Love in the Time of Swine Flu

The WHO upgrades the risk level to 5* and now there are reports of swine flu in my hometown of Chicago, which gives one a little frisson.

A Quiet Day in Iowa as Same-Sex Couples Line Up to Marry

Now New Hampshire and Maine are looking to legalize also.

And there are signs the GOP is rethinking its stance on gay marriage.

Gay and lesbian groups that want this should ally themselves with divorce lawyer associations, see Intolerable Cruelty,** who would no doubt be willing to pony up for the cause.

---------------------------
* out of 6

**

The Australian duo Empire of the Sun.

Martin Amis remembers J.G. Ballard.

Tom Bissell writes about David Foster Wallace.

I heard Bissell on the radio once talking about a trip he took to post-Soviet states, like Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. He laughed as he told how the former communist boss/ current dictator of one of them granted a holiday amnesty and emptied the prisons while he was in the country. Bissell was mugged 4 or 5 times the following days.

Like Wallace, the 41 year-old financial chief of Fannie Mae David Kellermann recently committed suicide. With suicide you can't really explain why, even though Wallace was clinically depressed and Kellermann was under enormous pressure. Others suffering in a similar manner don't do it. In medieval Europe, suicides were denied a Christian burial and superstitiously buried at crossroads with a stake through their heart. As if their heart wasn't already broken.

Centrists Gone Radical!


Tim Fenrholz writes about Simon Johnson.

Paul Krugman writes about Bush's drive to war in Iraq:

"The Bush administration was obviously - yes, obviously - telling tall tales in order to promote the war it wanted: the constant insinuations of an Iraq-9/11 link, the hyping of discredited claims about a nuclear program, etc.. And the question was, should you stand up against that? Not many did - and those who did were treated as if they were crazy.

For me and many others that was a radicalizing experience; I’ll never trust "sensible" opinion again."

Here, Krugman points us to the new IMF report titled World Economic Outlook.

The New York Times reports on it here and here.

The I.M.F. projected a 1.3 percent decline in global economic activity for 2009,[first decline since WWII] down sharply even from the modest 0.5 percent growth it had projected in January. In the United States, still the "epicenter" of the crisis, according to the fund, economic contraction would be even greater, at 2.8 percent this year, with zero growth for 2010.
...
Mr. Blanchard said that the fiscal responses of several major countries had made "a gigantic difference."

"If there had been no fiscal stimulus across the world, world growth in 2009 would be 1.5 to 2 percent less," he said. "We would be in the middle of something very close to a depression."

One has to give props to China who enacted a $500 billion (converted) stimulus package. Japan also enacted one. The IMF puts bank losses from global economic crisis at $4.1 Trillion:

Of that amount, $2.7 trillion is from loans and assets originating in the United States, the fund said. That estimate is up from $2.2 trillion in the fund’s interim report in January, and $1.4 trillion last October.
...
Among European countries, the fund has already agreed to more than $55 billion in loans to Hungary, Serbia, Romania, Iceland, Ukraine, Belarus and Latvia. More may yet need to be bailed out.

On Tuesday, Colombia became the second Latin American country to seek aid, requesting $10.4 billion. Last Friday, the fund approved a $47 billion line of credit for Mexico, making it the first country to qualify for a loan from a program that extends credit to emerging economies that are considered well managed. Poland also said this week that it would seek a $20.5 billion credit line under that program.
...
In a twist that leaves some experts shaking their heads, the fund needs money from cash-rich developing countries, like China and India, to help more developed but strapped countries, like those in Eastern Europe.

Mark Weisbrot argues the IMF needs reform.

The Stockholm Syndrome

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
The Stockholm Syndrome
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

Via Matthew Yglesias. Yglesias also reports good news: his friend Ezra Klein was hired by the Washington Post.





But to my sorrow Matt also linked to Daniel Larison at the American Conservative. Larison is a conservative isolationist of the Patrick Buchanan/Justin Raimondo/Charles Lindbergh school and is currently being touted by the anti-interventionist faction. From Wikipedia:

After Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Lindbergh resigned his commission as a colonel in the U.S. Army Air Corps on September 14, 1939 to campaign as a private citizen for the antiwar America First Committee. He soon became its most prominent public spokesman, speaking to overflowing crowds in Madison Square Garden in New York City and Soldier Field in Chicago. His speeches were heard by millions. During this time, Lindbergh lived in Lloyd Neck, on Long Island, New York.

Lindbergh argued that America did not have any business attacking Germany and believed in upholding the Monroe Doctrine, which his interventionist rivals felt was outdated. Before World War II, according to Lindbergh historian A. Scott Berg, Lindbergh characterized that:

"the potentially gigantic power of America, guided by uninformed and impractical idealism, might crusade into Europe to destroy Hitler without realizing that Hitler’s destruction would lay Europe open to the rape, loot and barbarism of Soviet Russia’s forces, causing possibly the fatal wounding of western civilization."

Charles Lindbergh speaking at an AFC rally.

During his January 23, 1941, testimony before The House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Lindbergh recommended the United States negotiate a neutrality pact with Germany.

In a speech at an America First rally in Des Moines on September 11, 1941, "Who Are the War Agitators?" Lindbergh claimed the three groups, "pressing this country toward war [are] the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt Administration" and said of Jewish groups,

"Instead of agitating for war, the Jewish groups in this country should be opposing it in every possible way for they will be among the first to feel its consequences. Tolerance is a virtue that depends upon peace and strength. History shows that it cannot survive war and devastation."

In the speech, he warned of the Jewish People's "large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government," and went on to say of Germany's antisemitism, "No person with a sense of the dignity of mankind can condone the persecution of the Jewish race in Germany." Lindbergh declared,

"I am not attacking either the Jewish or the British people. Both races, I admire. But I am saying that the leaders of both the British and the Jewish races, for reasons which are as understandable from their viewpoint as they are inadvisable from ours, for reasons which are not American, wish to involve us in the war. We cannot blame them for looking out for what they believe to be their own interests, but we also must look out for ours. We cannot allow the natural passions and prejudices of other peoples to lead our country to destruction."

J.G. Ballard passed away this past Sunday.

