief ouster of Chavez before the coup in Venezuela was called off.
I remember how John Burns hair started to get more and more wild as his reporting continuing. His eyes also got dark circles. He looked like Einstein on drugs.
It’s the entire MSM, from the individual journos and editors to the organizations they work for. I hope Taibbi got the book as one of those freebies publishers give to other scribes for reviews, or else downloaded a pirated copy. I hate the very thought of Miller profiting from this travesty.
on all the criticisms on FIFA and the FIFA Blatter leader, such as “how can a man so corrupt get reelected!?”, etc
I agree, but I feel the same could be said for the USian poli-trick-ian & business oligarch powerful elite, such as 0bama, Clintons, Reagan, Bush(es), B0ner, McConnel, and Jamie Dimon/other 2B2F Bank$ta Welfare Queens, Mint Rawmoney, etc; except the likes of 0bama/Dimon are worse than the relatively minor-scale criminal Blatter.
Do yall agree?
Re; Google hacking our clothes
Please Google – just leave us alone.
Spheres of influence (or dominance) are being established.
Google: eyewear and now, clothes.
Amazon: Books, electronic stuff, drone-delivered groceries, and perhaps one day, robot surgeons that will come to your home at your convenience (but only after you have met your deductible).
Google cardboard virtual reality headsets. Actually this is kind of cool.
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/05/low-end-vr-playing-with-googles-new-cardboard-headset/
Is there a better example of a solution in search of a problem ANYWHERE???
I used to be a fidgety kid and (I know this will date me) my mom used to tell me that if I didn’t cut it out, people would think I had “St. Vitus Dance.” From Wikipedia:
Sydenham’s chorea or chorea minor (historically referred to as Saint Vitus Dance) is a disorder characterized by rapid, uncoordinated jerking movements primarily affecting the face, hands and feet.
I just get this hilarious picture of people “connecting with their clothes” by twitching, jerking and tapping themselves all over to make a PHONE CALL. Can you imagine what they’d look like trying to TEXT–one tapping area for each letter of the alphabet? Every time I think about it I have to laugh.
My mother, rest her soul, would have had a fit.
RE: “Is there a better example of a solution in search of a problem ANYWHERE???”
Hear hear!
From the article: “He starts imagining what that means out loud: What if your phone knew you were getting dressed up, and called an Uber as soon as you finished knotting your bowtie? ”
Would it mean that you are a lazy, inconsiderate, bastard with more money than you know what to do with and a shortage of good sense?
Hmmm. Yes.
Vernor Vinge did write a pretty good novel, Rainbow’s End, concerning totally-connected people who controlled the interfaces through postures read by their clothes. I didn’t visualize it that fully. Probably should have. As it was, I balked at the idea that the information flooding in through my net-connected sunglasses would be information that I chose, and that I would find useful. Fat chance there. Spam my eyes. Vinge might have mentioned the strange gestures, but I never mentally saw them fleshed out.
haha. Being part of the Voice Mailbox Generation, I quickly assumed texting would never catch on. I’ve been humbled…and will wait and see on body typing.
What’s this ‘texting’ you speak of? Kidding, sort of. I don’t text and have placed a block on receiving texts. My friends think that I am a caveman.
Renaissance Man can hold a steering wheel in his teeth!
Me too. Stilll am. The better half just called out from the other room asking me to put some WE40 on my chair since the squeaks from its springs every few seconds were interfering with her nap.
C’mon now . . . how does it profit Google if they leave us alone? Or are you only thinking of yourself again?
You’ll feel much better about things after you get your implant. Everyone does.
I’m on the waiting list.
I assume a law will be passed, or TPP foreign clothes manufacturer will sue for potential lost profits to ensure, banning clothes from being labeled for spy/monitor/zap-troublemaker threads.
RE: Did a rich sports team owner jump the line for a liver transplant? Los Angeles Times
An interesting question. I’d like to think that, having found his donor, Melnyk encouraged and maybe even enabled the other volunteers to consider donating to other patients on the waiting list. Had he done that, I doubt the question would have been asked.
But at least his donors knew whom they were volunteering to help.
Unlike the generous person who donated their heart to save a life, and that life turned out to be Dick Cheney’s. I shudder at the thought.
And I don’t believe for a minute that, in this era of commoditized “healthcare,” this doesn’t go on all the time, albeit less publicly. There’s a reason saudi potentates come to america for their “healthcare,” and there seems to be no shortage of “healthcare” providers who are glad to have them.
