Celebrate, Celebrate

Instapundit.com

Meanwhile, Christine Hurt comments on whether the bailout is a good idea: "That's the question I was asked by my fellow conferees at my non-corporate conference. My answer has to be 'compared to what?' . . . Would the market be able to right itself, after breaking more than a few Wall Street eggs, eventually? Not sure."

Plus this: "What's the easiest prediction to make from the financial crisis? More law school applicants."

There once was a retailer named Pharmor -- the "Phar" being a Pharmacy and "mor" being anything they could buy by the truck load and sell by the truck load. I would shop there and see really good deals and ask myself, "How can they afford to sell this stuff at this price?" Well, it turned out they couldn't. It was kind of a "losing money on every sale but making up for it on volume" kind of deal -- only in their case they opened more stores and acquired more financing (Their corporate books should have been on the fiction "best seller list" or featured in the cooked books section). They were not necessarily bad people, you understand, just silly people doing stupid (and fraudulent) things and then finding they couldn't stop.

Its corporate headquarters was in my home town. One week they were announcing more financing and plans to open dozens of new stores and the next they were going bankrupt. There were rumors flying before but not much definite. In any case, one day I was having lunch across from the Courthouse when a lawyer came in and announced to a bunch of other lawyers that Pharmor was going down. Well, it was like New Years Eve in August. Or Christmas morning, and the children get up to find their "rosebud" sleds under the tree -- or a bb gun that will put other people's eyes out. And I thought, these lawyers should learn to be more discreet in public.

Inflation adjusted, I think the Pharmor mess -- one of the biggest up until that time -- would be less than one/one thousandth of what we got today. So lawyers: celebrate discreetly.

The House of Peace, The House of War, The House of Saud

From Nibras Kazimi, writing at his blog, Talisman Gate بـاب الطلــسم (What would a McCain presidency mean for the Middle East?):

It should be noted that there is a widely accepted and legal form of corruption at play: be nice to the Saudis while you’re at public office, and you shall be guaranteed a nice fat retirement bonus as a lobbyist, consultant, or ‘think-tank-er’. Public servants, whether they be diplomats or spooks, don’t make much money while they are on the government’s dole, but if they keep their heads down and go along with what the bureaucratic mandarins have mandated, then they too can benefit from Saudi or any other petrodollar largesse.

These bureaucracies, as well as their ‘retired’ auxiliaries, bitterly pushed back against President Bush’s limited post-911 reforms, and they are seemingly rooting for Obama’s camp to win, reading Senator Barack Obama as the candidate of less change, and more importantly, the candidate of less experience at changing things.

OK, so I'm not the only person who wonders who some of these folks work for. This is not a case of dressing for your next job. Having multitudes of State Department employees showing up to work in a well tailored Bedouin outfit (and burnoose) might give the game away. People do "profile," which says bad things about people (face it, they're all swine) but not about the person being profiled (we've all be victims of this, and we are not swine -- we are people). Still, why be -- what's the word? -- obvious.

So rather than dress for the next job, they simply adopt the policies of their next job.

So, OK. The House of Saud has penetrated deep into The House of Peace. But the House of War? How many T.E. Lawrence wannabes has the Pentagon brought up? And the CIA? Well, if the Secret Plumbing that connects all our "Houses" leaks to the Washington Post (to applause), why not gush to the House of Saud? They probably have their own high pressure hose.

The Evils of Capitol-ism

An old friend asked the other day, "What are we going to do about that party they got going on down in Washington.  It don't matter who you send there!"

Yup. What about affordable government?

What's clearly on Display in our financial crisis are the evils of Capitol-ism.

I've long thought that the Democrat Party, the National Media and the Federal Bureaucracy are knotted together by self interest and a shared belief in their own importance. Republicans, too, can join them in the knot and often do. Today they form their own political party, the Washington Party, that works to move ever more power to the capital and to the "national centers" -- be it information centers (New York, D.C.), financial centers (New York, Chicago), or entertainment (LA). Basically, for the Washington Party, all problems are national and all problems have a national solution -- and they use the media to bring you along. Your kids go to a lousy school? Look to Washington for the answer, not your local community. This is the platform of "The Washington Party."

