Open Thread - 19 November

pl

Comments

[Paul Deavereaux]

+1 for the color change on the site. Much easier on old eyes (enlistment date 21 Sep 69).

[Michael McIntyre]

Love your commentary.....Hope to see you on Google Plus one day; it's a great platform for "correspondence".

[Michael McIntyre]

Siege of Knoxville??

[turcopolier]

Michael Mcintyre

Cedar Creek. "From winchester 20 miles away...' Surprisingly the horse survived. His name was "Reinzi." you can visit his stall in the stable at Ft. Myer. pl

[Arun]

Sharia in London:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dN6CHtGGo4g

[walrus]

Mario Draghi has just reaffirmed that The European Central Bank won't come to the rescue of Italy since by acting as lender of last resort.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/18/world/europe/european-central-bank-resists-calls-to-act-in-debt-crisis.html?_r=1&hp

Paul Krugman correctly points out that this will be the death knell of the Euro.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/19/incredible-europeans/

This is what a Eurogeddon looks like:

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/11/italian-default-scenarios.html

"This is a rolling crisis wave through the eurozone infecting more countries, closer and closer to the core. As Marshall wrote recently, this is a structural problem. All of the euro zone countries face liquidity constraints and all of them will eventually succumb to the rolling wave of yield spikes one by one until we get a systemic solution: full monetisation and union or break up."

So we have this on our plate today, and please don't think it doesn't affect America, because those wonderful financial derivatives - credit default saps, will ensure it does. On Wednesday we see the Super Committee plan - or non - plan, which will have a knock - on effect because it will raise concerns about Americas sovereign debt levels.

[J]

Rienzi's name was changed to Winchester after the Battle of Cedar Creek. After having served Sheridan with distinction, he was put out to pasture and died in 1878. Mounted and sent to the Museum of Military Service Institution of the United States on Governor's Island in New York, and later he was transferred to the Smithsonian Institute.

He was wounded four times, poor horse. Never failed his master.

[William R. Cumming]

I am disappointed that the skills and talents in the NBA won't be on display this fall! And perhaps not this winter or next spring.

[PK]

More ground breaking science.

"At the heart of the weirdness for which the field of quantum mechanics is famous is the wavefunction, a powerful but mysterious entity that is used to determine the probabilities that quantum particles will have certain properties. Now, a preprint posted online on 14 November reopens the question of what the wavefunction represents — with an answer that could rock quantum theory to its core. "

http://www.nature.com/news/quantum-theorem-shakes-foundations-1.9392

[Fred]

That's just free market capitalism destroying democracy. Why worry, the police from NYC to UC Davis have 'Occupy' wherever beaten down. I believe that's the new status of 'justice' in the US. There's nothing to fear, if you're rich you'll stay that way; if not you get the bill.

[turcopolier]

J

His name is spelled "Reinzi" on his stall because that is how some trooper would phoneticize it. A noble beast of the Morgan Horse tribe. pl

[Neil Richardson]

Krugman titled his post "Incredible Europeans." Actually my first thought was "Incredible economists." Did Krugman really expect the ECB to deviate from Bundesbank? Homo economicus exists only in the minds of economists. The memories of the 1920s still haunt the Germans. Scores of political scientists (those who were derided as Euroskeptics) had warned about the pitfalls of monetary integration going back to the late 1960s.

As for Krugman, this is so typical of his pop writing (it's a shame because once upon a time he was a brilliant economist who actually cared about empirics). Sure you need the ECB to act in order to forestall a lost decade in the southern zone. Well, how do you get them to do that? This is the same sort of nonsense I read when he was criticizing the stimulus proposals in the US. Sure what was needed was a bigger stimulus (if you accept the Keynesian assumptions without any allowance for exogenous variables), but how the heck could Obama or anyone else get there? And this is even before looking the downside risk of coordination problems internationally. In a democratic state, you have political process which many of these economists just assume away.

[Russ Wagenfeld]

walrus
scary stuff
Listening to the reporting on the floundering Super Committee, I find Republican - Democratic negotiations these days remind me of the Israeli - Palestinian peace process.

[David J]

Albert Bartlett said, "The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY

[Roy G.]

