cotton

Cotton’s rally bodes well for the economic recovery, as it is the longest leading economic indicator of all the commodities. From a bag of cottonseeds to a T-shirt, it takes about 18 months as it goes through planting, ginning, spinning and weaving. “No other raw material takes that long and is influenced by that many different things,” Mr. Lawson said.

Banks still fucked

...according to data compiled by Bloomberg (see table below). Citigroup’s 2011 EPS is forecast to be 89 percent lower than in 2006, while Bank of America and Zurich-based UBS AG will probably fall more than 60 percent below 2006 levels on a per- share basis, estimates show.

Bank Reported Estimated Change
2006 EPS 2011 EPS


Bank of America $4.72 $1.53 -68%

Barclays GBP 0.67 GBP 0.39 -42%

Citigroup $4.25 $0.45 -89%

Credit Suisse CHF 7.53 CHF 5.74 -24%

Deutsche Bank EU 12.48 EU 7.79 -38%

Goldman Sachs $19.69 $18.53 -5.9%

HSBC GBP 1.22 GBP 0.99 -19%

JPMorgan Chase $3.82 $4.64 +21%

Morgan Stanley $6.82 $3.34 -51%

UBS CHF 5.17 CHF 1.99 -62%

-Bloomberg

Greg Mankiw on libertarian public universities

At a faculty lunch yesterday, I heard about an ingenious scheme used by some universities in New York, where much rental housing is rent controlled. Here are the three key elements, as it was described to me by one of my colleagues:

1. The university buys a rent-controlled building. The purchase price is low, because the existing landlord cannot make much money renting it.

2. The university then rents the apartments to its own senior faculty, who view this as a great perk. In essence, the difference between the free-market rent and the controlled rent is a form of compensation for the professor. As a result, the university can reduce the professor's cash compensation by an equivalent amount. The university is effectively earning the market rent for the apartment.

3. But it gets even better. The implicit rental subsidy is a form of non-taxed compensation. Normally, if an employer gives an employee a perk like this, the subsidy is taxable income (unless the perk is deemed a working condition required to do the job, like a hotel manager living in a hotel). But here, the university can claim there is no subsidy: It is only charging what the rent-control law requires. Because of this tax treatment, the implicit subsidy is worth even more to the professor than the equivalent cash compensation. This fact allows the university to reduce the professor's cash compensation by an even greater amount. Thus, the university effectively earns even more than the free-market rent on a real estate investment purchased much lower than the free-market price would have been.

In the end, the goal of the rent control laws is thwarted (the low rents are enjoyed by well-paid tenured faculty rather than the needy), the income tax laws are thwarted (a sizable part of compensation is untaxed), and all this is done by a nonprofit institution (the university) whose ostensible purpose is to serve the public interest.

buying it

Although the “science” of this kind of marketing is sometimes debated and questions constantly arise about the messy, qualitative side of this discipline—something I can discuss more, later on—powerful statistics act as a call to shopper marketing. Namely:

—70% of brand selections are made at stores

—68% of buying decisions are unplanned, and

—5% of consumers are loyal to the brand of just one product group (Stahlberg & Maila 2010)

In other words, while sometimes highly effective, there seems to be something very ineffective with traditional marketing, advertising and branding efforts. As a result, shopper marketing budgets are growing rapidly.

Problem

Economists will say–and they have the studies to back it up–that employees actually pay the full cost of premiums (including the “employer” share) in the form of slower wage growth. Nevertheless, few workers understand this. The perception is that only the employee share is paid by workers. But that’s gone up too, so perception and truth align. Employees are paying more.

life

The Olive Garden brand is built around the notion that guests are treated like family, but Pickens knows that isn't likely to happen unless employees feel like family too. Employees, he says, need to believe that serving meals and cleaning tables and cooking pasta in a hot kitchen is meaningful. "It's very difficult for the experience of the guests to exceed the experience of the staff," Pickens says. "We put the two together."

American Values

The conservative conception of American identity is so selective and so specific that it tends to suggest to its adherents that many (maybe even most!) Americans aren’t real Americans, or are Americans who betray real American ideals. Birther and Muslim Obama memes crudely reify the logical upshot of the right’s fixation on its favored version of American identity. Most conservatives don’t need to believe that Obama is literally an un-American non-Christian. They’re just content to nod along with Glenn Beck when he implies, or outright asserts, that a guy who adheres to a mundane version of liberal politics slightly to the right of the typical “This American Life” fan is hell-bent on destroying the special Americaness of America.

War is Over

It’s hard to have an honest emotional response or even know what one feels. After seven years of war, the occasion deserves some weight of feeling, but many Americans stopped paying attention a long time ago. And that’s exactly why the President made his announcement: because Americans want the war to be over, have wanted it for years. Tonight he told us what we wanted to hear. August 31, 2010, will go down in history as the day Americans could start not thinking about the war without feeling guilty.

Remember Mark Rich? The Republicans should have fellated him.

A typical Marc Rich & Co trade involved Iran (under the Shah), Israel, Communist Albania and Fascist Spain. The Shah needed a path to export oil probably produced in excess of OPEC quotas and one which was unaudited and hence could be skimmed to support the Shah’s personal fortune. Israel - a pariah state in the Middle East - wanted oil. Spain had rising oil demand and limited foreign currency but was happy to buy oil (slightly) on the cheap. Spain however did not recognise Israel and hence would not buy oil from Israel - so it needed to be washed through a third country. Albania openly traded with both Israel and Spain. Oh, and there is an old oil pipeline which goes from Iran through Israel to the sea.

So what is the deal? The Shah sells his non-quota oil down the pipeline through Israel and skims his take of the proceeds. Israel skim their take of the oil. Someone doing lading and unlading in Albania gets their take and hence make it - from the Spanish perspective - Albanian, not Israeli oil. The Spanish ask few questions. The margins are mouth-watering - and they all come from giving people what they really want rather than what they say they want. We know what the Shah wanted (folding stuff). We know what Israel wanted (oil). We know what Spain wanted (cheap oil). Who cares that Spain was publicly spouting anti-Israel rhetoric. [Similar trades allowed South Africa to break the anti-Apartheid trade embargoes.]

It also helped that Marc Rich & Co was a (highly) multilingual firm. Rich is fluent in Spanish (it is the language he talks to his children in). He speaks English, German, Yiddish and presumably Hebrew. His business partner (Pincus Green - pardoned the same day as Rich) speaks Farsi amongst many other languages. They could do this deal because they could negotiate it and - deep in their heart they hold the Ayn Rand view that trade is a moral virtue and hence they do not need to be concerned with other morality. [The only line that matters is the law - and then it might not be the law of his adopted country - Switzerland - rather than the United States where he was resident.]

Update on Corp. Boards

Many of the boards we have come across are populated by individuals who rely on the stipends they receive from numerous corporate boards and thus appear motivated primarily to ensure continuing board fees, first-class air travel and accommodations, and a steady diet of free corned beef sandwiches until they reach their mandatory retirement age. We are therefore encouraged by the recently finalized proxy rules, which will ease the nomination and election of directors by shareholders.

Sentence of the day

By the time a cake-mix jingle writer is giving Don a hummer while humming “The Star Spangled Banner,” we know we’re in for a cynical riff on the secrets of American success.
-NYMAG

Business Update

And this:

In a recent survey of more than three hundred big companies a few years ago, eighty per cent described themselves as delivering “superior” service, but consumers put that figure at just eight per cent.

