Dangers of the Concentration of Wealth

Interesting pontifications regarding the concentraion of wealth:

Simply Left Behind

I had a chance to do a little thinking this morning in the bathroom....

I've read recently complaints on the left that Bush is an imperialist, that 9/11 was an attempt to grab power for himself and to create an American empire.

Bush is not responsible for setting up an American Empire, anymore than Clinton, or Bush I or Reagan, or Kennedy, or even Roosevelt.

History demonstrates that all democracies and republics evolve to empires. That's a simple fact, because democratic forms of government cannot possibly compete with the twin factors of the gathering of material wealth and it's concomitant, power.

Democratic power, by defintion, is diffused. I cannot gather a big enough bloc of votes without appealing to a large number of people.

On the other hand, wealth, with its aggregation in the hands of the few or even the one, can garner massive power that does not require a consensus. It merely requires an opinion in order to be deployed.

Ergo, when viewing history thru the lens of power, we see that wealth inevitably trumps cooperation.

We've seen it already in this country for centuries, literally almost from the beginning, but let's look at the latter half of the twentieth century for relevance:

Democratic power is best exercised when law and precedent are revered above any other "social god", for want of a better turn of phrase (and I'm just back from vacation, so taht's the best you're getting!). Washington got it correct when he went out of his way to ensure that his custom and precedent was something that was fair and equitable to all. Like only standing for election twice.

So here comes FDR, a savior of the nation, arguably the greatest President ever, to demolish that institution at the altar of personality.

Similarly, we've seen the brick-by-brick devolution of our personal freedoms, most recently in the Patriot Act, but also in the actions of previous presidents in the so-called "war on drugs", whereby the Fourth and Fifth Amendments have been greatly challenged and the SCOTUS has agreed they needed trimming.

The First Amendment is in danger of collapsing under the weight of public opinion, goaded on by the petty, small-minded administration currently in power, but the fatal blow was dealt by the Reagan FCC when it removed the Fairness Doctrine and when the 1996 Telecommunications Act greatly increased the concentration of media ownership.

Similarly, an huge blow to personal freedom was dealt by the Supremes themselves when they determined that corporations had precisely equal rights to natural born persons (I think this was in the Ford administration, but someone correct me if I'm wrong). Couple that to the fact that corporations already had rights far exceeding those of natural born persons (the right to socialize losses but privatize income, for example) and you can see that the dangerous combination of material wealth and power were mixing.

And we've already seen the beginnings of the coalescence of power into pools based on families: The Kennedys, Rockefellers, and Bushes. And now, the Clintons are poised to join the plutocracy.

There are examples of how a country evolves from a democracy to an empire, but the obvious choice is Rome (and here, I highly recommend reading "Rubicon").

Right now, all we have standing between us and an empire is the rule of law. All it takes is for one person to decide he is above the law (and as recent Presidencies indicate, that's not hard) and that's the ballgame, Charlie. Sadly, I don't see a way to reverse or even stop this trend from happening.

Katrina Anniversary: The Blame Game

Well put.

TPM Cafe

Another Round of the "Blame Game"
By Boyd Blundell

On of the most noxious of the federal talking points after Katrina last year was that they weren't going to play the "blame game." Of course administration defenders were playing it vigorously, which is important to note, because if the "blame game" had not been played, things would have been much worse for the administration than they ended up being (which is in fact pretty bad). The reason it was a success is that it gave Bush's true believers something to hang their hat on if they didn't want to criticize the administration.

But all this is to misunderestimate the scope of what happened here, and how predictable it was. You could prove decisively that Nagin was an incompetent idiot and Blanco was clueless and uncooperative, and still do nothing to mitigate the "blame" due the federal government.

The threat presented by Katrina, which it managed to deliver on despite barely grazing New Orelans, had been considered long in advance. It ranked alongside nuclear bombs and bio-terror threats as one of the worst catastrophes possible. This was not a secret.

So the question is not whether the city of New Orleans or the state of Lousisana acted well or poorly, but rather how much the quality of their reaction matters given the scope of the disaster. Remember we are not talking about a few square blocks of destruction, where the resources of the rest of the city can be brought to bear on the problem. We are talking about donzens of square miles of devastation, which complely obliterates the whole command and control structure.

So pile on Nagin if you must. I have no particular interest in defending him. He's energetic and fairly honest, but is completely overmatched by his job. But it should be noted that the evacuation of New Orleans before Katrina was among the (if not the) most successful urban evacuations ever. The lessons of Ivan were learned, and contraflow performed admirably. While the mandatory evacuation was ordered Sunday, the rhetoric of evacuation was ramped up on Thurday and Friday. New Orleans does not have the resources to plan a perfect evacuation, or good post-storm care. Everyone knew this too.

(Horrifying thought of the day: The 17th st and London canal levees failed well below their design specs. The level at which they seem to have failed could conceivably have been achieved by tropical storm Cindy in July of 2005. Everyone would have been in the city. Potential six digit death tolls. And you saw FEMA perform with maximum warning -- imagine if they were taken by surprise.)

Or pile on Blanco if you must. This is harder, because she did in fact declare a state of emergency on the 26th and requested a federal declaration on the 27th. She, unlike senior federal officials, cancelled her out of town plans, and generally seemed more cognizant of the scope of the impending disaster than Bush and Nagin put together. But whatever Blanco's competence, she did not do a lot to inspire confidence in her consituents. She didn't look decisive, and that's part of the job.

But let's pretend that both Nagin and Blanco performed beautifully throughout the whole thing. Let'e pretend (and this is hard) that Nagin made all the right calls, ordered the mandatory evacuation at the proper time, and marshalled all of New Orelans' meager resources in preparing for disaster. Let's further pretend that Blanco was a model of foresight and was ready to be the grease that helped the enitre disaster machine run smoothly, cooperating fully with both Nagin and Bush. The only thing that stays the same in this scenario is the federal response.

New Orleans is still completely screwed.

If the mayor and governor had been perfect, the ice still would have been sent to Boston, the necessary resources would not have been pre-positioned, Bush would have stayed on vacation, interrupting it only to to photo-ops with McCain and country music stars, and Broderick would still have made life and death decisions based on CNN's coverage of drinking in the French Quarter while ignoring the 700 emails that described the catastrophic flooding.

For the people of New Orleans and Louisiana to hold Blanco and Nagin responsible for their failures is not difficult or even unwarranted. But when the rest of the country starts piling on as well, it misses the point by over-valuing the the mayor and governor's importance in the whole scenario. It would be like blaming a few officers for the comprehensive disaster in Iraq. (And who would be craven enough to do that?)

If we fail to keep our collective eyes on the federal ball here, we are missing one of the reasons why we should care about this more than we apparently do. (Others are enumerated here.) The Department of Homeland Securty, the ultimate architect of this abject failure, is still in charge of FEMA. And FEMA is not a fixed-venue performance; it is a travelling road show that could soon be coming to a city near you. And when they screw it up again, they're going to blame you.

The Best Example of Free Trade?

Bush touts "free trade" as the reason Harley-Davidson is doing so well. Actually, it was the protectionism that allowed Harley to flourish amidst heavy Japanese competition:

From "Economist's View"

... Let's play dress-up! -- but we need an excuse. How about we say it's to tout the merits of free trade? Yeah, that's the ticket:

Free-Trade Ain't What It Used to Be, by Dean Baker: USA Today had a great story about President Bush's visit to a Harley-Davidson factor in York, Pennsylvania to tout the merits of "free-trade." The reason why the story was so great is that the plant is in fact a testament to the effective use of protectionist policies to sustain a favored industry.

Don't take my word for it, here's the beginning of a 1983 article in the New York Times describing President Reagan's decision to impose tariffs on imported motorcycles:

In an unusually strong protectionist action, President Reagan today ordered a tenfold increase in tariffs for imported heavyweight motorcycles.

The impact of Mr. Reagan's action, which followed the unanimous recommendation of his trade advisers, is effectively limited to Japanese manufacturers, which dominate every sector of the American motorcycle market.
The action was exceptional for protecting a single American company, the Harley-Davidson Motor Company of Milwaukee, the sole surviving American maker of motorcycles ("U.S. Raises Tariff for Motorcycles," 4-2-83:A1).

What Bush Has Done Right II

On further thought, Bush has actually pursued two main objectives:

- Insure that fear of terrorism continues so as to be a recurring element at every election cycle.

- Insure that a hot war is active during his entire administration. This enables him to claim status as a "war president". This is used as a cudgel against anyone who tries to criticize him.

These two items he has used repeatedly against his critics and to encourage the masses to vote for him and his party.

This explains his lack of enthusiasm in capturing Bin Laden. It also neatly explains his half-hearted war effort. The lack of sufficient numbers of men and equipment may be an effort to hobble the effort and draw it out. A war that is won and over before his presidency would not serve the purpose of silencing his critics.

The 5 Stages of Bubbles

Billmon points out about bubbles:

Working from a schematic first developed by the late financial economist Hyman Minsky, Kindleberger described the idealized bubble thusly:

* Displacement: Some sort of exogenous shock -- such as the huge drop in interest rates in the early '00s -- gets the speculative juices flowing.

* Credit expansion: Lenders hustle to get in on the action, feeding more liquidity into the market, creating a self-sustaining loop of price increases, which leads to:

* Euphoria: (Minsky, following Adam Smith, called it "overtrading.") Since expectations are adaptive, not rational, a prolonged period of rising prices creates a growing consensus that the boom will never end. Clever writers and hack economists like Jim Glassman and Kevin Hassett, hustle to develop new wave theories showing why this must be true.

