Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Fora Dilma

The Economist magazine wrote an analysis of Brazil years ago when in investment circles the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries were the fashion.  The grotesque level of government intervention, taxation, injustice and absence of a rule of law described was a warning bot to invest in Petrobras, the hot semi private offshore oil drilling company.
2015 Protests in Brazil put Petrobras in a giant scandal that calls for the impeachment of the President, Dilma Rousseff by a wonderfully libertarian Movimiento Brasil Livre of self organized young energetic protesters gathering in one instance millions of followers on the streets.  Its fantastic that this movement calls for a Free Press, A free Market Economy free of abusive taxes and crony capitalist deals, separation of powers among institutions free of totalitarian party control, free, clean, and transparent elections and an end of subsidies supporting the totalitarian state.

IMPRENSA LIVRE E INDEPENDENTE, sem verbas ou regulamentações governamentais que influenciem seus posicionamentos;
LIBERDADE ECONÔMICA, um mercado livre de regulações abusivas e impostos escorchantes;
SEPARAÇÃO DE PODERES, instituições independentes, livres da ingerência sufocante de partidos totalitários;
ELEIÇÕES LIVRES E IDÔNEAS, um processo eleitoral transparente e livre coerções partidárias; 
FIM DOS SUBSÍDIOS DIREITOS E INDIRETOS A DITADURAS, tributos cobrados do povo brasileiro devem ser investidos no Brasil 

Its fantastic because usually these movements go off the deep end into more government intervention, corruption and loss of liberty such as with the Spanish self organized political party called "Podemos" as in Barack Obama's "Yes we can" which uses Chavismo of Venezuela as an ideology.

Saturday, July 25, 2015

The Chicago Boys

Paul Krugman's The M.I.T. Gang mistakenly equates the Chicago Boys dynamic economic policy for a country, such as the prosperity that brought back democracy to Chile, to a Keynesian region wide management of a status quo.

Breathing Currency Union

Why Greece Should Give Up the Euro brings up the interesting idea of a breathing currency union. Its perfect for a political union composed of independent states and no real federal bank authority.

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

ISIS is Coming! ISIS is Coming!

This blog posited on 17 June that ISIS is converting to Daesh, a governing entity for Sunnis more successful than Assad in Syria and Baghdad in Iraq. Today's ISIS Transforming into Functioning State that uses Terror as a Tool confirms it.  The current U.S. position of eliminating ISIS is one where we take sides in a civil war rather than provide a pacifying influence in the region.

July 21 comment below, besides filling out my sentiments better drew a high recommend number.  Others are catching on.

Jacques    New York 1 day ago


ISIS is in a revolutionary phase. It is nothing like al Qaeda which was never much more than a martyrdom machine. ISIS is building a civil society - advertising for engineers, doctors, families and so on. As for cruelty? There has been an unending chain of cruel governors of the region. As for organisation and control? It's as least as good as what has gone before.

This revolutionary phase - and world opposition to it - is fuelling recruitment and fervour. All revolutions are bloody and chaotic. Al Qaeda recruited on the basis of Islam being under attack, ISIS on "Islam is on the attack."

The question the West needs to ask is, if not ISIS, who? Who will promise more sustainable stability in the future? How could ISIS ever be defeated? Already it's a minuscule army - less than 100,000 - controlling an area with a population of almost 9 million. The regions sunnis would prefer ISIS to the Iranian based militias who fight in the name of Iraq these days (a gift of the Blair-Bush-Cheney junta).

An outrageous strategic option may be the only thing that will work in the absence of a military solution, namely, call ISIS's bluff and recognise it as a state. Allow them to build a Caliphate (after all, Jews have a Jewish state in the region) and watch while the pragmatists and ideologues slug it out for control. In the end all revolutionary movements end with the pragmatists killing the ideologues. Possible? Not with the fundamentalist thinking that permeates the West these days.

     

The European Union's basic Division

Bernie Sanders proudly declares he is a Socialist and he uses Scandinavian socialism as a good working example.  From Finland, a More Positive Take on the Euro has Finland’s finance minister, Alexander Stubb, comparing his country’s current economic downturn versus Greece and how the Euro is not really the issue.  These two references have tickled a notion that Socialism  needs a sharing heritage in order for it to develop a greater good.  The north’s long cold winters created a saving and sharing culture that counts the pennies and allocates the resources to survive.  Southern Mediterranean countries have an easy to live in climate which developed a carefree culture that corrupts rather than organizes for a greater good.  Its the basic difference among European Union members that will always be difficult to reconcile.

