Something to crow about: New Caledonian crows show strong evidence of social learning Science Daily
Quantum ‘spookiness’ passes toughest test yet Nature
HSBC system failure leaves thousands facing bank holiday without pay Guardian
Retail brokerages keep breaking Business Insider
REFILE-SPECIAL REPORT-U.S. banks moved billions in trades beyond CFTC’s reach Reuters
Ratings agencies aren’t doing enough to anticipate market volatility Nouriel Roubini, Globe and Mail
Crisis, what crisis? U.S. economy steams along McClatchy
Uh-oh, Canada. China Pales as a Risk to U.S. Growth Bloomberg
Brazil’s economy enters recession BBC
Cheap Oil and Global Growth Project Syndicate
OPEC Divorce And Self-Destruction Thanks To Saudi Oil Strategy? Oil Price
Fed’s Stanley Fischer keeps September rate rise on table FT
One of Facebook’s founders is taking on the Federal Reserve WaPo
The peer-to-peer scaling, matching and pricing fallacy FT Alphaville
China?
China local pension funds to start investing $313 billion soon Reuters
How much do we really know about China’s stockmarket? Sidney Morning Herald (EM)
Stock meltdown exposes how markets cling to myths about China McClatchy
The Chinese economy is slowing down and there can be no denying it Guardian
The Verdict on China’s Easing of Foreign Property Rules? A Resounding ‘Meh’ WSJ
The Party Has Its Tea, but Deserves No Sympathy Caixin
Return to Thaksinomics Nikkei Asian Review
Grexit?
Who Lost Greece? Parallels with Russia in 1998 Brookings
How the IMF’s misadventure in Greece is changing the fund Reuters
Former Greek PM Tsipras Wants Greek Voters to Dismiss ‘Old Political System’ in Snap Elections Greek Reporter
From Greek comrade to nemesis Politico
Greek Q2 GDP growth revised up (yes, up) to 0.9% FT. “That is from the time immediately before capital controls came in, the impact of which will only be seen in the third quarter reading.”
Mass Migration: What Is Driving the Balkan Exodus? Der Speigel
The Latest: UN chief ‘horrified’ by latest refugee deaths, asks states to act with humanity US News
Europe shouldn’t worry about migrants. It should worry about creeping fascism New Statesman
Ukraine Offers Creditors GDP Warrants. Here’s How They Work Bloomberg
Syraqistan
Twelve years on, remembering the bomb that started the Middle East’s sectarian war Quartz (Re Silc).
British Library declines Taliban archive over terror law fears BBC
Welcome to the World, Drone-Killing Laser Cannon Wired
2016
Here’s When You Can Expect Primary Polls To Really Start Mattering HuffPo
Who Do Polls Say Will Win the GOP Nomination? Check Back in November. Medium
At DNC Meeting, Hillary Clinton’s Quiet Moves Are the Ones that Matter National Journal
Bernie Sanders was called a liar for saying Hitler won an election. But he was right. Vox
Airbnb names ex-aide to Bill Clinton as policy chief Sidney Morning Herald (EM). Ka-ching.
‘The Teacher Shortage’ Is No Accident—It’s the Result of Corporate Education Reform Policies In These Times. Idea: More TFA scabs?
Black Injustice Tipping Point
Liberals Are Wrong to Separate Race from Class TNR. Rather, Democrats.
Micromanaging Cops? ‘Black Lives Matter’ Can Try Bloomberg. Oddly, or not, McArdle praises ending “civil forfeiture” but has nothing to say about ending “‘for-profit policing,’ in which communities use fines as a substitute for taxes.”
Where Black Lives Matter Began Slate
What happened when Brad Pitt and his architects came to rebuild New Orleans WaPo
Lawyers plan challenge to arrests based on secret cellphone tracking USA Today. Stingrays in Baltimore.
Rome’s notorious mafia families are putting their rivalries aside to work together The Independent
Japanese police bracing for gang war as Yamaguchi-gumi mafia group splits Guardian
How to Prevent Your Local Searches From Being Sent Over the Internet How to Geek. No, you probably didn’t expect and don’t want to send your SSN to a remote server just because you searched your own machine for it.
