Dave Ramsey, the UAW and the Auto Bailout

I have to admit, I don't get it. I simply don't think in the same terms as the UAW negotiators who killed the auto bailout bill yesterday.

Republicans, breaking sharply with President George W. Bush as his term draws to a close, refused to back federal aid for Detroit's beleaguered Big Three without a guarantee that the United Auto Workers would agree by the end of next year to wage cuts to bring their pay into line with U.S. plants of Japanese carmakers. The UAW refused to do so before its current contract with the automakers expires in 2011.

We've been told that the choice here was bailout or total liquidation of the American auto industry. That made the choice for the UAW either reduced wages or no jobs at all. How is an income of $0 a year better than wages equal to the Toyota workers' wages?

Let's see what Dave Ramsey has to say about this in a recent call to his talk show.

Question: Seth lost his job earlier this week, and he has some debt. He is in his 20s, married and has a 10-month-old daughter. He wants to know how to keep his head above water. Dave gives him short term and long term goals to shoot for.

Dave Ramsey's advice: I'd go crazy about finding an income, because this is all about finding an income. If this involves delivering pizzas at night and working at the mall at weekends to replace your income, then do that while you hunt for a full-time job.

Emphasis in the original.

If Seth was a UAW worker and he called up Dave to ask if he should take a cut in pay or throw away his job, what do you suppose Dave would say? How about this: "Seth, I think you should toss away the job you have and end up scrambling for pizza-delivery jobs in a financially wrecked part of the country!"

I doubt it.

GM is not selling cars because the cars cost more than they're worth to the customers. Cost comes from labor + capital + raw materials. The last two are fixed costs, so the only variable cost is labor. It's pretty simple stuff. I don't understand the UAW denial and intransigence.

Update: I understand now. The UAW will get its bailout anyway.

The Bush administration dropped its opposition to using the $700 billion bank bailout fund to provide financing for U.S. automakers, after the Senate yesterday failed to approve emergency loans.

Honestly, what's the point of voting, anyway? If it isn't the courts finding mysterious rights in the Constitution and telling all of us to shove it if we don't like them, it's the Treasury blowing money in defiance of the legislature.

I considered trying to make a buck on this and buying 100 shares of GM with a sell order 20% higher from where it is right now, figuring on a bounce, but I decided not to do so. That kind of gambling just doesn't work for me.

Global Warming Hits New Orleans

... with snow.

NEW ORLEANS -- People across south Louisiana called their friends, grabbed their cameras and headed outside this morning to document a rare and wonderful sight: snow ...

Much of southeast Louisiana was under a winter weather advisory until noon. Accumulating snow was reported in towns and cities all across south Louisiana, including Baton Rouge, Lafayette and Lake Charles.

The storm caused several schools to close.

The Earth is boiling. We're doomed. Film at 11. Film now.

Update: This just in! Our Theocratician on near the scene, Justin has more. Go check it out!

What's Your Morning Drive Time Radio Station?

For me, it's Scott and BR on XX Sports Radio 1090. They're fun and funny and they don't lard up their broadcast with commercials and bump music. I've tried ESPN's Colin Cowherd (sp?) show, but I think he gives you no more than 12 minutes of actual entertainment per 60 minutes of broadcast time.

I have to admit that other than some jazz, I don't listen to music very much any more. Political talk shows are really turning me off these days, too.

How about you? What's your morning drive time show?

The Teachers Union Takes on Handicapped Kids in Court

Our good friend B-daddy over at The Liberator Today alerted us to this situation in Arizona.

Parents of special needs children are arguing for the right to use vouchers to use at the private or public school of their choice, but opponents argue public funding shouldn't go toward private education.

The vouchers for special needs and foster children were approved two years ago, and they have been challenged twice. The lower courts have ruled that the use of vouchers at private schools is unconstitutional.

Apparently, someone is arguing that using tax dollars to educate retarded kids is unconstitutional. Who would be so utterly venal and heartlessly selfish as to do that?

The Arizona Education Association said funds should go toward ensuring public schools are serving every child's needs.

The Teachers Union. I should have known.

The Liberator Today post has a wonderful video on the subject. It's worth a visit.

The Place Burned Down and Sank Into the Swamp, but we Were Still Able to Refinance It

Dig this.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage-finance companies seized by the U.S. government, are considering waiving a requirement for new appraisals on refinanced loans, their regulator said.

“If they refinance someone, rather than doing a loan mod, do they need a new appraisal if they already have the credit?” Federal Housing Finance Agency Director James Lockhart told reporters after a speech in Washington today. “That’s an issue that’s being discussed. They’re looking at it.”

Unreal.

Thanks to Fannie Mae, I was able to refi this home and get $40,000 out to buy a new ski boat!

Blagojevich is a Distraction

... sort of a new entree into our Bread and Circuses atmosphere.

The MSM and the right wing blogs are all a-twitter over Blago's baldfaced corruption. Freight trains full of electrons are being spent discussing how horrible this is, speculating how far the web of scandal will go and if The One will be tainted by this.

Yawn.

While all of this is going on, the Fed is considering issuing its own debt. Now that's newsworthy. Why are they doing this? To continue their finger-in-the-dike effort to contain the financial meltdown. Why do they need to do that? We spent far more than we earned. Why did we do that?

For the same reason Blago tried to sell the senate seat, the same reason gays want to marry, the same reason GM and the UAW want a bailout and the same reason our prisons are full of young men from broken homes.

Because we want it and we want it now and we don't want to earn it.

Where's all of the new money Going?

Mish's Global Economic Trends has a great post showing just where all of the new funny money is going. Here's the gist of it.

Base money is soaring but all of it is sitting in bank reserves. In other words, banks are not lending. Clearly we have a huge monetary distortion, but banks seem to understand that lending money in this environment would do nothing but increase losses.

The charts show wild increases in the money supply, but decreases in the amount of money actually in circulation. Banks are hoarding it. To me, this looks like a great recipe for wild inflation down the road, but I'm no expert.

Obama Skepticism and Paul Volker

So far, almost everyone and their dog has praised the economic team that Obama has assembled, even while noting their widely varying views. I'm highly skeptical. The cornerstone of Obama's economic plan is to spend, spend, spend and not worry about the debt. Part of his team, even if just on an advisory basis, is Paul Volker. Here's a bit about him.

Volcker is back, tapped by Barack Obama as a special economic advisor. And if the president-elect follows his advice on the current economic crisis, there could be pain again and no doubt many protests -- but also the possibility of long-term benefits.

Small chance of that as Paul Volker's advice runs completely contrary to the majority of Obama's team.

His concerns go to the very core of how America lives and how Wall Street operates. A child of the Great Depression and a man of legendary personal thrift, Volcker thinks Americans have been living above their means for too long.

