RE SILLINESS AND SLEIGHT OF HAND THE CASANOVA HAND NYT EDITORIAL BLOW BACK ON THE LAISSEZ FAIRY

Charles M. Blow. Blowback.
Great stuff. 


His article, blow back for the landing, below, of the Laissez Fairy, perhaps coming in for a landing 
from Brook's 'Upper Blowhardia' 
(CF BROOKS' ARTICLE, RE TRUMP, THE OTHER DAY, nyt.)


Let's just hope for no sightings of 
the Deep Do Do Fairy, (my term, cf The Big Short), 
the Laissez Fairy's nemesis, 
from Lower Blowhardia.

THE LAISSEZ FAIRY'S NICKNAME

MARKET BOY.


This is kindof like 'Jungle Boy', of old.

THE LAISSEZ FAIRY'S BEST FRIEND

THE TOOTH FAIRY


Here they are at play with their friends:

INTRODUCING LAISSEZ FAIRY'S FAIRY NEMESIS

To paraphrase Gutfreund's comment to Lewis, in The Big Short,


'It's Laissez Fairy Land until the arrival of 


The Deep Do Do  Fairy.'

RE THE LAISSEZ FAIRY AND QUANTITATIVE EASING FOR THE LIQUIDITY TRAP RESULTS IN BUBBLES

He will sprinkle some Fairy Liquid, in order to dispel quantitative tightness, and liquefy the liquidity trap. 


Cf Krugman's comments re the liquidity trap........... 


'Fairy Liquid' was a UK dish washing soap, may be still on the market.


This is not the same as fairy dust, which was thought of old to be gold dust; Fairy Liquid is a far cry from that. 


Unfortunately, Laissez Fairy Liquid always results in bubbles, perhaps because it treats the symptoms of income inequality economic and commercial sludge and grease. 


A liquidity trap is rather like a grease trap in a restaurant.........
all the wealth goes into the trap.

RE LAISSEZ FOU INTRODUCING THE LAISSEZ FAIRY

We are going to introduce a new, sublime, imaginary, perhaps immortal, personage.


He has a complex pedigree. He follows in a train of previous characters here, including Robert Macaire, Thurston Howell Macaire, The Maverick Executive, The Casanova hand, The Invisible Hand, The Enter Preener, and others. 


He is confused, about many things, about his background, nationality, loyalties, parentage, divine lineage, gender, ideology, offspring, religion, tastes, skills, inclinations.


A video reference might be "HELP".  


An audio one, for the weekend, "Let It Be", 
in honor of the royal wedding, and other things. 


Here is an image of what he might look like in a certain light, landing in a forest glade. He resembles Daumier's image of the Wind God, Zephyr, here.


Let's call him 


THE LAISSEZ FAIRY: 

RE EGYPT WARMS TO NYT EDITORIAL

Not a very big surprise.

RE PAIN AT THE PUMP? NYT EDITORIAL WE NEED MORE globalism A JAPANESE PLANT STRUGGLES TO PRODUCE A CRITICAL AUTO PART

These gurus, Porter etc,  want us to be better able 'to compete globally', with smart energy.


Porter gave us that classic of global market capitalism The Competitive Advantage of Nations, with a bunch of illuminating diamonds........ 


With some of Porter's schema, could a smart government policy pick winners? (If not, then what is the point anyway?) 


Nothing rational, based on his insights (but, re promoting domestic industrial and commercial export/import substitition; rather than globalistic initiatives), nothing rational, has ever been tried here, can be tried here now, if ever.


I will give the example of why such a rational policy is desperately needed in this ever so fragile global economy, also from the NYT today:


' A Japanese Plant Struggles To Produce A Critical Auto Part '


Apparently this one globalist bottleneck is holding up world auto production in many countries at once. 


Great entrepreneurial planning and thinking going on here.


Terms search many terms here.


Here is a reference to Porter in Thurston's rant:

As our tariffs dropped, American makers of this or that either went out of business or, like me, wisely high tailed it.[1]

 Foreign subs, more than FHA/VHA subsidies or the GI bill, caused deindustrialization and urban decline. 

