Federal Reserve ought to raise US interest rates tomorrow. Don’t wait til March.

 The Fed’s primary job ought to be keeping the economy growing.  Making money available to buy inventory, build new factories, hire more workers, raise their pay, finance building new aircraft, new cars and trucks, new ships, new railroad rolling stock.  Part of this is keeping prices stable.  If companies and people get the idea that the dollar will be worth less tomorrow, they will buy stuff today, before the price goes up.  Resulting demand will raise prices because the supply side isn’t big enough to supply everybody’s wants today.

 

Unfortunately the Fed usually sees it’s job as to keep the stock market speculators speculating.  They borrow money to buy stocks, running up the price of the stock.  Then they sell.  For this to work, the Fed has to make borrowing money reasonable cheap.  And stock speculation does not grow companies or hire more workers.  We don’t need it.

 

Better would be a Fed policy to keep prices stable, and money for real economic purposes available.  If this means interest rates so high that stock speculation becomes a loser, tough. 

I don’t know if we would do things like that today.

Way back in the 1950’s USAF had Convair design the “ultimate interceptor” for homeland air defense.  In those days the big worry was Russian bombers flying over the North Pole and nuking our cities.  ICBM's were still experimental in those days. In the search for an interceptor to stop the Russians,  Convair had already struck out once with the F102, which was nowhere near fast enough.  The best the poor old Deuce could do was Mach 1.2.  Convair’s political connections were excellent in those days, and USAF gave them a second chance.  Hughes Aircraft got the contract for the radar fire control in the F106 project.  When the red tape unwound, Convair got paid $8 million apiece for the airframe and engine, and Hughes got paid $8 million apiece for MA-1 radar fire control. 

   At this time, everyone wanted a missile armament, 50 cal machine guns were considered old school, WWII stuff.  Years later Viet Nam would change minds on this issue and guns came back into style.  Anyhow, the F106 carried two heat seeking guided missiles, two radar seeking guided missiles, and a single MB-1 Genie nuclear war headed unguided missile.  No guns of any kind. The nuclear warhead was of about the same yield as the one we used on Hiroshima only ten years earlier and the tremendous blast would make up for any minor errors in aim.  In actual fact, the blast from an MB-1 warhead would have done serious damage to anything on the ground as well.  Nobody talked about that.  Today, with the voters far more sensitive to issues of radiation, fallout, and blast damage, I don’t think the nuclear idea would fly.  I never heard that any of the later USAF fighters carried nukes. The F106’s in my squadron were built between 1957 and 1960.  They remained in service into the 1980’s.

 

Open mouth, Insert Foot.

 I just heard Lloyd Austin, Biden's defense secretary say "Biden has ordered that no US troops will be deployed to Ukraine".  Stupid thing to say.  Biden should not have said it.  Austen should not announce it on TV.  You don't want to tell an adversary what you will or will not do.  Let the adversary guess.  Maybe it will deter him.  Maybe he will guess wrong.  You don't tell adversaries what you plan to do.  Lets go Brandon.

Beans and Franks Harmful??

 I was doing a little websurfing and I run across a site "25 Foods you should never eat".  Having a little time on my hands I clicked on it.  They listed a whole bunch of junk food that I never buy.  But, they blackballed hot dogs  and then baked beans.  Picture of a can of Bush's baked beans.  Arrg.  I do beans and franks now and then.  My mother used to serve beans and franks and brown bread for family dinner, oh once or twice a month.  She baked the brown bread at home.  She liked raisins in the brown bread.  Dad detested raisins in anything.  So she put the raisins in one end and left the other end raisinless for Dad.  Then came the night a trouble making raisin escaped from detention and popped up in Dad's slice of raisin bread.  Dad didn't say anything, but his grumbles carried to all us kids. 

Biden wants to bring the "living Constitution" back to life

 Now that Justice Breyer has announced his retirement, Biden gets to nominate a supreme.  Back during his campaign he promised to nominate a black woman.  The Wall St Journal showed five leading candidates, all black women.  None of their names meant anything to me.  At least all five had "Judge" in front of their names.   

The doctrine of a "living Constitution" means that a lot of changes have occured since the Constitution was ratified way back in 1789.  And it is the duty of judges and courts to change the Constitution to support their view of the proper course of modern events, leftie, greenie, and worse.  I don't believe this.  It is the duty of elected legislatures, both Federal and state, to pass new laws or amend the constitution if necessary.  If the voters are in favor, the changes will happen.  If the voters are not in favor, or just don't care, changes won't happen.  That is representative democracy.  When unelected judges change the law it is tyranny. 

I wonder how those five leading candidates feel about living constitutions.  Someone ought to ask them during the confirmation hearings.  Courts should enforce the law as written, not the law they wish was written.

 

That gas pipeline from Germany to Russia

 Nordstream 2 they call it.  TV news is saying that the US will do something to kill the project if the Russians invade Ukraine.  Question.  How come the US has a veto power over a European project?  The pipeline will run underneath the Baltic sea, which was international waters last time I looked.  The Germans have plenty of money to finance the job, which will bring Russian natural gas to heat German homes and fire German power plants.  The Russians like the idea of earning German money for the sale of their gas.  

   What gives the US any kind of control of Nordstream 2?

SR71 Blackbird

 The TV has William Devane giving the pitch to invest in gold and silver. He is standing in front of an SR1 Blackbird in some aviation museum.  Plane looks good.  Devane says "Just as this plane evaded radar...:   Fun fact, the Blackbird was not radar stealthy.  It was designed before the stealth technology had been discovered, and it (and its crews) did not really care if the plane showed on Russian radar.  It was faster than anything the Russians were flying and it could fly higher than anything the Russians were flying.  If a Russian fighter showed up while the Blackbird was photographing inside Russia, or anywhere else for that matter, the Blackbird could just out run it.