The ideology of the Washington Party is Capitol-ism.  For a Capitol-ist, both state power and economic power are centered on Capitol Hill in Washington DC, where the inhabitants of the corridors of power meet and bargain.  Their preferred form of  economic organization is the cartel, sometimes organized by government but always controlled by members of the Washington Party.  These new Cartels function much like the old ones -- except they focus on shielding mediocrity (by emphasizing credentials over performance)  as well as creating abnormally large benefits for the members. 

Of course Cartels are illegal, but only when non-members of the Washington party try to organize them.  As we "fight" global warming the Washington Party will organize Carbon Cartels that will dominate the entire economy.  These will be promoted as life-saving "Cartels of Caring": it is not about screwing you and benefiting them, it is about saving the planet.

All the institutions at the Center of the Washington Party have scandals connected to them where the national "watchdog" media is late to the scene. When they arrive they start tampering with evidence, and then issue reports with mistakes and omissions that point to conclusions that lie in one direction -- a direction favorable to the Washington Party and the system of Cartels it creates.

If there is a problem with the free market the answer is regulation. If their is a problem with the regulations the answer is more regulation. Problems with the additional regulations require yet more additional regulations. It's a one way ratchet -- at least until the whole rickety structure is about to collapse. Then there is a half-assed deregulation, followed by a collapse which is then blamed on the Free Market. In California ten years ago they "deregulated" the electricity market but kept the price controls in place. This was not an example of deregulation. This was an example of stupidity -- or brilliant bureaucratic strategy. When the doo-doo fell into the wind tunnel and the lights went out in California there was someone else with poo-poo on their face.


The Federal Fannie and its spawn, Frantic Freddie are at the Center of the subprime mortgage mess.  Congress constructed a Fun House at the corner of Broadway and Wall Street where low showmanship and high finance meet.  Fannie and Freddie were the host, and they brought the good faith and credit of the American people in there to play.  In those mirrors everyone looked fat and solvent.  The Fat and Frantic Feds were the center of the "Cartel of Caring" which screwed the people it was alleged to help and greatly enriched members of the Cartel.  Even now rule one is: protect the Washington Cartels.

So naturally it is reported as if the fault were in the private economy.  The Mainstream Media is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Washington Party.  The Federal Fannie is already sitting on health care -- another Cartel of Caring.  They want of feed it a much bigger slice of the pie -- so if you think it is heavy now, just wait. 

Belmont Club » Just so

Western civilization is dying a death by a thousand cuts. The quest for perfection has become such an obsession that it is sought even at the cost of basic functionality. A friend who works at big name consulting firm said that so much attention is focused on ensuring compliance — checking off boxes, making sure that everything is gender-friendly, green, non-racist and whatever else — that sound business is almost an afterthought. In this modern world it’s alright to have something that doesn’t work, as long as it’s perfect.

The Heart and Soul of Capitol-ism is "The Caring Cartel." The business of the Cartel is not the general welfare, but the welfare of the Cartel.  In the Cartels of Caring the clerks who run them are king.  Barney Frank is an alpha clerk.  Clerks cut free of their  middle class masters ( and resentful of them) now run government, finance and Eduction.  They give Western Civilization the soul of a Clerk.

Check the box.

Target Acquiring

Spengler over at atimes.com strums the overture for the End of the World (as we knew it). I'm still waiting for him to be right. Is it this time?

Wall Street and the City of London rode an unprecedented wave of profitability by providing overpriced leverage to consumer and corporate markets. Led by the financial engineers at Lehman, the securities industry grew an enormous infrastructure of staff, systems, and financial exposure. They were so successful that when the music stopped, there was no way to liquidate this mechanism gracefully. It only could be allowed to collapse.

Our tax policies and regulatory policies encourage people to put their money in houses. This includes the mortgage deductions in our tax code. Obama policies will make this worse. When you raise the marginal income tax rate you make the mortgage deduction more valuable which will push more money into real estate. This will in no way help the average American since it will take that money from other useful pursuits while at the same time feeding the next bubble. But it will favor professional speculators while leaving people who buy homes to live in (what a silly notion) holding the bag for the results.