Everything here is for sale.
Jeebus….
Joe Biden’s son Beau dies of brain cancer
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/31/us-usa-biden-son-idUSKBN0OG01120150531
Condolences to the family.
Beau, from all i’ve read, was a good person. The world will be a lesser place without him.
Condolences to the family.
Crocodile tears for a hedgie?
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0409/Biden_son_brother_associated_with_closed_hedge_fund.html
http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2009/04/economics-of-paradigm-global-alleged.html
Bronte also had their blog “suspended” by google after posting that little bit. It was quick, but it still got out and they had to restore it.
The Jacobin article concludes, “But we should not underestimate the resiliency of capitalism, and the staying power of the American economy.” This article ignores thermodynamic reality, the foundation of human economic activity. Capitalism requires a perpetually expanding supply of “cost-free” natural resources to exploit. The late William Catton’s book, Overshoot, explains the dynamics and the endgame of this exploitative attitude towards nature: ecological overshoot.
Yes, I read that one yesterday and the author misses the whole critical discourse on the resource base of the modern economy along with the crapification of jobs and the ways spiraling inequality dampens economic activity (forget about population overshoot). That said, clever but long-term destructive policies have get the global economy afloat since 2007-8, and the capitalists and those they pay to do their thinking for them are cunning and ruthless enough to find ways to strip mine the future to buoy the present. Their long-term prospects (along with the rest of us) are bleak, but how long they can play out the string is an open question.
And now you understand why IP is such a big deal in these “trade” deals: primitive accumulation has come for our social and intellectual rights.
Scientists discover animals’ bark
It’s interesting to note the following:
A. A dog always knows another dog’s bark.
B. Your dog has known your bark for a long time (for example, it knows when you’re being mean)
C. You, as a scientist, just discovered today, your dog’s bark?
Who is the slow one here?
nothin like a catfish bark on a swelterin southr’n nite
(course your dog’ll never bark again if it east outa lake in GA)
well, perhaps some codification is a good thing. human to human translation is sketchy at best. we’re just just getting started with interspecies communication. it seems i speak pretty good cardinal and chickadee and phydeaux, my cat, has picked up some human.
i, personally, have ventured into interspecies music as you can sample here:
https://soundcloud.com/frostyzoom/a-certain-buzzing
https://soundcloud.com/frostyzoom/frogs-of-a-feather
The WaPo article on ‘A Flaw in the design’ is a nice little treastie on the history of the birth of the internet-and shows what happens when security isn’t part of the core requirement of the design of any system. In the case of TCP/IP, this has led to all of the insane amounts of cruft stuffed all around it in order to make it secure.
Maybe it’s time to throw the baby out with the bath water and build a new internet with security as a key requirement. (Maybe resurrect Multics at the same time….)
Huge pipeline corporation hires off-duty cops to deter protests/counter protesters.
Viewed in strict economics terms*, protesting is an economic stimulus, if that will prompt get more off-duty cops hired.
*And that’s the only thing – money/economics – that matters. How much money do you have? The government can have as much money as it wants, never mind what that means politically, or if the problem that money printing is supposed to address can only be addressed politically.
By their questions shall you know them.
Just a comment in general.
We know an infant is interested in something by the duration of his/her staring at an object. Similarly, there is a blogger on another website, by the number of posts he has on one particular subject, we know his particular obsession.
That is one way our questions reveal us as questioners/interrogators/investigators.
We are probed/measured by the same device we probe/measured. It’s a little different from we change the very object – however slightly – we try to observe/measure.
And a sniper is taken out as he/she betrays his/her own location in taking out a target.
Life is ironical like that.
First city in Canada to eliminate homelessness.
A question – if an entire city is designed as a home, wouldn’t there be no homelessness inside that city, (as that city is a home)?
How does that bird do that?
It doesn’t. A Dominatrix bird does it.
Pretty sure that’s in the Ashley Book of Knots under double and multiple loop knots (not sure if it’s a hitch or a bend or both – mostly hitch though).
Where the bird learned it; a whole nuther matter.
re: Kansas G.O.P. Considers the Unthinkable: Raising Taxes
The story should have included these facts: almost all of the income tax exemption for pass-through entities, which the KS GOP calls “small businesses”, are left in place. Instead of benefiting all small businesses, small by by financial size, 83% of the tax break benefit in reality goes to the biggest 6.5% of the fliers who claim the exemption. And 42% of the benefit goes to less than 1% of them. It’s easy to see who the biggest beneficiaries are, and it’s not most of the actual small businesses in Kansas. The benefit goes to the biggest boys in the state. No one would consider these companies “small.”
