They Hate America, They Hate Freedom, They Hate Apple Pie too.

Too funny for words except that it is so sad.

"President" Bush on Tuesday dismissed a human rights report as "absurd" for its harsh criticism of U.S. treatment of terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, saying the allegations were made by prisoners "who hate America."

More Hussman

From this week's Hussman report:

There continues to be pressure on China to revalue the yuan. In standard Orwellian fashion, China 's maintenance of a fixed and stable exchange rate with the U.S. dollar is being criticized as “manipulation.” We should be careful what we wish for – the deep current account imbalance with China owes far more to profligate fiscal policy in the U.S. than to unfair currency policies abroad. Sure, the yuan appears undervalued, but before pushing for a revaluation, U.S. policy makers would be really, really smart to get our own fiscal policy in order so we wouldn't be so heavily dependent on foreign capital inflows to finance U.S. economic activity.

Unless that happens, a revaluation of the yuan will do more to stifle growth in U.S. gross domestic investment than any single policy move that Congress could contemplate. Thinking about this in general equilibrium is a disaster: the stuff we buy from China isn't really stuff we make at home, so we'll observe import price increases without enjoying much increased demand for domestic production, the stuff that China competes with us to import (mainly oil), being priced internationally in U.S. dollars, will become cheaper to China, thereby exacerbating energy prices, and the major source of growth in U.S. gross domestic investment in recent years (foreign capital inflows from Asian central banks) will drop off substantially. This is going to be interesting.

Don't miss the message here.

Candidates Loyal to Hariri Sweep Election and elect his son.
(Blood is way way thick. Everything else is water or worse.)

A Bane Amid The Housing Boom: Rising Foreclosures

Is "news" the reporting of something changing, or is it just a matter of convenience, accident or pile on?
"Hey, the lights good over here: lets write about this."
Dunno: does seem to say that the caution flag is out for buyers.

Trial balloon

"Meanwhile, retired Gen. Wesley Clark predicted 'a substantial pullout of American troops' from Iraq by the end of the summer. The former presidential candidate was a speaker at the senior convocation at upstate Ithaca's Cornell University"
The spin machine is reving up. As of May 28, victory is scheduled for September.

Bubbles

"About 54 percent of home buyers in the District purchased their homes using interest-only loans so far this year, according to LoanPerformance, a San Francisco-based company that tracks loan originations nationwide. About one-third of buyers in Maryland and Virginia are buying with interest-only loans. Just five years ago, only about 2 percent of home-purchase loans in the Washington area involved interest-only terms."

WW III

No other way to describe it. Bigger and better, as this is a war without borders: it's your neighbor.

Interesting

"Tell your boss you have to deal with a drinking problem and you'll be fine; say you want more time with your family and you're on the endangered species list."

Everything is OK. Go back to sleep.

This is a government that lives to make itself look good, so that people remain placid and accepting of (or better still, oblivious to) the shit going on around them.

This is a quote from a blog about China, but you no doubt first thought it was about our own government. This is why W likes China so much, his government is just like theirs.

Rates: swimming in deep waters.

"It may just be a confluence of all these. But many economists are concluding that, in a world of rising savings and cheap money, returns on Treasury bond investments may simply be the best of a bad bunch."
GMB: Which would make I-bonds an easy entry.
But the underlying reasons examined here are a cautionary tale. Basically, nobody has clue, not really.

post-digestive art

uh, thanks. no more for me.

luckily we now know that...

It's All Newsweek's Fault

The right's rage at Newsweek is all too reminiscent of the contempt it heaped on Specialist Thomas Wilson, the soldier who dared to ask Mr. Rumsfeld at a town hall meeting in Kuwait in December about the shortage of armored vehicles. Mr. Wilson was guilty of "near-insubordination," said Rush Limbaugh; the embedded reporter who helped him frame his question was reviled by bloggers as a traitor. Yet Mr. Wilson's question was legitimate, and Mr. Rumsfeld's answer (that the shortage was only "a matter of production and capability") was a lie.