Bill de Blasio the Authoritarian


Mayor Bill de Blasio is showing his authoritarian roots in his counterattack on Uber, the ride hailing service, by defending a grotesque top down taxi system that puts million dollar values on medallions and makes indentured servants of the drivers.  If he would think about a system that provides a greater good then he would welcome Ubers’ democratizing quality.

Saturday, July 18, 2015

Bernie Sanders, He the Man!

Sanders Presses Clinton on Her Views on Banks by "pointedly asking whether the Democratic presidential front-runner would support measures to break up the country's largest financial institutions and re-instate a firewall between commercial and investment banking."  While Hillary speaks with platitudes regarding wages, employment and opportunity, Bernie has hit to the crux of the matter which is that finance today is the giant trust that needs chopping apart just like TR did at the height of the last gilded age. The break up of Standard oil in 1911 was good for its stockholders and for the economy. Breaking up today all financial institutions into pieces that control assets representing just one percent of gross national product would have the same salutatory effect.  J P Morgan Trust for example controls assets of 1.7 trillion or one tenth of U.S. GDP, so it should be required to split into ten units to be less than too big to fail.  Even more egregious is Blackrock with $4.4 Trillion under management, that would be a  break up into 26 units. Not only would this policy reduce systemic risk for the country but it would be good for the economy so that financial decisions are made by many versus the few in our current gilded age.

Thursday, July 16, 2015

What is Our Strategy in Syria and Iraq?

Syria is Disintegrating into Fragmented Parts under Pressure of War and its hard to see how it can be reversed.  It also can be said of Iraq as well.  Given this analysis what are the sixty Dudley Do-Rights just vetted and trained by our Department of Defense to lead a rebellion in Syria going to do again?  How solid is the pillar of a unified Iraq? What is our strategy?

Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Greece is a Collection of bad habits

Overregulating Life in Greece broaches the problem and then scurries back to safe platitudes. Greece needs the anarchy of a Grexit from both the Euro and the Union to build a simple and economic government.

July 16
:TheUpshot To Fix the Euro Look to Connecticut takes the opposite tack with the analysis of the European Union must work in a more united way where rich subsidize the poor members much like Connecticut subsidizes Alabama.  1st Greece is in a no man's land of in betwixt and between so that either it should exit Europe or Europe hug it tighter.  2nd I had no idea my big government Democrat state of Connecticut was subsidizing Red States espousing small government.

Monday, July 13, 2015

The Need to work Smarter not Harder

Paul Krugman's Laziness Dogma editorial got the following comment:

Willy E

 Texas 4 hours ago
Saw this chart recently. Compares the OECD annual hours worked per worker of the different countries. Greece is third from the top with 2042, Mexico is highest with 2228. US is 15th with 1789. Germany is last with 1371.

https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=ANHRS

Justifying Intolerance

The God Clause from the New York Times Magazine illustrates the step backward from what our forefathers intended by imposing religion on our well developed Constitution separating Church and State. Evangelicals are misdirected by politicizing religion whereby they try to enact laws that dictate a point of view rather than serve the people.