Many have argued that American firms just weren’t creative or competitive enough.[2] Although maybe true, especially for my firm, trade deals reduced American firms’ chances for survival, even boosted foreign competition. As a result, American firms’ multinational sides had to speed up to compete with trade breaks to lower cost foreigners.[3]

  Absence of an industrial policy, or even a meaning for ‘competitiveness’ as a basis for one, have lessened chances for domestic firms.[4]          

Urban redev efforts were usually paltry local side shows, swimming upstream against global site-competition, even with fed dough.[5]

---

[1] Eckes; Prestowitz; Bluestone; Harrison; Jane Jacobs, Cities and the Wealth of Nations, Vintage, 1985, p. 167.

[2] Good arguments can also be made for incentivized domestic competition, and greater antitrust scrutiny, not just for economic reasons, but for security.

[3] N. Glickman, D. Woodward, The New Competitors, Basic Books, 1989. See especially Ch. 6, “The Domestic Effects of American Investment Abroad.”

[4] See especially Prestowitz; Michael Porter, The Competitive Advantage Of Nations, Free Press, 1990, xii. Unfortunately, Porter has the usual ‘economics’ discipline blinders, going in. He had been selected for the ‘President’s Commission on Industrial Competitiveness.’ His views, in the present context, are best summarized in Ch. 12, p. 617.

As one might imagine, he is not a fan of import substitution, or managed trade. Yet, he says things like: “As a starting point, a nation must identify those industries where its factor advantages today provide some competitive advantage but where other determinants of national advantage are also actually, or potentially, present.” p. 677. (One good antidote for Porter is Johnson, Japan: Who Governs, e.g., p. 99.)

[5] Eckes.

RE THE LONG WAR THEORISTS

Terms search: civilizational advantage, civilizational disadvantage.


GENERATIONAL ANALYSIS MIGHT, PARENTHETICALLY, BE TURNED TO EXPLAIN, OR BE USED TO EXPLAIN, HOW ONE GOES ABOUT WINNING, OR PERHAPS LOSING, A VERY, VERY LONG WAR.


THINK PUNIC, OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT.......


(CYCLICAL, GENERATIONAL, INTRA-CIVILIZATIONAL HISTORICAL TRANSFORMATION PARADIGMS MIGHT EVEN CONTRIBUTE, IN A TINY WAY, TO A MORE GENERAL INATTENTION TO MATTERS OF GREATER CONSEQUENCE FOR CIVILIZATIONAL RIVALRIES, RIVALRIES NOT NECESSARILY SO GENERATIONALLY DRIVEN.)

RE GAVIN HEWITT BBC EDITORIAL EUROPE AND IMMIGRATION FRANCE ITALY EU

Only the beginning.....


Not: 'The Age of Aquarius'.

RE COMPARATIVE HISTORY

David Kaiser has bemoaned loss of a larger comparative perspective, within the discipline of history, on his blog recently. 


Great concern.


I want to echo that thought here as well, with a little reference. 


Recently started reading Empires Of The Atlantic World, J H Elliott.


His Introduction, p. xv, and following, explores a similar point to that made by Kaiser, and explains Elliott's reasoning for the book he wrote, wonderful so far. 


(I seem pulled in the direction of Regius Professors of Modern History.)


One could make similar observations, and I have been trying here to do so, about parochialism, or over compartmentalism, of research, techniques, investigation, and or experiment, both within and across many different fields.

LAISSEZ FOU

Another iteration.


See also: laissez faire, lazy fare, lazy fool

RE THE BIG DISCONNECT BROOKS NYT EDITORIAL

The disconnect is bigger, older, and more complicated than the picture Brooks paints. 


He tends to talk about 'structural' weakness in an economic idiom, rather than the political one one probably should use in such circumstances.


Call it:
http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=2973239501462830480&postID=4981096057596554293


See also eg civilizational advantage, terms search, and other terms

LAISSEZ FAUX

Why not also another, while we are at it.


See laissez faire, lazy fare, etc.

LAISSEZ FOOL

A new term, for a country, from the laissez faire, lazy fare, lexicon.


Guess which country that is, and long has been? 


See reference below to the post and the quote from Friedman and LeBard, the problems with empire.....:

RE MOST OF SYRIA'S EXPERTS WRONG SECT

Just a little analogy from recent NYT articles, re experts, eg Bahrain, in various countries 'wrong' sect or religion.......

RE BBC THAI CAMBODIA CLASHES

There are clashes more or less all over Asia it seems. Maybe some good old hegemon or two will step in.

UN calls for an end.