* Distress: As price gains slow or plateau (there are only so many fools in the world with money to wager) it begins to dawn on the crowd -- always slowly, never at once -- that the boom will NOT last forever.

* Revulsion: (Minsky also used the term "discredit") The conviction sets in that the one thing you do not want to own, under any circumstances, is the asset in question -- the same one the Glassmans and Hassets of the world were recently predicting would grow to the sky.

When we apply this to the current housing situation (Billmon again):

It goes something like this:

1.) We're not in a bubble. Prices are just recovering from years of underappreciation.

2.) It's a bubble, but it's a sustainable bubble because the fundamentals of the market have changed in the past decade. People need to recognize this. (Note: this stage is usually recognizable by an explosion in popularity of increasingly desperate and bizarre financing options.)

3.) Yes, growth is slowing, but we think we'll navigate a soft landing. It's absurd to think that housing in [fill in area where you live] will actually lose value.

4.) This is a disaster! Somebody better step in and do something! People are losing their life savings!

5.) Buyers have learned a permanent lesson this time. Homeowners need to accept the reality that the bubble of the past five years was a one-time fluke and we'll never see it happen again.

Sounds familiar? Read the rest.

Personally, I know of areas that have *tripled* in price since 1995. A "10-20%" drop is being very optimistic, in my opinion. Heck, if you have a fixed-rate mortgage and your house *tripled* in value in 10 years and "only" dropped 10-20% you still have every reason to be *thrilled*.

Bush Trotting Out the Old Fear Horse

Courtesy of Martini Republic

Demonstrating once again that his is an administration bereft of imagination, initiatives, or answers, Bush dusted off an old, worn out campaign slogan yesterday, echoing the fear-mongering theme of his 2004 reelection:

“America is safer than it has been, yet it is not yet safe,” Bush told reporters at the National Counterterrorism Center just outside Washington.

Safer, but not yet safe. Bush sounds like a man with demented echolalia, repeating old, familiar words echoing back from years past:

“America is safer, but not yet safe.” — GW Bush, November 1, 2004

“we are safer, but not yet safe.” — Bush, October 31, 2004

“America is safer, not yet safe.” — Bush, October 25, 2004

“America is safer, but not yet safe.” — Bush, October 9, 2004

“I think we are safer today. I would say, though, we’re not yet safe” — Dick Cheney, September 17, 2004

“the actions we’ve take have made America safer, but not yet safe. ” — Bush, August 26, 2004

“Our homeland is safer, but we are not yet safe.” — Bush, July 31, 2004

Read more here.

What Bush Has Done Right

Pointing out Bush's failures and faults is easy. Ok, REAL EASY. This one's woefully out of date.

Finding the few things he's done right is also fairly easy. I believe there's a pattern in there somewhere. Bush puts time and energy into making a success of those things that are important to him. Everything else? Well... it slides.

Bush's successes:

- Pandering to Religion. e.g. Broke vacation (something he wouldn't do even for New Orleans) to return to DC and sign Terri Shiavo legislation.

- Repeated tax cuts that brought biggest benefits to the wealthy.

- Killing Social Security (ultimately failed, but not due to a lack of effort on his part).

- 2+ times increase in oil prices (benefits oil buddies?).

- Billions of dollars of federal funds to Bechtel, Halliburton in NO-BID CONTRACTS via Iraq War. (Who has ties to Halliburton?)

- Capture of Saddam Housein. ( Why not devote equal effort to capturing Bin Laden? )

What is the pattern here?

The Read Treasure in Iraq

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Bush Serious About Terrorism?

Andrew Sullivan

How Serious Is Bush About The War?

14 Aug 2006 10:17 am

Here's a question many pathetic Democrats won't ever ask directly. Why is Bush firing dozens of trained Arab linguists in wartime? Here's an interesting nugget from an article dealing with the success of the British intelligence agencies in uncovering the recent airplane plot:



Here you have a classic test: does president Bush care more about winning this war and protecting Americans than pandering to a bigoted anti-gay base? Every day that goes by with the ban on openly gay officers in effect is a sign of where Bush's real priorities lie. For more information on the insane policy rejected by up to 80 percent of Americans, and options on how to help, click here, and here.

Torture Suggestion

I can't figure out whether I'm suprised by this or not, but Christians (tm) tend to support the idea of torture more than the general public ( read: those f*cking secular heritics).

Yes, the Peace and Love Club throws thousands of years of Jesus's teachings out the window the second some fuzzy foreigner shows up in the dock.

Yeah, no suprise.

What I find interesting is that even close relatives of mine (those I always hoped would know better) hold the simultaneously conflicting views that:

A) Japanese torture of Americans during WWII was wrong and has been detrimental to Japanese-Everyone Else relations for 60+ years. America should learn from this and not torture.

B) Torturing "terrorists" is ok.

"Terrorists" (in practice, anyway) being loosely defined as anyone the President doesn't like.

So I have a suggestion: Though the current administration didn't exactly pass science class (without a few greased palms that is) I think this whole torture ethics debate should be tested scientifically.

Let's find out, once and for all, whether Rush Limbaugh is right that torture works.
Let's collect all the folks that support torture, throw them in jail and torture the shit out of them. Let's see what kind of information we can glean from them.

Yeah, the little cruds will probably dump their National ID Numbers (SSNs) at the first knife cut, but I'm sure there's other stuff hiding in there that could prove helpful to national security. No doubt at least two of them have some ideas on how to better torture people. Let's wail on them until they give up the goods.

Sure, to be a more scientific study, we should have a control group who isn't tortured and see how much information we can glean from them in other, non-torture ways. Say, through Nigerian e-mail scams and "discount vuIagr*" (sic) ads.

Finally, for those that argue "But our President doesn't support torture. Those were a few bad apples!" - why, oh why did Bush and Cheney lobby so hard to keep torture from being made illegal?

If the "ticking A bomb in the metropolis" scenario were to actually happen I'm sure there'd be no lack of CIA types willing to sacrifice their own freedom and go to jail for torturing that hypothical mastermind that knows exactly where the bomb is. Heck, we hire entire details of guys in suits who *volunteer* to take bullets for the Pres any time of day. Why wouldn't someone be willing to spend a little jail time to save an entire city? Sounds like a true hero to me.

(New) WAR!

Nothing like a new war to perk up the 'ol ratings, eh?

I'm not suprised that the MSM has completely forsaken Iraq for the new, younger, flashier war in Lebanon/Israel - but NPR even?

Yes, for the past two days, even NPR's top-of-the-hour news re-cap has given lavish attention to the Lebonon/Israel conflict with absolutely no mention of Iraq. Death tolls, numbers of buildings bombed, numbers of civilian casualties. Iraq who?

I guess Iraq is no longer an issue, eh?

Guess there's only room for one war at a time.

Flight Suit Thoughts

Do you think it is possible that Bush spent more time in a flight-suit as president that he did during all of Vietnam?

So Tell Me Again Who We're Fighting...

Our Enemy: Declares that anyone who criticizes the leadership is against God.
Our Leadership: Declares that anyone who criticizes the leadership is unpatriotic and/or a "terrorist".

Them: Invades other countries (Saddam) on flimsy pretense.
Us: Invades Iraq looking for "WMDs".

Them: Kills innocent civilians.
Us: "Collateral Damage"

Them: Tortures just about anyone.
Us: Throws you into prison indefinitely without due process before torturing you.

Them: Causes instability in nearby nations.
Us: Runs a wreckless financial policy that could conceivably distrupt dozens of nations.

Them: Doesn't provide for the basic welfare of their citizens.
Us: Tries to kill Social Security. Katrina.

Them: Goes on national TV threatening to wipe other countries "off the map".
Us: "Axis of Evil"

Them: Dictators that run around in funny hats.
Us: Self-declares immunity from laws ("signing statements") and wears a flight jacket (occasionally the full suit).


Them: Surrounded by gangs of thugs to intimidate enemies.
Us: Swift boating.

Them: Keeps population in constant terror from due to threat of invasion (N. Korea)
Us: "Terror Alert" before last election.

Them: Answer to every problem involves violence and destruction.
Us: Supposedly built a school-house somewhere in Iraq but we can't show you a picture of it to prevent the populace from blowing it up.

Them: Dangerous loners that tend to make hasty, ill-advised decisions contrary to the desires of their neighbors.
Us: "Coalition of the Willing" consisting of Britain (so far) and a lone island in the Pacific somewhere. (We can't tell you which one else the terrorists might blow it up.)

Them: Brings only war and poverty to their country.
Us: $400B and counting...

You Black and White. Me Shades of Grey

An interesting reader post over at Andrew Sullivan

"It's amazing that a president who claims to see the world in black and white, and good and evil, sees the question of torture as one full of gray."

It's not amazing, it's human nature.

We've always seen the evil other people do in clear terms of black-and-white, and our own evil is always lost in a fog of gray. We grant ourselves vast swaths of nuance, while demanding clarity from others. Our enemies' motives are always clear and wrong, our own always justified and right.

It’'s a story as old as time. You'll find it told in the Illiad, in the Bible, in Shakespeare and Dickens, in Mark Twain and Sinclair Lewis. Heck, you'll find it in "The Sopranos" and any sitcom.

To find this amazing you'd have to believe we are really different from our forebearers, that our own apple fell across the street from the tree. The human condition didn't change because we have better technology, technology just distracts us from ourselves more efficiently.

