I think any proposal should explain how a new "superagency" would have caught these problems earlier.

Maybe somebody will ask Dodd all about it at a 'town hall' in Greenwich CT... [/snark]

No, CR, as you must know the superagency's function and purpose would be to PREVENT regulators from shutting down Hurricane Ponzi lest the system which paid for Dodd's campaign collapse.

corporate child molesters, marketing directly to children

The function of the superagency PROPOSAL is to remind contributors that there is an election coming and they need to route some contributions towards his Senate race.

DCRogers +1 insightful

You know, make a big integrated watchdog-

I nominate Hank Greenberg, ex AIG-man to run it.

After all, having seen what he built destroyed by idiocy, he would clean up wall street from top to bottom, and he is rich enough to not care who he pisses off.

Yup- give Dodd what he thinks he wants, and then have a very mad and nasty guy do the job.

Someday this war's gonna end...

dryfly, I haven't been impressed by Dodd. Not only does he seem to side with the banking industry, he is supporting the extension and expansion of the absurd housing tax credit ... and that is just dumb.

Dodd is owned by Wall Street... as is Schumer & Lieberman. Expecting them to vote against big banking is like expecting farm state senators to vote against ethanol & farm price supports. Never gonna happen.

"Yup- give Dodd what he thinks he wants, and then have a very mad and nasty guy do the job."

Greenberg would need cover from somewhere to pull that off. Who could provide that?

"Isn't this great!!!" [Wide shot of dinosaurs lumbering around]

"Oooh, ah. That's how it always starts. But then later there's running, and then there's ... screaming...."

0.46 on the clip, Jurassic Park II.

YouTube - Jurassic Park 2 - The Lost World Trailer

C

dryfly, I was , perhaps, overly harsh with you the other night, saying you were a nobody, for voting both sides of the ticket. I wish to apologise. Let your conscience be your guide.

dryfly, I was , perhaps, overly harsh with you the other night, saying you were a nobody, for voting both sides of the ticket. I wish to apologise. Let your conscience be your guide.

No sweat - its the internet - everyone has an opinion. Peace.

OT: BTW, love this quote in the Boston Globe today on the aftermath of C4C:

“It was probably, in the end, a complete waste of taxpayer money,’’ said John Wolkonowicz, a senior auto analyst at IHS Global Insight, Lexington forecasting firm. “The dealers, who were supposed to be the primary beneficiaries, many were forced into cash flow problems because the government didn’t pay them in a timely fashion.’’

The question is; can Goldman Sachs afford to let enough senior execs take leaves of absence in order to staff up this super-agency?

That's a lot of revolving door there dawg - hope the bearings aren't Chinese.

Mr Slippery - heh heh. The turf wars will also make the 30 years' war look efficient.

C

Chris Dodd?

Give me a break... is the new superagency going to regulate favorable or questionable loans to US senators from financial companies?

Let's see if Chris Dodd proposes anything along those lines.

Long Timken dryfly, long Timken.

The function of the superagency PROPOSAL is to remind contributors that there is an election coming and they need to route some contributions towards his Senate race.

How true, DCRogers.

I think any agency could have discerned there were problems in the markets. They just did not want to.

Bond Girl;

They were specifically instructed not to. It's on the tapes for all to see.

Re: " I think any proposal should explain how a new "superagency" would have caught these problems earlier."

These models and upgrades are all based on past failures, and no one (to date) has been held accountable for the lack of regulation failure, thus, until the guilty parties are dragged through the mud, no future model can be built that will be better than what we had.

I think any agency could have discerned there were problems in the markets. They just did not want to.

Exactly. Everyone could see that the risks were rising, and additional caution was prudent. Regulators (including the overseers on Capitol Hill) made a conscious decision not to disturb the gravy train for everyone - bankers, politicians, businessmen, and homeowners.

As with most mooted legislation, Dodd's proposal is a way to pump more lobbyist dollars from the banking industry into his reelection coffers, as DCRogers pointed out.

There was a lot of denial as to how safe derivatives were -- actually, it wasn't denial, it was pure stupidity from banking people that relied on third-party bullshit, and the game just took on a life of its own, as regulators pretended that they understood what was going on ... or something like that.

Cairo kills all their pigs in an irrational fear they spread swine flu and now drowns in waste. We feed our pigmen and we drown in debt. There is a lesson here among the refuse.

Belatedly, Egypt Spots Flaws in Wiping Out Pigs - NY Times

Bond Girl, it was long obvious that there were severe problems in the mortgage market, but when that criminal thought pattern spread to wall street through the meme of AAA- well that was game over.

AAA used to mean AAA- not manure sliced up six ways from sunday with fraud packaged for sale.

Now, Wall Street thinks they can return to the way things used to be.

Look at the mortgage market now.

Look at what is left- the only functioning part of the mortgage market is all backstopped by the government.

Look at the mortgage mod morons- they are about to be blown up by the FTC.

For the first time in a long time, regulation is making a comeback.

The failure of the SEC is legion.

So, all that needs to be changed.

All that could be changed to go back to proven methods will revert.

Now the only question that remains is how long the dollar holds up before we have to do a real defense.

