Starry, Starry Bush Roads

Anonyman writes, "They followed a forest road for 35 miles?!? GPS doesn't seem like their biggest problem."

About this, I mean.

What's your favorite thing about this incident? Here are two of MY favorite things:

1. Thinking about the conversation the LMM and I would have if I got us that lost in the mountains, for three days, using GPS. "STOP and ask for directions!" "Ask WHO? Besides, I know where we are. Look at this map!" "I told you not to...." and "I think there are some lights up ahead," and so on.

2. The woman's name is Starry Bush-Rhoads. No, really. They got lost for three nights in the mountains on bush roads, and her name is....well, you see my point.

The Grand Game!

Sometimes here at KPC someone sends a link that is just SO sweet that we have to examine it, savor it, and then leave it by the side of the road to rot.

While Sweden has a large state and well developed public services, in Japan government social expenditure makes up an unusually small part (compared to other OECD countries) of its Gross National Income. The same contrast exists among US states - even between neighbouring states like Vermont and New Hampshire. Vermont takes the big government route and New Hampshire the small. But despite the contrast in how greater equality is achieved, Sweden, Japan, Vermont and New Hampshire all enjoy good health, lower rates of most social problems - i.e. all the benefits of greater equality.

Here is just such a link, a set of "studies" so noisome, so nonsensical... well, enjoy. Here is the "evidence" page. This is a rare combination of almost painful self-importance and bad social science.

J. Gruber joins the dark side

People, did you know that any money you actually get to keep is simply a temporary tax break generously allowed to you by a beneficent and magnanimous government?

Me neither.

But according to Gruber, the so called "Cadillac tax" on generous health plans, is not a tax at all, but rather just a partial mitigation of an existing tax break:

"The assessment proposed in the Senate is not a new tax; it is the elimination of an existing tax break..."

Now, I don't deny that what Gruber is saying is true in a weird world where we start with everything belonging  to the government, but have we really come to that? Maybe so.

By the way, not only is it not a tax, it's also magic:

"So in the end, we have a policy that provides the necessary financing to pay for subsidies to low-income families; induces employers to buy more cost-effective health insurance, lowering U.S. health-care spending; offsets a bias in our tax system that favors more expensive insurance; and raises wages by $223 billion over 10 years."

No word yet on whether or not it will cure male pattern baldness, but I am hopeful!

Nachas

I have written about nachas before. But about sports.

Today, I had to take the YYM down to the Urgent Care Clinic, because he had pink eye, and we needed some antibiotic eyedrops.

On the way home, we were talking about theories of the origin of the moon, and the problem of caclulating mass, and LaGrangian points (I had not heard of these...)

The YYM is quiet for a minute, and then says, "I was wondering the other day about kinetic energy of a bullet. So I calculated the kinetic energy of a .50 caliber bullet from a M-82".


(I'm thinking, okay, not so hard, you just need estimates of the mass of the bullet, and the muzzle velocity....Still, very cool that he would actually try to calculate it!)

He goes on, "And I wondered how fast a small car, say a Smart Car, would have to be going to have the same kinetic energy."

He looks over. "About 16 miles per hour. A .50 caliber round from an M-82 sniper rifle has the same kinetic energy, at least when it leaves the barrel, as an empty Smart Car traveling at 16 miles per hour."

This, for a father, produces a flood of pure hormonal nachas. To think that this is an interesting question is pretty great. To be able to solve for it is a sign that he actually has learned something in physics. And to bring it up in casual conversation, as a random factoid, ensures his admission to the club of geek-nerds.

I'm so proud....

(UPDATE: I haven't checked the algebra. He may have gotten it wrong. But it SOUNDS about right, in order of magnitude)

Vic Chesnutt, R. I. P.

American poet/songwriter Vic Chesnutt is dead. 

Wow, this is very bad news. I was very late in arriving at an appreciation of Vic. It didn't happen until Mrs. Angus and I saw him play live in a bizzaro "super-group" called "The Undertow Orchestra" which was him, David Bazan (Pedro the Lion), Will Johnson (Centro-matic), and Mark Eitzel (American Music Club). 

We went because of Bazan and Johnson, but Vic stole the show.

Check out his music if you haven't had a chance, starting perhaps with "West of Rome" or "Silver Lake". 

Beginners' Guide to Liberty

Adam Smith Institute publishes a very nice edited "volume" on the web.

(Nod to Angry Alex, who is no beginner)

Registration Map of NC

Thanks to the good work of Ray U., we can construct the following registration map of NC. As the legend suggests, the GREEN counties are those with Libertarian regisration proportions (as % of registered voters) greater than 0.11%. And the YELLOW are counties with registration proportions of 0.09% to 0.109%. And that's about half the counties. The RED counties are those with the lowest percentages, below 0.03%. The counties left white, then, are those between 0.03% and 0.089%.


Overall, only 1 in 1,000 registered North Carolinians are L's.

Discuss.

Republicans are Hypocrites

Remarkable that the best defense the Dems can come up with for their "sell your children" deficit is "The Republicans did it!"

I thought that the Dems, and Obama in particular, had promised to make DIFFERENT mistakes. So far, foreign / military policy is Bush III. And, since the Republican fiscal policy was "run up the deficit, and pay off Goldman Sachs," and the Dem policy is "run up the deficit much faster, and pay off Goldman Sachs,"...well, I don't see much to pick from here.

Still, sure, for the record, the Republicans are stone liars. I agree.

Six years ago, "it was standard practice not to pay for things," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. "We were concerned about it, because it certainly added to the deficit, no question." His 2003 vote has been vindicated, Hatch said, because the prescription drug benefit "has done a lot of good."

"Standard practice not to pay for things"? Only if you are a Senator, Orrin. And the idea that spending "does a lot of good" is amazing. Clearly, if I take money from A at gunpoint, and give some of it to B (keeping the rest to pay my expenses), then B is, in terms of that one program, better off. That is NOT the same as "does a lot of good," even if there are many people in the B category.

And the prescription drug benefit, since it was paid for with deficit, actually takes money from B's grandchildren in the future, and gives it to B NOW. B likely would not do that straight up, but give B the smoke-screen of this being a "government program," and it DOES A LOT OF GOOD!

(Nod to Anonyman, who never lies. Just ask him.)

Merry Christmas! Ho-Ho-Ho!

Op Ed in Durham Herald

I had an op-ed in today's Durham Herald.

1994

or

1964?

ATSRTWT

Sing it Bing!

It's almost Christmas!

Okie-damus

The Cutest Darned Baby Panda

Little guy leaves the den, and has adventures.

Mostly falling awkwardly on his face.

To each according to their needs

Seth Roberts great post about appreciative thinking (link is here, it's well worth reading) got me thinking about my own career teaching grad students. I realized that, in alternating waves, I've dealt with students who needed to learn appreciative thinking and students who needed to learn Cowen's Law.

At GMU, I was teaching traditional subjects (econometrics, macro) to non-traditional students (austrians and public choicers). Many of them thought the whole enterprise was invalid and were not shy about saying so or giving heated critiques of what exactly was the problem. It was great for me, because it forced me to figure out why I thought my subjects were worth learning. Plus working to convince them that even if they disagreed, there were worthwhile things to be learned and even appreciated in the standard material definitely made me a better teacher (thanks Pete and Steve and Dave!!).

