They’re ALL Communists

I've been saying it for a long time but not as well as Laura Hollis. Read her entire post.

Connect the dots, people. It’s not that Jones, Dunn, Sunstein et al were not properly vetted; it’s that they were. It’s not that Obama wasn’t familiar enough with their viewpoints; it’s that he was. These people were not chosen despite their views; they were chosen precisely because their views coincide with Obama’s own. If it walks like a communist, talks like a communist, and espouses state control in the name of “the people” like a communist, it’s a communist.

OK, I was wrong on the Polanski extradition

But forgiveness is still divine. As Jonah Goldberg points out in his column, even if Polanski were totally innocent of the charges against him there would still be the necessity of bringing him back to the US because he fled a charge of which he was convicted and bringing him back preserves the integrity of the rule of law.

I am still disturbed though about the ferocity with which I was attacked when I suggested that his 30+ year-old crime(s) be forgiven. I was particularly disturbed that so many assaulted me with the horrendous details of sexual perversion that attended the crimes. If this behavior were recent or shown to be a pattern with him I would feel differently but I contend that the concept of forgiveness, especially when the danger to the community has passed, is absolute. Christ did not say forgive unless you can't. He said forgive.

And I will be attacked again for this. I don't want to hear the sordid details again, those of you that have committed these to memory have a profound sickness of your own.

Twitter Emergent Behavior

I am beginning work on twitter & self-organizing systems/emergent behavior. My first document is a list of relevant definitions compiled from Wikipedia and other sources. A work in progress it is the kernal of my working glossary.

I think that in the end emergent behavior and consciousness will be a function of brute force computing power. Once there is enough working RAM and there are enough nodes with content a gradual awakening will occur.

The Collective Consciousness of Twitter

The term "collective consciousness" has a long history in social theory and has gained some common usage but I am particularly interested in its use pertaining to Twitter. When I was in high school around 1990 I read a book by Marvin Minsky titled The Society of Mind which describes a theory of human intelligence. About that same time there was talk of an "information superhighway" that would be built upon something called the Internet. I put these concepts together along with some other ideas from science fiction and projected that this new thing would become a giant thinking "brain" that would eventually develop its own behaviors and come up with ideas on its own. In other words I thought the internet would develop its own consciuosness. Well back in 1990 I figured that by the year 2000 this would surely have already come about. Now I think I may be lucky if I ever see it happen within my own lifetime. But make no mistake, I think it is happening and I think Twitter is currently the leading edge. I'm still very excited about this, in fact I'm probably more excited than ever. I am going to continue to blog about this concept and I am going to promote it on Twitter. This is one reason I have decided to take a break from my Twitter habit to further develop this idea. When I do finally get back to Twittering on a regular basis I will have an additional focus.

Twitter, AOL & Me Online

Since quitting Twitter I have been thinking and reflecting about what it meant to me and how I am going to replace it as an expressive outlet. I have concluded that I will resume Twitter at sometime in the future but it will be different. Defining my political positions in great detail and building a polemic framework are important and Twitter has been very useful for that. If I approach it more methodically and have my arguments better organized it may be more satisfying on the second go round.

I am tempted to tell my entire online life's story here on this blog and I may eventually get to that. I do now have enough history to identify patterns and how one medium like Twitter can at first intrigue, enthrall, and obsess me for a while only to turn frustrating and unsatisfying. The four month Twitter experience is so much like a compressed version of my six year experience on AOL that I absolutely must explore the parallels. My early AOL experience was as a naïve and curious teenager in 1993. Among other experiments I engaged in some blatantly sexual and exhibitionist behavior and while I managed to quickly supress that aspect outwardly I think there is such a subliminal thread occasionally running through my online presence to this day.

I am going to make an outline and index of all my andilinks tweets and begin a plan for my next Twitter round. It probably won't begin until I'm well settled in my new home, I'd guess around September 1. I will record many of my musings about this here on this blog.

Finished with Twitter

I will not be deleting my account because a situation may arise where I will want to make posts but the mode I had been following over the past several months is finished. I was spending too much time for too little return.

