To fight carbon emissions Angel Merkel should rescind Nuclear Mothballing decision

The Human Face of Coal Power describes Germany as the greenest of green countries concerned it will miss its 2020 carbon dioxide emissions target because it will subsidize the burning of the dirtiest coal available, lignite, to placate its coal workers union. Maybe, but the reality is that the traditional atomic and coal power generators, whose assets values have dropped precipitously from Germany's nuclear shutdown, are the ones that need a rational energy policy.  In order to make as much money as possible to mothball the nuclear facilities these companies buy the cheapest dirtiest coal possible for their coal burning plants to make the best of the hopeless position that Angela Merkel's emotional nuclear ban after the Fukishima, Japan disaster has put them in. The best move for her government would be to get the priorities right and rescind the nuclear mothballing so that the money now being allocated to dismantle the most effective tool for reducing carbon emissions can be devoted to mothballing the dirty coal power generators as soon as possible.

Turkey's incursion into Sunni Arab town of Jarabulus keeps Kurd's from overreaching

Syrian Rebels Threaten Territory Held by Kurds, in a Clash of U.S. Allies is a less confusing than it appears considering that the Kurdish are not an imperial force to take charge of Arabic regions. Turkey's incursion into Syria's predominantly Sunni Arab town of Jarabulus is logical and keeps the Kurd's from overreaching into Arab territory they are not inclined to govern.  Yes there is an isolated Kurdish region to the west which if Turkey were sane then would allow Kurdish pesh mega militia and governing elements free access to while it further invades Sunni Syria pushing ISIS out and provide a safe haven for Sunnis with possible annexation because of Syria's political dysfunction its sovereignty should be respected or of concern.

Convincing Erdogan to displace Sunni ISIS from Jarabulus was a good call

It's Complicated with Turkey because of it's denial of the Armenian massacre at the end of Ottoman Empire which was also the end of the federalism that peacefully accommodated the various sects, clans and tribes within it. Turkey's Erdogan fears Kurdish separatism to a point of irrationality.  He should embrace Kurdistan efforts to form a Kurdish nation as a means of diffusing the call for separation in Turkey.  As an ally the U.S. shouldn't be a part of its denial of its Armenian history or its irrational call of declaring the PKK as terrorists rather than a political union. However, pointing out that not all of Northern Syria is Kurdish and that Turkey has a role in displacing radical Sunni ISIS from normally Sunni parts of Syria because the Kurds are not interested in empire where they fight, sacrifice and die taking over and administering non Kurdish regions was a good call.

Hillary Clinton & Elizabeth Warren's suffer the elite conceit for micro managing

Break up the Big Banks is a populist call coming from the base of both sides of the political spectrum and where the elites favor concentration because it favors them.  Dodd-Frank was an attempt to reign in finance after the disaster of 2008 and Glass-Steagall was a similar attempt after the Crash of 1929.  The later lasted for fifty years before it began to break down as financial institutions explored means of circumventing its restrictions. Today's bank lobby has an expertise developed over the decades that is sure to gut Congress's two thousand page attempt to regain financial control in a few short years. Its because of the bill's complexity which gives the opportunity for Banker's to game it.  It's a complexity which comes from the many committees and subcommittees that feed off the Bank lobby's largess and is the primary reason we need term limits.
The posters on the The Atlantic's article shows protesters supporting Massachusetts' Senator Elizabeth who ironically is part of the problem because of her elite conceit that solutions require micro managing. Its what provides the devilish details so adored by lobbyist. This blog has called for a simple law for to big to fail banks which is that no financial institution can control more assets that 1% of the nation's GDP and ones finding themselves above that level need to split apart into smaller independent units that comply.   Its a law that allows failure a chance to cull out the poor performers and restrains all actors so that they act prudently rather than game a system where their bonus is assured no matter who loses. Unfortunately the prospect of rendering a juicy committee seat, where bank lobbyist shower funds on a one's reelection campaign, irrelevant makes such a logical solution currently impossible.  Maybe the Federal Reserve could require it?          