Just As Long as the Test Passes

I gotta get this one off my chest. This isn't the first time this has happened, but today it strikes me as an example of the zeitgeist around here.

I've been having a lot of trouble with our testbenches. Testbenches are programs created to test the chips we produce. I design (parts of) the chip and the testbench tests it to try to catch bugs I/we introduce during our design.

Me: These testbenches are driving me nuts becuase they keep failing for reasons that have nothing to do with the chip.

Test Guy: Well, if that test keeps failing, just change the design of the chip to make the test pass.

Me: Whaa? You gotta be kidding me. The whole purpose of the testbench is to make sure our released design works.

Test Guy: No, no. You don't understand. You change your design to get the testbench to work, then change it back afterwards.

Me: That suggestion is wrong on *so* many levels.

- We wouldn't be testing the released code, but different, changed code.
- What if we make a mistake in changing the code back and in the process *introduce* a bug?
- Why the hell don't we just *fix the freakin' testbench*???!?!?!?

The list goes on.

So Test Guy goes tries again to explain to me how its only temporary and a whole lot less trouble than trying to fix the testbench.

This is what I work with.

Lord help us.

Write Your Own Caption

Blown away?

Stand By Your Words

Andrew Sullivan

"America's armed forces need better equipment, better training and better pay ... A generation shaped by Vietnam must remember the lessons of Vietnam: When America uses force in the world, the cause must be just, the goal must be clear, and the victory must be overwhelming ... I don't have enemies to fight. I have no stake in the bitter arguments of the last few years. I want to change the tone of Washington to one of civility and respect ... We're learning to protect the natural world around us. We will continue this progress, and we will not turn back ... to lead this nation to a responsibility era, that president himself must be responsible. So when I put my hand on the Bible, I will swear to ... uphold the laws of our land ... I will not attack a part of this country because I want to lead the whole of it ..."

Man, this is great stuff.

Insights Into the SUV Craze

Economist's View

I would also add "sex appeal" to the reason SUVs took off. The "active lifestyle" became popular with Americans around this time as well. SUVs were seen as sexier alternatives to station wagons. After all, an SUV is just a 4WD station wagon.

But actually, I guess that explanation doesn't hold much water either. The "health craze" probably took off in the 60's and was definitely strong by the 80's.

Guess the tax breaks for SUVs (they are classed as "light trucks" and therefore offer many tax loopholes) may be another major driver of the trend.

Are We Safer Yet?

George Bush's Big Idea after 9/11 was to make Americans safer. Are we there yet?


- North Korea is testing more missiles and continuing to develop nuclear weapons.
- Iran is developing nuclear weapons.
- India now has nuclear weapons and we're helping them develop more nuclear technology.
- Pakistan was found to be the biggest distributer of nuclear technology on the planet, supplying technology to both N. Korea and Iran. (We asked them to stop.)
- Bin Laden is still at large with (apparently) no interest in persuing him.
- Afghanistan is still not stable nor purged of Taliban.
- Almost every other country is sick of Bush, Bolton, Rice and the others that they almost refuse to talk to us, let alone work with us.
- New Orleans is still in the crapper.
- Lebanon elects a radical government (Yeah, Democracy!) and picked a fight with Israel. They're now pounding the shit out of each other.
- Iraq has gotten so bad that even Don Rumsfeld is now admitting it's bad.

Are we safer yet?

Hmmm.. November's coming up. Might be time to roll out the Terror Alert system again to scare the sheep back into voting for Republicans.

Political Dish: Ouch and Ouch

02Aug06 AP

And former ABC News White House correspondent Sam Donaldson reprised his role as a relentless presidential questioner, refusing to cede his desire to find out whether Bush believes actor Mel Gibson should be forgiven for an anti-Semitic rant after a drunken driving arrest.

"You're a has-been. We don't have to answer has-been's questions," Bush shot at Donaldson.

"Better to have been a has-been than a never was," the TV man retorted.

Shell "Signing" Staged?

The first photo I saw regarding the young Israeli girls signing shells, (presumably) about to be lobbed into Lebanon:



Seems.. well, at least candid.

Now this one, from another online news source:



Same two girls. But now there looks to be a press photographer caught in the background.

Now how I had imagined this scene, a press photographer comes up on this scene, photographs it and sends it to one or more news outlets.

I wonder if the press photographer caught in the background of Pic 2 indicates that there were more than one pro photographer there, i.e. a staged event?

In the background of the first pictures, we can see two people with cameras. The guy on top of the tank and the lady in the background, both with compact cameras. In the second picture, the fuzzy guy in the background is (I'm guessing) using an SLR.

It's very possible that Pic 1 was taken by the guy in the background of Pic 2. Who took Pic 2?

SLR guy is in Pic 2. Did tank guy or camera lady of Pic 1 take pic 2? I don't *think* so. As a general rule the smaller cams tend to be point-and-shoot. These camera don't usually have the ability to create the narrow depth of field seen in Pic 2.

My guess is that there was at least two press photogs at this event. This makes me believe that this was not an impromptu thing but was an event staged for the media.

How Bush "Handled" the Israel/Lebanon Crisis

Newsweek

Making Enemies

Michael Hirsh

Why You Won't See Flying Cars

soon. If ever.

Personal Tech Pipeline

One point he didnt' mention is that we can barely control all the traffic we have in the air as it is. Multiplying that my over 1 million will only make it worse.

It Definitely Was Nothing Like Vietnam...

except now it is. What changed?

Cunning Realist

More Catastrophic Success

Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -
President George W. Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki will consider adding more U.S. and Iraqi troops in Baghdad and other ways to counter surging violence when they meet at the White House on Tuesday.

Bush and Maliki will consider new approaches to quelling the bloodshed in and around the capital after Maliki's security plan for the region proved a disastrous failure.

"One of the first challenges, obviously, is to go ahead and find an effective way to secure Baghdad," said White House spokesman Tony Snow.

Senior Bush administration officials said one option to was to move more U.S. and Iraqi troops into Baghdad from different parts of the country.

The Rules of Modern Business

Modern Business's Second Goal is to shift all costs off onto someone else. For example, why pay to get rid of waste if business can simply dump it into a river?

Importation of high-tech labor is yet another example of this practice. Why pay (taxes) to train the locals when it is more expedient to simply bring the labor in from somewhere else? Of course that winds up costing more in the long run, but then that fits nicely with the First Goal of Modern Business: worry only about the immediate future, take the resulting money and run.

The Trouble with Saddam

America is learning the hard way that it simply can't do the same things that dictators do and expect to maintain its integrity.

Granted, the Bush administration has been busy turning America ideals into torture chambers for 5 1/2 years, but time and the light of day are starting to weigh on those efforts as well.

This isn't PC to say, but perhaps Saddam managed to keep Shiites and Sunnis living together "peacefully" because he could do what most democracies can't: shoot lots of people.

I refuse to believe that the various ethnic and religious groups in the Middle East can't get along. It's entirely possible that the strife in the Middle East is the result of many other, more mundane factors and are simply dressed in the colors of religious hatred to provide an excuse.

While its safe to say that few have found peaceful answers to Middle Eastern harmony, it is certain that democracies like the US will always fail to instill peace by force. True democracies simply won't tolerate the brutalness required to sprout peace from the barrel of a gun.

Outsourcing and Wishful Thinking

We got into the Iraq war due to wishful thinking.

Discarding 2,000 years of experience to the contrary to state, without laughing, that the solution to strife in the Middle East is as simple as going in a shooting people is at best wishful thinking.

[snide aside] Oooohhhhhh! You mean the reason the Middle East isn't docile is because we haven't killed enought people?


True, wishful thinking is bad enough to give us the trouble we have now, but we've compounded the problem by outsourcing. No one in this administration has really sat down and figured out (without lots of the Wishful Thinking) what is really necessary to even provide stability, much less peace. Except for Rumsfeld's fantasy of Overwhelming Success on the cheap, the order of the day for addressing the Iraq situation has been to assign the problem to someone else.

First, the Prez decides that we need to transform the Middle East. So he tells the military, "Go transform the Middle East". The military turns to contractors and says, "Transform the Middle East". Those contractors turn to sub-contractors and say...

So if our goal was to transfer as much American treasury to contractors as possible in the shortest period of time, we have truly succeeded. Its a failure by every other measure.

The sad thing is that 49.9% of the population knew that before it even started.

Orwell: Lies and Reality

The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.

-- George Orwell "In Front of Your Nose"

The Good Economy

Someone continually telling you things are "A" when everyone knows that things are "B".

Bush Administration: The sky is green.
America: No, it's blue.

We always called this "blowing smoke up your *ss". I'm not sure where the expression originated, and honestly, it doesn't make any sense literally. But that's what the Bush Admin is doing.

Bush Administration: "We lowered taxes."
America: "Yay!"
Reality: "The money's gotta come from somewhere. You think prices are high *now*? Ha! You ain't seen nothin' yet... [cue music]"

Gosh! Would a politician tell us something we know is untrue?

What I find amazing is how many *economists* look at the disparity and don't think, "Whoa! We need to re-examine our numbers and methods" but instead tell everyone, "America just doesn't get it. Why?"

America: "Duh!"

It makes sense that politicians will continue to spew this babble. Sure, many people will spot the disparity between the current admin's view and reality and say, "Yeah, right". The politicians gain, however, those that A) many don't know better and B) some actually *are* doing better. So long as the number of people convince (and via bad logic deduce that the politician in question is doing "a good job") is larger than the number of people that get pissed being lied to, the pol can be better off.