RE MULTIDISCIPLINARY STUDIES METAPHYSICS ACADEMICS INDUSTRY AND THE WAY THINGS ARE GOING

I hate to put it so baldly, but metaphysics, in the sense of what I will call disciplinary foundations, including their intra disciplinary matters, interdisciplinary connections, discontinuities, and interrelations, 


has become more important, for cultural and political survival, not just for enlightenment, job training, employment, diversion, or entertainment, rather than less important, as the 20th Century wore on, and the 21st has now begun.  


Metaphysics, in this special sense,  has been where our 'intellectual', or call it ideological, system, not just our philosophical academic establishment, has been at its weakest, almost from the beginning.

RE FAST TRAIN TO NOWHERE NYT EDITORIAL SEE ALSO CIVIL WAR AND US GLOBALIZATION

This editorial points to some themes I have tried to elaborate here, re the need, for a long time, for a more unified political system, and a more rationally planned industrial policy that would depend on it.


A good reference here to 19th Century infrastructure fragmentation failures, the kind that also resulted in the Civil War. These fragmentation failures were hardly 'solved' by the Civil War, which in fact, as David Kaiser has noted on his blog, actually weakened the union. 


Nevins, Ordeal of The Union, Volume II,  covers some of this ridiculous legislative and entrepreneurial history in good detail in some places, as part of the larger infrastructural, sectional, and political picture he was painting of the run up to the Civil War, but there may be other good books on transportation itself as the main topic, including White's when it comes out.


Terms search many terms, PPP, industrial policy, steel, laissez faire, trading places, manufacturing matters, MITI, game over, etc.


See also Kaiser's current post, and his discussion there of the recognition back in the earlier 20th Century of the need for planning.


War usually makes the need for planning abundantly manifest, but not in the US, where we have been able, until now, because of small scale conflicts, and the Coldness of the Cold War, to politically, economically, and socially, tinker around the exigencies of all conflicts since WW II without resorting to a better, reformed, and rationalized, political structure. 


Meanwhile, there has been an enormous shift of economic, and inevitably military, power, elsewhere, a shift which our political system engineered by fighting the wrong foe with the wrong weapons.


Terms search: terms search, cartoon, mise en scene, Popper, Gin

RE MERCANTILIST MANAGERIAL OR ENTREPRENEURIAL MARKET STATES

Take your pick. This is not my schema.......


Bobbitt, in a spirited discussion in Shield, p. 336, suggested, back then, that the US should tend toward the entrepreneurial type of so called market state, versus the other two, as better for security reasons. 


I would say that the US had long been pursuing that alternative by default, without the need for encouragement, or even for a credible rationale. 


The fact that others have long been pursuing other alternatives to our disadvantage is one of the biggest problems with the whole strategic initiative after WW II.


I am not one of those who agrees with this selection. Terms search this site for examples of why it might have been misguided, not just for commercial, but also for strategic reasons.


I would like to talk about his comments in that chapter re interdisciplinary matters, at some point, as well....

RE MOST OF BAHRAIN'S MEDICAL EXPERTS PERSONNEL WRONG SECT REMOVAL

This is a more exaggerated version of creeping anti intellectualism here in the US.


It seems that most of the medical experts in Bahrain are Shi'ite, whereas the ruling group is Sunni.


Maybe merely their 'medical techniques' are being called into question by the proper authorities.


Certainly some Sunni medical experts can be found to testify in this regard.

ATTACKING THE AGGRESSIVE TEAM APPROACH CHAPTER, IN ATTACKING THE TEAM IN EMINENT DOMAIN

ATTACKING THE AGGRESSIVE TEAM

What is amazing about attacking the aggressive team approach, is that usually the other side is so convinced that this is an accepted way to behave, in this aggressive, ostensibly team-oriented, America we inhabit, that they won’t even see your attack coming.  They, these ostensibly independent experts from different specialized disciplines, will openly admit (proud of it!) that they are subordinate members of a trial team.  They will admit (for owner teams) that the lawyer (rather than an owner) hired them.  


They may admit that their lawyer plays something like an aggressive quarterback role for their team (no problem there).  


They may admit that they have worked on the lawyer’s team many times before (a badge of honor even).  They may admit that they have taken orders from the quarterback regarding their opinion.

Many don’t realize, until it’s too late, that just characterizing themselves as being part of a team can be used to cast doubt on the independence and integrity of their opinions. 

Back when I worked for DOT, in some districts they required that one schedule a team meeting.  I objected to calling it a team meeting, and to other aspects of the proceedings. 


It really should be called, if done properly, “group meeting with independent experts and client”, or something like that.  


