Deep Inner Turmoil.

It's stories like this that bring up the most fundamental conflicts in my politics.

1) On one hand, I abhor our lax gun control laws and find the path of the NRA and U.S. gun rights movements to be amongst the stupidest campaigns ever waged.

2) On the other hand, I would like to be able to shoot people in the arm if they won't stop talking during a movie. Especially a Brad Pitt film.

BEST DEFECTIVE PRODUCT EVER!!!!!!!!!!!

NEWS from CPSC

U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission

Office of Information and Public Affairs

Washington, DC 20207

---

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE December 23, 2008 Release #09-073

Firm's Recall Hotline: (800) 425-5627 CPSC Recall Hotline: (800) 638-2772 CPSC Media Contact: (301) 504-7908

Hallmark Recalls Jumbo Snow Globes Due to Fire Hazard

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, in cooperation with the firm named below, today announced a voluntary recall of the following consumer product. Consumers should stop using recalled products immediately unless otherwise instructed.

Name of Product: Jumbo Snowman Snow Globes

Units: 7,000

Importer: Hallmark Cards Inc., of Kansas City, Mo.

Hazard: When exposed to sunlight, the snow globes can act as a magnifying glass and ignite nearby combustible materials, posing a fire hazard.

Incidents/Injuries: Hallmark has received two reports of the snow globes igniting nearby materials. No injuries have been reported.

Description: This recall involves a Hallmark Jumbo Snow Globe in the shape of a snowman with model number 1XAG5093 and UPC code 795902066666. The snow globe measures 11 by 12 by 17 inches. The model number and the UPC code can be found on the back of the hangtag.

Sold at: Hallmark Gold Crown stores nationwide from October 2008 through November 2008 for about $100.

Manufactured in: China

Solicitation Again!

Last time I solicited your books...and despite my fierce promise to read them all by the end of the summer, I wasn't able to keep up with my convictions because of the need to study for the bar. (How typical to be derailed from meaning by the Career of Law and then complain about it.) That being said, I still have the list of remaining books:

Down and Out in Paris and London – H.
Chinese Lessons - A.B.
Dhalgren - Jeff?
Some indecent book - mh.

Am I missing any?

In any case, I am coming back for another solicitation....this time for music. Similar rules to prevent overload and to ensure you give thought rather than volume...because it's impossible to deal with 30 new artists that are "sooo good." (M: I still have 94 cds of yours I haven't gotten to yet, though thanks much for the Ingrid!)

The rules:

1) Suggest one artist and/or album.
2) Suggest one.
3) Suggest one. If you suggest more, I'm ignoring you.
4) If you suggest something I already have, you get another go.
5) If you have it on non-DRM mp3, please send it to me.

Oh, and if you're one of the people out there who I am aware may read the blog but has never commented and for some reason thinks they shouldn't comment...just comment dammit. For example, KG or CFM.

Recovered!

I think I've recovered! I'm still a little sore, but I think everything else is in order. Now I'm debating with myself over whether I should crack a beer as I watch a game of football in HD.

...tough. On a side note, I think I've actually lost weight from not drinking any beer in the last 3 days...which, since it is the weekend, could add up to a total of, what, 15 to 20 beers? (That or I lost weight from having only consumed 1000 calories since Thursday). I've basically spent all of today doing exactly what I did the past two sick days...watching TV from the couch. However, I was able to sit up and do some cleaning too rather than getting too cold and woozy to be able to sit up straight.

In other news, I watched Hellboy 2: The Golden Army today. I actually really enjoyed the last Hellboy movie, which I had absolutely zero interest in seeing (but bought because I was living by myself in India and needed something to watch while washing my clothes by hand in my bathroom.) Although the movie is not without random flaws, I thought the movie was pretty amazing. It's sorta like mashing together Pan's Labyrinth, The Matrix, and Men in Black (without the Barry Sonnenfeld) into this gigantic, swirling ball of trippy pandelerium. I mean, for God's Sakes....Hellboy fights a Forest God ("An Elemental") under the Brooklyn Bridge - that's entertainment.

Ok...I'm going to recover with Hookah and Alcohol.

Food Poisoning Upsides.

So food poisoning has its upsides...

Although I should be sitting at my desk doing some reading on a new bank regulatory law involving tax deductions and calculation of goodwill for the purposes of tier 1 capital, the truth is that my head is still very woozy and my lower back hurts like hell for some reason. The back pain began with the food poisoning and seems to be my litmus test for how quickly I'm recovering...I suppose it's just a continuation of my body aches. Long story short, I can't sit at my desk and it doesn't seem right to try and work when I should just be resting up.

Instead, I've been resting in a complete daze of media. I woke up and laid in bed listening to an episode or two of This American Life in bed while trying to assess how good or bad I felt. (I felt good lying in bed. I felt sick getting up.)

I managed to trudge over to the couch and turned on the television. So far I've re-watched Talladega Nights, I've watched Annie Hall, and I've also watched Pan's Labyrinth...these in addition to polishing off the first season of The Wire, getting through the first half of Season 11 of South Park, and watching Persepolis last night. Since it's not worth getting into, I'm just gonna say that every thing I watched was totally awesome, except Pan's Labyrinth, which was totally awesome but far more intense than I was ready for. I have semi avoided that movie because I knew it was the type of movie that had the ability to drain you...and boy...it sure did. Then again, it's not like The Wire and Persepolis were lightweights.

I also started reading "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" and though I'm only like a quarter of the way through, I still don't really like it. Does anyone have any opinions on this particular book? I know we all have opinions about Eggers and whatnot, but just this book...anyone? I could just as easily put it down and leave it for good, but I'm curious as to why he is as well-received as he is.

That's all...back to food poisoning. Ugh.

AH Goddammit!

Food poisoning fucking blows.

I don't know where it came from, but I think I got food poisoning from my firm's holiday party. If I had to guess, it was that cold meatball I ate right before I left. Miserable. Joint pain, my body aches, my skin hurts, I'm freezing and hot and chilled like a motherfucker, my stomach is queasy, I've been in and out of the bathroom for various reasons at least 40 times (25 of which were between 3:00 and 4:00 am.) And if I'm not mistaken, I must have vomited up so much and dug so deeply that I must have cleared my spleen and liver by the time I finished.

And, as it turns out, throwing up HURTS man! I couldn't even keep water down for more than 10 minutes as I felt my lips and skin drying up from the inside.

URGH.

At least I ordered 7 gallons of gatorade from the local delivery grocery place.

Weekend Wrap-up.

There's nothing all that interesting here...just a few notes:

First, I had the pleasure of seeing Frost/Nixon. It was excellent. And jesus christ, that Frank Langella is one hell of an actor. I suggest you take the time to see it, not because it carries any deep lessons, but just because I think it's a good movie worth seeing. But probably not on the big screen...instead, you should go see

THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL! NUMBER ONE IN THE BOX OFFICE BITCHES!!! For the record, in case you've forgotten or in case you are new, I will consistently and earnestly defend Keanu Reeves' honor with ferocity and admantine resolve. I am keenly aware of his shortcomings and I make no claim on his talents. But damn, I support Keanu Reeves. Reviews for this movie have made me laugh out loud everytime I see them. ALL of the reviews are all similar (and funny). Here are some examples of the idea conveyed in every review you will read:

• The best part of this movie is Keanu Reeves. He plays an alien who doesn’t talk much and shows no emotion. I really think he has found his perfect role.
• I even liked Keanu Reeves, who has often been unfairly accused of robotic acting. Intentionally or not, his performance here subtly tweaks those accusations.
• On the plus side, Reeves is relatively well cast as an affectless alien. One can only hope that in the future he will devote himself to playing androids, less-self-aware species of undead, stylish pieces of contemporary furniture, and other roles that do not require the exhibition of any recognizably human traits.