United in-flight Wi-Fi reportedly blocks Ars Technica and New York Times Ars Technica
Seeking diversity, Twitter plans to boost female employment by one percentage point Los Angeles Times
That time Jimmy Carter walked into a nuclear reactor Patheos
I HAVE A DREAM… MARTIN LUTHER KING – August 28, 1963 YouTube
Antidote du jour:
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
70 comments
Comments are closed.
Why do I always get such a yucky feeling when reading Megan McArdle? She creeps me out so much. Other writers are just as craven and deceitful but she takes sliminess to another level.
McArdle is pretty much any kid at B-school or law school. Don’t know what they don’t know and ideology prevents them from figuring it out.
Check out the S.H.A.M.E. (Shame the Hacks who Abuse Media Ethics) profile on McArdle.
She actually wrote an article titled: The Virtue of Riches: How wealth makes us more moral.
That just about says it all.
I never read anything so I have no clue who this woman is. But it didn’t sound totally horrible to me.
This sentence was a brain stopper though:
” At the end of the day, we still have to send police officers out to deal with our society’s most desperate moments. ”
I sort of like that phrase — “our society’s most desperate moments” — since it manages to convey both the worst depths of human trauma and, at the same time, a removal of the author to the position of spectator that both disqualifies her from any coherent perspective on that trauma and renders the entire sentence a totally hysterical example of the use of the “our” word as a sentimental bromide that balms the conscience of society’s winners at the expense of its losers.
Other than that, I can’t remember much of what it said.
Great piece from the WaPo on the Trump phenomenon.
The venality and corruption of our political system, along with the creeping impoverishment of 80% of the population, explain much of the rise of both Trump and Sanders — the only two candidates who can call venality and corruption by their proper names. Certainly Hillary and Jeb! can’t.
The right-leaning of the disenchanted are going for the charismatic leader, while the left-leaning are attracted to the charismatic program. That is cajones v. ideals. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, if it even comes to that. The ruling elites still have six months or so to get together on a marginalization plan for the “extremists”.
RE: Zombie Factories Stalk the Sputtering Chinese Economy NYT
At the Changzhi Cement Group, where the only sound is a barking dog, a former company electrician, Zhao Liwei, 43, watches TV inside a decrepit room for janitors at the compound’s entrance. Two years ago, as production at the state-owned plant ground to a halt, her paychecks stopped coming. Most employees were left to fend for themselves.
Since the factory was never formally shuttered, they have not received severance payments or other compensation, Ms. Zhao said. Though a private company took on a handful of employees to produce cement in a portion of the plant’s facilities in August, the work is only temporary.
Ms. Zhao has not worked at all. The only jobs in the area, she says, are sweeping floors and waiting tables, for as little as 500 renminbi, or $78, a month. She earned twice that working at the factory. “We were promised an iron rice bowl” — the Chinese term for lifetime employment — she said. But now “it is like we’ve been left on an eternal, unpaid vacation.”
———————–
Over the long term, Chinese policy makers are trying to decrease the economy’s dependence on excessive investment for growth and allow household consumption to play a bigger role. That means the factories in many heavy industries, like cement, may never run again at full tilt.
————————
How can this contradiction be resolved? The Chinese workers make what is essentially zero, but are expected to be a pillar of growth.
When looking at pictures from China it has become obvious that there are not enough paint factories, and paint brush factories, or if there are, the Chinese export it all. They could do a neighborhood beautification program, and put some lipstick on the pig. Though, to start the process of “household consumption” the painters need $25.00 per hour instead of $0.50.
“….sweeping floors and waiting tables….”
That’s a “service economy.” Works here in the u s. What’s the problem?
“How can this contradiction be resolved?”
Credit cards, negative amortization loans, interest only loans, subprime loans, home “equity” loans, student loans, mortgage loans, mortgage refis and types of loans yet to be invented. Works here in the u s. What’s the problem?
What’s the problem?
In China, it’s $0.4875 per hour at 160 hours per month and $78 dollars in wages.