The Rumsfeld Stain

Rumsfeld: presentation is everything. aka don't let them see you sweat. aka too dumb to know you're dead (eg, Bush)
As to the war, it's over: the Sunni's have joined the government.
Not only will this quell the violence in Iraq, it will ripple through all of Islam. The Islamic Reformation has reached critical mass.
Finally, ALL the media seems to be carrying the heckling of Laura... makes no sense. Heckle Laura? George hides behind a skirt?
But none of it is going to matter: it's over.
(Yeah, Bush can still screw it up... if peace in Iraq does not bring oil or even promises less,, ummm, maybe that's just not acceptable: keep fighting.)
Ah, but HOW could he screw it up ?

Why worry about yuan?

From Hussman:

Now, why would international financial market participants want to hold onto their yuan but get rid of dollar holdings (or even borrow them)? Hmm.

While I don't yet anticipate an abrupt revaluation of the Chinese yuan (a change in the currency peg that would make the yuan appreciate, or equivalently, the U.S. dollar depreciate), suddenly all of this talk about China and other central banks wanting to “diversify” their holdings away from U.S. dollars seems to be having more bite. Anticipation of that type of event would tend to create just the sort of yuan hoarding and dollar borrowing that's reflected in Eurocurrency spreads (you want to borrow dollars if they're expected to depreciate, of course, so you can pay them back with cheaper dollars later).

Though I discussed the risk that an abrupt revaluation of Asian currencies would have, I also viewed that risk as somewhat remote - an important element to watch but not any sort of imminent threat. After all, China and Japan seemed to be willing to continue with the status quo, and nobody in the Administration would possibly provoke an event that could so profoundly destabilize the U.S. economy.

Well, in a move that is simply beyond comprehension, Treasury Secretary John Snow last week tried to jawbone China and Japan into revaluing their currencies relative to the U.S. dollar (i.e. to allow their currencies to become more expensive). In the unilateralist, partial equilibrium, no-unintended-consequences world that is the Bush Administration, more expensive Asian currencies are a way of protecting U.S. manufacturers from the competition of cheap imports. In the general equilibrium world that is reality, the potential effect of this policy could be disastrous.

How to quickly eliminate our gaping current account deficit

Recall that every major expansion in the U.S. economy has begun with a current account surplus. This means that the U.S. had not only enough savings to finance its own investment, but was even sending savings overseas by purchasing foreign securities. This allowed the U.S. to finance huge investment booms, first by drawing on those excess savings, and then by quickly moving to a current account deficit and importing savings from foreigners. Needless to say, with the U.S. presently running the deepest current account deficit in history, our ability to finance much sustained growth in domestic investment (factories, housing, equipment, capital spending) is sharply limited. Even our present level of economic activity is dependent on the largest inflows of foreign capital in history, largely from China and Japan.

In effect, the factor that allows the U.S. to continue its consumption binge, finance its investment, extend its housing boom, run irresponsibly large government deficits, swap corporate debt payments into ridiculously low short-term interest rates, and maintain unusually high valuations in the equity markets - the quiet support that keeps this whole house of cards standing - is the willingness of Asian economies to accumulate an endless supply of U.S. dollar assets (largely Treasury and U.S. agency securities). That willingness is driven by one goal - to hold their currencies down in relation to the U.S. dollar.

Incomprehensibly, the Administration is now trying to pressure China and Japan to give up that goal. If this effort succeeds, and particularly if that success is abrupt, surging short-term interest rates, higher corporate defaults, and a collapse in U.S. domestic investment would likely follow. As I used to teach my students, there is a really quick way to "balance" a current account deficit (which is also the main way that it happens in practice): plunge the economy into a deep recession. This isn't our expectation yet. It is, however, an increasing risk born of misguided economic analysis.

I-Bonds are at 4.8%

You have to hold them for at least a year, and you'll pay a 3 month interest penalty if you cash them before 5 years. But compared to the best 12 month CD rate I've found at 4.2%, which required opening a new bank account and paying bank fees, 4.8% and the terms are pretty good. If rates are higher after a year, it comes to a 1.2% penalty to get out at 12 months, so the APY would then be 3.6. The move-to rate would have to be at least 6.0% for this to be a sensible move. Seems like a decent place to stick cash.

Why I'm still a liberal

Evans: Why I'm still a liberal

May 22, 2005

I am, in most things, liberal because to my mushy eyes, the American "welfare state" has been (mostly) a success. Not a big fan of government, but a believer that some things are best done together, rather than individually.

History is quite clear about what happens when the "haves" don't bother to take care of the "have nots," or even the "have somes": Rule by the rich, the few, who will, eventually, lose control, often violently.

