There was no Joy in Mudville

I did not catch all of the Debate between Senators McCain and Obama but enough to have some reaction. I thought McCain did alright in a format that did not favor him (he can be quite good in the "Town Meeting" format but stiff behind a podium). Sen. Obama used Henry Kissenger's name -- several times -- while misinterpreting what the foreign policy sage had to say. This could come back to clobber him (but with so much of the Media on his side, who knows?). For the most part I thought Sen. Obama did OK.

What surprised me was the atmospherics of post debate commentary. I figured most of the folks in the broadcast news divisions are Obamaphiles and expected them to be at least moderately pleased. But there was no Joy in Mudville and since I had not seen the mighty orator strike out I wondered why. Then it occurred to me that they expected him to put McCain away -- what with the "subprime mortgage mess" -- and that he had failed to do so. They wanted to see that long ball go out of the park and drive home a few scores to likely put the game out of reach for the Republicans. Instead, Obama may have got on base with a bunt while the lead runner was picked off. McCain was still very much in the game, and may have improved his position a bit.

At Panamas Media Jennifer Rubin asksWho Won the Debate?

And second, the McCain camp will be under the gun to make the most of their material. Some possibilities are already evident. Will the embarrassing stumble over the name on Obama’s bracelet be key? Will the Henry Kissinger misquote come back to haunt him?

I suspect it may be something far more serious. John McCain’s shining moments came in large part when discussing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

She goes on to quote several of McCain's answers about the threat from the Islamic Republic. I also thought it was probably the high point of the debate for McCain.

For Obama the high point was tying the invasion of Iraq to McCain. It is, after all, an unpopular war but seems largely behind us now. And it is better to win wars than to lose them, a point Sen. Obama seems to disagree with.

Cartels of Caring

What we now see in our financial system is what I call "Deregulatory Collapse." That's when years of heaping new regulations on old builds a rickety structure that is about to topple over. At that point a half hearted process of deregulation begins -- and then the process of deregulation is held responsible when the collapse occurs. It is a bit like blaming lung cancer on the "chemotherapy" the patient undergoes rather than thirty years of smoking cigarettes.

The Democrats blaming deregulation in this case is a mighty stretch, especially since the Bush administration tried to extend regulation to an obese Fannie and a hyperactive Freddie. But according to Congressional Democrats and their Main Stream Media coconspirators, it was the rearranging of the regulatory deck chairs on the financial titanic that caused the current inundation. And the ship officers were congressmen who were not properly consulted by the stewards.

At the Belmont Club Richard Fernandez asks:

Who you gonna call? Who you gonna believe? Bailout anyone? A crisis creates an incredible opportunity to play partisan politics. ‘Want me out of the way? Buy me off.’

We are not going to solve our "financial meltdown" problem without recognizing what the problem is.

Central to our problem is Washington’s propensity to organize producer Cartels. Cartels exist to benefit the “partners” but are presented to outsiders as a public good. Because cartels distort market signals, purely private cartels normally collapse or are supplanted by new players in a fairly short time frame. To endure, Cartels need the participation of Government — and, of course, the political establishment. It is the participation of the ruling elite that enables a cartel to withstand market forces and act as a parasite on the larger society for an extended period. Of course when the crisis comes, it’s an eight or nine point — not a four point — shake to the foundation of society.

Cartels are hard to attack because everyone wants one of their own. They appeal to people’s need for “control.” A professional organization can cut down on “unruly” competition, protect the more inept or unlucky practitioners and gain favors from government. A Union can act as a Cartel for labor. In the long run, as Cartels spread, the cartels will even impoverish many of its own members as Society itself becomes poorer. Of course, by that time the insiders are wedded to the system.

Since most folks in a position of influence hope to profit from a cartel, they are sympathetic to blaming the free market, and will ignore the existence of a Cartel at the center of the problem. OPEC, an openly declared Cartel, raises prices? It’s the fault of the oil companies (which are part of the over all “energy international” cartel, to be sure). When Politicians stop oil companies from building a refinery, are they standing up to Big Oil? Or increasing the value of their old refineries and limiting competition?

Of course our Cartels in the US are never presented as such, and are indeed illegal without deep government involvement — which is convenient for our politicians. We have an Education Cartel that requires massive infusions of resources to produce scant positive results — which disappear as soon as our attention wanders (the resources remain, of course, and need increasing).

Fannie and Freddy were part of our Real Estate industry Cartel, along with much of our congress and much of the Federal Bureaucracy. Every twenty years or so it requires huge infusions of money to keep it staggering forward.

The solution here is to demand an end to the Cartel in return for the bailout, and a return of any money the government “clears” from the rescue effort direct to the exploited taxpayer — do not allow it to be recycled into the Cartel.

Most of all, we need to educate voters on what government organized cartels are, and how they are parasitic on society even as they are sold as being symbiotic. But first, we need to recognize them ourselves. They often are, as Adam Smith might say, Government organized conspiracies against the Public Interest — and we all hope to profit from one.

By the way, Health Care is another example of a Government organized Cartel in the US — though not yet fully emerged and “rationalized.” Once it is, it will create incentives to intensely treat well people and speed the death of the severely ill.

Send it back to the Taxpayers -- The Palin Plan.

The Paulson Plan Will Make Money For Taxpayers - WSJ.com

In 1992, hedge-fund manager George Soros made $1 billion betting against the British pound. In 2007, John Paulson's Credit Opportunities fund correctly bet against subprime mortgages, clearing $15 billion for the year and $3.7 billion for him. Warren Buffett is now hoping to make big money on Goldman Sachs.

But these are small-time deals. My analysis suggests that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson (a former investment banker, no less, not a trader) may pull off the mother of all trades, which could net a trillion dollars and maybe as much as $2.2 trillion -- yes, with a "t" -- for the United States Treasury.

When Gov. Palin got more money for Alaskan Oil, she sent it back to the taxpayers. If any money is made from the bailout, John McCain should push for returning it to the taxpayers. One hundred billion -- with a "b" -- would be $333 for every American. A trillion would be $3,333. It could be taxed as income so the rich will, in effect, get less and the government will get a taste.

It is important to get that money out of Washington. The Politicians will just waste it -- or use it as a down payment for ongoing future waste. Paying down the national debt won't work because the Politicians will just borrow it right back. Send any profit to the people, and they will spend it in local communities and help stimulate the US economy from the ground up.

It would be a wonderful campaign issues for Republicans, too. The Democrats will just try to give that money to their voters -- or better for the pols, pretend to.

Then again, the whole 700 billion of taxpayer cash might be lost. So don't spend that dividend just yet.

So says The Misrepresentative from Tennessee

Gore urges civil disobedience to stop coal plants

"I believe for a carbon company to spend money convincing the stock-buying public that the risk from the global climate crisis is not that great represents a form of stock fraud because they are misrepresenting a material fact," he said. "I hope these state attorney generals around the country will take some action on that."

This from the guy who won the noble prize for lying. It should be Headlined "Leading Bullshit producer attacks Energy Producers."

So, we should expect another assault on US industry via the shock troops of the trial lawyer brigade and The Legion Demerit of Eliot Spitzer Wannabes. And I thought the Mortgage Bailout was expensive.

You best stock up on candles. The people who brought you "Nightmare on Mainstreet," starring Freddie Mac are back (OK, they never left). Now they'll not only gouge out your incandescents, they're gonna cut off your electricity!

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.