I'm so PROUD!

The YYM turned 21 a week ago.  A proud moment in a father's life, where there is an evolution of aging in baseball.  First, the kid is old enough to play t-ball, then baseball.  Then I got to coach various teams.  Then I got to watch him play on various teams, and excel in lots of ways.

And we got to watch games together.  First he was old enough not to spill the drinks when I brought them back to the seats.  Then he was old enough to win the "fast-pitch" competition (which he did at least a dozen times) down at the radar gun booth.  Then he was old enough to go get the drinks and hot dogs, while I relaxed in the seats.

Now, he's old enough to go buy the BEER while I relax in the seats.  A major step.  Really, all that's left is the day when he can PAY FOR the beers, because he has a JOB.  I do look forward to that final milestone.  That's spelled J*O*B, there, fella.

In the meantime, though, we sponsored a party for him, and 50 or so of his friends, at Metro 8 Steakhouse.  Rented the whole place, from 10 pm until much later (shared with two other friends with "close" birthdays, I should note).

And how did the YYM chose to dress to honor this rite of passage into alcohol-legal adulthood, at a swank steakhouse?  He did what any proper Munger child would do.  He dressed (apparently, according to this underground cell phone image) as a cow.

Good one, YYM. 

Super Cows

Genetically modified cattle, in Europe.

Except that the genetic modifications are selective breeding, not chemicals.  What is the difference?  I have no idea.  These are still genetic modifications.  The EU seems confused, because people insist they don't want genetically modified food.  I guess they think they are eating aurochs?



UPDATE:  MAG sends this link.  Spectacular.

More Russian Drivers

David Skarbek sends this video, on the "Crazy Russian Drivers" meme.  I started not to put it up, because it's pretty horrible.  But the cows appear to get up in pretty good shape.  The driver.... hard to say.

 

What went so wrong?

Ezra Klein wrote a nice piece yesterday arguing that the big problem in the recession was housing debt and the central failure of Obama's economic policy was ignoring this big problem.

Here's his synopsis:

The precise nature of the administration’s misunderstanding was that the key problem was household debt, and until that problem was solved the economy couldn’t recover. But while it had a clear strategy for attacking bad debt in the banking system, and a clear strategy for attacking the fall in consumer spending, it never had a clear strategy for reducing housing debt.

He then points out that there are really no politically viable solutions to "bad" housing debt.

And indeed, what occurred was the bursting of a massive bubble in housing that left us much poorer than we thought we were. And since houses are relatively non-liquid assets, and often the main savings vehicle for many households, that bursting has long lasting ill effects on the economy.

I agree that ex-post, it's a very hard problem to solve and stay in office. Ezra talks about the massive forgiveness paid by the taxpayer approach. The other extreme is the get tough, foreclose like crazy, put it all behind us ASAP approach. We muddled through somewhere in between, though closer to option II than option I.

The best policies here are ex-ante and preventative. Looking back, perhaps the Fed should not have kept rates so low for so long, setting off a desperate search for yield that engendered a massive demand on Wall St. for mortgages to repackage. Perhaps the rating agencies should not have granted AAA status to synthetic instruments that they did not understand. Perhaps regulators should not have turned a blind eye to the blatant level of fraud that was occurring in the mortgage market. When a whole category of loans is referred to as "liar loans", that might be a problem down the road.

And of course, none of these policy failures can be reasonably laid at President Obama's door, but as Ezra points out, they are a factor in this pitiful recovery which undoubtably will hurt Obama in November (I don't agree with Ezra that Obama has no other significant economic policy failures, but I'll save that for another post).

It was often said that the role of the Fed was to take away the punch bowl just as the party was getting started. That clearly did not happen, nor did any of the other regulatory agencies or politicians show any inclination to get the country to drink responsibly.

So here we are. What do we do?

Krugman and Eggertsson have a new paper arguing that in our current predicament (which they, like Ezra attribute to excessive private debt) more government borrowing and spending is a very effective policy tool.

As I see it, this path seems unlikely to be taken without a Democratic sweep of the election.

So here we are. What do we do, or stop doing? Tell me in the comments!