I do appreciate my followers and I want you to know that I will miss those of you who interacted with me from time to time. I will likely be visiting the financial blogs posted on the andilinks home page and will be posting comments on those blogs.

Five Dollar foot-long

1) The grocery bill was way higher than $5.*
2) It's not even a foot long.
3) Prep and clean-up took way longer than a trip to the Subway.
4) It wasn't as good as a Subway.*


*if I prepared such a sandwich everyday I could bring down the unit cost and improve quality. But that would be such a boring diet for every day.

Next time I'll just buy one.

The Firestorm has just begun (h/t Paul Kedrosky)

The importance of this Rolling Stone piece is not so much what it says (thought it says a lot), and not how breathlessly it's said, but the fact that it exists at all where it does and the traction it will get among its readership. This will in turn will inspire more pieces like it and re-awaken the msm to the fact that their only salvation is to draw blood.

Every dying magazine out there will heave a hail Mary pass like this one, but they will get ever-more desperate for a kill and each in its turn will scatter the body-parts further onto the landscape. These pieces will then awaken recriminations and backbiting in Congress whose angry constituencies will be waving a Rolling Stone in one hand and a pitchfork in the other. The appetite for this kind of journalism on this subject is insatiable, people want to know where their money went. This firestorm has only just begun--and THAT's the story here.

Who stole my lunch?

Until very recently the counterparties to the AIG CDS's that were settled with the bailout money were kept a secret. The first person to call attention to this publicly was Paul Krugman and shortly after he did so we learned who those counter parties were. Or did we? The AIG bonus thing was not a secret before this week, it simply came to our attention recently. Complexity and jargon pick up where secrecy leaves off.

This thing in its fullness has not yet hit that famous fan. How will our government behave when at least two of the three branches are completely covered with the digested waste of Goldman Sachs et al and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act?

They will try to protect each other for as long as they can, but the truth will prevail and it won't be pretty. This is a LOT bigger than Watergate.

Pollyanna's Puzzle

This post is a rewrite and expansion of a comment I left on Paul Kedrosky's Blog.

CNBC faces a conundrum and an impossible task; bearish news drives away advertisers. No where on the front page of their website is there the slightest indication that there may be another shock and another leg down in the market. So are they grasping at straws or is luck with them this time? I'm sure that buried somewhere in the articles they've hedged their bets and have warned that this may not be over.

I myself have been decrying the lack of confidence in the messages from the White House and Treasury, a bearish message from there is a self-fulfilling prophesy... So what's a cheerleader to do?

The Stewart-Cramer Thing

This post is a compilation/digest of several comments I left on Paul Kedrosky's Blog.

I watched Cramer's Mad Money Show daily for over a year around 2006 and have read two of his books. I have had mixed results with his picks but I also did learn much. Jon Stewart needs to continue throwing pies at CNBC. They are less culpable than many but did not do enough to expose sleazy Wall St. practices and were indeed occasionally (isolated, and by individuals) in bed with the enemies of "truth, justice and the American way". Cramer in particular I think plays both sides of the street and knows more dirt than he will admit. I do think he is honest and will do the right thing in the end.

CNBC bills itself as financial news and opinion and sometimes they do that very well. And occasionally they are a forum for the worst kind of hucksters, they probably would have booked Bernie Madoff as a talking head before his arrest if he were available.

Just because others were guilty doesn't mean that CNBC shouldn't be held to high journalistic standards. Yes, I think it was their job to get to the bottom of this scandal before the others, that's their duty and if they didn't do it they need to be held to account.

I have watched a *lot* of CNBC at all hours and have read books by the personalities that appear there and I do like them. I have affection for them because I spend a lot of time with them and most are likable people. And so I have a responsibility to them to offer my constructive criticism when that opportunity arrives.

I also want to thank the people at CNBC for the fine work that they do, I know that just like the rest of us they strive to improve.