They need to be paid much more to be able to afford the debt.
“Students” here in the good ole u s of a make $0.0000 per hour and have borrowed and spent over $1 TRILLION in “loans.”
I get it, cnchal. I was being sarcastic.
I know you were. I was being cynical.
Students loaded with debt for an education to perform corporate functions for their oldsters is as close to a sure thing as one can get, as they have their lives in front of them to pay for it, and no way out, except to pay.
Another problem for the Chinese peons, is that their leaders are taking the money, and running as fast as they can out of there. The astronomical house prices in Vancouver and Toronto are so distorted by rich Chinese buyers, it may even become an election issue in Canada. But we know who they stole the money from.
I was informed yesterday that no one in Beijing cares about any crisis in China.
How the person who said that knew about what everyone else in Beijing thought, I am not sure.
Perhaps, by ‘Beijing,’ he/she meant the central government, though usually, they prefer to keep it hush-hush.
I think we need The Onion to report on the JH Fed brain fest.
Something like this:
“Fed Vows To Continue ZIRP Until HFT Computers Stop Flash Crashing”‘
I am starting to get seriously embarrassed for all these distinguished fed ladies and gentlemen who relentlessly wring their hands over a QUARTER POINT rise in interest rates and endlessly dissect their angst-ridden “decision” process.
Not to mention the boot-licking “reporters” who refer to each such incident as “breaking news.”
Maybe that’s why they use the term “basis points.” I think it’s an attempt to make the issue seem less puny and trivial.
Ya, I’m beginning to think reality must have forked to a parallel universe. I took out my first home mortgage in 1980 at 12%. It stayed at 12% all the way thru Volker’s 81-82 recession. And far beyond.
If I were on the other end of that deal today, I’d almost feel like a rich guy.
Hah! My folks took out a home mortgage in Miami of Florida in 1967. They were quite worried about paying the scandalous interest rate of 3.25% The house note was only $87.00 a month. Dad was making all of 24K per year. I remember the surprise when Dad drove home a second hand 1963 Lincoln Continental for Mom to drive about. Those were the Go Go Years.
While only 0.25%, it gets treated as if / that “whoosh” prime rate will be at 10.0% and no one can cope with that.
Prime going north towards 4.0% should be the GOAL at this point. And a modest goal at that. SMH
Yes, but have you noticed the “point spread” between a Prime rate loan and a garden variety credit card rate? There’s the “whoosh” for you.
Posted last Sunday:
Results: S&P 500 down 3.94% on Monday; up 0.92% for the week.
Although it’s difficult to extract a meaningful signal from a bearish stopped clock, after his next update we’ll take another shot at assessing whether the good doctor has moderated his stance or (as is rather more likely) has doubled down by hurling a fresh volley of projectiles at the stumbling old bull, urging it to ‘just die already.’
Everyone is a Matador that can’t see Bulls coming and going. No thanx. Getting too old for that game.
I remember that Jim. You were right. You’re often right, in fact (about a lot of things, not just money). But this is the thing: When I finally say to myself “Jesus. Jim is so right, so often, that I have to put some money down and profit from this free advice.” Then you’ll be wrong, big time. Just that once!
Ned Davis Research published a book titled Being Right or Making Money, much of it dedicated to proving with backtesting that the illogical and irrational often is more profitable than the conventional wisdom.
Probably the implication is that with the benefit of a lobotomy, or least trepanation, we would be better traders by avoiding overthinking.
Nevertheless, I think that the Fedsters — those creatures with heads bulged by the rippling PhD cranial musculature beneath — are about to lay an egg. All that can save us now is a ‘final missive’ from Doctor Hussman, asserting that an imminent asteroid strike finally will drive the Dow to its fair value of zero. ‘God’s mercy on you bullish swine!’ he will conclude.
The FED, a privately owned entity, has an agenda of global debt enslavement to achieve a totalitarian utopia. From 1913 on, it has achieved the 99% debasement of the USDollar, totally wrecked the once strong US middle class and has enabled fascism on a global basis. Within the next 6 months, it will purposely crash the markets, thus further impoverishing the 99% and destroying the future benefits of all pensioners counting on a stable retirement.