Heh.

In other news, I am very impressed with GWB's ability to dodge thrown shoes by Iraqis. I have to admit that I probably would have gotten a very fearful awkward face (like the one I get when pigeon dodging) and had a momentary panic the instant someone stood up in Iraq and started yelling and making sudden movements. I would have embarrassed the shit out of myself. Instead, Bush quite gracefully dodged the first shoe and wasn't all that bothered by the second. Furthermore, as soon as security came over, he brushed them off to the side. Now I hate that fucking man and everything he stands for and has done to this world...but I'm a little impressed. (Note: He completely undid the cool factor by his verbal response to the incident afterwards.)

Sampler Platter.

Once again, I am here with a healthy mix of chinese victuals...a little kung pao, a little general tso's, some financial crisis reading, some buddha's delight, some explanation of securitization, and maybe a quick concert review....followed by yet another great way to pass 15 minutes at work....followed by a pictorial explanation of why racism is proper.

1) The Kung Pao.

...Fuck Kung Pao chicken. It has peanuts and I can't eat peanuts. Fuck Kung Pao.

2) General Tso's.

...This makes up for my inability to eat Kung Pao. If General Tso met Kung Pao (445-398 B.C.E.), General Tso would whip his ass.

3) I read another great article on the financial crisis today, this time from the perspective of Chairman Bernanke. If you're unfamiliar with the players, Ben Bernanke is a smallish little jewish professor who was a lauded academic and economist who became the Chairman of the Federal Reserve. He was installed during one of the most exuberant economic times in history with the irrelevant background in studying the Great Depression, and is now at the helm of potentially one of the most destructive financial crises in the history of mankind. This one is in the recent issue of the New Yorker if you, for some reason, need credentials on whether it's good.

4) Buddha's Delight.

...who the fuck are you kidding? Vegetarian chinese food? Leave. And eat some leaves. (Maybe thick succulent ones if you're lucky."

5) Securitization.

I watched this little video during work today because I had nothing to do. If you have a fairly good grasp over the process of securitization, you won't need to see it. If you 1) don't know what securitization is, 2) don't care what securitization is, and/or 3) don't immediately understand how our financial system managed to vaporize itself...I suggest you take the 7 minutes to watch. It's definitely not academic. It's entirely made for lay peeplez and is interesting.

How credit cards become asset-backed bonds from Marketplace on Vimeo.

6) Bon Iver.

I went to the Bon Iver show tonight at Town Hall. Fantastic. Chills and warmth. 'Twas good. Likey.

7) Fascinating Fascinating: The story of Clive Wearing.

Sarah sent along this wonderful wonderful article about this dude named Clive Wearing. He contracted this cold sore virus that somehow decimated the part of his brain that allows people to remember, and thus has spent the last like...30 years without being able to remember anything for more than 18 seconds. When he wrote in a journal, his entry looked like this:

8:31 AM: Now I am really, completely awake.
9:06 AM: Now I am perfectly, overwhelmingly awake.
9:34 AM: Now I am superlatively, actually awake.

As existential and chilling a piece as you will read. But then again, it's just very interesting because it's just so...inconceivable. (Incidentally, he still plays music beautifully.)

...yeah yeah...it's the New Yorker.

8) [Shakes head]...Chinese People and their products.


IVIKE HAHAHA

Harry Potter and the GIANT FUNNEL. No shit.

Violence and the Media.

WARNING: This post contains several very violent images. I guarantee my thoughts aren't worth reading if you don't want to see the photos.

I don't know if it's just Indian media or all media except our own, but despite our overexposure and over coverage by the media, and all the proclamations about "violence in the media"...our outlets remain extraordinarily sensitive to depictions of violence. This is something I understand, since no one wants their deepest grief and loss displayed for the entire world to see and sensationalize. I remember seeing the Fallujah attacks on the American contractors (i.e., Blackwater) and wondering what it must feel like for the wives and children to see the photos of these men...the people they love the most (I tried to link them to avoid posting them, but it wasn't working, so I'm just posting them.)
(I still can't get over the smiling kid on the left side of that photo.)

I was living in Bangalore when the tsunami rolled through Sri Lanka and southeast India on December 26, 2004. I remember sitting at my computer continuously refreshing the NY Times and watching the death toll climb from 1,000 to 10,000 to 50,000 to 80,000 to 100,000 to 150,000 to 200,000...completely unable to comprehend what was happening less than 200 miles away. What made the experience so different was going into work each day and reading the Indian newspapers and seeing the photos they printed on the front page. I remember seeing the front page of The Hindu which had a half page picture of an enormous pit, maybe 20 or 30 feet deep with a mass of dozens and dozens limp, bloated bodies rising from the bottom to the top, and on top of the pile were 3 or 4 naked and dead babies. I just stared at it. I had never seen anything like it. Mass death. It wasn't a movie. Real people. People who had never imagined their lives would end and would someday look like this. Everytime you see a dead body, it makes a little bit of sense because...they must have somehow put themselves in these situations to die like this...right? nope.

I always wondered how our foreign policy would have to be conducted if the real photos from the front line came back to us. If we were forced to look at the dead face and mangled body of a 21-year old American boy, I think the wars would end pretty quickly (...although I also think we would also lose any wars we did fight.) We've had over 4,000 dead American soldiers since 2003 and probably close to six figures in dead Iraqis. How many of their dead faces would we have to see before we just had to stop? And how many more before the zealots are satisfied?

In any case, I'm still disgusted to my core over the Bombay attacks, which is what this is about. At the center of it all is the fact that I really really fucking hate stupid people. I don't mean unintelligent people or people who lack the capacity - I just mean STUPID fucking assholes. Racists. Bigots. Ideologues. Zealots. I hate stupid people to begin with, and I hate it even more when they have power and they exercise it by destroying life. And die believing that their version of stupidity was right. Stupid hicks who think they understand who their enemies are. 20 year olds. Kids. These are the deluded school shooters. These are the Cho-Seung Huis who are so lost and so fucking stupid that they think they understand something. Ugh. Someone give me a cogent argument for the use of brutal violence against the violent so that I can go face-punching and nut stomping in Waziristan.

If you're wondering what any of this has to do with anything and are curious at how or why I just rambled on about nothing for the past page, the answer is that I went to a few Indian media outlets (Times of India, NDTV) and picked up some pics from the sites. I wanted to post them both because I always find my perspective on these events sharpened and intensified by seeing pieces of what actually transpired and because I'm so fucking sick of these people that I would like to foster tiny little well-spring of hatred against radical religion, and radical islamism in particular.

So here are some pictures of the victims and the scenes of the attacks.

This is Moron #1. (terrorist/scumbag)

This is Moron #2. I hope it hurt and that they dragged you naked through the streets after this.

Morons #3-9.

I don't think I'll ever understand people...

So whenever I read the NY Times, I invariably wander over to the right lower side of the webpage and look at the "most-emailed" articles. I usually am able to find 2 or 3 interesting pieces to read in there and the bigger more meaningful pieces often end up there pretty quickly. I also get to find some articles that seem totally stupid and boring to me, but click on them to figure out why they are number on the list. (irrelevant, but I love stories like this about how all these haughty taughty luxury stores are *gasp* discounting luxury goods. *Jerk off gesture.*) (Here's another article, but it's more along the line about how millionaires are still buying $191,000 dollar purses because they're still millionaires.)

