Finished another round of car shopping. Stopped at a dozen dealers over in St Johnsbury. Each lot filled with very average looking cars, mostly painted mud color. Mud has taken over from gray as the most popular car color. Each one of these cars was new once, and each new car buyer opted for a mud paint job. Taste they had, lots of taste.
Why is it that I see multiple stories about the end of stainless steel as America's favorite kitchen appliance finish, but I don't remember a single one on the rise of mud as America's favorite car color?
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Getting things done WITHOUT using the military
Both candidates spoke at length about the need for America to influence events overseas and in the Middle East, but without "putting boots on the ground". Get foreign governments to do things our way but without using force. Nice work if you can get it. The voters approve, Americans have never supported agreements made at gunpoint. We don't like to act the bully, we don't like getting our sons and husbands killed, and we don't like spending the necessary money. America is not a war like country. We don't see war as moral.
So how do we influence events overseas? We find individuals or groups, politicians, newsmen, religious leaders, authors, unions, churches and political parties who support liberty, the rule of law, democracy, free market capitalism, and oppose terrorism, communism, and religious radicalism. We offer these people and groups our support. Money, web access, smart phones, color printers, favorable publicity in our press, intelligence, passports and visas, laptops, Xerox machines, and the myriad of useful devices that our economy produces in such abundance. For a democratic resistance movement struggling to liberalize a repressive government, such assistance can be the vital edge that pushes them over the top. It's generally accepted that this sort of encouragement and support to Lech Walensa's Solidarity movement was very important in the overthrow of the Polish communist regime.
Of course, for this to work, it MUST remain secret. Imagine what would happen to any American politician should it becomes known that he accepts help from the Russians, or the Chinese, or even the Saudis. Likewise it would be the kiss of death to many overseas should it become known that they were working with the Americans.
Trouble is, no one overseas is willing to trust that the Americans will keep secrets secret. They all fear that anything they share with the Americans will appear on the front pages of the New York Times in a few days. Until we can tighten up our security and keep secret things secret, not even the best our our representatives be able to do much coordination with players overseas. Those players fear that American leaks will cost them their lives.
CIA is disgracefully leaky. State isn't much better. Until we tighten things up, we won't be able to do much influencing of anyone.
So how do we influence events overseas? We find individuals or groups, politicians, newsmen, religious leaders, authors, unions, churches and political parties who support liberty, the rule of law, democracy, free market capitalism, and oppose terrorism, communism, and religious radicalism. We offer these people and groups our support. Money, web access, smart phones, color printers, favorable publicity in our press, intelligence, passports and visas, laptops, Xerox machines, and the myriad of useful devices that our economy produces in such abundance. For a democratic resistance movement struggling to liberalize a repressive government, such assistance can be the vital edge that pushes them over the top. It's generally accepted that this sort of encouragement and support to Lech Walensa's Solidarity movement was very important in the overthrow of the Polish communist regime.
Of course, for this to work, it MUST remain secret. Imagine what would happen to any American politician should it becomes known that he accepts help from the Russians, or the Chinese, or even the Saudis. Likewise it would be the kiss of death to many overseas should it become known that they were working with the Americans.
Trouble is, no one overseas is willing to trust that the Americans will keep secrets secret. They all fear that anything they share with the Americans will appear on the front pages of the New York Times in a few days. Until we can tighten up our security and keep secret things secret, not even the best our our representatives be able to do much coordination with players overseas. Those players fear that American leaks will cost them their lives.
CIA is disgracefully leaky. State isn't much better. Until we tighten things up, we won't be able to do much influencing of anyone.
No Knockout blows.
I watched the last Romney-Obama debate. And watched the after debate spinners attempting to spin it their way. Neither man made a fatal gaffe or landed a knockout blow. Watching these things is like watching a bullfight. You are waiting for someone to get gored.
Well, that didn't happen. Romney came on as presidential, well informed, and reasonable. He ain't gonna take us to war anywhere. Obama did OK, defending the weak record of his administration. He made the best of a bad situation. The moderator, some old white haired coot from CBS news, was a lot better than the last one, Candy Crowley. He had better questions and he didn't jump into the debate himself the way Candy did last time. We TV viewers want to hear what the candidates have to say, we don't care what the moderator wants to say. We don't like the moderator taking air time away from the candidates.