Since Berle and Means published “The Modern Corporation and Private Property” in 1932, the majority of corporate lawyers and law professors have come to accept the view joint stock corporations (the regional Federal Reserve Banks included) are not owned by shareholders: all shareholders own is a right to receive performance of whatever obligations the governing corporation law and corporate charter and bylaws happen to say the corporation owes them, and these obligations never add up to amount to the property law concept of private ownership. In the real world, corporations (including the regional Federal Reserved Banks) are so organized i as to prevent the stockholders from having any control, or any use, or much if any say, concerning what goes on in them.
There is a formal legal argument to explain my reasoning, property law defines “ownership” as the exclusive right to possess and use a thing; “property” is defined as a thing that is owned. Corporations are not “things” that are capable of being owned in this sense. Also, “private property” is property owned by private “persons” (including private business associations fictitiously treated as persons). A regional Federal Reserve Bank can’t be “private property” of shareholders if they don’t collectively own exclusive right to possess and use the regional Federal Reserve Ban, and they do not own any such right to possess it, or use, exclusive or otherwise.
So, if the Federal Reserve Banks aren’t the private property of their members, who owns them? The answer is: no one owns them. The Federal Reserve Banks themselves are fictitious corporate persons that own their bank buildings, office furniture, and other assets, as the private property of the Federal Reserve Bank. The regional banks themselves are not the private property of anyone. (They’re not public property owned by the state, either. No one owns a “Federal Reserve Bank” as such. No one owns any joint stock corporation, as such.) – comment from NC archives
Skippy… I would note that the Fed is/has been increasingly managed by economists from the 70s, with that observation its important to understand the guiding principles by which the Fed is run via the dominate school of economics e.g. a hybrid of austrian neoclassical w/ a bolt on on neo-new Keynesian.
Europe shouldn’t worry about migrants. It should worry about creeping fascism New Statesman
I think Laurie Penny gives a useful perspective.
“Fascism happens when a culture fracturing along social lines is encouraged to unite against a perceived external threat. It’s the terrifying “not us” that gives the false impression that there is an “us” to defend.
Living standards have certainly gone down across the eurozone, but that has very little to do with immigration.
Nobody can quite decide whether migrants are a problem because they work so hard that they’re taking all the jobs (the biggest fear of a working class pummelled by unemployment and falling wages) or because they’re too lazy to work so they’re taking all the benefit money (the biggest fear of a middle class suffering with rising rents and cuts to social services).
The greatest threat to our “way of life” is not migration. Migration does change society, although far less so than, for example, technology, economic austerity, escalating inequality, globalisation or climate change.”
Yup. Same phenomenon is happening in the US.
When making aioli, pouring oil too fast, you don’t get that rich, smooth, creamy sauce.
The fact is a sudden influx of migrants does present absorption/adjustment problems for the host country, except its 0.01%.
But we can’t blame these homeland-less people, but imperialists who created the victim-refugees in the first place.
As for right wing and left wing leaders, they reflect our two brains and when we can balance both, we get more out of life.
Colonialism — payback is a bitch.
“Cheap Oil and Global Growth”
What he fails to reconcile is the 2 trillion funneled to consumers means 2 trillion taken away from producers many of which subsidize consumers with that money. Globally it seems to me to be a wash.
It seems that cheap oil hurts producers but expensive oil hurts consumers…thats pee coil folks, lets call it what it is and deal with it.
They tried it in the ’90s but people didn’t like to hear their computer called a, “dumb terminal.” So they came at it from the other side (Marketing) and instead called remote servers, The Cloud. Then they reduced the size of the monitor down to that of a wrist watch and lo, verily, people can’t get enough of it. Go figure. Surprising the boot text isn’t, “You’ve come a long way baby!”
As to people not being bothered with distinctions between “local” and “out there”, they’re right. There is no difference, unless you dig deep in the configurations settings of, SuDataEstMiData10, at which point it will store local stuff on your (shrinking?) hard drive (but search queries would probably still go out over the net unless you attend to that as well). Who knows how much longer even having your own hard drive will be legal, never mind those unpatriotic CPU cycles involved with anything other than cloud binding.
