Best video i've ever seen

Haircut

Old and new cars

Monetary Policy

It seems the most common objection to suggesting a return to sound money, ala the gold standard, is that the central bank can't adjust monetary policy to expand credit when the economy is in recession, and thus can't help the economy grow. The argument misses the mark, though, because the argument for sound money is that lending institutions are forced to be more disciplined with their lending in the first place. This leads to less mal-investment, less potential for asset bubbles, and less severe swings in the business cycle.

Central bankers are no more prescient than any other kind of banker, and they're just as likely to make wrong predictions. Perhaps more so in our current environment, given the dual mandate of our federal reserve. The point of sound money is that you can't fuck it up. Unless you get rid of it.

I read a commentator, a professor of history, noting that inflation is beneficial to debtors. He was specifically addressing the young Ron Paul supporters who (as the wisdom goes) have tons of student loan debt. Inflation means that those debts are easier to pay, since presumably wages are inflating at a similar rate to everything else (which isn't quite s0). The argument reminds me of my highschool US history class; I recall reading about William Jennings Bryan making the same argument with the "Cross of Gold" speech.

I wonder what research has been done into the beneficial effect of price stability and mild, steady deflation (as sound money would create)?

New Personal Record!

My max bench press is now 195lbs! Max deadlift is 315, and max squat is somthing around 260. I'm not gaining any weight, still at 148 +- 2lbs, but I certainly seem to be getting stronger.

THE CMB

I appreciate a song that can pull off a casual and ironic reference to the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation without naming it. I'm thinking of a song from The Faint, namely "Machine in the Ghost:" A line from it runs:

"Turn your TV to the snow, watch the first thing ever known... its always on"

Its an allusion to the fact that the static you pick up on an untuned (analog!) TV is, in fact, part of the oldest energy in the universe, the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation (CMB). Its the furthest back - the deepest into space- we can see, the closest thing to the big bang. You'll recall that since the speed of light in a vacuum is constant, the further away something is, the longer it takes to get to our view point, so looking at a very distant object is very literally looking into the past. That's what the CMB is: the first thing ever known. And its always on TV. I've read sentimental people refer to the map of it as "the Face of God." Sortof trivializes the other stuff we watch on TV, eh?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background_radiation

The song's talking about the inability of any philosophy, religion, or science to account for the fact that the universe exists in the first place. Its an age-old question, probably one that all aspiring intellectuals grapple with early on in the development of their world-view. The next line in the song is:

"When nothing's over, what was there? How did nothing come to end, at once?"

Surely, that's got to be high on the list of questions that plunge juveniles into existential dilemmas; hair-pulling, glassy-eyed episodes of bewilderment that don't end until they get comfortable with saying "we don't know" and living with it. Which isn't to say that all attempts to know are fruitless, just that most are.

Good news

Paul beat Romney in Minnesota! Sadly Santorum beat them both.

-TJ

Belief

I'm recalling a former co-worker, from a former job, saying incredulously: "Wait, so you believe in science?" as if that were the most absurd possible belief to hold. I think the context of the conversation was the advent of intelligent life on earth. In his defense, he was kind of an idiot. The sort of person competent enough to file reports, but not inquisitive enough to question their purpose.

Also, it borders on sillyness to talk about "believing" in science. Science is just a method of determining, with as little error as possible, the state of some natural phenomena. It makes sense to believe in the efficacy of science for doing so, but believing in science itself makes as much sense as believing in measuring-tapes. Or rather, I should state the contrapositive: not believing in science makes as much sense as not believing in measuring tapes. Both things exist, and to believe otherwise is just to be willfully ignorant. Which I suppose is exactly what the speaker was declaring himself to be.

And on a related note, people facilely talk about "believing in global warming" (or these days, "climate change") as if it had the same level of self-evidence as things like science and measuring-tapes. Well, strictly speaking, the earth does warm (as well as cool) and the climate does change, so it's equally tautological. But that's not really what they're talking about: they're referring to anthropogenic climate change, which is a hypothesis and doesn't hold the same epistemological status as an observation.

Hypotheses aren't things to be "believed" in, they're to be accepted or rejected. Once enough evidence accumulates, one can reject a hypothesis, or determine that they are unable to reject a hypothesis. The latter doesn't mean that the hypothesis is correct, just that the evidence can't tell one way or another.

Empire

Maybe the most compelling objection to the US adopting a non-interventionist strategy is that the Pax Americana is holding the rest of the world together, and without our military presence everywhere, the locals will start fighting each other for whatever inscrutable reasons. The trouble is, maintaining that presence is expensive, and however exceptional America is, its not exempt from the reality of needing to produce at least as much as it consumes, in the long run, or perish.