But why economists? Possibilities come to mind:

1 The economist doesn't want to believe that all the work he/she has been doing is wrong and/or for naught.
2 The economist inquestion already has an assumption in mind and sub-conciously picks and massages data to match the foregone conclusion.
3 They're just incompetent.
4 They've got a hat in the ring.

My generous side picks 2. Its a very common human foible. Occam's Razor, if you will.
My skeptical of modern media side picks 4.



Economist's View

Selling the Economy

The administration continues to be frustrated that the public does not report satisfaction with the economy. For example, here's Al Hubbard, director of the National Economic Council from the New York Times:

"Obviously, it's frustrating to us that the American people don't recognize how well the economy is doing," Mr. Hubbard said.

Since the administration is used to relying on sales as much as results to achieve success in the policy arena, it's understandable why they would be frustrated that the sales job on the economy is not working. The problem is, it's a lot harder to sell people on something that's directly observable through their own experiences such as their day to day economic circumstances.

People know when they are better off or worse off, at least we assume they do when formulating basic building blocks in economics such as preference relationships, and when you ask them directly if they are better off, here's what they say:

Explaining Why People Are Pessimistic about the Economy, by Karlyn H. Bowman, American Enterprise Institute: Why do Americans seem so down about the economy, when many economic indicators are positive? Gallup points to the answer, in a poll that asked Americans how things have changed for them over the past year.

The May poll found that 99 percent of respondents said that the price they paid for a gallon of gas has gone up. (Who are the 1 percent?) In addition, 82 percent said the amount they pay for utilities has gone up, 73 percent said the price they pay for food has risen, 70 percent said their local property taxes have climbed, and 64 percent said the amount they pay for health insurance and the amount they pay out-of-pocket for health care or prescription drugs has gone up.

At the same time, only 38 percent report that their take-home pay after deductions has increased. That, and the pall the Iraq war is casting over things, goes a long way to explaining Americans' pessimism.

Are You Better Off ... ? In a June 24-27 Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll, 21 percent said their own family's economic situation is better because of President Bush's economic policies over the past five years, while 27 percent said it was worse off, and 48 percent said it was about the same. ... The Gallup poll cited earlier found that 42 percent said their federal income taxes had gone up over the past year, while 49 percent said they had remained the same. The local property tax bite was more severe. Seventy percent reported it had gone up, with 28 percent saying it had remained the same...

So 75% of the respondents do not feel their economic situation has improved, or it has deteriorated. The New York Times reports:

[A] poll released last month by the Pew Research Center found that just 33 percent of respondents approved of Mr. Bush's handling of the economy, while 54 percent disapproved. And a June survey by the University of Michigan, which tracks consumer confidence in government economic policies, found that 39 percent said Mr. Bush was doing a poor job, while 13 percent said he was doing a good job, and 47 percent rated him as fair.

Administration policy seems to be:

Administration: You're better off due to our economic policies.

Public: No we're not.

Administration. Yes you are.

SC Rules Against Military Tribunals

Sydney Morning Herald

Sounds like the Bush administration will now have to invent the judicial equivalent of a signing statement. Should be interesting.

WWI Factors Leading to WWII

Some interesting tidbits on how the "resolution" of WWI led to WWII.

From the History Channel

KEYNES PREDICTS ECONOMIC CHAOS:
June 28, 1919

At the Palace of Versailles outside Paris, Germany signs the Treaty of Versailles with the Allies, officially ending World War I. The English economist John Maynard Keynes, who had attended the peace conference but then left in protest of the treaty, was one of the most outspoken critics of the punitive agreement. In his The Economic Consequences of the Peace, published in December 1919, Keynes predicted that the stiff war reparations and other harsh terms imposed on Germany by the treaty would lead to the financial collapse of the country, which in turn would have serious economic and political repercussions on Europe and the world.

By the fall of 1918, it was apparent to the leaders of Germany that defeat was inevitable in World War I. After four years of terrible attrition, Germany no longer had the men or resources to resist the Allies, who had been given a tremendous boost by the infusion of American manpower and supplies. In order to avert an Allied invasion of Germany, the German government contacted U.S. President Woodrow Wilson in October 1918 and asked him to arrange a general armistice. Earlier that year, Wilson had proclaimed his "Fourteen Points," which proposed terms for a "just and stable peace" between Germany and its enemies. The Germans asked that the armistice be established along these terms, and the Allies more or less complied, assuring Germany of a fair and unselfish final peace treaty. On November 11, 1918, the armistice was signed and went into effect, and fighting in World War I came to an end.

In January 1919, John Maynard Keynes traveled to the Paris Peace Conference as the chief representative of the British Treasury. The brilliant 35-year-old economist had previously won acclaim for his work with the Indian currency and his management of British finances during the war. In Paris, he sat on an economic council and advised British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, but the important peacemaking decisions were out of his hands, and President Wilson, Prime Minister Lloyd George, and French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau wielded the real authority. Germany had no role in the negotiations deciding its fate, and lesser Allied powers had little responsibility in the drafting of the final treaty.

It soon became apparent that the treaty would bear only a faint resemblance to the Fourteen Points that had been proposed by Wilson and embraced by the Germans. Wilson, a great idealist, had few negotiating skills, and he soon buckled under the pressure of Clemenceau, who hoped to punish Germany as severely as it had punished France in the Treaty of Frankfurt that ended the Franco-Prussian War in 1871. Lloyd George took the middle ground between the two men, but he backed the French plan to force Germany to pay reparations for damages inflicted on Allied civilians and their property. Since the treaty officially held Germany responsible for the outbreak of World War I (in reality it was only partially responsible), the Allies would not have to pay reparations for damages they inflicted on German civilians.

The treaty that began to emerge was a thinly veiled Carthaginian Peace, an agreement that accomplished Clemenceau's hope to crush France's old rival. According to its terms, Germany was to relinquish 10 percent of its territory. It was to be disarmed, and its overseas empire taken over by the Allies. Most detrimental to Germany's immediate future, however, was the confiscation of its foreign financial holdings and its merchant carrier fleet. The German economy, already devastated by the war, was thus further crippled, and the stiff war reparations demanded ensured that it would not soon return to its feet. A final reparations figure was not agreed upon in the treaty, but estimates placed the amount in excess of $30 billion, far beyond Germany's capacity to pay. Germany would be subject to invasion if it fell behind on payments.

Keynes, horrified by the terms of the emerging treaty, presented a plan to the Allied leaders in which the German government be given a substantial loan, thus allowing it to buy food and materials while beginning reparations payments immediately. Lloyd George approved the "Keynes Plan," but President Wilson turned it down because he feared it would not receive congressional approval. In a private letter to a friend, Keynes called the idealistic American president "the greatest fraud on earth." On June 5, 1919, Keynes wrote a note to Lloyd George informing the prime minister that he was resigning his post in protest of the impending "devastation of Europe."

The Germans initially refused to sign the Treaty of Versailles, and it took an ultimatum from the Allies to bring the German delegation to Paris on June 28. It was five years to the day since the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand, which began the chain of events that led to the outbreak of World War I. Clemenceau chose the location for the signing of the treaty: the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles Palace, site of the signing of the Treaty of Frankfurt that ended the Franco-Prussian War. At the ceremony, General Jan Christiaan Smuts, soon to be president of South Africa, was the only Allied leader to protest formally the Treaty of Versailles, saying it would do grave injury to the industrial revival of Europe.

At Smuts' urging, Keynes began work on The Economic Consequences of the Peace. It was published in December 1919 and was widely read. In the book, Keynes made a grim prophecy that would have particular relevance to the next generation of Europeans: "If we aim at the impoverishment of Central Europe, vengeance, I dare say, will not limp. Nothing can then delay for very long the forces of Reaction and the despairing convulsions of Revolution, before which the horrors of the later German war will fade into nothing, and which will destroy, whoever is victor, the civilisation and the progress of our generation."

Germany soon fell hopelessly behind in its reparations payments, and in 1923 France and Belgium occupied the industrial Ruhr region as a means of forcing payment. In protest, workers and employers closed down the factories in the region. Catastrophic inflation ensued, and Germany's fragile economy began quickly to collapse. By the time the crash came in November 1923, a lifetime of savings could not buy a loaf of bread. That month, the Nazi Party led by Adolf Hitler launched an abortive coup against Germany's government. The Nazis were crushed and Hitler was imprisoned, but many resentful Germans sympathized with the Nazis and their hatred of the Treaty of Versailles.

A decade later, Hitler would exploit this continuing bitterness among Germans to seize control of the German state. In the 1930s, the Treaty of Versailles was significantly revised and altered in Germany's favor, but this belated amendment could not stop the rise of German militarism and the subsequent outbreak of World War II.

In the late 1930s, John Maynard Keynes gained a reputation as the world's foremost economist by advocating large-scale government economic planning to keep unemployment low and markets healthy. Today, all major capitalist nations adhere to the key principles of Keynesian economics. He died in 1946.

The Real Reason We Can't Close Gitmo

We're afraid that if we release the prisoners, they might be tortured.

Cunning Realist

How do the Bush Admin PR flacks manage to keep a straight face when they say these things?

The Party of Ideas

Economist's View laments:

And I'm tired of the "we're the party of ideas" claim. The recent Republican agenda includes:

Flag Burning
Line Item Veto
Tax Cuts
Gay Marriage

This is the party of new ideas? Where?