Come on in, the water’s fine.
I still don’t understand why anyone thought something called “the cloud” might be secure.
Aristophanes did call his ‘out there’ place “Cloud Cuckoo Land.”
Cheap oil and global growth.
Don’t forget cheap labor.
And cheap lives.
help!
turns out this government ornithologist was suspended for this song:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/harperman-singer-suspended-for-allegedly-breaching-public-service-ethics-code/article26145239/
it’s on his own time and he never mentions his government job. this is the straw that broke the straw that broke the straw on the camel’s back.
please spread the video. this attempt at silencing democracy must backfire.
thanking y’all from the north,
frosty
Dear Yves,
I must say, I’m quite annoyed at the Reuters piece on Greece. Last week the e-version of my Kiling the Host came out. There are four chapters on Greece, including an entire chapter on the IMF 1980-82 episode that Reuters claims they just got from unpublished documents.
Their report follows mine directly — the same quotes from the same directors. What they did NOT say was that this information was leaked by an IMF whistleblower who left, went to Canada and wrote up the story — on which I based my chapter. (I also made a similar point on Democracy Now last week.)
What the Reuters report does NOT say is the intervention by Tim Geithner and Barack Obama at the G8 meetings, warning that if Greek bonds were NOT paid, U.S. TBTF banks would lose heavily, and their losses could create “contagion” to Europe.
Also, Reuters praises Lagarde, as if she recognizes that Greece cannot pay. She’s not been any help at all to Varoufakis or the Greeks. She insists that the loan CAN be paid — simply by “extend and pretend,” lowering the interest rate and stretching out the maturities.
Its selective quotes and decontextualization is almost as if the report was done to counter the political points I make in Killing the Host.
The main thing Kessler was trying to communicate wasn’t anything useful about Sanders but rather something about himself: “I’m not a liberal.” This is a preoccupation of the Beltway media, which is why they either dog the left about trivial or bogus stuff, mock them or studiously ignore them, while letting the right get away with murder or lavishing praise on them.
Kessler may think it makes him look courageous to concoct a reason to give Sanders four Pinocchios, but it does the opposite. It shows he’s a gutless coward.
Sanders tweet is actually flawless. The conclusion is not that elections matter but that politics matter, politics include even the intimidation that may go on at street level. With enough force and intimidation it would be hard to call an election anything most Americans would recognize as an election (some minority disenfranchisement exempted I suppose, although the obstacle hit there is usually bureaucracy, and yea we’ve got other things to worry about as well like Dibold).
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/aug/13/mystery-isis/
Rather, each case suggests that institutions that are starkly divided in theology, politics, and culture perpetually improvise lethal and even self-defeating partnerships of convenience.
The thinkers, tacticians, soldiers, and leaders of the movement we know as ISIS are not great strategists; their policies are often haphazard, reckless, even preposterous; regardless of whether their government is, as some argue, skillful, or as others imply, hapless, it is not delivering genuine economic growth or sustainable social justice. The theology, principles, and ethics of the ISIS leaders are neither robust nor defensible. Our analytical spade hits bedrock very fast.
I have often been tempted to argue that we simply need more and better information. But that is to underestimate the alien and bewildering nature of this phenomenon. To take only one example, five years ago not even the most austere Salafi theorists advocated the reintroduction of slavery; but ISIS has in fact imposed it. Nothing since the triumph of the Vandals in Roman North Africa has seemed so sudden, incomprehensible, and difficult to reverse as the rise of ISIS.
==================================================
An analysis based on rationality and logic, I fear falls short, perhaps because of the inability to acknowledge some very dark aspects of the human psyche. As Monihan said, “defining deviancy downward”
“And the al-Qaeda leaders were not the only Salafi jihadists who assumed that their core supporters preferred serious religious teachings to snuff videos (just as al-Tayeb apparently assumed that an Islamist movement would not burn a Sunni Arab pilot alive in a cage).”