This week will provide some clues in Pittsburgh.

I spent a very nice summer in Pittsburgh in 1983- CMU summer program was a blast.

Someday this war's gonna end...

I wouldn't describe it as "stupidity". I would characterize it as willful ignorance. Ignorance that no one wanted to cure since the misuse of statistics was so profitable and bonuses were so large.

Honestly, I don't think it makes a damn bit of difference if Barney Frank's plan for regulation, or Chris Dodd's, or the President's, or the current system, prevails.

All of the parties are totally committed to shoveling the maximum amount of money into the housing market, and keeping home prices as high as possible. We already know the outcome, since all the choices that will be considered seriously lead to the same result.

And while we consider the undoubted merits of a national super-regulator and the swift and uncontested progress that proposal is likely to make, a thought perhaps to G20, colleges of supervisors, macro-prudential oversight and the mother of all regulatory mechanisms... Should be done by morning tea at Pittsburgh, and they can head off for some decent golf and architecture viewing. (Fallingwater is simply divine in fall.)

Mr Obama says cooperation needed. (I think this means the frenchies are annoying Timmy).

Obama Says Financial Regulations Must Be Strengthened Globally - Bloomberg.com

Actually he said economic freefall is over. Come to think of it Orszag said the same in May, so did Soros. (Do they email!? Are they BFFs?). And, oops, Mr Obama said it in July.

So that's 5 months of saying it's stopped, over, finis, kaput.

Why is that necessary?

Wait a minute, why would you spend so much money doing more stopping of something that's over?

C

When history is written 20 years from now I hope there will be detailed manuscripts of how Dodd sold his country out to the banking oligarchs. I want "Dodd" to be on par with Ponzi in American lexicon

To all who donated to/volunteered for Obama's Campaign, thanks again. Nite.

This week will provide some clues in Pittsburgh.

Allen - you read this yet... my favorite paragraph:

What should we expect from the Pittsburgh summit on September 24-25? “Nothing much” seems the most likely outcome. The leadership of industrial countries does not want to take on the big banks, and the technocrats have contented themselves with very minor adjustments to key regulations (“dinky” is the term being used in some well-informed circles.) The G7/G8/G20 is back to being irrelevant or, worse, mere cheerleaders for the financial sector.

There's your clues.

All of the parties are totally committed to shoveling the maximum amount of money into the housing market, and keeping home prices as high as possible.

Homes are the envelopes used to send money to banks - it could have been cars, stocks, hookers - homes just worked best.

Daddario would have made a good senator. He would have busted up a lot of the insider crap.

Re: "Senator Dodd's father was also Senator Dodd."

Is that incest?

But the benefit of the house over the hooker is that my wife won't dump me for making mortgage payments.

Stepford Senators - awesome

Bush, Dodd, Kennedy.

Yep, political incest sounds about right.

I don't know what you'd call it with the Clintons.

" if your desire is to see housing prices fall as low as possible, I have to say I am with you in that regard. "

barfly, I actually don't want to see them fall "as far as possible". I am sure it is possible to bring home prices well below their natural economic level through, for example, govt action as strong as today's, but in the opposite direction. (A high federal tax on home ownership would be one way to achieve that.) But why force the prices higher or lower than they would settle at through the normal operation of supply and demand? We rely on that pricing mechanism to get us the greatest aggregate consumer utility from our collective productive efforts and, for all its faults, it seems to do better than most other methods. I am reminded of Winston Churchill's saying, "Democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried". Open market pricing is a lot like democracy.

I do remember when he had a major nervous breakdown.

That was in '62.

Ya I think the Stones did a song about that a few years later...

I want to see young people and young families be able to afford to buy housing in neighborhoods they want to live in. That's going to mean the destruction of current housing prices. I have no problem with that.

Wasn't pappy Senator Dodd censured by the Senate for being a crook?

Baby Senator Dodd can't help himself. It's genetic. Crookedness runs in the family.

Bush family, Dodd family, Kennedy family.

Darwin was right.

Devolution proven.

Well, Linda McMahon may be able to stop the reign...

The Churchill quote that comes to mind for me is "The United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative". So I expect sensible bank regulation in about a decade or so. I guess to will all have to come to a grinding halt before it will even be considered.

So I expect sensible bank regulation in about a decade or so.

We got a decade to get it right?

dryfly (profile) wrote (in reply to...) on Sat, 9/19/2009 - 9:27 pm

So I expect sensible bank regulation in about a decade or so.
We got a decade to get it right?

Yeah, 1987-1997.

It takes time to "exhaust every other alternative".

OT: Forced vaccine story.. (seems regulators should be forced to regulate)

http://www.vindy.com/news/2009/sep/20/many-health-care-workers-shun-getting-flu-vaccines/?newswatch
This month, Loyola announced it was doing something deemed rather drastic by others in the medical community: The medical center has told all 7,825 of its employees — from doctors to housekeepers — that being vaccinated for seasonal flu is a condition of employment. Get it or leave.

I'll second that notion.

There is a lot of America where that is the situation today - trouble is those young families don't want to live there. They would rather all compete for the same houses in Marin or Orange county - guess what there are never going to be enough of them to go around.