Now They're Not Looking At Our Financial Records

Only looking at "international" financial transactions. Didn't the whole phone-tapping thing start out as "only international calls" before it was revealed that *everyone's* phone records were being spied upon?

NYT

Never Enough

So now it seems that wiretapping every American's phone records isn't enough to "keep us safe". Now the prez is going through our financial records as well.

Yahoo

Cultivating Corporate Ignorance

"as far as we know" seems to be the catch-phrase of the naughties.

Every day, another entity, corporate or government, loses National ID numbers.


Every notice of massive data loss is tagged with the disclaimer, "None of the numbers have been used illegally as far as we know."

"Bobby, did you lose your goloshes again?" "Not so far as I know, mom."

Ignorance is bliss.

To my knowledge, not one corporation has said, "We used the best security we knew how, the records were encrypted and accessed only be individuals with necessary access and clearance, but these dastardly crooks used Mission Impossible techniques to abscond that vital information. We will use every and all means at our disposal to track and prosecute the criminals and we will cover all expenses in making our customers whole."

Instead, we get an Adam Sandler-esque "Whoopsie!"

Legally, no one unrelated to Social Security or tax purposes can legally even *use* Social Security Numbers.

In reality, its easier to steal someone's ID for a fake credit card than it is to slip in the shower.

Back in '05, BofA even lost tapes containing the personal data of several congressmen. Data protection bills? Still non-existent. Or did someone steal those as well?


15 Jun '06

US Navy Jun '06
USDA Jun '06

Specious Arguments R Us

We use this technology on other criminals, why not the general public?


Forget the Slippery Slope. The bigger danger is Specious Logic. I love the last line of the article where people express concern for their privacy rights. Police's response?

"You shouldn't be worried about being spied on by your government," said Commander Heal. "These days you can't go anywhere without a camera watching you, whether you're in a grocery store or walking down the street."

How much confidence in the competence of your police force does that engender? While some worry whether the police are able to appreciate our rights and won't violate them, the police are actually so ignorant of our rights that they're not even smart enough to know when to *lie* about not knowing them. They're not even clever enough to spout the lie, "We will endeavor to respect people rights... yadda yadda."

Instead, the pull out the old horse, "Rights? You never had rights. Those are long gone anyway."

I can just imagine this police force getting caught robbing someone's home. "Oh, it's ok. This house was bound to be robbed eventually anyway."


The Independent

LA's spy-in-the-sky drone sparks privacy concerns
By John Hiscock Los Angeles
Published: 20 June 2006

The future of law enforcement was launched into the smoggy Los Angeles skies at the weekend in the form of a drone aircraft intended to bring spy-in-the-sky technology to urban policing.

The unmanned aerial vehicle, called the SkySeer, looks like a remote-controlled toy and fits into a shoulder bag. In the air, the craft is guided by global positioning system coordinates, and a camera fixed to the underside sends video to a laptop command station.

A prototype is being tested by the LA county sheriff's department, which says the SkySeer will accomplish tasks too dangerous for officers, and free helicopters for other missions. "This technology could be used to find missing children, search for lost hikers or survey a fire zone," said Commander Sid Heal, head of the sheriff's department technology exploration project. "The plane is virtually silent and invisible."

The SkySeer, which has low-light and infrared capabilities and can fly at speeds of up to 30mph, would also be able to spot burglary suspects.

Commander Heal believes it will be the first of many unmanned surveillance crafts which will be used in police work. "Who knew five years ago we would be shooting photos and videos with our phones?" he said. "I can see this drone technology replacing some conventional aircraft in 10 years."

The LA sheriff's department operates 18 helicopters costing £2m to £3m each. The SkySeer costs £15,000 to £23,000.

Although the SkySeer is not yet capable of spying into windows, some critics are uneasy about eyes in the sky monitoring daily life.

"A helicopter can be seen and heard and one can make behaviour choices based on that," said Beth Givens of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. "Do we really want to live in a society where our backyard barbecues will be open to police scrutiny?"

Police say the concerns are unwarranted because everybody is already under surveillance.

"You shouldn't be worried about being spied on by your government," said Commander Heal. "These days you can't go anywhere without a camera watching you, whether you're in a grocery store or walking down the street."

Stages of Truth

I'm paraphrasing...


The idea is ridiculed.
The idea is violently opposed.
The idea is accepted but declared unimportant.
The idea is adopted as always having been true.

No New Ideas

That's the catch-phrase these days. All fingers point to the moon when the question of responsibility is posed to those favoring the Iraq War.

"X don't have any good ideas".

True. But *no one* has any good ideas. That's why they refer to the metaphore of "jumping off of a cliff" to describe these decisions before they were made. We're in free fall. Stop wasting your energy flapping your arms. Hell, maybe even flapping our arms would be an improvement over pointing to everyone else and saying, "No one could have foreseen this." and "X doesn't have any good ideas."

The ironic thing is, some of the many suggestions could have been good ideas. But any change whatsoever has been dismissed/ignored by the "stay the course" administration.

So we're gonna just grind this one out until we just can't take it anymore, eh? Great strategy.

So this is going to go on until some adult stands up, declares Humpty broken and moves on. Those that supported the Iraq war weren't necessarily wrong (in my opinion) they just zealously supported an administration that couldn't find its own ass with both hands because instead of contemplating suggestions to "look behind them" they point all fingers at everyone and scream, "Coward! Stay the course!"

Actually, we have no one else to blame but ourselves. We elected these fools. Twice. (I only voted for this idiot the first time).

Maybe we do truly get the government we deserve.

Good Investing Advice

Harry Koza

TORONTO (GlobeinvestorGOLD)—"Write me a column on "Extreme Investing," said the editor, oxymoronically.

"What, like averaging down your Nortel from $120.00 to $2.00 wasn't sporty enough for you, now you want me to tout some really foolhardy investments? And you're asking me, Mr. Risk Averse himself, to recommend something extreme? Me, whose investment philosophy can best be summed up as, 'Bland is Good, But Boring is Better'?"

Geez, I dunno, this may be a sign of a new market top. I mean, sure, I realize that for the twenty-something crowd, "extreme" is the new byword. They're into extreme sports like mountain biking down Mount Everest, cordless bungee-jumping, nude javelin catching, and going over Niagara Falls without a barrel. They listen to 'extreme' music like acid-jazz-house-rap-speed-metal-thrash, whatever that is, sport dozens of tattoos, and have odd bits of metal stuck through their various body parts with alarming insouciance.

Fine. I can understand that kind of extremism, even if I would not choose to partake of any of it myself, especially the body-piercing part. But investing? Can we talk?

It hasn't been that long since everyone was running from tech stocks, looking for safety in fixed income instruments, and the investment press was full of talk about "the new prudence" and preservation of capital. Now the new prudence, having lasted about as long as a Chrétien campaign promise, is out the window and people want "extreme" investments.
Speculation nation

We already have extreme investing: it's called speculation. That can range from talking a punt on Moose Pasture Mines Inc. to buying earthquake or hurricane derivatives, to trading pork-belly or frozen orange juice futures, to buying a lottery ticket. While that sort of thing may be fun, especially if you are doing it with someone else's money, it's definitely not investing.

Before we go any further, let's just refresh a basic concept here. My dictionary defines investing as "committing (money or capital) in order to gain a financial return." Note that last part: it's in order to gain a financial return. One doesn't invest in order to get struck by lightning, win the lottery, find buried treasure, or spin straw into gold. One invests in order to gain a financial return.

Buying a Super 7 lottery ticket gives you 1 chance in 62,891,499 of winning the jackpot. To put that into perspective, the odds of getting struck by lightning are only 1 in 300,000, yet few people would touch that bet. Super 7 is an 'extreme' lottery, designed by the government especially for those people for whom the 1 in 14 million odds on Lotto 649 aren't skewed enough (the odds of winning the 649 jackpot are exactly the same as the odds of you dying in the next fifteen minutes. Never happen, right? Think about that the next time you're lined up with a fistful of 649 forms at your local Seven-Eleven). This is a perfect example of Harry's First Law of Capital Markets: "Make the Stupid Pay."

I think what the Editor had in mind by 'extreme investing' is speculative, or high-risk investments. The online hyperdictionary defines "high-risk" as "Not financially safe or secure; a bad investment; high risk investments; anything that promises to pay too much can't help being risky; speculative business enterprises."
Step right up!

Well, if it's a flutter on the sporty side you're looking for, come on down! There are plenty of exciting investments out there for those looking for a walk on the wild side of the Street, and plenty of salespeople who will happily help you to 'maximize the velocity' of the funds in your account. There are commodity futures, penny stocks, movie partnerships, gemstones, junior mining stocks, vacation timeshares, junk bonds, weather derivatives, earthquake futures, unhedged hedge funds—you name it.

Hell, back just before the Fall of Milken, Drexel was launching derivatives based on the air rights over office buildings (You've got to admire anyone who can sell air as real estate). If it floats, flies, flares or, well, whatever, there's some corporate finance geek out there who can turn it into a security.

Nowadays they securitize everything: David Bowie song royalties, car loans, trailer parks, hurricanes, tobacco company cancer lawsuit liabilities. Everything. Anything. If there's any kind of risk in it, there are, as they say in the Chicago commodity pits, usually a bunch of dentists in Peoria who are willing to strap it on.