"It is the United States as a whole that became addicted to spending and consuming beyond its capacity to produce," Volcker lectured the Economic Club of New York in April. "It all seemed so comfortable."

Bringing consumption back in line with income would not only crimp individuals and families, but also require major readjustments in the global economy, which has relied on the U.S. as consumer of last resort.

Paul Volker is a dramatic example of the wildly diverging advisors Barack Obama has assembled.

He (Volker) also will have to work with some outsized egos and giant intellects on Obama's economic team: Lawrence H. Summers, chairman-designate of the National Economic Council; Timothy F. Geithner, nominated to be Treasury secretary; and Christina Romer, chosen to lead the Council of Economic Advisors.

The group is generally not of one mind. Major differences exist in how they view regulation, monetary control and fiscal policy. Summers, for example, was among the Clinton administration officials who helped relax federal regulation on Wall Street, recalled David R. Henderson, a conservative economist at the Hoover Institution. Romer has questioned how well fiscal policy works at all, a central tenant of Democratic economic thinking.

To me, this is a clear indication of intellectual chaos within Obama's thinking. I've run teams of researchers, major projects and 100+ person organizations. At no time did my staffs and I have significantly different world views. It made no sense at all to do so. As a leader, you need a staff who will execute your plans and enact your vision. If they disagree with it, you'll be forever chasing them down and changing the decisions they make when they're away from you.

Can you imagine the staff meetings? How is anything going to get done with everyone coming at the problems from completely different viewpoints? It's hard enough to come up with plans of action in the time you've got to meet, much less do it in an environment where people have deep disagreements.

So why would you assemble such a team? First off, there is no way Barack Obama has an economic vision at all. You would not bring together this kind of team if you had a clear direction for the government. Second, the team consists of high-profile people who are guaranteed to earn Obama kudos from everyone. Financial scrooges like me love the Volker selection and profligate spenders love some of the others.

My conclusion is that Barack Obama's primary goal is adulation. Beyond that, he has very little intellectual discipline and no vision of his own. The team has been assembled to garner him praise from all quarters and to insulate him from criticism as every viewpoint will have been heard. I think that's an achievable short-run goal, but in the long run, after we've blown through a couple of trillion dollars and have nothing to show for it save a massive financial hangover, his lack of vision and purpose will become obvious.

Barack Obama at the center of his council of economic advisors.

We're About to Buy GM

The auto bailout bill is now supposed to be around $15B. GM's market capitalization is about $3B. The bill would "give taxpayers stock warrants equal to 20 percent of the loans" which amounts to $3B. Even if the loans are divided among all three automakers equally, that amounts to us buying a 1/3 stake in GM. There's also this.

The Democratic proposal would let the president appoint a so-called car czar to oversee industry restructuring, and give taxpayers stock warrants equal to 20 percent of the loans. It would prohibit the automakers from paying dividends and owning or leasing corporate jets, and pay and bonuses would be limited.

This is madness. Almost no one in congress has any commercial world experience at all, much less experience running even a small business, let alone a monster like GM. Add to that the fact that Barack Obama has no experience at this at all. Not good.

Together, we can get GM this car working again!
Image used without with permission from the WickedStyle blog. Thanks, Veronica!

Blagojevich to Oversee GM

... well, maybe not him, but probably someone just like him. Dig this.

According to a 76-page two-count indictment unsealed by prosecutors in Chicago on Tuesday, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents allegedly heard the governor on wiretaps attempting to trade or sell the Senate seat being vacated by Mr. Obama when he becomes president next month.

In exchange for the Illinois seat, federal agents say Mr. Blagojevich is heard seeking a number of arrangements, including a salary for himself at an organization affiliated with labor unions, a cabinet post or ambassadorship for himself, cash or campaign funds, and placing his wife Patti on paid corporate boards.

Let's put Patti on corporate boards such as, oh, I don't know, GM's, maybe?

WASHINGTON -- Congress and the White House inched toward a financial rescue of the Big Three auto makers, negotiating legislation that would give the U.S. government a substantial ownership stake in the industry and a central role in its restructuring.

How well do you think a quasi-governmental agency, overseen by corrupt(able) officials will compete against Toyota and Nissan?

Amusing Your Cat and Other Links

Is important. And should be recorded for posterity. Our Missionary to the Frozen, Northern Wastelands has more.

Our Official Artist has a new quiz.

Our Cantor of Chemistry has been posting a series called "What I Believe. Here is entry #3. I've enjoyed them all and this one in particular.

There was a recent flap over some sexist behavior by an Obama appointee. I yawned at first, but our Grand Inquisitor has an angle I hadn't considered.

The Monks at the Monastery of Miscellaneous Musings share our dread over the auto bailout.

A future Theocracy member, The Liberator Today, has a typically insightful post about the mortgage bailout schemes being considered.

Finally, our Pater of Prowling has a cool post about the French Foreign Legion, of all things.

Enjoy!

Captchadefs

I am way behind on my captchadefs, so let me try to catch up, just a little bit. For those who haven't seen the previous post, these are definitions for the anti-spam captcha words that you have to type in on some blogs when leaving a comment. Some generous readers have been leaving their captcha words and I've decided to perform a public service by letting you know what they mean.

Here we go (again).

swincon (n) - a conservative given to spending wildly, particularly on pork. The entire Republican party, post-Gingrich, has been dominated by swincons.

Vizenes (n) - a small, but growing cult of people addicted to eyedrops. It's about the mildest form of teenage rebellion possible. If you notice an excessive number of eyedrop containers in your child's room, he might be in the grip of Vizenes.

muricate (v) - to cover with mulch or leaves. "Martha! Stop muricatin' over there and help me with this tree stump!"

telinati (n) - a secret society believed to be responsible for the increased use of cell phones.

chros (adj) - to be angry about the time. "If I'm late one more time, my wife will be very chros with me!"

That's just a small taste of the captchadefs that have built up. Feel free to leave us some more and we'll try to get to them more often!

Lies and Ignorance Just Don't Sell Any More

... or so the management of the Tribune Company is finding out.

Tribune Co. is preparing for a possible filing for bankruptcy-court protection as soon as this week, according to people familiar with the matter, in a sign of worsening trouble for the newspaper industry ...

Tribune owns eight major daily newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and Baltimore Sun, plus a string of local TV stations ...

Tribune's latest actions underscore the deepening distress enveloping Tribune and other newspaper publishers. Their businesses are being battered by dwindling advertising sales, and many are carrying debt loads that are unmanageable in current market conditions. Industry insiders expect some papers will need to fold in coming months or seek protection from creditors to reorganize.