Vetted Syrian Rebels is the Oxymoron U.S. doesn't understand

Turkey Assists as Syria Rebels Seize ISIS-Held Town is great news for closing off a depot border town but as usual there appears to be the muddled thinking on the U.S.'s part when it
"floated a suggestion that vetted Syrian rebels could fight extremists in exchange for a role in a somehow expanded or reformed Syrian government."
Because government requires local political unions, not one of Dudley Dorights cobbled together by a meddlesome outside power.  

Dead end ideological mantras: Unified Iraq & Syria, Climate Change, Citizens United

Three dead end mantras are:
1) There can be no peace in the Middle East without a unified Syria and or Iraq
Iraq and Syria are like fissile uranium with too many resisting components set to explode. Both countries want to partition so let them to relieve the pressure.
2) Climate change is the number one priority for human kind over every other issue period
Is like LBJ committing to saving South Vietnam from the enemy who is us. Reducing carbon emissions carelessly will starve the World's poor and if serious requires a tight hugging embrace of nuclear to make the math work.
3) Citizens United is corporate money influencing politics
Planned Parenthood to the National Rifle Association is the spectrum of corporate money enjoying freedom of speech under the Citizens United decision. The misappropriated money in politics is from lobbyist who influence would be undercut by term limits.

Kurds partioning Syria Iraq whether U.S. policy likes it or not

Kurds Sign Truce With Syrian Government in Northeast, Portending a Shift from an asinine U.S. foreign policy objective for a unified Syria and Iraq before their can be peace. While it may not be apparent to Bashar al-Assad that he can't regain control of all of Syria, both Russia and Iran realize that its useless. Iran has made its peace with the Kurds in Iraq's Kurdistan region so that the same can be expected in Syria. Putin on the other hand has no respect for al-Assad as was apparent during his hat in hand visit to Moscow last year but he has gotten Russia's support because of the Naval Base on the Mediterranean coast, an Alawite enclave. Anything to keep his base secure is in Putin's interest but he has no interest in expanding al-Assad's control beyond the Alawite regions of Syria because its a quagmire of dysfunction with no end.

Unified Syria and Iraq as prerequisites for Peace is perpetual War

Fractured Lands: How the Arab World Came Apart is a background work on the Middle East that should be required reading for our State and Defense Department policy makers.  Nowhere in this work is it possible to see Iraq and Syria unifying rather than Balkanizing into separate ethnic and religious states.

In the Middle East trust your enemy's intentions not your friend's

Fractured Lands Part IV ISIS Rising 24. Azar Mirkhan
“I’ve never trusted the Arabs, but as strange as it sounds, I trusted Daesh,” Azar explained, using a common term for ISIS. “In the past, the Arabs always lied — ‘Oh, you Kurds have nothing to fear from us’ — and then they attacked us. But Daesh was absolutely clear what they were going to do. They wanted to take this part of the world back to the caliphate. They wanted to eliminate everyone who was not their kind — the Christians and the Kurds and the Shia — and they were absolutely open about it. After their June offensive, I had no doubt they were coming for us next.”

Kurds are fighting for their own nationhood not for a unified Iraq

New York Times Magazine Part IV: ISIS rising by Scott Anderson 26. Azar Mirkam :

By May 2015, Barzani said, nearly 120 pesh merga had died in Sector 6, where the greatest ISIS incursions had occurred. At the same time, pesh merga commanders make an interesting distinction between where they are willing to suffer losses to regain land and where they aren’t. For example, the ISIS-held village that Azar studied with his binoculars was inhabited by Arabs, not Kurds.

“So even though it is on K.R.G. territory, it’s not worth losing men for,” he explained. “Not until we’re ready to do a much bigger offensive.”

But when that offensive might come was a matter tied up with international geopolitics, and with the outcome of decisions being made in Washington and Brussels and Baghdad. In light of the woeful conduct of the Iraqi Army in the past — and absent any will to place significant numbers of Western troops on the ground — many American and European politicians and foreign-policy advisers were calling for deputizing the one fighting force in the region that had proved its mettle, the pesh merga, to lead the campaign to destroy ISIS. Less clear was whether anyone had seriously discussed this idea with the Kurds.