So. Maybe the peace is worth keeping, and we should keep our military deployed around the globe, keeping people from fighting each other. Its to their benefit, whether or not they realize it, right? But we can't provide security if we go bankrupt, so we've got to find a way to deal with that (impending) issue if we want to keep on keeping everyone safe. How do to it? Borrowing and inflating can't work forever, and there's only so much tax money to be had from US citizens.

But wait a minute, if so many non-US citizens are benefiting from our military presence, perhaps they should pay for it?  There's an idea, we could start charging all the countries in which we have military bases in order for us to keep them there; an amount at least equal to what the presence costs. That way our protective umbrella is sustainable. Any country who doesn't like that idea, or can't afford it, can simply say so and take their risks with their neighbors on their own.  

And thus, America asserts itself as a tribute empire. Is this desirable?

"The state of Union is getting stronger"

What?

The state of our Union is that we're broke, that we've made promises to our citizens and allies that we can't possibly keep, and that we don't have the political will to fix any of it.

Who is the state of the union addressed to anyway? Evidently people who aren't paying any attention, and who's sole insight on how the country is doing is that one speah each year.

Sovereign Default

This is exciting; George Mason University is having a symposium on how
a sovereign default might play out in the United States.

http://mercatus.org/publication/us-sovereign-debt-crisis-tipping-point-scenarios-and-crash-dynamics

Not everyone is playing osterich.

Electability

Aye, there's the rub:

"Some candidates for office may themselves know better but believe that electoral success is impossible unless they make unrealistic commitments. U.S. politicians will not receive credit for solving a problem that many refuse to believe they have—sometimes out of sheer ignorance, sometimes schooled by widely propagated but baseless ideology. Perhaps some more-understanding candidates say what is necessary to achieve election now, hoping or planning to educate and change the views of the electorate later."

From the GMU symposium on US sovereign default: http://mercatus.org/publication/us-sovereign-debt-crisis-tipping-point-scenarios-and-crash-dynamics/courting-avoidable.

I think that's a charitable interpretation of the candidates' (other than Paul's) positions on our national finances. The uncharitable interpretation is that they're absolutely delusional, which may be the case for Santorum in particular.

And then, on the other hand, we've got Ron Paul telling us we've got a serious problem, and people telling him he's unelectable for saying it.

Our country may deserve what's coming to it, I'm sad to say.

NDAA

National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012

The president may now use the military to imprison anyone associated with a dangerous group, in secret, without access to an attorney.

As always, governments are the greatest danger to their citizens. I fear a government responding to a subversive message (such as this blog post) much more than I fear a religious zelot in a remote part of the world wearing a homemade explosive belt. The latter are in relatively short supply, poor, and disorganized. The former are ubiquitous, the most economically powerful entities in existence, and highly organized.

How much power?

I've been wondering how much Paul could actually accomplish in office, as the president. He can veto any new bill that he finds unconstitutional, but I don't think he can refuse to enforce bills that have already been signed into law by previous presidents. Can he? Part of the answer is that he can rescind anything that was enacted solely though executive order. Whats the scope of that?

I saw an interview where the anchor tried to corner Paul, asking directly: "You say you're opposed to anything unauthorized by the constitution. Does the Head Start program meet that criteria, and would you end it?" I thought Paul's answer was at the same time principled, sensible, and pragmatic. he said "Yes its unconstitutional, but its not the focus of what I'm concerned about. We need to focus on the big impact issues, like spending overseas, if we want to fix the fiscal problem."

Elsewhere, such as here, he's explained that he's not looking to pull the support out from under the people who have come to depend on the government. He thinks we should work to ease that reliance, but not that it should be forcibly and immediately removed.

"First in the South"

I wonder if Paul has yet uttered the words "states rights" in the hearing of South Carolinian's.


News pundits talk about how the large active military presence in SC won't jive with Paul's pro-peace message, but their governor thinks the state might be war-weary enough to respond to it (though he backs Romney). I also read somewhere that South Carolinian's have "their own brand of independence," and the governor exemplified it by saying: "our great-great-great-grandfathers fired on the flag!"

That's a curious way to put it, but it drives the point home in my mind: people in SC care about principle more than unity. And I like that. The reason they "fired on the flag" had everything to do with states rights and the proper role of the federal government. Since the issue at hand in that case was regrettably slavery, I can understand why a candidate might not want to bring it up again; but "states rights" has got to be something that people in SC would majorly respond to.

So: is there a way to talk about states rights -- or more properly: Federalism -- without invoking the ghost of slavery and being labeled racist? Its a touchy subject. Yes, ending slavery was moral good, but it probably could have been accomplished via peaceful means, avoiding the deaths of close to seven hundred thousand people.