Can we please have one more completely fictional story about homicidal Marines on a rampage in Iraq before you go, just for old times' sake?

Well, That Will put an end to our Pre-Emptive Use of Nuclear Weapons

Our lobby CNN TV is reporting that Obama will use diplomacy to try to improve our relations with Muslim countries. Man, is that a welcome change or what?

Still, I'm going to miss seeing these over Saudi Arabia, Iran and Indonesia.

On Building Roads and Bridges and Investing

This is a thought piece written as an open letter to my financial guru (I'll bet you didn't know you were a guru, did you?) who reads this blog.

Despite Obama pouring mounds of printed money into roads and bridges, I don't like Vulcan Materials (VMC) and I don't like Caterpillar (CAT). There. I've said it. Here's why.

As a neophyte investor, I'm developing my set of criteria for buying stocks. So far it consists of two principles. First, I'm happy to make a mistake and miss out on a stock that goes way up, but I'm not happy to buy a stock that tanks. Second, I only want to invest in a company that I'd have fun managing. Despite the fact that both are scheduled to open much higher today, VMC and CAT fail me on both counts.

VMC makes the raw materials you need to build roads and bridges. They are going to be major beneficiaries of Obama's spending spree. However, VMC has huge debt problems. It's not just the magnitude of the debt, it's the maturation of the stuff. Right now, the thought of rolling over short term debt would terrify me. Every government in the world is sopping up all the investment cash there is and they still have to print money in the basement to cover their irrational, profligate stimulus packages. If you look at VMC's balance sheet, you see they have $31M in cash. They have $2B in short term borrowings. If I was the CEO, I wouldn't sleep at night. Even if you threw in their accounts receivable, which is no guarantee of getting paid these days, you still only pick up another $389M.

Ouch.

CAT is a harder decision for me. I like CAT. I think they're going to do well in the future, I just don't like them now. On other blogs, I've read that commercial construction is falling off a cliff and that Obama's cataract of freshly inked dollar bills isn't going to come close to making up for the drop in commercial construction spending. I haven't looked into that closely, but it makes sense to me, so I'm in no hurry to get into CAT.

Both of these stocks are going to shoot up today, making me look silly. That's OK. I'd rather miss out on a good thing than chase a bad one.

Heavy equipment! What guy doesn't want to invest in things like this?
Image used without permission from A-2-Z Trading LLC.

Maybe the Market is Oversold

... at least I think so when I read things like this.

Danieli, Italy’s biggest maker of equipment for the steel industry, has $1.49 billion in cash, or almost 40 percent more than the combined value of its shares and debt after a 73 percent stock plunge this year, Bloomberg data show.

Emphasis in the original.

That means that Danieli could pay off all of their debts and buy back all of their outstanding stock and still have $596,000,000 left over.

I Think I'll Stock up on Incandescent Bulbs

... after reading this.

Christmas Gifts for Pit Bulls

My fiancée has a very nice pit bull. She's a delightful dog, just larger and more powerful than most other dogs. And most locomotives, for that matter.

She loves stuffed animal toys as gifts, particularly ones that make squeaky noises. She plays with them aggressively and they are typically ripped into tiny bits in about 90 seconds.

It's like getting a Christmas present for the garbage disposal.

Picture slowly lowering this cute little hedgehog toy into your In-Sink-Erator
Image used without permission from Freebears.

Obama and his Chinese Creditors

... don't seem to be seeing eye-to-eye.

Obama:

Obama, who takes office Jan. 20, said his advisers are still working to determine the size of the economic stimulus package needed to pull the country out of the longest recession since 1982. “But it is going to be substantial,” he said, without giving an estimate.

While calling the federal budget deficit he will inherit “enormous,” Obama said economic recovery is more important, “and that means that we can’t worry, short term, about the budget deficit.”

Obama yesterday outlined an economic program focused on spending on public projects that he said would be the biggest such investment in the nation’s infrastructure since the Eisenhower administration.

The Chinese:

“We hope that the U.S. can take all necessary measures to stabilize its financial markets and economy as soon as possible and ensure the safety of China’s assets and investments in the U.S.,” Wang said. “To work together to tackle the financial crisis is the most pressing task that we are facing.”

Zhou urged the U.S. to increase savings, after excessive consumption and debt helped to trigger the crisis.

Emphasis mine. The Chinese are starting to wonder if the US was such a great investment after all.

Obama as a Weathervain

... and no I didn't misspell that word.

Our Grand Inquisitor has a nice post on Obama turning his back on the progressives.

Obama's liberal coalition has served its purpose - to get him elected - and will be replaced by those who will also serve their purpose - to keep him there.

I haven't been thinking of politics much lately, but one thing has struck me when I have. There is almost no way that Obama can have a set of core principles. None of his behaviors match up with one you would expect of someone with a definite vision for the world.

Conservatives railed appropriately against Obama's attendance of the racist, paranoid, lunatic church of Rev. Wright. When Obama threw him under the bus, conservatves were worried that this was only temporary and that Black Liberation believers would sweep into the White House along with Obama, should he be elected.

That's precisely what you would have expected from someone who actually believed what his pastor, spiritual mentor and friend of 20 years was preaching. It's clear now that Obama didn't believe much, if any of it. There's not a whiff of raving lunacy in any of his appointments. Most of them are just Clinton retreads.

How could you attend such a strident church for 20 years and not carry any of that philosophy with you? If you were someone with a vision, how could you leave that behind? If you had a purpose in life and you attended such a church regularly, that church's teachings would be in concert with your purpose, right?

The obvious conclusion is that there is no core to Obama outside of the squishiest of standard leftist pablum. More money for education, more money redistributed, more jobs programs and so on. The real Obama is interested in nothing more than Obama.

This is Obama's real purpose. Pomp and speeches in stadiums filled with adoring fans.

Blogging from my Linux Machine

... and enjoying it. My Windows XP machine is on the decline (again) and it's being backed up to Mozy right now. (If you don't use Mozy, please look into it. It's fantastic.) The biggest thing that keeps me using the XP machine is Adobe Creative Suite. Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Flash and Premiere Pro are too good to throw away. I can live a fulfilled life with OpenOffice instead of MS Office. Since almost everything I do is aimed at the Interweb Tubes, I don't really have much of a need for any of the other features on my XP machine, but Creative Suite is central to what I do.

Maybe staying with XP is kind of a security blanket. I know that I can find an application that does what I want that works on XP, no matter what that is.

I recently stumbled across LiVES, a Linux-based video editing package. It's free, of course. That might break me of my attachment to Adobe Premiere. I wonder what I can find to replace Photoshop, Flash and Dreamweaver ...

