Looking for a New Thermometer

The leaders of Argentina and Brazil hope to create a common currency to break the trade-denominated link to the US dollar. Joe Blogs compares their efforts to the creation of the Euro around the turn of the century.

Historically, most Euro participants lean towards "easy money" but Germany, having suffered from hyperinflation, is a hard-money, hard-nut to crack. That isn't the case here. Argentina currently suffers from roaring inflation -- not for the first, second, or third time -- which has tanked the value of their currency in dollar terms. Brazil has a similar record. Since their bilateral trade is largely denominated in dollars, this is highly inconvenient for businessmen and, more recently, politicians. The two countries are suffering from inflation fever and the leaders want a new thermometer in lieu of treating their policy problems. Even in the Euro's case, there was a financial crisis in the area because some countries did not follow the program they signed onto (ie limiting budget deficits and so on).

The proposed currency union is a bit like fixing a leaky roof. It's a good idea. What's a bad idea is trusting the job to "roofers" who cause more leaks than they fix. Meanwhile, the bewildered homeowners at the job site find half of their valuables have disappeared before the job is done. When they complain it is explained that the poor result is all the fault of people who live on another continent thousands of miles to the north.

Nevermind the Gap

There's a gap in the chart! Jeff Snider at Eurodollar University has a video where he discusses "real personal income excluding transfer receipts" (think government handouts), which fell "off trend" in 2020 and hasn't recovered. Transfer payments backfilled the gap for a time. Here's his chart:

I fear the "off-trend" has become the new trend. Perhaps people in 2020 were rioting for the wrong reason.

I blame "Cronny Class Consciousness" and the governing philosophy of "Feudalism with the Right People in Charge" for the developing economic malaise.

At its center, the Crony Class consists of politicians, hacks, bureaucrats, and those who acquire power through their ability to influence government action -- the lawyer, lobbyist, and dark-money crowd. This group took to heart the advice of Scarface, "first you get the power, then you get the money, then you get the girl." Confusingly, we now have to add the lawyer/lobbyist girls who want to be "the man" while still blaming "the man" when the man is actually, you know, a man.

The outer ring includes those who benefit from government action, such as corporations that fear bureaucratic overreach or seek government favor or the education establishment which devours government resources while avoiding societal accountability. To this add the legions of minions whose livelihoods depend on promoting Crony Class Interests, such as MSM Journalists (not to be confused with reporters), aspiring academics (not to be confused with actual scientists), and "house experts" (not to be confused with people who know what the hell they are talking about). The tentacles of this class reach far and wide, and gives the appearance of "Nerds working for Sociopaths."

"Crony Class Consciousness" allows them to act as a unit to protect class interest with a minimum of actual coordination. They framed Donal Trump (a minor threat) as a Russian agent for three years, knowing it was bunkum from day one. When it no longer played, the media Emily Litellas said, "never mind," and moved on to the next set of feeble accusations class members are required to promote. Objectively, these are the actions of horrible people. Subjectively, they have their reasons. This beast is hungry and needs to be fed. Those gaps in the charts are just the start.

"Feudalism with the Right People in Charge," says the rulers should come from an accredited, pseudo-intellectual caste (the true nobility of the mind), not a military one. The philosophy provides the justification for the rule of the Crony Class (i.e. Climate Change requires their control of resources) and the rationale for keeping their "expert" descendants in charge (having a lot of kids -- which will expand family contacts in an influence-peddling system -- is frowned upon). Diversity-Equity-Inclusion is sold as the ability to include but is actually the power to exclude. Everyone should get in their place and stay there. Mind the Queue.

Think of a War Where Only One Side Is Allowed to Fight

Media outlets keep promoting 'forest defenders' and ignoring that they shot a police officer

If the left campaigns to free an accused person, that person is likely guilty. When they are not trying to get the guilty off, they are trying to destroy the innocent (see: Sacco and Vanzetti = framed; Justice Kavanaugh = corrupt, and Joe Biden = honest). Even when I was on the left this tendency among those who claim to want a better world puzzled me. I came up with several reasons.

Recruitment: Most people would want an innocent person freed but only a potential true-believing, money-donating, self-deluding activist will campaign to free the guilty.

Delegitimizing the Justice System: The guilty person is on the "right side of history," combating an entrenched evil and therefore not just innocent but heroic. It's the other-way around for the so-called innocent person who is actually a cowardly defender of privilege.

A Display of Power: Freeing the guilty and destroying the innocent will attract supporters to the movement and discourage opponents. Also, it will strike fear in the souls of possible apostates (black conservatives, for instance).

The political left wants power above all else and believes that a highly disciplined and properly led band of activists can gain control during social chaos, hence "the worst the better" for the far left. Many would rather be a camp guard in a socialist state than a factory worker in a capitalist one.

Whither -- or Wither -- San Francisco

Government action and the reaction:

No major American city has failed at the same level as Detroit, whose population dropped from 1.85 million people in 1950 to about 630,000 today. Move over Detroit, here comes San Francisco, which lost 6.3 percent of its population between 2019 and 2021, a rate of decline larger than any two year-period in Detroit’s history and unprecedented among any major US city.

In 1964 the Democrats put the Model City Program in place. It was meant to show what innovative government programs could accomplish. Detroit was a model city. A lot of Federal money and "help" for Community Action went into Detroit. The 1967 riots -- a type of community action -- followed. Those who sponsored the Community Action then wrote a report blaming the results on systematic racism (other people's systematic racism, of course).