Line from WWI... "How will you keep them down on the farm after they've seen the lights of Paris?" Answer was "you won't"...

The only way you destroy the prices in places sufficiently like that is destroy the jobs & credit to pay for them - destroy the demand - so the prize is still out of reach for many if not most.

We'll all see later that it is a Catch 22 and 'unfixable' - need a different solution [like you really can live well renting IF you have to or want to live in one of these places]...

The two tier legal system is well known. I can understand the lack of prosecutions of white collar crime but I believe there were still some standards that regardless of wealth were not negotiable in America. This story proves this to not be the case.

"Billionaire financier sex offender Jeffrey Epstein's secret non-prosecution agreement he struck with federal prosecutors was unsealed Friday ...

According the agreement, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Attorney's Office investigated Epstein for various federal crimes, including prostitution...
But federal prosecutors backed down and agreed to recall grand jury subpoeanas, if Epstein pleaded guilty to prostitution-related felonies in state court, ... received an 18-month jail sentence, of which he served 13.
Palm Beach Police began investigating ...after they received a complaint from a relative of a 14-year-old girl who had given Epstein a naked massage at his home on the Intracoastal Waterway.

Police sought and found in poor neighborhoods a variety of tall, thin, model-like young women, who told stories of begin recruiting, then going to Epstein's home and massaging and stimulating him. They walked away with between $200 and $1,000.

The investigation triggered tensions between police and prosecutors, with then-Chief Michael Reiter saying in a May 2006 letter to then-State Attorney Barry Krischer that the chief prosecutor should disqualify himself.

"I continue to find your office's treatment of these cases highly unusual," Reiter wrote. He then asked for and got the federal investigation that ended in the sealed deal.

"The Jeffrey Epstein matter was an experience of what a many-million-dollar defense can accomplish," Reiter told the Palm Beach Daily News upon his retirement.

Local News: West Palm Beach, Palm Beach County, Martin & St. Lucie Counties | The Palm Beach Post
++++++
So this billionare gets preferential treatment from the local prosecutor and the cops get pissed off and get the feds involved. The feds investigate and then don't press federal charges, naked massages from young girls isn't a serious crime, I'm sure the 14 year old looked 18...Lady Justice was pimped. My outrage meter just pegged into the red, g'night

I am not sure I want to go further, and actually have the govt dictate that young people can get houses in exclusive areas even if they haven't saved a lot, or they don't earn a lot.

Yeah, that's too far. Unfortunately even at current prices much of California would appear to be "exclusive", and I don't buy that (literally and figuratively).

Why are regulators not accountable? Why is OTS not being held accountable for not watching Fannie?

"dryfly, wiley coyote ran off the cliff a good 5-10 years ago."

You know, I'm not saying this to bust your chops or anyone else's, but I really believe this country peaked out in 1976.

A lot of people take issue with that.

I know, GDP keeps going up, blah, blah, but there were things happening then that made me think that.

Yeah, that's too far. Unfortunately even at current prices much of California would appear to be "exclusive", and I don't buy that (literally and figuratively).

I do - when more people leave Cali in net [in big numbers over a long time] only THEN will prices look like the Rust belt [been depopulating for a generation].

It is gonna take awhile considering the 'weather'... where would you rather be mugged in January... in Detroit or LA?

I see prices dropping in Cali to maybe 4X median incomes, maybe... nothing like the 2X in my little Midwestern town.

You might be right, but I don't want my sister to think that her HS graduation was the pinnacle of America's greatness.

"saving certain neighborhoods for the wealthier among us is prejudicial to youth, and the future of society. "

This comment of mine (buried in all that verbiage ) was intended to address that sentiment:

" it turns our entire society upside down, by making savings and income irrelevant in the allocation of real goods and services, including housing. I understand that some people advocate that kind of revolution, but that's not primarily a housing issue."

If you want an egalitarian society, where savings and income are not connected to consumption, then you are advocating a political revolution. You are welcome to that goal, but I will have to go back to discussing housing and finance while you man the barricades.

Hoops, the only hope for humanity is for you, and EHP, and Hollywood Hack, and Resistance is Feudal, and BYZ to go out and impregnate as many females as possible, to hell with the repurcussions, in the short terms.

Regarding the 'peak' in '76... it is possible HOWEVER I would argue individual citizens in said country can live VERY well there past its 'Imperial Peak' IF their sovereigns govern responsibly. I could care less if we are past peak - I just want us to do the right things better. Bailing out bankers isn't one of them.

dryfly,

We need to synchronize our ideas of "exclusive". 4x is reasonable for California, and I can't wait to see it.

We were supposed to have gone fully metric by 1976, but it didn't take.

"I really believe this country peaked out in 1976."

And I can see why many people would feel this way. A great deal of the increase in measured income since then has come from entry of more women into the workforce, higher incomes for traditionally disadvanataged minorities, and a very large increase in incomes for a small group of people at the top of society. As others have often pointed out, that means a large group of people - white middle class and working class males - are earning not much more than they were back in 1976. And, relatively speaking, they are earning less, so they feel poorer.

