Bunch Of Phonies Mourn J.D. Salinger

CORNISH, NH—In this big dramatic production that didn't do anyone any good (and was pretty embarrassing, really, if you think about it), thousands upon thousands of phonies across the country mourned the death of author J.D. Salinger, who was 91 years old for crying out loud. "He had a real impact on the literary world and on millions of readers," said hot-shot English professor David Clarke, who is just like the rest of them, and even works at one of those crumby schools that rich people send their kids to so they don't have to look at them for four years. "There will never be another voice like his." Which is exactly the lousy kind of goddamn thing that people say, because really it could mean lots of things, or nothing at all even, and it's just a perfect example of why you should never tell anybody anything

This seems relevant

From the New Yorker-

Nothing illustrated this disconnect, Tabibian says, as clearly as the Islamic Republic’s attitude toward prostitution. What should the state do about the “special ladies” who, under the Shah, populated the red-light districts of Iranian cities? He recalled that in Tehran the authorities resolved to pay salaries to the prostitutes so that they would cease their work and reform their lives. “And, at the same time, you’d hear in the news about women being stoned!” Tabibian marvelled. “The revolutionary court said to execute prostitutes. Nobody talked about the hundreds who were suddenly on the government payroll, doing nothing.”

This quote from Bottle Rocket is my game plan for 2010-

I'm also coaching a little league soccer team called the Hurricanes. They're mostly beginners, but they've got a lot of spirit, and they don't let defeat get them down. They remind me of Dignan in that way. Say what you will about him, he's no cynic and he's no quitter. I'm usually so exhausted now at the end of the days that I don't have to time to think about blown opportunities or wasted time.

This why I read Clusterstock

Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria

MarketWatch-Spanish banking giant BBVA on Wednesday reported a 94% drop in fourth-quarter net profit, as it increased provisions for bad loans and took a write-down on the value of its U.S. businesses.

Best sentence:
"Profit in the period was also affected by negative impacts of hyperinflation in Venezuela."

Prescience from Bronte Capital

I really do not know. I am not close enough to the ground in Spain to know – and – frankly – analysing (supposedly) faked data in a language I can’t read from a desk in Australia is unusually difficult. But there seem to be four variants.

(a). The Spanish banks are telling the truth – and this is a storm in a teacup,

(b). The Spanish banks are doing a normal amount of bank over-optimism in the face of a crisis – and whilst the banks are really stretched (but not telling us) the banks are ultimately solvent – and the European experiment is fine,

(c). The Spanish banks are in fact diabolical – and the losses are maybe 15-20 percent of a year of Spanish GDP – in which case a bailout by (effectively) German taxpayers is possible or

(d). Variant Perception is in fact unreasonably bullish – and Spain will collapse economically and socially and we will be thankful if all we get back is someone like the Generalissimo. The modern European experiment will be deemed to fail because a single European Union with a single currency can’t hold together in a crisis because Germany won’t or can’t bail out Spain, Italy and Greece in a crisis.

The Vice Guide to Liberia

In its horrifying awesome entirety.

A primer on the Vice empire via Gawker.

More on General Butt Naked. How about a new Sasha Baron Cohen character?

Mr. Spending Freeze

Reactions

Krugman-

A spending freeze? That’s the brilliant response of the Obama team to their first serious political setback?

It’s appalling on every level.

It’s bad economics, depressing demand when the economy is still suffering from mass unemployment. Jonathan Zasloff writes that Obama seems to have decided to fire Tim Geithner and replace him with “the rotting corpse of Andrew Mellon” (Mellon was Herbert Hoover’s Treasury Secretary, who according to Hoover told him to “liquidate the workers, liquidate the farmers, purge the rottenness”.)

Brad Delong-

And what do we get for these larger output gaps and higher unemployment rates in 2011 and 2012? Obama "signal[s] his seriousness about cutting the budget deficit," Jackie Calmes reports.

As one deficit-hawk journalist of my acquaintance says this evening, this is a perfect example of fundamental unseriousness: rather than make proposals that will actually tackle the long-term deficit--either through future tax increases triggered by excessive deficits or through future entitlement spending caps triggered by excessive deficits--come up with a proposal that does short-term harm to the economy without tackling the deficit in any serious and significant way.

Tyler Cowen-

There's not much to say in terms of the economic issues, the real lesson is that politics is more constrained than many people think. Berating Obama for his lack of courage or his "failure to get tough" is simply denying or postponing this fundamental realization.