China Fact of the Day

China has an extremely high investment rate, perhaps the highest ever recorded for a medium or large economy. Countries with high investment rates should normally run trade deficits, since there is so little left over of their production for them to consume that they must import the balance. This is what happened, for example, to the US during most of the 19th Century.

But China has probably the highest trade surplus ever recorded. This means that an extraordinarily large portion of its production is invested, and another extraordinarily large portion is exported. So what about consumption? The only way a country can run an extraordinarily high investment rate and an extraordinarily high trade surplus is if consumption is extraordinarily low.

MPettis

This

China Fact of the Day

Chinese consumers, when asked, will detail how household expenses have changed in the past decade. Medical costs are the No. 1 concern for 84 percent of China’s rural residents, according to a recent survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit. Officially, medical prices are only up 2.8 percent so far this year. That number does not include the cost of gifts to hospital doctors and administrators to ensure adequate care.

...One-year deposit rates at 2.25 percent have not been changed since November 2008, which means Chinese savers are actually losing money now that inflation has passed 3 percent

This is the way back japan

Dear Masanori and Kiyoko,

Even though you can't see me, I'll always be watching you. When you grow up, follow the path you like and become a fine Japanese man and woman. Do not envy the fathers of others. Your father will become a god and watch you two closely. Both of you, study hard and help out your mother with work. I can't be your horse to ride, but you two be good friends. I am a cheerful person who flew a large bomber and finished off all the enemy. Please be an unbeatable person like your father and avenge my death.

From Father

Sure

Venezuela is struggling with a decade-long surge in homicides, with about 118,541 since President Hugo Chávez took office in 1999, according to the Venezuelan Violence Observatory, a group that compiles figures based on police files.
-NYT

Thank a farmer

Each pound of wheat contains about 1500 food calories (i.e., kilo calories), and a person needs about 2500 calories per day. A year’s supply of calories for a person is in the neighborhood of 900,000, which in wheat units is 600 lbs. In simple terms, during a day of work Clint can supply the annual food needs of 100 people. Of course he and his dad Mike also spent days prepping and sowing the field, and there are hours planning, maintaining equipment, and marketing, etc., but in total the amount of time actually spent with machines on that 25 acres is probably only a week or so. And since Clint and his family manage to farm several hundred acres it all works out to about 100 people fed by one guy like Clint, which is typical for the US food system.

Let's Go!

“What is so exciting about yams? Everything!” Zobi, a taxi-driving muppet, shouts in a Nigerian lilt to anyone who will listen. “I can fry the yam. I can toast it. I can boil it. I love yams!”
-Nigeria

True again.

That said, my main problem with the piece was simply the fact that there wasn't much of an attempt at making class distinctions. It delves into the "extended adolescence" of relatively sheltered graduates from major universities, but what about the mass of 20-somethings who either didn't go to college or pursued degrees at community colleges and local universities? I graduated from a high school of roughly 2,400 people in 2005, and judging from the Facebook profiles of those I graduated with, many of my former classmates have built fairly adult lives for themselves. Most have jobs and live independently of their parents. Some have spouses or long-term partners, a few have children. For those who do live with their parents, it has less to do with maturity and more to do with the terrible job market. Obviously, anecdotes can't substitute for statistical data, but I'd wager that the above is true for many 20-somethings of modest means.

One last point: I'm not convinced there is an extended adolescence, but insofar as there is, I think we should consider it the product of economic changes decades-long in the making. A generation or two ago, you didn't need luck and a college degree to get a job with decent pay and benefits; with a high school education -- or less -- you could get a union job or learn a trade. You wouldn't be rich, but you could start a family and a build a stable life. The absence of those jobs goes a long way toward explaining the purported rise of late-onset adulthood.

True

The book value of the stock market — the value of its assets minus the value of its liabilities — has, on this view, been declining steadily of late, as the size of America’s liabilities has steadily risen. This is why people lump Spain in with Greece: while Spain’s liabilities are largely in the private sector and Greece’s liabilities are largely in the public sector, ultimately it’s the economy as a whole which is responsible for them.

The German Will Fear Us

Photos of Pre-War German Cities:


Did you know that the National Socialists wanted to build a skyscraper in Hamburg taller than the Empire State Building with a gigantic neon swastika on top to serve as a beacon for ships at sea?

Radioshack College

Let me make this more concrete. Perry notes that, in 1964, Radio Shack sold a stereo system nobody today would want for $379.95. 1964 also happens to be the year my parents started college at the University of Michigan. According to Michigan's Bentley Library, in-state tuition that year for freshmen and sophomores was $140 ($155 for juniors and seniors.) So, a stereo cost more than a year of college in Ann Arbor. Is life so much better now? Yes if you're a middle-class person who wants a stereo. No, if you're a middle-class person who wants a college degree. Now, most people today would consider a college education overwhelmingly more valuable than a stereo, and find it hard to believe that there was a time when the latter was comparably priced eith the former.

America the NYT pg1. photo

So sad now

Books I have enjoyed more after reading Wikipedia plot sumaries

HP

On the other hand, putting up dazzling short-term numbers that have the effect of enriching himself while robbing H.P.’s future — isn’t that what a C.E.O. should be fired for? Firing Mr. Hurd for that reason, however, would have taken courage, something that has always been in short supply on the H.P. board.

May 21 2001

Commentary: Sorry, Steve: Here's Why Apple Stores Won't Work
New retail outlets aren't going to fix Apple's sales

Rated R

...a vaguely sensual, mid-tempo, falsetto-chorused burner that Homme occasionally introduced in concert by pointing at some dude in the crowd who was displeasing him and announcing, "This is a song about fucking that guy's girlfriend.

Arcade Fire Alpharetta 8/11

“Ready To Start”
“Neigborhood #2 (Laika)”
“No Cars Go”
“Haiti”
“Half Light II (No Celebration)”
“Empty Room”
“The Suburbs”
“Ocean of Noise”
“Keep the Car Running”
“We Used To Wait”
“Neigborhood #3 (Power Out)”
“Rebellion (Lies)”
“Month of May”
“Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)”

Encore:
“Intervention”
“Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)”
“Wake Up”

Observations
-I observed three black people
-Lots of high school kids which is great
-Lots of asians which is bad
-Concert ended at 11:15 I got home at 11:30

Nerd blogger and socialist discuss current events

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN—As members of the international press looked on, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton rode on horseback through the streets of Kabul Monday, dragging the mutilated remains of Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Jalil through the dirt behind her. "Graaaaaggghh!" Clinton shouted as a frenzied crowd of supporters shot AK-47s into the air. Earlier in the day, Clinton had led a band of mercenaries through rugged mountain terrain to hunt down Jalil, whom the former senator eviscerated with a single stroke of her gleaming scimitar. U.S. soldiers marched alongside the triumphant, blood-soaked Clinton to the center of Kabul, where she ordered the Taliban leader's gutted body be hung from the town's tallest spire, where "all may behold it." White House sources confirmed that upon returning to Washington, Secretary Clinton burst into the Oval Office, threw Jalil's head down on the president's desk, and let out a deafening war cry

Major plot holes in movies

Independence Day: not only can Jeff Goldblum's Mac manage to connect to the alien systems, it can also bring the entire fleet to it's knees (and display a lovely animated GIF on their monitors).

