The incredible shrinking deficit

Cardiff Garcia sends us this cool deficit reduction chart:

If you like your numbers raw, then there's this,

"In dollar terms, the Congressional Budget Office estimates for the July fiscal balance (which will be released next week) suggest that the deficit totaled $722bn in the 12 months ending in July, down from a peak of $1.471trn in December 2009; we now expect the deficit to total $650bn in FY 13 and $550bn in FY14".

Plenty of people are lamenting this show of "austerity" with unemployment still high.

If  we had been better Keynesians in the past, we would have used the "boom and not the bust" for "austerity", and could have run an expansionary policy longer. But in the absence of a proven connection between fiscal stimulus and sustainable job growth (sorry Brad and Larry), and the presence of our high and still rising debt levels and the continual damaging political theatre around debt ceiling breaches, I am fine with this rate of deficit reduction.

What is not so great about the deficit reduction we are getting is that it doesn't address longer run budget issues, and the deficit is projected to start rising again in 2015 and get ugly shortly thereafter.

I'm happy we've reduced war spending and cut the military (at least as a % of GDP). We can do that some more. But I don't see any achievable solution to our long run deficit drivers. People we can't even get chained CPI as the benchmark for social security increases. That was treated like running over grandma with a reindeer.

The good side to me is that our government actually "worked". Politicians saw the huge deficits as a problem and enacted policies to reduce them (at least for a while). The bad side is that the policy process burned tons of trust and political capital without addressing our real, long-run budget problems.

He's not just a RINO anymore

Bravo to the unnamed South African rhino who brutally gored a tourist last week.

A "game park owner", taking the picture of his clients, a city couple, urged them to get "within feet" of a pair of rhinos in order to get a better shot. What the wife got was a collapsed lung and broken ribs.

With apologies to Chris Rock, that rhino didn't go crazy, that rhino went RHINO, and now he's not a RINO anymore.

Gun Control, Okie style

When faced with a home invasion, this Oklahoma woman, grabbed the family shotgun and pistol, called 911 for directions, and then shot and killed the person who kicked down the door to her home.

The intruders seemed to be targeting her house because her husband had just passed away.

Mrs. Angus and I go target shooting at a local firing range, and the gender mix there is easily 30% female.

By the way, Mrs. Angus is a pretty good shot!

Fearless Predictions

Here we go:

US:

Obama re-elected

US unemployment rate no higher than 7.5% by the end of 2012, real GDP growth > 2.5% for 2012

Republicans keep House and barely get Senate

Heat defeat Thunder in NBA finals

Albert Pujols will be AL MVP

World:

Putin ain't gonna be President of Russia for 12 more years

Assad Jr. gets the boot in 2012

The Euro zone makes it through 2012 intact

China's 2012 growth rate will be < 7.5%

The laws of health care

1. Everyone Dies!

2. No amount of taxation can reverse #1.

3. Much of our health care spending is wasteful

1 and 2 are golden. need more good ones though.

Thanks and apologies (but no blame) to Dan Diamond, Austin Frakt, & Don Taylor.

He Jumped the Surfer

So, "he jumped the shark" means to go way, WAY too far in the direction of doing something stupid, for a show or activity that has long outlived its "dispose by" date.

Well...this shark jumped the surfer. Yes, he did, in this very video.

And since a lot of people have never heard of the Happy Days origin of the phrase "jumped the shark," I give you: Fonzie.

In case you were wondering

You know that God damned road seemed like it went forever
Exhausted fumes made our eyes turn red and swell
With our clothes stuck to the seats and to our bodies
It was a stinking summer trip through southern hell

--David Bromberg

Spontaneous Order

A street person "directs" traffic in Raleigh, after the tornado destroyed a lot of infrastructure, and knocked out power.



(Nod to the good Mr. Greene).

Selfish reasons to NOT have (more?) kids

Ah yes, kids are cuddly, fun, look like you, and are impervious to your attempts to influence them via expensive or time consuming parenting techniques, so just, chillax, be fruitful and multiply, and enjoy the floor show, what could go wrong?

Well there's this:

More than half of baby boomer mothers in the United States support adult children financially and 60 percent are the person their offspring go to when they encounter problems, according to a new survey.

Of women with children over age 18, nine percent said they had adult children living back home for indefinite periods. Twelve percent were primarily responsible for their adult child or children's financial well-being and 31 percent said they had children who returned home, relied on them but expected to become independent.

People, can I get a Yikes!!??

And of course you can't argue that you would raise your child not to be such a shameless leech, because, as we all know, parenting doesn't affect how kids turn out!

Pennies and steamrollers?

