Keeping them on the Plantation

“If we have Obamacare and the insurance is available to me, I will use it and be thankful for it,” Ms. Mayhew said. “But would I gladly give up my insurance today if it meant that some of the things that are in the law were not in place? Yes, I would.”

I could never understand how Mitch McConnell does it, that is convince his constituents to organize and vote against their own best interest. It appears that Senator and forthcoming Republican Senate Majority Leader depends on the ignorance voters and the influence of cronies reminiscent of the Gilded Age of 1880 - 1900. Its deja vu all over again for the G.O. P.     

Nations and Currency

Greeks Patience with Austerity Nears its Limit is a view of how a country's economy must be in the same league as its currency.  Greece is not a well developed economy. The Euro and the European Union are too expensive for its weak economy and not realizing causes them unnecessary pain and suffering.

China has Plucked the Low Hanging Fruit

In Limbo, a City in China Faces Life after Graft is a showcase article on why China needs to open up it's capitalism and press, at least it's business press.  Without a system that allows capital to flow to its most worthy projects and a press that critiques and highlights these projects China can not progress into the realm of developed economies.

Syria's Revolution Sputters

As Syria's Revolution Sputters, A Chaotic Stalemate is an example of tactics without strategy. A long term strategy to pacify the region would be to develop and nurture moderate political states that deliver services, security and adjudication efficiently so that good people relocate toward their preferred state and drain the dysfunctional  ones of subject population.  Tactics would support the functional and degrade the dysfunctional.  Otherwise degrading terror without having a moderate alternative in place makes for a super petri dish of terrorist.  

It's Always Something

Can't help laughing while reading "Germans Balk at Plan for Wind Power Lines" in today's New York Times.  Germany's power grid is based on innumeracy.  Here is a country whose auto manufacturers are recognized for superior engineering and yet whose energy policies are based on the fanciful.

Response to Joe Nocera's Editorial - "The Cuomo Cop Out"

New York's new ban on Fracking is correct. Drilling requires a good State based regulatory structure and expertise to have it done correctly with minimal environmental after affect and New York does not have one in place. At this time of low oil prices its not worthwhile to develop such a State Agency when industry has no interest in expanding drilling in New York for many years, if ever.

What has Cato got to do with it?

Mark Calabria shouldn't have been so understanding in his Nightly Newshour appearance on the Mega Bank Lobby's softening of Dodd Frank in the budget just passed.  Cato's only response should be that the most straight forward solution to too big to fail is an act that requires any financial institution that controls assets approaching two percent of the gross national product to split itself in two independent selves.  For example currently J P Morgan Chase with a control of a trillion in a twenty trillion economy needs to be split into ten separate entities and thereby let markets, not Congress, control those capable of failing.


Tuesday 30 2014 Comment

THE WARREN EFFECT The economy is growing and job growth is increasing, but that hardly means Wall Street doesn’t still have a target on its back. Perhaps the person most important to the fate of Wall Street — with the exception of Janet Yellen, the Federal Reserve chairwoman — is Elizabeth Warren. “Dodd-Frank isn’t perfect,” the senator commented in reference to Wall Street recently, talking about the post-crisis financial overhaul law. “It should have broken you into pieces.” And she is unlikely to stop.

Wow! "It should have broken you into pieces." is exactly my position.

Cuba - Its about Time

Watching Ambassador Roger Noriega on the Nightly Newshour make a case for continuing the Cuban isolation that President Obama announced today he will be relaxing.  I suggest Noriega take a trip to Vietnam and then report back to school and learn to construct an argument.  Senator Marco Rubio could use a refresher as well.

Ted Cruz Slayer of Hillary

Among the G.O.P. Hopefuls Honing Attacks Against Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz is the perfect candidate to ignite the visceral anger of old white men in a crusade to vanquish a godless foe.  I wish him well as much as I wish the G.O.P. ill.

ISIS overeach

Terror as a weapon of war is capable subjecting many people with few soldiers. Its the ultimate method of Authoritarian conquest, but not so good over the long run.  An example is Islamic State Imposes Strict New Order in Mosul and Deprivation is the Result where the long term prospects of the caliphate's rule based on terror are not good.  That there is no alternative is an advantage that must be chipped away at by the forces of moderation, consumers.

Egypt is a Loser Bet

Another Dealbook article is An Investment Bank Revives Along with Egypt.  Its illusory.  Egypt is one hundred percent crony capitalist and doomed to a revolution.

Big Banks are Walking Dead

The budget fight is a nail biter because of lobbying efforts to modify Dodd Frank.  Who cares?  Its a huge unwieldy act doomed to be regulated by the regulate es.  The Dealbook section in the New York Times had Boutique Investment Banks Gain Prestige which is a favorable trend where the risk taking of private partnerships who use bank utility services to to advise and deal without the big bank structure.  The 2008 financial crisis was the equivalent of Detroit manufacturing millions of defective automobiles and the catharsis caused by everyone wanting their money back.  Big banks may want the freedom to sell profitable exotic instruments but what Corporate Financial Officer wants to buy them given the big bank history of self dealing and bonus entitlement?      