Considering they're supposed to be thousands of years ahead of us, that's akin to bringing down the internet using a virus written on stone tablets.

Answer:

There was a scene cut out of the movie that explains it. All of human computer technology is based off of the OS found in the ship in Area 51.

The Dutch on Quants

The acceleration of addictiveness

You can probably take it as a rule of thumb from now on that if people don't think you're weird, you're living badly.

Sigh

There were just 25 U.S. noncombatant fatalities from terrorism worldwide. (The US government definition of terrorism excludes attacks on U.S. military personnel). While we don't have the figures at hand, undoubtedly more American citizens died overseas from traffic accidents or intestinal illnesses than from terrorism.

Lawyerings

BRK

Buffett has accumulated losses for Berkshire on equity derivatives since the 2008 financial crisis. The contracts, which mature starting in 2018, lose value when stock indexes decline. Berkshire’s second-quarter profit plunged 40 percent after the derivative bets on equity markets accounted for a $1.8 billion paper loss in the period.

Berkshire’s counterparties on the deals paid $4.9 billion in premiums, and Buffett arranged the contracts to minimize the collateral requirements his company could face. Liabilities tied to the equity contracts and the firm’s portfolio of credit- default swaps were about $10.5 billion at June 30. The company’s collateral provisions at that date were $173 million.

and...

By my calculations, Berkshire are short a staggering $280m vega marked now at an average vol in the low 30s. That is to say each 1% move in implied volatility impacts their portfolio by $280 million.

Excellent Sentences

"He was fun," Patrizia says about the fucking of the Presidente. "If it weren't for the videos I had to watch and the songs we had to sing. And the girls. The girls offering themselves to him. That I didn't care for."

"...In his bedroom, there was an enormous bed ringed in curtains, bigger than any bed D'Addario had ever seen. This is Putin's bed, he said. It was given to me by Vladimir Putin. They are close friends. The fall after this episode comes to light, he'll join Putin in St. Petersburg to celebrate Putin's fifty-seventh birthday. People like to guess what it is that Putin finds so companionable about Berlusconi, or if whatever it is can be deduced from the fact that Putin gave him a five-person bed as a gift."

-GQ

Yes!

I will be far away from any internet connection on August 10th, when the next Fed policy decision is announced. (I am assuming that the internet has not yet reached western Wyoming.) Thus I thought I would give you my reaction to the decision right now, before I left.

So here’s my reaction to the decision:

Very bad: The Fed does nothing significant. Maybe just a slight change in wording. The Dow falls several hundred points.

Bad: The Fed does something minor. Perhaps it promises to maintain the monetary base at current levels by purchasing T-bonds as the more unconventional assets are gradually sold off. The Dow falls slightly. (Actually, people are now so discouraged that this might be viewed as good news.)

Good: The Fed promises additional QE. The Dow rises significantly.

Outstanding: Fed announces both QE and an end to interest on reserves. The Dow soars by 500 points.

Inception: Leonardo DiCaprio penetrates three layers into the dreams of Hoenig, Fisher and Plosser. Inserts 500 posts from TheMoneyIllusion.com. Convinces the three that these are actually their own ideas. The Fed does QE, ends interest on reserves, and sets an explicit NGDP target, level targeting. The Dow soars 1000 points. We get a 1983/84-style recovery. Obama re-elected and strikes a grand bargain with the GOP to replace the income tax with progressive consumption tax.

-Money Illusion

These people don't want jobs!

The job market itself also has changed. During the crisis, companies slashed millions of middle-skill, middle-wage jobs. That has created a glut of people who can't qualify for highly skilled jobs but have a hard time adjusting to low-pay, unskilled work like the food servers that Pilot Flying J seeks for its truck stops.

Companies offering middle-skilled jobs can be flooded with applicants. Laquita Stribling, a senior area vice president in Nashville for staffing firm Randstad, says she received several hundred applications for a branch manager job that might have attracted a few dozen candidates before the recession.

But other employers with lots of applicants say the pool of qualified workers is small for specialized jobs. Carolyn Henn, head of hiring at environmental consultancy Apex Companies, says she recently received about 150 applications for an industrial hygienist job paying as much as $47,000 a year, which requires special certifications and expertise to oversee projects such as asbestos cleanups. That is about three times the amount she received for similar jobs before the recession. But she says the number of qualified applicants—about five—is less than she got before.

a 52-year-old mechanic in Lumberton, N.C., says he turned down more than a dozen offers during the 59 weeks he was unemployed, because they didn't pay more than the $450 a week he was collecting in benefits. One auto-parts store, he says, offered him $7.75 an hour, which amounts to only $310 a week for 40 hours.

"I was not going to put myself in a situation where I was making that small of a wage," says Mr. Hatchell. He has since found a better-paying job at a different auto-parts dealer.

At Emirates, four cabin-crew job fairs the airline held in Miami, Houston, San Francisco and Seattle attracted an average of about 50 people each, compared to a global average of about 150 and as many as 1,000 at some events in Europe and Asia. "I would have liked to have seen more and would have expected to see more," says Rick Helliwell, vice president of recruitment.

The jobs require little more than a high-school diploma and fluency in English. They include free accommodation and medical care, and starting pay of about $30,000 a year. Mr. Helliwell speculates that Americans might be hesitant TO MOVE TO DUBAI, where the jobs are based. "Maybe they have less of an adventurous spirit" given the uncertainties they face at home, he said.

-WSJ, Some Firms Struggle to Fill Jobs with assholes who probably voted for Obama and should have their benefits cut

Oh.

A memo sent to the panel Thursday night by the New York company included an analysis of derivatives-based revenue at Goldman from 2006 through 2009, said the person familiar with the matter. Based on the percentages provided by Goldman, such businesses generated $11.3 billion to $15.9 billion of the company's $45.17 billion in net revenue for 2009.

Add this to my high school time machine required reading list

Our findings confirm previous research indicating that overweight or obese girls are less likely to be sexually active than other girls. The authors also found that as a result of being less sexually active, overweight or obese girls are less likely to have vaginal intercourse without a condom. However, overweight or obese girls are not less likely to have sex under the influence of alcohol, and once they have had vaginal intercourse, their consistency of condom use is no different from that of their recommended-weight peers. Our most striking finding however, is that overweight or obese girls are at least 15% more likely than their recommended-weight peers to have had anal intercourse.

These findings make clear the importance of going beyond the question of just any sexual intercourse when characterising the sexual behaviour of teenage girls. Our findings also illustrate the benefits of using multifaceted and contemporary measures of risky sexual behaviour. If we had only considered outcomes related to vaginal intercourse, we would have concluded that overweight and obese girls are less likely than their recommended-weight peers to engage in risky sexual behaviour.

-VOXEU

I learn much.