What I never look at though, are the other two tabs in that section: Most Blogged and Most Searched. I mean, I've clicked on them, but I've never really paid any attention because they don't really seem to offer much. But today, because work was a little slow today (I can't tell if that's terrifying or ok…) I looked at it for a little longer, and then furrowed my brow. Here's the list for the last 24 hours, and a few choice selections.

1. obama

2. november 5, 2008

3. mumbai

4. china

5. cancer

6. education

7. india

8. december 2, 2008

9. bush

10. health

11. modern love

13. canada

23. women

35. sex

36. recession

45. economic crisis

50. pakistan

Now I'm not going to go through these one by one, but I think that taking a few minutes to just think about parts of this list will leave you slightly baffled. Of course the high ranking of Mumbai makes sense, because a very specific event just took place. But searching for "Obama" doesn't make sense, mostly because every other article involves Obama. What is going through your head when you type Obama into the NYTimes search? What story are you looking for?

#5 cancer is sad. Because if I or someone I knew got cancer, it's likely I would type it into a NYTimes search just to see what I could find either to boost my spirits or find hope.

#6 education is a little baffling to me. Education is important. So is oxygen. Why is it #6 on the search frequency? I think Obama's choice for education secretary is going to be an interesting and highly covered issue, but if that's the case, where the hell is "commerce" or "state" or "homeland security"?

#13 Canada. Heh.

#23. Women. #35. Sex. #Wtf. This is the NYTimes, what are you doing?

And which random topics do NYTimes readers search for less, but with at least SOME interest?
Numbers 36, 45, and 50. Recession, Economic Crisis, Pakistan.

Glass.

There is broken glass all over my apartment. Two glasses were broken. One of them was thrown at full force at my wall. The other fell off my desk while I told her "Get the fuck out of my apartment and don't ever come back." There is a hole in my wall.

From one end of my apartment, which is at least 35-50 feet long, I hurled a glass in an uncontrollable rage at the wall. The glass shattered so completely, so fully that every inch of my apartment is covered in glass. I found glass in my bathroom, in my bedroom, on my pillow and in the farthest untouched corner of my bedroom. Every place I thought the glass could not have made it to holds pieces of glass. There is glass on top of my refrigerator, on top of the door frame, in my bathtub, in the space between my fridge and the counter, in pots and pans hanging over my stove, on the toilet, and even inside of clothes hanging in my closet. The glass is in shards and in chunks and in the finest powder that cannot be carried by a broom. I will be breathing, eating, and drinking broken glass. I will be discovering new pieces of the broken glass for the rest of the days I will live in this apartment. It is 1:45 a.m. on Thursday evening and I am done.

Clarification and Good Read.

Just to be clear, since two people have already expressed reservations about my last post: I think Saxby Chambliss is a piece of shit. I wish that some other, almost any other, Republican had kept their seat...maybe even Ted Stevens instead of Chambliss because he represents almost everything that is wrong about American politics. Hence, the "Fuck that Guy."

Nevertheless, the reason I was "ok" with his victory is because I believe a filibuster-proof locked down Legislative, Executive, and possibly Judiciary is a bad thing for the party. We're in for a world of disasters and chaos far beyond the control of any government, and I don't believe the electorate is discerning and educated enough to realize what disasters are government created and what disasters are continuing fallout from the last 8 to 10 years. All indications suggest that Obama is doing almost everything right, and I don't think good governance and good policy should be punished by circumstance...and I think a filibuster-proof Democratic majority can only hurt the long-term prospects for America.

There.

Moving on...

Today's "American Banker" contained a very interesting piece about the Community Reinvestment Act and its role in the current crisis. To provide a little background, it has become Republican stuff of legend that the Community Reinvestment Act is the source of the current crisis. To put a finer point on it, Republicans blame Jimmy Carter for what's happening (yeah, of course they are...jesus). The gist of the argument is that the CRA was intended to provide government support and funding for those who couldn't really afford houses. Thus, the story says too many people bought houses they couldn't afford, a housing bubble was created, and boom - 2008 Financial Crisis.

Personally, I believe that the view is bullshit. Yes, there is some truth to an inflated housing market. No, the CRA is not irrelevant to the housing market. But NO, the CRA explanation for the current crisis is BULLSHIT. The article below explains how all of the front-line regulators, republicans and democrats, agree that it is bullshit. And it is a good article.

In Election's Aftermath, CRA Stays a Flash Point

American Banker | Thursday, December 4, 2008

WASHINGTON — The debate on whether the Community Reinvestment Act caused the subprime crisis has outlasted election season and could affect future regulatory restructuring.

Though there is scant evidence and growing dissent from regulators, Republican lawmakers appear poised to make CRA a fall guy for the financial meltdown, arguing that it spurred banks to make poor loans that eventually led to delinquencies and foreclosures. Some said they plan to tackle the issue next year as Congress works to revamp the broader regulatory structure.

"The overwhelming support" in the Republican party "is for changing the CRA," Rep. Scott Garrett, R-N.J., a member of the House Financial Services Committee, said in an interview. "It's high on the agenda as far as trying to fix the entire collection of regulations that exacerbated the housing bubble."

Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Tex., also argues that the financial services panel should "explore the role the CRA played in exacerbating the subprime meltdown and figure out how much bad lending was done in order to fulfill CRA goals," a spokesman said.

Regulators, even Republican ones, are beginning to push back.

Both Federal Reserve Board Governor Randall Kroszner and Comptroller of the Currency John Dugan have recently expressed strong support for the CRA.

In an interview Wednesday, Mr. Dugan said he felt obliged to speak up against criticism of CRA. Data does not support the idea that bankers made poor loans as a result of such requirements, he said.

"There has been criticism recently suggesting that the CRA caused the subprime crisis, and we just felt it was important to set the record straight because that's not what we saw," he said.

After a speech on the subject last month, Mr. Dugan was hailed by House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank in a speech on the House floor. "This firm statement by President Bush's appointee with prime responsibility for the safety and soundness of the banking system should help us end the inaccurate, politically motivated misrepresentation of the role that CRA has played," he said.

Critics of the CRA have argued that the law, passed in 1977 to combat discrimination by banks against poor and minority communities, forces banks to lend to borrowers who are poor credit risks. They say CRA regulations have caused lenders to lower their underwriting standards.

"It caused standards for mortgages to deteriorate very substantially because it forced banks to find new ways to offer mortgages to people who couldn't meet the normal standards," said Peter Wallison, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a member of the Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee. "Then those lower standards spread to the rest of the mortgage markets, so people who could have qualified for prime loans were able to get interest-only or negative amortization loans, and all of those things became more or less the standard for mortgage loans."

Mr. Wallison argued that the CRA should be scrapped.

But others said the focus on CRA is a red herring. They said it is a talking point for Republicans who want to distract attention from a growing consensus that more regulation is needed.

"I think that the deregulatory conservatives have a political motivation in trying to deflect attention from the underlying causes of the subprime and financial crisis to anything they can find, including the CRA," said Michael Barr, a law professor at the University of Michigan who has testified to Congress on the CRA's reputed role in the subprime crisis. "The facts just don't support the claim. The overwhelming bulk of subprime lending was made by institutions not covered in the CRA."

