The New Economy Sized Brains!

[elfs]

The US Government: "One gigantic, half-opaque holding company, one whose balance sheet includes the world's most appallingly large and risky hedge fund."

Tabbai's article in Rolling Stone documents the regulatory failures and the rise of investment banks "too big to fail." Arnold Kling, from whom I got this link, has this to say:

The best way to predict developments in politics and finance has been to ask: what will do the most to increase the concentration of power? Every headline, from the Geithner regulatory plan to the proposed cap on the charitable deduction, to the resignation of the General Motors CEO, should be viewed in that light.

Many of Kling's commentors have useful dissents from Tabbai's article, which upon re-reading I have to agree is overwrought with images of power- and alcohol-drunk executives making backroom deals. Another valid dissent is Tabbai's failure to include legislative changes in the past eight years that made the dealmaking possible.

Private, voluntary testing found Salmonella in pistachios; obviously, the solution is more federal intervention!

This week, Kraft announced that it's private testing facility uncovered salmonella in pistachios supplied to Kraft by Setton Pistachio, Inc. This looks like a good case of the private sector doing its job: Kraft is protecting its reputation by testing the materials that go into the products it makes.

So if this is something that doesn't require federal intervention, why is every freakin' news article about this handwringing about how the FDA needs more authority?

Nouriel Roubini has more hope than Paul Krugman!?

The Economist's "Free Exchange" blog shows that Krugman is still completely aghast at what's happening, but Nouriel "Dr. Doom" Roubini is actually saying that things might start to get better-- slowly, but upward-- by the start of next year.

"At what point do people beat their state legislator to a bloody pulp for being an idiot?"

So, still think violent rhetoric is evenly balanced on the left and the right? Erick Erickson, a former speechwriter for George Bush, completely loses his cool and writes:

At what point do the people tell the politicians to go to hell? At what point do they get off the couch, march down to their state legislator's house, pull him outside, and beat him to a bloody pulp for being an idiot? Were I in Washington State, I'd be cleaning my gun right about now waiting to protect my property from the coming riots or the government apparatchiks coming to enforce nonsensical legislation.

Do you know what he's mad about? He calls this "lunacy:"

Spokane County became the launch pad last July for the nation's strictest ban on dishwasher detergent made with phosphates, a measure aimed at reducing water pollution. The ban will be expanded statewide in July 2010, the same time similar laws take effect in several other states.

Yes, that's right. He's calling for blood in the streets over water pollution regulation that reduces phosphates in dishwasher detergent. Matthew Yglesias says the same thing that occured to me: this looks like a market distortion, sure, but smart markets respond by developing better soaps, and the rest die.

(And no, this isn't like the Kraft thing; clean water is an unpriced externality, and using legislation to mandate minimal standards is something I usually find acceptable.)

Note to self: ethnic cleansing is a useful first step in nation-building

Matt Steinglass looks at Iraq and the cultural and ethnic separation going on there, and then notes that after WW2 the US and European powers engaged in "vast amounts of ethnic cleansing," each state expelling "the other" to create nations of ethnic and linguistic familiarity.

The map of Central and Eastern Europe was sorted of most of its troublesome Austro-Hungarian complexity. And as it turns out it's much easier to build a nation when its population doesn't have murderous long-running internal religious and ethnic differences.

Glenn Beck: America on the Road to Facism

Arnold Kling is right to ask that we look at everything in terms of how power is concentrated or distributed for our benefit, but Beck's over the top invocation of Nazi imagery and claims that the 1916 Mercury dime's use of the fasces signalled Roosevelt's desire to make our country a facsist nation is simply stupid.

Sarah Palin: "There was no one on the McCain team I could find to hold hands with and pray."

This is just pure WTFism. At a dinner speech last week, Sarah Palin made a comment to the effect that there was no one on the McCain team with whom she felt comfortable praying. That's just weird, and it's apparently pissed off a lot of the Republican staffers who coddled her along during the campaign, and who are tired of Sarah throwing them under the bus, repeatedly, to excuse her own shortcomings.

The Corner: Obama Likes Being Unpopular

Another thing I just Do Not Get: At NRO's The Corner, Andy McCarthy writes:

We know that lowering marginal tax rates can increase federal revenue, but it's clear that the President won't cut taxes.

Let me get this straight. (1) Cutting taxes is massively popular, it's a way to win votes, it's a way to win the hearts and minds of the American people. Let them keep their money. (2) Cutting taxes increases federal tax revenue. Increasing federal tax revenue is massively popular, because it allows the government to accomplish more.

Therefore, since Obama won't cut taxes, he clearly wants to lose. He wants to be unpopular. He wants to fail. It can't be because the administration is trying to do its best, and has experts telling it that just maintaining our current economic state, much less improving it, requires a certain level of taxation, can it?

Obviously not!

Comments

[rand0m1.livejournal.com]

Wait a minute. Cutting federal taxes increases federal tax revenue? That's like saying if my salary is lowered I will make more money. Am I just missing something/dense or is this another case of people not knowing the basics of logic?

[lucky-otter.livejournal.com]

Taxes reduced -> more money in the hands of rich people -> more jobs -> more income in the brackets which didn't have their taxes reduced, in amounts sufficient to make up for the tax loss from reducing the top bracket.

That's the theory. And it's just as much bullshit now as it ever was.

[sirfox.livejournal.com]

trickle-up economics?

[elfs.livejournal.com]

The Laffer Curve (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve).

[(Anonymous)]

It's not bullshit; in fact, the validity of the Laffer Curve is pretty easy to see. It's just when people start claiming that the maximum must lie exactly where their ideology specifies it should, or that the curve must necessarily be unimodal, that you start getting into woo territory.

Number 127

It's not cutting taxes

[(Anonymous)]

it's cutting tax RATES. That worked for Reagan, Kennedy, and Queen Victoria :)

[lucky-otter.livejournal.com]

They're all writing about how the FDA needs more authority because someone, probably an FDA spokesperson, spun this as "It's a darn good thing they told us; imagine what could have happened if they didn't? It's too bad we can't require them to tell us."

[sirfox.livejournal.com]

In answer to Erick Erickson:
"At what point do the people tell the politicians to go to hell?"

November 4th, 2008. Maybe he wasn't paying attention.