At Tulane and at Oklahoma, a lot of students had the opposite problem: they thought all published work was perfect and all famous professors infallible. Here I had to work to convince them that (a la Tyler) there is indeed something wrong with everything, existing work can be improved upon, even by non superstar economists, and that a critical eye was extremely important.

This past fall though, I realized I may have gone overboard with pushing critical thinking on my students. Mrs. Angus and I started a reading group in development and growth where we meet to discuss recently published or new working papers in the fields. And some of the students didn't like anything! I am a critical person by nature, but the level of negativity in the group often disturbed me. I once again found myself trying to show students that there was value to be appreciated in other people's research, no matter what one thought of its overall validity. 

Full circle, people!

Lazy Students, or Just Clueless?

There is an interesting divide. Some of my students work, and some don't. Most of the ones who work, do well. (They got into Duke, so they have SOMETHING going for them)

And some of the ones who DON'T work much, still do well, at least in the B+ range. To be honest, Poli Sci is just not that hard. If you are smart and write well, you can write a perfectly acceptable paper in four days. Even just crunched in at the end of the semester.

An interesting article, on working and time management. The amazing thing is that you just need to work a little, every day, to succeed.

Same thing for faculty: 3 hours actual work, writing, every day and you will be pretty successful.

Happy Solstice from Angus & Mungowitz!

"it's a Saturnalia miracle"

Back From NYC, and Rapping It Down

So, I'm back from NYC, and have finished my (truly trivial, probably will die on cutting room floor) role in the rap video. It was SO great to watch the film crew in action, though. Very, very cool. Also colder than heck in NYC, post-blizzard.

For more info on the video, and the rap song, and the people who actually matter, check this video....

Spanish is so great

One of my favorite dichos (sayings) in Spanish is "salir de Guatemala y llegar a Guatepeor" which is in the same spirit as "out of the frying pan and into the fire" only much much funnier.

The reason why I mention this is the Dallas Cowboys cut their worthless kicker Nick Folk who has missed 7 of his last 9 FG attempts only to sign Shaun Suisham, who was recently cut by the Washington DC football franchise (I refuse to use their heinous name) for missing a chip shot that cost Washington a game earlier this month.

I wonder if Suisham would be willing to change his surname to Guatepeor?

The EYM Comes Home

The Elder Younger Munger returned home from UNC, resplendent. He pulled the intermediate microecon and macroecon courses out. He had skipped the intro courses (which are always dreadful) and the second level courses (which are only slightly less so). But it does help to know the definitions. Still, he got through them both, with just enough for the "gentleman's A-" that is what the "gentleman's C+" has turned into at American universities. Two anecdotes of the return.

1. In the car, he was describing a friend of his. The EYM has a great deadpan, which drives the LMM a little nuts. EYM: "I have a friend. He just got his nipples pierced. His first piercing experience."

LMM: "Why? And YOU had better not do that."

EYM: "Whimsicality. He got curved barbells inserted into his nipples. But invisible to others, most of the time. Whimsicality."

LMM: "And he's better now, somehow?"

EYM: "Well, he is considerably more sensitive to temperature changes...."

2. Then, the EYM noted that he is in a "band," THE PRETENSE. They have "tracks" up on MYSPACE, at http://www.myspace.com/thepretensemakesense

They are, as you will hear if you listen, a noise rock band. Three tracks have particular historic value, I think:

"Exams at 8 and 12, Featuring 'The Neighbor'" (listen at the end; that's an actual neighbor coming in and telling them to STFU)

"Stupidly Hot Shower" (just because)

"Kentucky" (this track was of course much too commercial and calculated for the band's core fans. It has, after all, both something like a melody and something like lyrics. NOT those things, but something like them. So the band broke up over creative differences, but reformed after promising NEVER to "sell out" with any commercial pandering like this again. A turning point, I predict.)

Finally, I should point out that they are playing a gig January 18, at Elon, as a warmup band. I predict injuries, inflicted by the audience, and inflicted on "The Pretense."

UPDATE: Old KPC friend Martin comes home for Froehliche Weihnachten, and sends warm props to the EYM. Thanks, Martin. And of course I will elevate your suggested link to the front page. That's amazing.

As for Principles of Econ, Patrick, you MAY be right. But the EYM read Hazlitt, Hayek, and Heilbroner, Read and Rand before he was 12. He is almost finished with a math major in college. I don't see why memorizing the definition of "elasticity" in a large principles class is going to help. Having me as a dad has many obvious drawbacks. Why not acknowledge the one benefit: He has had "Principles" shoved down his throat since birth?

Go Josef, it's your birthday

We gonna party like it's your birthday, sip Bacardi like it's your birthday and, for at least one day, no one in Russia is gonna badmouth you!

The Russian Communist Party asked the nation Monday for a daylong moratorium on criticizing Soviet dictator Josef Stalin as they celebrate his 130th birthday.

Despite overseeing political purges and widespread famine that killed millions of Soviet citizens, Stalin is still embraced by many Russians nostalgic for Soviet times.

His popularity has even risen in recent years amid a Kremlin-backed campaign to burnish his image as the man who led the nation to victory in World War II.

"We would very much like for any discussion of the mistakes of the Stalin epoch to be silenced today, so that people could reflect on Stalin's personality as a creator, a thinker and a patriot," Communist deputy parliament speaker Ivan Melnikov said on the party's Web site. The Communists represent the country's second most powerful political party after Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's United Russia.

You got it Ivan!!

Don't walk him, but don't give him anything good to hit

As a mere lad, pre Mrs. Angus and digital cable, I followed baseball. At one point in this (admittedly low) stage of my life, I recall watching a show about the Atlanta Braves on the "Superstation" where the pitching coach came out to the mound and offered up the zen koan of unhelpful advice that comprises the title of this post.

Apparently Nicholas Sarkozy watched the same show and internalized the meme:

President Nicolas Sarkozy has ordered the head of the French train authority to get Eurostar traffic moving again by Tuesday.

Eurostar has suspended traffic between Paris and London pending tests to determine what caused five trains to get stuck inside the Channel Tunnel late Friday, trapping more than 2,000 people for hours.

On Monday, Sarkozy called in SNCF President Guillaume Pepy and ordered him to get traffic moving again by Tuesday and present measures to assure such incidents don't happen again.

Through the years it has amazed me how often people "in authority" offer up the same useless advice: don't walk him, but..... 

Markets in one less thing

Reuters informs us that Horse is "falling off restaurant menus" in France:

"Many people love horses and traditionally, many French people have loved them even more with a side of salad. That passion, however, has slowed to a trickle in the last couple of years as crisis-hit French consumers buy less meat and years of campaigning by animal rights groups take effect.

Consumption of horse meat has fallen 12 percent in the last two years and currently makes up less than 1 percent of all meat consumed in France, the ministry said in a report.

And while only a few years ago horse meat was relatively easy to find, now it takes more time to track it down.

"Horse is indeed a French dish, but you'd be very hard-pressed to find it in any restaurants now," said the chef at restaurant Le Central in Paris, adding: "There's so much publicity against it.""

I guess Mr. Ed can finally visit Paris, eh?