Even Nazis tried to hide or obscure their most barbaric acts – this may be the first group that psychopathy is blatantly used as a public recruiting feature. Perhaps the true appeal that attracts their adherents is nothing more than sadism, torture, and rape – with only a veneer of ideology
I see the breakthrough coming a long time ago with the idea that if a conventional war with the Soviets was going the wrong way, it was better to destroy the world and wipe out the human race than allow the Godless Commies to win, i.e. “better dead than Red.” Modern jihadists seem to have taken this ethic to heart. In the struggle against the American Satan and the Western culture for which America is a stand-in, nihilistic rage is the last and only response. It is still the ideology of a small minority, but the spirit, which is expressed in the West as the drive to use up every resource and despoil the globe in a final orgy of consumption, is gaining ground in various manifestations everywhere. King got the vibe in “The Stand” in several segments that highlighted the murderous rage unleashed when some people dimly grasped that the world they knew was passing away in the plague and somebody was going to pay for it before the disease gets to me. Very scary stuff.
I don’t know enough to know whether your assessment of the real baseline reality of ISIS’s psychic existence is correct or not. IF! you are correct and IF! ISIS’s appeal is to pure recreational sadism, torture/rape opportunities, etc., then the people serving in ISIS and the people it attracts from around the world are indeed radioactive human waste. It would be an interesting question what turned the ISIS volunteers from human beings into radioactive human waste . . . so as to avoid turning more human beings into radioactive human waste. But the ex-human beings who have already been turned into radioactive human waste can’t be turned back into human beings again . . . IF your analysis of ISIS’s attraction is correct. So IF you are correct about what attracts what kind of people to ISIS, then the only way to make those people safe for the rest of us is to kill them. And the only legal way to kill them is to allow ISIStan to remain a surviving state just long enough to attract all the potential jihadis in the world to go join ISIS. The reason for letting them all go to the Islamic State is so that they could all be killed in an ongoing war between IS and its surroundings. When the very last jihadi wannabe has joined ISIS, gone to IS and been killed, then the world can move in and exterminate ISIS itself within the borders of IS by killing every single leader, member, cadre etc.
If ISIS really is what you say, that is the only approach which makes sense. HowEVer . . . if ISIS has an ideological basis, then perhaps a combination of bodywar and brainwar may be used against ISIS.
This kind of terrorism to intimidate enemies actually has a long history (for instance, the Mongol invasion of Persia).
But we hoped we were done with it.
whoever instigated and is paying for this (Saudi Arabia, at least, and quite possibly the CIA) has a lot to answer for.,
A lot of the best fighters and war-leaders of ISIS are bitter ex-Baathists from Iraq. Their unique atrociousness against the Kurds is probably a desire for vengeance dating back to fall-of-Baathism days. So they too have a lot to answer for.
As do the Turkish Erdogists for supporting ISIS so hard and effectively over the border. As do all the Western Powers who obstructed all Russian/Iranian/Hezbollah efforts to help Assad crush and exterminate the rebellion before a vacuum could open up for ISIS and Nusra to fill.
about isis…the opposite of sisi …has anyone ever actually seen any photos of more than 75 of these pickup truck loving garbanzos in one actual photo…not trying to be cute…just wondering is it just me or is it that no one gets close enough to see if there are actually any of then out there…not that smoke and mirrors does not win battles…but have never seen a photo that even looked like 100 of them together…
Hunh. That’s very interesting.
Tsipras calls on voters to “dismiss the old political system” that caused their economic mess in the first place. Something tells me Tsipras and Varoufakis are not really at odds. If Tsipras is against his radical Left wing, it seems to be because it has no long term solutions for change; he implies they just want to go back to the status quo ante and pick up the bliss where they left off. To my ear that is a condemnation of the last 40 years of neoliberal crony politix. While, similarly, Varoufakis is almost laughing at the oligarchs accusing him of treason and has joined forces beyond Greece with the entire European Left to create a new EU. Creating a New EU is not a radical idea, it is a conservative idea.