I think a lot of the increase in income is overstated. For instance, when a wife enters the workforce, and spends a lot of her income on child care, meals out, higher home prices and other consequences of her and 50 million other wives working, the GDP goes up a lot, but the quality of life for the family may not be much higher. If we charged everyone $1 for every gulp of air, GDP would go up a lot, but our quality of life would not.

We need to synchronize our ideas of "exclusive". 4x is reasonable for California, and I can't wait to see it.

I think you will see it - within about five years or more if CR's curve follows past trends.

And actually that sounds reasonable to me too [about 4X]... some more, some less but pretty close to that average I'd bet... that has been the typical non-bubble number in Cali ever since WWII while Midwest was always half of that [no sunshine premium].

But it is gonna take time... you got 5-8 years more to wait? If not then learn to love renting... no crime in that as you know.

"We were supposed to have gone fully metric by 1976, but it didn't take. "

Score one for practicality.

This video helps place 1976 in perspective

Doc, thanks for that.

Damned interesting stuff. Damned interesting facts.

I could care less if we are past peak - I just want us to do the right things better.

I certainly wouldn't take issue with that.

I just think it's important for one to know where they are in history.

I could very easily be wrong. Probably am.

mp,

Things (in general) are moving very fast with tech, but that doesn't mean that society is evolving into something better or headed towards true north, and if anything, what is happening is closer to chaos. 1976 was a mellow time and may have been closer to a peak in terms of social equilibrium .... I was there, graduating....

"Damned interesting facts. "

What does it all mean? I had 10 different jobs before I was 40.

I am always running to keep up. See this months SciAm.

OK, at this point, this talk by Congress or anyone for that matter of installing or constructing more regulation is just an absurd joke. If I were a Wall Street I would welcome more regulation behind the scenes while in public acting like I’m against it. Has this been done before? Oh yeah, that’s how the bankers got the Federal Reserve Act passed on its second attempt.

Regulation is a joke when the people who are supposed to enforce it are either incompetent, bullied, or bought off. All more regulation does is give everyone a false sense of security—and this crisis, as all crisis before, came from the most regulated sectors of the economy!

There is and there never will be any Wall Street bank that fears regulation, and until those who hold the illusionary belief that regulation is the answer they will continue to be duped into creating a future crisis.

You let these people go bankrupt and let the free market drive them out; yet we don’t, and so the Federal Reserve and the government interfere and then turn around and blame the free market. Our politicians, economists, regulators, and to a large extent, even our citizenry has become such a passive and complacent joke that I’m not sure if the better solution is to just have the entire system fall in on itself—which is what is going to happen anyway, seeing that these insolvent banks have no way of earning their way out of this mess.

The best cure for situations like this is to let those who fail actually fail.

To have any debate over how some super regulator would have prevented this mess is to do nothing more than be a mere debating society.

More regulation…I’m sure the bankers are getting a kick out of that. The FDIC covering deposits has actually been a contributing factor to causing large scale problems in the banking sector. People put their money in a bank and do no due diligence to see what that bank is up to; that motivation to protect your money was one of the free market checks on the banking industry. Now we just blindly put our money in. Banks use to have to offer better services for you to take the risk of putting your money in their bank; now they either charge us for these services or they act like they’re doing us a favor for not charging us.

All these regulations and safety nets do is build a false sense of security and promote complacency—and complacency is a disease in a free market economy; but since we don’t have a free market economy I suppose it doesn’t matter; and complacency is just as disastrous for democracy.

Well, let's all get out the banner: "Never again" as we argue for regulation, and yet the more regulation we pass, the more it seems to happen again.

I'm not sure, but this fear of not letting anyone fail, what's it a symptom of? Sympathy? If so, then pity is a dangerous feeling because it prevents you from having to do what's necessary, and what is necessary here is to address the structural problems of our economy, not to prop up insolvent and failed banks because we're afraid of the pain. If we had stopped being afraid much earlier, it would've gone much easier for us, and our fear and sympathy are only dragging out the day of judgment, and then the pain will be much worse.

km writes;
"Unmitigated bullshit."

Pretty much. See the links I posted above.

Re: "What does it all mean"

It means no one can keep up with all the bullshit -- it means no one will be able to focus on reality -- it means future value will not be related to discounted cash flow -- it means that regulators will never catch up with paperwork -- it means that everything we write here @ CR tonight will fade way into the past -- it means that I should lay on my sofa and watch that movie

"Unmitigated bullshit."

Just when I was beginning to think about calling it a day, the discussion becomes even more interesting.

"I have a book on tomorrow's reading list which is a serious, thorough, researched refutation of the anthropogenic climate change hypothesis. I will choose to read that instead of those two items of smarmy hog shit you just linked."

Link Please.

Burt Rutan has more credibility than any of the political commentators on the subject in my book.

I would rather listen to real engineers than politicians on this subject. Especially a subject that is so politically charged.

p.s.: Funny how Hoops can know all that about a book he hasn't even read yet.

The climate models are even less accurate than the financial models used to create the current financial mess.