Johann Hari asks: Was J.G. Ballard a prophet of doom - or the future?

Ballard's vision hangs like black smoke over my instinctive liberalism and rationality, as a constant, nagging doubt. His novels present a world where people will not - cannot - be persuaded by facts and evidence and reason for long. Our frontal lobes are too weak; our adrenal glands are too big. We would rather hug our consumer goods and our guts today than preserve ourselves and our species for tomorrow. He said of his novels: "I see myself more as a kind of investigator, a scout who is sent on ahead to see if the water is drinkable or not."
...
The roots of Ballard's vision obviously lay in his childhood. He grew up in the ornate mansions of the International Settlement in Shanghai in the 1930s, waited on by battalions of servants paid for by his father, who was a rich textile chemist. When the Japanese invaded, that world was stripped away overnight. His family was interred in a detention camp, and he scavenged and starved in suddenly abandoned mansions - a story told in the Spielberg film Empire of the Sun.

From the New York Times:

A former C.I.A. officer, John Kiriakou, told ABC News and other news media organizations in 2007 that Abu Zubaydah had undergone waterboarding for only 35 seconds before agreeing to tell everything he knew.

Then he was waterboarded another 82 times.

Khalid Sheik Mohammad was waterboarded 183 times.

I think Obama has the right idea that a bipartisan 9-11 type committee should be formed instead of Leahy's truth commision because that might become too partisan.

I love Anna Faris, so I was interested to read Majikthise's criticism of a scene in the new movie Observe and Report, which I haven't seen.

I tend to agree with Dana Stevens more, who says that Ronnie stopped once he realized Brandi was passed out. Although I haven't seen the movie.

Hopefully Faris's next movie will be better - like House Bunny or Smiley Face - since neither Beyerstein nor Stevens liked this one.

In an interview with Newsweek, Faris says she and Seth Rogan believed the scene would be cut.

Kiefer Sutherland was on a local radio station last night promoting his record label by hanging out and playing songs by bands on the label. I've watched his show 24 this season and it's really good with loads of great actors (like Mary Lynn Rajskub* and Janeane Garofalo pictured above). Sutherland said they start shooting the next season in three weeks.

Coincidently yesterday the Obama administration released the Office of Legal Council memos about torture yesterday. Hell froze over as Glenn Greenwald had some kind words to say about Obama's decision.

--------------------
*Rajskub and Kristen Wiig were good in this past season's The Flight of the Conchords also.

Happy Tax Day!

(And a belated Happy Zombie Jesus Day!)

Patriots Glenn Beck and Nick Cavuto and Dick Armey among others have been organizing "Tea Parties" to protest Obama's alleged drift towards socialism, Think Progress reports. The turnouts were rather low.

DeLong doesn't believe the Obama administration is giving the public a narrative about the Geithner plan.

If the Obama administration were selling any of these three lines of narrative--or were selling all of them--it seems likely to me that it would be having more success is building support for its strategy. But I do not think that it is selling any of these narrative lines to make sense of its policies. Indeed, I do not know what the narrative story it wants to tell about the current situation is.

As I understand, Obama explained that the credit markets have stopped working (and the Fed has already lowered interest rates to zero). They have a three-pronged approach: the first leg of the "stool" is the stimulus, to kick-start consumption and employment.

Second, mortgage relief so people stay in their homes, keep their jobs, and continue to spend. Also this is to help the banks.

Third, TARP and the Geithner plan - or son of TARP plus stress tests, etc. - to sort out the banks and get credit markets flowing again after the stimulus kicks in.

James K. Galbraith doesn't believe the Geithner plan will get credit moving again.

The dismal science is sexy again!

Why so serious, Ludwig?

I thought it was funny that at the beginning of the film Happy-Go-Lucky, the happy-go-lucky protagonist wanders into a book store where Ray Monk's biography of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein is on display. Alexander Waugh - son of the satirist Auberon Waugh and grandson of the novelist Evelyn Waugh - has a new book out on the Wittgenstein family.

From Wikipedia: "In 1929 he decided, at the urging of Ramsey and others, to return to Cambridge. He was met at the railway station by a crowd of England's greatest intellectuals, discovering rather to his horror that he was one of the most famed philosophers in the world. In a letter to his wife, Lydia Lopokova, Wittgenstein's old friend John Maynard Keynes wrote: "Well, God has arrived. I met him on the 5.15 train.""

The Newsweek cover story on Paul Krugman by Evan Thomas was pretty good, but it missed some things.

It does get at what's appealing about his demeanor, like "One thing he still has is a smile that plays around his face when he's talking, almost like he's looking at himself and thinking, 'What am I doing here?'" "He is an unusual mix, at once nervous, shy, sweet and fiercely sure of himself." "Krugman is "not a prima donna, he wears his fame lightly," and that Krugman is not resented among his academic colleagues, who can be a jealous lot." And "Ideologically, Krugman is a European Social Democrat. Brought up to worship the New Deal, he says, "I am not overflowing with human compassion. It's more of an intellectual thing. I don't buy that selfishness is always good. That doesn't fit the way the world works.""

In the beginning of the piece, Krugman is quoted commenting that he hasn't received any outreach from the Obama administration. Thomas doesn't give a possible explanation until later in the piece: "In the 2008 election, Krugman first leaned toward populist John Edwards, then Hillary Clinton. "Obama offered a weak health-care plan," he explains, "and he had a postpartisan shtik, which I thought was naive."" In fact during the primary Krugman was fairly critical.

A few days ago, I wrote that Stereolab would be my pick for favorite band, if I had to choose under duress.

So by coincidence, a couple of days later they note at their website with characteristcally good-spirited humor that they'll be taking a "Hiatus/Sabbatical/Pause/Intermission/Breather."

Dear All,

As we recently made #51 with Emperor Tomato Ketchup in the Amazon 100 Greatest Indie Rock Albums of all Time we feel that our work is done for the moment.

We have had to cancel the last two shows that we were scheduled to play, apologies to all that had bought tickets, and there are no plans to record new tracks.

Duophonic are working on the release of Chemical Chords 2, we also have plans for a new Switched On and remastering of the back catalogue.

