Administrative Delusion
Yesterday on CBS Sunday Morning, President Barack Obama was being interviewed by Harry Smith. This seems to be this President’s primary function. I can just see his job description now–Item 1, must interview with the media incessantly. Never mind...It Pays To Be A Pelican
As the BP oil spill unfolds in the Gulf and in our living rooms through our television screens, the coverage has focused on two major problems that it has created. One is the flat-out brutal images of oil soaked pelicans; the other is the crisis of the Gulf fishermen who have been forced out of work. One thing is clear, if you had to choose between being a pelican or a fish your choice is an easy one. At the same time everyone is rightfully heartbroken about the pelicans, we can’t wait for the fishermen to get back in the water and cast their nets to catch and kill as many fish as possible. While I am not by any stretch a PETA guy and I grant the fact that this is largely because we don’t eat pelicans, the point it makes is that we constantly draw large subliminal differences between things. In this case, though both are “wildlife,†we subconsciously dismiss the plight of the fish while granting a level of sympathy to the pelicans that compels some of us to set about capturing them and hand rubbing them with Dawn dish detergent. The same point could be made by asking the questions: Why do we eat turkeys and chickens but not pelicans; why cows and not horses? Why are mice disgusting but gerbils and hamsters cute? In large part the answer is: that’s just the way it is.
I suppose you might be asking yourself a question right about now—how does this relate to politics? While I’m quite certain that indeed everything relates to politics, the specific answer is the power of the mentally presumed. The United States is now and has always been a relatively conservative country. Our Constitution, laws, and values, as well as every poll ever taken on the subject, prove this. The problem for Liberals is that well . . . they are not. This presents a huge political task for them. In order to get the [...]
Hitting A Moving Target
The two major forms of Republicanism each have a doctrine that is tied to actual documents. Religious social conservatives have The Bible, while fiscal and Constitutional conservatives have the Constitution. It is safe to say that the vast majority of Republicans have their political tenants supplied by one, if not both, of these documents. This type of textual anchor is a positive philosophically and morally but in a strictly political sense can be a liability. The resulting positives are what tend to be deep, time-tested convictions, stability, certainty and, when used, an effective measuring stick for candidates in primaries. However, in our current event driven and largely politically uninformed society the negative is that this rigidness makes it nearly impossible to adapt positions to individual situations and use current events for maximum political gain. This is a problem that the modern day liberal Democrat will not have anytime soon. They indeed stand in the starkest of contrast. Having left the Constitution behind decades ago, they move forward with no defined doctrine. No set of black and white documents that create, inform, or guide their ideology (and don’t even try to give me the party platform). This creates a situation in which changing party leadership sets an evolving standard as to what defines a Democrat. This not only allows them to easily tailor their political message to what they perceive to be popular at the moment, but grants them the option of playing the role of “lifeguard†and coming to the citizenry's rescue with politically crafted legislation. This, in tandem with the current perception that this is indeed the role of government, is extremely effective but thankfully also comes with disadvantages. First, the [...]So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you can win a hundred battles without a single loss.
—Sun Tzu, The Art of War
The Case Against Financial Institutions Regulation (and other sundry items)
The news events of the last few months have certainly put the Obama Administration in a peculiar position. The Gulf crisis notwithstanding, most of these events have been created by this president and his staff. Team Obama went the the G20 Summit in Toronto this weekend to chide the other 19 nations to continue to stimulate their economy through Keynsian economic principles. "Not so fast", said the other countries. "We have to make choices, and right now, we choose fiscal solvency and prudence". What a concept! Passage of the Financial Institutions Reform package was always tenuous, at best, but the death of Senator Robert Byrd over the weekend makes passage more difficult. One less Democratic vote means that it's more likely that Republicans can filibuster this package, and this is a good thing. Here's why: Any bill that increases regulation, drives up costs to the consumer, and squeezes financial services companies' margins will negatively affect the economy. The costs of increased regulation always get passed along to the consumer in some way, shape or form. Limiting profits also limit tax revenues [...]Levin v. Goldman: Big Solution For a Big Problem?
When Senator Levin says “Goldman made a lot of money by betting against the mortgage market†what do we think he might have meant? Knowing some of the political philosophy of the esteemed senator from Michigan, it is obvious that his inference was that Goldman was acting in a fashion that was either illegal or immoral. How could any American institution bet against motherhood, apple pie or the American dream of universal home ownership? And certainly the notion of â€making a lot of money†is of dubious quality on its face. The Senator is literally screaming “These people are the enemy of the state, and they need to be leashed, or chained, or imprisoned, or tortured…all for the good of the system of the people.â€
It is always amusing when a single statement contains such a large number of fallacies. Let us count the ways.
First, Goldman was acting in their role as an investment broker. Everything they do is essentially either a bet for or against something…or the facilitating of someone else doing the same thing. More technically, they are simply acting as brokers, and not as agents. Agents represent a buyer or seller. Brokers facilitate the transaction. This is the “market mechanism†and it is what guides the whole system of the effective allocation of resources. It is fundamental to our material progress. As significantly, if people [...]
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