The article on Myers-Briggs is Wired is actually pretty deep…if you ask me. Here’s the nut:
I think this gets to a lot of the debates that go on here over labeling of groups—especially generationaly. Those labels have a nugget of truth, but they are not the whole story. Debates seem to go on between those who see the nugget of truth and those who insist that they’re not everything (or anything). Both may well be right…in some sense.
In his introduction to Martin Buber’s I and Thou, Walter Kaufman puts it like this (to paraphrase): The world is complex, but most people have a hard time with complexity, therefore those who speak in terms of complexity speak to few. The wise understand complexity and they understand people, and so they make the complex simple, in order to speak to many.
The trick is maintain our awareness of the complexity of existence and the absolute uniqueness of individuals, without swearing off entirely the simplifying conceptual tools that we all use, and need, to make sense of the world—without forgetting that the reality is never fully described or comprehended through simple dichotomies. Real mastery, I think, entails knowing when to emphasize the simple, and when to point out the complexity.
“Begin with an individual, and before you know it you have created a type; begin with a type, and you find you have created – nothing.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald
The only way to really understand human nature is to tune out formulaic psychologizing completely and turn to the great masters. Psychologizers are the economists of the mind, but the great masters, they are the true scientists. hahahahah. crack me up just thinking about it!
Jungian psychological type has been a great tool for me. And what you sense about uniqueness and also being part of humanity is what it’s all about. Isabel Myers book was called “Gifts Differing” from Romans 12 v. 4-8 in the Bible.
Jung disagreed with his mentor Freud and broke off with him. It kind of broke his heart. In an effort to understand why, he arrived at the theory of type. When he went to Asia, he discovered that other civilizations and cultures have been dividing people up into types for centuries. Joseph Campbell’s “The Power of Myth” series comes from his study of Jung.
It’s a rather light article, but she does realize that the MBTI did help her to get in somebody else’s shoes and experience other people’s gifts though different than hers. These letters are “preferences”. Myers also said that it was best to use judgment for only for ourselves and that it was kinder to use perception for others.
I also remember 15 or so years ago reading that “The Twentieth Century had been ruled by Freud, the Century of Me. And with any luck, the 21st Century would be ruled by Jung i.e The Century of We.”
Yeah old Freud started out inquisitive and then became a mythologist, sadly it seems some found the latter faze more utilitarian and ran with it….
Skippy…. “Voila” the modern economist was born… hiving off risk from the political arena…. and a smoke screen for their VC benefactors.
Is my mind playing tricks on me or did Lambert actually post a link to Arsenal’s historic FA Cup victory yesterday? I suppose I’m not the only Gooner in the commenteriat. Anyways, what do we think of Tottenham?
From http://www.economist.com/cge15?fsrc=scn/tw_ec/a_weighting_game:
“But Ricardo looked at only two countries making two products, at a time when few non-tariff barriers such as safety standards existed. This renders his elegant model about as useful for analysing contemporary free-trade deals as a horse and carriage are for predicting the trajectory of an aircraft.”
True but grossly inadequate. Ricardo’s theory depends on an “assumption” (requirement is a much better word) that capital and labor don’t move between countries much. That was true in his day, but his theory is nonetheless used today to justify the free flow of capital – which neatly cancels “relative advantage,” returning us to absolute advantage (geographic differences ) and the race to the bottom. Incidentally, Ricardo justifies barriers to movement of labor.
Economists who justify “free trade” today based on Ricardo are either grossly incompetent or equally dishonest, or quite likely both.
Dumping of halibut sparks fight among North Pacific fishing fleets. A fight between bottom trawlers and long line fishermen over halibut bycatch rule changes. Great job by the Seattle Times of never once mentioning the sheer destructiveness of bottom trawling. Instead, it focuses on a change in the way catch gets sorted that could reduce “halibut mortality rates … from about 80 percent to around 60 percent.” 60% mortality rate, that’s something to brag about while completely leaving out the destruction of the ocean bottom and the waste of other type of bycatch.
Prime Minister Tsipras of Greece has tossed a bomb onto the pages of LeMonde. An English translation is at his website
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Smart for him to take his case to the European people at this time.
