The rich tend to get richer not just because of higher returns to capital, as the French economist Thomas Piketty has argued, but because they have superior access to the political system and can use their connections to promote their interests.--Francis Fukuyama
During the last six months of Clinton’s tenure at the State Department, Huma Abedin was drawing paychecks simultaneously from the government, a private consulting firm with close ties to the Clintons, the Clinton Foundation and the secretary’s personal office.
The Fed manages the most important price in all the world, the price of money denominated in the world’s reserve currency. They manage interest rates, which is basically the price of money. They believe they can set the price of money and thereby balance demand and supply. How is this philosophically different from any historical effort to fix wages or prices or anything? When has the idea of freezing or fixing one price to stabilize another ever worked? It always, always, creates shortages.
The Fed manages the most important price in all the world, the price of money denominated in the world’s reserve currency. They manage interest rates, which is basically the price of money. They believe they can set the price of money and thereby balance demand and supply. How is this philosophically different from any historical effort to fix wages or prices or anything? When has the idea of freezing or fixing one price to stabilize another ever worked? It always, always, creates shortages.
A paper by Hadfield and Weingast think that what distinguishes legal from social order is not public enforcement but rather common knowledge, a stewarded normative classification institution that designates what is and what is not acceptable conduct in a community. Law emerges then "to better coordinate and incentivize decentralized collective punishment, that is, private ordering: sanctions imposed by individuals not in an official capacity." Split infinitives aside, if true, isolated communities would be dangerous.
One wonders if, of all the goofy ideas that have popped up in the last years, the idea that unhappiness and discomfort are intolerable states in a free society is the goofiest. To cause offense to a person, to hurt his or her feelings, or question his or her sense of worth – these have become grievous social transgressions. One can imagine the future outlawing of pain. Or death. Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is ostensibly about censorship--something that was a concern after the Reich and the Commie scare. But much in the story is of the symbiotic relationship between authoritarianism and utilitarianism, the dangers of driving for universal happiness. Regarding the need for book burning, the "fireman" Beatty elaborates: ‘Coloured people don’t like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don’t feel good about Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Burn It’ He continues: ‘You must understand that our civilization is so vast that we can’t have our minorities upset and stirred. Ask yourself, What do we want in this country, above all? People want to be happy, isn’t that right?... That’s all we live for, isn’t it? For pleasure and titillation? And you must admit our culture provides plenty of these.’ Here, the desire for the happiness of all demands the silence of people who rock the boat. Remember, Bradbury published this in 1953. But I'm sure Bradbury never imagined that social tenderness would become so individual.
What is....the Eridanus Supervoid?
It is axiomatic among right-thinking people that there are many things the market cannot provide, and therefore the state must. The sheer magical mysticism inherent in this thought is rarely examined. Because the market cannot do something, why must we assume that the state knows better how to do it?--Ridley
Nonpareil (a NYT word) n: 1. a person or thing having no equal. 2. a small pellet of colored sugar for decorating candy, cake, and cookies. ety: Nonpareil is from the Middle French word of the same spelling, with pareil meaning "equal." It appeared in Late Middle English as nonparaille.
Freedom of speech is a basic American right. What is not a right is to be heard. Anyone can expect to pursue any life in this country as long as it does not injure or impair his neighbor's. While he can expect his neighbor's tolerance, what he can not expect is his neighbor's approval.
A lot of problems occur at these inflection points. A guy demands to be heard, a guy demands to be accepted. There is a world of difference between tolerance and acceptance.
The always provocative Slavoj Žižek has a new essay on the problem of immigration called Against the Double Blackmail. Its underlying argument is relatively simple: Europe should neither throw open its borders nor pull up the drawbridge; instead, for Žižek, what we need is a politics of solidarity with the world’s oppressed. But to do that we’re going to need to break a series of liberal-left taboos: acknowledge that telling people to empathize with strangers is pointless and self-serving; that Western European values are superior values, even if in the past Europe built racist colonial empires; that trying to protect one’s way of life is not racist or fascist; and we should stop dismissing criticism of Islam as “Islamophobia”. Once we’ve broken these taboos we should send in the army to take charge of refugee camps, tell the refugees to respect our values or face punishment, then work on building genuine solidarity between groups of people divided by religion and culture.
Apparently he is not kidding.
40% to 80% of the last $6 trillion the Chinese borrowed went to pay interest on the debt they already had. In less polite circles we would call that a Ponzi scheme.
According to a New York Post article (May 22, 2016), in just two years, Hillary Clinton — former first lady, senator from New York and secretary of state — collected over $21 million in speaking fees. These fees were paid by Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, Fidelity Investments, UBS, Bank of America and several hedge fund companies. In 2015, lobbyists spent $3.22 billion lobbying Congress.
The Eridanus Supervoid is the largest supervoid ever discovered. (A supervoid is an area of space that contains no galaxies.) It is about one billion light years in diameter. Current theories of the origins of the universe cannot explain the supervoid, but it has been speculated that "the supervoid may be the result of quantum entanglement between our universe and another." Huh?
