RE KEYNESIANS VERSUS AUSTRIANS A FALSE DICHOTOMY IN AN EVIL DARK WORLD

Realecontv does not necessarily get anything right, in a deeper sense, but this is fun to watch:

http://www.realecontv.com/videos/media-con-artists/who-did-you-listen-to-.html

RE THE GOOD BANKER JOE NOCERO NYT EDITORIAL TODAY CASINOS AS BANKS AS INVESTORS

He cites a good banker saying the typical bank now is just a casino.
This was also what I had inferred.

RE BBC REVERSE BRAIN DRAIN INDIAN ENTREPRENEURS OUT OF US AFTER EXPENSIVE EDUCATION

Smelling the global struggles coffee to come. 


Us higher education: No doubt one of the biggest tech and academic sluices in the world for many decades now. 


Paraphrasing Churchill, re RAF, 

('Never was so much owed by so many to so few')

'Never In The History Of Human Conflict Has So Much Been Given Away to So Many By So Few.' 


All comers education here has not helped the American people unfortunately, although heavily funded by taxpayers the whole time.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-13595196

VERY INTERESTING CHANOS ON CHINA

http://www.realecontv.com/videos/china/not-bearish-enough.html

BUBBLELIZATION LEADS TO BABBELLIZATION WHICH LEADS TO GLOBISH

Q.E.D.

RE CHARLES BLOW ENDANGERED RYAN-OS NYT EDITORIAL RINOS

This is the tone of discussion, from what used to be the left, I guess.

RE US LAWMAKERS BLOCK CHINA FIRMS PENTAGON CONTRACTS

Rather a ridiculous discussion, at this point.


This is how the US has been doing 'business'
for a long time now.....


Can you say, lack of political economic or strategic 'leverage'?


Terms search: leverage, playing three sides, etc.

STAGFLATION AND GLOBALIZATION

Natural partners.

RE THIS FROM GLOBALSPECULATION.COM

This person does not know what they are talking 

about, unfortunately.

'The gold standard failed because it imposed natural constraints on countries that left them unable to defend themselves and their citizens. It is absurd to form an entity for public purpose and then not be able to utilize that entity when you most need it. Some people like to think of govt’s as these foreign entities that are created for their own benefit (primarily because they’ve read too much economics from people who lived in the days of communism and socialism), but that is not the case. We live in a REPRESENTATIVE REPUBLIC. If you are that pissed then stand up and do something. This is YOUR govt. It is to be used for YOUR benefit.

When you enter yourself into an arrangement such as the one that Greece is involved in then what is the purpose of your govt? You are no longer fulfilling public purpose. You are just existing in someone else’s system. That is what the gold standard did. And it is what the Euro is doing today. The trade imbalances are a direct result of the single currency system. The gold standard failed. It isn’t coming back. And we’re all better off for it.'

RE THE DOWNSIZED COLLEGE GRADUATE NYT EDITORIAL

Uaintsenutniet.

RE MYERS BRIGGS AND OTHER THINGS

Post Jungian personality system......


Used, as Wikipedia notes, during WW II, great watershed event, to help women be incorporated into the wartime workforce.


I first took the test, many years ago.
It showed I was 'the Inventor'. ENTP. 


Not a 'type' apparently supposed to be appropriate for parentage, at all!! Inventors should never procreate.  


We were advised not to have any children with this personality profile.


I took a similar Myers Briggs test, many years later, at the office. It showed, at that time, that I was the most 'well balanced' tested personality, of the 12 or 13 people who took the test in the office. 


This result was announced to us all at an office meeting. Many people in the office were taken somewhat aback by this 'finding'............


Many different implications might be drawn from these bare bones factual musings. 


Do 'inventors' not procreate, 
even if they turn out, 
according to the very same criteria, 
to be better balanced than many other different character examples? 


Rather a ridiculous series of events, to say the least.......


Should a society which has inventors prevent them eugenically from procreating? 


Then, question, isn't this rather cutting off one's intellectual nose to spite one's ostensible societal face?


These are some of the rather odd conclusions one might draw from this strange psychological schematism, 


and its very different, and potentially conflicting, and explosive, 'clinical applications'.