Good Books, Bad Books

On the "good" side of the ledger:

"Open" by Andre Agassi. I am not kidding about this. It is really honest, funny, informative and fun. Even if you don't like tennis.

"Born to Run"  by Christopher McDougall. Fascinating story about the Tarahumara, human evolution, and personal growth and discovery. The guy makes a few bizarre statements about the Tarahumara in the beginning (for a more balanced view of them, I recommend "God's Middle Finger), but the book is really attention grabbing and fun. Even if you don't like to run.

On the "bad" side of the ledger:

"The Art of Political Murder" by Francisco Goldman. He somehow manages to take a sensational case in a divided and violent country and make it mind numbingly boring. The first few chapters (as far as I could make it) are just a laundry list of names and times. I skipped ahead a few times and found more of the same so I quit. An infinitely better book, more or less on the same topic is "Senselessness" by Horacio Castellanos Moya, which I can unreservedly recommend.

"The Inheritance of Rome" by Chris Wickham. I am sorry, but Tyler must have been indulging in some of Oklahoma's finest when he recommended this book. All the guy does is (a) contradict himself at least once per page (so thus they were very Roman, but yet they were not Roman) and (b) come up with new names for the Goths. People I have plowed through multiple volumes of Braudel with pleasure, but I couldn't get past page 100 of this.

 

"Inherent Vice" by Thomas Pinchon. Lord, how the mighty have fallen. It's not funny, it's not weird, it's not readable. If you want to read a "hard boiled" novel by a slumming serious author try "Nobody Move" by Denis Johnson instead.

Descartes' Muse?

Incontrovertible proof that Economics is a Science!

Hat tip to Gabriel M.!!

Twitter Experiment: Avatar today, Rap Video Tomorrow!

So, I'll try out this whole TWEET thing.

@mungowitz

Today, going to see 3D Avatar.

Tomorrow, flying to New York to play the role of "The Bouncer" in Russ Roberts' rap video production. I can't post details, but the Wall Street atmospherics should be worth something.

So, follow if you will....

Just too obvious

Tiger Woods was named the PGA tour's "Playa of the Year"! 

Natch, who else could match his "record"?

ps. if you are looking for a Christmas present for Tiger, here is a good suggestion.

Self-respect

Anonyman sends this link, noting that the LMM and Anonyspouse have similar views on Tiger-Edwards-Spitzer-Sanford. (My wife has made it clear that if I dillied or dallied, she would leave. But she would not leave empty-handed. She would be carrying with her the official "Lorena Bobbitt" souvenir edition portion of me, as a keepsake. Since I would not be needing it any more.)

Why is it, then, that Hillary Clinton gets so much respect? Remember that extraordinarily condescending interview, where she said she would NEVER bake cookies and stand by her man? And then she did EXACTLY that, like a whipped dog? Sure, she made Bill miserable, for more than a year. But she stayed with him, as a calculation of her own interests, in effect selling and demeaning herself. She did "make" him sleep on a couch. That is a little funny, because they already had separate bedrooms!

Why would any woman with independent financial means stay around to be humiliated?

You go, girl. Go out the door. Leave. You are better than that.

UPDATE: I have to add this. Here is the treatment the Hill had to endure after the scandal, and Bill fessed up. WHY did she stay?

Leno:

The big story continues to be President Clinton's best selling book. On the
news tonight they interviewed Clinton's editor. Editor? The book is 957
pages long! What the hell did he edit?

The book is huge. And actually, it folds out into a bed.

The "New York Post" is reporting today that Clinton now feels he has two more autobiographies left to write. That's what I love about Clinton. He's the only guy in the world who has three different versions of his life story. One for him, one for Hillary, one for the grand jury.

In the book, Clinton says that "in politics, if you don't toot your own horn, it usually stays untooted." And if you get someone else to toot your horn, you get impeached.

In his book, Bill Clinton talks about the point where Hillary started to laugh again. It was when he told her "Look, I'll never cheat on you again. I promise." Apparently she got hysterical.

Letterman:

It's only been out a day, Bill Clinton's book is already number one on the
"New York Times" bestseller list. The book is called, "My Life...As A Dog."

It's a fascinating read, this Clinton book, in the book he claims he led a double life. There were 2 Bill Clintons. Bill Clinton claims he led a double life. He was kind of like Dr. Jeckyl and Mister Hyde the salami!

In the book, Clinton reveals one night when he was five or six years old back in Arkansas. His step dad fired a gun in the house but it didn't hit him or his mother. So it looks like this bad aim thing runs in the family.

The most quoted thing in the book is where Clinton talks about after the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, he slept on the couch for two months. That's how you know Hillary was mad, they had separate bedrooms and she still made him sleep on the couch!

Today Monica Lewinsky was not sympathetic. She said if Bill thought the couch was uncomfortable, he should try getting under that little desk.

Bill Clinton is really busy right now. He's so busy signing books that he had to cancel his 3 o'clock intern.

I went to the book signing and I was surprised the book was already 30 percent off. Just like his pants.

Angus's favorite music of 2009

To me, there was one release that stands above all others this year. "Bitte Orca" by Dirty Projectors totally knocked my socks off. It's just so f-ing triumphant! Here is a song from the album called "Cannibal Resource"

I also really liked "XX", by The XX. I think this is their debut album. Kind of Edwyn Collins meets Young Marble Giants (i.e. freaking tremendous).

Here's a sample:

Another fantastic release for 09 is "All My Friends are Funeral Singers" by Califone. I have this as double vinyl album and it sounds so incredibly good. Califone has been good for a long time, but they really stood out to me this year in particular. Here's the video for the song "Funeral singers".

Next is a definite guilty pleasure release. I mean, come on, these guys are soundtracking Cadillac commercials. I got it for Mrs. Angus and swore I wasn't going to like it, but Holy Crap!   ">"Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix" by Phoenix is such a fun and practically perfect rock record, it totally won me over. Here's the video for "Liztomania":

The next picks are weird in that while they stand out from the rest of 09's releases, they are not quite as good as music by the same people from last year.

"Tarot Sport" by The F***k Buttons would be in my top picks except it's not as good as last year's "Street Horrrsing", which was my record of the year for 08.

Same for "Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle" by Bill Callahan. Stellar, but not as good as " Woke Up a Whaleheart" from 2008.

The last example of this phenomenon is "Blood Bank", the 2009 EP by Bon Iver which is awesome, but not as good as last year's "For Emma, Forever Ago".

People, could "Skinny Love" be the best song of the decade?

I also really enjoyed new releases by stalwart groups like Built to Spill's "There Is No Enemy" and Dinosaur Jr.'s "Farm".

The best live shows I saw this year were Built to Spill at the Diamond Ballroom in OKC, and Bill Callahan at the Granada Theater in Dallas

App State is HOT HOT HOT

Would this make you MORE likely to apply? I don't think so....

Episode II: The Women Strike Back

Wow. One can't condone the violence.

But sports trophy wifes are saying, "Enough!"

Elin beat Tiger like a punk.

And now Chris Henry has actually died being thrown out of a truck. Mr. Henry's fiancee was upset at him, and basically killed him. The description was that "he came out of the truck." Sure he did. Because she was swerving around and screaming at him.

Hell hath no fury.....