Help me Pick a Photo

... to blow up into a print and give to my fiancee for Christmas. These are roses from a garden that has a particular meaning to us. I went out and took a swarm of shots yesterday and these are the best three of the lot.

Red


White and Red


Pink


Vote now!

Cheezburger of the Day

more animals

It's not all bad News

Falling prices for stocks, commodities and real estate means your cash is worth more. For example, I filled my gas tank for $25 the other day. That's a reason to be cheerful. My 401(K) has been killed, but my current contributions are buying more shares per dollar than they used to. Jewelry costs less. Home prices have fallen to where a first home for a frugal, thrifty family is within reach or a rental property can almost pay for itself now. It's not all bad.

The recent financial crisis has made Dave Ramsey out to be a total genius as cash really has become king.

Can You Spot the Flaw in This?

Dig this.

"We must ... prevent the auto companies from collapsing, or we risk adding millions of more Americans to the unemployment line," Reid said. He said "any help must include specific requirements that ensure viability and strong oversight" of the industry.

Somehow, giving Congress strong oversight over an industry doesn't give me a lot of confidence about that industry becoming profitable again.

Pioneers vs. the Aristocracy

This is an addendum to my previous post asking, Where are the Pioneers?

Here is a photo from rural China.


It looks like the set of an updated Western. A Chinese Gary Cooper is probably driving a beaten up pickup through the streets right now.

Consider the comparison of 1880s America to 1880s France and England. How did that work out? Now consider the comparison of modern American and modern China.

Globalization makes the rich poorer and the poor richer as opportunities flow into what used to be an economic wilderness. If we want to compete with the folks who are seeing these opportunities for the first time, it would behoove us to spend more time re-learning the work ethic and morality of our pioneers and less time finding reasons to hate them.

1880s France and England deluded themselves into thinking they were our superiors. The aristocracy always does.

Nap Location #14

... the dining room chair.

Where are the Pioneers?

This morning I found this article in the Wall Street Journal dealing with a Federal program to send money to the states to buy up abandoned property and refurbish it.

AVONDALE, Ariz. -- In this Phoenix suburb, two townhouses stand vacant, filled with trash and abutting an empty neighborhood swimming pool covered with graffiti. But to Gina Ramos Montes and other city officials, the dilapidated properties look promising.

As part of the $4 billion Neighborhood Stabilization Program authorized by Congress in July, Avondale is set to receive $2.5 million to redevelop neighborhoods blighted by abandoned and repossessed homes.

Think about what this says about our culture. 150 years ago, American pioneers were moving into the wilderness where there were no structures at all and building homes and farms and towns. In Oklahoma, there was a mad rush for such land on March 2, 1889. Can you imagine the reaction you would have gotten from those settlers had there already been homes on the land?

Settlers in Oklahoma. The people pictured include representatives from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Agriculture and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Or maybe not.
Nowadays, we need the government to come in and make the houses ready for habitation by other citizens. Meanwhile, we've just blown our economy apart because we decided to help low-income people buy homes by making home loans so easy to get that dogs could qualify for the money. At the same time, we subsidize rental housing for single parent families with no expectations on them for morality or thrift. Tax credits for such people will soon be in the mail.

Now, no post on a topic like this would be complete without a quote from the ultimate spokesman for helping people believe in money-dispensing fairies, so here we go:

Rep. Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat and one of the program's main advocates on Capitol Hill, said in an interview that it "would have made a bigger difference if there were more money."

Is that classic, or what? We have abandoned homes, vandalized by neighbors who are most likely not even close to paying their share of the tax burden nor expected to do so, being rebuilt by the government with money borrowed from China that will be paid back by our children, assuming we don't simply vaporize our currency first.

Here's what might be the best part of all.

For new subdivisions, the city wants to entice buyers by subsidizing down-payments, closing costs and renovation expenses. The structures are solid, but the interiors are often damaged. Officials suspect that buyers might need a financial incentive before they'll take the plunge. "They're watching the TV," said Rogene Hill, the assistant city manager. "Everybody is getting bailed out. 'Why should I have to buy a refrigerator?' It's emotional, not rational."

Fantastic.

Wouldn't it be great to hold a seance with some of the Oklahoma settlers and let them know this was going on?

Last Week I Bought Some Grapes That I Didn't Eat And They Went Bad

... can I get the Federal government to buy them off of me?

WASHINGTON -- U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Thursday urged the government to consider sweeping steps to prevent foreclosures, including buying risky mortgages and refinancing them under more favorable terms to homeowners.

My grapes don't look like this any more. I want new ones.

Paris Hilton, MTV and Zombies

Considering the normal diet of your average zombie, I think that Paris Hilton's new TV show is the zombie equivalent of rice cakes.

The Upcoming Stimulus Package Explained by Fish

In the following instructional video, the food represents money you have borrowed from China and sent to the Federal government. The fish represent Washington lobbyists and contractors. What falls to the bottom of the aquarium represents your share of the stimulus package.

Cheezburger of the Day

more animals

Sunset Over Fallujah

A friend of mine here at work just gave me this photo she took while in Iraq. I thought it was a nice addition to the other sunset photos I've posted.

The Stimulus Bill Explained in Simple Terms

Here's a simple explanation of the massive stimulus bill that will soon be enacted by Barack Obama's incoming administration.

Every man, woman and child, from the 104-year-old woman with Alzheimer's in the managed care facility nearby to the baby boy born 5 minutes ago, will take out a loan for $3,000 from the Bank of China and hand that money to Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, people who have no experience in the private economy.

That will solve all of our problems.

And the Hits Just Keep on Coming

... hits to your kids' wallets, that is. Dig this.

PHILADELPHIA -- President-elect Barack Obama promised cash-strapped state governors support for an infusion of aid, but also warned of disappointment, saying the federal government wouldn't be able to fix all of states' budget problems ...

Before you blame Obama, try this tidbit on for size.

Republican governors told Mr. Obama they had qualms about what they called indiscriminate federal spending. "Every dollar they send to us is money they don't have," Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty said. "Meantime, that bill is being sent to our children and grandchildren."

But when the governors were asked at a news conference whether any would refuse new federal funding, no one from either party stepped forward. "None of us are comfortable with the $10 trillion in debt that has been amassed over the last several years. But for the short term, most governors agree some funds are needed for state and local governments," said Republican Vermont Gov. James H. Douglas, vice chairman of the National Governors Association.

Yay! Free money for everyone!

5 year olds at local kindergartens could not be reached for comment.

Thanks, Tim

A while back I posted a question about the digestive system of a gnat. I muddled about with it and then asked Tim over at The Backyard Arthropod Project to weigh in. He did so in his normal, fascinating way.

Go check it out. It's really cool.

