Lots of bad debt losses in this market. Mortgage companies down the tube, Freddie and Fannie under duress. What we universally hear about is that the buyers are unable to pay for what they bought. Those poor credit users and credit suppliers are seeking the sympathy of our collective legislative hearts and wallets.
But wait a second. All of that credit represents money that was paid to sellers. This decade’s “ownership society” boom was not driven by easy credit. Easy credit was a facilitator. The housing boom was driven by observations of sellers consistently making money on transactions.
To the extent that there were buyers who were not properly vetted to purchase a particular property or product, there were sellers who were unjustly enriched through the resulting transaction. Given that there might be several trillion dollars worth of bad debt that prudence could have prevented, there will have been the equivalent value in seller wealth that would not have been accumulated or spent on possessions. I haven’t heard anything about these “unjust gainers”. Nobody is blaming the sellers.
I wonder what the economic growth of this decade would have been with a more prudent, call it normal, credit policy. Given that this “seller’s feeding trough” was one of the most ambitious of the Administration’s economic programs, it is a foul flavor for the Republican’s business reputation. It harkens back to the President’s own history of oil business experience. Real world understanding is what makes business so tough, and it is something that cannot be taught in the Harvard Business Charm School.
I came across an article in the June 2008 Scientific American titled “Digital Forensics: Five Ways To Spot a Fake” by Hany Farid.
The article was particularly relevant this week because of questions in the New York Times about an Iranian missile launch. In fact Mr. Farid wrote a follow-up about the image in SciAm online on July 10th “Is That Iranian Missile Photo a Fake?“.
Today in the Wall Street Journal’s Weekend Journal section, the lead article is about Gregorius Nekschot, the pseudonym of a Dutch cartoonist troublemaker. Upon review of the site I unexpectedly came across this image, inducing upon me excruciatingly painful laughter.
OK, let’s analyze this image for trickery.
These are several of my favorite phrases that I have used at the bottom of my writings on a couple of forums where I post.
I currently use this one. I found it in one of the comments on a news-blogs. Unfortunately I can’t source it. I found it during the last month or so of the Clinton presidential campaign. For whatever reason, I find it fascinatingly funny.
And then they took all the Hillary Clinton supporters’ Bibles, and gathered up their companion animals and et them in a pagan barbeque while dancing around maypoles, and basked in beeswax and honey and the blood of innocents while all through the valley the lamentations of the slaughtered could be heard.
This one is from Kurt Vonnegut’s book A Man Without a Country.
There is no reason good can’t triumph over evil,
if only angels will get organized along the lines of the mafia.
And then from Jimmy Buffett’s Party At The End Of The World.
I don’t care about “the Rapture”
When there’s native girls to capture
There’s a party at the end of the world
Milt Bearden writes a commentary in The Washington Independent today titled “The Truth Is Out on CIA and Torture“. He is a 30-year veteran in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, served as senior manager for clandestine operations, and is the author, with James Risen, of “The Main Enemy: The Inside Story of the CIA’s Final Showdown With the KGB.”
He writes about something that has bothered me throughout this presidential administration regarding its persistent secrecy with facts, and emphasis on an equivalent of the classic phrase “trust me”. Over my decades of survival, and long before this presidency, I’ve half jokingly recast the phrase “trust me” into actually being a para-phrasing of “I’m about to kill you.” As in “Trust me, I can make this landing.”
Mr. Bearden writes:
Throughout this ugly drama, U.S. leaders have assured the public that the extreme interrogation measures used on detainees have thwarted acts of terrorist and saved thousands of American lives. The trouble with such claims is that professionals who know something of interrogation or intelligence don’t believe them. This is not just because the old hands overwhelmingly believe that torture doesn’t work — it doesn’t — but also because they know that torture creates more terrorists and fosters more acts of terror than it could possibly neutralize.
The administration’s claims of having “saved thousands of Americans” can be dismissed out of hand because credible evidence has never been offered — not even an authoritative leak of any major terrorist operation interdicted based on information gathered from these interrogations in the past seven years. All the public gets is repeated references to Jose Padilla, the Lakawanna Six, the Liberty Seven and the Library Tower operation in Los Angeles. If those slapstick episodes are the true character of the threat, then maybe we’ll be okay after all.
When challenged on the lack of a game-changing example of a derailed operation, administration officials usually say that the need to protect sources and methods prevents revealing just how enhanced interrogation techniques have saved so many thousands of Americans. But it is irresponsible for any administration not to tell a credible story that would convince critics at home and abroad that this torture has served some useful purpose.
I edit a blog written by a Navy helicopter pilot currently on his fourth tour in Iraq. A few weeks ago I stopped hearing from him for an uncomfortably long period of time. Here is a select series of emails subsequent to that period.
