…there were countless condemnations of how democracy had failed in this, the world’s largest democracy. Those condemnations led Vir Sanghvi, a columnist writing in the financial newspaper Mint, to remind his readers of 1975, when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi imposed emergency rule. Mr. Sanghvi wrote, “I am beginning to hear the same kind of middle-class murmurs and whines about the ineffectual nature of democracy and the need for authoritarian government.”
I’m not sure what to make of the fact that Indians began to question their government – and indeed democracy itself – as a result of these attacks while in the aftermath of September 11, Americans rallied around our government and our president and ignored the obvious indications of incompetence.
I noticed over the weekend my site was getting a bunch of visitors from a site called wa6n.net. Curious, I followed the trackback (A poorly translated version here.) Apparently wa6n.net is a bulletin board registered in America by someone in the United Arab Emirates. With the poor quality of the translations and a lack of understanding of the background, it’s hard to see what type of site this is. There are arguments over whether Saddam Hussein is a martyr; there are arguments over whether Obama truly means to withdraw from Iraq; there are calls for revolution in the name of Allah.
And – here’s where my site comes in – a member of the forum posted a picture of Obama answering a phone upside down intending to ridicule him – a picture that was emailed around during the past year. This actually starts what seems to be a brief argument as the other members of the forum dispute the picture, and in the end, the matter seems resolved when someone posts links to – among other places, my blog – where the authenticity of the photo was challenged.
What I thought was noteworthy was the amount of interest in Obama on this discussion forum. Many of the members of this discussion forum even seemed somewhat sympathetic to Obama, though they did not believe he represents a true break from an American foreign policy they strongly oppose.
Looking through that forum, to the extent that Google Translate was able, was like some accidental insight into a world I would not ordinarily come across.
It is this type of serendipitousness that makes the internet so transformative.
[digg-reddit-me]Jon Stewart pointed out against last night how non-constructive the political debate regarding the bailout of the Big Three Automakers has been:
Clearly, politicians are applying a double standard. But I think the hypocrisy is worse than Stewart suggests – because the product financial companies are supposed to be creating is profit with the risks associated thoroughly managed and quantified. Their product has proved to be far more defective than the cars produced by the Big Three, as the financial products have not just malfunctioned, but acted as a virus spreading the failures around to everyone.
Stewart previously pointed out how the first story regarding the bailout of the Big Three focused almost exclusively on the method of transportation used by the CEOs of the auto companies to get to hearing instead of any substantive issues. The real controversy has barely been discussed:
Corporations, whose primary purpose is to amass wealth by any means available for their owners (and who always manage to simultaneously amass wealth for the managers) cannot be trusted with public money. There is no public purpose to such profit-making. The public value of a corporation comes from it’s incidental activities – the means by which it is able to amass it’s profits. By bailing out General Motors, the government would be giving it’s money away for no public purpose. But the government does serve a public purpose by keeping General Motors’ factories churning out cars – by keeping people employed, by providing stability, by keeping the economy going and producing usable items.
Within that distinction lies the difference between outrageous abuse of taxpayer funds and a valid public purpose. The more difficult question is how to avoid the abuse while serving the purpose. [edited slightly from my original]
Which is why I think a bailout should be postponed – to attempt to find the least worst of all the options – rather than to cause great problems with hasty solutions. If the automakers won’t survive without an instant cash infusion though, the government needs to step in one way or another.
1. Transporting Americans is and should be one of the most important functions our government must address. And because we are facing a massive economic, energy and environmental crisis, the new president and Congress must do what Franklin Roosevelt did when he was faced with a crisis (and ordered the auto industry to stop building cars and instead build tanks and planes): The Big 3 are, from this point forward, to build only cars that are not primarily dependent on oil and, more importantly to build trains, buses, subways and light rail (a corresponding public works project across the country will build the rail lines and tracks). This will not only save jobs, but create millions of new ones.
2. You could buy ALL the common shares of stock in General Motors for less than $3 billion. Why should we give GM $18 billion or $25 billion or anything? Take the money and buy the company! (You’re going to demand collateral anyway if you give them the “loan,” and because we know they will default on that loan, you’re going to own the company in the end as it is. So why wait? Just buy them out now.)
3. None of us want government officials running a car company, but there are some very smart transportation geniuses who could be hired to do this. We need a Marshall Plan to switch us off oil-dependent vehicles and get us into the 21st century.
Moore’s solution seems like what was done with the railroad industry in the 1970s – when it was taken over by the government, revamped, and then privatized again. I think Moore’s almost got it right. But not quite. Moore’s solution seems very 20th century – like India’s Five Year Plans or other centralized, government-sponsored attempts to solve large problems. Instead, I think Moore could take a lesson from Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the philosopher, economist, and former hedge fund manager who has been explaining the underlying weakness of our financial markets since he made a killing in the 1987 crash. Taleb understands that if you put a bunch of geniuses in charge, you might get something great. But as he points out, the truly game-changing developments happen by accident. The computer, lasers, the internet – all of these innovations have accidentally changed the world in a way that could not be anticipated. He refers to this type of game-changing development as a Black Swan.