After a while, the word “team” can just start to sound like the word “conspiracy”.

You can use how the team gets paid in order to show witness bias.  I’ll give you an example.  An appraiser can’t accept compensation contingent upon reporting a property value in a predetermined direction.  USPAP says “the acceptance of compensation that is contingent upon reporting of a predetermined value or a direction in value that favors the cause of the client, is unethical.”

How can you show that the team playing appraiser may have some bias or interest in the outcome of the litigation affecting his value?  You can make the connection between his value, how often he is hired, and how he and the quarterback are compensated.  You can start by asking, who hired the appraiser?  For owners, it’s often the lawyer.     

Then you make a connection between his value, and the size of the lawyer’s fee.  The lawyer gets paid based on a benefit (this part varies by jurisdiction in the US).  A benefit is the difference between an offer and a settlement amount or verdict.  It is often, though not always,  influenced by the difference of appraisal positions.  If his value goes up, influencing a higher settlement, the lawyer’s fee goes up.  “Appraiser’s value goes up, lawyer’s fee goes up, lawyer hires appraiser next time: repeat.”

If the appraiser plays ball, he gets hired next time.  The circle is closed. 

You can show that the appraiser has an interest in playing along, whether it’s for the owner or the government.  


If the appraiser doesn’t play along with the quarterback’s per square foot value play (low for government, high for owners), he won’t make the 'playoffs'.  If he doesn’t execute the damage play (zero for government, big damages for owners), he won’t be back 'next season'.

You can close the circle on the bias and interest of other experts similarly to appraisers.  Start out with the fact that they were hired by the quarterback, and invariably hope to be hired again.  (for condemnor experts, you can rely on the urge to be rehired; government contracts.)  Then go to how their opinion supports or fails to support a higher, or lower, value for the appraisal.  Finally, for owner teams, sketch how the lawyer gets paid based on benefit. If they don’t play along, they don’t play next season.

For some lawyers, the urge to play what I will call a “strong quarterback” role, a role that goes too far, is overwhelming. They have been told that you need an effective quarterback to win, they mistakenly equate “effective” with “strong”.

Can playing on a team under a strong quarterback affect the integrity and independence of an expert’s opinion?  Some trial lawyers see the evil effects of overly aggressive team play, pointing out, for example, how condemning authorities give legal instructions to their appraisers.

Condemning authorities authoring team play memos can be harmful to their cause.

Let’s say you find that there is some evidence of a scheme among the players of one side or the other to bend the facts beyond recognition.  If you attack this conspiracy, they may try to use cases like Venning v. Roe, 616 So.2d 604, to claim you can’t argue scheme, collusion, or falsehood.  The problem with these cases is that in them the improper argument was without record support.  If you have record evidence of falsehood, the Supreme Court has allowed argument alleging it. Murphy v. International Robotics, 766 So.2d 1010.  You might use this case for arguing scheme or collusion as well.

Excessive team meetings can be a tell-tale sign that the quarterback is dictating his experts’ opinions.  Team meetings can be a fertile field for cross-examination regarding the integrity of an expert’s opinion. 

Time records showing excessive telephone conferences between an expert and a lawyer may indicate that the lawyer is the one who actually has the opinion.  

One of my favorites, was the parent tract issue.  I had appraisers tell me, in all honesty, that the client “gave” them their parent tract.  They hadn’t thought to ask whether it was right or not! 

Another of my favorite examples, of strong owner quarterbacking, is the unrecorded lease of adjacent property, prepared by the quarterback.  I call this “fact manufacturing”.  Usually, the ink on this document isn’t yet dry when you see it.  This technique, used for challenging the parent tract for an OT, or for changing a whole taking into a partial to get business damages, has been touted in some circles as a laudable tactic. 

Yet, there may be no independent basis for entering into the lease. The quarterback’s signature is on a sham transaction. Another variation involves changing ownerships to create a parent tract issue.  You can attack these as sham transactions, if they lack an independent basis.  See rule 4-1.2(d) where it says a lawyer should not participate in a sham transaction.

       In order to criticize the aggressive team approach to eminent domain appraising, it may be useful to compare how appraisals are done in the outside world, the world above, with how they are done in the twilight world of condemnation. 

In the typical real world appraisal assignment, the appraiser looks at his assignment as an appraisal “problem”.  In the course of problem solving, the appraiser may, or may not, discover that he needs the services of some other expert.  In the real world, this may actually be the appraiser’s decision. There’s no one there controlling his value, or incorporating his opinion into a larger edifice.