Cheezburger of the Day

I thought this one was particularly clever.

more animals

Check This Out

Rather than borrow the photo, I'll just post a link.

Wow.

A Different way to see the Financial Crisis

There's an unstated theme coming out in the blogs and sites that I'm reading these days about the financial crisis. The government is fighting to maintain the status quo and keep the rich and powerful rich and powerful.

If GM declares bankruptcy, what happens? The UAW will lose a lot of power and chances are good that existing car dealerships and whole lines of cars will be eliminated from the GM brand. Components of the company will be sold off and new people will begin to manage them. The existing power players will be stripped of their power.

We've spent $10T stimulating the economy with borrowed money. Barack Obama wants massive stimulation with still more borrowed money. What happens if we don't do that? The government will not have goodies to hand out. People will have to rely on themselves rather than one political party or another. Power will leave Washington and move out to individuals. And what of the lobbyists after that?

On a smaller scale, this is happening in California as Governor Schwarzenegger declares a fiscal emergency. His proposal is not to obliterate whole sections of the budget, but instead to cut 10% across the board. If he cut out whole programs, then those program managers would no longer have cash to dole out.

We've leveraged and borrowed and spent in wild decades of partying. If you listen carefully, there is no plan for the distant future, there is only a series of short-term plans to continue the partying, to carry on with the existing culture and power structure.

In related news, Zimbabwe has cut off water supplies to the capital, Harare, because of a cholera outbreak. Soldiers are rioting in the streets because they can't get their (worthless) pay. Maybe driving the white farmers off their land a few years back wasn't such a good idea. Maybe hard work, skill and thrift meant something.

Government redistribution at work.

How to Change the Culture

... or at least the financial part of it comes from a tidbit in this post over at Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis.

Children who have seen their parents wiped out in bankruptcy or foreclosed on are going to have a completely different attitude towards debt than their reckless parents did. Expect to see more frugality from parents and their children alike.

You can't force prudish and thrifty behavior on people. Having said that, you can't escape the consequences of wild self-gratification, either.

Why Not Nuke the Lawless Areas of Pakistan?

... was a question posed by an emailer to some dingbat CNN panelist as I passed through the lobby of the building where I work where, for some inscrutable reason, we have a plasma TV broadcasting CNN.

The answer to this can be seen from any number of highly reputable sources, including Roger Corman films and the recent documentaries on superheroes like the Fantastic Four, Iron Man and the Not-Quite-So-Spectacular 16.

We don't want to have to face giant, mutant terrorists who have been given superpowers by the radiation.

I didn't really need to warn you about this, did I?

The Way Out Of Our Financial Mess

... leads straight through our children's wallets. And their children's, too.

As long as we don't have to exercise any financial or personal discipline, it's all OK, right?
H/T: Greg Mankiw.

Blogging from my Laptop

... stinks. But I have to do it this morning because my big desktop machine has decided to croak. Argh. I hope I can save the information off of it.

I used to use an online backup tool, but for whatever reason, when I rebuilt my machine the last time and downloaded all the saved info, I never started it back up again. That means all of my email, photos and whatnot are at risk.

That's the last time I do that.

Update: So now it boots up to the point where it asks me if I want to boot the rest of the way in safe mode. I decided take a chance and went for normal mode. Bad decision. It's lost in space now.

Danger, Will Robinson! You should have chosen safe mode!
Update 2: Hooray! I let it run and it finally booted all the way in normal mode! Now it's a mad race to move the important files onto my experimental Linux server and then restart the backup on the Internets Tubes.

Update 3: Files moved and Mozy restarted, it looks like I'll survive this crisis.

Cheezburger of the Day

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The New Orleans Saints Playoff Picture, Week 13

I'm a huge Saints fan. The reason why is a long story I may share on another day, but just take my word for it, I love the Saints. I also like to entertain and I love to cook Cajun / Creole food.

I've promised family and friends a monster bash if the Saints make the playoffs. Right now, the Saints are 10th in the NFC and they need to make their way up to 6th to make the last wild card playoff spot. The NFC South is too good to think that they'll be able to win the division.

Update: Never mind. The Saints lost today. They're 6-6 in a conference where 10-6 may not be good enough to make the playoffs. Argh. Just wait 'til next year.

If They Could Marry, Would it Have Been Different?

Japan's Kushiro Zoo has discovered that two female polar bears can't produce offspring.

The municipal zoo in the city of Kushiro in Hokkaido brought in a polar bear cub three years ago. They named it Tsuyoshi, after the popular baseball outfielder Tsuyoshi Shinjo, and waited until it reached reproductive age.

In June, the zoo introduced Tsuyoshi to its resident bear, an 11-year-old female named Kurumi, and waited for sparks to fly.

But much to the disappointment of zookeepers, Tsuyoshi never made any amorous advances toward Kurumi.

Earlier this month, zookeepers put Tsuyoshi under anesthesia to get to the bottom of the matter. That's when they made their discovery: Tsuyoshi is a female.

I think we should try marrying them to each other to see if that solves the problem.

H/T: Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis.

It's the Christmas Season in San Diego!

... and here are the palm trees to prove it!


Err, this looks exactly like summer time in San Diego, doesn't it?

Note: I took this photo from my phone. My phone. How great is it to be alive right now? Whenever my kids and I discuss just when we would like to have been alive, out of any time in history I always say right now.

A Convection Experiment

Dig this. It's the motion found in the asthenosphere, only with water and food coloring and not magma.

Update: I forgot to mention that we made this movie ourselves today with my son's Flip video camera. We were studying plate tectonics and I decided to try an experiment while she read. It worked, so we did it a second time and recorded it. A little post-processing with Adobe Premiere and voila!

Plate Tectonics for Kids

My daughter is learning earth science this year. She struggled a bit to figure out plate tectonics so I spent some time finding material on the Internets Tubes to help her out. First, I found some cool YouTube videos. Here's one.

Next I found some nice Google Earth overlays showing the Earth's plates and showing volcanic eruptions in the last 10,000 years.

It made a big difference in her understanding of the subject. Yay!

Cheezburger of the Day

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A Different View From Australia

Dig this.

Nov. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said the federal government and the states agreed to a A$15.1 billion ($9.9 billion) spending package that will create jobs as the country confronts the global financial crisis.

Seems normal enough. Every nation is doing this right now. What's the big deal?

Forecast budget surpluses will fund new spending to start this fiscal year and extend over the following four years.

Forecast budget whats?

The spending programs, which have an average timespan of four to five years, won’t push the government into deficit, and would allow it to maintain “a modest surplus,” Rudd said.

Amazing.

Culture Trumps All

What do these things have in common?