And a Black Swan is exactly what Michael Moore, Barack Obama, and the rest of us know we need to jump start the green energy industry. The best way to catch a Black Swan in Taleb’s parlance is to tinker.
In that spirit I propose to create a government-affiliated entity, the Detroit Investment Group (DIG). ((Dig.gov is not being used by any government agency at the moment.)) DIG would be a modern-day government intervention in the market that would take inspiration from the Tennessee Valley Authority (especially it’s regional focus), the Manhattan Project (it’s think tank aspect), NASA’s moon shot (in the specificity of it’s goal and it’s timeline), and the Department of Defense (in how it creates incentives for inventors to create new technologies with the promise of contracts.)
Government intervention is necessary as the marketplace has failed to invest in the long-term development of green energy. This tendency of the market to focus on short-term profits over long-term projects has certainly been revealed to be a significant flaw in our current economic structure, as, for one common example, corporate managers seek instant profits which lead to huge bonuses and leave before the long-term effects of their actions hit. Not knowing how to fix this tendency to focus exclusively on the short-term, a government agency can create incentives within the market to focus on long-term issues that are essential to our nation’s security and stability. This would be the purpose of DIG – to supplement the market rather than to impose it’s own hierarchical structure.
DIG would be given goals and rules rather than a typical bureaucratic organization. It’s goals would:
To spur the creation of new green technologies and a green energy industry in America; and
To rejuvenate Detroit and the surrounding areas.
To accomplish both of these goals, DIG would make Detroit the place to go for green industry – the way Silicon Valley is for computer technology. DIG would not have a specific method of encouraging green industry – but would use an infusion of cash and people to tinker and innovate and generate solutions. It would need quite a number of tools to spur this growth and innovation:
It would need the authority:
To offer government contracts to license green technologies or buy green products;
To sponsor a think tank of top experts in various fields to come up with technologies;
To offer prizes for creating products that meet certain benchmarks or accomplish certain ancillary goals;
To have input into a cap-and-trade program not managed by DIG;
To buy companies with worthwhile technologies or resources (including General Motors for example) and continue to operate them.
The point is – DIG would try everything. It’s task would not be to follow certain procedures, but to achieve it’s goals. It would be structured in such a way as to create market incentives and to centralize planning – on two alternate tracks – and let each influence the other. If this problem is fixable, then DIG would unleash the money and human resources to find the fix – and it would be agnostic about the ideology of it’s solution.
While Trotsky was home reading some shit, Mercader buried an ice axe into the back of his skull.
This just pissed Trotsky off.
He stood up from his desk, axe in head, and spit on Mercader. Then he went after the assassin, wrestling with him. Trotsky’s bodyguards heard the commotion (where the fuck were they a few minutes ago?) and came running in to subdue the assassin and get Trotsky to the hospital.
Trotsky made it to the hospital and underwent surgery before finally dying a day later from complications related to being brained with a goddamn ice axe. We’re hoping he lived long enough to fire those bodyguards.
GOP Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen hung up on Obama twice yesterday. She reportedly told the startled Obama – while hanging up on him – that she was sure this was a prank. A call from Chief of Staff, Rahm Emmanuel, failed to convince her Obama was trying to reach her; same for a call from Chairman Howard Berman, who she knew personally. She finally realized she this wasn’t a prank after she challenged Berman to describe a story only the both of them would know, and he was able to.
Obama was reportedly “amused” when he called back again and she did not hang up.
Ironically, it was the fear of looking foolish that made Ros-Lehtinen look especially foolish.
Here’s a look at some different time periods the number of days the S&P 500 has moved up or down more than 5% during the trading day:
1950-2000: 27 days
2000-2006: 7 days
Jan. 1-Sept. 30, 2008: 20 days
Since Oct. 1, 2008: 22 days
This data suggests a follow-up:
Is the real economy moving that much faster just this past year? or
Are financial markets responding to new data that much faster? or
Are the financial markets untethered from the real economy?
I don’t know that anyone knows the real answer yet.
It’s not as if the guy doesn’t have a point – but as the Deity once said, take care to remove the log from your own eye before attempting to remove specks from the eyes of others.
Maureen Dowd has a pleasant piece in January’s Vanity Fair profiling Tina Fey. Dowd tells the little-known story of how Tina Fey got the scar on the side of her face (she was randomly assaulted by a stranger with a knife who slashed her when she was 5) and the more well-known story of Fey’s transformation into “the sex symbol for every man who reads without moving his lips” in Michael Specter’s phrase.
You can argue about how important a role Obama’s platform played in his victory. But, to read any newspaper in the days following the election, you’d think that Obama had to start crafting his agenda completely from scratch. “He ran on a platform to change the country and its politics,” wrote Washington Post lead political analyst Dan Balz. “Now he must begin to spell out exactly how.” Now? I thought that by the end of the campaign even blind and deaf hermits could tell you that Obama had a plan that could be found at barackobama.com/plan. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that political reporters don’t feel compelled to familiarize themselves with the candidates’ programs in detail, but they should, at minimum, be aware of their existence.