Mr. Kroszner on Wednesday told an audience attending a Fed conference on poverty policy that the CRA had not caused lenders to make a significant number of bad loans. He reviewed studies by the Fed showing that CRA lending was "nearly as profitable and performed similarly to other types of lending done by CRA-covered institutions." The Fed's most recent mortgage study showed that 60% of high-priced loans went to middle- or upper-income borrowers, those outside the CRA's target population, and that 20% of high-priced loans to low-income borrowers were not made by banks, he said. Instead, they were made by nonbank lenders not bound by the CRA.

"Contrary to the assertions of critics, the evidence does not support the view that the CRA contributed in any substantial way to the crisis in the subprime mortgage market," Mr. Kroszner said.

Some bankers clearly agree.

During a panel discussion Wednesday at the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce, Ken Lewis, Bank of America Corp.'s chief executive officer, said CRA has become a "scapegoat" for the current mortgage crisis.

"The great majority of loans that caused this problem were outside of CRA," he said.

Given Democrats' control of Congress and the White House, Republicans have little chance of prevailing on CRA in the near term. But some observers said the focus on CRA is meant to lay the groundwork for change later.

"Changes in regulatory laws happen through people stating their case as to why things work or don't work," said Douglas Landy, a partner at Allen & Overy LLP.

"Those arguments are batted back and forth for years — or even decades. So people put in their place holders. You're not sure exactly when an idea is going to come back."

That has in turn spurred regulators to respond, Mr. Landy said.

"I think the Fed, as one of the regulators that enforces the CRA and perhaps as the primary regulator that enforces consumer finance rules, wants to set the record straight," he said.

Mr. Barr, the Michigan law professor, said the attempt to divert the attention of participants in the regulatory reform debate appeared to be failing, despite the recent attention from regulators.

"I think that it has failed so far because it's implausible on its face, the facts don't support it, and the country as a whole recognizes the origins of our crisis were in a failure of government to act and not in the CRA," Mr. Barr said.

So much better.

Obama during the Richardson announcement:

"I'm going to answer this question about the beard," said Obama, when Richardson was asked where the facial hair went. "I think it was a mistake for him to get rid of it. I thought that whole Western, rugged look was really working for him.

"For some reason, maybe because it was scratchy when he kissed his wife, he was forced to get rid of it.," Obama continued as his nominee for commerce secretary smiled broadly. "But we're deeply disappointed with the loss of the beard."

Heh. This is totally something we would want to say about each other if one of us were President.

Ack!

No, this does not qualify as a legitimate post either...but I won't post from work and I didn't get home until 2 am last night.

So I pass on a healthy shudder of revulsion and fear.


AAAGGGGHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(Credit to M. for sending me this link, which knocked me out of a corporate law daze and into a visceral fear.)

Oh, and Saxby Chambliss won the Georgia runoff, so thankfully the Democrats won't hit the magic number in the Senate (I'm not going to explain why I think it would be a bad idea for the Dems to get 60, but I do despite my utter repudiation of the mold of the current Republican party). Just three (eight?) words after being otherwise ok the Republican victory...

Fuck that guy. (with a big rubber dick)

World AIDS Day.

Today is World AIDS Day. I think I posted some reflections on the day over the past few years...on the state of AIDS policy, or how I feel about the direction the epidemic is moving etc...but the honest truth is that I haven't been keeping up with it as closely as I used to...and all I would be doing is rehashing the things I've been thinking and carrying with me for the last 4 years rather than adding anything thoughtful or new.

In this situation all I'll say is this:

Please don't get the hiv. The epidemic is definitely not going anywhere, and the greatest conduit of transmission is believing that you're safe. I've seen enough to know that no one is safe - no one.

Hehehehehe.

Despite the fact that I'm in a shitty mood over what's happening in Mumbai, I stumbled across this video, and it's hilarious.

Well, it's hilarious if you've ever thought that Germans were just inherently funny. Or thought Hitler was funny. (Apart from everything completely unfunny about him.)

I FUCKING HATE THESE PEOPLE.

The Bombay terrorists...21 and 22 year olds most likely, taking dozens and dozens of lives. Stupid, non-understanding, and devoid of anything that makes people worthy human beings who live among us. These people are so lacking in mental capacity that they aren't just irritating and burdensome, but they are actively destructive in their stupidity.

As long as people continue believe to in their own utter rightness, they will shower stupidity, suffering, and terror on the rest of us. The Deccan Mujahideen is just the latest manifestation.

Good Reads: Car Horns

Once again, one of those entertaining little articles about some tiny little detail of our world - filled in, fleshed out, and hit with a dash of color. This time, it's about car horns and honking.

Honk if You Know Why You're Honking

The car horn is beeping useless.

By Dave Johns
Updated Tuesday, Nov. 25, 2008, at 7:06 AM ET

---

My mom is not much of a honker. You know what I mean when I say that: If a driver in front of her fails to hit the gas when the light turns, she simply waits. Time passes, and the green light glows. Eventually, the driver notices the signal change, or the cars behind begin to lay on their horns. Traffic proceeds. But no thanks to my mom; she's just not much of a honker.

For years I've been telling my mom that she ought to learn to honk a little more. After all, honking is a venerable automotive tradition. Just over a century ago, Henry Ford's first Model T rolled off the production line. Inside, near the driver's side window, was a grapefruit-sized squeeze bulb affixed to a twice-looped brass trumpet. It was a horn—one of only a few basic amenities that came standard. Thus, the car that "put the world on wheels" also gave the world a way to complain about it: a horn for the great honking masses.

And honk we have. No one keeps official tallies, but with nearly 1 billion cars on the roads, there is no doubt that worldwide honking is on the rise. In dense cities in places like India and China, where hordes of new drivers are now navigating ancient tenement districts, horn-honking is so constant that it is a major noise problem. In July, traffic police in Mumbai launched a "No Honking Movement" led by taxi drivers who took an oath not to toot. Last year, Shanghai banned honking downtown, with the prohibition set to expand to the entire city. Dhaka is a riot of honking. Cairo is the unofficial honking capital of the world. Islamabad, Ho Chi Minh City, Lima, Katmandu, Accra, and New York have issues. Even the virtual world is getting into the act.

In theory, the horn is a safety device; it might rightly be called the world's first "collision-avoidance system." But exactly how many collisions it serves to avoid has never been clear. From its earliest days, some observers wondered whether the horn wasn't actually facilitating certain road mishaps by shifting the burden of evasion from the honker to the honkee. A Londoner argued this case in a 1912 letter to the Times: "Drivers have escaped punishment because they hooted loudly just before killing an aged and deaf colonel, or an elderly woman, deaf, and blind of one eye, or capsizing another car and injuring three or four persons … Ordinary care and precaution would have prevented each of such accidents. Hooting, however, is counted a sufficient set-off against the lack of such care and precaution."

By the 1930s, this judgment was gaining converts. First Paris and then London outlawed horn-honking at night. In 1935, New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia kicked off a nighttime honking ban with a radio address in which he praised the English anti-horn effort: "The results have been so good that there is no demand from any quarter for their return. Automobile accidents, fatalities, and injuries have been reduced to an appreciable extent merely because the campaign against horns there has caused drivers to drive more carefully." He said deaths were down 17 percent and injuries 7 percent since the ban had taken effect. A New York Times article from the same year documented new horn restrictions in Rome, Stockholm, Vienna, and Berlin, under the headline, "Honking Autoist a World Problem; Every Nation Seeks to Curb Him; Horns Viewed as Contributing Cause of Accidents Rather Than Aid to Safety—Campaign On Here to Curb Drivers Who Depend on Blasts Instead of Brakes."