It's weird how the projection of the climate models grow outward in a smooth, predictable fashion, the kind of nice steady movement that makes it very easy to set policy goals and agendas, and dateline targets for certain goals. It's also the kind of nice steady movement that in no way resembles the jagged moonscape of peaks and valleys of actual hard data that precedes it. I think our models are trash too, but who knows whether they're undershooting or overshooting. I have read some pretty good arguments that global sea levels are a more reliable predictor of climate change than average atmospheric temperatures. Like a giant thermometer, they expand with heat and rise when ice caps melt. And they are rising. Steadily.

"p.s.: Funny how Hoops can know all that about a book he hasn't even read yet. "

That doesn't matter - Hoops is challenged with the politics that he comes from.

It seems that I just touched a nerve. That's what happens when politics overcomes a rational debate.

Burt Rutan

Oh, please, not him again.

If this keeps up, I'll regale everyone with the Long-EZ story, which is an airplane Rutan would probably just as soon forget.

Canard, dumbest damned thing I've ever seen. And Rutan has the gall to say he invented the first "unstallable" airplane.

*1976 was a mellow time and may have been closer to a peak in terms of social equilibrium

What country are you talking about?

1976 was during the Ford administration.

We had just lost the Vietnam war.

Jeremy Rifkin was organizing neo-Luddite protests for the Bicentennial.

We had almost impeached and indicted a President, but he quit and was pardoned before the hammer could fall.

The economy was in a lull between two oil crises.

The only folks who were mellow were college students smoking too much dope.

Re: "The only folks who were mellow were college students smoking too much dope."

That's what I meant ..... and the best thing I can remember was Betty Ford’s Curried Tuna Casserole, which helped me whip inflation.

"When will my Hollywood Hills condo become beachfront property? I can't afford the Colony. "

How long is your lifetime?

It helps to have some perspective. If you could afford the Colony, it would not matter. To you, at least. Maybe not an asset that you would pass to your great-great-great-grandchildren. But that's your great-great-grandchildren's problem, isn't it?

Yeeesh. People need some perspective. When things get untenable, you move.

That's all you've got?

sm_landlord,

As the joker said "Why... so... serious?" Your gutting my perfectly good snark!

"Real classy and professional piece of work there, sm_landlord."

Truth hurts. Sorry.

mp,
You messin' with me? I worked for Burt and those anecdotes are new to me.

"Your gutting my perfectly good snark!"

Sorry. The prevalent bogo-memes are so strong that you can't even have the necessary conversations lately.
It's like pissing into the wind sometimes.

Dawg, the Long-EZ has issues. It doesn't like to get wet.

Dude,

Did you read anything I said?

We can talk about the merits of this, that or whatever, but it boils down to food, which i'm going to assume you enjoy eating, right?

The Horten brothers designed and built the first unstallable aircraft in 1938.

sm_landlord writes:
That doesn't matter - Hoops is challenged with the politics that he comes from.

It seems that I just touched a nerve. That's what happens when politics overcomes a rational debate.

Are you functionally retarded? When you're looking to educate yourself on an issue, a serious issue, do you seriously go to shit like that and read it and nod to yourself and go, "Yessir, this cheeky bit of editorial is high quality scientific thinking! And it's got cartoons! I think I'll put that on my webspace and forward it around, so people can see how smart I am and how totally up I am on the latest science behind the climate change debate!"

I'm trying to imagine the world you've constructed here. Do you envision like a panel of scientists somewhere, in some euro country like sweden, at a climate change summit or something, going through serious debate, and this aeronautic engineer like busting down the doors with his earth-sodden boots, fresh from his field work performing real science, slapping down a FWD FWD FWD political cartoon of Al Gore farting into a hot tub, throwing back his head and going, "Gentlemen, I present the death of your so called consensus on climate change" and totally breaking up the summit? Like these papers you've linked me are some sort of secret that the pro-climate change hypothesis scientists don't want me to know? What do you imagine the world to be like?

I'm interested in other things about your brain. When you read things, do you stop and look at the words, the style of the writing, and the biases of the author, and think, "Does this look like a convincing piece of objectively presented information, which is thus more likely true, which would be good to absorb into my epistemological model of the world?" What criteria do you apply to the shit that you decide to absorb into your brain? To pass on to others?

Is your brain fucking broken? Do you lack the basic functionality of a rational and discriminatory eye guarding over what kind of things you internalize, and, more embarassingly, pass on to other people? You realize by passing that stuff on, and treating it like it's serious, like its anything more than utter garbage, you're broadcasting to the recipient that you're a moron, right? You're going over to the pool of common discourse, with a big fat beer hat on, puckering your asshole over the side, and taking a big, fat dump into what should be the clear waters of a scientific discourse for grown ups. And you're calling everyone over to look at what you did.

I will be the first to admit that the climate change debate is obviously colored by political and economic motivations by various people, including industry groups that stand to profit from doing useless shit like putting up windmills. But your linking of those two documents underlines a basic, fundamental problem, perhaps the very core of the reason that we stand a good chance of becoming extinct as a species within the next 200 years. A lot of us are crazy, idiot morons, and if climate change isn't anthropogenic, we will undoubtedly find some other way of annihilating ourselves.

If we have C4C and 8k for first time home buyers there will be Food4Voters.