On Dancer! On Prancer!

What kind of sick person would do this?
What kind of sick person would put it on their blog?

Banks Not Lending?

A letter:

I have been struggling with figuring out where the banks are getting money to pay back the TARP loans with all the bad loans they have on books and the fact that they are not lending money. I do not see where they are making money suddenly to pay off TARP and pay bonuses!

Thank goodness you got to KPC in time, where ALL can be explained!

The banks are getting money from two sources:

1. The Federal Reserve System, through the its Open Market Desk in NY, and through other outlets, is POURING money into the system, in the form of reserves. Banks, as a result, have an extraordinary amount of cash.

How does the Fed do that? They buy long-term Treasury bonds. Banks can hold reserves in cash or bonds. Many were holding bonds, because there is an inverse relation between interest rates and the value of bonds. If interest rates fall, bond owners take a capital gain. Rates have fallen a lot over the past 14 months. But now rates are near zero. So banks are happy to sell bonds.

When the Fed buys t-bonds, it takes money out of its account at the Treasury (and that account is NOT part of the money supply) and transfers it to the accounts of banks and other entities. Say Fed buys a $1 million dollar bond from Bank of America. BoA has no more wealth than before, but it suddenly has an extra $1 million in cash it needs to invest. The Fed has been increasing the money supply in just this way for the past year or more, at a rate of 10% per month. (I didn't stutter, 10% per month, biggest sustained increase ever, in absolute terms).

2. The assets (collateralized debt obligations and other mortgage-backed securities) have become a little less illiquid. A year ago, nobody would buy CDOs at any price. Now, that part of the credit market has unfrozen a little bit. Banks may still be bankrupt, on their balance sheets, but they can get their hands on some cash, lots of it, by selling off CDOs and other assets.

So, why aren't we seeing the RETAIL credit market unfreeze, since the WHOLESALE credit market, described above, has plenty of cash?

Again, two reasons. First, banks are still trying to avoid risk. And it is not clear that recession is over, in the real world. So banks are borrowing money from the government, at 0%, and then buying NEW federal debt, which pays 3%. That's a guaranteed 3% real return, with no risk. So the Fed buys up debt to increase the money supply, to get the banks to lend. But the banks just buy more government debt, lending to the government instead of lending to small businesses or even large businesses.

And the government is having to borrow more and more to finance the deficit being used to bail out the banks. But the banks are just using the bail-out money to buy more of the debt being used to finance the bail-out! From the taxpayer's perspective, you'd be better off playing the "3-card monte" games in Times Square.

Second, the rush of cash is causing an "asset inflation" which I had always thought was just a wild hypothesis, something that could never happen in the real world. But it IS happening. We aren't getting broad inflation (though the Producer Price Index has been up at a nearly 6% annual rate the last two months!). But the stock market is looking pretty good. But it may simply be because the Austrian Econ prediction of an asset inflation is correct.

A bad day to be in Copenhagen

Consummate statesmen Robert Mugabe and Hugo Chavez addressed the climate change conference.

YIKES!!

Mugabe was as incisive as ever:

"Why is the guilty north not showing the same fundamentalist spirit it exhibits in our developing countries on human rights matters on this more menacing threat of climate change?"

And Chavez too got right to the heart of the matter:

"If the climate was a bank, they would have already saved it."

Now that things have devolved to a circus, why not go all the way and have Ahmadinejad say a few words?

What's that? He's on the schedule for tomorrow?

Holy Crap!

So Sweet I can't stand it....

(Nod to Angry Alex)

Two quite useful posts

on inflation

and on the "carry trade" argument we have argued about before. Angus has noted a weak dollar is not a problem, and of course that's right. But a strong dollar is also not a problem. That's why, as Angus put it, using technical economics language, "Who gives a crap about the dollar?"

This Math is Hard to Understand

The problem, I think is obvious. If you add up the percentages, you get 193%. This is obviously wrong, since even Rachel Maddow knows that a circle has 360%. And a pie chart is a circle. Therefore, a duck is made out of wood, just like a witch.

Thus, we all want to know about the missing 167% has gone to. That is too big to be reporting error.

Perhaps the explanation is that the source is "Opinions Dynamic." Dynamic, indeed.

(Nod to RL, who is only partly made out of wood, and even then only after a glass of wine)

Best. Samuelson. Quote. Ever.

“Like herpes, math is here to stay,”

Source is here and the hat tip goes to LeBron!

  

A bad week for Icons

First Paul Samuelson, then Arthur Goldberger and now Oral Roberts have died this week. Oral was 94 and apparently an Okie.

UNC Library, Midnight Flash Rave

The culture that is Germany: Polar bear edition

Remember Knut? The polar bear cub rejected by his mom and hand raised by keepers in the Berlin zoo? Well he just turned 3 and is doing well, having avoided being banished to a lesser zoo, and even gaining a temporary "girlfriend" that his fans hope to make permanent.

A way out for Eldrick

People, Tiger's cone of silence plan is not working. Accenture has dropped him, Gillette has de facto dropped him, Tag Heuer is thinking about dropping him, Gatorade has de facto dropped him, and Elin is rumoured to be dropping him, even though he's promised muchos Benjamins for her to stick around.

He needs a game changing play.

My advice? Medicalize it!

That's right, "my name is Eldrick Woods and I am a sex addict". People, it's perfect. Release a statement, go into rehab and come out at the end of 3 months or so magically transformed into the sympathetic figure in the play.

How can a sponsor drop him for having an illness? Jeez, even Elin would seem unsympathetic if she followed through and divorced him or even ratcheted up the pre-nup.

Think about it Tiger, I want to see you play all four slams this year!

Puppy Christmas!

A Tiger Documentary

I had not seen this. You probably have, I understand. But I had not.

Whole Foods Republicans

A terrific article, by Michael Petrilli, in today's WSJ.

Answering the question: Could 2010 be 1994 all over again.

Probably not, and for some useful reasons.

Words Fail Me

And dancing failed them....

(Nod to Angry Alex)

The Liberal Surge was actually a High Water Mark

Just one year ago, the chattering-battering class was thumping its thin little chest and whooping it up for the new liberal takeover of the world.

Well, how do you like us, now? Germany has selected a surprisingly conservative government. Chile appears to be well on its way to electing a VERY conservative fellow (though with some social liberal stands, bless his heart!)

Fact is, Obamamania was not the return of the left to American, or world, politics. It was the reaction against an unresponsive and tin-eared militarist and corporatist regime called Bush.

Obama even won a Nobel Prize for not being Bush 43. Although Bush 41 could easily have given the same speech that Obama gave when Obama got the Nobel for not being Bush 43. Obama may be trying to centerize himself, in spite of his instincts for lunacy, and his surprising inability to understand even basic economics.

But the deficit, the mishandling of TARP, and unbelievable mishandling of health care by the left (again) have all combined to make the alternatives look pretty strong.

I still wonder if the Republicans aren't going to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, by "New York 23rding" themselves into irrelevance.

Many voters seem to prefer to vote for a loser they really like, rather than reduce the majority Nancy P and Harry R need to do their dirty work. And so the dirty work will go on.

My own view is that if you are going to do a protest vote, then do the principled thing. Don't go halfway, and vote for a RINO. Vote Libertarian!