Terms search social science, philosophy, etc.

RE GOLD SAY WHAT

http://seekingalpha.com/article/271802-china-gold-and-etfs

There are a lot of historical reasons why Americans are driven into gold. 


Some of those reasons are contained on this blog, for those having an interest.  


It is not a matter of being liberal or conservative; those terms, and the party system, and the political system, on which they 'free rode',  are what got us here.

RE INVESTMENT TERMINOLOGY BECOMING NOW OBSOLETE CALL IT JUST SHORT TERM GAMBLING

Unfortunately, most investment terminology, heretofore used in the West, and for a while elsewhere, is becoming obsolete.


'Value investing', 'sectoral' investing...
debt, versus equity, even....
investing versus just plain hedging, or even casual gambling, these are all blending into a half light of global financial twilight activities; traditional investment terms losing their traditional relevance in the tumultuous world of 
momentary gains versus momentary losses, 
of politics and corruption over private property, 
or private property and corruption over politics, 
in a dog eat dog world of ...... what?


Momentary investment activity nevertheless is gathering strength, then waning strength; 


is it also a species or a symptom of military strength; or weakness?

RE GOLD CHINA AND INDIA AND THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME

To date, their demand for gold doubles last years' demand.


Maybe it's just a bling thing.


What really 'backs' the dollar? 


(Used to be things like gold, industrial capital, productive assets, labor force, things like that.)


What now backs the dollar? 
Mostly only our military, and the relative weakness of others'.


Rather a weak position to be in, unfortunately.

RE DAVID KAISER'S CURRENT POST

Great summations on this site. Terms search here: David Kaiser, or DK, for some of my past comments on his site.


I would say that, as I am sure many have long anticipated, these instabilities he notes going on now, will quickly grow into major military conflicts involving the great powers. 


There are many reasons for this. Paramount is the nagging need for secure supplies of oil resources from this region, even though its proportion of world sources has declined over the decades. 


I skimmed a book, some years ago now, The Middle East, Oil, and The Great Powers, recounting the history of rivalries in this region back into the 19th Century.

RE THE PROMISE OF ARAB UPRISINGS NYT EDITORIAL TODAY

A chimera from the beginning. 


Few Americans were well placed to recognize this as it has unfolded. 


They have long been fed hollow democratization pap, those who turn for a moment, away from the sporting event of the moment.

RE KRUGMAN NYT EDITORIAL TODAY MAKING THINGS IN AMERICA MANUFACTURING NEVER TRY TO TEACH A PIG TO SING

Seemingly nice ideas....but. 
He paints the story as good democrats versus bad conservatives.


That has not been how the competitiveness situation unfolded, over many Presidential administrations, and many Congresses. 


His analysis leaves untouched the underlying political structural causes for this state of affairs. 


The political party electoral merry go round, on which his party politics comments also ride, will not prevent further competitiveness erosions of this type, just as it utterly failed to prevent them from developing since WW II. 


Loss of what I have called civilizational advantage happened in the early 70s. 


He was also a big globalist apologist pundit back in the 80s and even the 90s. Terms search: flatly wrong.


Regrets.


As The Wall Street Sector Selector said today, re big picture, 'the boarish details', 'Miss Piggy':


Like putting lipstick on a pig.  


Call her Pollyanna, 
or even Marilyn:





Furthermore, to paraphrase Robert Heinlein, 
Never try to teach a pig to sing; 
even a beautiful one; 
it wastes your time 
and it annoys her.


Terms search: many different terms.

RE THE RUSSIAN BILLIONAIRE JUST BOUGHT THE NEW JERSEY TEAM SMELL THE COFFEE

SEE ALSO:

Terms search: eg, 'your state'. Or: 'why Iowa'. Or: 'state and local politics', or 'Crockalization'.


It does not really matter which state it is. 
It is flaked out.

TERMS SEARCH IGNORAMITOCRACY

Why not, a reprise of some important themes 
and references......

NYT EDITORIALS DROIT DU SEIGNEUR AND THE NEW POLITICS

A moment in what one might call a 'new politics'.