I have to admit, I myself have bought shares in many a moose pasture in my time. I'm not against speculation, which is defined as "engagement in risky business transactions on the chance of quick or considerable profit." There's nothing wrong with taking a punt on pork bellies or a flyer on flax futures. Just remember the speculator's Prime Directive: never bet more than you are prepared to kiss goodbye. Don't put your entire portfolio into Bre-X at $200 a share, or six carloads worth of pork belly futures. Believe me, it's no fun when the Teamsters show up and ask "Where do youse want we should put your 'bellies?" But, if you've got a couple of grand to risk, and the lack of which won't cause you to miss any car payments, then go for the gusto.
Buy what you know

Personally, I've always preferred junior mining stocks, since I could talk the talk—metavolcanics, strike, dip, true width, induced polarization, all that rock stuff—and I knew a lot about the mining game, having knocked around the trade in my younger and— dare I say—more extreme days. And also, they were cheap. That's why they call them penny stocks. There's a lot to be said for a good 10-cent mining stock. New Consolidated Golden Peat Bog Explorations Ltd., at a dime a share, can double a lot faster (sometimes even several times in a day) than a $50 bank stock can. Plus, for a relatively small amount of money, you can buy a lot of stock, which lets you feel like a macher, a shooter. You can call up your broker and tell her to buy you 10,000 shares of Dry Hole Oil and Gas Inc., and you sound way cooler than if you just ask her meekly to buy you an odd lot of Citigroup shares. And every once in a while, that little mining stock turns into a Diamond Fields, or an International Corona.

A few years back, the papers were full of Barrick Gold Corp.'s failed attempt to buy an Africa-based gold producer. I figured that, having gone through all that effort to acquire an African gold mining company with a big land position and having been rejected, Barrick wouldn't just go home and lick its wounds, but would look for something similar. Enter Pangea Gold, a small TSE-listed gold mining company with a huge land position in the greenstone belts of Eastern Africa. The stock was around $3 a share at the time. I bought 1,000 shares, and within a month or two, Barrick took the company over at $7 a share. Of course, I was disappointed that I hadn't bought more, but then, if it had gone to 50 cents, I would have been disappointed that I owned too much. This is called the Rule of the Wrong Amount, one of the governing principals of capital markets.

Timing is everything, though. A few years back, I read an item in Scientific American about a physicist at Los Alamos who was developing fuel cells small enough to power laptops and cell-phones for up to six months between recharges. Cool idea, I thought. A few days later, I saw a story scroll by on a Bloomberg screen about how a small OTC bulletin board company called Manhattan Scientifics had bought the rights to the technology for a big block of stock. The stock was trading around $0.25 (U.S.)—right in my price range—so I bought 4,000 shares. I called up the president of the company, and dropped the name of the large investment bank I worked for at the time, and asked him if I could to talk to the scientist about his research.
Know your limit

The researcher called me back from his car phone a little while later and we had a nice long chat about energy densities and other esoteric fuel cell topics. Within a few weeks, the stock had tripled to $0.75, so I sold enough to cover my costs. Now my remaining position was all gravy.

Over the next few months, as the tech bubble inflated, the stock rose, getting as high as $7 and change. I was long gone by then, however, having sold my last shares around the $6 mark. I looked the stock up again today and it's selling for under a dime a share. Pity the poor saps who bought it at $7.

So, penny stocks can be a lot of fun. Just don't play with more than you're prepared to kiss goodbye: my portfolio still has some dogs that I bought at $1.50 some years ago that are trading at $0.05 today. It hasn't hurt my overall return because I never put much into any one of these speculative stocks. The ones that do well make up for the dogs.

Now, commodities are something I've never had much success with. I dropped $5,000 in a few nanoseconds once on options on bond futures, and decided I didn't know what I was doing so I had better quit.

If you want to speculate in financial futures, take a look at one of the technical analysis magazines like Futures. You'll notice that those magazines are chock full of advertisements for secret trading systems that are guaranteed to beat the market. I dunno, though, if I had some secret never-miss futures trading system, I sure wouldn't be selling it to all comers for $387.50 a pop in the back of some magazine. I'd be retired on my private island in the Caribbean—maybe Jamaica—and be quietly running the world from my estate there.
Leave cattle to the cowboys

Actually, commodity futures are great if you are in a commodity business, like if you are a wheat farmer hedging your crop against a drop in prices when you go to sell it at harvest time, or if you own a chain of gas stations and want to hedge the risk of a gasoline price spike. Or, if you make lumber, raise cattle, grow oranges or cotton. For the average retail investor, however, the old adage holds: the best way to make a small fortune by trading commodities is to start with a large one. Yes indeed, we have met the dentist from Peoria, and he is us.

As for movie limited partnerships, you really need to be in a high tax bracket (alas, in Canada that basically means that you have to have a job), and you need to have high net worth and a lot of disposable income, with a particular emphasis on disposable. Besides, you probably won't get to meet Uma Thurman anyway, as she will have become suddenly unavailable for the movie you're backing about the time your cheque clears, and will be replaced by the producer's cousin.

Junk bonds are ok, too. Just stick to a well-run junk, er, high-yield bond fund. You really need diversification with a capital D for this racy class of asset. Leave it to the pros. Putting a lot of money into any one junk issue is a stunt best not attempted at home. The high yield market has had a very nice run, and while there may be a bit more steam left in it, rising interest rates will slow it down considerably.

Finally, remember the key rule of speculating: don't bet the farm. Yeah, I know, I've mentioned this one about six times already, but it is the one necessary, carved-in-stone secret of successful speculating, and too many people ignore it.

When I think back to my younger days, when I was an avid speculator, I recall that many people in the investment business used to look askance at me, as if speculators were some lower life form than investors. Speculation was the red-headed step child of investing, a raffish practice of dubious reputation, indulged in by guys with cigars who hung around at the racetrack, or near the snooker tables in the Engineer's Club.

Nowadays, everyone is a speculator, yet they think of themselves as investors. Worse, people got spoiled during the Bubble: they think that double-digit equity returns are the norm, and with markets looking to generate returns in the 6 per cent to 8 per cent area for the next several years, they're willing to push the envelope to try to get them. That, to me, suggests that the excesses of the bubble have not yet been squeezed out of the market.

Be careful out there. Lawyers, guns and money may not be enough.

US's New Manufacturing Powerhouse

Great stuff from Simply Left Behind

INTERNATIONAL TRADE EXPLAINED

Source: Steve Clifford


Q. Does International Trade benefit the United States?

A. International trade benefits everyone.



Q. How?

A. Let’s look at Finland. Finland makes excellent cell phones. Then they sell their phones to other countries and buy what those countries make best, TV’s from Japan, textiles from China, tin from Brazil, and taxi drivers from Uzbekistan.



Q. So every country produces the products they make best and free trade allows everyone to get the best of everything?

A. Exactly. We get the best from each country. Furs from Russia, sherry from Spain and oil from Saudi Arabia.



Q. What does the United States sell to other countries? What product do we make best?

A. Debt.



Q. So other countries sell us oil, TV's, sherry, and cab drivers, and we sell them debt?

A. Right. Last year we sold $150 billion of debt to China alone.



Q. Couldn’t the Chinese manufacture their own debt?

A. They could, but they are not very good at it. They fare much better by selling us their great textiles and then buying our superbly crafted debt.



Q. Why do we make the best debt?

A. The quick answer is productivity. Our debt productivity is the highest in the world. Last year we ran a trade deficit of $666 billion. That’s $6000 for each household in the U.S.



Q. Is that good?

A. That is great productivity. Look at the French, who are trying to compete with us in debt production. Their trade deficit was a paltry $109 per household. The debt productivity of the U.S. is fifty-five times that of France.



Q. Is that because the French work only 35 hours a week, take long vacations, and are saddled with social welfare policies that sap individual initiative?

A. Yes, and they also waste time with their families when they could be producing debt.



Q. What explains the United States’ extraordinary debt productivity?

A. Culture, technology and government.



Q. Culture?

A. We make the best debt in the world because we have a culture that allows debt to flourish. Debt is second nature to us. We invented home equity loans, auto loans, and variable rate mortgages. Financial obligations – debts, mortgages, auto payments now consume one fifth of household income in the U.S. And the average credit card debt of U.S. households is about $10,000.



Q. Sounds like France and China don’t have a chance!

A. Not with our technological edge. Other countries are still using old fashioned mortgages while we are pioneering with space-age debt technologies such as interest only strips on pass-through securities based upon pools of collateralized mortgage obligations. We are the country that invented off-balance sheet debt financing. We’re the home of Enron!



Q. So our trading partners recognize our technological lead?

A. No, they whine about unfair trade practices.



Q. What is their complaint?

A. They claim that “Stumble, Fumble and Borrow” is protectionist, giving our domestic debt industry an unfair advantage.



Q. Is “Stumble, Fumble and Borrow” a law firm?

A. No. “Stumble, Fumble and Borrow” is the current administration’s approach to any issue. Hurricane Katrina? Stumble, Fumble and Borrow. Iraq? Stumble, Fumble and Borrow. Energy? Transportation? Health Care? Farm Programs? Stumble Fumble and Borrow.

This year the administration will receive over $150 billion of supplemental appropriations for war, counter-terrorism and disaster relief – all appropriated outside of the normal budget process and all financed by debt.



Q. Why can’t other countries compete with “Stumble, Fumble & Borrow”?

A. Because in the last two years, “Stumble, Fumble & Borrow” has added $742 billion to our federal debt. Our level of debt, $72,000 per household, provides economies of scale that give our domestic debt industry an unbeatable advantage.