This will help Greece also: French Far Right Calls For EU Referendum. Of course the right is NOT trying to help Syriza. Their call (demand?) follows on the planned British referendum.
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PS I have a similar comment awaiting moderation.
on economic issues, the FN is much closer to syriza than it is to ukip and possibly even to syriza’s left. they are anti-TTIP whereas i don’t know where syriza stands on that festering pile of evil.
Thanks for the link to the Live Science article about land clearing and construction in the Amazon basin that predated the rain forest there. Hard to grok related environmental issues, if any, since global human population and the use of fossil fuels was relatively small at that time. Intuitively it seems to me that loss of forest has a much higher level of impact today than it would have in that era.
Have also been doing a little reading about Pumapunku in Bolivia (536-600 AD), which was a more recent development: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumapunku
Seems to be quite a bit about human history in the Americas that we don’t know, although it is fascinating and fun to speculate.
You might take a look at Charles Mann’s 1491. It’s extraordinary.
OK, banks are not intermediaries of loanable funds. They get that part correct (although this is hardly a new insight; MMT has said this from the start.) But they keep holding on to this silly idea that banks create money. Really? Then why do they pay interest to borrow your money? Because they’re good-hearted? Why do they go broke? Entities that create money can’t go broke. No, the only money a bank creates is the money they put in your account when they take the real US funds you deposit and place it in their reserve account. (Sorry, your account doesn’t contain real money. It contains bank money, which you redeem when you withdraw it. That’s why you need deposit insurance; in case that bank money becomes worthless via the bank’s insolvency. If you had real US dollars in your account, you wouldn’t need deposit insurance.)
they can only create money when they’re not broke!
just like a lobster can only be your pet when it’s not your food
just a car radio can only play songs if it has electricty.
just like you can only poo if you eat food
Just like . . . that’s probably enough for demonstration purposes
“What’s your dog trying to tell YOU? Scientists discover animals’ bark can reveal whether it is scared or lonely…and can even be used to tell its gender and age Daily Mail”
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“The research team from Eotvos Lorand University, in Hungary, and the Technical University of Madrid, in Spain, hope the new computer program will help vets diagnose canines in future.”
Woof. Would you please remove that cold stethoscope from my tit!
We have an elderly Boston Terrier, Madeline by name. Due to her lifelong habit of picking fights with really big dogs, she has reached her 13th year missing one eye. And the other one doesn’t work.
Madeline is untroubled by living in darkness. We assume she figures we turned the lights off one day, and are too stupid to turn them on again. “Humans — can’t live with ’em, can’t bite ’em.”
She is randomly inspired to stroll out to the yard a few times a day, a short, straight walk across the patio to the lawn, where dog business may be conducted. She manages this trip adroitly, and without complaint, since it’s business. She makes a bee line for the lawn, and wraps things up without delay.
But everything goes to hell on the return journey. Suddenly unable to walk in a straight line, she tromps around and around in tight circles, always to the right, orbiting until she bumps into something. She bumps her head into the wide open gate, into the trash can, the barbecue, the picnic table — sometimes there’s suddenly an entire house sitting right where she needs to walk.
Which pisses her off, so eventually she loses her temper, parks wherever she is, and begins to direct a heartfelt stream of profanity at us, at the derelict obstacles blocking her path, at ye gods and little fishes, at life in general, and at the midnight sky (it’s always midnight in her world). They are short, sharp, four-letter barks, increasing in rage and frequency until one of us goes outside and carries her inside.
She never makes these angry noises except when we somehow move the house over in her way, or quickly put the yard where the house used to be. When we do these things, she swears like a shanghaied sailor.
We know exactly what she’s saying. Just can’t repeat it here.
Amazing story. Maybe suggest to her the doggy version of bread crumbs – a pee line to sniff back to the house?
Hello, I posted a comment earlier in the day about the Arsenal’s FA Cup victory and no longer see it. While I thought it was an innocuous comment, did I breach any rules with it that resulted in the comment being deleted? If so, I duly apologize.
I was surprised to see NC link to the result of a sporting event let alone Arsenal FC. I was trying to gauge whether they were other fans and poke fun of Tottenham Hotspur at the same time. It was meant as banter and I tried to keep it clean. If did break the rules, I’m sorry.
Disregard my previous comment. I see it.