Droit du seigneur is perhaps one hallmark of the Maverick Executive, The Casanova Hand.


Also the Invisible Hand, Facebook executives, and their substantial Russian investors, at work, as well.


The new global lower class, including virtually all of 'us', and all of 'them', will have to adjust to it, by force, unfortunately. 


Freedom of the press, which has failed the middle class here in the 'West', is going out of business apace. 


Here is a classic example of its failure, Patton:
http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=2973239501462830480&postID=6131285628055317644

see David Kaiser's current post at historyunfolding

(And also my comment....)


The passage in The Shield of Achilles is called 'Politics and Representation', p. 238.

re Mortgage debacle fake fraud docs

Here's a reference to 60 minutes, forwarded by realecontv.
Great stuff:

http://www.realecontv.com/videos/real-estate/banks-gone-wild.html

Well worth watching, even for people whose home was not securitized.

RE THIS WEBSITE AND CERTAIN ACCIDENTAL VIEWERS OF IT

Anyone is welcome to view this site.


However, it is intended for those who have attained, at least, an undergraduate liberal arts college education. 


I often comment, on that very date, on articles and or events, and editorials in major print news media.


Moreover, it is more accurately 'targeted' toward those who have read those print media articles, and have also done some post graduate work, in either philosophy, political science, economics, some other of the social and/or exact sciences, and  also history, preferably including also art history. 


The ideal audience is one which has done at least undergraduate work in more than one academic discipline.


Terms search: 'terms search',  'this website'

the menu deviled eggs Michael Lewis John Gutfreund

A quick note re today's culinary confectionery delight:


deviled eggs. Delicious. (My wife made them; thus her recipe, if any.)


I couldn't help recalling the last, almost, words, in The Big Short, where Gutfreund, wronged, but at lunch in Manhattan with Lewis, and ever so politely, at the end, offered him one.

re MOTHERS DAY MENU

This was pan sauteed local red snapper fillet with a meuniere sauce. 
Diced provencal potatoes, steamed asparagus, and tossed field green salad. 
Various ice cream, mint milano cookies, etc.


The image of a black bean soup, which was taken by me, sent to certain friends, contains soaked black beans, cumin powder, fennel seed, a dash of cayenne pepper, black pepper, healthfood bacon fat 1 tbs., olive oil, a splash, sauteed onion and garlic in abundance, several diced carrots, a bay leaf. It is not made according to a recipe. I use them, recipes, as a guide, sometimes. 


This website has some menus; terms search: the menu, mayonnaise. 


The important thing (to me), other than the flowers, about the image, is the fruit compote, which is part of the Creil Montereau 'japo' table ware line, from 19th century France, which Claude Monet used, daily, at Giverny. Cf. the book,  Monet's Table, text and illustrations therein.

RE STATES AND INSURANCE LAWS LOOSENING HERE AND THERE NYT EDITORIAL

Increasingly it's a dog eat dog race to the regulatory bottom, among cash strapped states.


REDUCING RESERVE REQUIREMENTS IS NOT THAT GOOD A THING; 
SEE FOR EXAMPLE WHAT HAS HAPPENED WITH BANKS, 
AND LOOSER REGULATIONS, LOWER RESERVES, 
RATINGS AGENCIES FOIBLES, ETC.


Terms search your state.

RE END OF MIDEAST WHOLESALE TOM FRIEDMAN NYT EDITORIAL

I recommend against even reading this article. 
It will only confuse you, at best.

RE TARGET PATTON BAD POLITICS AND A FLAWED SYSTEM AND THE PRESS

I finished this book. Very worthwhile. 


Good but brief discussions in passing of interactions among generals and politicians (and the press), both ours and 'theirs'.


Terms search, civilizational advantage, disadvantage,  Patton.


The press played a particularly unhelpful role in this political  debacle. Shows how truly useless and counterproductive the press has been for truly important issues and decisions.

RE ONE HAND CLAPPING NYT EDITORIAL

QUALITY EMPLOYMENT HAS NOT BEEN A PRIORITY HERE SINCE AT LEAST SAY THE MID 60S.