What they do is rather than have 200 different computers throughout their business they have maybe one, at most three different models in use at any time. These computers are essentially identical and they have – sitting on the IT guys desk – three exact clones. When new software arrives (say for example a Microsoft update) the software is thoroughly tested on the three clone computers to make sure it produces no glitches. If the software (or hardware upgrade for that matter) causes no problems they roll it out across the network with all the computers being changed when staff power them up in the morning. The system works because the IT specialist controls “what is in the box”. By controlling what is in the box (often restricting the right of staff to load their own software) they get Apple levels of reliability but the ability to buy Wintel priced hardware. They do however pay a price on hardware – which is that they often get tied to exact specifications for computers. If their business expands they can either (a) get a new computer specification in or (b) order more computers under the old specification. When they do the latter (which would be most the time) the hardware maker has leverage – and selling old computers to business at old prices can be surprisingly profitable. [After computers should fall in cost by about a percent per week – so selling an old computer at an old price is a massive winner for the vendor... and is an important part of Hewlett Packard’s business.] Big business – through standardization – are – in this view – trying to emulate the advantage of being Apple.

Bronte Capital

Yes.

"There is nothing more annoying than Conceptual Artists/Bands who have allegedly garnered mainstream praise," Carles goes on. "I think the main gimmick behind these bands is convincing yourself that their 'product' stands for something more than music."

Pause and let the Dipset reference sink in. We've reached another ass to ass moment. There is nothing more annoying than people liking music for the wrong reasons? Not to pull a Chuck Eddy, but are there wrong reasons for listening to music? If blasting DMX out your Wrangler as you're pulling into some high school girl's driveway makes you feel awesome, makes you feel like a fucking bad-ass, is that wrong? If listening to metal makes you feel tougher, less insecure, is it my job to tell you that you are an idiot? You know when some people say "music is like a drug for me", this is what they're talking about: the simple act of listening to music makes them feel good. Imagine someone saying "You're enjoying heroin for all the wrong reasons." Are there right reasons? Is ‘empirical knowledge as to the effects heroin has on my body’ the right reason? I don't think so! Regardless of the myriad horrible reasons that might lead them to it, people probably do heroin because it makes them feel good.

In the Hipster Runoff universe, the only acceptable worldview is blowing up the hospital. HRO needs rugs, and people to stand on them, so that it can pull it out from them and show how stupid they were for thinking they were safe, for “pretending” they knew who they were. Just like Gawker, HRO won't stop until we're all too afraid to do anything, to step on the rug and take a fucking chance, to give a shit. Until we're all crippled by self-consciousness, and the worry of making a mistake. The targets will get younger and softer until we're laughing at thirteen year olds and ten year olds and five year olds, how stupid they are, how they embarrass themselves, how they believe they can do things it's so obvious to the rest of us they just can't do--so fucking obvious because we know so fucking much.

And thus a great sentence was born

“But please understand, sexual concerns are far from being the dominant concerns in space. It’s down here on the list.” With his hand, he indicates a level down by his knee. “It would just be a nice supplement. But when we talk about five hundred days, it’s true, this problem starts to grow higher on the list.” He believes a Mars crew should be made up of couples, to help ease the tension that builds during a long mission. According to NASA’s Norbert Kraft, the agency has considered sending married couples into space. When they asked his opinion on the matter, he discouraged it. His reasoning was that an astronaut might find himself with an untenable choice: jeopardizing his spouse or jeopardizing the mission. Astronaut Andy Thomas, who is married to astronaut Shannon Walker, told me another reason NASA shies away from flying married couples. In the event of a crash or explosion, they don’t want one family to have to endure a double loss, particularly if the couple has children.

Laveikin listens, then amends his statement: “Not necessarily married.”

“That’s right,“ says Lena. “There would be a different ethic there. When you come back to Earth, your wife should understand that at that time it was like different dimension, different rules, different you.”

Laveikin concurs. “My wife is a clever person. She would understand. She’d say, ‘You’re not completely faithful even on Earth. Let it be in space as well.’”

-Cosmonauts on a future Mars mission

Famous Actors Cut from Movies

Billy Bob Thornton, Martin Sheen, Gary Oldman, Bill Pullman, Lukas Haas, Viggo Mortensen, and Mickey Rourke, The Thin Red Line (1998)

For his first film since 1978’s Days Of Heaven, famed writer-director Terrence Malick brought together seemingly every male star in Hollywood, including Sean Penn, George Clooney, John Cusack, Woody Harrelson, Nick Nolte, John C. Reilly, John Travolta, Thomas Jane, and many, many more. But a cavalcade of big names fell victim to his unusual working methods and 20th Century Fox’s understandable reluctance to release a five-hour-plus movie. Billy Bob Thornton, Martin Sheen, Gary Oldman, Bill Pullman, Lukas Haas, Viggo Mortensen, and Mickey Rourke were all eventually cut from Malick’s loose, largely improvised adaptation of James Jones’ anti-war novel. Malick began with a script that served only as a loose outline, then shot enough material for his five-hour cut. When The Thin Red Line was shortened considerably, plenty of heavyweight thespians ended up on the cutting-room floor. Malick has hinted that he might someday release a director’s cut restoring their roles and greatly expanding the roles of actors who did make it into the film, but given the pace at which he works, cultists shouldn’t hold their breath waiting.

-AV Club

????

From the NYT:
Quantifying just how much taxpayer money will have been wasted on the hastily developed Volt is no easy feat. Start with the $50 billion bailout (without which none of this would have been necessary), add $240 million in Energy Department grants doled out to G.M. last summer, $150 million in federal money to the Volt’s Korean battery supplier, up to $1.5 billion in tax breaks for purchasers and other consumer incentives, and some significant portion of the $14 billion loan G.M. got in 2008 for “retooling” its plants, and you’ve got some idea of how much taxpayer cash is built into every Volt.

From MR:
Big new programs to create jobs need not be expensive. Suppose the cost of hiring a single employee were as high as $30,000 a year, several times typical AmeriCorps living allowances. Hiring a million people would cost $30 billion a year. That’s only 4 percent of the entire federal stimulus program, and 0.2 percent of the national debt.

Correct.

Time magazine has a very disturbing cover image this week, because the magazine thinks it has a very important point to make about the war in Afghanistan. Editor Richard Stengel decided to make the cover a photograph of an Afghan woman with a gaping hole where her nose used to be, where the Taliban had mutilated her.

But the pretense that putting the woman's picture on the cover is politically neutral is fake naivete, covering over a real and dangerous naivete. The headline on this non-political image is "What Happens If We Leave Afghanistan."

It is a gut-wrenching assertion of what's at stake in the Afghan war—except, as a photo caption, it is completely false. A correct and accurate caption would be "What Is Still Happening, Even Though We Are in Afghanistan."
-Scocca

America! Opiates! Jail!

Massachusetts is a liberal state, but its drug laws are anything but. It treats opium-derived painkillers such as Percocet like hard drugs, if illicitly sold. Possession of a tiny amount (14-28 grams, or ½-1 ounce) yields a minimum sentence of three years. For 200 grams, it is 15 years, more than the minimum for armed rape. And the weight of the other substances with which a dealer mixes his drugs is included in the total, so 10 grams of opiates mixed with 190 grams of flour gets you 15 years.

Why is white bro yelling so much?

Lizzy Caplan

Basically, every book about a reformed addict is Sarah Palin's Going Rogue but with more self-aware debasement at the beginning.
-AWL

Hunter S.

"Fuck England," I said. "This is Middle America. These people regard what you're doing to them as a brutal, bilious insult. Look what happened last night. I thought my brother was going to tear your head off."

