Small Dead Animals draws my attention to the fact that things are not all quiet in France On New Years day, more than 1000 cars were torched – but the French seem unable to mention the fact that Muslims were burning the cars of infidels. Islamic jihadism has tripled over the last year, but French …
Author: Jim
affirmative action, bad loans, bailout, crisis
The New York Times explains: creditors came to believe that their loans to unsound financial institutions would be made good by the Fed — as long as the collapse of those institutions would threaten the global credit system. Bolstered by this sense of security, bad loans mushroomed. Of course any crisis is multicausal. I have …
No warming trend in raw surface temperature data
You have all seen those GISS graphs of global warming. Anthony Watt checked the raw data on which they are based. The cooked data shows warming, the raw data shows cooling. Of course this does not mean the data is necessarily fraudulent – but the adjustments are largely guesswork, so when they compile these graphs, …
The cause of the crisis
Capitalism and free markets are prone to bubbles, and a great deal more prone to bubbles when speculators can expect that the government will print as much money as needed to keep the bubble going, but bubbles do not in themselves lead to massive financial defaults, because normally lenders only lend to people who are …
The crisis
Fred Thompson argues the solution is thrift – which exactly what the government is trying to prevent. Obviously he is right – and yet wrong, for one person’s savings have to be another person’s obligations. What we need is a financial system that mobilizes savings for sound investments – such as mortgages on reasonably priced …
Why do all large organizations skew left authoritarian?
Constant drew my attention to the fact that Fox news, originally created to provide an alternative to the Mainstream Media orthodox ideology, is joining it, which led me to reflect on the tendency of big corporations to go left authoritarian and support socialism, gun control, political censorship, government health, and so on and so forth …
Global Average temperatures to 2008-October
This is the running twelve month average world temperature, as measured by satellites, as reported by The National Space Science and Technology Center. World temperature change in centigrade degrees. It goes up, it goes down. If there is any trend, the trend is less than the decade to decade fluctuations, and is not at all …
Why iceland went bust – and why the US went bust
The usual answer, of course, is the evils of capitalism: this country’s banks – virtually unregulated – to borrow more than 10 times their country’s gross domestic product from the international wholesale money markets. Watch as a Graf Zeppelin of debt propels its self-styled “Viking Raiders†across the world’s financial stage, accumulating companies like gamblers …
China’s boom
China in the 20th century had two major revolutions, a civil war, a World War, The Great Leap Forward [sic], mass starvation, the Cultural Revolution, arguably the most tyrannical dictator ever and he didn’t even brush his teeth, and now they are going from rags to riches without even a business cycle burp. While the …
The lesson of the 2008 American Presidential election
You win elections from the base, not the center. Obama appealed to the Democrat base, the Democrat wing of the Democrat party, and the lunatic wing of the Democrat of the Democrat party, Just as Reagan appealed to the Republican party base. McCain tried to appeal to the wobbly Democrat wing of the Democrat pary …