Now let’s look at the appraiser’s role in eminent domain.  He is a subordinate member of a team.   Who assigns responsibilities in team meetings?   The quarterback.

The team is led by the quarterback, not the appraiser.  The team’s main goal is to win, not to solve an appraisal problem.  This is the key thing: how to win, using the appraisal process, and using the appraiser himself, is being decided by the quarterback, not by the appraiser.  The whole appraisal opinion is part of the quarterback’s strategy for winning.  Not only is the appraiser tied to the quarterback by purse strings.  Often he is not even the master of the details of his opinion.

Recently Jim Masterman discussed ethics at an ALI-ABA in Miami.  He asked whether a lawyer could ethically instruct an appraiser to leave out 5 of 15 admittedly comparable sales from his appraisal?  The sense, from audience discussion, was that this was not a big deal.  That shows something of how far we have come.  Look at rule of professional conduct 4-3.4(a).

The quarterback often picks other players for the team regardless of whether the appraiser sees a need for them or not, and without regard for the solution of an appraisal problem.  Some quarterbacks in fact pick the same battery of experts over and over.  Wise counsel avoid this. Condemnors often have project wide contracts for planners and engineers, and these usually stick their noses into a particular case just enough to open the door for the other side to hire a battery of its own.

The appraiser often doesn’t decide the theme, even if he happens to think of it initially.  It’s often decided by the quarterback.  The quarterback, after all, is calling the plays.  Yet the theme can set the script for the appraisal.  Recall our quote from Jacobs and Camins, “... The preparation of the appraisal report is part of a game plan”.  Doing an appraisal as part of a game plan can take the “independent” out of independent fee appraiser.  Where have you heard that before?

Planners’ and engineers’ roles are similarly subordinate.  Often, they are not the masters of their fate.  Planners find uses predicated not on reality, but rather on the side they’re on.  Engineers find, or gloss over, problems, design cures, and look at sites, based on where they sit, not on what they see.    

You can question their integrity beginning with how they were hired.  They weren’t hired by the appraiseror the owner, but rather by a trial lawyer.  That shows that they often were not hired as part of a real world solution of an appraisal problem, but rather as expert witnesses at the behest of a trial lawyer. 

You can sometimes draw inferences from the fact that the lawyer, not the appraiser, hired them.  They weren’t asked to assist in an appraisal problem, or to report to an owner, but rather to work for a lawyer on the lawyer’s team.  Appraisers are ethically obligated not to communicate their opinion to the owner without the lawyer’s consent.  You may find that often they haven’t even met the owner, yet they may have had four or five team meetings.  They may have no idea whether the owner has ever looked at their reports.

This can work particularly well if the owner may need an actual real world cure, yet his expert witnesses have been asked to do nothing but testify in the case.  It really casts them in a bad light.  This is especially true if there are other experts working on a real cure somewhere. 

However, criticizing the other side’s experts for not being in the real world can really backfire if yours are on another planet too.

Some colorful examples of questionable practices are: a case of an owner having concrete development plans, but claiming inconsistent severance damages; an owner’s pending sale of the property during litigation, yet the owner was claiming catastrophic damages in the case; an attorney giving a legal instruction to an appraiser to ignore obvious severance damages, even though the business damage expert found business damages, indicating a patent inconsistency.  These practices could be viewed as altering or concealing evidence under the rules of professional conduct.

GREECE PRIVATIZATION TO DEMONSTRATE STRENGTH OF GREEK ECONOMY

Greece to privatise 50bn euros of state assets power companies etc.

Not that Greek public utilities would necessarily be models of fiscal responsibility, but

how has private electric power shown the 'strength' of 


the 

US economy, or the reliability of private, or privatizations 


of, big 


infrastructure,


after private company financial events like ENRON; 


banking and brokerage, mortgage debacle, food, you 


name it, 


or re oil companies, or the wasteful and inefficient, and 


monopolistic history of private electric 


power in the US, or 


the private safety policies of BP, re Gulf Oil Spill, etc?


To say little of private nuclear power... Crystal River 


plant recently,

etc, etc?

This is another example of the laissez faire dream world.


Private, poorly regulated, market systems prone, 


especially when globalized,  to rampant


corruption, and then collapse and corrupt bail out.






The cartellization of the global economy.