Q. That’s great, but how will we pay it all off?

A. Pay it off? Our expertise is debt manufacturing and marketing. We don’t have much experience in paying it off. We can’t compete with the Swiss, the Danes and the Dutch when it comes to paying off debt.

Who Killed the Electric Car?

Smithsonian replaces EV-1 exhibit with Taureg just before movie launch.

Gizmodo

Squashed Under a Mountain of Good News

Leaked US Embassy Memo at Christian Science Monitor.

White House press secretary Tony Snow did not deny its authenticity, calling it "an accurate reflection of the realities there." But he also said that conditions had changed since the memo was written a few weeks ago.

In a comment about the story on his website, Rush Limbaugh said this is exactly what he expected to happen.

We nail Zarqawi; it's the epitome of good news. Bush has one of the best weeks of his presidency last week and a couple of days prior to that, and so what do the Democrats do? Redouble their effort to paint this whole thing as a lost cause, and they get of course their willing accomplices in the Drive-By Media to go right along with it. In fact, the Washington Post citing a 30-day-old story preceding any of the good news of the last week.

Bush is one of the only US presidents for which doing nothing can be spun as "one of the best weeks of his presidency".

"Well, at least nothing blew up, flooded, burned, or was secretly revealed by the Administration as an undercover agent. All in all, a *great* week!"

I'm gonna add a few other reasons that might explain the Catastrophic Success in Iraq:



- Gays in US allowed to marry
- Flag burning in US

The one I'm betting on?

The administration, err... I mean "Too much good news."

Suicide Doors

So along with the wife's new pregnancy comes the realization that my life driving a two-seat convertible is nearing the end. So a few weeks ago, we buy a 4-door.

The new car is nice, but I'm noticing that it has a unique door system. Most car doors have these "notches" sorta-things that help hold the door open. There's the "barely open" position, the "half-open" and the "fully-open" position.

Well this car isn't a big fan of doors staying where they are. Every time I park, I shut the car off, open the door and push it open and remove the key. The door swings past "barely" and "half" and usually has just enough speed left to barely make it up the ramp of "fully open". There it hangs for a bit (usually for *me* to get half-way out of the car) before the door changes its mind and run back downhill it yet another demonic attempt to crush me against the frame. Suicide doors? I've got homicide doors.

Handling Stolen National ID Numbers

ING makes the right noises.

The company is mailing letters on Monday to the workers and retirees whose personal data was stored on the computer, and will pay for a year of credit monitoring and identity-theft protection, Campbell said.
"ING will indemnify any customer who experiences any identity theft as a result of this incident," she added.

Putting unencrypted data on laptop computers "is not the ING standard," Campbell said.
"We are aggressively moving forward with a comprehensive confirmation process that all of our laptops meet our encryption and password-protection policy requirements," Campbell said.
"In addition, we have implemented an immediate policy to restrict any laptop from being exposed to the public domain until properly protected."

Violating the Constitution to Protect the Constitution

Andrew Sullivan

Illegal Immigration -- What Does Mexico Do?

We've heard the arguments:

"Send troops to protect our borders!"

"We have to allow illegals. Citizens don't want to work!"

But where are those arguments coming from? Not just America, apparently:

Stepping Over the Line
Don't try sneaking north across Mexico's other border.
By Joseph Contreras
Newsweek

June 5, 2006 issue - Ever since he crossed into Mexico, José Moisés has had nothing but trouble. Now the 30-year-old Honduran mechanic is hunkered down with other young illegal migrants in a rail yard just north of Mexico City, waiting for nightfall to hop a northbound freight. He displays a pale line encircling his finger. He used to have a ring there, he says—until Mexican cops slammed him against a squad car in the southern border state of Chiapas and grabbed it. "They took everything," says Moisés. "Here the Central American has no value."

As tough as the United States can be for workers who slip in from south of the border, Mexico is in a poor position to criticize. The problem goes far beyond the predatory gantlet of thugs and crooked cops facing defenseless transients like Moisés. There's ample precedent in Mexico for just about everything the United States is—or isn't—doing. Calling out the military? Mexicans may hate the new U.S. plan to deploy 6,000 National Guard troops on the border, but five years ago they cheered President Vicente Fox for sending thousands of Mexican soldiers to crack down on their southern frontier. Tougher laws? Hispanic-rights groups are enraged over U.S. efforts to criminalize undocumented aliens—yet since 1974, sneaking into Mexico has been punishable by up to two years in prison. Foot-dragging on amnesty? Fox has spent the past five years urging the United States to upgrade the status of millions of illegals from Mexico. Meanwhile, his own government has given legal status to only 15,000 foreigners without papers.

Some of the worst abuses take place on the coffee plantations of Chiapas state, where some 40,000 Guatemalan field hands endure backbreaking jobs and squalid living conditions to earn roughly $3.50 a day. Some growers even deduct the cost of room and board from that amount. "If you ask them, 'Why are you bringing in Guatemalans to work?' they say, 'You can't depend on Mexicans. They don't work hard; they're irresponsible'," says George Grayson, a political scientist specializing in Mexico at the College of William & Mary. "The truth is, you can pay [the guest workers] a pittance. And if they cause the slightest disturbance, you can send them back to Guatemala."

At least a few Mexicans are balking at the hypocrisy. Late last year their National Human Rights Commission issued a report criticizing Mexico's widespread mistreatment of aliens; the report described sub- human facilities where captured illegals are kept until they can be deported. Several international news agencies ran stories on the publication. But most of Mexico's leading papers ignored it.

Work hard for a pittance or we send you somewhere you really don't want to be.

Where Does Honor Begin.... and End?

HfA brings up several salient points regarding the administration's Or-Speak. If the link doesn't work, I've quoted most of it below.


My question is however, where does Honor begin and end?

I used to have a great deal of respect for Colin Powell. I really thought that he'd make a great president. Under the banner of the "Powell Doctrine", he helped regrow the honor of a military that had bled self-confidence and respect for decades following the Vietnam War. Powell seemed a man of integrity.

His dog and pony show to the UN in support of the Iraq War seemed suspect at the time. We later discover that the administration had used Powell's honor as a battle standard to sell their lie. Discarded later as propoganda met the battlefield, the administration no longer needed the tattered rag. How long before the nation's, the military's and Powell's honor be stitched back together?

Why did Powell do it? Why did he support these false premises? One could argue that Powell believed what he was saying, but I doubt it. I think it was his sense of duty that made him do it. He was a man steeled in the military. His sense of duty to his presidency he did not question. Why else would he wait for the end of the presidential term to resign?

But all military personel are expected, nay demanded, to disobey orders they know to be wrong. No one questions that the president and the military supports torturing those held in Guantanomo and other places. They refuse to prohibit torture. The create secret places where torture can take place. They fill the airwaves with the vitalness to protect the homeland from the hidden enemy... yet they prosecute anyone caught torturing by the public. The crime? Not performing torture, but revealing it.

Just as ordinary grunts are expected to reject orders they know are wrong, we expected Colin Powell to reject the command to ply the UN with vials of baby powder described as Anthrax. Colin's mistake? Not remembering that duty to a man who is president cannot be allowed to override the duty to the office of the president and to the Union.


One of the gates at Guantanomo has a sign that reads "Honor Bound to Protect Freedom". The foundation documents of our Republic describe that "All Men Are Created Equal", yet now "Men" has been revised (yet again!) to now mean, "not including those outside the US". American's pride themselves in repeating, "no punishment without due process" yet even Bush himself has admitted that those serving in Guantanomo will most likely never leave and will most likely never receive a trial. Why is it so hard to give a trial to a military enemy? Does international law really give no recourse to try an enemy that isn't wearing a uniform? I can't imagine your run of the mill military trial conversation being

Judge: "What is this man accused of?"

Prosecution: "Fighting in a war for the wrong side, your honor."

J: "Witnesses?"

P: Well, sir, we have no *direct* witnesses, but our boys were receiving fire from the room in which this man was found wounded, with a machine gun, pointed at our guys and he screamed "I'm gonna kill every last one of you" before attempting to detonate a grenade.

Defense: "Your honor, my client wasn't wearing a uniform."

J: "NO UNIFORM!?!?!? Case dismissed!"


How hard is a Kangaroo trial anyway? If you've got at least circumstantial evidence that the guy wants to wontonly murder, how hard is it to get him a life sentence?


Could the embarrasing fact that we've been torturing these people make the trial process more difficult? Impossible? Or just even more politically embarrassing?

So here these hundreds sit. Without trial, presumably still being tortured for information and occasionally we slip up and let one (or three) commit suicide.
'manipulative self-injurious behaviour' or 'SIBs' the military/administration calls it. Spokesmen for the US have since called the deaths 'a good PR move' by the prisoners, and 'an act of assymetrical warfare'.

We fire guided Hellfire missiles from an unmanned drone flying at 10,000 ft, piloted from the other side of the world at bunch of thugs armed with machine guns and homemade IEDs.

A prisoner in Guantanomo commits suicide and we declare it "Asymetrical warfare"?

Where does Honor end?

The president's war on language

From Mat Whitecross:

One of the less noted aspects of the Bush Administration's 'War on Terror' is the government's simultaneous War on Language, a calculated use of Orwellian double speak. Post 9-11, the invasion of other countries became a 'preemptive strike', the capture and torture of civilians 'extraordinary rendition'. A sign on the front of the US prison in Guantanamo Bay reads 'Honor Bound to Defend Freedom'. Small comfort to the 460 'unlawful combatants' who after four years still languish inside, without any access to basic human rights.