But as diehard conservatives insist we move from America's New Deal ethic into Ayn Rand Adventure Land — minimal taxes; everyone out for themselves — I can't imagine why they think our (far from perfect) system has been so awful.

After all, since Roosevelt, the United States has won the only war that really mattered, blasted into the economic stratosphere, raised standards of living, cultivated the middle class (that powerful antidote to pluto-oligarchy), become a technological Godzilla, and built the most dominant (if excessive) military in history.

Gee, what a trainwreck.

But people like change, I guess, and these days we seem to be demanding it regardless of the likely consequences.

In Missouri, Gov. Matt Blunt piously declares that raising taxes on "hard-working families" is immoral even as he strives to eliminate Medicaid services for the poor. This Christian politician seems to have missed one of Jesus's most oft-repeated messages: Take care of the poor.

In Kansas, the state board of education proposes redefining science as "a systematic method of continuing investigation" that does not limit its inquiry to the natural world. Under such Dark Ages claptrap, the "supernatural" would be fair game in Kansas science classes.

The supernatural they are after, of course, is God. But thousands of years of inquiry have not brought "naturalistic" proof of God, and good, old-fashioned faith has had to suffice. And once you open the door to the supernatural, what's to stop a kid from writing a biology paper on werewolves, unicorns or Oz?

I keep wondering if these people even "believe" in science, and if they are willing to eschew the medicine and technology — produced by "naturalistic" science — that has granted them such cushy lives.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration is in high dudgeon over a Newsweek item about alleged "Quran abuse" at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A small item, since retracted (though it's bolstered by substantial evidence), "caused" Muslim riots in Afghanistan, according to the Bush spin.

Now the White House, ignoring the undisputed abuse and murder of Muslims by U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, is playing the schoolmarm, telling Newsweek it has blood of 16 Muslims on its hands.

No mention of the tens of thousands of Muslims killed in ill-advised military actions, or the 1,622 U.S. troops killed (and more than 10,000 casualties) in Iraq because of much more egregious "errors" by our elected armchair gladiators.

And if we are to believe Newsweek is to blame for these deaths, then why aren't we blaming loudmouth ideologues in Congress for the dangers faced by judges who don't rule as some think they should? Following the tragic Terri Schiavo case, for example, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) suggested that we can hardly blame wackos for going after judges when they don't like their rulings.

Chicago Judge Joan H. Lefkow, whose husband and mother were murdered by a lunatic who didn't like her dismissal of his malpractice suit, chastised the agitators last week. Such rhetoric, she said, "can only encourage those who are on the edge ... to exact revenge on a judge who displeases them."

But our outrage is now selective, directed by people drunk on their vision of an America unfettered by collective responsibility, a society ruled by belief over facts, a judiciary beholden to party politics, and a foreign policy that may make us feel like kick-ass warriors from afar, but in fact makes the world more dangerous.

Call me what you will, but what, exactly, is so appealing about that grand vision?

Contact Clay Evans at (303) 473-1352 or evansc@dailycamera.com.

Wal-Mart and America

Protecting your god given right to shop.

Hiring is Obsolete

Web startup costs = living and eating.

RealMoney on Walmart

More Downside in Store for Wal-Mart
By James Cramer
It's clear that Wal-Mart is vulnerable, and things are going to get worse before they get better for the retailer, says James J. Cramer. The competition that Wal-Mart faces from slicker, more consumer-friendly rivals is hurting Wal-Mart, even with its low prices. Wal-Mart will continue to suffer until it gets in someone who can merchandise or unless we get a nasty recession. Until then, this stock is a sell.

The Note: carnage

"We say with all the genuine apolitical and non-partisan human concern that we can muster that the death and carnage in Iraq is truly staggering.
And/but we are sort of resigned to the Notion that it simply isn't going to break through to American news organizations, or, for the most part, Americans.
Democrats are so thoroughly spooked by John Kerry's loss —- and Republicans so inspired by their stay-the-course Commander in Chief —- that what is hands down the biggest story every day in the world will get almost no coverage. No conflict at home = no coverage.

This Is Your Brain on Motherhood - New York Times

Becoming a parent... can power up the mind with uniquely motivated learning. Having a baby is 'a revolution for the brain,' Dr. Merzenich says."

Interesting

Wal-Mart as an employer.