They blow bubbles, don't they.

Here is Spengler's take on President Elect Obama's financial wizards, from an article with some good background:

For a quarter of a century, the inbred products of the Ivy League puppy mills have known nothing but a rising trend in asset prices. About the origin of this trend, they were incurious. The Reagan administration had encountered a stock market in 1981 trading 50% below its the long-term trend. Reagan restored the equity market to trend by cutting taxes, suppressing inflation and easing some regulations. The private equity sharps were fleas traveling on Reagan's dog. They simply rode the trend with the maximum of leverage...

Without leverage, the clever folk around Barack Obama are fleas without a dog. None of them invented anything, introduced an important new product, opened a new market, or did anything that reached into the lives of ordinary people. They wore expensive cufflinks, read balance sheets, exercised regularly, sat on philanthropic boards, and assumed that their flea's ride on the Reagan dog would last forever.

Apparently their new idea is "shock and awe" stimulation for the economy.  Like the old joke says, when you have a hammer all your problems look like nails. The Real Estate bubble worked out well for Rahm  Emanuel, Barney Frank and the Congressional Democrats. Their Wall Street Pals will "bail out" alright, too.  Obviously, if you know how to create bubbles then when you see a problem break out the bubbly.  So soon we'll have a bubbly auto industry, a bubbly "alternative fuel"  sector and a bubbly bath for the taxpayer. I hope it is "for the children" since they are the ones who will pay for it.

Will his sensible appointees come up with sensible policies?  Or will they break out the bubbly?

Want a well used crisis? How's about Global Warming for 45 trillion?

History News Network

What is to be done? We must use this crisis to make major strides towards energy independence. A major part of the stimulus package should be spent on investment in our energy resources. This is the time to take a holistic approach. We should do everything, so that never, but never, will energy warlords be in a position to hold us hostage again. As in 1973 and 1979, they have demonstrated yet again that they cannot be trusted. Enough is enough.

I wonder. If President Obama wants to serve two successful terms he will go slow on alternative energy development. Alternative energy is expensive energy and will drain America's wallet while putting the nation's industry at a competitive disadvantage. He would be wise to keep the price of oil low (and our enemies -- now his enemies, too -- poor) by allowing more domestic production and generating cheap, coal powered electricity for the grid. The fact that we may be entering a mini ice age should help. Instead of a ten year time frame for alternatives, he should think thirty years and have a successful Presidency.

He has been making sensible appointments. He should follow up with sensible policies.

Settled Men

Pajamas Media » The Peter Pan Myth: The Real Reason Men Won’t Settle Down

But what was original was just how much of a backlash Hymowitz herself incited –all of it from the boys. Her inbox overfloweth with righteous invective styling itself as the “Menaissance,” which sure sounds as ridiculous as “Iron John” did in the ’70s, but recommends an altogether healthier program than banging bongo drums naked in the woods. The Menaissance mantra seems to be, “We’re mad as hell, and we’d rather be masturbating”...

I watched "House" Tuesday and on that show an "emancipated" 16 year old girl said the reason she was estranged from her parents was that her father had raped her. I thought the statistical genius Doctors on the show should point out that for the biological father to rape the daughter is a rather rare event. For the "live in" boyfriend or the latest hook-up of a single mom, much more common. This is one of my favorite gripes against Hollywood: They constantly show the "traditional fathers" as wretches; the single mom as heroic. Then they will associate the social problems of the broken family with the intact ones. In the real world a daughter living in an intact family is at much less risk.

Now in this case the daughter was lying about her father raping her. On the program it seemed regarded as a perfectly acceptable "polite" lie, however. In the end they did show the parents reuniting with the daughter. That is progress, for Hollywood.

I think the gripes of the "boys" have to do with what they are called when they become men.

An august bureaucrat gives us August in October

From the folks who brought us bogus "climate models" heavily biased toward global warming (or rather prejudiced against Free Markets and Free Enterprise) comes Flaming October!

The world has never seen such freezing heat - Telegraph:

A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.