We are are all going to have a bit of a rest now after nearly 19 years and work on a few other projects.

The website will still be updated and disks released but there won't be any new Stereolab product for a while.

100 Greatest Indie Rock Albums of All Time

In the earlier post, I listed their influences such as Krautrock. But really they are sort of sui generis. Or a new synthesis. Imagine humanity survives another 500-1000 years and evolves slightly. It avoids environmental cataclysm and economic catastrophe and nuclear war. Sterolab would be this future humanity's American idol winner or teen sensation like the Jonas Brothers or Miley Cyrus transported back in time.

Her eyes tell me that in a former life she organized doomed children’s crusades and burned heretics by the gross.

And yet this zealous flame is imprisoned in the body of a suburban, would-be-folksy Minnesotan. It’s that contrast, I think, that makes her so hypnotic.

Michael Bérubé discusses Obama gaffe on Jay Lano.

Study Finds Paint Aisle At Lowe's Best Place To Have Complete Meltdown

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The 10.31 Project
comedycentral.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor NASA Name Contest

Or if you're a conservative, you can have it on cable television.

(via Rick Hertzberg)

Michael Lewis's Vanity Fair piece on Iceland.

(via Lindsay Beyerstein)

Last summer I caught Sigur Rós's tour film Heima which was really good. In 2006, having toured the world over, Sigur Rós returned home to play a series of free, unannounced concerts in Iceland. Heima is a unique record of that tour filmed in 16 locations across the island, taking in the biggest and smallest shows of the band's career. 'Heima' is a 97 minute documentary feature film including songs from all four Sigur Rós albums alongside previously unreleased material.

Congressional hearing on the lessons from the New Deal.

Panel 1: Christina Romer, Chair, Council of Economic Advisors

Panel 2: James Galbraith, Professors DeLong, Winkler and Ohanian

(via Mark Thoma)

"No Donny, these men are nihilists, there's nothing to be afraid of."

Onion's Gateways to Geekery: krautrock

If forced to choose, I'd have to pick Stereolab as my favorite band. They were influenced by krautrock, lounge, '60s pop, and the Velvet Underground. In interviews they always mention the Beach Boys as a favorite which always makes me laugh for some reason.

Having a Bad Week

TOKYO (AP) - A 93-year-old Japanese man has become the first person certified as a survivor of both atomic bombings by the United States, officials said Tuesday.

The survivor, Tsutomu Yamaguchi, had already been a certified hibakusha, or radiation survivor, of the bombing on Aug. 9, 1945, in Nagasaki, but he has now been confirmed as surviving the attack on Hiroshima three days earlier, in which he suffered serious burns to his upper body. Certification qualifies survivors for compensation, including monthly allowances, free medical checkups and funeral costs.

Mr. Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima on a business trip on Aug. 6, 1945, when an American B-29 dropped an atomic bomb on the city. He returned to Nagasaki, his hometown, before the second attack, officials said.

Vampire Prejudice

Ezra Klein has an excellent post on Simon Johnson who was a former chief economist at the IMF and has now become a prominent analyst of the Great Recession.

Ezra believes he deserves this prominence as do I and Johnson's definitely doing the country a service by trying to help everyone understand what is going on.

When reading the prolific Johnson's analysis of the G-20 conference or the Geithner Plan or whatever, my mind inevitably recalls that great quote Doug Henwood made early on:

The IMF, which was off the scene for many years, is, like a vampire salivating at sunset, returning to action. It's already developed a program for Iceland, which is being put through the austerity wringer; apparently being white and Nordic doesn’t earn you an exemption. It's likely to lend some money to some countries that it deems virtuous on easy terms - among them Brazil but not Argentina. More on all this in the coming weeks. (emphasis added)

The IMF pushes bankrupt nations to enact Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) in return for loans. Critics say SAPs often involve austerity measures which are very hard on the average citizen and rather lenient on foreign investors and local oligarchs.

Johnson touches on this in his Atlantic piece:

Squeezing the oligarchs, though, is seldom the strategy of choice among emerging-market governments. Quite the contrary: at the outset of the crisis, the oligarchs are usually among the first to get extra help from the government, such as preferential access to foreign currency, or maybe a nice tax break, or-here's a classic Kremlin bailout technique-the assumption of private debt obligations by the government. Under duress, generosity toward old friends takes many innovative forms. Meanwhile, needing to squeeze someone, most emerging-market governments look first to ordinary working folk-at least until the riots grow too large.

Klein provides a link to an IMF critic, Dani Rodrik, who rightly notes:

And I find it astonishing that Simon would present the IMF as the voice of wisdom on these matters--the same IMF which until recently advocated capital-account liberalization for some of the poorest countries in the world and which was totally tone deaf when it came to the cost of fiscal stringency in countries going through similar upheavals (as during the Asian financial crisis).

Simon's account is based on a very simple, and I believe misguided, theory of politics and economics. It is an odd marriage of populist and technocratic visions. Countries fail because political elites always end up in bed with economic elites. The solution, apparently, is to let the technocrats (read the IMF) run your affairs.

But perhaps the IMF can learn and change as Bill Compton did in True Blood.

Pragmatic Politics

At the beginning of the movie Happy-Go-Lucky the protagonist and her friends are dancing at a club to Pulp's Common People.



If one is holding up the liberal-left-social-democratic side of the rope in the political tug of war, you support economic and legal policies that pragmatically support the common people. This is what I try to do, which means not being ideological about, say, government regulation or taxes or unions.

And when I read a cri de coeur by an AIG executive, like this, I want to play the world's tiniest violin about his hurt feelings and complaints about "the environment," i.e. constant bashing of AIG management.

On the foreign policy front, though, my views differ from the ones common on the left-liberal side. I saw Ridley Scott's Body of Lies and thought it was a pretty good movie although many who are sympathetic with the common people will see it as warmongering propaganda. The scene where Leonardo DiCaprio is arguing with his girlfriend's sister over Iraq is especially good, because the sister is a "common person" who's against American foreign policy in the Middle East and yet I agreed with the arguments of DiCaprio's character and could see where he's coming from.