Oregon resident Jamie Shupe, who identifies as neither male nor female, can legally be considered nonbinary, a judge ruled. "Binary" is getting a lot of play re: sexuality.
Oregon resident Jamie Shupe, who identifies as neither male nor female, can legally be considered nonbinary, a judge ruled. "Binary" is getting a lot of play re: sexuality.
The basic idea of the American government was as the protector of individual rights. New philosophies have expanded that mission of government to improve some people's economic situation. As desirable as that might be, it is not liberty. Freedom is meaningless if we are only free to make choices that meet with government approval. Sarah Skwire has a funny comparison for the removal of individual freedoms for a greater good: the game Jenga. "You built a tower out of rectangular bricks, and then removed bricks from the lower levels of the tower and stacked them on top to make the tower get higher. The fun was seeing how many bricks you could remove from the increasingly unstable structure before it all came down in one glorious collapse.........
Each time a protection is removed, each time an amendment is gutted or the power of government to surveil or harass the citizenry is increased, each time someone suggests doing away with the institutions that have been created to keep the government from doing exactly what it wants when it wants, we do not just lose that particular protection.
We weaken the whole tower. We make it easier to remove more bricks in the future. And we shorten the time until the whole thing collapses."
If anyone cares, Hillary Clinton has claimed from the very beginning of the email scandal that nothing she sent or received was marked classified at the time. As recently as Wednesday of this week, she told Fox News' Bret Baier, "nothing that I sent or received was marked classified. And nothing has been demonstrated to contradict that. So it is the fact. It was the fact when I first said it. It is the fact that I’m saying it now." Yet the State Department today released an email from 2012 that totally contradicts her "fact." According to Catherine Herridge at Fox, the email carries "a classified code known as a 'portion marking' - and that marking was on the email when it was sent directly to Clinton’s account." (Not retroactively, as the Clinton camp likes to claim.)
A new trove of State Department emails reveal how a major Clinton Foundation donor - and high frequency stock trader - was placed on a sensitive government intelligence advisory board even though he had no experience in the field. A "sensitive government intelligence board!" The emails further reveal how, after inquiries from ABC News, the Clinton staff sought to “protect the name” of the Secretary, “stall” the ABC News reporter and ultimately accept the resignation of the donor just two days later.
Each time a protection is removed, each time an amendment is gutted or the power of government to surveil or harass the citizenry is increased, each time someone suggests doing away with the institutions that have been created to keep the government from doing exactly what it wants when it wants, we do not just lose that particular protection.
We weaken the whole tower. We make it easier to remove more bricks in the future. And we shorten the time until the whole thing collapses."
If anyone cares, Hillary Clinton has claimed from the very beginning of the email scandal that nothing she sent or received was marked classified at the time. As recently as Wednesday of this week, she told Fox News' Bret Baier, "nothing that I sent or received was marked classified. And nothing has been demonstrated to contradict that. So it is the fact. It was the fact when I first said it. It is the fact that I’m saying it now." Yet the State Department today released an email from 2012 that totally contradicts her "fact." According to Catherine Herridge at Fox, the email carries "a classified code known as a 'portion marking' - and that marking was on the email when it was sent directly to Clinton’s account." (Not retroactively, as the Clinton camp likes to claim.)
A new trove of State Department emails reveal how a major Clinton Foundation donor - and high frequency stock trader - was placed on a sensitive government intelligence advisory board even though he had no experience in the field. A "sensitive government intelligence board!" The emails further reveal how, after inquiries from ABC News, the Clinton staff sought to “protect the name” of the Secretary, “stall” the ABC News reporter and ultimately accept the resignation of the donor just two days later.
There is a ridiculous rumor that the V-P choice could antagonize Wall Street. But they have paid their money. Their part is done.
Is the typical Democrat less self-interested than is the typical Republican? Seizing resources from others through the use of state force is certainly a display of greed. It is no less greedy simply because it is done by a pious sounding agent. Indeed, Jones’s seizing Smith’s resources is a display of greed that is orders of magnitude greater than is Smith’s merely seeking to prevent his resources from being seized by Jones.
While one could make an argument that a lot of this election's problems stems from the decline of responsive political parties, the easiest conclusion to reach on assessing the two presumed candidates for president is that, because of the potential for bad leadership, government should carefully controlled and limited. How about background checks, mandatory government lock-boxes and government with limited firepower?
Golden oldie:
Long Term Capital Management was an investment fund run by Nobel Prize winners. It went broke--and almost took Citicorp with it. Experts. Elites. In companies there is some accountability when experts fail. But political experts are shielded. There is a problem when experts are permitted to operate with zero accountability. The EU represents such technocratic immunity better than any other institution in the Western world. They are difficult to get rid of even when they chase cleaning ladies naked through the hallways of 5-star hotels.
AAAAaaaaaaannnnnddddddd......a chart:
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