This assessment of the horn—that it is not in fact an instrument of safety but something else entirely—has not been refuted. Most honking research has examined the relationship between horn use and aggression. People honk more when it's hot than when it's cold, more on weekdays than on weekends, more if they are male than if they are female, more at beaters than at Benzes, more if they feel they can do so anonymously (PDF), and more in the city than in the country. My mother is a classic nonhonker: She is female, suburban, patient, and climate-control-oriented. Still, it would be nice to know whether her anti-honk bias poses a risk to society. A spokesman for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Jose Ucles, could not point to any studies on safety and the car horn. "It's sort of like brakes," he said. "Everyone's just always thought it was a good idea."

Jeff Muttart, a traffic-accident reconstructionist, has pored over hundreds of surveillance videos of real-life car crashes and near-crashes. In 2005, he concluded that emergency horn use is not associated with decreased accident involvement. He found that drivers never steered and honked at the same time, and usually they didn't honk at all. About half of emergency honks were meant to chastise and came only after the danger was over. The other half were just preludes to a crash. "It really didn't serve any purpose at all. It was just, Hey, by the way, I'm going to hit you."

Also: We stink at honking. A 2001 survey for the U.K. Institute of Traffic Accident Investigators shows that most people take two to three times as long to honk as they do to brake or steer. Professional drivers, like cabbies, are a bit quicker—they practice. (Now that automakers are getting over the whole tiny-horn-buttons craze, honk times may improve.)

Muttart explains this honking deficiency by the fact that many people view the horn as a tool for scolding rather than safety. So when we want to avoid a crash, we don't think to use it. (You don't look for a phone when you need a fire extinguisher.) It's possible honk speeds are better in India, where no one overlooks the horn, and the honking is more existential than aggressive. Of course, the street noise there can be literally deafening, and India's roads have one of the highest death rates in the world.

Perhaps the world just needs more standardized honking education. Here are some tips from AAA on how to use the horn to warn a child cyclist: "Ideally, you should sound the horn when you're about a half-block away … If you blast the horn at close range, you'll startle the cyclist. He may look over his left shoulder in surprise and steer inadvertently into your path. Worse, he may lose control and fall directly in front of you."

In other words: If you see a kid on a bike and he's at least a half-block away (the block being the standard unit of distance used by AAA's honking scientists), then give a toot. But take care: If you screw up, you may crush his tiny body beneath your wheels. This kind of messaging hardly helps: Instead of teaching us good behavior, it makes us afraid of the horn and takes the joy out of honking.

The truth is, many cities have already ruled out all the lighthearted, benign uses of the horn—rolling up to a girlfriend's house with a cool beep-beep, practicing Morse code in the grocery store parking lot … S-O-S … Saaaaave Ouuuur Shiiiiip! Even honking to celebrate Obama can get you a ticket. All that's left now are the aforementioned and ineffective "emergency" hoots. If that's the case, maybe we should eliminate honking altogether.

In Berlin in 1936, the Nazis put yellow spots on the cars of people who honked unnecessarily. The honking ceased. Memphis in the 1950s was called "the quietest city" thanks to a tough horn law. But horn bans are hard to enforce and maintain. In Cairo, drivers outmaneuvered an ordinance by reverting to squeeze horns. Shanghai's ban last year reportedly inspired one driver to install a custom horn that played a recording: "Please mind the car, we are making a turn." New Yorkers honk unflinchingly in the face of the city's many silly "Don't Honk" signs. Hey, man, free speech!

New weapons are joining the War on Honking. The Automobile Horn Audit System could track honk rate and location and transmit data to a state-run central computer. Australia is deploying "noise cameras." And in a nod to the Nazis, some Manhattanites want to fit cabs with lights to identify deviant honkers. Others say, Let's turn up the honk volume inside cars. The boors among us prefer eggs, or Taliban-style hand dismemberment. A more modest proposal, made by psychologist Charles Spence, is to replace the horn with a sharp spike protruding from the steering wheel. The spike would make driving "feel more dangerous," so people would go slower.

Last summer I was in Colombia on vacation, and one day I visited downtown Medellin. I was sporting sunglasses, short pants, and dirty white flip-flops. Near the Botero sculpture garden, after checking my map, I stepped into the road. A spray of honks ensued. Cars and motorbikes buzzed past. I felt as if I'd been Tased. But I was alive: a well-timed honk had saved my life.

Or maybe it hadn't. It felt like a near-miss, but the driver had seen me several seconds earlier, in time to honk me out of the way. Maybe he didn't even need to honk. Maybe he could have braked instead. That's what my mom would have done. Or what if his car had been equipped with the spike?

Horns don't honk at people. People honk at people. Whatever legislative remedies or gadgeteer fixes we can invent, I'm counting on one fact: We won't give up our horns until they're pried from our cold, dead, honking hands.

Dave Johns is a writer and public-radio producer in New York.

The Laffer Curve.

If you believe in the Laffer Curve, this is Art Laffer, the man behind that theory. So wrong. So humiliatingly public.

Tonight and the Rest of My Life.

I just got back from work. It's 2 am.

But I'm not actually unhappy about it. The work is fascinating, I'm not bored, I'm in the belly of the bailout, and I got to ride home in a sweet shiny black car.

(douchebag. yes.)

Notes From a Life Asian.

First: Heroes

I watched all of the first Season of Heroes over the past week or two. While I wouldn't say that the show was totally awful since I watched the entire season in 5 or 6 sittings, I will say that there are a lot of awful things about the show.

1) The first, which my brother pointed out, is that the entire show requires that all of the characters act like complete morons all of the time in order for the plot to move forward.

2) Ali Larter is terrible. Like...really terrible. Like...really really terrible. Like...really really really terrible.

3) Hiro's off-screen "Yata!" after the encounter with Sylar in Isaac's apartment is awesome.

4) The entire revealed plot was a direct rip-off of Watchmen. What the hell?

5) This show could potentially have been awesome. It wasn't, even if it was interesting enough to continue watching.

6) I just started Season 2. Amnesia is a stupid, lazy device.

7) Peter Petrelli's floppy sidepart is stupid.

8) Mohinder Suresh's faux Indian accent is atrocious because he's attempting to be British. Fail.

9) My brother just gave me 5 seasons of The Wire.

Two: Glass Palace
Ok. Moving onto literature. I just finished Amitav Ghosh's The Glass Palace after trudging my way through for 2 months and I remain thoroughly, entirely, and sadly unimpressed to the end. Don't read it. I can suggest 5 books that do exactly what he is trying to do, but that execute it much much better. (I haven't read Sea of Poppies, which apparently is quite good...but I'm not taking the chance.) If you want to read a mystical magical India novel, read every other one except for this one. Ugh. I don't understand some of the good reviews. Spoiler Alert:

Everyone dies in stupid meaningless ways and you couldn't care less that they're dead...except that it's clear that you're supposed to sit there after each death and ponder mortality and life. But in reality you ponder his suck.