I'll score this one as even-stephen. Each man's "base" will say (and think) their man did well. I don't think there are many undecided voters left, so it's hard say what the effect on undecided or independents might be. We will know in a couple of weeks.
Well, that didn't happen. Romney came on as presidential, well informed, and reasonable. He ain't gonna take us to war anywhere. Obama did OK, defending the weak record of his administration. He made the best of a bad situation. The moderator, some old white haired coot from CBS news, was a lot better than the last one, Candy Crowley. He had better questions and he didn't jump into the debate himself the way Candy did last time. We TV viewers want to hear what the candidates have to say, we don't care what the moderator wants to say. We don't like the moderator taking air time away from the candidates.
I'll score this one as even-stephen. Each man's "base" will say (and think) their man did well. I don't think there are many undecided voters left, so it's hard say what the effect on undecided or independents might be. We will know in a couple of weeks.
Monday, October 22, 2012
Car shopping
Youngest son took me car shopping today. In the space of an afternoon we visited all four car dealers in Littleton. Wow. Most of ;'em started at $10k for high mileage mini cars. We didn't find anything to fall in love with. The best of the batch was a Kia with 93K miles on the clock. It had a manual trans, which is a plus, but the road noise on the highway was a bit daunting.
Clearly more hunting is in order.
Clearly more hunting is in order.
Sunday, October 21, 2012
What should they talk about tomorrow night?
Tomorrow is the last Romney-Obama debate. It's supposed to be about "foreign policy". For a superpower with world wide interests, this is a fairly important subject. So what should they talk about? Here is my list.
1. Iranian nuclear program. How bad would a nuclear Iran be? What should we do to stop the Iranians from getting the bomb? We have managed to crash their centrifuge computers and their currency. Can we go farther and destabilize the mullahs, bringing on a third Iranian revolution? If worse comes to worse do we have the stones to do a regime change on them?
2. China and the South China Sea. China is claiming ownership of some worthless rocks in the South China Sea as a way of pushing out the Philippines, the Viet Namese, the Japanese and the Koreans from oil exploration in the region. Should we let the Chinese push our friends around? Should we tell China where to get off?
3. How much military strength do we need to maintain the Pax Americana? Let's talk real numbers here, numbers of Army and Marine divisions, Air Force squadrons, Navy ships.
4. Can we sign the outstanding free trade agreements which objections by US union have stalled?
5. How hard do we want to bash China on currency manipulation and trade? It wouldn't be hard to start a trade war here. Who would get hurt worse, us or them?
6. Do we just let the Arab Spring stew in its own juice, or do we try to restore some kind of order over there?
Wanna bet they waste the evening talking about Benghazi and who knew what and when did they know it?
1. Iranian nuclear program. How bad would a nuclear Iran be? What should we do to stop the Iranians from getting the bomb? We have managed to crash their centrifuge computers and their currency. Can we go farther and destabilize the mullahs, bringing on a third Iranian revolution? If worse comes to worse do we have the stones to do a regime change on them?
2. China and the South China Sea. China is claiming ownership of some worthless rocks in the South China Sea as a way of pushing out the Philippines, the Viet Namese, the Japanese and the Koreans from oil exploration in the region. Should we let the Chinese push our friends around? Should we tell China where to get off?
3. How much military strength do we need to maintain the Pax Americana? Let's talk real numbers here, numbers of Army and Marine divisions, Air Force squadrons, Navy ships.
4. Can we sign the outstanding free trade agreements which objections by US union have stalled?
5. How hard do we want to bash China on currency manipulation and trade? It wouldn't be hard to start a trade war here. Who would get hurt worse, us or them?
6. Do we just let the Arab Spring stew in its own juice, or do we try to restore some kind of order over there?
Wanna bet they waste the evening talking about Benghazi and who knew what and when did they know it?
Saturday, October 20, 2012
What to regulate?
In the news have been fatal cases of fungal meningitis traced to drugs mixed or packaged at a Framingham MA "compounding pharmacy". Nineteen people have died, more are ill. Predictably there have been calls for more "regulation" of "compounding pharmacies".
More regulation means more tests, more paperwork, more QC inspectors watching production, more worker training and a big dose of Mickey Mouse.