Poison Can Quench Your Thirst

That Ben B. He really is putting us in a bad spot.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke is prescribing “poison” to the U.S. economy by keeping interest rates near zero and fueling a wave of speculative capital that may cause the next global crisis, former Morgan Stanley chief Asian economist Andy Xie said.

Bernanke is making decisions based on “marginal considerations” that will help short-term growth and employment, instead of focusing on the “soundness of the system,” Xie wrote in an e-mailed note today. The next worldwide crisis will probably strike in 2012, driven by inflation as the low cost of borrowing spurs increases in asset prices, he said.

“There is a Chinese saying that one could quench the thirst by drinking poison,” said Xie, who predicted in September 2006 that the U.S. economy would fall into a recession in 2008. “Bernanke seems to be prescribing exactly this to the U.S. economy. The slower Bernanke raises interest rates, the bigger the next crisis.”

ATSRTWT

Deny Me Three Times, Before the Cock Crows

It turns out that NC has a law that outlaws public officials who deny the existence of God. (It's in Article VI, Section 8, by the way. I had assumed that officials just ignored that article, the same way that they ignore most of the U.S. Constitution).

So, this guy is going to get hassled.

(Nod to Anonyman)

A boy and his flagpole

So, a kid actually did it. He put his tongue on a cold flagpole.

And it (his tongue) froze there. And the kid is dancing around, tongue-tied to the flagpole, yelling "Geh ah hung ah uf hag hole! OWWW!"

And so they called the fire department!

Because the firemen, understanding fire and its uses, would know to use WARM water. (It helps to be trained....)

Apparently, the kid was "triple dog dared" to do the tonguey thing. (For the REAL "Tonguey thing," you will need to rent "Kung Pow! Enter the Fist!")

(If you simply must see "Toungey," then it is in this trailer, the sign of being the "Chosen One"...)

Paul Samuelson: RIP

Paul Samuelson died today at the age of 94. He won the Nobel prize in Economics in 1970. He had a huge influence on the profession both as a researcher and as a textbook author. 

However, given current circumstances, I wonder if he would like to retract this quote:

“I don’t care who writes a nation’s laws — or crafts its advanced treatises — if I can write its economics textbooks”

Boudreaux's Versatility

You all know about Don Boudreaux's many unpublished letters to the editor.

But did you know about Boudreaux's Butt Paste, and Butt Bath?

I didn't. But it is a NASCAR sponsor.

Markets in everything: Santeria edition

Looking for a great investment vehicle? Consider the human skull.

In 2007, UPI reported that, in Venezuela, practitioners of "black magic" were robbing graves for human bones and that skulls were selling for $300!

Two years later, the NY Times reports that the pace of Venezuelan grave robbing has accelerated and a skull now goes for $2000!

People, that is an average annual return of over 250%!

The Times has also upgraded the robbers from practitioners of "black magic" to adherents of a religion (transplanted from Cuba) called "Palo" (though this source perpetuates the "black magic" label)

England is SO SCREWED

Sorry to have been so obsessed about England lately.

But what a seriously messed up place.

Here is a guy who is being fined (a LOT) for....not producing enough garbage! I have blogged before about the government claiming to own your garbage, but....wow!

(Nod to Reason Daily Brickbats)

The Latest Insult

The latest insult on the interwebs, just in time for the holiday season!

The easy version: GIYF---"Google is your friend!"

The smackdown version: LMGTFY--- "Let me google that for you!"
fill in the search field in this URL: http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=_____.

Suppose someone in comments says, "Neil Young! Who is Neil Young?" You would say, condescendingly, "GIYF!" (In other words, the doofus should use Google, not use you as a research assistant.)

But you could also just give them, http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=Neil+Young" (TRY IT!)

The implied insult is even clearer, and LOTS more fun. Try it at Christmas parties. Family members LOVE being condescended to by a geek!

Sphinctered by the man

People, this is not what you want to encounter when you've gotten up at 7:00 am on Saturday to get some labwork done:

Obamacare! Come save me!

A Town Called Sue: You Are Libel to Lose!

Amazing, again, how messed up England is. Interesting article with clear discussion of the problem of assignment of burden of proof.

English libel law is the opposite of America’s in many ways. In the United States, the plaintiff, or accuser, must prove that the statement in question was false; public officials must also prove that it was made maliciously, with “reckless disregard” for the truth.

In England (Scotland has its own system), the burden of proof rests on the defendant, whose statements are presumed false and who has to establish that they are true.

It is not only news organizations that are running afoul of the law. Environmentalists, anticorruption campaigners, medical researchers and soccer fans posting criticisms of their teams on blogs have all been sued or threatened with legal action in recent years.

ATSRTWT

What is Central Bank independence in a dollarized economy?

I must confess upfront that I find this story confusing. The president of Ecuador's allegedly independent Central Bank resigned under pressure yesterday because he didn't transfer a portion of the Central Bank's reserves to public sector banks quickly enough.

President Correa had ordered $2.4 billion to be transferred for use on spending programs to lower unemployment. The new Central Bank head is also the Economy Minister and a member of Correa's cabinet. 

At this point in the proceedings, one would usually be thinking, goodbye Central Bank independence, hello inflation.

But here is where it gets tricky. Ecuador is dollarized, right?  They don't have an exchange rate to defend. Does the Central Bank even need any international reserves? And how did it acquire them? Are these reserves somehow left over from the pre-dollarization days?

When Correa says "We are restructuring the Central Bank so that everyone understands that it has to follow the policies of our citizen's revolution" (todays WSJ p. A16), what does that mean? 

If a country is dollarized, do they even need a central bank, let alone an independent one? 

Isn't the Fed really Ecuador's central bank? 

OMG, is Correa restructuring the Fed? Is Chris Dodd Correa's puppet?

Yikes!

Duke Faculty Prom Tonight!

No, I'm not kidding. The faculty "dinner dance" (clearly a prom, with a band, and hot women like the LMM) goes down this evening.

Me? I'll be wearing the black tux.....

Clean shirt, new shoes
And I don't know where I am goin' to.
black tux, black tie,
I don't need a reason why.
They come runnin' just as fast as they can
Coz every girl crazy 'bout a sharp dressed man.

Gold watch, diamond ring,
I ain't missin' not a single thing.
And cufflinks, stick pin,
When I step out I'm gonna do you in.
They come runnin' just as fast as they can
Coz every girl crazy 'bout a sharp dressed man.

Top coat, top hat,
I don't worry coz my wallet's fat.
Black shades, white gloves,
Lookin' sharp and lookin' for love.
They come runnin' just as fast as they can
Coz every girl grazy 'bout a sharp dressed man.

Raleigh Charter Rulz!

Both my sons went/are going to RCHS. (School site)

US News just came out with high school rankings. RCHS is 24th nationally. And it is a charter school, like many of the schools in the ranking.

AND....admission is by lottery. AND the school is in downtown Raleigh.

Why is the minority enrollment so low? (It's not THAT low, it's 10%)
Remember, admission is by lottery, the school is in an urban area where the minority population is 25% or more, and the school has enormous value-added (class size 12, teachers with PhDs, etc).

Overall, NC does reasonably well.