Wrong Department

Recent Headlines regarding the U.N. running out of money to feed Syrian refugees, ISIS claiming that the U.S. is in league with Assad and finally Secretary of Defense Hagel’s resignation leads one to believe that the wrong department is charge of our war against radical Islam.  Instead of Defense it should be the State Department.  President Obama’s funding request of $5 Billion for the war on terror should be divided between the two departments with 80% dedicated to State with a mandate to orchestrate a Marshall plan to make a viable political state out of the Sunni Refugees in Southern Syria and encourage the further consolidation of the Kurdistan state in Iraq toward North East Syria.  The purpose of the plan is to have moderate political forces that are efficient distributors of the public good with fair policing and adjudicating governments to take over once the fighting has stopped.

WIthout a viable political state at the ready to occupy a city or region it is not worthwhile to re-take it in the first place.  A most dispiriting example is the blood and treasure lost in our Marine’s house to house conquest of Fallujah in Iraq years ago only to have it all lost to an unresolved civil war. It is blatantly obvious that the military option is useless until the political option is developed. It is probably the source of the Secretary of Defense’s recent hesitancy. His military experience in Vietnam colors a less than enthusiastic promotion of firepower solutions which escalate the stakes and hardens the foe to taunt us to bring on more bombs so as to draw fresh radical recruits into the fray.  “We have met the enemy and he is us” is a Vietnam era lyric that has got to haunt Chuck Hagel.   

The U.N. Syrian refugee hunger aid program’s shortage of funds is an indication of a policy blindness to the vacuum which allows an ISIS to metastasize into an out of control radical movement.  Rather than military force the American counter to radical islam should be to nurture the refugee camps in North Jordan with massive aid organized in the same manner used by the U.N. where funds are distributed directly to refugees in debit card form so that individual families decide for themselves what goods and services they want to buy.  With this direct distribution a self formed representative state develops within the refugee camp to tax, police and govern in a relatively efficient manner and a governing body develops. The free flow of cash in the area lets Jordan create a market infrastructure to service the refugees and eventually a construction company to build a city state just across the border in South Syria. This would be a city protected from Assad’s helicopters with American air power and governed by the former Moderate Sunni Government in exile of the refugee camp.  It would be a city that swells by accepting more refugees so as to expand northward into Assad’s domain.  Let Damascus’ disaffected Sunnis vacate and migrate South, thereby leaving the regime alone with its Alawite Shia followers to eventually retreat to the West shore of Syria.

From the Northeast the U.S. should divert all resources to the independent Kurdistan region of Iraq so that it sweeps North and Westward. Turkey will have to accommodate Kurdish independence in a federated form or lose to it completely.  The reason is that the Kurds in Iraq have an efficient and sensible body politic already built and in place to govern along Turkey’s southern border well into Syria in the East.  Unfortunately for Turkey’s current anti Kurdish stance, Turkish Kurds will coalesce with their southern brethren. It can’t be helped and is part of the process where the artificial borders drawn up by European powers after World War I will be redrawn so that Syria, Iraq and possibly Turkey split off into a variety of nation states.  One consolation for Sunni Turkey is the possibility to expand into North West Syria and annex cities such as Aleppo and drive ISIS into the desert.  Iraq that is not part of Kurdistan is to be abandoned by the U.S.  Our policy of uniting Iraq will not happened and all efforts to patch it up are costly and futile.  The Shia South as well as a Middle and East Sunni regions will naturally coalesce into a their pure sectarian states to develop as well or badly as they decide.

Success in the Middle East needs to be cost effective.  The military solution is counter effective, and very costly, and so is the Defense Department’s lead in our war against terrorist who metastasisize out of failed states.  The long term least costly solution is to develop and nurture successful states which eventually displace the dysfunctional ones. It is a job for the State Department.  The analogy to the Marshall Plan’s containment of Soviet encroachment in post World War II Europe which nurtured war torn states back to health highlights the need for a similar plan for the faction torn Middle East. State building using the region’s consumers is a better path of development for self sustaining moderate nation and city states and for our and the World’s security.

Helicopter Money

When listening to a U.N. official on television describe how money for food is distributed to Syrian refugees I was surprised by how much I approve of their method.  Money through debit cards where the refugees themselves get to select the food and services they want is straight out of Milton Friedman's efficient buy playbook. That the U.N. took up such a method which eliminates so many inefficient intermediaries is brilliant and quite unexpected from such a body.

Iraq's Civil War

Sunnis Fear Permanent Displacement from Iraqi Town is an indication of the futility of U.S. involvement in Iraq. Current policy is to insist that Iraq unite to fight off ISIS.  It is a loser strategy where there is no possibility that Iraq's Sunni and Shia factions will ever put recent sectarian hard feelings behind them and unite into one Iraq.

Innumeracy Reudux

Missing its own Goals, Germany Renews Efforts to Cut Carbon Emissions keeps proving my point which is that Germany, of all countries, has a problem with numbers.  I can't stand quietly listening to some inane counter argument that Germany has solved the energy problem using green solutions such as Wind and Solar when they are actually doing the reverse by using dirty coal to handle the intermittency problem of energy sources that need a bridge between when the wind don't blow and the sun don't shine.