Courtesy of Ken Macclune:

Here is this week’s weekly comment from John P. Hussman the head of Hussman Funds, an investment fund. It is overall quite interesting except the “other comments” section which is exceptional.

Hussman Funds - Weekly Market Comment: November 24, 2003

Other comments
John P. Hussman, Ph.D.

The notion that we are the sum of our actions is as true for nations as it is for individuals. It is difficult to achieve peace without having peace within ourselves; without taking actions that embody peace; without understanding whether our actions have planted seeds of suffering or seeds of reconciliation. If our actions, or those of our enemies, regularly contain violence, our lives will be dominated by violence. If our actions regularly contain peace, our lives will be grounded in peace.

Justice and enforcement are essential when they center on those responsible for criminal actions. Force can be effective in overcoming a specific enemy, or as a method of bringing an intransigent enemy to the negotiating table. But when there is no centralized authority to persuade, the ability to achieve peace through violence and retaliation is very limited. Force, directed broadly, does nothing but to encourage each side to spill its own fresh suffering onto the other side. Under these conditions, peace can only result from leadership, moderation, understanding, and diplomacy.

There is no shortage of advisors surrounding the Administration, particularly from the American Enterprise Institute, who have long supported regime change in Iraq, and advocate a theory of democratizing the Middle East through force. It is doubtful that the American public would have willingly bought into the idea of placing the lives of our troops at risk for the sake of these theories, regardless of the appeal of freeing Iraqis from a brutal dictator. Iraq was interminably frustrating, but the risks to America were containable. The proper and humanitarian opportunity to remove Hussein was when he was gassing the Kurds – which could have been a multinational effort with much less risk to U.S. troops. In any event, the path to war was undoubtedly paved with a blurred line of distinction between those actually responsible for our suffering on 9/11, and Iraq.

Our obligation now is to see the situation clearly; to look for truth without filtering reality through wishful thinking. There have been enough positive outcomes from the Iraq war to begin bringing our troops home with gratitude and pride, and their safety cannot be separated from perceptions of the U.S. as an occupying force. In the occupation of the Philippines in the early 1900's, the U.S. was forced to maintain over 50,000 troops and a presence for over a decade. Attacks on these troops were relentless despite successful strikes on rebel leaders and magnanimous efforts in building schools, hospitals and public infrastructure. As historian Martin Gilbert wrote, “it was the tactics of guerrilla fighting that proved impossible for even the most disciplined army to master. The guerrilla forces could melt away… as soon as they made their strike, and then regroup whenever they decided to strike again.”

The situation in Iraq will not be changed simply by running elections of candidates appointed solely by the U.S. Administration, which would probably risk widespread boycotts. It certainly will not be changed by plans to “privatize” the Iraqi oil industry. The best way to achieve peace is through actions that contain peace – limit the use of broad retaliatory strikes, shift enforcement to a NATO coalition, abandon plans to privatize Iraqi resources, and delegate civil matters to the United Nations. It is essential for this process to end in a stable and agreeable government in Iraq, but this does not require exclusive U.S. control. Our true enemies are elsewhere, and our security requires as much cooperation and peaceful action toward the broader world as it requires enforcement against those actually responsible for terrorism. The roots of terrorism lie in ignorance, hate, suffering, misperception, fear, and resentment of foreign influence. It is still possible to address these in a way that increases our security.

All of this has been said before, of course, both here and elsewhere. But each day that an American soldier's family has to bear the sorrow of a foreign policy that has ceased to advance the security of America and its troops, it becomes obvious that it hasn't been said enough.

The Entertainment Economy
Can the United States economy possibly continue to grow based on nonsensical consumer spending? How many game consoles, CPUs, big screens, automobiles, timepieces, and multi-function cellphones can our population of WalMartians possibly consume? Our economy has become overly dependent on this conspicuous consumption of luxury items. What if everyone woke up and realized that $4 is way too much to spend for a cup of coffee?