Russell Crowe is good in the movie as a CIA officer in Langley, as is Mark Strong who plays a Jordanian spy chief. Strong was also great in Guy Ritchie's RocknRolla and will be in Ritchie's upcoming Sherlock Holmes movie which opens Christmas. (see Hitchens on Arthur Conan Doyle.)

The Politics of the Economic Crisis

Paul Krugman, Brad DeLong, Mark Thoma, and Simon Johnson are all pretty much in agreement over the economics of the Geithner Plan, but differ on the politics.

DeLong believes the plan brings in 3/8ths replacement money for the toxic assets on the banks books and believes the administration feels it's bringing in 6/8ths of the money. Krugman doesn't believe it will be enough to turn things around. DeLong doesn't say or doesn't know but feels it's better than nothing.

He thinks the Senate won't go along with a bank reorganization plan at this time, but might later on. Will it be too late? We'll find out.

What we won't know is if brinkmanship with the dead-enders in the Senate over pre-privatization would have worked. Two things stand out for me: 1) the conservative Swedish minister who implemented the Swedish model said bipartisanship and confidence is the key and war in the Senate wouldn't inspire confidence 2) info on the "stress tests" should already be coming in, even though no one is discussing them, so the administration should know the lay of the land.

The Microcosm of the Macro

Obama gave an impressive performance again trying to redirect the conversation - not all Wall Streeters are criminals or immoral - and answering the media's question during a live press conference tonight. I thought it was interesting that he called on Univision, Starts and Stripes and Ebony, outlets not normally called upon. The Fox guy's question was couched in typically misconstrued terms. He tried to be ironic about "Communist" China questioning the dollar as reserve currency and "Socialist" Europe's pushback on a spending stimulus, but it just reflected the typical Fox viewer's cramped view of the situation. He also gave a firm but respectful answer to the Washington Times' questioner about embryonic stem cell research.

Oh No, Performers Coming Into Audience

PITTSBURGH - Audience members at the Benedum Center for the Performing Arts are reporting that, oh God, no, approximately 20 extremely enthusiastic actors are approaching the edge of the stage and appear determined to continue their current musical number in the main seating area.

"Oh, man, are they? Shit," one audience member was overheard saying as the energetic ensemble began filing down previously unseen stairs and past the front row. "Shit, shit, shit."

Increasingly uncomfortable audience sources have also confirmed that the performers are proceeding down the aisle with crisp, larger-than-normal steps timed perfectly to the music. Even more shocking, some appear intent on interacting with non-cast members.

I caught Will Ferrell's live show George W. Bush: You're Welcome America and it was hilarious. Surprised at how much audience interaction there was. At one point he'd ask audience members their name and occupation and give them a nickname. One guy had a big beard so Ferrell nicknamed him China Grove.

Lindsay Beyerstein profiled by Normblog.

Michael Bérubé discusses a rarely known moment in rock and roll's history where it underwent a paradigm shift. (see video below. Note the bassist's groovy shuffling dance moves.)

Admittedly I'm an Obamabot infused with Obamamania,* but even I winced when I heard that Obama told Jay Leno on air that his experience bowling during the primaries was "like the Special Olympics."

------------------
*In other words I've set myself up to have a loss of innocence, a disillusionment so traumatizing my politics would swing wildly to the right and I'd transform into a cartoonish, younger, skinnier David Horowitz** figure. In my defense, growing up in the Chicago area and living in Chicago as in other cities but especially in Chicago it seems you're indoctrinated to pull for the home team like the Bears, the Blackhawks, the Bulls, the Sox and Cubs which is especially persuasive during good years.
** No relation to Adam Horovitz, (note the "v") the King Ad-Rock, member of the post-S&L recession version of Juicebox Mafia.

Death Penalty repealed in New Mexico

In The Watchmen, Rorschach becomes a Dirty Harry-like vigilante after stumbling across a child killer who pleads guilty and pleads insanity and asks to be taken in to the authoritites in a mocking tone. No doubt some of the audience will agree with Rorschach's decision to execute the criminal on the spot, but the reality of the death penalty is mistakes are made in its application by fallible humans and they aren't worth it. Perhaps Bill Richardson is trying to gain favor in fighting off corruption charges as George Ryan did in Illinois, but it was the right decision none of the less.

(On the international front, though, Rorschach is right and psychopathic regimes need to be taken down. Unfortunately most won't go down without a fight.)

What we've got here is a failure to communicate

(which is what Obama and Geithner should tell AIG about the bonuses.)

If the Ongoing Clusterfuck (in the economy) had a soundtrack it should include Lily Allen tunes, like her song about schadenfreude, Smile, and new song The Fear.

A Post-Capitalist Future is Possible by Doug Henwood.

The Revenge of Karl Marx by Hitchens.

I caught Obama's point man on the economy (or "political economy"* as Marx, Hitchens and probably Henwood would say) Larry Summers on Charlie Rose and when Rose asked him which economist or thinker is most relevant to understanding the crisis, Summers didn't hesitate to respond with "Keynes."

But Keynesian economics took a hit in the late 1970s when welfare states and relatively strong unions came up against high inflation. Central Banks raised interest rates to unprecedented high level and brought on a crash, which tamed inflation but the Right took advantage and won the political battle. (There was stagflation thought to be caused by Nixon's wage and price controls which were followed by cost-push shocks in commodities and the oil crisis of '73 which was a result of another Arab-Israeli war and OPEC's limiting of supply.)

-------------------
*The main political question now is to what extent the administration will take on the banking/financial institution lobby - as former IMFer Simon Johnson among others has been pointing out - and demand "clawbacks" and recompense for the taxpayer. There's also the question of the future regulatory environment.

What do you see?









What do you see?

Lorrie Moore writes about Donald Barthelme.

Podcast about her review.

Moore has a new book coming out in September.









Would be strange to have a book titled "Understanding (Insert Your Name Here)." Mine would be short. He's charming. Funny. Intelligent. Honest. Self-deprecating. Respectful of elders. A Roschachian crank about foreign dictatorships and despots. Not a realist in other words.