New Caledonian Crows and Social Learning. It might help this kind of research if “social” learning could be clearly defined. If it is a phenomenon of the transmission of ideas through language, then lets look at that first. Why isn’t demonstration a form of language? It requires lots of skills to decipher. And what could be more social than demonstrating how to harvest all those delicious ants? And then, really, adding a lot of words to that is just description. Right?
“Language” is just the way we define how humans as a species typically communicate. Other species have their own means of communication that work perfectly for their own circumstances. Anthropocentric observers would point to language in exceptionalist terms or as something other than the peculiarity it more probably is.
Which is higher bandwidth, Rush Limbaugh talking, or a coyote howling in concert with her neighbors?
right it’s like if particular sounds being repeated variably, as we do, is the only way to communicate. I think birds in general and ravens in particular seem to communicate well, but I’ve been scoffed at by people who study speech professionally, but how do we know they aren’t communicating with encrypted photons?
@Susan:
Social learning theory – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The one major lacuna (IMO) in the article is the lack of any discussion of priming, e.g. human infants being ‘primed’ to acquire language, and various attention-differences exhibited by the 2 genders even as neonates (which is key in the ‘to what extent are gender roles inborn (and merely reinforced socially) versus artificially imposed’ debate.)
http://momath.org/home/fibonacci-numbers-of-sunflower-seed-spirals/
re: Liberals Are Wrong To Separate Race From Class
In this article “Liberals” means right of center Dems, also known as Dem party elites.
In a way the #blm disruptions of Sanders campaign point to the success of neoliberal propaganda in the indoctrination of the primacy of identity politics over class politics.
—The growing acceptance of the view that racism was distinct from economic inequality and capitalist exploitation set the stage for underclass ideology and ultimately the paradox of the Clinton presidency. Clinton, though popular with black voters, did quite a bit to undermine the material wellbeing of black Americans.—
The same could be said of Obama.
Sunshine, people forget, the big wheel spins, the head spins, people forget
forget they’re hiding
Eminence front
it’s a put on
song now used in a GMC commercial: “In short, it’s a song that criticizes the kind of people who buy a chrome-grilled GMC truck over a Chevrolet. What an idea! Make a series of ads for your gussied-up versions of trucks, trucks that, in Denali trim, literally have an eminence front bolted onto the front fascia, and use a soundtrack that lampoons the idea of buying such a device! It’s like the LAPD making a recruiting video and using “Bulls On Parade” as the soundtrack! Sheer brilliance! What’s next for GMC?”
Come on!
Yes I know my enemies
They’re the teachers who taught me to fight me
Compromise, conformity, assimilation, submission
Ignorance, hypocrisy, brutality, the elite
All of which are American dreams.
Know Your Enemy/Rage Against the Machine
26 natl universities to abolish humanities, social sciences
Nearly half of the 60 national universities with humanities and social science faculties plan to abolish those departments in the 2016 academic year or later, according to a survey conducted by The Yomiuri Shimbun. Conducted among presidents of national universities across the country, the survey found that 26 intended to eliminate these departments. The universities will stop recruiting students for a combined total of at least 1,300 places, mainly in their teacher training faculties. Some of these slots will be allocated to newly established faculties. The survey highlighted the wave of reform sweeping over humanities and social science faculties. The Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry issued a notice to national universities this June calling for their humanities and social science faculties to be abolished or converted to other fields. The faculties it sought to have eliminated or converted included law and economics departments and teacher training faculties, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels. http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0002376592
I really hope that the Japanese are going to stop demonstrating to the world what man-made radiation does to people. Steven Magee
not sure why this post showed up here but hey…
Education, n. That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding. Ambrose Bierce
Anybody willing to bet that the suicide rate among seniors will rise exponentially in the next 10-15 years?
Korea vets,
vietnam vets,
drug war vets
black
irish
women
Great business opportunity!
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yOV8mBjHHYg
Regards to the column on rating agencies – well it is free speech, and only an opinion on the matter at hand. After 100 years of doing what it is they do, a/any investor should be able to rely on those opinions. But, possibly no.
I’ve begun to wonder how well these “blessed” NRSRO will handle higher interest rates on the muni bonds that they rate. Never mind, just an opinion.