Steadman shook his head sadly. "But I liked him. He struck me as a very decent, straightforward sort."

"Look, Ralph," I said. "Let's not kid ourselves. That was a very horrible drawing you gave him. It was the face of a monster. It got on his nerves very badly." I shrugged. "Why in hell do you think we left the restaurant so fast?"

"I thought it was because of the Mace," he said.

"What Mace?"

He grinned. "When you shot it at the headwaiter, don't you remember?"

"Hell, that was nothing," I said. "I missed him...and we were leaving, anyway."

"But it got all over us," he said. "The room was full of that damn gas. Your brother was sneezing was and his wife was crying. My eyes hurt for two hours. I couldn't see to draw when we got back to the motel."

"That's right," I said. "The stuff got on her leg, didn't it?"

"She was angry," he said.

"Yeah...well, okay...Let's just figure we fucked up about equally on that one," I said. "But from now on let's try to be careful when we're around people I know. You won't sketch them and I won't Mace them. We'll just try to relax and get drunk."

"Right," he said. "We'll go native."

?

It’s an economy that suggests an EKG- shaped recovery -- a sequence of mini booms and busts as consumer fads and pent-up demand drive sales, until the impulses fade.
-BLMBG

David Foster Wallace Predicted the Housing Bubble!

As of spring '04, though, the most frequent and concussive ads on KFI are for mortgage and home-refi companies—Green Light Financial, HMS Capital, Home Field Financial, Benchmark Lending. Over and over. Pacific Home Financial, U.S. Mortgage Capital, Crestline Funding, Advantix Lending. Reverse mortgages, negative amortization, adjustable rates, APR, FICO … where did all these firms come from? What were these guys doing five years ago? Why is KFI's audience seen as so especially ripe and ready for refi? Betterloans.com, lendingtree.com, Union Bank of California, on and on and on.
-David Foster Wallace, "Host." Atlantic Magazine, April 2005.

Not Cool. I checked.

Russia Update

As if the heat were not enough, Moscow has lately been coated with a patina of smoke from fires that have broken out in dried-up peat bogs in the suburbs. Throw open a window in a desperate bid to catch a breeze and the unpleasant smell of smoke bounds in. One of the country’s chief medical authorities estimated that walking around Moscow for a few hours was the equivalent of smoking a pack or two of cigarettes.

-NYT

Turns out it sucks

The guides in Saudi Arabia have a hard time staying on message, veering wistfully toward memories of time spent in the United States, studying in Palo Alto, San Diego, or Boulder. They still obsess about their college sports teams—staying up until all hours to watch games via satellite. At the Masmak Fortress, in Riyadh—the scene of a critical battle for Abdul Aziz ibn Saud—the guide soon lost interest in leading us among displays labeled “Some Old Guns” and “Cover for the Udder of the She-Camel” and began to wax nostalgic about a married woman named Liz in Grand Rapids.

-A Girls Guide to Saudi Arabia

What Atlanta Used To Be

Along came Verna, in a purple dress and a string of pearls. She looked at her son’s grand possessions and hoped he had gotten them the right way, with love and honor, but she said nothing about it, because he was no longer a boy. Along came Dana, who couldn’t help wondering how Darren was paying for all this, but he kept that to himself. Along came Steve Ewing, president of Wade Ford, the seventh-largest black-owned auto dealership in America; and John Applewhite, a Pinnacle executive and inventor of toy guns for children; and Robb Pitts, Fulton County Commissioner and former Atlanta City Council president. Pitts knew Darren through a friend who had met Darren at a Sonny Perdue fundraiser. Yes, Darren was a Republican. He said Democrats take too much of your money. All this was theoretical, since Darren rarely paid his taxes.

This is from an amazing article from a list of amazing articles. Thank You.

This is Difficult

Have you ever seen an old photo of yourself and been embarrassed at the way you looked? Did we actually dress like that? We did. And we had no idea how silly we looked. It's the nature of fashion to be invisible, in the same way the movement of the earth is invisible to all of us riding on it.

What scares me is that there are moral fashions too. They're just as arbitrary, and just as invisible to most people. But they're much more dangerous. Fashion is mistaken for good design; moral fashion is mistaken for good. Dressing oddly gets you laughed at. Violating moral fashions can get you fired, ostracized, imprisoned, or even killed.
-Paul Graham, What You Can't Say

Wikipedia on Regulate

The third verse is more expository, with Warren and Nate explaining their G Funk musical style. Nate displays his bravado by claiming that anyone with the same amount of knowledge as himself would not even attempt to approach his level of lyrical mastery. He also notes that if any third party smokes like he does, they would find themselves in a state of intoxication every day. From Nate's other works, it can be inferred that the substance being smoked is marijuana. Nate concludes his delineation of the night by issuing a vague threat to "busters," suggesting that he and Warren will further "regulate" any potential situations in the future (presumably by Nate engaging their enemies in a battle of small arms fire, while Warren watches and shares credit afterwards).

Daniel Schorr

HANSEN: Dan, if you don't mind, I'm going to keep you in the studio just for a second.

SCHORR: Oh?

HANSEN: Because you knew the Depression, you were there.

SCHORR: Yes.

HANSEN: And there was so much music that came out of that time.

SCHORR: You said it.

HANSEN: Now, were you hearing it? Were you hearing the songs?

SCHORR: There's one song over this three-quarters of a century that I can still remember from memory.

HANSEN: Really?

SCHORR: Yeah.

HANSEN: Which one?

SCHORR: (Singing) Once I built a railroad, made it run, made it race against time. Once I built a railroad, now it's done. Brother, can you spare a dime? Once I built a tower to the sun, brick and water and lime. Once I built a tower, now it's done. Brother, can you spare a dime? Once in khaki suits, gee, you look swell filled with that Yankee Doodleyum(ph). Half a million boots went sluggin' through hell. And I was the kid with a drum. Say, don't you remember? They called me Al, it was Al all the time. Say, don't you remember, I'm your pal. Brother, can you spare a dime?

That was Depression.

-NPR July 2008

Proposal

As Don would no doubt tell you, BP's brand is as done as horsemeat dog food. The only option is a new approach...

(Open on oil-smeared beaches, dying pelicans etc.)

Voiceover: In 2010, a terrible disaster befell America. It changed everything.

(Teary Louisiana fishermen, empty boatyards)

And those responsible pledged not only to fix all the things they'd done wrong, but make sure nothing like this ever happened again.

(Cut to a grave-looking BP man taking off a pair of oily gloves, then a contrite-looking Tony Hayward alongside Obama)

That was us.

(cut to black)

We realized what we had to do was rebuild, from the top down. Listen to those who know us best. Do away with everything that made us what we were.

(Cut to sunrise. Actual footage of focus groups, then a BP logo being taken off a gas station)

We saw that through all of this, one thing didn't change. And that was America's need for safe, clean energy from its rich abundance of natural resources.

(Cut to a busy highway, power stations etc)

That's why we’ve changed. We've changed so that safety and responsibility is behind everything we do.

(Man in hard hat, ticking boxes on clipboard)

We've changed to bring transparency and openness to our every action.

(Hard hat man shaking hands with inspectors)

And we've changed so that the millions of Americans we work with can be sure they aren't just employees or customers, but human beings.

