Russians

In Europe and America, there's a growing feeling of hysteria.
Conditioned to respond to all the threats in the rhetorical speeches of the Soviets.
Mr. Krushchev said, "We will bury you."  I don't subscribe to this point of view.
It'd be such an ignorant thing to do if the Russians love their children too.

How can I save my little boy from Oppenheimer's deadly toy?
There is no monopoly on common sense on either side of the political fence.
We share the same biology, regardless of ideology.
Believe me when I say to you, I hope the Russians love their children too.

There is no historical precedent to put the words in the mouth of the president.
There's no such thing as a winnable war; it's a lie we don't believe anymore.
Mr. Reagan says, "We will protect you." I don't subscribe to this point of view.
Believe me when I say to you, I hope the Russians love their children too.

We share the same biology, regardless of ideology.
But what might save us, me and you, is if the Russians love their children too.

-- Sting / Prokofiev (1985)

faulty Fed figuring

[Federal Reserve Chair Janet] Yellen said at least one thing of importance last week.... She confessed to the frightening truth that the Fed formulates its policies and actions based on forecasts of future economic developments. [Unfortunately] our monetary politburo couldn’t forecast its way out of a paper bag.... [I]t’s inherently impossible to forecast the economic future, but that is especially true when the forecasting model is an obsolete Keynesian relic which essentially assumes a closed U.S. economy and that balance sheets don’t matter....

[T]he economy is now seamlessly global, meaning that everything which counts -- such as labor supply and wage trends, capacity utilization and investment rates and the pace of business activity and inventory stocks -- is planetary in nature.... Nevertheless, Yellen & Co. are obsessed with the immeasurable and largely irrelevant level of “slack” in the domestic labor market. They falsely view it as a proxy for the purported gap between potential and actual GDP. Not surprisingly, they are now under the supreme illusion that the labor slack has been largely absorbed and the output gap nearly closed. So they are raising money market rates by a smidge to confirm the U.S. economy’s strength and that the Keynesian nirvana of full employment is near at hand....

[I]n today’s world of global labor competition in goods, offshored business services, episodic domestic gigs, temp agency labor delivery, and Wal-Mart style labor scheduling by the hour and time of day, week, month, and season, the whole idea of “full employment” is a relic.... [Labor distribution factors] shift and morph steadily over time and in response to new technological and cultural developments. They are utterly beyond the reach of 25 basis points of interest rate shifts on the money markets. So the unemployment rate tells you almost nothing useful. By contrast, there are an immense number of leading indicators which track the global credit bubble and false boom it enabled. They bear far more directly on the main street outlook than does the Fed’s primitive bathtub model of the US economy. 

-- David Stockman (The Daily Reckoning) Dec. 22, 2015

abortion politics

During my time in Congress, I regularly introduced legislation forbidding organizations that perform abortions from receiving federal funding. The US Government should not force taxpayers to subsidize an activity they believe is murder....

The federal government has no constitutional authority to permit, fund, or even outlaw abortion. Therefore, efforts to make abortion a federal crime are just as unconstitutional as efforts to prohibit states from outlawing abortion. A Congress that truly cared about the Constitution would end all federal funding for abortion and pass legislation restricting federal jurisdiction over abortion, thus returning the issue to the states....

One factor hindering the anti-abortion movement's ability to change people’s minds is that too many abortion opponents also support a militaristic foreign policy. These pro-lifers undercut their moral credibility as advocates for unborn American lives when they display a callous indifference to the lives of Iraqi, Iranian, and Afghan children....

[A]ll those who wish to create a society of liberty, peace, and prosperity should join me in advocating for a consistent ethic of life and liberty that respects the rights of all persons, born and unborn.

-- Dr. Ron Paul (from his website) Aug. 2, 2015

finite resources

Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. This is as true of humans in the finite space of a planetary ecosystem as it is of gas molecules in a sealed flask. The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who do survive.

-- Pardot Kynes, First Imperial Planetologist of Arrakis (Dune by Frank Herbert)

your life is a lie

Here's the deal -- open your eyes -- your life is a lie
Don't say a word.  I'll tell you why you're living a lie
Your life is a lie, but you deny you ever lied
Wondering why.  Barely alive
Count your friends on your hands.
Now look again -- they're not your friends
Hold your breath. Everyone left.  No surprise.  Living a lie....