“HSBC system failure leaves thousands facing bank holiday without pay ”
Money + HSBC + the Interwebs: what could go wrong? Several of my more techy clients insist on using web-based payments. Not HSBC, of course, but I just got more nervous about it.
And more broadly: this, and another example yesterday, are early examples of the same sort of IT brittleness we’re told is one reason Greece (for example) can’t change its currency overnight. These are breakdowns in day-to-day operations; making big changes, like a currency, poses much bigger problems – which means , in turn, that IT is a major barrier to solving other problems – in general. Grexit is merely one example.
I’m glad to see NC reporting these breakdowns, now that they’ve pointed out how brittle the systems really are. Unlike the Mellon Bank example, where there was suspicion of peculation, this seems to be a clear-cut breakdown – at a very troubled bank. Just the sort of thing that could propagate through the system.
A good reason to go back and watch those Permaculture videos: you may need those homestead skills.
“Ratings agencies aren’t doing enough to anticipate market volatility Nouriel Roubini, Globe and Mail”
Nouriel Roubini is among the VERY few prominent economists who “saw the bubble” in real estate and foresaw the crash of 2008.
About those smart crows, ravens, parrots, etc. . . . consider that they are all descended from a branch of the great dinosaur order which included theropods like . . . velociraptor among others. Imagine a velociraptor being as smart as a crow, or a rave, or an African gray parrot. And sociable like wolves.
If the killer asteroid hadn’t arrived, the intelligent dinosaurs might have evolved intelligence further. Veliciraptor might have become Philosoraptor. Philosoraptor might have created civilization, domesticated various vegetarian dinosaurs into stock animals for reliable meat, etc. Just picture philosoraptors riding on the backs of domesticated Tyrannosaurs wrangling herds of Triceratopsians. We mammals would still be the little ratlike things living under rocks or monkey-squirrely things living up in trees that our ancestors were.
Archaeopteryx rules!
Thanks for the report on moving derivatives trading beyond the CFTC
“Consistent rules around the world are better for investors and markets,” said Andrew Williams, a spokesman for Goldman Sachs. “That is what we advocated for then and continue to do so now.” ”
I think he means consistently weak rules around the world …
Wow, HSBC, think of the cascading failures from that…
Excerpt from Stanley Fischer’s J-Hole speech today:
Fischer goes on to discuss Chart 5 attached to his text, showing that a strong dollar depresses inflation the next year, but continues weakening GDP by -0.7% even in the second and third years afterward.
Yet he concludes by saying that:
Given Fischer’s strong dollar analysis, his conclusion is a non sequitur. A soft economy with soft inflation and a strengthening currency doesn’t need a rate hike. But the feckless Fedsters are tired of pushing on a string. They think a rate hike will tighten up the lines, so the great lumbering U.S. economy once more will clack its little wooden feet in response to their puppeteer’s hand jive. This delusional notion is a formula for failure, if not catastrophe.
As clueless as Greenspan was (I used to cue up the Beatles’ Fool on the Hill every time Magoo testified to Congress), the Yellen-Fischer comedy duo may be even worse.
But..but..what about bubble blowing, price discovery in markets, mal investment (M&A and bond funded stock buybacks) and the highest broker margin leverage in history? Not to mention screwing savers out of half a trillion the past 6 years and giving it to banks to lend with 12%-22% credit card rates?
Plus China is selling $50B/month of treasuries – potentially up to a trillion. That should help tamp down “King of the Junk Yard” Dollar a bit.
Re. ‘How to Prevent Your Local Searches From Being Sent Over the Internet’ — Under linux and os x, grep and find are your friends. Learn how to use them.
For windows machines, there are also third party file search tools, some are free. I’ve been using Effective Search for years (even before it was freeware). Boolean conditions and regular expressions are also supported (regex may not be your friend, but it’s still good to know).
http://www.sowsoft.com/file-search.htm
re Retail Brokerages Keep Breaking
gotta keep the rubes penned up, barbed wire was a great invention
might destabilize the market
puny players should expect ill treatment
I find these all convincing
Jay M