Jimmy Hansen and his jimmied up climate records is a prime example of a bureaucrat taking over a taxpayer funded institution to promote their own ideology. There is apparently nothing we can do about this if the individual shows up to work on time and don't take too many sick days or murder their co-workers. I remember this guy saying -- when global warming critics claimed that much foreign temperature data was inaccurate -- that third world readings track with US data so it's all good. Then when his "reformulation" of US data turned out wrong (the 90s were not the warmest decade in the US) he said it tracked with foreign data so he was still right globally even if his claims were wrong locally. 

The author Christopher Booker describes the cause of the latest screw up:

So what explained the anomaly? GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.

The mistakes seem to go one direction -- the direction of giving these folks all sorts of power and spending $45 trillion in a crash program to crash the economy.

Neo-Socialism and the Subprime Paradigm.

Neo-socialists are interested in the acquisition of power, not money. Therefore Neosocs work to make the population resentful of those who appear interested in the acquisition of money. They then use that resentment to acquire power over those interested in money (whose interest can be useful) and everyone else.

The fact that the economy began to tank under a Republican is a godsend to the Neosocs who surround President Elect Obama. So President Obama will do what he says he'll do, not what most on the "center line" of the political highway hope.

Back when everyone was talking $180 bbl oil I said the world has plenty of oil at $60 bbl and if the markets are allowed to function that is where the price will go. So obviously, the markets cannot be allowed to function.

For Obama and the Neosocs, $2 a gallon gas has got to be $5 a gallon gas if their "alternative energy" power grab is going to work. The business of OPEC is raising the price of gas by cutting supply. The Democrat Congress is the most important member of OPEC (see previous post) so look for them to significantly cut future US production. Of course it must be done with plausible deniability. Environmental concerns will stop oil exploration, stop oil shale development and stop new refining capacity. Meanwhile expanded oil use in the rest of the world will be allowed, if not encouraged, through Kyoto style loopholes (it's an antipoverty measure). Taxes and regulations of the oil companies must be greatly expanded in the name of Fairness. In return Big Oil will get -- from the Democrats -- expensive oil and good profits (the Democrats get their cut in the form of taxes). The Neosocs must get the price back on an upward path soon. They don't want their finger prints on "five dollar gas."

The USA as the TVA is part of the Neosoc agenda, and economic distress will provide all the excuse they need to implement it. Look for grandiose public work projects (as broadly defined as possible).

Meanwhile the economy as a whole will be organized into Cartels of Caring. Cartels exist to advantage producers over consumers and cartel community organizers over everyone. Cartels are justified as providing a social good -- even in autocratic Nations. As they spread through our economy they will provide little but social harm. The poor will become poorer (but they will be "helped") and the workers will become Cartel dependent. In fact, economic distress will make the emerging system more stable by making the dependent citizen conservative in the "change adverse" sense. The "change we can believe in" is neosoc "fear of change" in the population as a whole once the neosocs are in charge.

The Cartels of Caring will get a steady stream of income and protection from competition in return for supporting the new social order. In the neosocialist order, management and "Capitalists" will front for the bureaucracy and the Washington Party -- that combination of politicians, top bureaucrats, major media and "public private partnerships" that make up our ruling class. They will be politically dependent clients of the Washington Party. They will be selected for being responsible not in the sense of being competent, but in the sense of taking the blame when things go wrong (and they will go wrong).

Under old style socialism, socialist took the hit when economies collapsed. Under Neo-socialism the "capitalists" become neosoc puppets. They are kept around to take credit for failure rather than provide additional credit to success. Neosocialism operates on the Subprime Paradigm -- where the architects of the mortgage meltdown take charge of the "blame shift" and take over the government. Nice work, if you can get it.

The Democrat Congress: The most powerful member of OPEC

Pajamas Media » We Can Solve the Financial Crisis by Destroying OPEC

We need to ask ourselves the question: Why has the housing market collapsed? If you want the answer, just follow the money. It’s gone to pay for oil.