I can remember when families with five children lived in houses with three bedrooms. Now a couples with one child or no children live in houses with five bedrooms. And they are never home because they are at work. That's living your life according to the Tax and regulatory code.

Getting caught holding a bag of manure at the end is part of it, too. And because taxpayers feel they have been forced into this position, they feel a lot of resentment. It is up to our politicians to mobilize this resentment and point it elsewhere. Let's see, acquiring target now...

Hurricane Ike becomes a Pug with a Punch

Ike blew through this part of Ohio Sunday night and knocked out power during the Cleveland Browns/Pittsburgh Steelers game. It was nature's way of sparing us the sight of Cleveland's tenth straight loss to the Steelers. Trees were down all over the place and the power here went out for almost 24 hours. It was a little dose of what Houston swallowed.

What I was wondering is: could I put in for a FEMA grant for contents of the refrigerator? I had a couple of cases of lobster in the freezer that I'm scared to touch. And certain other delicacies, such as a dozen "Thousand Year Old Eggs" that went bad. Funny, they can last for a thousand years in swamp muck but cannot stand up to a couple of hours in my uncool refrigerator. Why, we can't even bake a cake with them now.

Do I have to provide receipts for this stuff? Or can I treat it like a $250,000 mortgage? I think I lost the receipts in the storm. The mortgage, too.

Uh-Oh

Here's what I just learned from CBS News:

The Sarah Palin Phenomenon Is Doomed --
The Media Live To Build You Up, Then Knock You Down

So. That's what they've been doing. Building her up. I wonder what their knocking her down will look like?

Put Congress on The No Call List.

OK. Time to face reality. This campaign is going to be totally Obama-Palin. No one (but the McCain Campaign) wants it to be that way. Yet apparently the Left Media is fated to attack her and the rest of us are fated to be amazed at their attacks. Yes, they are trying to help the country (by helping Sen. Obama win) but I ask: are their "street sweeping, Uzi spraying, take no prisoners" tactics actually achieving that end?

According to the Washington Post, we learn that as Mayor of Wasilla, "Palin Cut Own Duties, Left Trail of Bad Blood." Can't you just see the bad blood spurting from that cut in her duties? Apparently the Washington Post believes you can bring about "change" without reorganizing government or hurting anyone's feelings -- or at least the feelings of anyone in government. If you are in upper management in the Private Sector and lose your job, it's your own damn fault and you should have gone long ago. If you are a manager in government and you lose your job, it is the fault of the nearest Republican. Got it? Sen. Obama's change must be the sort Massive Bureaucracies can believe in.

Their attacks undermine the Obama Campaign in another way. They criticize Sarah Palin for getting money from the US taxpayer to help the People of her town achieve what they believe to be worthwhile ends. The National media appears to say the very act of making the request is bad, bad, bad. The Shame is on you for asking! But what is the premise of the entire Obama campaign? That they will take money and resources from one group of Americans and give it to another -- in fact, they will do that globally and on a massive scale. In this case it is good, good, good! The Shame is on you for even questioning!

In their way of telling it, Sarah could just call the US congress and, using her womanly wiles, whisper in their earmarks and ask them for money and those old guys were just so glob struck by her charms that they would cut a check. I wonder what those conversations were like. "Uncle Sugar, you are so big and strong and I am so small and vulnerable. Will Unkie Wonkie let little Sarah feel his big biceps? And will Unkie build little Sarah an itsy-bitsy Bridge to Nowhere." And Congress can't help itself. It just has to say, "Golly, Miss Sarah. Is 200 million enough, Pumpkin? How 'bout we make it 245, just in case?"

And these are the folks who will dispose of extra trillions of dollars of new spending in an Obama Administration. And dispose of it they will. Yup.

So let us take the media portrait of Congress collapsing before the onslaught of mayor Palin's charms as a true representation of reality. Isn't Congress like the old retired guy who will buy power tools he don't need with money he don't have from telemarketers without scruples just because he can't say no? And won't that guy's wife and kids cut up his credit cards and put him on the "no call" list? Can we do that for Congress? Apparently, they can't stop spending so it is up to us to stop asking.

Of course there is a difference between Congress and that old guy. Congress can raise its own debt limit and print its own money. Yup. Trillions of dollars spent and we won't even want to keep the change.