Sunday, July 12, 2015

Oil Pollution Promotion Act of 1990

BP is settling with the Gulf States of Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas for $18.7 billion on top of another $30 billion already committed to cover the DeepWater Horizon Oil Spill.  The Administration and these states ought to appreciate the deep pockets of BP in this incident.  The U.S. Oil Pollution Act of 1990 puts a liability cap of only $75 million on overwater platform oil rigs.  Because BP has extensive assets throughout the U.S. it was easy enough to make them cover the clean up costs but what if it had been an obscure limited liability corporation allowed by Congress?  Imagine Governors Rick Perry of Texas and Bobby Jindal of Louisiana among others looking for federal help to cover the 50 billion dollar clean up cost of their oil and gas cronies.
Deepwater Horizon was regulated by the United States Department of Interior’s Minerals Management Service.  It was pretty much an after thought by those on the rig making decisions.  Clearly the agency was out of its league in managing the rig and the devastation it reeked. Without BP’s assets the Administration would have been powerless to command resources other than the taxpayer’s to clean up the mess.  Its a situation strikingly similar to the 2008 bank crisis where risks and performance bonuses were taken on imprudent short cuts but the taxpayer was made to cover the fraudulent excesses. Incredibly in 2010, the year of the oil spill disaster, the Administration proposed an increase to $134 million on the liability cap.  Incredible because of the insignificance of the figure in comparison to the costs of the disaster just experienced.  Never the less the increase wasn’t approved nor is the Minerals and Resources agency a greater deterrent today on sloppy oil rig operating procedures.
The liability cap allowed by the Oil Pollution Act is an open invitation to imprudent risk taking.   A regulation that puts a government agency in charge of reviewing operational procedures puts the liability onus on government and so therefore the taxpayers as well.  A more effective regulation would be one that requires a performance bond to guarantee prudently run operations.  It is a laughably cynical  testament to the oil and gas lobby’s powers in Congress that the limited liability provision converts the law into the “the oil pollution promotion act.”  In Banking there is the very good example of the Federal Deposit Insurance Company, FDIC, where banks contribute to an insurance fund to guarantee deposits.  When a bank fails the insurance protects the public at the other banks’ expense, not the taxpayers, and with it comes an extrajudicial power to transfer ownership and shear off shareholder equity to fix the problem quickly rather than taking years in court to adjudicate.  
The oil and gas version of the FDIC would have industry experts reviewing procedures in all matters regarding prudent oil and gas drilling, transport and maintenance. The fund would pay out from revenue raised by the oil industry. High spill payouts would require high premium payments. This fact gives the industry an incentive to eliminate the sloppy operators and bring down the insurance cost.  Also it’s charter would have extrajudicial powers to quickly transfer operations and take sufficient shareholder equity from the bad operator to make the fix work with a minimum charge to premium income.  Naturally the upfront acknowledgement of these powers would eliminate players tempted by a fly by night endgame. The major oil companies would be participants as well with their domestic activities and yet given a really large disaster such as Exxon’s Valdez or BP Deepwater Horizon would break out into the regular tort judicial system as well. The People of Santa Barbara, California right now are justifiably concerned that the Plains All American Pipeline, whose recent pipeline oil spill from coastal rigs was caused by poor maintenance, will just hide behind press conferences assuring the public that everything possible had been done to secure the pipeline while legally hiding behind liability caps placed by well paid lobbyists and their crony politicians.  
For a fair and just society laws are to be kept to a minimum.  Clearly some are necessary for the good functioning of society but too many are for rent seeking crony capitalist. The Oil Pollution Act of 1990 is such a crony’s law.  It would have been best not to have written it in the first place.  Its time to either eliminate the law or rewrite it to favor and reward prudent operators and drive out the bad actors in the oil and gas business. Leaving it as is promotes liars and cheats to conjure risky ventures with a high probability of failure and a passing to the taxpayer the bill to clean up their mess.

Grexit

To stay in the euro-zone, Greece’s prime minister will have to jettison almost every promise he has made to his own voters” plus shackle his countrymen in a prolonged indentured service to a status quo that does not fit their temperament. Factors such as government bloat and dysfunctional politics will not resolve.  Uki Goni editorial in the New York Times:  “What Greece Would Face in a Default” is correct in drawing the similarity to Argentina renunciation of its debt in 2001 to the country’s indifference to reality.  Greece joined the Euro currency and the European Union’s expensive administrative directives on a fiction. Its best to break off completely and develop a self organized truth from which to build on.
First lets recognize the Greek economy can’t service a debt that so in arrears it requires more resources than what it generates.  An economy depends on the circulation of money, an economic lifeblood that nourishes and oxygenates the organs that produce.  Austerity demands at this point to balance the books are similar to the old time remedy of blood letting.  It will make the problem worse..
Greece and Argentina are similar in their misperception of the good of spontaneously organized markets.   Various articles about Greece in the New York Times over years bring up a very meddlesome government hindering economic activity.  One article from memory recounted the the travails of a Greek American trying to start a beer company in Greece only to be held back by a government bureaucrat beholden to Heineken of Holland.  Another article detailed an online olive oil start up with company executives required to submit stool samples to a Greek health bureaucracy in order to sell third party oil never touched by any of these executives.  And finally a railroad built for which their was no market demand but plenty of EU money to finance its building. These are decisions of a non-market entity, government, making wasteful asset allocations that are difficult to recover from even given a bountiful economic environment. Greece can’t afford a large meddlesome government similar to what prevails in the more developed regions of the European Community.
As long as Greece is part of the EU and its currency the meddlesome large government bureaucracy exists.  Until a default there is no possibility of a dis-assembly of this uneconomic structure so that it can rebuild logically in a market manner.  Bitcoin is a libertarian store of value that let markets win out by allowing citizens to disregard a dysfunctional government.  As described in a May 2015 New York Times Magazine article, “Quick Change” vacationers in Argentina settle up with their hotelier using Bitcoins which then are traded for pesos on the street at the current rate market rate. This way the hotelier avoids dealing with a government unconcerned with private property and or the rule of law. Without Grexit there is no hope for Greece of breaking free of the yoke of Eurozone’s authoritarian uneconomic bureaucratic rule so that its citizens can self organize into something more responsive to it’s needs.

