Zero degees outside this morning

It ain't as cold as some places, but zero is chilly enough for me.

What to spend on for economic stimulus

The quest for the magic economic bullet to pull the country out of recession. We know a couple of things that don't work. Giving free money to citizens doesn't work, citizens are to shell shocked to spend it on anything. Giving free money to Wall St doesn't seem to do much either. The banks are so shell shocked they don't dare lend it out, even if anyone wanted to borrow it.
Some IBM guys suggested investing in broadband and something they called "smart power grid", and computerize the nation's medical records. I can buy the broadband argument, especially up here where a lot of places can't get broadband, no way, no how. Broadband is a necessary utility now, like phone and electric and water. No new businesses are going to start up in places they cannot get broadband.
The "smart power grid" argument was less compelling, partly because the writer didn't bother to explain what it was. Probably because he didn't understand the concept himself. All I can think of is the old utility dream of load leveling. Electric power demand peaks in the morning and evening (when customers are home and cooking) and on hot summer afternoon's when every air conditioner runs full blast. If some loads could be turned off during peak times, the peaks would get smaller, and the utilities wouldn't need as many generators as they do now. Things like hot water heaters, air conditioners, and refrigerators could be switched off during peak periods. Give the customer's an incentive to install "smart" appliances and some how send a signal over the power lines in peak periods telling the "smart" appliances to conserve electricity.
The biggest most expensive part of this would be getting customers to replace perfectly good appliances with "smart" ones. Maybe we just pass a law requiring all new appliances to be "smart" ones and let the normal replacement cycle phase them in gradually.
Either way, I don't see how "smart power grid" really stimulates the economy.
I'd get more behind computerizing all the medical records except I fear that once computerized, hackers and crackers will steal them and offer them for sale. Do you really want your medical records available to anyone on the Internet?

Would you buy a used car from this company?

The Wall St Journal had a short piece discussing the wisdom of buying a used car, as opposed to a new one. They wound up recommending used European luxury cars. They missed the best deal on the planet. Used Cadillac DTS's are the way to go. This is the large sedan, they used to call Deville before GM marketing decided to abolish car names and replace them with obscure code letter groups. New they cost $43K. Used, they can be had for as little as $3K, although $10K is more usual. They are large enough to hold a family, or fit all the gear a college kid wants to take with him to school. Well built, will run happily up to 200K miles, get excellent gas mileage (27 mpg highway). Comfortable as you can get. Advanced engine, all aluminum, double overhead cams, 10.3:1 compression, 275 hp, and runs on regular gas. Front wheel drive, anti skid brakes, and a limited slip differential give a secure feeling driving in the winter up here.
New Caddy's are too expensive for most of us, but a used one is a deal.

Guantanamo

Just watched Obama on the ABC Sunday pundit show. He is still going to close Guantanamo Bay, at least the terrorist prison camp part of it. There was a lot of talk about trying the inmates. Trouble is, most of the Guantanamo inmates are in Guantanamo because they were captured on a foreign battlefield for bearing arms against the US. They aren't guilty of war crimes, and no US court or court martial is going to convict them for war crimes they didn't commit. These guys are enemy soldiers. If and when released they will take up arms against us again.
We have to adjust to the fact that enemy soldiers have to be locked up without a trial just because they are enemy soldiers. We had no trouble doing it in WWII or Korea. Few voters and taxpayers have a problem with this, although it upsets the MSM and liberal Democrats.

Economic Stimulus

The news has been talking about a $300 billion tax break/rebate/handout to citizens. That's about $1000 per person. The theory is, we will all rush out and spend the $1000 on something. Or at least, be grateful to the Obama administration for the money. If everyone spends $1000, then stores will order $1000 worth of merchandise, and factories hire workers and buy raw materials and we are out of Great Depression II.
Does this rosy scenario work in real life? Most Americans are worried about loosing their jobs, have humungous credit card debts, and have seen their savings vanish in the stock market crash and the real estate disaster. Most rational Americans will use the free money to pay down debt or save up for a rainy day. Although it's raining pretty hard now, a pink slip makes things get a lot wetter. In short, much as I like the idea of free money for me, I don't think it's going to do much to stimulate the economy.
Give the tax breaks to business. One of the reasons so much manufacturing has moved to China is that taxes on business are lower in China. US businesses pay 35% on profits, higher than nearly every other developed country. Lower that tax rate and more US businesses will survive Great Depression II and/or decide to retain operations in the US as opposed to outsourcing them to China.

Fixing Wall St. Part II

What's the difference between a futures market and a casino? Very little. Futures markets began with farmers needing to find buyers for their crops before harvest time. Partly to have an arrangement for the harvest (what do you do with tons of crops if you don't have a buyer lined up?) and partly to lock in a good price. Crop buyers found the futures market leveled out prices over the year. Used to be, crops were dirt cheap right after harvest, and got steadily more expensive as harvest time receded into the past. Companies making bread or corn flakes or what ever, liked the steadier and more predictable prices provided by the futures market. All well and good, commodities futures markets have real economic value.
Now let us consider futures markets in stocks, crude oil, and God knows what else. Neither stocks nor crude oil has a harvest time. Production stays steady year round. Price fluctuation is unpredictable. Lucky buyers like Southwest Airlines can save them themselves lots of money, Unlucky buyers loose their shirts. This is really gambling and serves no economic purpose. Money sunk into commodities speculation isn't available for real economic investment. The recent spike in oil prices had a lot to do with tipping the economy into Great Depression II. And the even more recent fall has bankrupted a whole bunch of speculators.
In a free market economy we cannot prohibit buying and selling, but we can tax the bejesus out of it. And we can forbid Federal y insured banks from speculating in, our lending to speculators in the commodities markets.

Too many codes.

Blogger is Word hostile. Cutting and pasting from MS Word brings in a raft of invisible HTML codes which causes Blogger to choke. Saving from Word in plain ASCII helps a bit but someone (Blogger or Notepad or Word) turns quote marks and apostrophe's into question marks. That's a bug somewhere, both quotemark and apostrophe are in the ASCII character set, have been in ASCII since the beginning, and they should convert. Pain in the tail.
Blogger really ought to accept cut and paste from Word. It wouldn't take all that much code for Blogger to merely discard any HTML that it doesn't understand.