With 500 million people, there will be no jobs in finance. Labor will be rewarded, though.

Every survivor remembers a simpler, more sensible, unified, picturesque, fairy tale time of her childhood because that's the way the world is presented to children.

"With 500 million people, there will be no jobs in finance. Labor will be rewarded, though."

I assume you are being humorous, yogi. At an equilibrium level of population of 500 million, the distribution of jobs would be not much different from today's. There would just be a lot less resource pressure, and a lot better odds of preventing catastrophic climate change triggered solely by human activity.

Hoops,

You can also present a world of economists -- some of them with extensive writings and nobel prizes -- that had models and data showing conclusively that the economic troubles we've been experiencing couldn't happen.

Hoops, other than showing your temper, what is your point?

Threefold.
1) Those two documents were non-credible trash.
2) sm_landlord is a terrible person who lacks judgment, as evidenced by his decision to forward them in anything other than an ironic, jocular manner,
3) and because of sm_landlord, humanity will annihilate itself inevitably, and in a cruel, undignified, and messy manner, like a monkey locked in a room with an inexhaustible nail gun.

this is interesting.... one reason that Paterson's favorability is so low is that he's giving sh!t pies to both sides of the aisle, something that unfortunately must be done.

Obama Said to Request That Paterson Drop Campaign

Bonddad has an interesting bit on jobs: The Bonddad Blog

It is real retail sales which lead the creation or loss of jobs some months into the future. It is a consistent relationship with almost no exceptions. And it is a significantly leading indicator. So I am going to show you the entire series via graphs:

Translating that into our recession/recovery so far, an increase from the 3-month average bottom at $159.4 million, means a move to $163.4 million. As of August's number, reported on Tuesday, the three month average is $160.9 million, a gain of 0.9%, not nearly enough of an increase yet to generate a positive jobs number.

Meanwhile, last week CR said: "But retail sales are still far below the pre-recession level, and the recovery will probably be sluggish"
Retail Sales increase in August

Goodnight! permanent daylight
YouTube - radiohead - permanent daylight

"A lot of us are crazy, idiot morons, and if climate change isn't anthropogenic, we will undoubtedly find some other way of annihilating ourselves."

I have been involved in this debate, at least peripherally, for over 30 years. My father, after he retired, was hired as a consultant to investigate global warming in the early 1970s. His conclusion was that forests actually contribute to CO2 emissions. His background was thermodynamics and organic chemistry.

My opinion is that the current science on this subject is highly suspect and colored by politics. It's not helpful to the warming case that the data is highly suspect. The current so-called consensus is too political to be credible.

I am calling bullshit on the whole debate until there is measured evidence that is credible and the models are proven. IMHO the current measurements are flawed, the models are unproven, and the debate is political, not fact-based.

"sm_landlord is a terrible person who lacks judgment"...

Please criticize the arguments. I just linked an opposing viewpoint. Your personal attack is inappropriate.

I am calling bullshit on the whole debate until there is measured evidence that is credible and the models are proven. IMHO the current measurements are flawed, the models are unproven, and the debate is political, not fact-based.

I tend to agree.

But I believe, based on history, that climate has and will continue to fluctuate and change.

NorkaWest writes:

"But I believe, based on history, that climate has and will continue to fluctuate and change. "

Without question.

Oh, really, Dr. Strangelove? So killing off 90% of the world's population would not require the surviving elite to devote a greater share of resources to fulfilling basic needs? The robots will take up the slack so that people can still dance and sing? I believe in growth control, of population and natural resource consumption, but I don't buy that you can declare some "equilibrium" number, only your personal density "preference".

But seriously dude. SERIOUSLY. WHY are you forwarding those two things to people interested in learning more about the climate change situation? What the HELL?

Because useful information can come from almost anywhere. If you're going to discredit the data in specific documents then have at it, or at least present your documents.

"Tundra is useless. Glaciers are useless. Melt it all... "

Deserts are useful. I suggest you go live in one.

Hoops, I can't adequately describe my admiration for your intelligence. Dude, you got it goin' on. More power to you.

"Deserts are useful."

The less water is locked up in useless glaciers and permafrost, the more water is available for the deserts.

Melt it all...

barfly,

Don't mistake arrogance for intelligence.

Well stated, yogi.

One last fact about the Long-EZ before I call it a day.

On the as-designed fuel system, the fuel quantity sight gauges for the wing tanks, which are non-linear in presentation, are only visible to the rear cockpit occupant.

That's kind of like putting the gas gauge for your car in the trunk.

Having said that, I think both sm_landlord and Hoopajoops have valid points.

... and for one covering the flip side: JunkScience.com -- Steven Milloy, Publisher

My point was more about the fallibility of so-called experts.
You mean like Lord Kelvin confidentially proving the sun couldn't be more than thousands of years old?
FWIW- I believe in human accelerated global warming-- we're always trying to access and burn energy, I don't see why it wouldn't contribute. But to accept the claims that we can stop the boulder rolling downhill once we started it, is unrealistic. And to think that we're going to be able to predict accurately what will happen and stop it,.... well, tj, you called the current situation a few years ago, do you think were going to change it? The mechanism causing both problems are so deeply entrenched, that it seems mitigating or dealing with the damage is a far more worthwhile goal. Say good-bye to Venice, hello impotent super-regulator!

