The green room has a wonderful summary of the economic crisis in the form of a children’s book. They neglect, however, to mention George Bush’s role in making the CRA even worse than it already was.
The cause of the crisis 5
February 9th, 2010Animal spirits
February 8th, 2010Bryan Caplan argues that the recent crash was caused by animal spirits.
But I saw the 2008 crash and subsequent downturn with my own eyes, and I’m convinced that mood played a key role. The world freaked out, big time. It was the economic analog of a riot.
I was there also, and it was entirely rational for everyone to try to get to the exits before everyone else. No animal spirits involved. In 2005 November I said “Now is the time to panic”, so I got to the doors comfortably enough, though it was starting to get crowded and a rush was setting in. By 2008 – well if you had not realized it was time to get out before 2008, it was indeed the economic analog of a riot.
In 2005 November I was talking to real estate valuer, who told me that lenders were getting nervous about wildly inflated valuations. I immediately saw what would unfold. Real Estate prices were going up because people, mostly cat eating Mexicans with no money, no jobs, no prospects, and a past history of never paying their debts, were buying houses at inflated prices with no money down, and since they were not putting any money down, did not care how inflated the price was. Obviously this could not go on, and when it stopped, everything was going to go to hell. So as soon as some people thought it was going to stop, they ran, and as soon as they ran, other people started to suspect it was going to stop, and they ran also, until by 2007 it was a crazy rush to get out, and by 2008, too late.
So when I learned in 2005 November, that lenders were getting nervous, I realized that the rush to exits had begun, and immediately joined it.
Everyone knew that things were going to collapse, but wanted to stay in till the last minute because there was money to be made, so it was not animal spirits, but people trying to judge when to run to the exits.
“One bad apple”
February 5th, 2010Greenpeace is calling for the head of Pachauri, the IPCC chairman.
As Mencius Moldbug says, this will not make the patient healthy, it will make the cancer healthy.
The call is not for a replacement who can more impartially discover the truth about anthropogenic global warming, but for a replacement who can more convincingly persuade the public of the truth of anthropogenic global warming, and the terrible harm it will do.
Since commanding us for the good of the proletariat turned out to be a bummer, they will command us for the good of the trees.
The basic strategy is to find that every human act has a vital global externality, so that every human act requires global supervision and centralized permission – for example building a house or choosing a school.
Sorry, you must send your children to the school we choose for you, since if you send them to the school you want, you are wasting carbon.
Sorry, we are not giving you permission to build your house, for it is insufficiently carbon efficient.
And since carbon dioxide is a world wide externality, permissions will ultimately have to come from a world wide organization, the climate treaty organization. We will have a theocracy monitoring us for our sins against the earth, with one world wide papacy and cathedral.
In the end, there will be war, and if we lose that war we shall be slaves, and if we win that war, will need to proscribe environmentalists and diversicrats the way Nazis were proscribed after World War II. You can never compromise with those who would rule you. Appeasement and compromise only works with those whose objectives are limited. With those whose objectives are total and limitless, each concession is merely a stepping stone to the destruction of those who concede.
Both the anti warmist blogs and the pro warmist blogs agree in calling for the replacement of the head of the IPCC. Watts Up With That, Dark Politics, Hot Air, The Right Cup of Tea, The American Interest
Whenever you find yourself on the same side as evil, you should look a little more carefully. The IPCC needs to imprisoned, not fixed, and the ill gotten wealth of its members and contributors confiscated.
Official science is not going to be healed. The scientific method is no more going to be permitted in the pages of “Nature” or “Science” than Jews and Muslims are going to share the middle east peacefully. The stakes are too high, the desires of our enemies too great.
More climate shenanigans
February 1st, 2010Cheifio has found all sorts of oddities in the surface temperature data. His latest target is Madagascar
But I’m sure it’s just an accident of history, or something, that an entire country with no visible warming in the basic data and a recent cooling was dropped in 2005…. Maybe the monkeys hid the data …
The Nasa Giss anomaly chart shows Madagascar burning up, while the Madagascar climate station shows Madagascar cooling.
