Chris Cook, a former director at the International Petroleum Exchange, has a wonky article up about the coming oil price collapse. Toward the end, he raises an interesting point:
the only difference between “economic terrorists” and proprietary traders such as hedge funds is motive. The former would destroy a market deliberately: the latter by accident.
John McCain has a very timely article in this month’s issue of Contingencies, the magazine of the American Academy of Actuaries:
Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.
Because, really, what could possibly go wrong in a market with vigorous nationwide competition, like banking?
(h/t to Professor Krugman)
The most unnerving aspect of his presentation was actually the source of it: I was watching international news broadcasts on Livestation (which I mentioned in a previous post), and, after watching the Canadian program The National talk about U.S. market troubles, I thought I’d flip to Bloomberg TV (a financial news network based in New York) for the pro-American perspective.
That’s when I saw Peter Schiff say, “Get out of America, and get out now!”
I’m not a financial expert, but, you know what? That sounds like pretty good advice right about now.
Communism: nationalize valuable assets (e.g., steel, oil, coal).
Capitalism: nationalize worthless assets (e.g., mortgage backed securities).
Yay, capitalism!
(Note: check out the Sam and Fuzzy online store , from which this poster image originates.)
Close the windows. Hang up the phone. Warn your housemates, partners, and/or pets to leave the building. Consider covering the windows with masking tape before you read this:
[U.S. Defense Secretary Robert] Gates pledged that American and NATO forces would do more to spare innocent lives.
“While no military has ever done more to prevent civilian casualties, it is clear that we have to work even harder,” Mr. Gates said.
You may now begin screaming.
…the bailout is likely to prove controversial, because it effectively puts taxpayer money at risk while protecting bad investments made by A.I.G. and other institutions it does business with.
In other words: socialism for the rich! Because, you know, they need a lot more money than regular folks!
Arthur Silber, one of my favorite doom-sayers on teh Internets, puts it more colorfully:
The economy of the United States is disintegrating in the same way a vampire does when exposed to sunlight, and for the same reason. Having sucked the blood out of all the living creatures unfortunate enough to be nearby, the vampire becomes intoxicated with what he perceives as his own power. Heedless of the warnings screamed at him from the few sane voices that remain, the vampire frolics and gambols long past the appointed time for his return to the soil of reality, so drunk is he on the glory of his being. The sun has been slowly rising for quite a while. Anyone who is looking can see it. Anyone who knows the relevant facts is fully aware of what will happen when the sun’s rays strike the vampire. But almost no one is looking at the sun, and anyone who states the relevant facts is ignored.
I know I say this almost every day, but, really: read the whole thing!
There are more black men in US prisons today than there were slaves in 1840, and they are being used for the same purpose; working for private corporations at 16 to 20 cents an hour. Half the states have private, for-profit prisons whose lobbyists are demanding longer mandatory-minimum prison sentences. Indeed, American blacks are incarcerated at nearly eight times the level of South African blacks during the height of apartheid.
That’s from an incredible op-ed in Saturday’s Boston Globe by Jack A. Cole, the Executive Director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. Amazing, courageous, timely, truthful — is it any wonder this isn’t even an issue in the presidential campaign?