RE LABOR BOARD CASE AGAINST BOEING SEE ALSO CHINA PLANTS

We don't have an industrial policy, regardless of which 'side' you happen to be on.


This is the closest the US usually comes, anymore.


Pathetic, really, given the recent history and reality of globbalist practices.


Here's what Boeing is also doing, in China, right now:


"Boeing's newest China plant to launch production in 2013"

As I have said many times here: Never, in the history of human conflict,.....

EITHER: COLD WAR GLOBALIZATION LOST CIVILIZATIONAL ADVANTAGE WMD PROLIFERATION

Or: Patton, in 1945, had he lived to go forward. 


At that time, the Soviets didn't yet have the bomb (they did, by 1948-1949).


Either, Or?


Following up on themes in the last post and elsewhere, were this an either/or choice I could make, with hindsight, 


I probably would select Patton.


Call me Pollyanna.


PS


Maybe someone can set me straight on the veracity of this UK Daily Telegraph story a couple of years ago, and the book it is about:


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/3869117/General-George-S.-Patton-was-assassinated-to-silence-his-criticism-of-allied-war-leaders-claims-new-book.html

RE PATIENTS ARE NOT CONSUMERS THE OTHER DONALD NYT KRUGMAN EDITORIAL

He asks, "What has gone wrong with us?"

It started back in the early 50s when we decided to encourage Americans to consume more, to aid foreign producers trying to recover from World War II. 


This strategy, really also a military and propaganda strategy, was viewed as also a way of refuting and eventually defeating the flourishing and spread of Communism, at that time.


It was an enormous shooting of oneself in the foot, for Western Civilization, because it rapidly promoted the development of several very large civilizational rivals, at a time when the very resources, especially oil, on which such rapid global, and globalizing globbalizing development, was beginning to dwindle. It lead in turn to the hollowing out of the US industrial base, and to many other things. 


It is viewed by some pundits as a sui generis phenomenon, but that is not how it had unfolded, after World War II. It was quite intentional and strategic, if ultimately quite foolish and disastrous, in retrospect.


Some pundits talk about 1980, and Reagan, as the start of a bad trend in globalization. Many people, cannot name them all, start there, re globalization.


It began much earlier, grew out of the Marshall Plan, and Bretton Woods, World Bank, GATT, etc. 


Embraced whole heartedly by the Executive Branch, early on, as a way of getting ostensible diplomatic or strategic jobs 'done', without having to go through elaborate public funding public scrutiny decisions with Congress. "Trade Not Aid", "Technology Transfer", etc.


The best very short summary of Executive Branch aspects may be Trading American Interests, in Foreign Affairs.  


See also Eckes' longer work, Prestowitz' Trading Places, and Chalmers Johnson's works.


See also recent posts re Donald Duck: 


good 'producerism' pay taxes and save, Walt Disney Hollywood propaganda, during the war; 


bad consumerism fight Communism propaganda after it.


http://www.realecontv.com/videos/government-corruption/war-and-taxes.html


Terms search also, eg, leverage, globalization trap.

Re dollar down cheaper for debtor better for exporters

" 'The U.S. Dollar Is Dangerously Low'.... It's one thing for U.S. elected and non-elected officials to desire the greenback's depreciation for the sake of helping U.S. exporters. It's another thing to let the value of the buck sink to an ocean's depths, just so it can pay less money (cheaper dollars) back to bondholders. At what point would foreign bondholders decide that a much higher yield on U.S. debt would be needed to offset continuous dollar devaluation?"


They are voting with their feet I believe.


Also, if the US doesn't export that much, relatively to imports, why worry about exporters?

RE STUMBLING INTO BAD BEHAVIOR NYT EDITORIAL

See terms search:


science wars, Goldman, Brooks, Thurston, experts, Attacking The Team, compartmentalization, social sciences, ethics, moral philosophy, pyramid of experts, Maverick Executive, entrepreneur, Winch, quarterback, etc.

RE NYT EDITORIAL THE NEW ANTI-ABORTION MATH STATES OF THE UNION IN GENERAL

This is how all states conduct their business, in an ineffective, fragmentary, and backward way.


The federal government has its own issues too.


Terms search: Why Iowa, your state, Lorch, why______, state and local government, local government, state government, how interesting is a state, etc.