Thursday, July 9, 2015

60 Syrians to Fight ISIS

Defense Secretary Testifies to Senate: We have 60 Rebel Trainees - YouTube is laughable except for its tragic lack of hubris.  The whole group of experts in the Defense Department and out who developed this tactic to counter home grown spontaneously organized rebels in Syria ought to be canned as were those who cooked up the Bay of Pigs disaster in Cuba.  Parts of Syria have split into Sunni, Shia and Kurdish regions. ISIS is showing signs of becoming a functioning state, certainly better for Sunnis than Assad's Shia Alawites. As tools of American imperialism the sixty rebel trainees are not going to be welcomed anywhere in their country. The only difference to 1961 is that the upcoming massacre won't be on a beach.

Thanks to NPR's Morning Edition I just found the expert leading the charge.  Its former undersecretary of defense for policy in the Obama administration, Michele Flournoy who coauthored the Washington Post editorial To Defeat the Islamic State, the U.S. Will Have to Go Big. She lists the first requirement in Iraq is a Political and Military unity. Well we know that isn't going to happen.

Wednesday, July 8, 2015

Recall Mathew Broderick in the movie "War Games"

Experts Oppose Government Access to Encoded Data because government would be the dummies in this war.  Recall Mathew Broderick in the movie "War Games" where he goes into the school's directory and changes his girlfriend's grade to an A. Is it possible that anyone believes the capabilities of both sides have converged to equal since that early example?

Tuesday, July 7, 2015

Why Does Cyrus Vance Insist on Pursuing a Miscarriage of Justice?

Ex-Goldman Programmer's Conviction Turned over, Again! Granted my view on Sergy Aleynikov's persecution by New York City's Attorney General, Cyrus Vance, is colored by Michael Lewis's article in Vanity Fair which made clear how contrary to the shareware culture that Goldman and Sachs freely acquires yet insists is exclusively theirs once taken contrary to the terms of its use. Several judges have told Mr. Vance he is barking up the wrong tree, never the less he keeps on going back like a dog you can't shake off. Why is he wasting the court's and the public's time and resources on a luddite's power play?
If authorities are so ignorant of the software shareware culture as they appear to be in this case then imagine a backdoor for government access to encoded data with the dummies plodding around and being taken for a ride by hackers amusing themselves.

Monday, July 6, 2015

Depression in China

A $2.7 trillion stock market loss in a ten trillion dollar economy is a depression setting event in China.  While all eyes are on Greece its this cataclysmic event putting China in a Japanese like decades long doldrums that will be remembered.  Its a bad day for Authoritarians who think they can run a country and its economy by pushing a few levers at the top versus a free market of the self organized working at the bottom.

Wednesday, July 1, 2015

Parece que Franco Vive

The first year of Saturday Night Live had Chevy Chase announcing that Generalissimo Francisco Franco was still dead.  Maybe not.  Security Law Takes Effect Amid Protest in Spain is an example of a repressive mentality in Spanish Politics.  In this case its on the right at the hands of the clueless Spanish Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy.  

Invisible Hand is Kept off Carbon

""Its a mystery," said Gilbert Metcalf, an economist at Tufts University specializing in energy and the environment, "why the Republican Party drives environmental policy away from using Adam Smith's invisible hand."  Ronald Reagan swept into office on the economic wave of Milton Friedman's Free to Chose ideology.  Market driven cap and trade solutions were adopted by George H W Bush and Bill Clinton as well and successfully accomplished their intent economically.  I guess the Stupid Old Party moved on to oppose Friedman's ideas because the other side adopted them.