It was actually federal government policy to promote quality employment elsewhere, certainly during the Marshall Plan AFTER 1945, and then later during the Cold War for about 50 years. 


At this point they do not know how to go back to seriously promoting domestic employment without explaining what really has happened since WW II, why, and what institutional arrangements and policies, both domestically and internationally, have been to blame.


Terms search: eg 
trading american interests, your state,
Terms search, civilizational advantage, disadvantage
Patton, etc.,
http://geraldmeaders.blogspot.com/2011/04/either-cold-war-globalization-lost.html

RE FORENSIC MEDICAL PSYCHIATRIC EXPERTS IN TEAMS AT STATE SCHOOLS

Apparently, there are some states, with state universities, which have created programs, forensic institutes, within colleges of medicine, within the state university systems themselves, 


for forensic medical (psychiatric, psychology, addiction, and pain) experts, to promote and ply forensic skills, insights, and expertises, (otherwise also apparently taught, presumably, as academic specialties, within their respective fields), to public and private clients and their counsel. 


While one can applaud an effort at greater skill and insight in increasingly specialized interdisciplinary endeavors, one must wonder at medical specialists specializing in certain forensic interdisciplinary topics. 


Members of some groups refer to themselves, as this letter states, as a team of experts, and are committed to exceeding expectations in the provision of expert testimony....


I received a letter from one of these institutes, and their website is here, for those who may need these types of expertise:


http://www.forensic.institutes.ufl.edu/

RE ATTACKING THE TEAM COMPARTMENTALIZED FORENSIC MEDICAL EXPERTS

I broach the subject of over specialization in fields beyond that of those associated with eminent domain.


One big area has traditionally been medical evidence and medical experts.


This has been an area as little subject to proper intra disciplinary, or inter disciplinary, self regulation, 


as have those disciplines, eg engineering, land planning, real estate and fixture appraisal, general contracting, accounting, market surveying and social sciences, etc.,  associated with eminent domain.


As background on this site, see eg, and posts cited therein:






Terms search pyramid, pyramid of experts, etc.

RE GOODMAN'S ARTICLE HERE

http://seekingalpha.com/article/266286-people-s-bank-of-china-looking-to-diversify-into-precious-metals

This makes sense, perhaps he is preaching to 'the choir' here.


Apparently he's a securities lawyer by trade.....


Here's another interesting one:


http://seekingalpha.com/article/265375-russia-doesn-t-want-any-more-dollars-what-this-means-for-investors


(They want a strong stake in Facebook, but not in dollars; you try to figure it out.)


Terms search many terms, eg Zuckerberg, enter preener

RE EDUCATION AND THE META PROBLEM OF COMPARTMENTALIZATION

Another field perennially hit by political and intellectual compartmentalization related conceptual problems, like, say, 
the 'problem' of hunger, 
or the 'problem' of homelessness, 
or the 'problem' of knowledge.


See Diane Ravitch's, new book.


See also: metaphysics, etc.,

http://geraldmeaders.blogspot.com/2010/12/re-thomas-friedman-and-pisa-test.html

RE TERMS SEARCH

See also: globbularity, Thomas Friedman, etc.

RE KRUGMAN'S FAIRY TALES FAIRYLAND ECONOMIST'S SITE

I have found Professor Anderson's blog....


Although I myself am critical of Krugman at times, I do not share Anderson's views, only apparently a few of his more imaginative terms. 


But I use those terms for people like both Anderson and Krugman, ie, economists generally, and others. 


Re others, Ayn Rand's 'philosophy', such as it is, is a kind of Laissez fairy land, for example. 


At the other extreme, so also, to some extent, was Marx's a proletarian fairy land.


Kind of ridiculous, really, when one surveys the directions things are going, as a result of this catastrophic, Western Civilizational, economics-driven, world view.


http://krugman-in-wonderland.blogspot.com/2011/01/krugmans-fairy-tales.html


Terms search many terms: see 'terms search', names, technical terms, eg liquidity trap, globalization, bubble, even intentional misspellings or nonexistent terms, bubblelization, , eg, glob, globbal, blobbal, etc.