“You know, the Americans come here, and they want to talk about retaking Mosul,” Sirwan Barzani said. “Are you going to do it with American troops? No. Are you going to do it with the Iraqi Army? No, because they’re useless. So let’s have the Kurds do it. But what do we want with Mosul? It’s not Kurdistan; it’s Iraq, and why should we lose more men for the sake of Iraq?”

Climate Change: What's so Alarming? @ClimateBasics #Libertarian

Climate Change: What's so Alarming? This guy is Danish for God's sake so don't give me any grief about my climate change bias which is that Bill McKibben is dumber than shit and his New Republic piece "The World at War" is laughably stupid reflecting poorly on the magazine's readers.

Medicare should for the prenatal and young exclusively

Obamacare is going down. It's "Wellness" gamble is not paying off and so the young and healthy will drop out leaving in the system only those who need it.   Long life and health comes from moderate consumption that needs to be taught by both family and medicine.  Rather than devote government resources to the aged it should be to the young and leave it to voting age citizens to choose and pay for the services they can afford. Make Medicare for the prenatal and young and hand off them off to the private sector as they mature.    

Julian Assange interview on NPR clear. lucid, correct; Interviewer not so much

NPR's interview with Julian Assange, the morally sketchy founder of Wikileaks secluded in the Ecuador Embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden on rape charges, this morning showed a train of thought that was lucid, clear and correct and in great contrast to the interviewer who could have been mistaken as the spokesperson of an authoritarian kafkaesque nightmare of a government.

Fed portfolio containing negative and positive rate bonds for infrastructure and jobs

The World’s economy is best described as full of liquid assets ready to fire the furnaces of growth and prosperity but the coals inside are smoldering and refusing to flame.  Apparently there is a need for paper fires, “helicopter money” as postulated by the late Nobel Laureate Economist Milton Friedman, to ignite some dry wood to start the furnace.  President John F. Kennedy’s goal to be the first on the moon showered cash on start up companies dedicated to develop miniaturized solid state electronic chips to power the moon project’s need for computational power. Today’s Silicon Valley came not even as an afterthought, but nevertheless California has an economic furnace powering it forward in complete defiance of Conservative austerity orthodoxies. The moonshot is an example of funding a hare brained scheme with no foreseeable economic benefit that boosts to a level where the speculative juices of private investors is aroused sufficiently to take it to the next level. So what scheme and how to fund it?  

One scheme comes to mind from the U.S. Northeast’s combined need to shore up against the inevitable rise in sea level and for a high speed corridor between Boston and Washington D.C.  Build a spine for urban development suitable for the centuries to come. It’s a long view investment that takes the worst case assumptions of the rise in sea level and then secures an accessway along the inland ridge line described by such a study.  The cost of a corridor project along this high ground is moderate as it avoids the dense urban areas along the low lying coast as well enhancing the performance of the future trains with straight runs. This corridor project will have cynics commenting that it starts from, goes through and ends nowhere but when hubs and spokes tie it to the old cities it becomes economic. The project’s advantages are that it draws population inland away from vulnerable coastal regions giving urban planners a long term framework using the corridor as a resource.  The other advantage is to let planners abandon ideas of remediating dense urban obstacles in future flood zones.  California’s  high speed rail project is a similar idea already underway but which may stall out from the same future payback problem. So how to fund it?

The Federal Reserve Bank acting as the supra national bank that it is could start a  paper fire or two if it had a little imagination. Its dual mandate of maximizing employment and stabilizing prices is one that it finds hard to even attempt to reconcile much less answer.  Here is an idea, what if it bought the complete initial bond offering of projects it deems worthy as engines of economic development? What if it bought the offering at a negative yield?  In other words initially fund the above example of a Northeast Corridor Authority’s land acquisition and development by paying interest to the Authority instead of the usual vice versa.  Madness a Conservative would think but actually it may help in the stabilizing part of the Fed’s mandate as well.  There is a concern that today’s extremely low interest rates distort investment activity so that there could be an ugly future reckoning.  If the Fed were to fund a few of these negative rate projects then it could feel free to raise rates in general. And by holding a mixed portfolio of bonds yielding positive and negative rates prudently  weighed to the positive. Yes, it’s a sketchy proposal, so go ahead and look for the holes in it and comment.