(Hard hat man and fisherman, laughing together)

We haven’t forgotten our responsibilities to those we’ve hurt. But we’ve remembered our responsibility to America.

(Billowing flag, images of booming industry)

Now, we’re ready to start helping you again. Introducing…

(New logo)

Phoenix Energy. Everything's changed, but you.

[Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce may need to do some focus testing on that name, though]
-NYMAG

The Straight

One thing does seem clear, though. The US Chamber of Commerce, Business Roundtable and Republicans generally have the wrong answer. The reason businesses are not hiring is not that their taxes are too high or that they're over-regulated or that their healthcare costs are too high or that they don't have enough cash or that they can't borrow. The reason is that there's fewer and fewer people left to buy their stuff (except the Chinese, but that's another story). It's not even clear, really, that's there's anything government can do. But if we have to pick between the Republican solution and the Democrat one, well, the Democrats win by default.

Low Interest Rates as Debt Cloak

This Brady-bond talk may seem largely academic, but it has a very important modern-day implication. It means that financial repression also matters a lot – even though it gets little attention in discussions about sovereign credit risk. In some countries, most notably Japan and China, interest rates are set artificially low – much lower than they would be by the market. Local central banks can do this because the financial systems in these countries are heavily banked (i.e. most savings and financing occur through the banking system), there are few investment alternatives, and the financial authorities determine deposit and lending rates.

Forcing down interest rates in this way has exactly the same effect as the lowered coupons on the “par bonds” described above. It implies significant (and hidden) debt forgiveness, so when we look at Japanese and Chinese debt-to-GDP ratios we must remember that we should conceptually reduce the nominal debt levels to reflect the fact that the interest coupon is artificially low – perhaps reducing nominal debt by as much as 30-50%.

This is why Japan was able to raise its nominal debt level to what seemed unimaginably high (and why if it is ever forced to raise interest rates to a more reasonable level, it will face real difficulty), and why although I believe China has a debt problem, I do not believe this problem will show up in the form of a banking or sovereign debt crisis (instead it will show up as lower consumption, as I explain in my July 4 post).
-China Financial Markets

I love movies

Brick original teaser from rcjohnso on Vimeo.

This is all I have on Inception

David Edelstein usually knows what he's talking about so when he panned Inception I took notice of this deficiency in the plot

Cobb accepts the job because he longs to see his two little kids in the U.S. and is forbidden to return on account of a Crime to Be Revealed Later; and Saito says that with one phone call he can make the legal problems go away. (He just can.)

If you assume Chris Nolan is smart and did not take ten years scripting his movie only to ignore glaring problems there must have been some reason Saito could with a single phone call return Cobb to America. There is another instance where Mal reminds Dom that circumnavigating the globe with his gang of jetsetting dream theives is hardly the most logical reality to dwell in. The film was never about Cobb implanting an idea into Cillian Murphy or returning to his kids. The characters were trying to wake up Cobb.

The C Word: Peggy Noonan Edition

All right, you know what I think people miss when they look at Washington and our political leadership? They miss old and august. They miss wise and weathered. They miss the presence of bruised and battered veterans of life who've absorbed its facts and lived to tell the tale.

This is a nation—a world—badly in need of adult supervision. In the 50th anniversary commentary this week of Harper Lee's masterpiece, "To Kill A Mockingbird," a book long derided as middlebrow by middlebrows, no one fully noted the centrality, the cosmic force, that propelled the book, and that is the idea of the father. Of the human longing to be safe and watched over by one stronger. And so we have the wise and grounded Atticus Finch, who understands the world and pursues justice anyway, and who can be relied upon. "He would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning." That's the last sentence. Ms. Lee was some kind of genius to throw the ball that soft, and that hard.

What Mr. Obama needed the past 18 months was a wise man—more on that later—to offer counsel and perspective, a guy who just by walking into the room brings historical context.

I know, "the wise men" are dead. Vietnam killed them. They were the last casualties, pushed off the roof with the helicopters. Their counsel on Vietnam was not good. But we learned the wrong lesson. We should have learned, "Wise men can be wrong, listen close and weigh all data." Instead we learned, "Never listen to wise men," and "Only the young and sparkling, not enthralled by the past, can lead us."

On Wall Street the concept of the statesman—the wealthy man who after a storied career enters public service and takes tough, risky stands on public policy issues—seems largely a thing of the past. In journalism the effects of cutbacks and lack of mentoring are showing their face, and will continue to. Maybe we'll see it most dramatically when the lone person on the overnight news desk, aged 28, in a cavernous room with marks on the industrial carpet from where the desks used to be, gets the first word of the next, possibly successful terror event. On the Internet, you read the fierce posts of political and ideological writers and wonder, Why do so many young bloggers sound like hyenas laughing in the dark? Maybe it's because there's no old hand at the next desk to turn and say, "Son, being an enraged, profane, unmoderated, unmediated, hit-loving, trash-talking rage monkey is no way to go through life."

-Some Cunt Writing for the WSJ

Compare and Contrast

So are the characters in the songs the same? Did he lose his house, boat, kids, etc and start working for "fast food wages"?

Little Minds

When faculty of a major Chinese university asked Plucker to identify trends in American education, he described our focus on standardized curriculum, rote memorization, and nationalized testing. “After my answer was translated, they just started laughing out loud,” Plucker says. “They said, ‘You’re racing toward our old model. But we’re racing toward your model, as fast as we can.’ ”
-MR

The interview is just plodding along, Exile in Guyville, record labels blah blah BAM!

Emily: So, I feel like I have to tell you, in my book there's a chapter called "Flower," based on your song, that's about how when I was 17 I took the virginity of a 14-year-old guy who was on my swim team, and everyone in my high school found out about it and it kind of sucked.

Liz: God, I'm sorry cause that sounds awful, but how hot is that?

Emily: He was so gorgeous, too. He definitely did not look like a 14-year-old. Um, it's disgusting to think of it now. But I was 17, it's not like I was a sexual predator…

Liz: Is it wrong that I'm sort of feeling like, you go girl?

Emily: I felt very justified by the song "Flower"—the lyric "You act like you're 14 years old" really resonated for me because he really was.

Liz: It was very concrete for you!

Emily: I'm friends with him now on Facebook. He's a painter. He seems to have turned out totally fine, so, no harm, no foul.

-Daily Beast

Yes!

An economist would find it inefficient to carry two lungs and two kidneys -- consider the costs involved in transporting these heavy items across the savannah. Such optimisation would, eventually, kill you, after the first accident, the first "outlier". Also, consider that if we gave Mother Nature to economists, it would dispense with individual kidneys -- since we do not need them all the time, it would be more "efficient" if we sold ours and used a central kidney on a time-share basis. You could also lend your eyes at night, since you do not need them to dream.
-Kottke

Assholery

"Mississippi Public Broadcasting strives to deliver educational, informative, and meaningful content to its listeners. After careful consideration and review we have determined that Fresh Air does not meet this goal over time. Too often Fresh Air's interviews include gratuitous discussions on issues of an explicit sexual nature. We believe that most of these discussions do not contribute to or meaningfully enhance serious-minded public discourse on sexual issues. Our listeners who wish to hear Fresh Air may find it online."

I hope the oil spill fucking goes till Ramadan. I hope every cocktail waitress mother of three in Biloxi is unemployed and whoring by next week. I am rage and vengeance.