(later) I just watched a segment on PBS's News Hour about the Stewart/Cramer thing, and the point was rightly made there that many stories about the coming disaster were published or broadcast by many media outlets and they were dismissed and ridiculed. Cramer himself very famously ranted and later advised people to get out of the market. Unfortunately journalists were as conflicted as the rest of us about this and mixed messages were sent. Those who doggedly pursued a bearish line were dismissed as cranks.

Journalism's mission is to tell us what has happened, not to predict the future. But most people seek investment advice specifically because they are concerned about the future and so investment shows that are not just infomercials should take a greater responsibility.

Cramer, I think is honest but is also a charming scamp, and that is much of his appeal as host of his show. All of us are chastened by our experiences of the past year but those who give advice certainly have greater reason for introspection.

Where is Twitter Going?

Twitter's versatility is amazing and that's why so many people are using it and why it has reached a tipping point where everyone will have to at least have tried it and have an account. Where it really shines is during a national or global event when you really want to connect with all those people you've come to know on Twitter.

Different users use Twitter differently, yet it seems to work for most. Sometimes I feel like I'm evesdropping on an IM comversation, other times I feel like it's a chatroom and then it becomes a newsfeed or a series of blog posts. And there are many functions I haven't touched upon...

The search feature will certainly develop more capabilities so once the index becomes large enough it will be a powerful search engine that can rival Google in many (but not all) circumstances. I've just tried to elaborate on that and have realized that it's an area of prognostication too complex to even begin.

The Cobwebs of Academia

Ivory Tower Unswayed by Crashing Economy

“before we’re certain of what the answer is, we’re unlikely to think in terms of changing the curriculum,” Mr. Reny added. “That’s very serious. The responsible thing to do is wait until we have some understanding of what went on here. ”

This is very interesting. I'm curious to know what the first day's lecture will be. "ummm... we'll be teaching last year's curriculum, but as I'm sure you know everything is different now."

Cramer responds to the White House

I am not a Cramer fan but I absolutly must be on his side in his fight with the White House. I voted for Obama and Cramer says he did too. I did have some fears that Obama's economic policies would be bad for us, and I was sure right about that.

We had a banking crisis coming into this regime, but now every area is in crisis. Each day is worse than the previous one for this miserable economy and while Obama's champions cite the stimulus plan, it's really just a hodgepodge of old Democratic pork and will not create nearly as many manufacturing or service jobs as we hoped. China's stimulus plan is the model; ours is the parody.

The whole article is here.

I voted for Obama knowing full well that his policies would create a lot of poor people for him to help and I positioned myself accordingly. Cramer on the other hand voted for Obama trusting that the Mad Money audience would be helped. What a gigantic bait and switch, ya think?

Trouble with Economic Models.

This was a problem first recorded by Aristotle: A category becoming a member of itself. In this case the category is a model of the economy or some part of the economy.


To what extent do economists climb inside their own models and contaminate their results? A social science equivalent of the uncertainty principle, examining the model changes it. But more prosaic since the disturbance may consist of some human being trying to use the model to game the system. The thought can't be original with me and my formal training consists of the three typical undergrad courses--macro, micro, and stats--so I'm definitely in way over my head but I do find this fascinating.

As soon as a functioning economic model escapes the laboratory it affects behavior in the real world and once a model is within itself it needs modification beyond the capabilities of its maker.

Twitter Reconsidered

Right now I feel a lot like I did in late 1992 after I had witnessed some dialog on Compuserve and The Well and became enthused about the potential. I promoted this thing among everyone I knew and even the polite responses were little more than blank stares. Even in 1993 when AOL was using a Mac-like GUI people still couldn't see the potential...

I ignored Twitter for a long time, I didn't get it, I even blogged recently that I didn't "get it." People on Facebook more or less "get it" but largely still don't understand the potential. It does take some work to figure out the potential, and you may well not realize it for a while. But this is the first time I've been excited about a new development on the web since Compuserve was DOS and AOL was Macintosh.