Neko Case's new album came in 3rd on the Billboard charts last week, after Taylor Swift and U2. She's also in the New Pornographers.

Lovecraftian School Board Member Wants Madness Added To Curriculum












West says the school inadequately prepares
students for the black seas of infinity.

Don't make him angry, you wouldn't like him when he's angry.

The Rock/Dwayne Johnson is staring in a new movie, The Race To Witch Mountain, with my favorite 15-year-old actress/celebrity (weird, I know), AnnaSophia Robb. I checked her website again to see if she added anything in support of the movie, and there was a little holiday in my heart because she had. She's noted some magazine interviews she's done and added some photos of her at an Obama rally. Robb also updated her list of favorite movies: Slumdog Millionare, Batman: The Dark Knight, Blood Diamond, Zoolander and Best in Show. Again, great taste. And she has another movie coming out in November with the girl from Little Miss Sunshine.

Too Many Dicks on the Dancefloor*

Looking over my blog links, I noticed there are too many guys and the ratio is way off. So I added Majikthise, who is Canadian also so that makes a twofer as the tactless say. I also added Michael Bérubé who is blogging again and is very funny, especially about the raging stupidity and hubris in politics. Yes he plays hockey. Yes his name looks suspiciously French. No he's not Canadian.** I've also added A Fistful of Euros which provides a European perspective on the Ongoing Clusterfuck*** in the financial markets and wider economy.

-----------------
* Doesn't one of the dancers in the video look like a Village Person, specifically Randy the Cowboy?
** Actually, yes he is of French-Canadian ancestry, though. (Added this note after I was corrected in the comments. Reminds me of what Alexander Cockburn once said about the corrections section newspapers tuck away on page 2 or 3, admitting mistakes in previous edtions. The real purpose is to convince the reader everything else in the paper is true.
*** I believe Tom Tomorrow coined this. William Safire recently had a contest in his Language column to name the current situation in the economy and this would be my nomination.

Cocooning
(or Blast from the Past/Back to the Future)

The Vatican and Pope Benedict are cocooning hard these day, but I'd like to think a group of wronged people have hired a 21st Century Robin Hood team, like the one from the cable show Leverage, to subvert "Popery"* from within.

First you had the Pope rehabilitating extreme right wing bishops and in some cases Holocaust-deniers. They backpedaled after an uproar but the damage was done.

Also, the church is bringing back the sale of indulgences which is a good way to raise money, but also a potentially alienating move.

-----------------------
*Popery and Papist were slurs common in the 18th and 19th centuries. JFK's election symbolized a more tolerant attitude in the 20th. Who might have hired possible agent provocateurs who are advising Benedict? Could be disgruntled scientists, feminists, gay rights advocates or perhaps some men who were molested in their youth by priests have funneled their legal reward money back into attacking the church.

Trailer and video from Whit Stillman's Barcelona.

Strange to be cheering on White House economists, but I really do hope these people are successful. Most people admit they don't know what will happen, which on one hand is unnerving, but on another it means they will be willing to try different approaches. It's also good to hear they understand speed is of the essence. Reagan and Clinton didn't fully enact their big economic packages until August. Obama and his propellerheads got it done in a month. From the New York Times:

Sometimes, during the 30-minute briefings that Mr. Summers delivers in the Oval Office nearly every day, Mr. Obama addresses him as Professor, as in, "What do you think, Professor Summers?" Sometimes, as he did in the Roosevelt Room one recent afternoon, Mr. Obama tweaks him and his fellow policy wonks, dubbing them "the propeller-heads."

This, senior White House officials say, is the president’s way of ribbing Mr. Summers, who is back in Washington - he served as Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton - in the role of what his new boss calls a "thought leader."


...
"The irony is that Summers and Geithner wrote the textbook on how to manage these crises, and they lectured countries all over the world on what to do," said Adam S. Posen, deputy director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, lamenting that they did not "follow through with their own prescriptions."

Mr. Summers dismissed the criticism, maintaining that the bailout plan, for which he said Mr. Geithner would announce details in due time, was "tough and ambitious."

In the meantime, Mr. Obama’s chief propeller-head is on to other matters, like housing and huddling in the Roosevelt Room to plan the budget with the president, as he did on Friday, when Peter R. Orszag, the White House budget director, passed out propeller-head hats.

Ian McEwan writes about John Updike.

What I like about Obama going around the country promoting the Stimulus bill is that it shows he's not afraid. Here's the very funny Dave Chappelle joking about being the first black President.

Fareed Zakaria writes about our neighbor to the north Canada:

Guess which country, alone in the industrialized world, has not faced a single bank failure, calls for bailouts or government intervention in the financial or mortgage sectors. Yup, it's Canada. In 2008, the World Economic Forum ranked Canada's banking system the healthiest in the world. America's ranked 40th, Britain's 44th.

We should probably follow their example regarding how they set up their healthy banking system and while we're at it take a look at their health care system.

I vote we skip right to the Swedish Model

Brad DeLong has some notes on the Geithner Financial Rescue Plan:

...

7. The net effect might be that fears that banks are insolvent or will become illiquid will ebb.

8. And the financial crisis and the Bush depression will come to an end.

9. But Geithner said this is not the end--that if the TARP money is expended and if banks still fail their stress tests, then what...

10. This plan does not foreclose a resort to the Swedish model, it is instead an attempt to use the TARP money to escape the necessity for adopting the Swedish model.

Jacob Sullum writes about the next Drug Czar, former Seattle police chief Gil Kerlikowske.

Executives from the financial institutions who received funds from the $700 billion banking bailout faced their critics on the House Financial Services Committee yesterday in Washington. The chief executives at the hearing were: Kenneth D. Lewis of Bank of America, Robert P. Kelly of Bank of New York Mellon, Vikram Pandit of Citigroup, Lloyd C. Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, John J. Mack of Morgan Stanley, Ronald E. Logue of State Street, and John G. Stumpf of Wells Fargo - CEOs from the too-big-to-fail banks essentially.