BBC EDITORIAL LATEST NONSENSE SPREADING TO EUROPE THE MAVERICK EXECUTIVE RAIL TO RAIL

'Top 1% of entrepreneurs create 40% of new jobs'

The rest of the population, 

for whom 

these unstable 'really erratic' individuals, as the very venture 

capitalists who seek to invest in them 

have described them, and cited on this site, terms 

search,create no new 

posts,  

is more or 

less superfluous, in an 

Ayn Radian sense.

BBC RE INDUSTRIAL INTELLECTUAL PIRACY THE RULE RATHER THAN THE EXCEPTION IN THE US' GLOBALIST ECONOMY

What's an entrepreneur to do? This is one of the problems with R & D, as it used to be called, and why or why not to bother to invest in it.  

If all products will be quickly copied, one can ask: 

why innovate, only to have innovations pirated in third world countries or second world countries?

Why?

Apple sues Samsung for 'copying' iPhones and iPad

RE NYT PERMANENT BASES AFGHANISTAN

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/19/world/asia/19bases.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha22

See:

http://geraldmeaders.blogspot.com/2011/04/re-pray-hope-prepare-thomas-friedman.html

RE WHY TRUMP SOARS THURSTON HOWELL MACAIRE PARALLELS

Brooks today describes what he calls a type, those who inhabit a realm he calls Upper Blowhardia, the 'abrasive, (often also rotund, I would add) rich man'.


He describes the character I have referred to repeatedly here, as 'Thurston Robert Macaire Howell', a character based in part on my uncle, and also on the TV character.


Here is Daumier's Zephyr, the wind god, 
landing, coming in to Earth from Upper Blowhardia:

RE ACTING FOR LAWYERS

Just in case any little wandering eyes stumble across this website, I should mention that my only brushes with the venerable profession of acting have been as a criminal, and then a civil, trial lawyer, before either judges or juries, over many years.

KATHLEEN BROOKS US TREASURIES LAST THROES SAFE HAVEN

'Last Throes'. Great term.


Say what?


'What rough beast, its hour come round at last, 
slouches.......'

RE S & P DOWNGRADE

Japan and the EU, 


Yes, even more Fragile.....


I would say that the solution, as always, 
is just a little bit more

'you know what'.........

RE S&P DOWNGRADES US ECONOMY

They, S & P, have needed greater (some) credibility, since long before now, but especially after, the mortgage debacle, when everybody then knew.


See eg The Big Short, Michael Lewis, etc. 

EU IS TOAST IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE BBC EDITORIAL

France blocks Italian trains carrying north African migrants

RE THE CORNER OFFICE DISTILLING THE WISDOM OF C.E.O.'S NYT EDITORIAL

Way too rosy, and unrealistic, picture, apparently painted here, of the marvelous personalities of some of these individuals.


Terms search: entrepreneur, enter preener, entre preener, maverick executive, rail to rail, Ayn Rand, Macaire, Thurston Howell, Boca, how he likes his management team, etc.

RE ATLAS WITHOUT ANGELINA NYT EDITORIAL AYN RAND

See previous posts, with terms search: Ayn Rand, Maverick, Maverick Executive, Macaire, Daumier, philosophy, etc.

CF MARY POPPINS CARTOONS

Why not show also Donald Duck, descending with an unfurled umbrella, with her, above either a desert, or an Asian island, landscape?

The caption below, Security Tag Team.
The one above, Axis of Consumption.

CHINA INFLATION BOOM OVER 5 % INFLATION INDIA BOOM ALMOST 9% INFLATION

'FREE RIDERS'...........'BEGGAR THY NEIGHBOR'..........BULL..........


EAST LAZY FARE BOOM (bubble too), blobbalization, glob alization, globbalization, 

WEST LAZY FARE BUST (squashed flat).


LAZY FARE 'BEGGAR THY NEIGHBOR' 


IN THE USA...

Re Comment The Current Situation

See my comment,  assuming he publishes it, and David Kaiser's great current post. 

THE CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS TIME FOR A LITTLE SELF DETERMINATION JORDAN NYT EDITORIAL

'Islamists Clash With Supporters of Jordan’s King'

Fundamentalists, clashing with gov, different from socialists and so called democratists, also clashing.

Call it a 'clash of civilizations', within a small Middle Eastern country.


looks like we didn't give Jordan enough free trade.

RE BREAKING THROUGH ON TRADE NYT EDITORIAL RAW DEAL STILL ON THE AGENDA DONALD DUCK IN REVERSE

Same ridiculous position this country has taken on trade and international policy, especially the Executive Branch,  for 6 decades now, really has put us where we are. 