Date: Fri, 20 Jun 2008 19:14:30 -0500
From: Sumner
To: Jamie
Subject: see below
Text: Commander Sir - WTF?
Date: Sat, 21 Jun 2008 06:12:01 +0300
From: Jamie
To: Sumner
Subject: Re: see below
Text: WTF? Over - Dude I just made it back to the freakin base - I have been on a
freakin merry go round of Iraq - fucking stinking country- I will write back
as soon as I have a shower and 8 hrs of sleep - J
Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2008 21:13:28 -0500
From: Sumner
To: Jamie
Subject: Re: Rudy’s BBQ in IRAQ
Text: Hi Jamie - Just wanted to let you know that I’ve been reading about
your vacation here.
God save the investigative reporters, …… and the special
operations forces.
Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2008 18:55:08 +0300
From: Jamie
To: Sumner
Subject: Re: Rudy’s BBQ in IRAQ
Text: strange article - cannot confirm or deny - if you catch my drift -J
Jonathan Clements wrote his final column in the Wall Street Journal this past Wednesday April 9th, titled “Parting Shot: What I Learned From Writing 1,008 Columns“. In fact, he says that it is his final column period. He is leaving journalism completely.
Mr. Clements has been one of my “reality bases” to regularly touch and make sure my thoughts have grounding. Time passes. Things change.
I wrote him a note:
Mr. Clements - I was sad to read in your column Thursday that it would be your last. Although I can’t say that I read all of your columns, I always looked for you when I could focus on the Wednesday WSJ.
I picked up your approach to investing while at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business several decades ago, and so reading your column became a regular affirmation that my approach was still on target. I have to admit, there are only so many different ways to try to convince people about the virtues of diversification and low cost index funds. Possibly you are just tapped out. And complaints from the fee-hounds must have been incessant.
I went from petroleum engineer, to venture capital, to entrepreneur, to regional airline captain. I believe that I even have one more enjoyable career in me after this one. I hope that your new endeavor is fulfilling. I’d be interested to know what you’ll be doing.
Sincerely
And later in the day I received this reply:
Thanks for the email — but, unfortunately, I will never see it. I have left The Wall Street Journal to join Citigroup, where I will be director of financial education for myFi, a new advisory service geared toward ordinary investors. While I can’t, at this juncture, give out any details about the new service, I plan to post updates at my personal Web site, www.jonathanclements.com — and you can always reach me at cyberclements@aol.com.
Best,
Jonathan Clements
At least he answered a couple of my questions, without even knowing it.
The Bush Administration, questionably elected and legitimately reelected by the American public, has during its tenure been able to successfully consolidate substantial additional powers in the Executive Branch of the Federal Government. As if that were why the American voters elected them.
Additionally, and of far more immediate relevance to the general American public, the Bush Administration:
1. Didn’t recognize or prevent 9/11.
2. Didn’t catch Bin Laden.
3. Didn’t catch the Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar.
4. Didn’t turn the Afghanis away from the Taliban and successfully end the Afhani War.
5. Was wrong on Iraqi WMD.
6. Was wrong on Iraqi insurgents.
7. Was wrong on the cost of the war.
8. Has not successfully defined an end to the Iraqi War, let alone anticipate any ending of it.
9. Required a contorted re-definition of the word “torture”.
10. Implemented questionably legal domestic surveillance.
11. The “Cheney Energy Task Force” deliberations were successfully kept secret, but crude oil prices have tripled.
12. The “Ownership Society” policy was the foundation for the near meltdown of the financial system.
13. Grew the Federal government payroll and debt to levels heretofore unimaginable.
14. Dropped the value of the $USD by almost 50% to the Euro.
Here I will continue to add items as they come to mind.
Continuing to wonder if gotcha’s, political theater, nominee wives, pretend facts, and talking air-heads will, like before, provide a determining influence on the results of the upcoming presidential election. Or if a harsh reality has encroached far enough to distract America’s attention into critically evaluating our current operating assumptions and myths.
Oh, because I am not an HRC supporter I am an misogynist? I have women in my family as far as the eye can see, and she says that misogyny is the coloration of my decision?
Hotel Internet Bandwidth Issues
Look, I’ll buy that this has been a crash course in technology over the last two or three years. Teaching the hotels that, ah, business travelers can tolerate crap TV, but making money requires Internet communications, so you’d better install something that doesn’t bog to oblivion when the kids wake up and log onto their IMs.
Well, if that is all the bandwidth you can provide, then I can’t afford to buy your hotel room. And really, don’t bother to talk to the people downstairs, because they don’t know WFT is going on.