Nobody wins.  Try not to cry.  You'll survive on your own

Lessons in life:  your life is a lie
Now there's no time wondering why
Where in the world is that girl who knows it's alright to live a life waiting to die?
Not knowing that your life is a lie
Wondering why nobody writes
Hollow inside.  Bitter delight.  Fire and ice.
Your life is a lie

-- MGMT (2013)

Bubble Financialization

[C]entral bank bubble finance has fostered an existential crisis in what remains of American capitalism....  [A]s the main street economy of work and production has been going nowhere, the financial system has erupted skyward....  How did this massive inflation of the financial sphere happen?  Since the time of Greenspan’s abject panic in the wake of Black Monday in October 1987, the Fed has chronically pegged the money market rate below market-clearing levels.  In doing so, they fueled an embedded carry trade that has mushroomed relentlessly....

In an honest free market, gamblers would have to pay more for their carry funding.  They’d face much greater uncertainty as to its price and availability and dissipate far more of their winnings hedging their portfolios than is required under the current central bank-driven regime of bubble finance....  When debt is priced drastically below its economic cost and receives a deep tax subsidy to boot, a variation of the supply side theorem manifests itself. Namely, when the cost of servicing debt capital is made artificially low, you get a lot more of it -- from the public and private sectors alike....

[T]he debt was overwhelmingly used for financial engineering....  The relentless trading, churning and synthesizing of assets and derivatives within the giant bloated system of finance has almost nothing to do with raising or allocating capital for productive use.  Instead, this giant $95 trillion pool is where honest savings from the household and business sectors go to be scalped, appropriated, and stolen by the hedge funds, dealers, financial engineers, and gamblers which populate the casino....

And the denizens of the Eccles Building keep their heavy foot on the monetary accelerator as they witlessly inflate a $95 trillion financial bubble....  This is a clear and present danger to American capitalism fostered by an unelected monetary politburo in thrall to its own lust for power and mesmerized by its own doctrinaire group think.  The tragedy is that nothing can stop them except the thundering crash of the gargantuan bubble they have single-handedly enabled.

-- David Stockman (The Daily Reckoning) May 14, 2015

equilibrium interest rates?

A similarly confused criticism often heard is that the Fed is somehow distorting financial markets and investment decisions by keeping interest rates "artificially low." Contrary to what sometimes seems to be alleged, the Fed cannot somehow withdraw and leave interest rates to be determined by "the markets." The Fed's actions determine the money supply and thus short-term interest rates; it has no choice but to set the short-term interest rate somewhere. So where should that be? The best strategy for the Fed I can think of is to set rates at a level consistent with the healthy operation of the economy over the medium term, that is, at the (today, low) equilibrium rate.
 -- Ben Bernanke (Brookings Institution blog posting) March 30, 2015 




There is no affirmative case that control of interest rates spurs a magic elixir called more debt and higher leverage ratios which, in turn, generate improved economic performance and greater societal welfare and wealth. Accordingly, the Keynesian central banking remit, perforce, rests on the default case of prevention of business cycle instability and warding off the alleged suicidal tendency of capitalism toward depressionary swoons.... [But] the blinding empirical reality is that since the arrival of Keynesian central banking under Greenspan and his successors we have had the "Great Immoderation," not the nirvana of stable, endless growth and a recession-free world....

The Fed does not need to manage interest rates, and therefore does not need to embrace Bernanke’s spurious answer to the question of "what rate." Bernanke’s comments on the "equilibrium real interest rate" ... amount to pure gibberish -- academic jargon for unbounded, plenary power to manage the entire pricing machinery of the world's $300 trillion financial system. Indeed, lurking in the intellectual mush ["healthy operation of the economy, full employment of labor and capital resources"] ... is the true rationale for the greatest exercise in mission creep during the entire history of the modern state....

There is nothing in [the Fed's justification] that can be objectively measured or tangibly pegged....  [T]he real world of capitalism is far, far too complex and dynamic to be measured and assessed with the exactitude implied by Bernanke’s gobbledygook. In fact, what his purported necessity for choosing a rate "somewhere" actually involves is the age old problem of socialist calculation. It can’t be done -- and most especially not in the most fluid, complex and fastest moving markets known to man. That is, the global financial markets for debt, equity, loans, commodities and all their derivatives.

-- David Stockman (The Daily Reckoning) April 1, 2015

destiny

veins are shaped like lightning,
like the roots of a tree,
and like rivers that flow down to the sea.
-- melissa swingle (trailer bride) 2003

crossed out name

I kiss her mouth, and I know
For everything there is a word.
For everything but this.

I like the dresses, the shoes, and the clothes
And everything you know that goes
With loving a girl, I suppose.

I wish I could tell you just how I'm hurt.
Pinpoint the location -- it's in another universe.
When I close my eyes, I see a fire so plain
And my crossed-out name.

-- Ryan Adams (2008)