And Hoops, don't worry about the human species, it'll survive, greatly reduced,...even if it's more like nova's brave new world than our own.

"..killing off 90% of the world's population would not require the surviving elite to devote a greater share of resources to fulfilling basic needs?"

Who suggested killing anyone? Our current population level was reached mostly through natural births and deaths. There's no reason why we can't use the same mechanisms to manage ourselves to a more safely sustainable population level. It might take many generations, but once we got there, there's no reason to assume that the distribution of human activity (jobs) would be much different than it would be at a higher population level.

Climatology hasn't figured out what gold is.

So we don't know a goddamn thing. We're like the foreign exchange student at the prom.

Maybe, like that student, we should enjoy the atmosphere, stand at the side of the room, keep our hands in our pockets, and try not to fuck with anything too much until we get a better idea of how things work. Or we could choose the alternate plan of going, "Man, I know fuck all about this prom shit! What I don't know can't hurt me!" getting smashed, and trying to start a mosh pit.

"We don't know jack" is a good reason for restraint, for leaving things as they are, and trying to uphold the status quo. It's not a good reason for chucking the experts proposing restraint out the window. "You don't know it will kill us!" *burns down the amazon*

barfly,

To each his own. He's bright, but that doesn't set him apart in this crowd. A little too cocky and self-assured, as all of us tended to be at that age. Good passion nonetheless.

"We don't know jack" is a good reason for restraint, for leaving things as they are...

Au contraire. That is diametrically opposed to the most fundamental principle of evolution: try everything, and breed profligately to make up for the losses.

Aha. the precautionary principle.

Now we know who you are.

The fuckers who would stop everything because they fear their oxes being gored.

The fuckers who hope to stop progress.

You suck, bastard.

How does it feel?

sm_landlord
It's impossible for forests to emit more CO2 than they absorb. Organic life is made up of carbon chains. That carbon is primarily coming from gaseous CO2. Look at this chart from the NOAA http://www.m4gw.com:2005/m4gw/CO2-Chart.jpg
The annual oscillation is the result of most land mass/forests are in the northern hemisphere, and there is more sunlight and photosynthesis during the northern hemisphere's summer.
I'm not saying your dad was wrong, but whatever he concluded it must have been more nuanced than you described because that is both a theoretical and empirical mistake.

Oops, now we know who Hoopajoops is.

The precautionary principle. The hope of idiots everywhere.

How useless are wind turbines and solar panels used to power water treatment in off grid regions of the world? To power lights in subsistence farming communities so farmers can learn better techniques?

Solar panels make power and wind mills make power, and these devices have their uses, but in the context of solving a supposed crisis of fossil fuel dependence, they are "useless shit."

We need nukes. Lots of them. And solar thermal plants.

Yes, that seems to be the CNBC approach to TBTF reform. "You can't regulate out of a crisis", the pretty bubbleheads chime. There will always be fraud, greed, waste and excess. Better just let human nature do its thing without "government interference".

As if governments are not an evolution of human nature, however clumsy. Oh, the circularity...

Is this the movie where the foreign exchange student gets laid? I think he stands around looking interesting and slightly mysterious, speaks timidly with a funny accent. One of the chicks comes onto him on a dare. Figures out there's more than meets the eye. He's quietly dashing. IT's a cultural thing. Her friend is after the football captain, who by this stage is smashing things and too wasted to get it up, ends up hurling the last of the keg over her dress. The foreigner goes into medicine, becomes a proctologist with WHO, bringing the wonders of digital examinations and early prostrate cancer detection to the third world. The jock marries the other chick, goes into finance.

And so the seas rise and fall, and the glaciers ebb and flow.

C

Hmmm, hitting close to home? a little personal experience you've witnessed?

Assuming that trees die in place, of course.

Logging changes everything. But logging is restricted by politics. Not much logging has happened recently.

So most trees die in place now. Most analysis does not account for this.

tj , Hoops' least impulse towards environmentalism sets him apart from most of the otherwise intelligent posters here, imo. His clarity, humor, and sincerity, in one so young, is truly inspiring to behold. I wish him, and all his generation the best. I will do everything I can to support them.

as R. Feynman found out

One of the world's great thinkers and great storytellers. He also knew the futility of bucking the system. His safecracking caper at Los Alamos comes to mind.

It has taken an hour or two to go from talking over each other to agreement. Nuclear has a place in the world as does solar thermal, but their necessity is not predicated by climate change which was the original argument. Our energy portfolio should be varied and redundant. There does not exist a transport fuel or battery that is more efficient or clean than gasoline or NG and catalytic converters. Batteries are not clean, nor is solar panel manufacturing, nuclear waste or coal slurry. There is no such thing as clean energy. Even building a solar thermal plant requires heavy machines utilizing diesel fuel. Fossil fuels are here to stay. But their use should be focused on what they're best at. Back to he main question of pollution. The only answer that will work today is conservation: Whether achieved through efficiency gains (technology) or simply consuming less. It is, dollar for dollar, the most effective way of maintaining a hospitable environment for human development.

yeah, I am against the "progress" of fucking shit up on our planet at a breakneck pace, cutting down forests, acidifying our oceans, and melting our ice caps. We should probably slow down on that stuff

All things that I presume are beyond your span of control, Hoops. So are you planning to take the "No Impact" challenge?