A particularly shocking example of this phenomenon is the Department of Defense's attitude toward suicide attempts by Guantanamo's detainees. Officially, 41 attempts have been admitted by the US government to date. Speak to any of the prisoners who have been released, and they will tell you the figure is laughably low. The reason for this discrepancy? No doubt aware of the adverse publicity the facility was receiving in the media, those running the prison decided to re-label suicide attempts as 'manipulative self-injurious behaviour' or 'SIBs', to euphemise still further. After reclassification, predictably the rate of attempted suicides plummeted overnight. Nevertheless, the British journalist David Rose has written that in the six months after the new terminology came into practice, there were forty reported SIBs, almost two a week.

[snip]

This weekend, three prisoners, two Saudis and a Yemeni, finally succeeded where so many before had failed, and took their own lives. Without access to family or lawyers, after over four years in US custody, they knotted bedsheets together and hung themselves from the grills above their cells.

Shafiq [Rasul, former Guantanamo detainee] met the Saudis while being held by Northern Alliance fighters in Afghanistan. Later, he saw them again while detained in Guantanamo. He says, 'They were just like us: normal people. Who knows, if we were still there, maybe it could have been us. My only surprise is it hasn't happened before.'

Spokesmen for the US have since called the deaths 'a good PR move' by the prisoners, and 'an act of assymetrical warfare'. The War on Language continues.

The American Inquisition

It's gonna take this country a long time to live down our Bush Administration policies.

We've got several hundred persons "detained". We can't release them because they're dangerous. We can't try them because nearly all evidence we could present against them would be tainted by torture. So here we all sit. Hoping that this problem, like the Iraq war itself will simply resolve itself.

Maybe we'll get lucky and they'll all just commit suicide.


When our moral superiors use the phrase "The American Inquisition", we'll have no other choice but to look to the ground.

The Dumb Leading the Blind

These and the multitude of similar instances would be funny if they weren't so damn common with W.


From HfA

Bush puts foot in his mouth, again

First, it was President Bush saying to a man in a wheelchair, "You look mighty comfortable." Today, there was this exchange at a presidential press conference:

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, Peter [Wallsten, Los Angeles Times]. Are you going to ask that question with shades on?

Q: I can take them off.

THE PRESIDENT: I'm interested in the shade look, seriously.

Q: All right, I'll keep it, then.

THE PRESIDENT: For the viewers, there's no sun. (Laughter.)

Q: I guess it depends on your perspective. (Laughter.)

THE PRESIDENT: Touché. (Laughter.)

It should be noted that Peter Wallsten is legally blind.

If his past is any indication, Bush has problems recognizing the blind. Blind celebrities, even:

Here's a vignette we're dying to see on the ABC broadcast of Sunday's Ford's Theatre Presidential Gala: When Stevie Wonder sat down at the keyboard center stage, President Bush in the front row got very excited. He smiled and started waving at Wonder, who understandably did not respond. After a moment Bush realized his mistake and slowly dropped the errant hand back to his lap. "I know I shouldn't have," a witness told us yesterday, "but I started laughing."

Stolen IDs. How Many Do You Know Of?

I know of three:

A former co-worker spends nearly 6 months trying to get her credit cleared up after a car-wash attendent stole a credit-card receipt from her car. She has memorized the numbers to all three credit agencies.

A friend is contacted by AZ police to return to prison. He's never been to AZ. Apparently a suspected wife-beater gave an AZ *police department* a stolen ID and skipped bail. My friend spent several lost work days going back and forth to CA authorities to clear up the mess to save a plane-flight (on his dime) to AZ.

Another friend was just contacted by OH officials regarding an embezzlement case there. Some local schmuck listed my friend's address, phone number, SSN and other information as the Financial Officer of a fly-by-night scam business.

I was the most lucky of the incidents I'm aware of personally. I was contacted by a electronics store in Los Angeles regards a $6,000 tv purchase. The company respresentative was *very* helpful and offered to forward all information she had to my credit card company for use in prosecution. My credit card company (i.e. my bank) wasn't interested. They simply said, "Wait for your new card in the mail. We can't chase down every lead."

Unfortunately, many police officials have the same attitude. When my stolen (and subsequently stripped) car was found in Oakland, I asked what plans they had for persuing the perpetrators. "What do you want us to do, take fingerprints?", the officer replied sarcastically. Yeah, I guess that would be a waste of time.

The financial equations of theft.

US National ID Number

Let's call it what it is. The "Social Security Number" has lost nearly all association with "security".

It's is used as a national ID, it functions as a national ID and for all practical purposes it *is* a national ID number. If someone has your SSN, they can own your assets and there's nothing you can do to change or stop it.


I don't agree with it, I dislike it intensely, but fretting over the possible implementation of a National ID number is worrying about spilt milk. We have it. It's here. We need to fix it.

Patriotic Fashion

Some history on The Pledge and the Belamy Salute. From WikiPedia

Strange how things change...

What Will You have to Blow to Drive?

To start your car?

Some habitual drunks must install court-ordered blood alcohol devices in their cars that test their BAL before the car will start. In the name of increasing target demographics, some loan dealers are offering a similar mechanism to those with bad credit. From Economist's View:

High Risk, High Tech Loans

Starter-interrupt devices are beginning to be used in risky car loans. If a consumer falls behind in making payments, the car won't start. In this case, technology is doing two things. First, it is displacing labor. With these machines, "Repo Men" are no longer needed, at least not in the same numbers. Second, it is reducing the risk of loans in the automobile market which enhances its efficiency:

For Some High-Risk Auto Buyers, Repo Man Is a High-Tech Gadget, LA Times/AP: Rashida Redd punched in a six-digit code in her Pontiac Grand Prix... The 34-year-old Pottstown, Pa., mother of five had to file for bankruptcy protection about a year ago in the face of mounting medical bills from her husband's open-heart surgery.

Despite her poor credit history, Redd was able to lease the 3-year-old car ... on the condition that it have a starter-interrupt device. ... The cigarette-pack-size device [is] mounted under the dashboard.... If she misses her $94 weekly payment, it won't let her car start.

Starter-interrupt devices are becoming a popular way for lenders to ensure that they get paid, and consumers seem willing to accept them to get into nicer cars, use a smaller down payment and qualify for a lower interest rate... Consumers with poor credit often face interest rates of more than 20% — nearly triple the rate that drivers with good credit can get... They also have to make a down payment equal to 10% to 20% of the car's purchase price, while buyers with good credit can buy a vehicle with little or no money down. ...

[T]he devices were mainly geared for the "buy here, pay here" market — consumers with the lowest credit scores. Typically, these buyers have filed for bankruptcy protection or had a repossession. "Buy here, pay here" customers also are limited to how expensive a car they can buy, typically no more than $5,000...

Where else could these be used? Home appliances such as washers, dryers, and refrigerators that won't function if payments are missed? Something about this feels intrusive, but I can't think of any reason to oppose it since it would allow more people to purchase these items on better terms.

This will probably average out to be a good thing, but what stands out most distinctly is how technology is creeping into more and more private areas of our lives... and being readily accepted. Many people seem genuinely willing to trade a privacy or priviledge.

I see a lesson here: There's a reason they don't bait traps with vinegar.

Sure, given a "lower" interest rate, the privacy invasion almost seems worth it. But later, when these devices are "accepted" by more people, interest rates will go up to where they are now.

The arguments for the trade in privacy will have evaporated and for this demographic, getting a car without the starter-killer will be nearly impossible.

Will the trade be worth it then?

The Special (Political) Olympics

As I read this post on BBC News regarding W's non-push for a Gay Marriage Ammendment, the first thing that popped into my head was the Special Olympics.

Bush is leading a throng of well... slow people out to a game that they know they won't win and serves no other purpose than to make those people feel good.

But no, dammit! That is *not* the analogy. The Special Olympics is about Good. It is about giving attention, love, hope and joy to people that society tries its best to ignore. Those dedicated men and women spend countless hours encouraging, supporting and loving people that most of us don't want to even acknowledge. We like to think we're good people, but guess what *they're* the good people. I just can't bring myself to sully such with the likes of Republican crass pandering to fearful idiots.

So the only analogy I can think of (kinda shows my intellectual tinyness, doesn't it?) would involve leading the ignorant with baubles and false hopes to be later sheared of value and tossed aside.

Child molesters, maybe?

Shameful. Pathetic. Desperate.

It's cliche and I'm dissappointed I can't think of a better on, but for now, I'll stick with a sheep analogy.

Immigration and Jobs

The article posted over at Stumbling and Mumbling isn't terribly enlightening, but I find the comments ( I'm referring to the first three, in case more get added. ) are spot-on.

Which brings me to my common immigration-related refrain of Extreme as Example. Extremes are almost never the best answer, but in the case of immigration, I suggest that looking at the extreme case my give some insight:

What if we completely removed barriers to immigration? Check and reject those with weapons and other criminals, but let everyone else pass. According to the pro-immigration-at-any-cost camp, that would lead to an explosion of greatness in America, would it not?

Why do we not open the borders completely to all to wish to live/work here? I think most know the answer to that question.

Everyone who supports immigration supports it only to the extent that they see it as being beneficial to themselves. These types of arguments are old and common. They have no interest in supporting the view that helps the Nation as a whole, just the view that they see as being profitable... damn the rest.

There are many good reasons that we limit immigration. The only *real* debate is how many and of whom, i.e. numbers.

Everything else is rhetoric.