Consider: This year, with OPEC-rigged oil prices averaging near $110/barrel, Americans will pay $900 billion for their oil supply, and the world as a whole will pay $3.6 trillion. These petroleum costs are up a factor of ten from what they were in 1999, and represent a huge highly-regressive tax on the world economy. For Americans, the $900 billion oil levy (up from $80 billion in 1999) is equivalent to a 33% increase in income taxes across the board — with sixty percent the sum being paid over in tribute to foreign governments.

To see how this tax can destroy real estate values, it is only necessary to compare expenditures. In 2003, Americans paid $268 billion for new homes, and $197 billion for oil. In 2008, we paid for new homes at an annual rate of $134 billion, and $900 billion for oil. So the increase in our oil expenditures was more than five times as great as the fall in our spending for new homes.

OPEC functions by limiting supply to drive up prices. What is the response of the Democrat Congress to the recent fall in oil prices? They announced they will block oil exploration, not only off shore but on land -- in other words they will keep millions of barrels of oil (every day) off the market.

The most powerful member of OPEC is the Democrat Controlled Congress. They keep more oil off the market (by far) than any other member. And the American people pay through the nose. Why would they do anything to undermine the organization of which they form an important part? If they can find a way to get control of that money rather than sending it to foreigners — then maybe. Still, they will want the money (or more to the point the "power of the purse" and the power of regulation), not affordable fuel. They need expensive fuel to make their alternative future, with them in command in DC, a reality.

What do you call Bankrupting the coal industry? A good start on the road to bankrupting oil.

AP says President Obama to ban Embryonic Stem Cell Research!

My Way News - Obama to use executive orders for immediate impact

WASHINGTON (AP) - President-elect Obama plans to use his executive powers to make an immediate impact when he takes office, perhaps reversing Bush administration policies on stem cell research and domestic drilling for oil and natural gas.

Reversing the Bush administration policies on stems cells research means reinstating the total ban on Federal Funding of embryonic stem cell research which was in place before President Bush changed it (allowing funding for research on existing embryonic stem cell "lines"). Is this what AP means? Probably not.

And they can't mean the second part either. Because Sen. Obama looked right into the electorates eye during the second debate and said "I do not oppose drilling!" Of course the AP and every other reporter knew he was lying to the voters and that was OK because he was lying to the voters and not to news fellows. And so they past over it in silence. And now he's doing so many pirouettes that if you put a drill bit on his shoes he'd be down to 4,000 feet. And what will the media do? Help him spin.

We should look upon the news manipulation of the new administration as a teaching moment. It is an opportunity to show the nation why centralizing power in Washington is a bad idea: Why the Democrat’s “groupism” of the parts hurts the group as a whole. Such instruction requires patience; that’s why I’m not a teacher. Anyways, here’s my take.

President Elect Obama rocketed to the top by opposing the US war in Iraq. There is nothing wrong with that.

So what is wrong with opposing his war on the US economy? The neo-socialist war on free enterprise? Why can’t “save the whales” become “save our trade”? And the machinations of the Carbon Market (which we don’t need) be compared to the worst that an excess of corruption and incompetence ever brought to the Free Market (which punishes the sorts of wretched excess that governments so often reward).

The left opposed the malefactors of great private wealth. We can oppose the malefactors of great bureaucratic power. The left opposed Christian “theocrats” reaching into our homes. We can oppose environmental Gaea-crats reaching into our homes, our bodies and everywhere else we inhabit (and even the areas we don’t).

We can safely oppose trashing an old power network that delivers power cheaply and — if the environmentalist would allow upgrades — reliably, only to replace it with a fantasy one that is expensive and unproven. This is like sending a good $25,000 car to the crusher (forgoing the resale value) to be replaced by a bad $50,000 car that is still on the drawing boards, can’t yet be manufactured and will end up costing 75,000. In fact, it may be exactly like that. It is, in short, a crash program to crash the economy. The only good thing here is that critics won’t have to make anything up or distort the truth when they point this stuff out (they need only persevere through persecution).

I even think being anti the neo-socialists war on the private economy will be patriotic. As the saying goes, “Do the right thing.” What do you think?