But, despite all the hooting and hollering, nobody has yet figured out what went wrong, and how. They had been making this stuff for some time and all of a sudden it goes bad. What really happened? Did they skip or botch some test for infectious matter? Fail to sterilize something? Buy some material from China? Leave out some important preservative? Change the formula somehow? Or what? I can imagine a lot of ways to let fungus infect your product.
Should some investigators figure out the problem and publish a paper explaining how to prevent this dreadful infection, I am 100% positive that every "compounding pharmacy" in the land would immediately make the needed changes to their production lines.
We don't need more "regulation". We need to find out how the fungus got into the product and how to stop it from happening again.
More regulation means more tests, more paperwork, more QC inspectors watching production, more worker training and a big dose of Mickey Mouse.
But, despite all the hooting and hollering, nobody has yet figured out what went wrong, and how. They had been making this stuff for some time and all of a sudden it goes bad. What really happened? Did they skip or botch some test for infectious matter? Fail to sterilize something? Buy some material from China? Leave out some important preservative? Change the formula somehow? Or what? I can imagine a lot of ways to let fungus infect your product.
Should some investigators figure out the problem and publish a paper explaining how to prevent this dreadful infection, I am 100% positive that every "compounding pharmacy" in the land would immediately make the needed changes to their production lines.
We don't need more "regulation". We need to find out how the fungus got into the product and how to stop it from happening again.
What to cut? Fannie and Freddy
Back during the New Deal, builders, real estate agents, bankers, insurance agents, and civic boosters of various stripes convinced the Roosevelt Administration that Great Depression 1.0 was caused because people weren't building enough new houses, and they were not building houses because there was a shortage of mortgage money. And the federal government, with the power to print as much money as desired, ought to print up a bunch and put it into mortgages.
And so it happened. Federal National Mortgage Something-or-Other, commonly known as Fannie Mae, was created. Being an agency of the US government, the best credit rating on the planet, they could sell bonds for nearly as good a rate as Federal Treasury Bills. They used this fountain of cheap money to purchase mortgages from savings and loans (remember them?) and ordinary banks. The sellers could then use the cash to write more mortgages.
And what did Fannie Mae do with all those mortgages? For many years they just cashed the mortgage checks and life went on. Something in the '90s they invented a financial weapon of mass destruction, the mortgage backed security. They proceeded to blow the global financial system to hell and back, and we are still living in the wreckage. Great Depression 2.0 was caused by Fannie Mae, more than anyone else.
The destruction included Fannie itself, as Great Depression 2.0 threw everyone out of work, they stopped making their mortgage payments, and that cut off Fannie's air supply. The US treasury had to step in and guarantee Fannie's obligations. This cost $140 billion of our tax money. As bad as AIG.
We ought to close down Fannie. It isn't needed, and it has the power to do humungous damage. It's still loosing money. The financial world will be a better, safer, and cheaper place after we drive a stake thru Fannie's heart. Revoke their charter, put 'em out of business.
Obama hasn't said one word about Fannie. But its a good bet that he would keep it going.
Romney hasn't said much about Fannie either. But I bet he would be OK with closing it down.
And so it happened. Federal National Mortgage Something-or-Other, commonly known as Fannie Mae, was created. Being an agency of the US government, the best credit rating on the planet, they could sell bonds for nearly as good a rate as Federal Treasury Bills. They used this fountain of cheap money to purchase mortgages from savings and loans (remember them?) and ordinary banks. The sellers could then use the cash to write more mortgages.
And what did Fannie Mae do with all those mortgages? For many years they just cashed the mortgage checks and life went on. Something in the '90s they invented a financial weapon of mass destruction, the mortgage backed security. They proceeded to blow the global financial system to hell and back, and we are still living in the wreckage. Great Depression 2.0 was caused by Fannie Mae, more than anyone else.
The destruction included Fannie itself, as Great Depression 2.0 threw everyone out of work, they stopped making their mortgage payments, and that cut off Fannie's air supply. The US treasury had to step in and guarantee Fannie's obligations. This cost $140 billion of our tax money. As bad as AIG.
We ought to close down Fannie. It isn't needed, and it has the power to do humungous damage. It's still loosing money. The financial world will be a better, safer, and cheaper place after we drive a stake thru Fannie's heart. Revoke their charter, put 'em out of business.
Obama hasn't said one word about Fannie. But its a good bet that he would keep it going.
Romney hasn't said much about Fannie either. But I bet he would be OK with closing it down.
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