1. Robert Rubin taking no responsiblity for the catastrophe at Citigroup.

2. The obliteration of civlization in Oakland.

3. The recent election where both candidates pledged to give us hundreds of billions of dollars more goodies than we had earned.

4. The relentless attacks on the Boy Scouts.

5. The big 3 automakers and the UAW begging for bailouts from Washington.

Leave your answers in the comments.

Cheezburger of the Day

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Sympathy for Bernanke and Paulson

As I continue my attempts to educate myself about the financial crisis, I've got growing sympathy for the Bush team trying to keep this from becoming financial Armageddon. It's not like they made this mess in the first place. We did. Bigger houses we couldn't afford, more government programs we didn't want to pay for, boats, cars, life in the fastlane, we wanted it all and we didn't want to have to work for it. Instead, we borrowed ourselves into a catastrophe. It's a mirror image of the whole do-your-own-thing secular morality predominant in popular culture. Give me what I want because I want it.

Nouriel Roubini, writing over at Roubini Global Economic Analysis, a fellow who allegedly saw all of this coming, has a great (and long!) assessment of the situation. Because of the debts that we created - debts across the government, business and personal spheres - deflation must be fought at all costs and right now. Here's why.

In all of its forms and manifestations debt deflation sharply increases the risk that borrowers will be forced to default on real obligations that they cannot service. Thus, debt deflation is associated with a sharp rise in corporate defaults and household defaults that creates a spiral of deflation, debt deflation and defaults.

When you have deflation, existing dollars become worth more. That includes the existing debts you have. 5% deflation means your debts just increased by 5%. If you were on the hairy edge of insolvency before, deflation just pushed you over the cliff. That leads to a new round of bankruptcies and more deflation and more bankruptcies and on until only the very strong have survived.

The problem is even worse for banks who count on the values of the assets they hold as collateral (houses, cars, etc.) for loans. If those values drop, they no longer meet their asset to debt ratio requirements and they have to declare bankruptcy.

If Bernanke and Paulson are thrashing around, trying every wild scheme they can concoct, that's why. They're just trying to shove financial calamity down the road a bit. Instead of screaming and pointing fingers, maybe we ought to apologize to them. I doubt they dedicated themselves to becoming experts in their fields just so they could come and clean up after us after we turned the nation's finances into confetti.

It was Delicious!

... so I had some extra helpings. Does it show?

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to all visitors, regular readers and commenters from all of us at The Scratching Post. I'd deeply thankful for the chance to get to know all of you and for the contributions you make to our lives. I'm grateful to be able to learn from each of you and for the beauty and happiness you share with us.

Fall foliage in Korea, a gift sent to me by a blogging friend of mine at work.

Breaking the Link Between Money and the Real World

Over at the Caluclated Risk blog, it was noted that Woolworths, an old and storied chain of stores in England, is going out of business. In the comment thread of that post was this excellent analysis of what's happening right now.

Original comment: IMO consumer demand is contracting faster than retail capacity. We won't be able to close retail square footage fast enough to generate supply constraints pushing up prices.

Reply to that comment: This is the real world manifestation of deflation.

This is why I think people have it backwards - they look at the deflation in the monetary supply as a problem to be solved.

They ignore that money is just an engineered proxy for the real economy and that the monetary deflation is simply the money doing its job and reflecting what's happening in the real world.

So they think by stopping the monetary deflation they can stop it's real world analog. By making more dollars and credit the real world excess capacity goes away.

I think all they do is break the relationship between money and the real world.
Curing deflation is like curing your fuel gauge of reporting that your gas tank is empty.

It doesn't fill your tank up with gas; it just makes your fuel gauge useless.

That's kind of how this whole Keynesian stimulus business feels to me.

On Romance Novels and Eye Color

Doesn't every romance novel have some hero who has eyes "the color of the sea after a storm" or something like that? Well, we had a storm last night and I went down to Stonerville Ocean Beach and took a picture of the sea after the storm. It looked like this.


Now if I was going to write a romance novel, the hero would have eyes "the color of salt water infused with single-celled algae, decaying organic material and silt."

What do you think? Pretty racy, no?

I'm sure you enviro-weenies out there would like me to include some comment about polluted runoff from local city streets, but this is a romance novel, not a Greenpeace campaign brochure. I'm trying to be sensual here.

Start With The End In Mind

... or at least that's what I've read you should do.

The more I educate myself about the financial crisis, the less I understand just what it is we're trying to accomplish with all this thrashing around.

Is it job growth? No. Jobs come from profits. We don't like profits.

Is it long-term financial health? No. No one strives for long-term financial health by burying themselves in debt. Even the most profligate credit card hound doesn't lie to himself like that.

Is it eradicating poverty? No. We're several decades into the War on Poverty and we seem to be stuck in a quagmire. Besides, we've got mountains of statistical evidence telling us where poverty comes from and we ignore that because it sounds to prudicious.

The only thing I can think of as our goal is to get the incumbents re-elected. In order to do that, you've got to come up with short-term solutions and not tell the public that they need to change their behavior.

Bingo.

Are Necks Necessary?

I've got a terrible stiff neck today. In fact, I've had it for the last two days. It's really getting annoying. Sleeping was painful.

I thought I read once that necks were like your appenix - you didn't really need to have one. Is that true? Can I just have my neck removed and be done with this?

Cheezburger of the Day

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Changdeok Palace

A friend of mine at work just came back from a trip to Seoul, South Korea and posted some photos on her blog. It's on our intranet, so you can't see it from out here, but she gave me permission to share this photo from Changdeok Palace with you.


Lovely.

What if Obama has it Right?

Over at the Econbrowser blog, no one's idea of a haven for socialists, James Hamilton likes what he sees with Obama's economics team.

I recall the advice that Larry Summers offered when we were debating this issue last January:

First, to be effective, fiscal stimulus must be timely.... Second, fiscal stimulus only works if it is spent so it must be targeted.... Third, fiscal stimulus, to be maximally effective, must be clearly and credibly temporary-- with no significant adverse impact on the deficit for more than a year or so after implementation.

Although our current situation is more serious than the one we faced a year ago, I still believe that this is a correct articulation of the core principles to keep in mind ... I think Obama's announcements today may be just what the doctor ordered.

On the other hand, there's this news out of England.

There is now a palpable fear that global investors may start to shun British debt as the budget deficit rockets to £118bn - 8 per cent of GDP - or charge a much higher price to cover default risk ... Labour ran a budget deficit of 3pc of GDP the top of cycle. (We had a 2pc surplus at the end of the Lawson bubble, so we go into this slump 5pc of GDP worse off). The size of the state has ballooned from 37pc to 46pc of GDP in a decade, and will inevitably now rise further.