I have always thought of the carry-trade as a classic example of "picking up pennies in front of the steamroller". Eric Burroughs thinks differently:

"From 2001 through 2010, this JPY-USD short versus a AUD-IDR long was up 162 percent, uncovered interest rate parity be damned."

That's a mighty slow steamroller, eh?

Shark Whisperer

A video from the shark whisperer.

Spain is so screwed!

Great chart from the Angry Bear Blog on the evolution of labor costs in the EU (clic the pic for a more glorious image):

The orange line that inexorably rises? Spain.

The green line on the bottom that ends up almost 30% below Spain? Germany.

Chances of Spain reversing this without years of economic and social pain given their membership in the Euro? Zero.

The bane of my existence

It's not the Fed, or my tax bill, or the lack of a local Whole Foods, it's grading. And right now, it's the grading time of the year.

This person definitely gets it in their post, "The 5 stages of grading".

An excerpt:

"Bargaining. This stage usually begins as an earnest attempt to buckle down and grade. The instructor might say, “If I grade five papers, I can watch one episode of House,” or, “For every page I grade, I get to eat a piece of candy.” This process starts well, but as the instructor progresses the amount of work required to achieve the reward generally becomes smaller and smaller..."

You'll have to excuse me now, grades are due in on Monday so I'm off to buy a big bag of Reese's cups!

the irresistible force and the immovable object

This is so great. China is trying to censor Wikileaks!

"According to WikiLeaks’ calculations, China appears in more than 8,300 of the cables—good enough for fifth place, behind Israel and just ahead of Afghanistan. The U.S. Embassy in Beijing accounts for 3,300 of the roughly 250,000 cables WikiLeaks claims to have in its possession. Six of the Beijing embassy cables have been released on the site so far."

Hmmm, wonder why they've got their Mao-shorts in a knot over this stuff.


"Contained in the cables are assertions that could make things awkward between China and the U.S., including suggestions that China ignored a U.S. request to stop transfers of ballistic missile technology Tehran and offered Kyrgyzstan $3 billion to close a U.S. airbase there.

Another cable, not yet released on the website but seen by the Guardian, quotes an unnamed source saying China’s Politburo—the powerful governing group within the Communist Party-–directed hacking attacks against Google after one of its members searched his own name on the U.S. company’s site and didn’t like what he saw."

Oh.

In Soviet Russia (and Miami), sneakers wear YOU!

Markets in everything: Canned goods edition

I can't decide which is funnier; "quality guaranteed" or "in tomato sauce"!

The Krugman gambit

Paul seems to only have one card these days, but he does play it very, very well.

It's the "nothing is ever enough card" and he got it out again in Sunday's NY Times.

The way it works is this:

(A) Lobby for any and all expansionary policies.

(B) Then, when an expansionary policy get proposed or enacted, pitch a fit and say that it's way too small and will never work.

(C) When said policy doesn't work (which of course could well be because the policy is bogus) scream "I told you so" over and over at the top of your lungs.

Was the "problem" with the stimulus bill simply that it was too small as Paul claims? Or was it that a temporary burst of government spending no matter how large is not going to come close to curing an economy that is suffering from a severe real shock/wealth loss?

One thing that's for sure as a matter of simple logic is that the fact that Paul said "it's too small", doesn't prove at all that's why if failed. Yet people (and Paul) often act as if it does.

Now he's pulled the same gambit with QE II, a policy that's unlikely to "work" no matter what size is chosen.

Well played, sir. Kudos!

Self experimentation and unintended consequences

People, I am no spring chicken. But I am moderately active. I play tennis, practice a fairly active version of yoga, "do" Pilates, and take daily walks with my pack.

Both Mrs. Angus (more of a spring chicken than I) and I have been bothered by post workout soreness. She asked her doctor about it and he recommended milk proteins taken post-exercise.

So she did some research and we've been using a product called "Muscle Milk".

AND IT WORKS!

This stuff is so awesome. I feel much better the day after exercising and can be more active more often.

However it is also highly caloric, so in spite of increased activity, I am gaining weight. I am up to 140 pounds, which is the heaviest I've ever been.

Now maybe the therapeutic value of Muscle Milk is mainly as a placebo; that's fine with me, I'll take help any way I can get it. But the weight gain part is very real.

There is a "lite" version of the product but (a) it's not very lite and (b) it contains less of the treatment (i.e. less milk proteins).

I guess I'll keep using it until I either get too big to do yoga or Mrs. Angus threatens to dump me.

The best new song I've heard in quite a while

It's called "knockout" and it's by Air Waves (aka Nicole Schneit). I don't know why, but it reminds be of the late, great Mark Linkous (Sparklehorse).

Here is Air Waves' myspace page with more songs.

Where's the FDA when you really need them?