No twentieth century warming
January 27th, 2010The global warming blogs have done an analysis of the surface temperature readings, from which noconsensus quotes:
leading meteorological institutions in the USA and around the world have so systematically tampered with instrumental temperature data that it cannot be safely said that there has been any significant net “global warming” in the 20th century.
Temperature readings have had “value added” to their data, with the “raw” surface station histories mysteriously changing from one download to the next, and surface stations that reported cooler readings have been mysteriously dropped.
The science is scuttled
January 26th, 2010Nasa, as evidence that we are doomed unless we make sufficient sacrifice to Gaia and tithe to Gaia’s high priesthood, has long had on its web page
Mountain Glaciers and snow cover have declined on average in both hemispheres and may disappear altogether in certain regions of the planet, such as the Himalayas, by 2030
Which web page has silently changed
So was it a lie, or an error?
In other words, a lie. And if one lie, all lies.
As Patrick Archibald told us of an earlier scandal with the same lesson, the science is scuttled
How left is Obama?
January 25th, 2010Obama was surrounded by the lunatic death-to-Americans left, his friends and social circle all come from those crazies, which led to widespread suspicion he was and is one of them – that he is a crazed commie nazi muslim who seeks to destroy America and reduce Americans to poverty and slavery. Birds of a feather flock together. On the other hand, a lot of people believe he is a moderate centrist.
He is now surrounded by the pillars of the Harvard Goldman Wall Street establishment, leavened with a fair few death-to-Americans crazies whom he helicoptered into top positions, but invariably positions where their actual ability to bring death to Americans is rather limited, which positions have been resentfully described by their demented denizens as “policy Siberia”, a disappointed complaint that implies they see Obama as really the moderate centrist, rather than really the crazed commie nazi muslim.
Those who think that Obama is lunatic left think that Bush was a left winger, and those who think that Obama is centrist think that Bush was far right, so there is evidently broad agreement that Obama policies are not all that different from Bush’s policies.
Bush’s big spending becomes much bigger spending, Bush’s heavy handed regulation becomes regulation considerably more heavy handed and much more hostile to business. Bush’s disastrous affirmative action has not much changed, foreign war becomes foreign war with somewhat more cringing before our enemies – the bowing is uniquely Obama, but the Hasan debacle was unchanged Bush policy. Politically correct warfare in Afghanistan has become even more politically correct warfare in Afghanistan.
Politicians always tend towards compromise, and politically correct warfare is a compromise between making war and making peace, but of course, such a compromise is unviable – it was unviable for Bush, and even less viable for Obama. You either have to annihilate the enemy with ruthless disregard for the women and children, or else cut and run. There is no middle road. The Bush disease has infected west point, which now upholds the politically correct position that slaying our enemies is so last century, a transformation that represents a victory for the State Department over the Pentagon.
If one considers these Bush policies to be left wing, as I do, then Obama’s policies are lunatic left, his crazy pals hanging out in “policy Siberia” are looming threat of cataclysm, and the fact that he is surrounded by pillars of the Harvard Goldman Wall Street establishment just shows how corrupt, decadent, incompetent, and out of touch with reality our establishment has become.
To synthesize these conflicting views of Obama, it is necessary to realize he is just not very bright. People overestimate Obama’s intelligence, because he presents as one of the Harvard elite, which he culturally belongs to. Therefore, he sincerely believes progressivism is moderate, humane, centrist, and good for America, and the swift implementation of these policies will make himself and democrats popular, while his brighter fellow believers (seething bitterly in policy Siberia) believe that Americans are evil sinners, and deserve to suffer progressivism every bit.
Obama delusively believes himself fairly moderate, but fears that if he was entirely frank, others would not see him so.
Global warming science in action
January 24th, 2010The “Air Vent” follows the money:
The IPCC makes a hyperbolic claim about retreating glaciers, which claim originates from a for profit company owned by the chairman of the IPCC. Millions of dollars are then granted to this company to investigate this purported disaster, to the personal profit of the chairman of the IPCC.
