A few WSJ words about Credit Default Swaps

For those who tuned in late, a credit default swap (CDS) is paper insurance, if the financial paper you hold defaults, the credit default swapper will pay you off. For a slight fee of course. The swapper will charge a percent or two to cover his expenses. So eager beaver young hi-roller can buy Greek bonds that pay 28% and tell his supervisor "It's OK, I bought a credit default swap on them, so when the Greeks default, we get paid off."
Only, the Greeks or the ECB or somebody worked some kind of evil magic and the Greek CDS's won't pay off after the bondholders took a 50% haircut. Woe is me.
"investors concluded that the CDS's of other EU countries weren't to be trusted either. So when fears mounted over Italy's solvency last week, investors bailed out of euro-zone debt."
Oh the horror of it. Investors will stop pouring money down an Italian drain. The world will end on Tuesday. Francesco Guerrera, a Wall St Journal editor, thinks this is terrible.
Actually, it's a good thing. Capital ought to be invested in economic development, factories, mines, off-shore oil platforms, sea going ships, roads, bridges, airliners, you know, stuff that employs people and makes money. Money loaned to EU governments just goes to pay pensions of retired bureaucrats. The bad part about CDS's, is that they encourage investors to invest in loser government bonds instead of useful things.
Far as I am concerned, anything we can do to stamp out CDS's is a good thing. Investors ought to look at the risk involved in any investment. CDS's (when they work) shuffle the risk off on the third party, and allow the investor to put his money into really risky stuff but without assuming the risk himself.
Society's capital will be better directed, resulting in greater economic growth and more employment, if the investors have to face up to risk.

Do I believe in stimulus?

In this day and age of scary big budget deficits, some governments (like NH) have reacted by cutting government spending. Others (like CA, USofA and Greece) have not. Each time a thrifty government cuts spending a whole bunch of pundits pipe up and say "Reducing government spending reduces economic stimulus and casts us deeper into Great Depressions 2.0". Is this really true?
The pundits have all been brought up on Dr. Maynard Keynes, British economist from Great Depression I. Keynes claimed that the Great Depression was caused by a "failure of demand" and the proper role of government was to create demand by spending money, and if necessary, printing it in order to spend it. This theory is attractive to politicians (who love spending money), business (who receives this largess), and liberals.
But does it work in the real world? Certainly Obama's $1 trillion porkulus bill didn't do much for Great Depression 2.0. Keynesian spending requires money that has to come from somewhere, either out of taxes, or inflation (which takes money out of everyone's hide). Could it be that taking all that money away from taxpayers reduces those taxpayer's ability to spend?

Maxims

Napoleon is remembered for saying "In war the moral is the the physical as three is to one". By which he meant that his army won because his solders believed in the cause they were fighting for. And there must be something in it, Napoleon repeatedly beat enemies as numerous as his and equipped with the same weapons that his men carried.

Of course we should remember that Napoleon is also the man who said "Le feu est tout", which translates into English as "Firepower is everything".

Words of the Weasel Part 22

"Nuanced." As in "President Obama's nuanced response to the Iranian nuclear weapons program. Quoted from Elizabeth Warren, currently running for Scott Brown's Massachusetts senate seat. Nuanced. Speak softly and slink out of the room. The Iranians are dead set on getting the bomb. Only military action or regime change will stop them. Nuanced won't cut it. Once the Iranians get the bomb, they are immune to invasion. With nukes they can pretty much do anything they like, and if we move to stop them, they will threaten to nuke someplace we care about, Jerusalem, Baghdad, Tel Aviv.
"Firepower." As in "The European Stability Facility needs more firepower". The Economist and even the Wall St Journal have taken to using "firepower" in place of "money" which is what they are actually talking about. Not quite sure why. Can it be that all these good liberals really think "firepower" sounds nicer than "money"?

Back to the Civil War

Whenever times get slow, the services change their uniform. The US Army has gone back to Civil War style blue uniforms and rank insignia. I just saw Chief of Staff Gen Ray Ordiero on TV. Instead of the traditional silver stars on the shoulder loops, he was wearing gold shoulder straps of the sort that William T. Sherman and U.S. Grant used to wear.
Only took 65 years for the Army to get back to blue. When the US Air Force got started in 1947 it picked blue for it's uniform. To prevent anyone from confusing Army soldiers with Air Force airmen, the Army promptly switched over to green uniforms. Now the Army is over it's snit with the Air Force and the soldiers are going with two tone blue uniforms.

After doing something stupid, sue

Something called "FairPoint Creditor's Trust" is suing Verizon to recover the purchase price Fairpoint paid Verizon for the privilege of going broke. For those of you that tuned in late, some years ago Verizon decided that operating telephone lines in rural New England was a money loser. Few paying customers, spread over a wide area means lots of wire to maintain and few bill payers to fund the thing. So Verizon found a bigger sucker. Small backwoods phone company from down south somewhere , name of Fairpoint, thought they could make money running land line phone service in New England. Verizon wasn't making any money off a fully paid for physical plant. Fairpoint was going to borrow a zillion dollars at 12 percent, give the money to Verizon, and then make enough money to operate the system and pay off the debt. Right.
Not only did Fairpoint fall for this scam, the public utility commissions of all the affected state bought into the scheme. And some bankers somewhere (Wall Street?) were dumb enough to loan out the money.
Things happened as any idiot could have predicted. Fairpoint couldn't make money, couldn't service the debt, and declared bankruptcy a few years ago. I haven't been following this closely, but I hope all the idiots who participated in this stupidity lost a lot of money.
Anyhow, the suckers, after getting thoroughly plucked, hired some lawyers to try a get some money back from Verizon. Let's hope it doesn't work. Far as I am concerned anyone who got mixed up in the Fairpoint scheme was too stupid to be allowed outdoors without a keeper.

Obama's Jobs plan

Kill the XL pipeline. That will create a lot of jobs. Although he claims merely to be delaying approval until AFTER the election, in the real world putting a one year delay on a big project often kills it dead. The oil producers in Canada need to market their oil. There are plenty of countries in the world who need oil and have money. China for instance.
So kiss the jobs, and the oil goodby.
That's really good for the country.