Instead of facing a firestorm, as the regulators at the SEC recently did, they got a "slow burn." One wonders if this happened because the banks are about to endure a "stress test" or because the critics have major employers in their districts who are on the hook to these banks. Maybe they even get campaign contributions from employees of these banks. Even though they were part of the problem, no doubt these CEOs will have to be part of the solution, so perhaps the critics were "looking foward" as Obama would say. Probably it's all of the above.

Robert Reich writes about perp walks at Congress at his blog:

When in 2005 Yahoo surrendered to Chinese authorities the names of Chinese dissidents who had used Yahoo email, and Google created for the Chinese a censored version of its search engine (removing such incendiary wordsa s "human rights" and "democracy," many Americans were outraged. Executives of both companies were summoned to appear before the House Subcommittee on Human Rights. Christopher Smith [(R-NJ)], its chairman, accused Yahoo of entering into a "sickening collaboration." He ridiculed the firm’s avowed justification for revealing the names of dissenters, saying if Anne Frank had put her diaries on email and Nazi authorities wanted to trace her down, Yahoo might have complied if Yahoo’s email system had exposed Nazi Germany to American culture. The late Tom Lantos, a leading Democrat on the committee and the only Holocaust survivor in Congress, asked the assembled executives "are you ashamed? Yes or no?" He called their behavior a "disgrace" and asked how they could sleep at night. James Leach, a Republican from Iowa, accused Google of serving as "a functionary of the Chinese government," adding that "if we want to learn how to censor, we’ll go to you." Smith subsequently introduced a bill to prevent American companies from, among other things, cooperating with censorship, but no one expected it to pass, and neither Smith nor any other member of congress pushed for it.

Perp walks like these may serve a useful public function. Rituals of public shaming are not inconsequential. But they're no substitute for laws and penalties that prevent the conduct in question from recurring.

You have to wonder if Yahoo and Google helped John Poindexter with his - now defunct - Total Information Awareness Program. Hopefully Obama and the new Congress will get tough with laws and penaltites.

Another intelligent guy I would include in my economic crisis rogues gallery along with Robert Samuelson is the blogger Mickey Kaus. He's on a permanent jihad against things like unions, welfare, immigration reform - you know, stuff that would help out the little people suffering during a global economic downturn.

Not sure what to make of the Israeli election. Steffi Graf won the most votes, but Bibi Netanyahu is claiming victory since rightwing coalition parties won the most votes.

Avigdor Lieberman, the ultranationalist, did well on a weird platform, combining a secular attack on the religious - proposing civil marriage for instance - and a vigorous scapegoating of Arab Israelis, the "enemy within."

On this day in 1809 Abraham Lincoln was born to Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks, two uneducated farmers, in Kentucky and Charles Darwin was born to wealthy society doctor and financier Robert Darwin, and Susannah Darwin (née Wedgwood) in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England.

I believe the first time I read this fact was in Hitchens's bestseller God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Adam Gopnik recently had a book come out on Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern Life.

To honor this happy coincidence I'm having a super blogfest.

Robert Samuelson comes to mind as someone who's usually either picking on old people over Social Security or picking on "pampered" European workers or ginning up generational warfare on behalf of the well-to-do. But the economic crisis has him writing some relatively decent columns here, here, here, and here which contradict much of what loony-tunes GOP politicians are arguing.

In his columns, Samuelson "talks the economy down" and engages in much-derided "fear mongering":

This democratic (with a small "d") despondency has many causes. As more Americans invested in stocks, more became exposed to the market's wild psychological and financial swings. The plunge in home values has made many workers with secure jobs poorer. And, of course, layoffs themselves have become more democratic. Once, the young and blue-collar workers bore the brunt of firings. Now, managers, investment bankers, journalists, scientists - almost anyone - can be canned. Age confers little security. In December, almost a third of the jobless were 45 and over.

What offends middle-class Americans, most of us, is economic capriciousness. People crave order, predictability and security. They want to believe that personal virtues of studying, working hard and planning will be rewarded in the marketplace. Even in good times, these ambitions are often frustrated. But in today's economy, the disconnect has widened. Setbacks and losses seem increasingly divorced from personal effort. Our whole values system seems besieged.

I'd just add that throughout his career Samuelson has argued against public policy that mitigates all of this.

Brad DeLong, who has an excellent memory, notes one of Nouriel Roubini's gloom and doom scenarios didn't come to pass:

Roubini and Setser, February 2005 http://tinyurl.com/dl20090207: [In the early 2000s] The Federal Reserve responded aggressively to the sharp falls in US equity markets, and the Bush Administration added a massive fiscal stimulus to the Fed’s monetary stimulus: as Ken Rogoff (2003) has noted, the US recovery was the best recovery money could buy.... [F]oreign central banks were unwilling to let their currencies fall against the dollar, and intervened massively... a seemingly unlimited credit line from the world’s central banks funded the expansion of the US fiscal deficit, preventing the growing stock of Treasuries from crowding out private investment....

A cooperative grand bargain... offers the best chance for unwinding of the US external imbalance without a sharp deceleration of US and global growth. However, such a bargain looks increasingly unlikely.... China may be willing to add $240 billion, or even $300 billion, to its reserves for another year. We doubt it will be willing to do so for two more years.... [T]he risk [of] a disorderly unraveling... a sharp correction of the US dollar and of the US bond market, a surge in US long-term interest rates, a sharp fall in the price of a wide variety of risky assets (such a equities, housing, high-yield bonds, and emerging market sovereign debt) - are growing. Such an unraveling could result in a sharp economic slowdown in the US. It will force countries that now depend on US demand growth for their growth to adjust as well...

Tax, Not Shame

Reed Hastings, founder and CEO of Netflix and a Democrat, had an Op-Ed in New York Times opposing Obama's plan to cap the executive pay of those managing financial institutions receiving public largesse in order to get credit moving again and prevent a decades-long slump.

Instead he proposes executives like him be taxed of half their wealth instead of a third. Fine.

In the meantime, Obama's plan seems like a good idea. Says Hastings:

Another advantage is that it would also cover the sometimes huge earnings of hedge fund managers, star athletes, stunning movie stars, venture capitalists and the chief executives of private companies. Surely there is no reason to focus only on executives at publicly traded companies.