It's the model for Democrat Party governance they've followed ever since -- blame everyone else for your screw-ups. Comparing dynamic Detroit in 1960 with its current husk, to sleepy D.C. then with its bustling (and budget-busting) "farms into office-parks" present, explains why this approach -- an apparent failure for ordinary Americans of every color and belief -- persists.

https://www.hoover.org/research/san-francisco-falls-abyss

Under-Whelma, Velma

I said of Prime Video's The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power that it was a bad, expensive flop but not horrible. I suggested ROP was less-than-horrible because I watched every episode and was mindful of the old joke that "the food was awful and the portions were small." However, unlike some Youtube critics, I'm not hoping for a season two.

But as regards HBO's Velma, I suffer no such constraints. The tale is told from Velma's perspective and she revealed herself to be such a horrible person that 15 minutes into ep-one I determined she really was the murderer and, the case being solved, I stopped watching. But I will applaud the show's premise that not all persons of the non-binary persuasion are good.

Velma takes a cartoon character aimed at children and repackages her story for adults between the ages of thirteen-and-a-half and fourteen. With the exception of mainstream media movie critics, everyone else pretty much hated it. We can only hope that HBO cancels the plans for a Pornographic Bugs Bunny Show. Yes, I am aware that Bugs once dressed in drag and kissed Yosemite Sam but dammit, they didn't go steady.

The Last of Us, Episode One

First, I'm not familiar with the video-game, but I knew HBO's The Last of Us had Zombies, though I expected more -- more monsters and more action. However, talking in hallways with guns does work better than just talking in hallways.

The opening scene -- where the coming Fungal Apopocalypse is blamed on Global Warming -- succeeded in lowering my expectations (I'd have gone with an escaped pathogen from Dr. Anthony Fauci's basement lab -- after consulting legal counsel, of course). I'm glad I hung around for Depeche Mode's "Ride with my Best Friend" over the end credits.

Though I enjoyed the extended normal-life setup that followed the opening obligatory lecture, it should have been half as long with twice the ominous overtones. I assumed the delightful and precocious daughter was 14 or 15, so her picking up much of the household burden while Joel, her dad, operated a small business was OK. That doesn't work for a twelve-year-old -- apparently her age in the video game. I did not know she would die in the first episode, so, surprise! I enjoyed the panic, mayhem, and death caused by the sudden onset of the disease. Does that make me a bad person?

Fast forward twenty years and Joel is in a walled-off portion of Boston overrun by "girl bosses" within and zombies without. Given that it's Boston, the superfluidity of girl bosses makes sense. We don't see many zombies but I assume they are the bigger threat. How Joel got to Boston without the help of his daughter isn't explained. Joel isn't exactly "Pale Rider," but nonetheless Tess, his significant other and immediate supervisor, compares him to Clint Eastwood. Still, he has room to grow (or shrink) -- if he can escape the ever-present, domineering forces of the matriarchy. Given that Elle, the young girl he is supposed to accompany on her cross-country journey, is an alpha-diva aspiring girl boss, his chances don't look good. I thought there would be a threat from airborne spores since a fungal infection is the cause of this worldwide distress. However, when they came across a human victim "molded" to the wall in the abandoned Boston subway, I was surprised by how casually they treated the danger. They even seemed to step on some of the protruding growth.

Overall, I thought the first episode was good but could have been better with mo'violence. They showed the bloody aftermath of one violent fight. Why not show the fight? The series is, after all, based on a shooter game -- unless it was a feminist consciousness-raising effort that I thought was a shooter game.

Hollywood has lost the plot...

...and substituted a conspiracy.

In a comment on Disparu's youtube channel, I made the mistake of comparing Amazon's The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power to a low-budget Xena, Warrior Princess that could have used a Lucy Lawless in the lead. Understandably, that really upset the Xena, Warrior Princess fans, and maybe Lucy Lawless as well. I should say I was impressed with the range Lawless displayed as an actor in Eurotrip. She's New Zealand raised but made a convincing Dutch Dominatrix.

I also said that if you ignore what The Rings of Power did to Tolkien (which might constitute felony murder were he still alive), it was not a horrible show.  This, too, was a controversial statement, with others claiming it was clearly horrendous and how could I possibly think otherwise? However, my reasoning here was quite simple: if it's horrible, and I watched every episode, what does that say about me? Rather than stare into that particular abyss, I decided it was a bad, expensive flop -- that if they were trying to make it horrible (a possibility), they hadn't quite succeeded.

Expensive flops are nothing new for Hollywood, but these days a creative mess isn't allowed to sink into the obscurity it deserves. Hollywood now sees itself as the declining Rome of the Entertainment World, offering treasures for protection to a barbarian horde outside its walls, only to anger and whet the appetites of others. It's entered the realm of politics which, these days, is not just "a house divided against itself," but an old mansion where it's every room, closet, and cubbyhole for itself (and don't leave out the servants' quarters). As a result, Hollywood doesn't know whether to fight, flee, or fortify.

Politics has always played a role but it wasn't of paramount importance at Paramount or universally agreed upon at Universal or really dizzy at Disney -- or, for that matter, the lead actor in acting. Left-leaning filmmakers could make a conservative-themed movie and a conservative executive might green-light a left-wing consciousness-raising effort. In the last decade, consciousness-raising has taken over (Hollywood, having found its religion, won't shut up about it).

Recently, I rewatched The Hunger Games and wondered if these days the people making it would have more sympathy for the Capital -- the ignorant folks in the districts just don't understand the problems the experts face just keeping things together! Meanwhile, Indigenous Activists complain about the portrayal of the indigenous inhabitants of an alien planet in the Avatar sequel. Using their criteria, every human should boycott that film. In fact, that's what I'm doing -- until it makes it to Tubi, at least.

My advice to Hollywood is to get on "The Right-Side of Story-Telling" and forget about history (which they find an easy task in the movies they make).