Some people have called RCHS a "segregation academy." That doesn't make sense to me. Why don't more minorities apply? The lottery, after all, ensures that the proportion that apply will be the proportion accepted.

And your final score is Angels 55 - AGW 36

Here is the full scoreboard from Foreign Policy:

Percentage of Americans who believe in angels: 55

Percentage of Americans who believe in evolution: 39

Percentage of Americans who believe in anthropogenic global warming: 36

Percentage of Americans who believe in ghosts: 34

Percentage of Americans who believe in UFOs: 34

Go to the link for sources. We are a wild and wacky bunch, aren't we?

Hat tip to Gabriel M.

Feeling Good

The Tetris God: Job

The Bishop sends this link.... the God of Tetris. He is a vengeful and an arbitrary God. THIS is the real book of Job.

Mungowitz Joins the Angus Party; STILL Not a Republican

Full disclosure: Angus has never, ever been a Republican. Not even close, really.

Me? I was.

People ask me why I am not a Republican, and I stumble for an answer. To paraphrase Jimmy Buffet, the answer is so simple it's like the Charleston, it plumb evaded me.

I do have a pretty good answer, now. It was sent to me by Anonyman. But it was written by Andrew Sullivan, who has always been one of my favorite conservatives.

For these reasons, I found it intolerable after 2003 to support the movement that goes by the name "conservative" in America. I still do, even though I am much more of a limited government type than almost any Democrat and cannot bring myself to call myself a liberal (because I'm not). My reasons were not dissimilar to Charles Johnson, who, like me, was horrified by 9/11, loathes Jihadism, and wants to defeat it as effectively as possible. And his little manifesto prompts me to write my own (the full version is in "The Conservative Soul"). Here goes:

I cannot support a movement that claims to believe in limited government but backed an unlimited domestic and foreign policy presidency that assumed illegal, extra-constitutional dictatorial powers until forced by the system to return to the rule of law.

I cannot support a movement that exploded spending and borrowing and blames its successor for the debt....

I cannot support a movement that refuses ever to raise taxes, while proposing no meaningful reductions in government spending.


There's more. It's good. And he's right.

Shine on you crazy diamond

Did you guys catch Jared Diamond in Sunday's NY Times? Ouch.

He starts out with an ode to corporate environmental responsibility:

The embrace of environmental concerns by chief executives has accelerated recently for several reasons. Lower consumption of environmental resources saves money in the short run. Maintaining sustainable resource levels and not polluting saves money in the long run. And a clean image — one attained by, say, avoiding oil spills and other environmental disasters — reduces criticism from employees, consumers and government.

But somehow ends up in Thomas Friedman crazyland:

While the United States is dithering about long-distance energy transmission from our rural areas with the highest potential for wind energy generation to our urban areas with the highest need for energy, China is far ahead of us. It is developing ultra-high-voltage transmission lines from wind and solar generation sites in rural western China to cities in eastern China. If America doesn’t act to develop innovative energy technology, we will lose the green jobs competition not only to Finland and Germany (as we are now) but also to China.

Class, repeat after me:

(1). Green jobs are NOT a zero sum game where nations are competing for a fixed number of them.

(2). If China or Germany or anyone develops "innovative energy technology", that is NOT bad for us.  It is in fact *awesome* for us, as we can then adopt it and use it.

People, ideas are public goods. That is the whole basis of new growth theory. If China is now doing cutting edge R&D, that is an unmitigated blessing for everyone on the planet.

WE WANT OUR CHANGE BACK!

Suppose I go to a baseball game, with my teen-age son. I've just been to the bank, and the smallest bill I have is a $100.

I send my son up to get two hot dogs, some peanuts, and two diet sodas. I know that costs maybe $18.

He comes back with the stuff and sits down. I ask him for the change. He looks at me like I'm crazy. "That money is going to be spent on other things! That's leftover money!"

What would I do? I'd grab him by the belt, and shake the money out of his pockets! That's my money! I want my change back. I WANT MY CHANGE BACK!

That's what we should be telling President Obama about the TARP money. I WANT MY CHANGE BACK! Obama and his bunch of geniuses in Congress said they needed our money, that there would be a DISASTER unless we gave them a $1 Trillion bill. Maybe that was true, maybe it wasn't.

But we gave them the trillion dollar bill. AND THEY DIDN'T NEED IT ALL.

WE WANT OUR CHANGE BACK! It is outrageous that they are keeping the change, just so they can spend it on something else.

Tell the President: WE....WANT....OUR.....CHANGE...BACK! Apply the money back toward the deficit, don't treat it like a high school kid at a baseball game, on the equivalent of cotton candy and corn dogs.

The Culture that is Germany VII

Or Saw -1?

Here it is, direct from der Spiegel:

Was it mass cannibalism, ritual slaughter or both? Archaeologists who unearthed the remains of 500 Stone Age corpses in the German town of Herxheim say the meat was cut off their bones as if they were livestock. One conclusion is that the people were eaten -- after volunteering to be sacrificed.

YIKES!!

Drug war over: We win!!

hat tip to Art Carden!

Part of the VANGuard

This guy lived in a van, on the Duke campus.

Or so he says.

(Nod to Chelsea)

An Email Exchange

A delightful email exchange.

Excerpt:

From: Simon Edhouse
Date: Tuesday 17 November 2009 11.07am
To: David Thorne
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Logo Design

You just crossed the line. You have no idea about the potential this project has. The technology allows users to network peer to peer, add contacts, share information and is potentially worth many millions of dollars and your short sightedness just cost you any chance of being involved.

From: David Thorne
Date: Tuesday 17 November 2009 1.36pm
To: Simon Edhouse
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Logo Design

Dear Simon,

So you have invented Twitter. Congratulations. This is where that time machine would definitely have come in quite handy.

When I was about twelve, I read that time slows down when approaching the speed of light so I constructed a time machine by securing my father's portable generator to the back of my mini-bike with rope and attaching the drive belt to the back wheel. Unfortunately, instead of traveling through time and finding myself in the future, I traveled about fifty metres along the footpath at 200mph before finding myself in a bush. When asked by the nurse filling out the hospital accident report "Cause of accident?" I stated 'time travel attempt' but she wrote down 'stupidity'.

If I did have a working time machine, the first thing I would do is go back four days and tell myself to read the warning on the hair removal cream packaging where it recommends not using on sensitive areas. I would then travel several months back to warn myself against agreeing to do copious amounts of design work for an old man wielding the business plan equivalent of a retarded child poking itself in the eye with a spoon, before finally traveling back to 1982 and explaining to myself the long term photographic repercussions of going to the hairdresser and asking for a haircut exactly like Simon LeBon's the day before a large family gathering.

Regards, David.


(Nod to Prabhu)

The never ending temporary tax?

In 1993, my northern neighbors in OKC voted to add one cent to their sales tax to fund something called MAPS. This tax was sold as temporary and the revenues were used to (among other things) help get the Ford Center (where my beloved Thunder play) built. The tax expired in 2001, but was replaced by an equivalent tax to fund "MAPS for kids" which spent money on school renovations or new school construction. When that tax expired, an extension was sold the the OKC-ites to help get the Seattle Supersonics to come to OKC by funding renovations of the Ford Center.