Moving onto Part 3: Speakers.
I just spent 100 dollars on computer speakers. Generally I would assume that means I get a couple of pieces of garbage and I'm forced to listen to Ingrid Michaelson with less than perfect clarity. But nope! Logitech Z-2300 speakers are friggin INCREDIBLE. Now it turns out the subwoofer is enormous, but it produces such clean, warm, sharp and resilient lows that it's totally worth the space. In addition, although those two tiny little speakers don't look all that impressive...they each have are loaded up with independent tweeters to get those really crisp and clean highs. I imagine that the sound of a handful of pins hitting the floor would sound amazing on these things. Plus, the mids are good. I don't know what mids sound like exactly, but they're good. Heh. In any case, I just wanted to say that if you wanted computer speakers and only want to spend about a hundred bucks...this is the way to go. (Oh, they can also get loud as HELL.)

Part 4: Snack Food.
Don't buy snack food. I just managed to eat an entire bag of japanese rice snacks while watching Heroes S2E1. I was puffy the whole next day.

Identify.

"Docta said I need a backiotomy."

Heh. Love this movie.

Daily News Roundup.

Christianity is a religion of forgiveness. South Carolina is a bastion of religious freedom. My hometown's priest ban's communion for Obama supporters.

"Voting for a pro-abortion politician when a plausible pro-life alternative exists constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil, and those Catholics who do so place themselves outside of the full communion of Christ's Church and under the judgment of divine law. Persons in this condition should not receive Holy Communion until and unless they are reconciled to God in the Sacrament of Penance, lest they eat and drink their own condemnation." - The Rev. Jay Scott Newman in a letter distributed Sunday to parishioners at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Greenville, SC. (My home.) (Credit: The Bro)

Newt Gingrich wants to End Adolescence: And it's really a very interesting point that I think warrants some serious thought. Read it. It actually is sorta interesting.

Newt Gingrich: Let's End Adolescence

I's time to declare the end of adolescence. As a social institution, it's been a failure. The proof is all around us: 19% of eighth graders, 36% of tenth graders, and 47% of twelfth graders say they have used illegal drugs, according to a study by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the University of Michigan. One of every four girls has a sexually transmitted disease, suggests a recent study for the Centers for Disease Control. A methamphetamine epidemic among the young is destroying lives, families, and communities. And American students are learning at a frighteningly slower rate than Chinese and Indian students.

The solution is dramatic and unavoidable: We have to end adolescence as a social experiment. We tried it. It failed. It's time to move on. Returning to an earlier, more successful model of children rapidly assuming the roles and responsibilities of adults would yield enormous benefit to society.

Prior to the 19th century, it's fair to say that adolescence did not exist. Instead, there was virtually universal acceptance that puberty marked the transition from childhood to young adulthood. Whether with the Bar Mitzvah and Bat Mitzvah ceremony of the Jewish faith or confirmation in the Catholic Church or any hundreds of rites of passage in societies around the planet, it was understood you were either a child or a young adult.

In the U.S., this principle of direct transition from the world of childhood play to the world of adult work was clearly established at the time of the Revolutionary War. Benjamin Franklin was an example of this kind of young adulthood. At age 13, Franklin finished school in Boston, was apprenticed to his brother, a printer and publisher, and moved immediately into adulthood.

John Quincy Adams attended Leiden University in Holland at 13 and at 14 was employed as secretary and interpreter by the American Ambassador to Russia. At 16 he was secretary to the U.S. delegation during the negotiations with Britain that ended the Revolution.

Daniel Boone got his first rifle at 12, was an expert hunter at 13, and at 15 made a yearlong trek through the wilderness to begin his career as America's most famous explorer. The list goes on and on.

It is true that life expectancy was shorter in those days and the need to get on with being an adult could be argued. Nevertheless, early adulthood, early responsibility, and early achievement were the norm before the institution of adolescence emerged as a system for delaying adulthood and trapping young people into wasting years of their lives. To regain those benefits, we must develop accelerated learning systems that peg the rate of academic progress to the student's pace and ability to absorb the material, making education more efficient.

Adolescence was invented in the 19th century to enable middle-class families to keep their children out of sweatshops. But it has degenerated into a process of enforced boredom and age segregation that has produced one of the most destructive social arrangements in human history: consigning 13-year-old males to learning from 15-year-old males.

UNDERMINING COMMUNITIES

The costs of this social experiment have been horrendous. For the poor who most need to make money, learn seriously, and accumulate resources, adolescence has helped crush their future. By trapping poor people in bad schools, with no work opportunities and no culture of responsibility, we have left them in poverty, in gangs, in drugs, and in irresponsible sexual activity. As a result, we have ruined several generations of poor people who might have made it if we had provided a different model of being young.

And for too many middle-class and wealthier young Americans, adolescence has been an excuse to delay work, family, and achievement—and thus contribute less to their own well-being and that of their communities.

It's time to change this—to shift to serious work, learning, and responsibility at age 13 instead of age 30. In other words, replace adolescence with young adulthood. But hastening that transition requires integrating learning into life and work. Fortunately, innovations in technology and in financial incentives to learn offer hope.

The Information Age makes it possible for young people to learn much faster than our current failed bureaucracies and obsolete curriculums permit. New systems such as Curriki, founded by Sun Microsystems (JAVA) and now an independent nonprofit, allow a community of teachers and learners to collaborate via the Internet to create quality educational materials for free—giving every American access to learning 24 hours a day.

And experiments such as the one my daughter, Jackie Cushman, is running in Atlanta—where poor children are paid the equivalent of working in a fast-food restaurant to study and do their homework—are examples of a more dynamic future.

In math and science learning, which are among the most important indicators of future prosperity and strength, America lags far behind such emerging powers as China and India. Studying to compete with Asian counterparts in the world market is going to keep U.S. teens busier than anyone ever imagined. This will require year-round learning, with mentors available online, rather than our traditional bureaucratic model of education. But we must go further, toward a dynamic, real-world blueprint for learning.

Indeed, going to school should be a money-making profession if you are good at it and work hard. That would revolutionize our poorest neighborhoods and boost our competitiveness.

The fact is, most young people want to be challenged and given real responsibility. They want to be treated like young men and women, not old children. So consider this simple proposal: High school students who can graduate a year early get the 12th year's cost of schooling as an automatic scholarship to any college or technical school they want to attend. If they graduate two years early, they get two years of scholarships. At no added cost to taxpayers, we would give students an incentive to study as hard as they can and maximize the speed at which they learn.

Once we decide to engage young people in real life, doing real work, earning real money, and thereby acquiring real responsibility, we can transform being young in America. And our nation will become more competitive in the process.

This I Believe. (The Non NPR Version)

Edit: Yes, I wrote this at work on a Word Doc.

I am trying to put together a coherent vision of what I believe. Although it will most likely end up as a list of bullet points, I think I am also going to try and put together some things that are slightly (but not much) more comprehensive, less ranty, and hopefully more systematic and lucid than some of my previous posts or fights with RS in the comments. I understand that you few loyal friends out there probably read the blog because you're bored as hell and/or are looking for an occasion to make Chinese jokes…but I don't know where anywhere else I could think out loud like this, so I'm doing it here. I'd like for you to read it, if only to let me know if these things are coherent, striking a chord, whether they seem biased, and whether or not it's interesting, which I hope it is. (These things are certainly fun to write.)

So today's post is a whopper of an issue, and it could be framed in a variety of ways (none of them entirely accurate):

• Deregulation v. Regulation
• Reaganomics v. Clintonomics
• Milton Friedman v. John Maynard Keynes
• Pure Free Market Capitalism v. Slightly-Less-than-Pure Free Market Capitalism
  

So here's a little introduction that I'm going to quickly pound through (that's what she said) off the top of my head, just in case the context of the argument isn't the type of thing you generally give a shit about.