Obama lashes out at the innocent to protect the guilty
January 23rd, 2010Immediately after losing a senate seat to a Republican populist, Obama the next day proceeded to go populist. He, is, he tells us, going to punish those unregulated wall street fat cats who caused the crisis.
He is going to tax the banks, and restrict proprietary trading by banks. But proprietary trading had little to do with the crisis.
All the things that caused the crisis are still going: the continuing misbehavior of Fannie, Freddie, and the FHA, the continuing regulatory pressure on banks to lower credit standards for non Asian minorities, and the continuing government created opportunity for banks to unload dud mortgages on the taxpayer.
Past private misbehavior was facilitated by the hedge fund activities of too-big-to-fail AIG selling naked CDSs, and too-big-to-be-defaulted-on Goldman and Sach, purchasing naked CDSs. These activities enabled banks to unload the dud politically correct loans that they made.
The misbehavior of AIG and Goldman was downstream of the center of the problem ? banks made dud loans, and then unloaded them thanks to the hedge fund activities of too-big-to-fail businesses, primarily AIG. The problem was that the government wanted, and still wants, banks to make dud loans, and will do whatever it takes to get them to make dud loans. When too-big-to-fail hedge funds ceased to facilitate dud loans, this was a crisis, which crisis the government has swiftly acted to remedy.
Today banks get to unload their dud loans directly on the government. The taxpayer is “stabilizing” the market for unwanted mortgages, which is a huge off the books housing subsidy to minorities, irresponsible borrowers, irresponsible lenders, and bums with no credit rating.
Precisely because AIG and Goldman have stopped their bad conduct, bad conduct that the government needed and wanted, government stepped in, and is now doing exactly the stuff that AIG and Goldman were doing.
The lesser hedge funds did the right thing throughout, and the smaller they were, the more right they were – naturally so, because if a smaller hedge fund screws up, no one bails them out.
The one populist intervention against fat cats that would be both effectual and popular is a special tax or special restrictions on businesses that are too big to fail, and this one populist and popular intervention is not proposed, and is highly unlikely.
What the election of Scott Brown means
January 21st, 2010Notice Scott Brown’s old pick up truck.
Partly, of course, it is simply a massive swing against the Democrats. The economy is collapsing, people blame the party in power.
But it also means more important and more interesting things: Scott Brown was campaigning as the anti elitist candidate, brandishing a working class and underclass identity, such as his old truck and his conviction for shoplifting. The elite is unpopular, not just one party of the elite.
This was a populist landslide. People think that those running our country, Democrat and Republican, are evil, stupid, and insane.
Normally a populist movement is anti libertarian, but the massive crony capitalism of the last few years, Obama and Bush, has put populists on the libertarian side. They want real capitalism, not crony capitalism where the losses are socialized but the profits are privatized. They want capitalists to be free to take risks with their own money, and not free to take risks with the taxpayers money.
I would like to say that democracy is self correcting, and the populist masses will get what they want. But they probably will not. The elite is just too entrenched at every level of society, and the politicians are just their public relations officers. Some politicians will be thrown overboard to appease the masses, some perfectly innocent businessmen will be falsely accused of crony capitalism, and punished to appease the masses, but then the elite will continue with business as usual.
To get the reforms the Tea Party wants, it would probably be necessary to proscribe Harvard, every organization with “environment” in its name, and everyone involved in “diversity”, in the way Nazis were proscribed in postwar Germany.
Observe what happened when various states passed plebiscites declaring affirmative action illegal.
Absolutely nothing happened, and that is the likely outcome of a thorough Teaparty victory in the US. The elite will just continue doing what it does. Reagan had a vision for ending Soviet power. I do not see anyone with a vision for ending elite power and privilege.
This raises the interesting question: Is the elite evil, stupid and insane?
Yes it is, and the disease is bound to get worse. It is an inherent problem with theocracies. The official priesthood tends to become more and more religious, while the masses become less and less religious. The official religion gets sillier, tending to select silly people for priests. To be part of the elite, you have to believe in an ever growing list of stupid stuff, such as “diversity” and global warming. This selects for people who apply their smarts to deluding themselves, rather than connecting to reality.