Now THAT tax is set to expire and sure enough, voters are being asked tomorrow to approve yet another extension for "MAPS 3", which is supposed to last for 9 years, and to fund a laundry list of projects such as:

• A new, approximately 70-acre central park linking the core of downtown with the Oklahoma River. The park would include a restaurant, lake, amphitheater, dog park, skating rink and other amenities. ($130 million)
• A new rail-based streetcar system of 5 to 6 miles downtown, a downtown transit hub to link streetcar, commuter rail and bus systems, and possibly increased funding for the building of commuter rail lines. ($130 million)
• A new downtown convention center on the south edge of downtown near the proposed park. ($280 million)
• Sidewalks to be placed on major streets and near facilities used by the public throughout the city. ($10 million)
• 57 miles of new public bicycling and walking trails throughout the City. ($40 million)
• Improvements to the Oklahoma River, including a public whitewater kayaking facility and upgrades intended to achieve the finest rowing racecourse in the world. ($60 million)
• State-of-the-art health and wellness aquatic centers throughout the city designed for senior citizens. ($50 million)
• Improvements to the State Fair Park public buildings, meeting halls and exhibit spaces. ($60 million)
• Contingency funds to cover unforeseen costs ($17 million)

While all of this stuff surely is awesome, (can you imagine how nice of trails those would be at a price tag of $701,754.39 per mile?) I wonder if my northern neighbors are getting tired of this 17 year long temporary tax? At least some folks are against it and they have put their case up on the interwebs here.

So maybe in a few years I can take a streetcar to the senior aquatic center and then walk a luxury trail down to the Oklahoma "river" to see some white water kayaking! And after that, who knows? Maybe MAPS 4 could build a ski resort in south OKC!

More reasons to not worry about the demise of newspapers

People, you don't need newspapers, you got KPC for FREE! But (as our beloved president loves to say) some would argue that newspapers serve an essential role in a democracy by influencing the electoral process.

Well, not so much, according to a new NBER working paper by Gentzkow, Shapiro, and Sinkinson (ungated version here):

We use new data on entries and exits of US daily newspapers from 1869 to 2004 to estimate effects on political participation, party vote shares, and electoral competitiveness. Our identification strategy exploits the precise timing of these events and allows for the possibility of confounding trends. We find that newspapers have a robust positive effect on political participation, with one additional newspaper increasing both presidential and congressional turnout by approximately 0.3 percentage points. Newspaper competition is not a key driver of turnout: our effect is driven mainly by the first newspaper in a market, and the effect of a second or third paper is significantly smaller. The effect on presidential turnout diminishes after the introduction of radio and television, while the estimated effect on congressional turnout remains similar up to recent years. We find no evidence that partisan newspapers affect party vote shares, with confidence intervals that rule out even moderate-sized effects. We find no clear evidence that newspapers systematically help or hurt incumbents.

So to sum up, newspapers don't affect the composition of the vote and since the introduction of radio and then television (i.e. for a long, long time) have only a very small influence on the size of the vote. 

Hey, but at least they do have Dilbert!

OH VER RAY TED

UNC's basketball team has been getting the "OH ver RAY ted" cheer from opponents pretty often this year, and has deserved it.

But...CDOs? Really? That's bad.

(Nod to Reuters)

Wow! Great Britain is Messed Up!

two stories that caught my eye:

1. A guy found a "shorn-off" shotgun in his garden, with two live shells.
He goes to turn it over to the police. And is arrested. And was convicted. And will be sent to jail (!). For "possession of a fire arm"! The law is "strict liability." Just amazing. This man will go to jail for five years.

My gosh, even the Canadians think the Brits are a bunch of jack-booted thug boys.

Sentencing for the vicious criminal Paul Clarke will take place on December 11. And let me state some sympathy for the police, here. IT'S THE LAW that's stupid. How could you enforce a law where turning in a gun is a crime that carries a five year prison sentence?

2. A guy in Wales was cleaning up his yard. By law, the People's Democratic Republic of Wales has dictated that you MUST put yard waste in the special yard waste containers so that paid goons can suck down taxpayer money to go around and collect it for "composting."

So, our sturdy lad did as he was told. But he also raked up some sticks and apples that had fallen from his apple tree. Apple tree is in the yard, and when it drops sticks, leaves, and apples that might well seem like yard waste.

The crew of cretinous sinecurists refused in horror to collect this dangerous waste, and slapped a "CONTAMINATED!" sign on the bin.

As for me, I'd say the Brits have gone ROUND the bin. One thing occurs to me: would it okay if the first guy had put the shorn-off shotgun in his yard waste? If he had, then the cops would have been forced to arrest the collectors, right? Zero tolerance on gun possession.

Does ICE stand for "Idiots Couldn't Explain"?

Hans Joachim Keil is a U.S. citizen. Demonstrably. He has a passport. He served in the U.S. Air Force.

But he was arrested in Branson, MO by the intrepid folks at ICE. They said he was using a false passport.

Okay, maybe. ICE was worried about human trafficking, and there was a Western Samoan dance troupe there. (Here is their web site. Some pretty studly guys. Tommy the Brit: You are welcome!) There was some kind of investigation. So it wasn't just made up.

Except....except that ICE held Keil for three months. Are our records so bad that it takes three months to check on a passport? (He wasn't in jail, but he couldn't leave Branson. Is that "trailer park arrest," like house arrest but Branson style?

Then, Kiel was released, having never been formally charged. He is now trying to sue the gubmint (here is the actual complaint, listing the facts and the allegation; good luck with that...)

He is (pauses) A. US. CITIZEN. ICE should not be able to harass him, not in any way. But they did. And they could do it to you. If you say, "But I'm a U.S. citizen!" they will simply question your passport.

Ugh. Here is a claim that there was some kind of problem with the application for the passport, in 1967. But then why release him, and say he IS a U.S. citizen? It's the 90 days thing that is strange.

In December 2008, a year ago, the US Attorney's office in Springfield, MO filed a motion essentially certifying (get this) that Kiel was and always had been a U.S. citizen! No, really.

Oh, and one more thing: Keil is the Western Samoa Ambassador to America. If he does NOT have a U.S. passport, then he has diplomatic immunity. He can be deported, but under no circumstances can he be detained.

Bottom line: there are only two possibilities...Keil has, or does not have, a valid U.S. passport. If he does, then he is a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil and ICE can't touch him. If he does NOT, then he is a duly appointed ambassador of a foreign nation, on formal diplomatic business, and the ICE CAN'T TOUCH HIM.

The only thing I can think of is that Ambassador Kiel is a big d**khead, and the ICE is just harrassing him for bureaucratic recreation. But if the ICE can use "is a known d**khead" as an excuse to hold you for three months, then...well, Angus and I need to go into hiding!

(Nod: Reason Brickbats)

Peak Idiocy

Of all the idiotic things that people believe, the whole "peak oil" thing has to be right up there. It is literally impossible for us to run out of oil. We have never run out of anything, and we never will.

If we did start to use up the oil we have...(though, counting shale oil, we still haven't used even 10% of the total KNOWN reserves on earth, and there are lots of places we haven't looked)...but suppose we were on our way to using it up. Three things would happen.

1. Prices would rise, causing people to cut back on use. More fuel effcient cars, better insulation on houses, etc. Quantity demanded goes down.