Ev Williams was on Charlie Rose last night, the interviews take a few days to be posted so it's not on the site yet.So, if you haven't put a little effort into "getting it," you should or you risk having to play catch-up somewhere in the future.

The Burning Platform by James Quinn

As a political and economic medium this blog has fallen into disuse because I am not regular enough with it to gain regular readers so I simply have been commenting on other blogs, mostly Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed though I have been maintaining a blogroll and other links at andilinks.

Yesterday Paul listed this in his "Readings" section: "Deliriously good and though-provoking rant on where we are, where we’re going, and what we should be doing (James Quinn)" and after reading just the few paragraphs I realised this was a very important post that deserved even what little attention it may get here and what meager link juice it may provide. Below are the lines that I found so compelling though you should read the whole thing.

”Delay is preferable to error.” – Jefferson

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” – Lincoln


The $787 billion 1,074 page stimulus bill has been passed. President Obama has signed it. The market immediately dropped 500 points. It will have no impact on the economy in 2009. The bill will stimulate nothing but the National Debt. Within months, plans for another stimulus plan will be demanded by the Democratic led Congress because speed and the appearance of action are how politicians get reelected.

Morgan Stanley Now Warns of Hyperinflation

I have only just begun my deflation-inflation comparison and read in Alphaville this morning that:

Morgan Stanley’s Jocahcim Fels and Spyros Andreopoulos... [are saying] While such an outcome is clearly not our main case, the risk of hyperinflation cannot be dismissed very easily any longer, in our view.

I should say that I've increased the percentage of my portfolio in gold and silver to over 60% and thinking seriously about going for more, in spite of the recent spike which may be sustained and not return to old levels ever if we are going to see hyperinflation. Just the MS statement is probably responsible for a good part of today's rise.

Inflation or deflation?

I am going to begin commenting on the post titled Inflation v. Deflation and Part II on the Cassandra Does Tokyo blog via Infectious Greed.

The issues on both sides are relatively easy to understand but what is crucial is the timing so I will try to lay out the arguments as clearly as possible but I will keep those that affect the timing as a separate list. I happen to think that the amount of US debt that China acquires going forward is an important bellwether both for US inflation and for stability in Asia which is why I used that link for the title of this post.

I find this to be the most important of all topics and will be working on this for the next week or so. I also just received my copy of The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century by George Friedman and will be commenting on the provocative topics covered in this book

Geithner’s taxes and the $700 billion bailout

This post is a rewrite of several comments I posted on a thread on Paul Kedrosky's Blog.

He cheats and he lies but he's the only one who knows where all the bodies are buried so he's got to be confirmed.

When lawbreakers must be confirmed, who's really in power? Corruption is now the stated norm, it's out in the open. Yeah, it was always part of the game on Wall Street, now it's the norm on Main St. too. Geithner's confirmation has turned a lot of honest people into cynics, you think they're going to report all income now? Other cynics will say everybody cheats, well that's much closer to the truth now.

What we are seeing suggests that some of Geithner's skeletons are not in his closet but in Congress. If a clean outsider begins auditing treasury and the whole stinking mess we may have a lot more blood on the floor.

I’m not asserting that Geithner has dirt on major players but if there are dirty major players Tim's their guy. In other words, Geithner's record at the NY Fed establishes him as a non-dirt-disturber. If he's rejected by Congress they may get a dirt disturber. I don't doubt his reputation as a financial wiz (except of course on his own taxes) but, a new broom sweeps clean and while someone else may take more time to get up to speed on the bailout questions many people are just as qualified.

I don't doubt the ''financial wiz" attribute because everyone trying to rush him into the Treasury position (and these are some impressive names) is touting him as the best man for the job in spite of his little tax cheating episode. But maybe it's just that they can't say "we want him because he's not a dirt disturber."

The "wiz" attribution appears in a recent AP story (third paragraph): quoting Ross Baker, a Rutgers University political scientist:
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2009/01/24/america...

Geithner is sliding into Treasury on the same greased rail that gave us the 700 billion dollar bailout, and for the same reason