Friday Thoughts

Reading Yglesias (a hard Keynesian) on economics is like reading someone arguing creationism - it takes a lot of denial for Matt to argue taht way.

NYTimes endorses McCain and Romney/Giuliani breathe a sigh of relief. Pinch has destroyed a national treasure.

Republicans everywhere are smiling that Democrats notice that Bill Clinton is a liar. Though admittedly that depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is...

Every day that passes convinces me that the Democratic primaries are making Obama is a more dangerous candidate and Hillary a less dangerous one. If Bill is pissed at the press now, Chris Wallace will make his head explode on national TV.

The economy will be the win-lose issue as usual. Iraq has calmed down and there have been no major terrorist attacks in the Western world. I am less confident that plays well for Republicans.

To astute observers, the military is at a cross roads. The US Armed Forces does not have one major force delivery platform that was introduced later then the 70s, excepting drones. The F-22/F-35 are starting to come online in small numbers; DD(X) destroyers are JUST being built (the "as needed" CG(X) and LCS are not started yet). Ironically, the Army is making better strides with FCS, but that is due to lower marginal cost and higher enemy contact. Someone needs to be worrying about this now.

The Billionaire and the Poor

Bill Gates is trashing capitalism. Larry Kudlow destroys his premise. In particular, it is always fascinating to me how capitalism can be blamed for failure in Africa...a place were capitalism is no where to be found. (If it were, they would not be dirt poor.)

One thing the Kudlow gets wrong most people do...he says that Gate is a "guy without a college degree who invented a new technology process in his garage that literally changed the entire world." Uh, no. Gates and Microsoft did not invent anything...they licensed DOS technology and re-licensed it to IBM. In other words, Gates is a billionaire because he was a smart and savvy middleman. Further, it is pretty clear that they rode IBM's sales prowess and the emergence of the PC to greatness. The right place at the right time.

I am not begrudging Gates that, but let's be straight on how this all happened.

Where are the Adults?

The markets are in a downward spiral and looking for some adult supervision. They will not get any from Washington.

The current credit crisis resulted from easy money policy and interest rates that were too low. This provided lenders with non-market incentives to over commit (including not doing diligence - a substantial amount of subprime mortgages foreclosures involve fraud) and viola! problems. The "solution" of easing the cost of credit (lower interest rates) and coming to the rescue does not provide the market medicine needed; Clinton's moratorium on foreclosures doesn't either; and each "solution" convinces the markets (US and world) that we are stupid or unserious about the problem.

The plain fact is no one has a stimulus solution because there is none. The best we can do to provide a sound, long term policy and structure and let the markets work it through.

Secretary Paulson, shame on you, you should know better. George Melloan certainly does.

Fred is Gone

Thompson has dropped out. This has left a lot of righties on the political front scratching their heads...me included. (Frank J. has taken it surprisingly well, but I hope he continues to educate us on Fred Thompson.)

While I have been a bit busy to comment on politics, I will have some time in the next week to reflect and post on Thompson, the economy, politics, sports and all the other subject I know shit about.

I'll leave you with this, courtesy of Theo Sparks (btw, site NSFW sometimes):