Three comments:

Here's a video link to the police hosing down non-violent student protesters at UC Davis. Fascism plain and simple:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmJmmnMkuEM&feature=player_embedded

Israel's FM, and possible future führer, A. Lieberman wants to cut ties with the Mossad, because they aren't playing ball on his terms:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/nov/17/israeli-foreign-minister-seeks-to-cut-ties-with-mo/

Third, although visually the new layout is nice, it's actually harder to read white paragraph text over black, according to conventions of User Interface design:

http://uxmovement.com/color/when-to-use-white-text-on-a-dark-background/

[YT]

Col. sir,

A greater than Nathan Forrest (of KKK fame)?

"The only White officer who supports the unit is Regimental Commanding Officer Colonel Benjamin Grierson. Ostracized by other officers for his enthusiastic command of the African-American troops, Grierson believes in the abilities, dedication, and record of performance of the Buffalo Soldiers and declines offers to lead at any other post. General Pike offers to relieve Grierson 'of this self-imposed exile and have him commanding a real cavalry regiment within a month,' but Grierson refuses."

http://exiledonline.com/war-nerd-ben-grierson-actual-hero/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Grierson

[YT]

Mr. Deavereaux, sir,

I'm 'bout 3-4 decades your junior & even I'm in agreement with you (astigmatism & myopia not helpin').

+2!

[At the Virginia Capes]

"...credit default saps" was likely a typo for credit default swaps, but then again, the word "saps," referring to those who thought the swaps were good/sound financial instruments, it is probably an appropriate word.

[walrus]

Yes it was a typo - but perhaps a Freudian one if there is such a thing.

[walrus]

I think you are right. Krugman rails against the German attitude saying: "Economics is not a morality play." However if I was a German worker, I'd be saying unprintable things about the bailing out of lazy corrupt Greeks and Italians by inflating the currency and eating into my savings and the moral necessity that they suffer for their sins.

It would therefor appear that unless there is a Deus Ex Machina available next week, we are in for a live performance of the fable of The Scorpion And The Frog.

[Fred]

Yes, those poor billionaire owners not wanting to pay those poor millionaire players, whose talent makes those billionaires richer every season. I'm sure the owners will get plenty of tax write-offs and will be back at every city/state legislature looking for another tax subsidized hand out next year.

[zanzibar]

The pressure on the ECB to engage in unlimited-scale printing is monumental. Politicians from Sarkozy to Obama as well as the bankers and Eurocrats are laying their heavy hand. Sarkozy of course is desperate. He has an election contest to win and he knows that France has no capacity to bailout it's banks on its own. The Germans stand in the way as their politicians need to show their taxpayers that they got something, however ephemeral, in return for them picking up the lion's share of the tab. Right now, it seems the price they want is for the periphery to give up sovereignty, at least on fiscal matters. The Germans, I doubt can hold back the tide of ever increasing pressure to follow the Bernanke doctrine and turn on the spigots to debasement. They just don't have the votes on the ECB board.

No matter if the ECB prints massively or there are Euro-bonds or the EMU fractures - German taxpayers will pay.

[zanzibar]

This is so true. During the mid-2000s as our credit bubble was inflating I would ask audiences of mathematically astute folks to guess what the net worth of an Egyptian from the Old Kingdom would be today if their $1 investment had a 3% annual rate of return. They would always be astounded at the result.

Today, I note that total credit market debt in the world has grown from $80 trillion to $210 trillion over the past 9 years - a 12% annual growth rate. During this same period global GDP has grown at a rate of 4%. Whatever theories or models du jour our central planning commissars propound, the inexorable mathematics of exponents will always prevail.

[William P. Fitzgerald III]

Pat Lang,
Rienzi! There's a wonderful bronze statue of the horse with Sheridan astride in Lincoln Park in Chicago. He (Rienzi) was a stallion but was gelded about 10 years ago. The reason for the operation was that the park district got tired of cleaning the paint( in various colors) from his prominent balls. The paint kept reappearing during the warmer months and was thought to be a fraternity prank. The big surprise was that it was the visiting baseball teams who painted poor Rienzi with their team colors when in town to play the Cubs or Sox.

WPFIII

[Jay Mcanally]

Sorry.
I guess I'm in the minority, but I really (really, really) don't like the "White on Black" format.

I read this blog every day, and try to do my bit to support it, and I will continue to do so. But I'll probably be a little bit "ticked" each time by this stylistic choice.

There is a reason why "Black on White" dominates text layouts -- it works. The alternates are just "cutesy" and thus off-putting.

Sorry, but I had to speak up for my side...