It is because Gordon Brown exhausted the national credit limit to pay for his silly boom that today's fiscal stimulus - just 1pc (per cent) of GDP (China is doing 14pc) - is enough to rattle the bond markets. Our national debt will jump in what is more or less the bat of an eyelid from under 40pc of GDP to nearer 60pc ...

It's worth noting that the US deficit and debt are higher that Britain's.

Keynesian economics tells you to borrow and spend when times are bad. However, there's an upper limit to that - an upper limit when everyone is so totally in debt that more borrowing produces no effect. In time, all of your borrowing goes to pay the interest on your previous borrowing and none of it goes to stimulation. As a reference point, the federal government now pays about $300B per year on interest on the debt. That will jump with these new, monstrous deficits.

What's the end goal look like for these stimulus packages? If the economy starts growing at 1% (robust growth by socialist European standards), but our interest payments are $500B per year, are we really better off? Does anyone, anywhere believe that these policies will ever lead to paying down the debt?

Update: Manchester blogger Dominic makes this point: "Keynes was born in a world where government spending was under 20% of GDP, Keynes studied in one of the largest conflicts the world had ever seen, when government spending was on average 25% of GDP."

Update 2: James Hamilton's readers are not so sanguine about Obama's choices.

If the above is the best Summers has to offer we are in big trouble. Timely, targeted, and temporary - does this mean whether the actual policy is good or bad. This is inane; it has no economic meaning. This could be said about Thanksgiving Dinner and be just as intelligent. Summers has extreme Keynesian ideas that will push consumption when our whole problem has been caused by government pushing consumption.

A Young Lady Needs a Transplant

... maybe you can help. Click on the image to get to the story.

Slinky Cat

I love it.

A Blogging Tip From a Catblogger

Sometimes it helps if you get away from your post and think about it for a while.

Money is Moving From Europe to Asia

... at least that's my semi-literate take on these three charts.

The first thing you need to realize is that you can't buy US securities and bonds with Euros or Yen. You first need to convert your foreign currency into dollars. That means there is a supply and demand for dollars and euros and yen. Similarly, you can't buy Australian securities without Australian dollars and so on for each country. There's a market for currency and it reflects, in part, where investment money is going.

Right now, the big investors are fleeing the market for the safety of short-term Treasury bills. These are short-term loans to the US government. Here's why.

The whole world, it seems, is rushing into Treasurys, and with reason. As asset prices melt globally, managers steering pension funds, foundations, hedge funds -- you name it -- are running for shelter.

They can't just dump tens of millions of dollars or more into their local bank. They need the liquidity of the Treasury market.

That won't last forever.

When the panic trade ends (Friday's markets offered a glimmer of hope), the pros will seek some degree of risk and will pull money out of Treasurys.

In any case, for the time being, the movement of money is clearly west-to-east.

2 year dollar vs. Euro chart. The dollar is worth a whole lot more Euros than it used to be. Money is fleeing Europe and coming to the US.

2 year dollar vs. Yen. Money is leaving the US and heading for Japan.
Money is leaving Europe.

Hmmm.

Yesterday's Soccer Game: A Contrast in Parental Motivation

My daughter does not play on a team that comes exclusively from the white bread section of town. Some of our families are a bit, how shall I say it, rough around the edges.

I love them.

Yesterday we played the preppy team. Down by two players for over half the game, we scrapped and fought to a 0-0 tie. I take photos during the game and this time, because of the angle of the sun, I had to shoot from the other team's sideline. Eventually, I just quit and came back to our sideline because I couldn't stand the treacle any more. Here's a comparison of the two teams' fans.

Them (after failing to beat a bedraggled and demoralized team they outmanned 11-9): "Oh, well played, girls! What a great game! Tiffany you were so close to scoring a goal! It wasn't very nice of them to play so rough.* Let's all go out for smoothies at Jamba Juice!"

Us: "¡Maria, si no jugar mejor, te voy a pegar ustede con un palo!"

* - We played a very clean game, if a bit physical.

Update: Before anyone gets the wrong impression, I was exaggerating for comic effect. No one is beating their daughters con un palo. We're just a bit more colorful than the other teams.

This has been my daughter's first year of club soccer and she's really enjoyed it. Her skills have gotten much better, but she sometimes plays timidly. With about 15 minutes left to go in the game, she became a ravening beast and was hip-checking her opponents all over the field. It was great. I found out later that the other team had been teasing our very short left midfielder because of her height. My daughter got angry and took it out on the other team.

Bad move, girls. You might want to use those smoothies as ice packs.

England Gets Worried

... and rightfully so.

Like Iceland, we boast a huge banking industry out of all proportion to the overall economy. Like Iceland, we have an unfunded depositor lifeboat scheme totally unequipped to grapple with failing banks. Like Iceland, our national output is dwarfed by the vast liabilities of our banks. Like Iceland, our banks for years scoffed at relying on domestic depositors to fund their activities and developed a dangerous addiction to wholesale money. Like Iceland, our Government is poised to go on a borrowing spree to try to soften the pain. Like Iceland, our currency is on the skids as foreign investors pull out.

You can't have what you don't produce, at least not for long. Those massive credit card debts, business debts and government debts made you feel rich, but if you didn't actually make anything, the bills are going to be hard to pay. Over at UK Bubble, there's a great post about England spending its way into deeper trouble. In that post, lies this great tidbit.

The greatest lie ever invented in modern economics was the one that said that the government budget does not work like a family budget. The idea is that governments can borrow from "within the family" and use the money to boost expenditure when times are rough. On the contrary, government finances are exactly like those of a family. If the father borrows, the children pay.

Barack Obama is being flippant about the $1T deficit we'll be running next year, but that shouldn't give the Republicans any solace. McCain wasn't going to be much better.

If all the governments in the world go on borrowing sprees at the same time, where will that money come from?

Yes, a Soccer Team Can Reinflate!

Yesterday, my daughter's team played the last game of the 2008 outdoor season. In the previous game, we managed to lose on a late-game, boneheaded play and it totally demoralized the team.

We started yesterday's game without our normal goalie. She was out sick or at some mandatory family event, I never did find out which. That immediately put us at a disadvantage since our team only has 11 players. At the end of the first half, one of our best midfielders went down with a slight knee injury. We played the rest of the game down 2 players, 11 on 9.

The girls played their most inspired and smartest half of the year and we managed a 0-0 tie. It was about as exciting a game as we'd had this year since most of the game was played right around our goal. Our makeshift goalie blocked some tough shots and there were a couple of times we nearly scored on breakaways. That tie was as exciting and uplifting as a playoff win.

So yes, a team can reinflate after a bad loss. Yay!

Now onto the 2008-9 indoor season.

Why Obama is Picking Clintonistas?

... it's because his resume is so thin.