This week, President Obama proposed imposing a $500,000 compensation cap on companies seeking a bailout. It’s a terrible idea. We all want the taxpayers' money returned, and capping compensation at bailout recipients will just make it that much harder for those boards to hire and hold on to the executives who can lead their companies to compete and thrive.

Perhaps a starting place for "tax, not shame" would be creating a top federal marginal tax rate of 50 percent on all income above $1 million per year. Some will tell you that would reduce the incentive to earn but I don’t see that as likely. Besides, half of a giant compensation package is still pretty huge, and most of our motivation is the sheer challenge of the job anyway.

As Dr. Evil would say, right...

I just don't see a tax increase as politically feasible at the moment, maybe when the economy picks up. My points to Hastings would be:

1) the boards of the companies in the financial market got us in the position we are in, so who cares if they have a tougher time hiring and holding competent executives. They can't do much worse than they've done already.

1a) star athletes, stunning movie stars, venture capitalists and the chief executives of private companies didn't get us into this mess and their industries aren't being bailed out by obscene infusions of public money. Yes hedge fund managers played a substantial role but there is already talk of regulating them.

2) executive positions at companies backed by the government - essentially saved by the government and the taxpayer - will be more desirable than at companies no one trusts. Especially if you figure in his point that executives are mostly driven by the sheer challenge of the job.

3) If he had proposed that once the economy recovers, pay caps should be removed and taxes increased, I wouldn't suspect his motives. But since he doesn't, I will never be using Netflix, not that he would care.

Lux Interior of the Cramps passed away.

What I hope Obama is most bipartisan about is maintaining and improving the good relationship Bush developed with India. The south Asian nation is fast becoming an essential democracy and important part of the global economy. What is making India nervous is the prospect of internationalizing the conflict in Kashmir, so America and our allies will need to be most delicate about that.

Floyd Norris writes that "the countries that opened the most to the international capital markets, and that sought to bring in business with relatively lax regulations, now are suffering the most. Iceland was the wonder economy of the world; now it is broke."

Kenneth S. Rogoff, the Harvard economist, noted at the International Monetary Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week that India, which has "comparatively stringent restrictions on international capital flows," also seemed to have the most optimists and seemed to be in line for economic growth in a year when few countries are.

"Thank heavens for the strong regulatory framework we have in our financial system," he quoted one Indian corporate executive as saying.

Meanhwhile on the homefront, instead merely offshoring work to help it deal with the economic crisis, IBM is attempting to offshore workers:

Big Blue is offering its outgoing workers in the United States and Canada a chance to take an IBM job in India, Nigeria, Russia or other countries.

Through a program dubbed Project Match, IBM will help interested workers whose jobs are on the chopping block to "identify potential opportunities in growth markets and facilitate consideration by hiring managers in those markets," according to an internal company document obtained by CNN.

The company also will help with moving costs and provide visa assistance, it says.

What companies like IBM are finding is that they like the low labor costs, but don't like the lower quality labor or work they are getting in return.

In related news, A.Q. Khan was set free. Say what you want about Musharaff - and I think it was good he was pushed off the stage, relatively peacefully - at least he kept that guy under house arrest. Holbrooke has his work cut out for him and we here at Negative Outlook? wish him the best.

What Say You? (@ the centrists in Congress)









A reliably brilliant piece on the economic mess by Doug Henwood titled "Gloomy, w/ a 15% chance of depression". He always includes great photos of the major personalities involved.

LBO has often described the U.S. economy by invoking the old Timex watch slogan from the 1950s, "Takes a licking and keeps on ticking." Crash follows upon panic follows upon bust, and yet the thing keeps getting up again to binge some more. These remarkable feats of renewal, though, have always come with big help from the U.S. government, either multibillion dollar bailouts or long rounds of indulgent monetary policy from the Federal Reserve. But revive it always has, despite the forecasts from the hard left and the hard right that this time it was different and the medicine just won't work.

Will it work again? Will the megadoses of stimulus do the trick? Or is the jig up? Will what’s widely touted as the greatest financial crisis since the 1930s be a prelude to Great Depression II?

As this is written, the punters on the Intrade betting site - who have an uncanny history in predicting elections - are giving depression a 15% probability. That seems about right. [Note added for web: the value of the web contract soared in the weeks after these words were written. As this note is added, the contract is at 53. That seems too high, but you never know, do you?]

Also, an interview with Henwood by Steve Perry.

Henwood has a new blog where he writes in typical literary fashion:

The IMF, which was off the scene for many years, is, like a vampire salivating at sunset, returning to action. It's already developed a program for Iceland, which is being put through the austerity wringer; apparently being white and Nordic doesn’t earn you an exemption. It's likely to lend some money to some countries that it deems virtuous on easy terms - among them Brazil but not Argentina. More on all this in the coming weeks.

I agree with Martin Wolf of the Financial Times that IMF reform is needed in the medium to long term.

Paul Krugman notes that Obama has ratched up his rhetoric:

Now, in the past few days I've heard criticisms of this plan that echo the very same failed theories that helped lead us into this crisis - the notion that tax cuts alone will solve all our problems; that we can ignore fundamental challenges like energy independence and the high cost of health care and still expect our economy and our country to thrive.

I reject that theory, and so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change. So I urge members of Congress to act without delay. No plan is perfect, and we should work to make it stronger. But let’s not make the perfect the enemy of the essential. Let’s show people all over our country who are looking for leadership in this difficult time that we are equal to the task.

Larry Summers warns "deflation is a real risk for the economy."(again, noted by Krugman).Despite all of this I am much more Pollyannaish than Henwood or Wolf or Krugman. Maybe it's a generational thing, although I wasn't much surprised by the crisis after years of neoliberal-Republican misrule, unlike say Bush or McCain or Phil Gramm were.

Brian Beutler writes:

If you’re of the opinion that the events of the past several days are parts of a shrewd political gambit that will ultimately result in the best stimulus package we ever could’ve hoped for, this post isn’t for you. If you’re not, here’s how a motley assortment of folks think the effort can be salvaged.
...
What say you?

I say nay! Obama admitted making mistakes over the nominees, it's not a big deal. If you get tons more of those, then it's death by attrition of course.