So...by the late 70s, we were embroiled with an existential struggle with Communism around the globe, witnessing devastating effects to societies and economies around the world as totalitarian dictatorships seized the means of production and tried to implement state-run-state-controlled economies. America grappled with stagflation, financial crises, oil crises, and the like. Conservatism had also molded itself into a formidable intellectual movement with respectable principles and people who were clearly neither stupid nor cynical: they were serious and very smart. (I note here that a wonderful article entitled "The Perils of Populist Chic" from the WSJ discusses the current state of that line of conservatives.) Economists like Milton Friedman from the Chicago School made powerful economic arguments about the power of free markets and the burden of government interference. Then ascendancy: Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were elected in 79 and 80.

Reagan believed that government and regulation were the problem. If you reduced taxes, people would have more money and the economy would grow faster. If you cut down on regulation and bureaucracy, then businesses have less obstacles to flourish and be productive. Get the inefficient and bureaucratic government out of the way of American business, and America would prosper. As a corollary, this is good for everyone because as the rich get richer and richer, the wealth would "trickle down" to the poor. Everyone wins. Basically, free up the markets, allow people to keep their money and freely spend it and invest it, and the American economy would grow faster and all people across the spectrum would be better off as market mechanisms self-correct and distribute the wealth.

The overt goal during the Reagan Administration was thus to deregulate and dismantle as much of the federal government as possible, with the exception of defense and the military. The problems of the world and economy would all be eliminated by eliminating government regulation and lowering taxes. Freedom from the government was the solution. Just to make this point clear, no matter what the subtleties of the philosophy may have been, it became little more than unabashed hostility to the federal government. Notably, this was the explicit governing philosophy of the Bush Administration and continues to be a major force in the debate over the financial crisis ("No Bailouts!"). This philosophy also continues to dominate the conservative movement. Introduction over, this is where my discussion begins.

I would like to start by invoking current events, sort of. One of the weakest invectives from the last election cycle is the invocation of Obama as a Socialist. It didn't stick. The Baby-Boomer-Cold-War-Vietnam-Fear-Mongering failed across the board this year. The generational torch has passed and half of them can put their stupid 1960’s battles in a pipe and smoke it, while the other half can lament and declare war on it. Let me point out that a 3% increase in income taxes for the top 1% of the country is definitely NOT the dividing line between freedom and socialism. Please stop.

More broadly, the ideological battle between capitalism and socialism is no longer relevant. Market capitalism has prevailed. There is no longer a meaningful or useful debate about whether market forces and the creative forces of economic freedom are far superior in creating value and allocating resources efficiently than centrally-planned economies. They are. By fostering market mechanisms, namely preserving profit motive and private decision-making for capital allocation, economies have expanded globally, lifting millions out of poverty in the past 20 years. Even redistributive societies recognize that freer markets are necessary to generate enough wealth growth for tax and redistribution.

But despite their ascendancy and efficacy, the limitations and preconditions of free markets cannot be ignored. Economic models presuppose perfect information – the real world does not provide perfect information. Well-functioning economies require the rule of law: contract laws, property laws, and an independent judiciary to enforce the laws. Market actors do not properly price in negative or positive externalities, resulting in problems like excessive environmental degradation and too little investment in non-industrial pure sciences. Market failures are abound in economic models, ranging from monopoly pricing to poverty traps. The development of human capital does not provide adequate returns to properly educate a society. Infrastructure like roads, railroads, airports, power, water, and communication require public spending and investment, and serve as necessary preconditions to economic growth. In short, well-functioning markets require a well-functioning government: The freedom of free markets cannot be falsely conflated with the pure libertarian freedom espoused by believers in deregulation.

We have spent far too much energy battling this false dichotomy between deregulation and regulation. Instead we should be focusing on how to regulate. Enforceable contracts are good regulation. An independent judiciary is good regulation. Consolidated oversight of financial institutions is good regulation. Capital adequacy standards for banks is good regulation. Telling banks who to lend to is bad regulation. Bailing out zombie industries without a policy goal is bad regulation. Allowing economic power to compound by allowing it to control political power is bad regulation. Property rights are good and necessary regulation.

The false dichotomy of regulation and deregulation has left the arena of legitimate ideas and is now the province of wealthy cynics and the sippers of their Kool-Aid. I can never respect it any more than I respect “intelligent design” (which is actually quite similar because they both begin with "Poof!" and end with “Perfection!”) I can fully engage in discussion about the size of the federal government. We can disagree about the prudence of certain entitlement programs. I can get on board with the idea of decentralizing power to preserve local freedom, e.g., federalism. I can also have an intelligent discussion about the dangerously fragmented financial regulatory system of the U.S., and how the manner of regulation the various agencies practice is misguided and detrimental. We can talk about whether environmental regulators should remain hands off, or set strict guidelines on emission levels, or use judicially enforceable standards, or be implemented by complex science-based regulatory agencies. But for God’s Sakes, can we stop this dogmatic nonsense that the mere existence of regulation and government is the problem?

Moving on to the financial side...

An exceptional op-ed piece entitled "Human frailty caused this crisis" in the Financial Times by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein further this critique of classical free market theory by pointing out that the classical neoliberal economic model is non-behavioral, in short that it has no role for human nature. Anyone who begins the study of economics immediately stumbles upon the assumption that all people act rationally, wrestles with it uneasily, and then is promptly told to ignore the assumption because it is required for modeling. This non-behavioral strain of economic thinking is also the underlying premise of deregulatory conservatives: If people didn't act the way they did in the economic models, the outcomes wouldn't be as good as the models predict.

The op-ed points out two "human frailties" that render the rational economic actor assumption useless: limited rationality and limited self-control. The first piece, limited rationality, is obvious to anyone who happens to be human: we are limited in our perceptions and capacity to be totally rational. Choosing to brush past this basic fact, ideologues often claim that sophisticated investors will correct the system by making optimal decisions. Even conceding that this is true for simple financial instruments like a single mortgage, it is provably false for modern financial instruments, like synthetic collateralised derivatives many degrees divorced from the mortgages. No one understands these financial instruments. No one can price them. The computer models used to create them turned out to be dead wrong. Greenspan himself, the patriarch of current free market philosophy, admits that the most sophisticated investors in the world did not understand the instruments the markets created.

Question: "Do you feel that your ideology pushed you to make decisions that you wish you had not made?"

Greenspan: "Yes, I've found a flaw. I don't know how significant or permanent it is. But I've been very distressed by that fact. . . . This modern risk-management paradigm held sway for decades…The whole intellectual edifice, however, collapsed in the summer of last year."

The second piece, limited self-control, is also obvious to anyone who happens to be human. We smoke cigarettes, we eat cake, we drink too much, and we desire too much. Sure, greed is an impulse for productivity and hard work, but greed is also the impulse for dropping a month's paycheck in a casino. None of that is rational, and most of it is simply the inability to resist temptation and exert perfect self-control. Temptation and limited self-control lead to irrational investment decisions, in our current situation, most notably in the pile-on that took place in mortgage-backed derivatives, despite the fact that no one knew what they were or how they worked. (They were literally designed by astrophysicists and math whizzes on computers.)

The conclusion? Well-functioning markets are incredibly complex and delicate and require intelligent regulation. Financial regulation and monetary policy cannot be based on classical economics unless it accounts for human limitations. Human frailty will forever be the free radical preventing the system from operating the way it does in a textbook, and to ignore the human side of the equation, or in other words, to ignore the protestations of reality, is nothing less than dogma. It is calling for increased the State economic control in 1989 Russia.