The excuses USED TO BE ABOUT building up 'allies' economically, FIGHTING COMMUNISM, AND PRETEXTS LIKE SECURITY, DIPLOMATIC FAVORS, MILITARY BASES, NUCLEAR STRATEGY, ETC.


Now, it is just 'human rights', 'democratization', and Cobdenism generally, in 3rd and 2nd world countries, as a 'carrot' for opening US market to low wage labor. 


The stick has been to close, or reduce mostly unilateral access to US market. (That's what has passed for 'free trade', were it an ideal in the first place.)


How many more raw foreign carrots can the US population eat, decade in decade out?


Terms search, many terms, even the last post, say, Donald Duck.

RE DONALD DUCK DOMESTIC INDUSTRY TAXES HOLLYWOOD WW II

http://www.realecontv.com/videos/government-corruption/war-and-taxes.html

Contrast this with the situation now, since WWII, re consumption consumerist propaganda, not saving to pay taxes, 


the 'Axis of Consumerism', 


opposite of domestic producerism, 


on the other foot.


See prior post here re competitiveness, trading places, etc.

RE JIM GRANT INTERVIEW

'Bond Legend Says U.S. Will Resolve Debt by Returning to Gold Standard (GLD)'

Perhaps so.

RE HUMAN RIGHTS PREACHING TO CHINA VERSUS THE COMMON WELFARE HERE

Why preach to others on so called human rights, abroad, 


while having been eliminating even the common welfare here?

re CHINA POLICY MAIN TOPIC FOR G 20

It is hard to imagine, given US trade and economic appeasement policy since the Nixon shock, to suggest such a policy now.


What a ridiculous foreign policy situation.


'Allies' are asked, in effect, to globalize more, to combat bad, mercantilist, protectionist China.

RE UNILEVER PROCTOR GAMBLE SOAP PRICE FIXING BBC EDITORIAL DISTINGUISHING CRIME FROM CAPITALISM

Monopoly capitalism working itself out here.


With monopolies like these, and crony public private deals, everywhere, one wonders where the line between price fixing, a crime, and capitalist 'business as usual', really is, anymore. 


Bobbitt has made an analogous point, in Shield, p. 339, '...the problem of distinguishing crime from capitalism...'.


In our system with its rampant monopolization, versus Europe, the question arises, whether allegations of price fixing would even surface, if the right pay off to political cronies, thus on board from the start, were made.

RE GEORGE F. KENNAN

Began reading Kennan's Memoirs 1920 to 1950.

RE TEACHING COMPANY COURSE SCIENCE WARS HISTORY OF SCIENCE GALILEO KEPLER NEWTON BACON

Professor Goldman.

I have started watching this series of lectures.


Wonderful so far. 


It touches some themes I have broached here, re terms search: compartmentalization, junk science, experts, multi disciplinary issues, disciplinary foundations, politics, philosophy of social science, Wittgenstein, metaphysics, history of science, ethics, religion, sophistry, and anti intellectualism.

RE FATTENING THINGS UP AND THE NIXON SHOCK

This is the webpage and page reference referred to in prior posts. 
The page in this document for this quote is page 27. Sorry for any confusion.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB106/NZ-3.pdf

RE BBC 3/31 ASIA MILITARY COMPETITION LAISSEZ FAIRE BUILD UP

China white paper highlights US military 'competition

RE PRAY. HOPE. PREPARE THOMAS FRIEDMAN NYT EDITORIAL

He still harps on the wonderful, but fitful move, probably through violent endless civil wars across the Middle East, (and doubtless leading also to major war beyond) toward his utopian democratic ideal, over there.


My thinking is toward the view that we would all have been better off under, say, the British Colonial Empire, had it lasted, than what is now to come. 


Call me Pollyanna, or something.

re FT EDITORIAL INDIA UNREST ON THE HORIZON BBC CHINA INDIA MEETING

Of course.


What would be the next shoe to drop?


See this old interchange, between Nixon and Chou re India, 
a propos fattening Things Up etc, 


and the India China trade now under way:


http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB106/NZ-3.pdf


page 30, or so.

RE OUR COWARDLY CONGRESS KRISTOF NYT EDITORIAL

Re 'impossible to explain', 


this is not that hard to explain, really, 
but it is rather complex
long history of such situations, really.


Too big and complex an entity, too many elections, too many unmanaged issues, too little real representation re political parties and their corruptions, etc.