RE DAVID KAISER'S CURRENT TOPIC

Re Echoes of the distant past,


See also, Michael Howard's The Lessons Of History, ch 2, at paragraph at fn 3, re the politics and reasoning in 1917 surrounding the British decision for a small scale Jewish Homeland in Palestine. 


At least one British cabinet minister apparently sensed the coming travails.


Of course there were various other irons in the fire, at that time:


Britain entered into more specific obligations to other allies. In April 1915, it signed a secret treaty promising Constantinople to Russia, thus explicitly jettisoning Britain's long-standing reservations about Russian control of the Straits. (In fact, British governments since the time of Lord Salisbury at the turn of the century had resigned themselves to eventual Russian control of Constantinople.) At the same time, as part of the price of persuading Italy to enter the war on the Allied side, Britain agreed in the Treaty of London that, in a postwar carve-up of the Ottoman dominions, Italy would receive southwest Anatolia. Under an agreement negotiated in 1916 between Sir Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot, Britain promised France most of Syria, Cilicia, and the oil-bearing region around Mosul in northern Mesopotamia. Most fraught with evil consequence for the British was the Balfour Declaration of November 1917 in which Britain undertook to facilitate the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine - with provisos protecting the "civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities" and the rights of Jews in other countries. All of these engagements were designed to serve urgent wartime objectives rather than long-term interests.

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/britain-and-the-middle-east-from-1914-to-the-present#ixzz1DQvzXruy

RE BBC EDITORIAL STATE MULTICULTURALISM HAS FAILED

It has failed because it has been paired with anti-state economic globalization, a process which has inflamed and encouraged civilizational as well as national economic and religious rivalries.

RE ANOTHER KIND OF FINANCIAL FRAGILITY KRUGMAN NYT BLOG THE HIGHLY CONTAGIOUS ECONOMICS DISEASE

Rather ironic really to have a bunch of economists, or PK,  trying to fix the causes of 'financial fragility', a thing caused of course by the kind of universalization of economic activity dating to Smithism, the fount of economic theory.


The causes of what one can now call blobal or globbal fragility are themselves symptoms of what one might call the economics disease. 


CALL IT 'THE GREATEST FRAGILITY FOR THE GREATEST NUMBERS'.


It is not a case of 'money supply', or 'belt tightening', or 'structural', or 'stimulus', or 'demand', or 'equilibrium', or 'exogenous', or 'endogenous', or 'price level', or 'inflation', or 'deflation', or 'stagflation', 'surplus', 'deficit', 'boom', 'bust', 'cycles', 'growth', 'comparative advantage',  'competitive advantage', 'beggar thy neighbor', 'free market', 'regulatory', 'laissez faire', 'mercantilist', etc.


 It is a highly contagious case, something which almost all nations now have plenty of, 


a bad case of 'economics'.


On another topic, and article, alluded to by PK, I do agree with this much of Dimon's views:


"We should have standard national laws. We don't. We should have standard foreclosure laws. We don't. Standard servicing clauses. We don't."


Enormous implications, with 50 different states, and their picayune laws, separate Bar Associations, and diverse judicial systems.

THE MENU

Freshly smoked mullet, from Ted Peters Famous Smoked Fish, here in Florida. Eureka lemon juice.


Ba Tampt garlic dill pickle, raw onion.


Broccoli and carrots steamed. Toast medallions.


Fetzer Merlot.


Breyers' Vanilla ice cream with organic peppermint oil essence drizzle.

RE Auf Wiedersehen Carino BBC STORY

Shape of things to come, 
for those who can.

RE REAGAN'S INTELLECT

There is an interesting passage on Reagan's putative mental type, in a biography written long ago now, by one of his lifelong biographers. 


The passage refers to a book on types of intelligence, only several of which Reagan apparently had. 


For example he had a photographic memory, interpersonal intelligence, was not analytic, abstract, critical thinker, etc., etc. 


Very interesting. Explains a lot.

RE THE COMPETITION MYTH CORRECTION NYT KRUGMAN EDITORIAL

See my prior commentary.


http://geraldmeaders.blogspot.com/2011/01/re-competition-myth.html


Re President Obama's competitiveness claims: 
historically, the Presidency has been about the last office inclined to take a protectionist domestic competitiveness stance. 


This goes back actually to FDR in the 20th Century. There were powerful anti protectionist forces leading up to the Civil War as well, as then Democrats controlled trade and kept tariffs on manufactures, and certain finished goods, notably steel, and on certain commodities notably coal, relatively low. 


'Complementarily', the British imposed no tariff on cotton, their biggest imported industrial raw material. 


See Nevins, Ordeal, V2, The Rising Industrialism, subch. 7, esp fn 55; and Nevins, Hewitt; Dorfman, The Economic Mind, 'The era of "Good Feeling"'; Eckes, Opening America's Market, early chapters.


For this history, of bipartisan Presidential selling out the domestic economy, in a capsule, article limited to post WWII, see the old Foreign Affairs article: 


Trading American Interests.

RE CLASS WARFARE IN EGYPT NYT EDITORIAL Is global banker bashing exogenous?

Another NYT article, re fragile global markets, calls this type of event, 'exogenous', and so it is, for now.


Question: What if it happens all over the middle east? Still exogenous?


What if here too? Still exogenous? 


Or does it start to look endogenous?


Re Krugman's article today re Davos, what if it were limited strictly to a subspecies of class war, say a new pastime referred to by Krugman, called 'banker bashing'?


What is wrong with banker bashing?
Does it matter which kind of banker? Global banker? Local banker? Liberal banker? Planned economy banker?