What we need to do is to distill the essence of what makes markets work. It's not simply "freedom," and thus the answer is not simply deregulation. Broad economic freedoms are an absolutely necessary component, but determining which economic freedoms are the most central to functioning markets is the key. I don't think a shifting band of marginal tax rates are a determinative factor (e.g., the US and Germany). On the other hand, I believe that moral hazard and central planning could very well destroy markets. I don't think a reasonable minimum wage will stunt economic growth. On the other hand, I do think excessive labor regulations enforced by a bureaucrat in D.C. can hinder growth. Meaningful and intelligent debate should be furiously taking place over the prudence of mark-to-market accounting v. historical cost accounting, not whether accounting regulations should exist at all. Some types of decisions should be made privately, and some can validly be made publicly. We need to distill the essence of effective free markets, and focus our energy in developing ideas and methods to nurture the right impulses and control the wrong ones.

Unlike Communism, we don't want government making production decisions. But we do want government engaging in broader policy like punishing fraud and creating mechanisms for detection, like disclosure and accounting. And we can do this. There are hundreds of systems around the world from London's light regulation of finance coupled with universal health care to France's heavy regulation of finance coupled with a heavily redistributive system to China's system of government directed market capitalism to North Korea's moronic jackassery. There are hundreds of tax and revenue systems: VATS, sales taxes, income taxes, dual taxes, resource taxes, estate taxes, and tariffs. We have tools with various degrees of coercion and subtlety, and we have the ability to design appropriate institutions.

The broad and sweeping hostility to regulation and government is a relic of the past. Move on. There are harder and far more relevant questions to consider. I'm shuttering Reaganomics away with Stalinomics and Maonomics and moving on.

Note on Libertarianism:
So I do want to note that this does not mean that I don't respect libertarian beliefs, which I believe are different. Conservatives speak of liberty primarily (though not completely) as a means to an end: increased growth and higher standard of living. This is the claim I find specious. Libertarianism values individual liberty as both the means and end. To be free is to be free to succeed as well as to fail. If that is the case, you are forced to acknowledge and fully accept the potentially devastating consequences a libertarian system would produce with respect to issues like poverty and inequality, and the subsequent social fall out. And that is totally respectable, because a moral philosophy predicated on individual liberty is very appealing and justifiable, I get it. If liberty itself is worth more than all of the potential consequences of its free exercise, then I can totally be at peace with your values. I just am making the point that you cannot argue that the negative consequences won't happen because the markets will correct themselves and somehow spit out positive social outcomes. It's a new twist on an old cliché: freedom is not free, so stop pretending that it is.

That's all. That must have sucked to have read all of that.

Melodramatic Post (Suck It.)

"If it were possible for me to get to the United States on my bicycle, I would," - Joseph Ochieng, a 36-year-old carpenter who celebrated in Nairobi's Kibera shantytown, one of Africa's largest slums.

(This post is a little bit much, especially the quotations...but you can suck it. It's rare to feel this excited anymore. I definitely have a variety of concerns about the future, but I'll talk about those later.)

The dialogue that has emerged from the currently election has really re-energized me. I think that I just needed to put one in the Win column, (just one please!) having attained political consciousness during the Bush Era and not knowing anything else except division, bitterness, anger, and a desperate sense of frustration. Instead of tearing out my hair in disbelief over the buying and selling of alienation and division, I love reading stories of Republicans tearing up with pride over the fact that Obama won the election. I love seeing pictures of Kenyans in the streets carrying an Obama poster. I love that people stayed up all around the world to watch our election returns, and cheer and hug ferociously over a foreign politician's victory. I think that no matter where you stand on specific issues of policy, this election is the earning and exemplification of American Exceptionalism – this is the moment where we can be proud that our ideals and our choices are one in the same, and that we have the intelligence and the moral compass to attempt to right our wrongs. Democracy works: When governments, politicians, and policies fail, there must be some accountability. I like that if even for a moment, we are the good guys again. That we are the Shining City on the Hill, and that we will forever work to improve ourselves because our greatness lies in our efforts for progress, not in our DNA. Just as there is no inherently superior race, there are no inherently superior nations.

America will now have a president with half-brothers in Kenya, old schoolmates in Indonesia and a view of the world that seems to be based on respect rather than confrontation.

That matters. Under George Bush America’s international standing has sunk to awful lows. This week Americans voted in record smashing numbers for many reasons, but one of them was an abhorrence of how their shining city’s reputation has been tarnished. Their country will now be easier for its friends to like and harder for its foes to hate. . . .

Like most politicians, Mr Obama will surely fail more than he succeeds. But he is a main of great dignity, superior talents, and high ideals. In choosing him, America has shown once again its unrivalled capacity to renew itself, and to surprise. - The Economist

The last 8 years have truly left me feeling utterly exhausted and sad. Good ideas were discarded for dogma. Science was discarded for religion. The Old Ideas of the 60s dominated the New Ideas. Hatred replaced commonality. Intelligence and education became liabilities, while instincts and dogmas became law. Freedom in every sense except the (wealthy) economic was restrained. And for that matter, increasing the marginal tax rate by three percent on the very wealthiest Americans became the dividing line between Socialism and True Patriotism. Language and ideas were mangled and distorted so that the Clean Air Act loosened pollution controls, the Healthy Forests Initiative increased logging, and our President preached freedom and justice while torturing and detaining foreign citizens without process or rule of law.

"Today, reality in America has superseded fantasy. ... Americans have struck a deadly blow to racism all over the world. Americans have regained themselves and have regained the American dream. The picture of the U.S. that was disfigured by the Republicans in the past eight years fell from the wall today. The picture of the America we had in our minds has taken its place," - Prominent Saudi columnist Dawood al-Shirian.

I’m also thrilled that we’re in for a renewal of politics with ideas. We will have a president who believes in ideas. Who believes in thinking, and debating, and engages in intellectual battle with rigor. He understands the law. He has read and taught the Constitution. He understands the limits of law at the most abstract levels, and has spent time organizing poor communities at the most concrete. This is not someone who has all of the answers. This is a man who will be fighting, searching, and applying a vast intellect and ability to find real solutions for real problems. I’m not going to like a lot of them, I’m sure, but at least I know they will not be pre-packaged and at worst, at least they won’t be stupid or blind.

No matter our policy differences (and there are some), what offers me the most comfort is that Obama and I live in the same world. We see the same world. The same problems, the same force for good and hope for good, the common bonds of citizenship and humanity, the strength in unity and the disaster of disunity. When he speaks, the world he describes is the world I see and want to see. It’s not completely divorced from all sense of reality, morality, and decency that I see and want to see in the world. It makes sense. We see the world from the same place and we see the same goal for our country and the world. And as easy as that should be, it feels utterly miraculous that it has happened.

Consider this hypothetical. It’s November 2008. A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees that this man—Barack Hussein Obama—is the new face of America. In one simple image, America’s soft power has been ratcheted up not a notch, but a logarithm. A brown-skinned man whose father was an African, who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, who attended a majority-Muslim school as a boy, is now the alleged enemy. If you wanted the crudest but most effective weapon against the demonization of America that fuels Islamist ideology, Obama’s face gets close. It proves them wrong about what America is in ways no words can. - Andrew Sullivan

(I'm currently trying to work out what I believe in bullet points. Maybe someday I'll post that.)