Don’t remember a thing. Skynet works in mysterious ways. NC is not a sports blog, obviously, but with FIFA in the news, and Arsenal huge on my extremely eclectic and global twitter list, I thought I’d throw in a link! (Obviously, we’re a blog about political economy, so if you want to do sports fan stuff, this probably isn’t the best venue.)
MUST READ for those following Greece:
Smart for Tsipras to address Europeans at this point. And questions about EU membership/soverignty raised by the European left or right only help Greece in negotiations.
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“French Far-Right Calls For EU Referendum” ought to be read by everyone. It’s good for people to remember that there are “right-wing” republics with more properly democratic aspirations than the US mainstream’s most ideal “democracy”.
Good point. Syriza has a coalition with ANEL which is also conservative and anti-immigration but pro labor and anti neo-liberal.
Immigration is a tough issue. I think the best overall immigration policy would be to try and foster conditions to keep people from needing to immigrate in the first place such as not destroying the social fabric in Libya and Ukraine.
I think that this speech by Obama can be considered as xenophobic:
“”Obama told graduating West Point cadets, on 28 May 2014: “China’s economic rise and military reach worries its neighbors. From Brazil to India, rising middle classes compete with us, and governments seek a greater say in global forums.” In other words: part of these future military officers’ jobs will be to help make sure that the BRICS, and other countries that have lower per-capita wealth than in America, stay poor, so that America’s aristocrats can send jobs there instead of pay America’s own workers to do it — in other words: get America’s workers competing against ones in poor countries, rather than get America’s investors competing against ones in poor countries. He’s telling America’s military that they are soldiers in this international class-war, paid by the public, but working actually for America’s plutocracy and not for the public, but against America’s public — to drive down their wages, food-safety, etc.””
https://proactvoice.wordpress.com/2015/04/27/whats-obama-up-to-with-his-tpp-and-ttip-by-eric-zuesse/
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I think the point of international solidarity is to respect people and their rights at a deeper level. I don’t think the IMF and World Bank have this sort of world view.
Good point. Syriza has a coalition with ANEL which is also conservative and anti-immigration but pro labor and anti neo-liberal.
Immigration is a tough issue. I think the best overall immigration policy would be to try and foster conditions to keep people from needing to immigrate in the first place such as not destroying the social fabric in Libya and Ukraine.
I think that this speech by Obama can be considered as xenophobic:
“”Obama told graduating West Point cadets, on 28 May 2014: “China’s economic rise and military reach worries its neighbors. From Brazil to India, rising middle classes compete with us, and governments seek a greater say in global forums.” In other words: part of these future military officers’ jobs will be to help make sure that the BRICS, and other countries that have lower per-capita wealth than in America, stay poor, so that America’s aristocrats can send jobs there instead of pay America’s own workers to do it — in other words: get America’s workers competing against ones in poor countries, rather than get America’s investors competing against ones in poor countries. He’s telling America’s military that they are soldiers in this international class-war, paid by the public, but working actually for America’s plutocracy and not for the public, but against America’s public — to drive down their wages, food-safety, etc.””
(Eric Zuesse)
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I think the point of international solidarity is to respect people and their rights at a deeper level. I don’t think the IMF and World Bank have this sort of world view.
“Manufacturing hub starts work on first zero-labor factory”
Oh well. It was inevitable. China is doing away with cheap Chinese labor.
Maybe we can get America’s railroads fixed up on the cheap again?
Do robots buy toothpaste or cars? Do they watch television?
I’m just trying to figure out who the consumer of the robots’ products will be.
Robots might want human pets, then they’ll need to buy all that stuff at PetSmart.
I, for one, must applaud Loretta Lynn(ch) for going after all those evil soccer players, and those evil teachers who cheated, yep the RICO Act was perfect for putting a few teachers in JAIL.
I’m sure after this she’ll get right on the guys down the street stealing tens of billions up and down the halls of Wall Street…they must be quaking in their (Gucci) boots.
I’d really like to know when the housing price bubble will pop. I live in an established neighborhood w/good people and all of a sudden homes are getting picked off like cherries as the original owners die, the houses become mcmansions and suddenly, I’m not kidding, there’s a house on the block that actually sold for over $1 mi7%l. We all drive cars from 2006 and such. Who’s moving into our neighborhood. Porn companies? Certainly not families. I’ll start believing their numbers for every category when they actually raise a quarter point. Until then its smoke and mirrors w/the little guy getting hosed/unable to live in the houses we’re 16 years into a 30 year mortgage. House prices need to be reigned in. They are out of control.