Posts
9 months ago
31 May 2009
21 May 2009
20 May 2009
New Fuel-Efficiency Regulations
It would be much simpler and more efficient to just increase gas taxes two-ish bucks a gallon over the next few years. It would be easier to create a PR campaign against a gas tax, though. Consumers are overly sensitive in that area. Plus, environmentalists don't understand economics, so their support and enthusiasm can't be counted on as much as it can for regulations. With populist sentiments, the oil companies, and anti-tax groups against it, and no significant base of support, maybe new regulations are the best we can hope for at the moment.
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17 May 2009
Blocked photos
Telegraph.co.uk: 'Prisoner abuse' photographs surface as Barack Obama prepares to block publication
It seems fairly obvious to me that information about the Bush administration's torture shenanigans will come to light. It appears that the Obama people are going to publicly oppose it to keep the military/intelligence people happy because they need them to succeed in Afghanistan. The courts could, as far as I know, do the job themselves without Obama getting mixed up in it. My wishful thinking is coming to its limits, however.
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It seems fairly obvious to me that information about the Bush administration's torture shenanigans will come to light. It appears that the Obama people are going to publicly oppose it to keep the military/intelligence people happy because they need them to succeed in Afghanistan. The courts could, as far as I know, do the job themselves without Obama getting mixed up in it. My wishful thinking is coming to its limits, however.
15 May 2009
Afghanistan is going to be a problem I'm afraid. . .
NY Times: Afghan Villagers Describe Chaos of U.S. Strikes
I've often wondered what a effects a stern policy of forgive and forget (like Captain Moroni style) would have had after 9-11. We'll never know, I'm sure.
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I've often wondered what a effects a stern policy of forgive and forget (like Captain Moroni style) would have had after 9-11. We'll never know, I'm sure.
10 May 2009
Response to comments on Soelberg's blog
The end of BYU's semester and my moving to Florida have seriously interrupted my posting and reading habits, so I didn't see this post until just now. In response to Brad, I don't mean to suggest that non-mainstream sources are always wrong. I am a frequent reader/viewer of several non-mainstream outlets (fair.org, Democracy Now!, Huffington Post, rawstory.com, to name some). I merely observed that these sources are highly slanted and that they should be with a very critical eye, especially when the claim seems outrageous or unbelievable.
Fringe groups are valuable. I don't mean to use the term in a derogatory light. I'm making a positive observation, not a normative statement of any kind. The groups I mentioned are "deviant" in the sense of being what my Stats professor used to say "a couple standard deviations away from the mean." For example, I feel I came to the correct conclusions about the Iraq war from the beginning partially because I checked out sources I found in the fair.org "Counter Spin" column.
My feelings about the specific personalities (Moore, Klein, Hannity, etc.) I named are the same as I stated before. Any individual (who isn't running a serious political campaign) who actively courts groupies is immediately to be suspected of being a hack whose opinion should be ignored unless they are quoting someone with credentials.
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Fringe groups are valuable. I don't mean to use the term in a derogatory light. I'm making a positive observation, not a normative statement of any kind. The groups I mentioned are "deviant" in the sense of being what my Stats professor used to say "a couple standard deviations away from the mean." For example, I feel I came to the correct conclusions about the Iraq war from the beginning partially because I checked out sources I found in the fair.org "Counter Spin" column.
My feelings about the specific personalities (Moore, Klein, Hannity, etc.) I named are the same as I stated before. Any individual (who isn't running a serious political campaign) who actively courts groupies is immediately to be suspected of being a hack whose opinion should be ignored unless they are quoting someone with credentials.
The stress tests seem rigged . . .
The more I see of the financial bailouts, the more I'm convinced some kind of temporary nationalization is necessary. So far, the only arguments that I've heard smart people give against it are based on theological conceptions of the origins of private property and specifically the mistaken notion that all non-governmental economic power is there by divine decree.
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Brad DeLong: Ummm... This Should Not Be HappeningFrancesco Guerrera and Sarah O’Connor in the FT:
Bank objections delay stress tests: US regulators will delay the release of stress test results for the country’s 19 biggest banks until next Thursday, after some lenders, including Citigroup and Bank of America, objected to government demands that they needed to raise billions in fresh capital. Citi, one of the biggest victims of the crisis that has already been bailed out three times by the government, is believed to have been told by regulators that it needs more than $5bn in fresh capital, while BofA might need to convert $45bn in government preferred shares into common equity...
The banks should not be negotiating with the government over this.
There comes a point when the right thing to do will be to set up a Maggie Sue--a manufacturing, transportation, services, and other business loan-guarantee authority owned by the government, a financial GSE alongside Fannie, Freddie, and Ginnie--to guarantee "conforming" loans to operating companies, and let the major banks wither.
Remember: the purpose of a financial system is to make new loans so that operating firms can obtain financing on reasonable terms. We don't care what happens to the value of old loans or to current-bank stakeholders as long as companies going forward can get new loans.
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