We have to spend our money on something though, right? We don't have the kinds of fundamental need problems our grandparents and great-grandparents had. What should a society do when its priveleged class passes through all extents of the traditional needs pyramid? It seems that we are defining a new needs pyramid that is distinctly pear-shaped. Our obese, novelty obsessed masses are hopelessly plugged in to the marketing and propoganda busily creating the next generation of workaholic consumption crazed amusement junkies.

Forbes.com: Happiness Is An Overpriced Latte

Comment Capability Added:
Comments now available courtesy of blogspeak. Blogger doesn't have its own comments capabilities. One has to add comment capability by "hosting" the comments with a 3rd party service. I use a free one called blogspeak. This means that the comments are actually stored on a 3rd party server.

Switching cell phone companies and keeping your phone number:

Update 11/20/03: I finally decided to take advantage of the seemingly good deals that abound on the web lately for free or heavily discounted phones with new service agreements. I opted for ATT GSM service and a 2 year contract after considering TMobile and Verizon. I found that the ATT rate plans for "national family" plans were much more competitive than the TMobile plans. TMobile's low end shared minute plan was $60, where with ATT I got a good plan with plenty of anytime and mobile to mobile minutes for $49.99 month. I purchased two nokia 6200 phones which were the best phones I could find with good reviews, not too many features like cameras and video recorders, cheap. The TMobile 6610 phone is similar to the 6200. I ordered directly from the attwireless web site and got a good shared plan with 550 anytime shared, 1000 anytime mobile 2 mobile, national plan, free long distance, free car charger, no activation fee, $100 rebate, and a few other things. The plan allows us to have 2 phones and one bill.

More information on transferring your existing number: HERE

I plan to do this from Sprint to Verizon. Should be an interesting experience. I would try to exploit Sprint to get a better deal, but I'm so tired of their substandard signal quality that I don't care what deal they might cut at this point.
Yahoo! News - How to Exploit the New Cell-Phone Rules

Dear Mr. Science,
OK, so this is slightly off the economic and political topic, and it is slightly gross, but I think we've all wondered about this before. An associate of mine has made the claim that the odors associated with flatulence are in fact due to "aerisolized fecal matter" which I find hard to substantiate. The following article incidates that Hydrogen sulfide is responsible for the smell, but there must also be a reason why there are such a wide variety of odors available. I submit to our resident expert on methane gas a request for a reasonable explanation in this matter. If you're about to ask, here is the definition of aerosolized. Thank You.

Howstuffworks "What causes flatulence?"

A response to the "KING Report" for November 13th, 2003:

"A repeat of Great Depression-type deflation is crap. I don't see how
it can happen now without a gold standard (and even the first time
around Roosevelt revalued the USD down about 40% in terms of gold) and
the policy wonks we have in place. Unneeded items will fall in price,
but the essentials will rise. An adjustment is needed to purge the
system, but it won't happen voluntarily. I do, however, see a chance
of a 'rhyme'.

Asia went through our current situation in the 90s. It started with
massive injections of "liquidity", followed by a spike in
rates/inflation, then an equally massive currency devaluation. And
they had current account surpluses to help dig them out!

I'm now convinced (but check back in 2 days, I'll probably have changed
my mind!) that this is the late 70s/early 80s all over again (price and
rate inflation) with a couple of major differences: debt levels (on
every level) and cross-dependency in derivatives (with financial sector
by far the biggest player in practically every market).

USD will fall (more), gold will rise (more), and if a shock doesn't
bring the debt house of cards down first, last will be debt liquidation
(and therefore the housing market). At that point, political problems
will dwarf the slowdown in commerce.

If the Fed pulls off, by virtue of confidence in Greenspan only, the
best-case scenario (Japan-style languishing until we hit retirement
age) it will be a miracle. Otherwise, it will pretty much suck.

Cheery, huh?"