All policy recommendations need to be analyzed within this framework. How will your preferred policy (this includes deregulation and the like, by the way; I am not aiming this barb in any particular direction) play out when, in the middle of the action, government turns out to be extremely constrained in a way you do not like.

If you are surprised by this Obama announcement, that is indirect evidence that some of your other policy preferences are incorrect.

Rush Limbaugh-

I don't enjoy that stuff. I don't enjoy anything. I don't even want to be here. The sadness and regret I feel every waking hour of my life is absolutely unbearable. I am a miserable pig and I do not want to exist.

So this is why I hate Constitutional Law

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

h/t-Justin Fox

More on Hobgolins

More on little statesman

"MARTY UP!"

Liberals Fantasize About Firing Bernanke, And Replacing Him With Someone Who Will Quantitatively Ease Like Crazy

"Will the real victim of Scott Brown's victory be Ben Bernanke?

No, but Democrats are fantasizing about a world where Ben Bernanke doesn't get reconfirmed at the end of the month, and is replaced by someone with a real hankering for some hardcore quantitative easing.

Matthew Yglesias points to this post at Donkeylicious, which dreams:

So the Senate apparently wants to 'pivot to jobs' in the wake of the debacle in MA. If they actually want to do something that'll work, there's an available solution: deny Ben Bernanke confirmation, and replace him with somebody who'll implement the Gagnon plan of massive quantitative easing. Maybe Joe Gagnon. Financial markets might freak out, but what matters isn't the S&P this week. It's all about unemployment numbers in late October.

The funny thing is that's it not the S&P 500 this week that's the issue. The markets would LOVE someone like this. Down the road, a few years from now, then we might run into some problems.

But as the author writes: "It's all about unemployment numbers in late October!"

After the election, we can worry about cleaning it all up."

Sorry for frightening you with that scary socialist healthcare legislation...Tea partiers, mothers of home school children listening to Glenn Beck, assorted former Northeast blue collar Democrats, those reliably paranoid Medicare loving elderly.

Its the jobs. We get it. We have a plan. We are going to quantiatively ease the shit of this motherfucking economy. You think Mervyn King can print money like Gideon Gono to buy gilts like there was another war with Nazi Germany to finance? Oh no. How about you begin your bestselling memoir Mr. Bernanke. Imagine Christmas 2010 shopping season, your tome and Paulson's sharing space on a Barnes and Noble display.

Martingale (betting system)

Originally, martingale referred to a class of betting strategies popular in 18th century France. The simplest of these strategies was designed for a game in which the gambler wins his stake if a coin comes up heads and loses it if the coin comes up tails. The strategy had the gambler double his bet after every loss, so that the first win would recover all previous losses plus win a profit equal to the original stake. Since a gambler with infinite wealth will with probability 1 eventually flip heads, the Martingale betting strategy was seen as a sure thing by those who advocated it. Of course, none of the gamblers in fact possessed infinite wealth, and the exponential growth of the bets would eventually bankrupt those who chose to use the Martingale. It is widely believed that casinos instituted betting limits specifically to stop Martingale players, but in reality the assumptions behind the strategy are unsound. Players using the Martingale system do not have any long-term mathematical advantage over any other betting system or even randomly placed bets.

Title of this post appropriated from Kid Dynamite

Godzilla Soundtrack Videos-This is not nostalgia, this is art.

Green Day - Brain Stew-Jaded
by Nate_Perro

Watch this video everytime you find yourself agreeing with Tom Friedman. It Helps.

"So there you have it: Command China, which wants to censor Google, is working against Network China, which thrives on Google. For now, it looks as if Command China will have its way. If that turns out to be the case, then I’d like to short the Communist Party"http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/20/opinion/20friedman.html?hp

Network China sounds intriguing. I hope Jim Cramer hasn't already written tonight's Mad Money. Investing thesis crunch time.

Social Periscope

"A periscope is an instrument for observation from a concealed position."

"Periscopes allow a submarine, when submerged at a shallow depth, to search for targets and threats in the surrounding sea and air. When not in use, a submarine's periscope retracts into the hull. A submarine commander in tactical conditions must exercise discretion when using his periscope, since it creates an observable wake and may become detectable by radar, giving away the sub's position."

-Wikipedia

I invented the title of this post one day in therapy as a description of my relationship with facebook. My therapist had no idea what a periscope was. This confused me. She has a doctorate in something that qualifies her to solve others dysfunctions. Hasn't there been a submarine movie made recently? Das Boot and that one with Bon Jovi? I stopped going for help after that. It cost $40 a session at a discounted rate. I still owe them money.