Is, for example, global banker bashing exogenous? Does use of the term depend on the situs of the speaker?

RE THE TEA PARTY WAGS THE DOG

Frank Rich article. Great that he makes the connection with GE.  


GE and Reagan went way back. GE really got a big boost when Reagan then took office. 


It is interesting to see the connection between the Maverick Executive, the Maverick Republican, and the cowboy. 


John Wayne for example too. 


It is also interesting to see the connections, between people like Ayn Rand, rugged genius individual paradigm types, also Thurston Robert Macaire Howell types, and the American corporate right.

RE THOMAS FRIEDMAN NYT TODAY

I just never agree with him or his reasoning on virtually anything.


'America never would or should copy Singapore’s less-than-free politics.' Wrong, probably should long ago have moved in that direction, sadly.


'But Singapore has something to teach us about “attitude...” wrong word.


 — about taking governing seriously and thinking strategically. Wrongly put, in so many ways, but a right direction nonetheless. 


(This is really, beyond Friedman's superficial treatment, about radical political reform here, not merely about an attitude, or taking something seriously, for a minute or two. But Friedman cannot broach that kind of level for the subject; off limits, prohibido.)


 We used to do that... wrong, we never did.


and must again..., wrong, we never did it.


 because our little brick house... completely wrong metaphor.


with central heating is not going to be resistant to the storms much longer.' Wrong: no central heat; wrong tense


Every sentence and phrase here is nonsense really. 


Singapore is not a system based on a 'radical free market', but rather yet another developmental state feeding on loose open consumer markets everywhere. 


His term for the welfare state aspect is nanny state, not very appealing image.


He also quotes Mahbubani, icing on the cake.


He really won't back off his radical globalist pander stance, persisting in calling Singapore a radical free market system; even in the face of overwhelming evidence that this has not been the kind of 'global free trade' system he has portrayed it to be, has not achieved the kinds of results; but rather one of developmental state feeding off more open advanced suggestible societies.

RE STATE OF THE DISUNION

'We know what it takes to compete for the jobs and industries of our time. We need to out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world.'


Most unfortunately, these are things Americans generally do not know, cannot do, and are not politically set up to act on. 

re gld puke indicator

I thought this comment rather interesting.

http://goldchat.blogspot.com/2011/01/funny-business-in-gld.html

cf also  Lance Lewis' 'puke indicator'................

RE STATE OF THE UNION

See David Kaiser's excellent site, and current post.


He also referred to Blow's editorial today, among many other things.


Here is a quote from DK:


'We now face the worst long-term unemployment problem that we have seen since the Great Depression and although it is less serous than it was then, we have, this time, no strategy to deal with it at all.'


At least back then there was a WPA, and still some union labor power in the society. 


Not anymore.


What really turned things around, however, was a world war; most unfortunately, for most everyone else.

RE HARD KNOCK LIFE NYT EDITORIAL CHARLES BLOW

Same thing has been happening since WW II re the role of the Presidency. Most Americans did not notice it happening.  


Kennedy, no exception. "Ask not..."


What nonsense, really.


"Maverick Team Players."

RE THE STONE PHILOSOPHY IN THE UK

This is Britain's version of The Stone apparently:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12279627

Quite vapid too.

RE THE STONE PHILOSOPHY NYT GOT STONED OFF THE AIR

Not a bad thing to be stoned silent, from what I saw.


Not enough Americans are good at it, 
and the NYT did it rather wrong.

RE PK AND THE RYAN RESPONSE

If, of course, oligopoly and monopoly are the rule, rather than the exception, and one never really sees hide nor hair of 'equilibrium', except in a Platonic dream world, as a sort of chimera, then why think of using equilibrium as a paradigm for a 'science'? 


Sort of like using 'The Forms'.... or calling God as a witness.


Beckett:
"Madame: Officer, as God is my witness, he had his hand upon it."
"Officer: madame, God is a witness that cannot be sworn."
Murphy


It would make a lot more sense to roll the whole 'discipline' (nondiscipline) of macroeconomics into the category of a subrubric of grand strategy, than to leave it flopping on the deck of history. 


Some countries no doubt actually have done it to some extent this way. Think of passages in Friedman and LeBard's book, The Coming War With Japan,  for example, on Grand Strategy. Paul Kennedy's work is also along these lines to some extent.

RE KRUGMAN CAN QUOTE KEYNES TOO SOMETIMES WITH REAL INSIGHT

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/25/the-ryan-response/

FACEBOOK MAVERICK CARTOON

Picture Mr Zuckerberg, in harness to a troika, a winter mountain scene, say Alois Arnegger painting of an Alpine ski slope scene; taxi's sign says SOCIAL NETWORK. 


It has prominent Russian top officials, yet wearing heavy mink-lined Robert Macaire type smokers, smoking huge cigars, and sipping champagne and holding the bottle; think Ken Russell's The Music Lovers, Tchaikovsky's troika,  etc.


The caption above reads: 
Information Superhighway.


The one below:
The Maverick Executive In Harness

RE FACEBOOK

See prior post above, and NYT January 4 article.


Russians are effusive about the development of the amazing personality of Mr Zuckerberg.


Very interesting to note the close ties of these backers to the top men.


Just one of those wonderful coincidences in a lazy fare world, here even a nonpublic company investment world.


Wonderful to have such a system really.


Eg what would a Milton Friedman, or even a Krugman, say?


Facebook control or twinkies, the product or security doesn't matter. 


Zuckerberg is our laissez faire man!