Winter's Bone pt. 2

Uncle Teardrop was Jessup's elder and had been a crank chef longer, but he'd had a lab go wrong and it had eaten the left ear off his head and burned a savage, melted scar down his neck to the middle of his back. There wasn't enough ear nub remaining to hang sunglasses on. The hair around the ear was gone, too, and the scar on his neck showed above his collar.

Three blue teardrops done in jailhouse ink fell in a row from the corner of the eye on his scarred side. Folks said the teardrops meant he three times done grizzly prison deeds that needed doing, but didn't need to be gabbed about. They said the teardrops told you everything you had to know about the man, and the lost ear just repeated it. He generally tried to sit with his melted side to the wall.

Winter's Bone

My Dad's hometown is in western Maryland very close to West Virginia. On the drive into town you fly over a two lane road that winds up and down hills for hours. You pass small houses and plots of land squeezed in between the hills and the creeks and rivers. It seems like a narrow landscape to live in. You would feel claustrophobic I think living there, hemmed in by the topography without a car to carry you to a bigger town. If you have been to any depressed, non-college town, small town on the East Coast you will recognize the setting of this film immediately. Its depicts the privations of rural America for two hours without dwelling upon sterotypes or red state/blue state tropes. That is an achievement. The girl is beautiful like the girls on those MTV reality shows about teen moms only not a fucking idiot. Breaking Bad is a TV progame about Meth in its 4th(?) season and you will feel more in tune with the media meme of meth in Appalacia or whatever that means in fifteen minutes of this film than 50 episodes into the AMC show.

It's also got something to do with Antigone

/\/\ / /\/\ /\

Wednesday

-The American People Have Spoken

Euro membership has nevertheless sheltered Germany, which relies on exports for 41 percent of gross domestic product, from the ravages of the global financial crisis, said Juergen Pfister, chief economist at Munich-based lender Bayerische Landesbank. Prior to the euro, the mark was a haven in times of turmoil and prone to volatility, surging about 50 percent against the Italian lira in the first half of the 1990s.

“The deutsche mark would have appreciated massively as a result of the financial crisis, harming German exports and making the 2009 recession much worse,” said Pfister. “The euro provides stability.”

Mark Cliffe at ING Bank NV calculates that any splintering of the euro area would mean a deflationary shock in Germany and a slump in output of about 10 percent over two years.
-Germans Show No Way to Give Up on Euro

The Obama administration expects a record budget deficit this year of more than $1.5 trillion, or 10.6 percent of GDP, according to projections the White House released in February. The U.S. deficit is a greater percentage of GDP than any other major industrialized nation except the U.K., where it is estimated to reach 11.4 percent, and Ireland, where it will be 12.2 percent, according to International Monetary Fund projections released in April.

The only deficit-reduction measure that gets strong support in the poll is higher taxes on upper-income Americans.
-Americans in 70% Majority See More

Mad men marathon

Preventing 2006

I won’t comment on the “wonderful outburst of productive energy” Keynes attributed to the late 1920s. But I do have an opinions about the quinquennium from 2004 to 2008.

It was stupid. We were profoundly stupid. We mismanaged resources catastrophically, idiotically. We substantially oriented our economy around residential and retail development that was foreseeably excessive and poorly conceived. We encouraged ordinary consumers, rather than entrepreneurs, to take on debt, and let the credit thus created serve as the kitty in a gigantic casino of egoism. We saw the best minds of a generation destroyed by madness, glutted hysterical in suits, dragging themselves through the Street at dawn, looking for an angry bonus. We accelerated the unraveling of physical, social, and intellectual infrastructure that took a century to build and that we will desperately need some day, perhaps quite soon. We celebrated our stupidity. Based on some back-of-the-napkin theorizing, we turned virtues like planning and prudence into cost centers, and eliminated them. We idolized “the market” while at the same time reorganizing it so it would tell us exactly what some privileged groups found convenient to hear.

I am sure someone will shout “20/20 hindsight”. That’s bullshit. Everything I am saying now was obvious five years ago, and lots of smart people knew and understood it.

...As we evaluate financial reform and political change, we should keep in mind that it is not 2008 that we must struggle to prevent. It’s 2006 that was the worst of times, the piranha were feeding while we splashed and giggled in our water wings.

-Interfluidity

Danny

Since his 1995 star-making turn in Heat (in which he played a character named just "Trejo"), Trejo has had well over 100 roles, almost all as characters like Razor Charlie, Poacher, Scarface, Fred, Collins, Pierce, Vito, Jumpy, Slim, Machete, Pedro, El Jefe, Bob, Manny, El Patron, Cucuy, Raul, Papi, Harold, Rondo, Apache, Fury, Roy, Creek, Shady Chuck, Priest, Albert, Junk, El Chivo, Clint, Capone, Manolo, Perry, Barro, Captain Podrido, Mario, Esteban, Crazy Joe, Jimmy, and Tortuga. He has played a character with the one-word name "Hector" no fewer than five times.

Imagine

Louie

Mr. C.K.: I haven't had sex without a shirt on, God, since I was about 23.

GROSS: Is that true?

Mr. C.K.: Yeah, I just don't think it's fair. I mean, you know, let her think she's with somebody decent, you know.

Like on the show, I do have sex sometimes on the show, and there's a rule in my head that I have to be on my back because...

GROSS: Because your stomach flattens?

Mr. C.K.: Well, no, no, God, no. I don't think - I'm not laying back in the bed thinking I look awesome right now.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. C.K.: It's because I think I should always be the victim of the sex. I shouldn't be...

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. C.K.: I don't think anyone wants to see me looming over her. I think that's an upsetting image for most. And then also, the puppy - the stomach I get. The mother-dog stomach that I get when I'm kind of - you get the point. It's not good.

So yeah, on my back, T-shirt, I'm okay. I can hang with that. I can be okay with a young woman, on my back, T-shirt on. Anything else, it's not fair.
-NPR, Fresh Air

Fact

Kung fu films:Wu Tang Clan , Founding Fathers:Tea Party

ok

right now the Japanese general government is producing the equivalent of 10 percent of GDP in new debt. That’s clearly not sustainable. So at some point the market will start to think that it will be very difficult to absorb this amount. Japan probably still has more time. But the longer it takes for a medium-term solution, the more nervous the market will become about future increases in new lines to finance the government.
-Could Japan Collapse?

How espionage should be conducted

A cursory Google Earthing of North Eastern Estonia suggests that the bridge from Narva to Ivangorod could work very well. The exchange needs to be conducted at dawn and the spies brought to each side in military lorries or dark limousines. The dress code is sombre, bleak and ill fitting. Cigarettes should be provided for each spy so, as they are released, they can trudge across the bridge and share a smoke and a wry exchange with their counter part. As the last exchange is made the sun will rise and, modern day traffic can re-enter the bridge and the cold war can once again slip into the past.

-Bronte Capital

Can we get the Yukos guy, Khordokovsky? I bet he has some great stories/rapes.

More..

It is not clear that the British respected pre-World War I Germany; it is clear that they feared it, and armed against it. As Winston Churchill said, when the magnitude of the German naval construction program became clear, “the politicians proposed [to build] four [new battleships every year], the admirals demanded six, and we compromised on eight.”