Putin's full support for al-Assad is contrary to Russia's Sunni majority

Battles to Control Aleppo Seem as Endless as Syria's War Itself is a case of Bashar al-Assad practicing ethnic cleansing by bombing the eastern Sunni half of Allepo to make it safe for his Alawite tribe to the city's west. John Kerry should negotiate with Putin to split the city.  Contain the Shiite Alawites to the West and leave the Sunnis to self organize to the east. The lever on Putin? Be a peacemaker in Islam's Sunni / Shiite divide or become a pariah to Russia's Islamic population which is 95% Sunni.

Fed take note: Amazon taking out Macy is Creative Destruction not a measure of the economy's health

Consumers Zip Wallets, Surprising Economists? Which one? Retail sales with Amazon taking out the likes of Macy's and other traditional retailers is going through such obvious Schumpeter's "Creative Destruction" that the Federal Reserve would be out of its mind to consider such an indicator as a measure of the economy's health.

China needs a Free Press to efficiently allocate assets

A Flood of Money, but to Where? is the problem confronting China where on one hand China's President Xi Jinping is suppressing a free press just when the economy needs it to efficiently allocate assets. The great Leap Forward, the one started by Deng not Mao, took the low hanging fruit. Now entrepreneurs need to figure out new and not so obvious opportunities that only a free press can examine to separate the wheat from the chaff, including the press.    

Military Intelligence in Syria is the same oxymoron that it was in Vietnam

Military Officials Distorted Intelligence on ISIS, Report Says reminds one of Vietnam when then Defense Secretary McNamara used enemy combatants killed as a measure of success, like there would not be any left to fight, and then the Tet offensive happened with a major counter by North Vietnam in five arenas at once!

Play Putin to protect his Naval Base in Syria and sideline Bashar al-Assad

Mike Morell on Charlie Rose tonight declared Hillary to be tough in foreign diplomacy because she is willing to back words with military force, the crux of many people's objection to her candidacy.  What this country needs is a State Department that thinks and acts with its tools rather than subcontracting the job out to the Defense Department. Mike talks of Putin playing Trump, how about our side playing Putin in Syria? There is no love lost between Vladimir Putin and Syria's Bashar al-Assad. A cold assessment of Syria shows its hopeless for Bashar's Alawite Shiite sect to control all of Syria as it used to and that he should retreat to his region by the sea where Russia's only Mediterranean naval base happens to be located.  Putin's ego can be stroked as a World leader who protects his military assets and controls his ally's excesses, just as he did a few years ago by taking out his chemical weapons. With al-Assad out of the way the current ceasefire would allow Sunnis and Kurdish sects to further partition the country into more workable self organized, it won't be pretty, political unions.

Kansas political monopoly cuts good, encourages bad and creates ugly

Kansas Republicans Turn Away from Allies of Governor indicates a level of disapproval with conservative Ayatollahs interested in moral bedroom issues and carelessly fostering an economic malaise. When Governors Gary Johnson of New Mexico and William Weld of Massachusetts were in charge of heavily Democrat controlled legislatures they compromised to support services necessary for economic growth while reducing spending.  On the face of it Kansas Governor Sam Brownback's tax cuts should have encouraged business. But without vigorous loyal opposition, services essential for a well functioning local economy were starved and useless back slapping cronyism, not evident but a without a long list of vetoed legislation, probable. On the other hand farmer and Congressman Tim Huelskamp's primary loss is a win for federal crony capitalists, the unholy alliance of GOP Ag and Democrat food stamp interests. If Kansas had been doing well then his principled small federal government stand would have been able to resist Washington.