2. Prices would rise, causing people to look for more. And they would find more oil, and more ways to get at it. Quantity supplied goes up.

3. Prices of oil would rise, making the search for substitutes more profitable. At that point (though not now!) alternative fuels and energy sources would be economical, and would not require gubmint subsidies, because they would pay for themselves. The supply curve for substitutes shifts downward and to the right.

This is econ 101. Even Paul ("I sold my soul to become a wanker") Krugman would credit this scenario.

But we ignore econ 101. And so we get this debacle. Ethanol was bad enough when it was just inefficient to produce and wasting more energy than it created. But we actually went further and bought too much of the stuff.

Yikes.

(Nod to Anonyman)

If You Tell Me This is Photo-Shopped, I'm Singing "LALALALA" Real Loud

(Nod to Jake Russ)

Warmer....You are Getting Warmer....

What an interesting guy this is. The title of the piece is "Why I think that Michael Mann, Phil Jones and Stefan Rahmstorf should be barred from the IPCC process."

He wrote this little firecracker.

Excerpt:

These words do not mean that I think anthropogenic climate change is a hoax. On the contrary, it is a question which we have to be very well aware of. But I am also aware that in this thick atmosphere -and I am not speaking of greenhouse gases now- editors, reviewers and authors of alternative studies, analysis, interpretations,even based on the same data we have at our disposal, have been bullied and subtly blackmailed. In this atmosphere, Ph D students are often tempted to tweak their data so as to fit the 'politically correct picture'. Some, or many issues, about climate change are still not well known. Policy makers should be aware of the attempts to hide these uncertainties under a unified picture. I had the 'pleasure' to experience all this in my area of research.

Will.I.Am.Not

Gosh, this seems like a long time ago now.

Markets in everything: Stepford Wife edition

Mrs. Angus and I had been debating whether Tiger's wife would leave him or stand by her man. Turns out she is planning to lease herself to him:

Elin and Tiger Woods had a prenuptial agreement, as expected. The couple is undergoing marital counseling, as you'd also expect. And now The Daily Beast is reporting that Elin Woods is renegotiating that prenup to get an immediate $5 million payout from her husband and as much as $55 million more to stay with him for two more years.

The initial prenup was worth $20 million after 10 years of marriage. However, the Chicago Sun-Times' Bill Zwecker has reported that Elin Woods will receive an immediate payment "into an account she alone controls," and that the 10-year timeframe -- which began when they married in 2004 -- has been shortened and the value increased "substantially."

The Daily Beast quotes "a lawyer familiar with the couple's negotiations" in reporting that the term of the prenup has been shortened to seven years, and that a series of staggered payments could increase the total value to $75 million.

But apparently there's also a behavioral component to all this: Elin Woods must "be a dutiful wife in showing up with him at social events and in public as if they were still the perfect couple, and sign a nondisclosure form that will prevent her from ever telling her story."

YIKES!

This pretty much negates any of the sympathy I had for Mrs. Woods, but I am surprised (guess I am naive) that Tiger's reaction to this situation is to just try to buy his way out of it.

The Grand Game!

It's been a while since we played "The Grand Game." That's where KPC readers are referred to a remarkably idiotic piece of writing, and invited to go medieval on its ass. Here is this week's fresh meat:

What is Fair Pay for Executives? An Information Theoretic Analysis of Wage Distributions

Venkat Venkatasubramanian, Entropy, December 2009, Pages 766-781

Abstract: The high pay packages of U.S. CEOs have raised serious concerns about what would constitute a fair pay. Since the present economic models do not adequately address this fundamental question, we propose a new theory based on statistical mechanics and information theory. We use the principle of maximum entropy to show that the maximally fair pay distribution is lognormal under ideal conditions. This prediction is in agreement with observed data for the bottom 90%–95% of the working population. The theory estimates that the top 35 U.S. CEOs were overpaid by about 129 times their ideal salaries in 2008. We also provide an insight of entropy as a measure of fairness, which is maximized at equilibrium, in an economic system.

Me, I just enjoy saying "Venkatasubramanian." But: Wait! There's more. Here's an article about Venkat Venkata's work, here. An excerpt:

As a professor of chemical engineering at Purdue University, Indiana, Venkatasubramanian seems an unlikely candidate to dictate CEO salaries. It turns out that the maths behind thermodynamics, the study of heat and energy, can also be applied to economics.

Discuss!

(Nod to Kevin L, who is according to maximum entropy is underpaid by 130%)

Bay Em Vay Zwei

The second BMW picture....my xmas present from the LMM!And here I thought I had been naughty...

Bay Em Vay Ein

A tale of two BMW's, part one: Guess who owns this?Hint: it was taken in the Duke faculty parking lot, behind the Econ building.

Hint 2: Yes, Tim Bollerslev works at Duke.

I bet there wasn't much competition for THAT vanity plate.

Sweet dreams are made of these

KPC has discovered the reason why Allen Iverson unretired so quickly. It is all right here!

Exit Strategies

The economy is growing again, but unemployment is extremely high and perhaps still rising (or if you prefer a positive spin, productivity is growing very rapidly). Inflation is not obviously lurking over the horizon, but memories of the Arthur Burns era are still fresh in the minds of Fed policymakers, and they fear that inflation expectations will become "unanchored".  Sooner or later the Fed will have to unwind its quantitative easing and raise short term rates.

Philly Fed President Charles Plosser says this should happen sooner:

Arguing that the U.S. economy has entered sustained recovery and forecasting growth rates of 3% for next year and 2011, Plosser said the Fed must take “appropriate steps to withdraw or restrict the massive amount of liquidity that we have made available to the economy.”

This could include hiking rates from their current level near zero even “before unemployment or other measures of resource slack have diminished to acceptable levels.”

I have a very high opinion of Charles Plosser. He is an excellent and perceptive economist. I agree that Fed policy should be forward looking and that no one wants a return to the 1970s.

The traditional role of the Fed is supposed to be "to take away the punch bowl just as the party gets going," and Plosser's views are very much in that tradition (though in a much more sophisticated way).

However, the Fed runs the risk of "taking away the medicine before the patient has recovered" and to my mind, in this circumstance (i.e. worst recession in a long long time, arguably worse than 1982), that is the greater risk than the concerns outlined by Plosser. 

If I were a Fed President (YIKES!!), I guess I would make speeches like this one in public, but support leaving easing in place until unemployment and other measures of slack have turned the corner in private.

Taking off the blinders

Great post by Seth Roberts on the so called Climategate affair.

Here is a particularly good bit:

According to Stephen Dubner, “if you are fan of science, this [Climategate] is a pretty grim day.” I think it’s a great day. As great as the day the first math text was printed. It’s the first time a large number of people are getting a real lesson in science. Mainstream media coverage is pathetic but there are so many bloggers it doesn’t matter. You can read about it endlessly. As you do, you will painlessly and unforgettably learn what Leonard Syme taught his students for years, and what I blogged about a few weeks ago: The apparent consensus on any difficult issue is more fragile than it looks. You are learning how conclusions are actually arrived at. It isn’t pretty — which textbook writers and professors, seeking dignity above all else, fail to mention.

Well said!

This explains a lot!

Thanks to KPC reader Rolo for this gem.