It is worth stepping back, and noting that all of these politicians and military officers were at best badly mistaken, and at worst criminally insane. Nearly ten million people would die in World War I. All of the continental European emperors whose ministers made war would lose their thrones as a direct result of the war, the British monarch alone surviving (the kings of Italy and Belgium also survived: their countries joined the winning Anglo-French side).

...To fight one set of wars at the start of the twentieth century to unify Serbs and Croats and to fight another set of wars at the end to dissolve the union and “ethnically cleanse” the region seems among the sickest of the jokes that History plays on human populations.

...no one remembered that Bismarck had never had any desire to escalate political conflict in the Balkans. Perhaps his second-best-remembered sentence is that: “There is nothing at stake [in the Balkans] that is worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier.”

So with the Archduke dead, with Austria having rejected the Serbian response to their ultimatum, mobilizing, and on the point of attacking Serbia, with Russia mobilizing...

At that point Germany attacked Belgium...

It was that stupid.

Why did Germany attack Belgium?

...Hence the first shots in what was a dispute between Austria and Serbia were fired on the German-Belgian border. The laughter of the guns began as Germany’s heavy artillery began destroying Belgian forts and killing Belgian soldiers and civilians.

And, indeed, since Fehrbellin, the odds are that first a Prussian and then a German army would be a fearsome and terrifying foe, greatly outpunching its weight on the tactical and operational level—but, as far as logistics, industrial mobilization, strategy, and grand strategy are concerned, a group that could be out-thought and out-fought by a committee of six-year-old children.

...10 million dead; 10 million maimed; 10 million lightly injured—out of major belligerent populations of some 100 million adult men.

-Brad Delong, Slouching Towards Utopia

Boer War

...Thus the Boers struck first in self-defense in October 1899, besieging British garrisons in towns named Mafeking, Ladysmith, and Kimberley, and defeating British relief columns in battles at places named Spion Kop, Vaal Kranz, Magersfontein, Stormberg, and the Tugela River: 20% of Sir William Gatacre’s 3,000 troops captured at Stormberg as British troops fled after being sent up a near-cliff against entrenched Boers with rifles; 10% of Lord Methuen's 14,000 killed or wounded at Magersfontein as they assaulted the Boer trench line; and Buller's 21,000 suffering 1200 killed and wounded to the Boers’ 50 in a failed attempt to cross the Tugela River. Any cost-benefit analysis done at this point would have led to an obvious conclusion: back down. Protest that the war was a mistake, and have some chair-polishing leading to British promises to respect the independence and autonomy of the Boer Republics and Boer promises to respect the rights and liberties of British-flag immigrants.

That is not what happened.

The Boer Afrikaans-speaking population of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State was 200,000.

The British sent 500,000 soldiers to South Africa starting in February 1900—the same proportional manpower commitment as four million would be for the U.S today. The British sent a competent general—Field Marshal Lord Roberts. They outnumbered even the total mobilization of Boer military manpower by fifteen to one. The Orange Free State capital Bloemfontein fell on March 13, Johannesburg on May 31, and Transvaal capital Pretoria on June 5.

The reaction at home in Britain to victories was as if the country had won the World Cup in soccer: half a million British soldiers could defeat armies one-fifteenth their size!

...Nearly 100,000 people died in the Boer War: in addition to the 30,000 Boer civilians, perhaps 8,000 British battle deaths, 14,000 British soldiers dead of disease, 10,000 Boer soldiers, and perhaps 30,000 Africans—nobody counted them. Britain mobilized 2.5% of its adult male population for the war. One in ten of those died.

-Brad Delong, Slouching Towards Utopia

Andy Xie

The problem is that Americans are deep in debt. Why should they bother if visiting France has become a bit cheaper? They should be saving money to pay off their debt. But, Americans are in Paris for a good time again. They stay at nice hotels, drink good wine, and eat expensive French food.

On the other hand, Chinese tourists go in groups, stay in cheap hotels, eat instant noodles and then spend ten thousand euros on an LV bag. I disagree with the choice. LV bags are sold almost exclusively to the Chinese and Japanese, believing it is a prestigious luxury brand. In fact, the product has been designed to profit from Asia's misunderstanding of western luxury.

My view on LV bags is beside the point. The main point is that Chinese leave with something that will last, while Americans put everything in the stomach. This fundamental difference in behavior won't change with a yuan revaluation. If the yuan goes up, it will benefit LV sales, not American exports.

hahaha

The attacks on Berwick are wildly unfair, but they also reflect the core incoherence of today’s conservative movement on the subject of health care policy.

Sarah Palin summed things up with a pithy tweet:

SarahPalinUSA: Press Corps-pls do your job as Obama sneaks in Berwick appt;pls cover his mission:socialized healthcare&rationing based on”quality of life”

You have it right there. Conservatives are against “socialized health care” (i.e., the public financing of health care services) and they’re also against “rationing” (i.e., limits on the availability of public financing of health care services). Their position is that whoever’s already been granted socialized medicine—i.e., old people—are entitled to have an infinite quantity of funds spent on their health care services. At the same time, they deem it intolerable for the government to provide health care to anyone else, since to provide it in unlimited quantities would be unaffordable. It’s as if we said we ought to ban everyone under the age of 65 from the library, because if we let them in we’ll have to “ration” the books by asking that they be returned in a timely manner.]

Think about it.

As I’ve said before, if we’re going to cut spending on retirement programs then it makes much more sense to reduce Medicare outlays by $1 than to reduce Social Security benefits by $1. Social Security benefits can be used to buy health care, and reducing Medicare spending could reduce system-wide health care costs. What’s more, if we’re going to cut spending on retirement programs then such cuts should be broadly shared and not exclusively inflicted on younger people. Such moves are both fairer and more credible. Last, if you want to cut Social Security benefits you should just cut Social Security benefits. Reducing outlays via the mechanism of a higher retirement age is going to mean that the incidence of the cuts falls most heavily on people with physically taxing—or simply boring and annoying—jobs. It’s one of the most regressive possible ways of trimming spending.
-Matthew Yglesias

That's a pretty good argument for cutting Medicare benefits and murdering the Baby Boomers. My favorite is the following clip which shows the people whose lives we toil to extend:

I think Tarantino lost

oh

Now, just as many consumers can no longer use their homes as cash machines, many small businesses can't draw on their properties to invest and hire. In a 2008 survey, 22% of small employers told the federation that they had taken out at least one mortgage to support their business operations.

"In olden days, many of the start-ups got financing by refinancing their homes. That's gone," said Sung Won Sohn, a California State University economist.

Sohn recalled a small auto dealer in Los Angeles who made most of his money not by selling cars but by frequently refinancing the mortgage on his lot, which until recently kept rising in value.
-LAT

What I learned of world affairs watching No Reservations this afternoon.

Answers

Eminem’s Recovery just sold 741,000 copies in its first week of release, making it the biggest first week since AC/DC’s Black Ice in 2008. when i was in high school my mom would bake cookies and cupcakes to bring to a group home for mentally challenged adults in our town around thanksgiving and christmas. she would bring me with her to drop them off. the last time i went i remember seeing all of the residents crowded around the TV, singing along to every word of The Real Slim Shady. now i’m not saying they bought ALL those copies of Recovery, but, like, they definitely bought some
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This is what you get when you look up "Hotel Yorba" on Google Maps