No Impact Project

Heh heh. Maybe once upon a time one sat on one shoulder and the other on the other.

Not on mine, natch, but, uhh, a friend's, yes, a very close friend's shoulders. Y'know, like those cartoon characters we have.

You've seen them, right? Little dudes. Zip around a lot. Chatty. Sometimes REAL chatty.

No?

This is shizo's anony..
aw shit

C

"Give him 20 years and he will have a useful contribution to the debate."

The feeble-minded argument of old people around the world.

lol, 3-paw. You'll learn. Eventually. We all do.

What does 2 Irish Travelers boxing have to do with this?

"We'll need a larger refrigerator."

Huh? I thought the collective refrigerator would be one tenth the size of what we need now.

I've told this board many times what I did - finance and risk management in DC, prior to my graduation to U6 and imminent departure from the swamp. Hardly under the radar, at that level.

But I could have fun with the proctology reference, as long as I could work in a chainsaw somehow.

C

(Nice credentials, BTW, though economic modelers aren't held to particularly high esteem here.... Wink)

I know, I've been here a long time. Years. I miss the old days when I didn't have to post under the same name though. I have never mentioned the "credentials" in the past so it might be time to find a new screen name. I thought they might give my insight into the flaws of modelling a bit more weight. Unmitigated bullshit and black magic are most definitely discussed in grad school, at least where I went! Not everyone wants to destroy the world through financial armageddon.

kz,
My gripe with econometrics is that as a field it does not recognize its own limitations well, and the approach is to learn a tool rather than learn the math and then use the tool.

You're right, 3-paw. Not everyone learns.

Assholes popping out kids? Have you got to repro health in your course yet?

C

A lot of professors are funded by banks, that is no secret. So the science suffers. Behind closed doors they will tell you what they think. In public they are paid to produce a tool and a tool they produce.

at C.

kz,
I see the same thing. Whether it is only biased professors are published and advanced, or unbiased professors only survive by presenting biased material -- the result is the same. I would like to see economics be the meeting of math and psychology. If that happens, I think it might first be done through blogs, columns, and books. Faculties are too slow to change, and even slower to attain critical mass -- the network outside of schools bypasses that

chomsky.info : Audio & Video

Oh snap, I love stephen fry!

I really did not intend to insult anyone by describing them as "amusing". At least not in those terms.

But it's really hard to take freshman theories about economics from people who have never had a job.

I'm sorry. It's just difficult. My Bad. I guess I'm too old for this.

I apologize.

The Earth will be here billions of years from now. I doubt we will be. Life will continue on and a new apex predator will be crowned. Does it matter if it's a virus or a thinking being?
the earth will only be here for four billion years more, but don't panic, kcoop will have given yogi an ignore ignore button by then. It matters a lot to me whether the apex predator is a virus or a thinking being, I've got ten bucks on super intelligent cave salamanders taking over. (Kind of a Morlock sort of thing.)

"1.5 GB HDDs going for $120.00"

That seems kind of pricey, for 1995..

EHP,

It's sad that otherwise savvy bloggers on here, that wouldn't in a million years use a partisan Fox news/right-wing study as a source on anything financial-related, are blinded by dubious facts, ecological fatwas issued by devious hacks.

A postscript, EHP . . .

There are several solar cycles operative simultaneously, the briefest of which is about eleven years. When you see references to "the" solar cycle or "the 11-year solar cycle" treated as the one-and-only, you're likely not in good hands.

Incidentally, even if cloud formation theories prove correct there are other pressing reasons to control co2 emissions - we're acidifying the oceans, significantly limiting what can live in them.

Just read through this thread and have been mightily entertained.

.... but if they roll all the regulators into one, who will regulate that behemoth?
Separation of oversight has been worthless to this point, but if you do a mashup of
all agencies the myopic beast will flatten what remains. Bad idea Mr. Dudd.

It's much too late to regulate our government. Once it is assumed that government owns your body and soul and has a right to 100% of what you own, 100% of what you produce, and 100% of the time you spend doing so, it is too late. There is nothing left but to squabble about the precise percentages and who your parasites will be. Of course, the same types of parasites win every time. The excrement always floats to the top and politician types and bankster types always surface and always win.

I only meant to point out that cosmic particles have been decreasing over the last few years, while the temperature was increasing

If we're lucky, solar activity will continue in it's "lulling" phase for about another decade, and give us a very solid clue on how much impact solar variance has on global temperatures.

I'm not even sure what the better answer is. If temperatures roll over, it will essentially eliminate C02 (and by extension, human activity) as a strong climatic modifier, but it means we are completely at the suns mercy. And oh my god is that going to unleash a political free for all!

If temperatures don't roll over, visit the poles soon, because they'll be gone by the time kids born today are graduating from college.

My guess is temperatures are going to roll over, but the data/theories are far from conclusive at this point.