Obama has repeatedly publicly said that the American people did not like how the Bush TARP plan was enacted. So they're fighting that and may have to give a little more than they would have liked. (In classic Republican fashion the Republicans have sort of sabotaged the cause, but it's "salvagable." At least Bush passed something which probably gave the economy some breathing space, and I seem to remember at the time certain liberals not wanting to pass anything and to put it off. Some of us have a memory.)

This isn't do or die time for Obama. It's do or die time for centrist Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats.

It's Obama who's inquiring of them: What say you? WHAT SAY YOU?

If they fail the test, they'll suffer the consequences.

Lindsay Beyerstein took photos at a Geoghegan event. She was hired by the Washington Independent as was the highly intelligent David Weigel.

Hackers Crack Into Texas Road Sign, Warn of Zombies Ahead

It happened in Austin, near the University of Texas. I lived in Austin in the early '90s and it's a great town and sort of a mini Silicon Valley. While I had a job in Austin, there was an economics professor at the univerisity whose classes I would audit. He had printouts of Clash song lyrics up on his office door (see below). I remember he also had stacks of BusinessWeek, a great magazine.

Any movie that contains a Clash song gets a thumbs up in my book. Yeah Guy Ritchie borrows heavily from Tarantino and Heat, but it's still a fun movie.

my daddy was a bankrobber
but he never hurt nobody
he just loved to live that way
and he loved to steal your money

some is rich, and some is poor
that's the way the world is
but i don't believe in lying back
sayln' how bad your luck is

so we came to jazz it up
we never loved a shovel
break your back to earn your pay
an' don't forget to grovel

the old man spoke up in a bar
said i never been in prison
a lifetime serving one machine
is ten times worse than prison

imagine if all the boys in jail
could get out now together
whadda you think they'd want to say to us?
while we was being clever

someday you'll meet your rocking chair
cos that's where we're spinning
there's no point to wanna comb your hair
when it's grey and thinning

run rabbit run
strike out boys, for the hills
i can find that hole in the wall
and i know that they never will

Lorrie Moore writes about John Updike.

Martin Amis writes about him for the Guardian.

In my thoughts on Obama's inaugural address I failed to mention one very important part where he said "we will restore science to its rightful place." I guess maybe I left it out because it seems so obvious and also because it's weird that he felt it necessary to mention. I mean science is one of those boring things they teach you at school.

But science has been bent lately to the needs of corporations and their quest for profits and it has also been under assault by the irrationalities of religion.

Dennis Overbye writes about science and democracy at the New York Times:

If there is anything democracy requires and thrives on, it is the willingness to embrace debate and respect one another and the freedom to shun received wisdom. Science and democracy have always been twins.

Today that dynamic is most clearly and perhaps crucially tested in China. As I pondered Mr. Obama’s words, I thought of Xu Liangying, an elderly Chinese physicist and Einstein scholar I met a couple of years ago, who has spent most of his life under house arrest for upholding Einstein’s maxim that there is no science without freedom of speech.

The converse might also be true. The habit of questioning that you learn in physics is invaluable in the rest of society. As Fang Lizhi, Dr. Xu’s fellow dissident whose writings helped spark the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations and who now teaches at the University of Arizona, said in 1985, “Physics is more than a basis for technology; it is a cornerstone of modern thought.”

If we are not practicing good science, we probably aren’t practicing good democracy. And vice versa.

Science and democracy have been the watchwords of Chinese political aspirations for more than a century. When the Communist Party took power it sought to appropriate at least the scientific side of the equation. Here, for example, is what Hu Yaobang, the party’s general secretary, said in 1980. “Science is what it is simply because it can break down fetishes and superstitions and is bold in explorations and because it opposes following the beaten path and dares to destroy outmoded conventions and bad customs.”

Brave words that have yet to be allowed to come true in China. Mr. Hu was purged, and in fact it was to mourn his death that students first began assembling in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Dr. Fang got in trouble initially because he favored the Big Bang, but that was against Marxist orthodoxy that the universe was infinitely unfolding. Marxism, it might be remembered, was once promoted as a scientific theory, but some subjects were off-limits.

But once you can’t talk about one subject, the origin of the universe, for example, sooner or later other subjects are going to be off-limits, like global warming, birth control and abortion, or evolution, the subject of yet another dustup in Texas last week.

I highly recommend the haunting animated film Waltz with Bashir by Ari Folman. It's the story of an Israeli veteran of the Israel-Lebanon war of 1982 and his coming to terms with that war and massacre at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.

Israel invaded Lebanon and installed their ally Bashir Gemayel, senior commander of the "Phalangists" Christian militia. As the movie's website notes

Gemayel was considered extraordinarily charismatic, a fashionable young man, handsome and infinitely admired by all Christian militia soldiers and their families. He was especially esteemed by the Israeli leadership. Gemayel’s appointment as President of Lebanon was designed to ensure relative quiet on the tense border between the two countries.

While giving a speech at the Phalangist headquarters in East Beirut, Bashir Gemayel was killed by a massive explosive charge. To this day it is unknown who was responsible for the murder, but the assumption is that the assassination was orchestrated by Syrian or Palestinian factions or that they collaborated thereon.
That afternoon, Israeli troops penetrated a region in West Beirut that was mostly populated in those days by Palestinian refugees, and they surrounded the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. Towards evening, large Phalangist forces made their way to the area, driven by a profound sense of revenge after the killing of their revered leader. At nightfall, Phalangist forces entered the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps aided by the IDF’s illumination rounds. The declared objective of the Christian forces was to purge the camps of Palestinian combat fighters. However, there were virtually no Palestinian combat fighters left in the refugee camps since they had been evacuated on ships to Tunisia two weeks earlier. For two whole days the sound of gunfire and battles could be heard from the camps but it was only on the third day, September 16th, when panic-stricken women swarmed the Israeli troops outside the camps, that the picture became clear: For three days the Christian forces massacred all refugee camp occupants. Men, women, the elderly and children, were all killed with horrific cruelty. To this day the exact number of victims is unknown but they are estimated at 3000.