Israel is just fine

This is interesting. At about 1:30 into the video, the host quotes the head of Israeli intelligence and the Israeli prime minister saying: "Iran is not a threat to Israel. And if it is, we can deal with it on our own."

I, quite frankly, had no idea that this was Israel's position. I thought they wanted our help with protecting them, that they felt like they needed us protecting them in order to continue to exist. I'm surprised to learn that that's apparently a uniquely American view.



So; good news then. It wouldn't be a betrayal of an ally to pull our support from the region. Israel wouldn't collapse, and they feel confident that they can take care of themselves in the face of aggression. Come to think of it, they've demonstrated that that's overwhelmingly true repeatedly, so there's really no good reason to doubt them.

On the other hand, the government of another one of our allies might be in a lot more trouble without our support: Saudi Arabia.

ADDED: here's Netanyahu say it himself:

IMF Money

I heard a bit of off-putting rhetoric in something Paul said in a speech in South Carolina; he mentioned how there's a conspiracy to replace the dollar with a global paper currency issued by the IMF. This was so out of the blue that it struck me as paranoia. But lo, Google shows me this:

http://money.cnn.com/2011/02/10/markets/dollar/index.htm

So: the IMF is publicly making noises about the possibility of replacing the dollar with a global paper currency. I can only imagine what's going on behind the scenes. That Dominque Strauss Khan is quoted in that article is icing on the cake.

The idea single currency has a lot to recommend it; so long as all its users hold themselves to the same fiscal discipline. The failure of that condition is a major part of the Eurozone's current problems.

More student loan paranoia

So the student loan asset backed securities (ABS) market is roughly one fifth the size of the home mortgage ABS market. Arguably, that means that a collapse in the student loan market would necessarily have less deleterious effects than what we saw in the mortgage crisis. However, I suspect that a large portion of the student loans issued have co-signers who have mortgages (ie, their parents). If this is true, a collapse in the student loan market should put further strain on the mortgage market, as co-signers who are legally required to pick up the slack in their co-signee's loan payments become less able to afford their mortgages. In that light, the un-expungebility of student loans takes on a new, darker tone. 

Actually, I don't know the law on that subject: if a student has a co-signer on their student loans, and the student declares bankruptcy (or even dies), does the co-signer become responsible for the loan? I would imagine that they do. What if the co-signer also declares bankruptcy? Based on the logic of student-loans, I would expect both parties are still on the hook. This hasto have already been played out in court, what has been the result? It's now that I wish I had a clan of loyal followers and commentators who would dig up the answers to such questions, as seems to happen on popular econ blogs.  

The Economy

Fun quote from Moody's chief economist, Mark Zandi: "I don't see anything different happening in the economy whether Romney or Obama are the next president. they're pretty much the same. If some of the other more bizarre republican candidates were elected, well then we'd have to reconsider things."So there you go: that's why you don't want to pick the "electable" guy just to get Obama out of office: he's substantively the same. Just rides to town on a different animal. On the other hand, Zandi dismissed my worries about the implosion of the student loan market, saying that "sure, a big portion of that trillion dollars worth of federally subsidized, need-based debt is going to default, but its on the books of the federal government. So it will be a big problem for tax payers, but its not going to impact the financial system like the mortgage crisis did."

I'm sorry to say, my worries were not allayed. Aside from default on government-held assets being a fairly big problem in this era of our government constantly running out of money, I'm not convinced that they're really on the government's books anyway. Sallie Mae, who I believe is the initiator of this trillion dollars of risky debt (correct me if I'm wrong), regularly issues asset backed securities. As often as twice a quarter, and they're not small issues.

I'd like to know who's holding them, because presumably the risk is on their books, not the federal government's. Their site is currently crashing as I try to investigate; awesome sign. But even then, the buyers of the ABS's likely aren't the ultimate bearers of the risk; it would be dumb of them to not buy insurance on these risky assets (ie, credit default swaps).

Zandi didn't answer my more specific question: "Has a market emerged for credit default swaps on student loan asset backed securities?" Which is unsurprising if he was unaware of the market for ABS's. I suspect the market is there, it just hasn't made the news yet.

Then again, I may be ignorantly misunderstanding the whole situation. I would invite enlightenment from anyone who's more well-versed.

Exercise

Recent appearances aside, this is a blog primarily about me (and my "times" secondarily).

And so I shall post some pictures of my naked torso.

This is a before and after. Before I started working out:

After about a year of working out:
Also some beardlyness.

Honestly the difference isn't quite as striking as I had hoped. The extra 20 lbs of muscle would probably be more evident if my chest hair were trimmed in either picture, or if they were from the same angle. And I think probably more than half of the gains is in my legs, which I don't have a before shot of. At anyrate, there's a bit more depth of chest, a bit more V-ness to the torso. I've got a ways to go still. I can never seem to eat enough.