Yes, lefties, your worst nightmare is coming to pass. Hillary, the woman you hate, is taking control after all. The One's cabinet is filling with her stooges and cronies. And why is that?

Remember what we were trying to tell you all along? That The Messiah had never accomplished anything in his life? It was true and it mattered. When normal presidents come into office, they bring along trusted friends from previous jobs. Clinton brought in his Arkansas buddies and Texans came along with Bush. Obama has never done anything in his life and he has no team to bring along. He's an empty suit, a hot air balloon and now we're getting an idea of what that means.

Once the Clintonistas are in place, he'll have as much control over them as he would have with a pack of Somali pirates. None. Oh, he'll see them in cabinet meetings and give them orders, but in the other 39 hours of their work week, they'll be talking to each other and doing what they want. They've got the bonds that come with years of working together, of accomplishing things as a team, a team of Clintonistas.

He's got nothing of his own except his photogenic family and a bag of rhetoric.

Cheezburger of the Day

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James Bond as Pantywaist

This week on Poliwood, there's a great discussion of the feminization of men in film and our culture. They make intriguing comparisons between the male and female roles throughout the history of film. Their next episode will discuss the new James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, but I wanted to post about it here and now.

I like Daniel Craig as James Bond. He's as masculine as they come. I liked Casino Royale up until the torture scene and then it totally fell apart for me. I hate Quentin Tarantino films and it felt like a great Bond movie devolved into some trashy slaughterhouse flick.

Having said that, the Poliwood theme of celluloid androgyny is alive and well even in the recent Bond movies. I love Judi Dench as an actress; I hate her as M. She gives the feeling that Bond can be as manly as he wants, but in the end all of his skills are subordinated to a woman. Since he is so completely over the top with testosterone, she, by inference, becomes an utterly controlling dominatrix and he becomes her submissive victim.

The films have always been colored with a conflict between M and Bond. He's running off doing what he thinks is right and M is trying to exert some kind of control over him. I thought the best of these was the Timothy Dalton movie, License to Kill. That conflict between M (played by Robert Brown) and Bond had no sexual overtones. It was a classic dramatic component.

In modern movies, however, such men are essentially sick and need to be either controlled or cured. The theme of the Bond movies with Judi Dench as M has been that Bond is outside of acceptable behavior, he's a necessary evil that, properly controlled by a woman, serves the needs of the state.

Yuck.

How different is this from the traditional male roles in film? Check out this, the end of The Maltese Falcon, and try to imagine it being shown in a theater today. Try, if you can, to see even a modern James Bond character, the man who personifies masculinity, doing this while under the control of a female M.

In recent Bond movies, the James Bond character has sent female villains to jail or their graves. But in the end, he comes back to be judged and controlled by the dominatrix. In the case of Sam Spade and other movies from that era, he is judged by his own innate sense of what it means to be a man. No dominatrixes need apply.

Creamy Orange and Red Sunset

So I'm driving along this evening and the sunset is gorgeous. It's a really unusual one, all creamy clouds reflecting a red and orange glow. I'm prepared this time, too. My fiancee's point-and-shoot camera is in my car's glove box. Admittedly, it's not my Nikon artillery piece, but it still takes great pictures.

Unfortunately, I'm driving my truck. I got nothin'.

Argh.

You Know Your Business is in Trouble When ...

... when political talk show hosts all across the radio dial are coming up with solutions for your problems.

Congratulations to Granpa Wollf!

Our Pater of Prowling is now a Grandpa of Prowling! Congratulations, old boy!

Live Piracy Map and Root Causes

Thanks to the Great Powers Politics blog, we've discovered a live piracy map. Here's a closeup on the Somali pirates' oparea.


Most attacks have come up north in the Gulf of Aden. The MV Sirius Star was nabbed way down south, off the coast of Kenya.

It's a massive area to have to patrol and none of the local navies have enough ships to monitor the whole place, looking for tiny fishing boats with pirates. Most of the fishing boats in the area do not have pirates and short of invoking the Roman Option, you can't just go down there and sink everything.

Having said that, the Great Powers Politics post linked above has this tidbit.

(A)long with the Indian Navy, the US and NATO are in charge of patrolling the Gulf of Aden, Horn of Africa, Indian Ocean, and other near by waterways where the pirates are most active, but their mandate is too weak. The US has the most powerful blue water navy in the world by far, yet it does not have legitimate rights to police pirates unless they are in the act of committing a crime.

We play by one set of rules, they play by another. The Great Powers post goes on to say this.

(T)he root of the problem is a lack of opportunity in the state of Somalia. Young men who have chosen the life of a pirate need to have other more legitimate options at making a living.

Here's where we part company. The US doesn't have to care what the root cause is. As we are discovering in the financial world, we've spent everything we have and much of our future wealth dealing with root causes that are actually someone else's problem. No one else is concerned with our root causes, so it's stupidity to be concerned with theirs.

The Roman Option was used by the Romans because it was cost effective and they didn't worry about root causes. Their response to annoyances like this was, "Cut it out or we'll kill you all." The Romans were experts at killing people and smashing things. So are we. We're about to blow through $1T in budget deficits in FY09. Efficiency in dealing with things like this had better start to matter.

Your Message From IT Security for Today

"We will be coming over to poke each of in the eye with a sharp stick. If we do not make it to your office before close of business, please poke yourself in the eye with a sharp stick."

We had a security threat that has led us to shut down PCs across our network. We were given a deadline to update our machines or face networking blocking, but management has decided to block PCs well ahead of schedule after which an email was sent out warning that network blocks would start occurring.

The email never reached its intended victims users because they couldn't get on the network to read it.

Yay!

It's Nice Work If You Can Get It

$25M for a day's labor.

Nov. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Somali pirates are demanding $25 million in ransom to release an oil-laden Saudi supertanker seized off the East African coast, and called on the ship's owners to pay up ``soon.''

And just how did our little friends come to this number?

``What we want from this ship is only 25 million dollars because we always charge according to the quality of the ship and the value of the product,'' a pirate who identified himself as Abdi Salan, one of the hijacking gang, said in a phone interview from Harardhare.

Well, that sounds reasonable to me! $25M would go a long way towards getting at the root causes of piracy which, as we all know, are poverty and injustice.

I've Seen It

... but I still don't believe it.

Don't Ask

... just go read this. Awesome.

Somali Piracy and Multiculturalism

If all cultures are equally valid and morally equivalent, then why can't our response to the Somali pirates be the one their culture would practice? Or is there some kind of inherent contradiction in secular humanism, moral equivalence and multiculturalism?

A culturally valid and morally equal response to Somali piracy.
I'd write more, but it's time for me to go to my Kwanzaa preparation classes.