It's just my opinion, I could be wrong

Every time Obama speaks, it aggravates me. It's not because of his method of speaking or speech itself: he's a great public speaker who's clear, eloquent, and polished. It's also not because he uses a teleprompter obsessively, is very good at not straying from whatever canned message or pitch has been written for him, and dodges answering any probing questions with real information: most politicians have perfected these arts, and they have become so ingrained in our political process that they are as expected as they are unhelpful in conveying actual information. It's obviously also not because he lies: most politicians lie, usually very well, and Obama can state even laughable, preposterous fallacies without even breaking stride, but again, that's expected, normal, and uniform in today's politicians. No, none of these things are the reason Obama's speeches really get to me. See, Obama comes across as a smart guy, and every once in a while you get a semi...

So much of the problems in the current economy were caused by banks placing large bets on uncertain propositions with high risk on the chance of an upside while the bubble lasted, so it's with a certain amount of irony that the government is pushing its new "public/private partnership" plan as the latest effort to pump more taxpayers money into the zombie banks while they continue shoveling it out the back door to their executives while they still can. See, the plan relies on private investors taking a gamble, hoping that the "bubble" will hold long enough for them to realize a profit, but potentially risking their long-term viability if it doesn't. But wait, you say, aren't they getting heavily subsidized by the government, so much so that it's practically a no-brainer to participate, since the government is taking all the risk (with taxpayer money, of course, not their own personal money or anything crazy like that) and giving the private investors...

A small blog post, was listening to the Senate budget committee meeting on the budget debate, opening remarks, and listening to some asshole Democrat saying the budget reconciliation process was intended to be used to bypass debate and compromise, and get the "right" [partisan agenda] policies into the budget without abiding by the rules of the process. Then, at the same time , he had the utter gall to say that obviously the same tactics were wrong when the Republicans used them to decrease taxes [and spending]. Now the next retard is also arguing that reconciliation is supposed to be used to circumvent the debate process and push a partisan agenda outside of the normal process. I hate these people; there a obvious reasons why our country is in the toilet, and they are in Congress.

Ok, how's that for a bold and over-ambitious title? I mean, the US government has been struggling for years to figure out a way to unwind the enormous, underfunded, Ponzi scheme entitlement program ever since it was enacted, back in the 30's. There have been numerous proposals, even more numerous criticisms of proposals without offering any substantive alternatives, a heaping helping of denial, and a general inability of the US government to do anything whatsoever to fix the impending problem. Well, I have a solution to add to the pile, and while I'm almost certain it'll never even be read by anyone with the slightest ability to take any meaningful action, in the spirit of Obama's fake encouragement of other people to come up with good ideas to help the US economy, here's another of mine. The facets: - The government should create private accounts for social security. These should be owned by the people paying in, and contain all the money paid into the accounts...

The AIG $200 million "bonuses" has been all the talk recently, but rather than add to the condemnation, I'm going to offer sort of a counter-point view. This is not to say that I'm a fan of the bonuses, their size, or bailing out failed companies in the first place, but it's important to look at the whole picture, not just the topic of outrage of the week. First, this was $200 million ish in compensation, compared to $170 Billion in "loans", TARP handouts, and government guarantees given to AIG by Congress. If giving out the bonuses was bad, then handing out the bailout money was 1000 times worse; where's the 1000x outrage at Congress for wasting 1000x the money in the failed company which is AIG? Which, of course, in turn paid most of that money to counter-parties, which are other failed banks, many of which are also already getting bailout money, Trillions more in fact counting guarantees. The outrage may be justified, but let's have some persp...

This article about a Nobel-prize winner backing a call for a global currency reminded me that I've been meaning to blog about kinda the same idea (although I'm sure it differs in actual substance, since I haven't read his actual proposal which wasn't linked in the article). I've been thinking a bit about this in light of the US financial meltdown and subsequent heating up of the US dollar printing press, and how you could have a stable global currency with which to measure objective wealth, as opposed to individual currencies which are all fiat-based and readily manipulated by their controlling governments (usually to the detriment of holders of the currency, or debt denominated in the currency). First, the problems that this idea would address. Currently, as mentioned, there's no good way to objectively track wealth. There are several bad ways which people use, for example: tracking currency relative to a "basket" of other currencies, holding preciou...

Commenting on another blog (as Nick): here I thought this was an interesting topic, basically if you should buy now if the business fundamentals are good. Normally I'd be inclined to agree, but recently I'm inclined to give more weight to the idea that the government will change the rules in substantial ways, and that might invalidate the whole investment strategy. I kinda explore and defend that counter-argument in the comments.

An interesting thing happened to me the other day, as I was looking a an open house (not browsing to buy, just browsing for home ideas). I struck up a conversation with the RE agent there, who was eager to convince me that it really is the right time to buy (like it always it, of course, when you're in sales). Amidst the usual baseless arguments, prognostications, and typical sales speak, there was the familiar argument: nobody can know which way the market is going to go, so you shouldn't hold off buying because you think the market is going down (I'll call this "the argument"). I was struck with the significance of both the argument itself, and the current state of the market, and how there are some interesting effects going on. First, in a normally performing market, the argument makes sense, and is almost a tautology. In normal free markets, the valuation of traded commodities is based on the weighted average of the future expected value of the commodity. The ...

So this probably doesn't mean much to people outside California (maybe), but our Supreme Court is currently debating challenges to Prop 8, which changed the California Constitution to make gay marriage invalid. This was in response to the court making it valid under the equal protection concept in the Constitution. At first glace, you might think the case would be over quickly: it's invalid in the Constitution now, so the court would just toss the bogus challenges... but you might be wrong; at least one of the challenges is more interesting than that, and (I think) has some merit. I'm going to ignore most of the arguments presented by the opponents of Prop 8, and focus on the one which seems to me to actually be a valid legal reason why the court should take action. The most interesting argument is roughly this, as I understand it: it requires a different procedure, and a 2/3 majority vote, to change the Constitution in a way which conflicts with the existing Constitution. ...

I comment on other people's blogs sometimes, and sometimes those comments are entertaining and/or interesting (this is subjective, of course). Rather than copy/paste, I'll just link a recent comment I made. I'm especially proud of this gem: Years of stumbling around like a blind epileptic retard trying to feel your way into the politically correct way to perform a morally deplorable and financially suicidal absorption of every failed gamble made by every underhanded corporation with a lobbyist or individual with a vote doesn’t help the economy or “bring a renewed sense of transparency and accountability”. Read it, or not; it's my opinion, I could certainly be wrong.

It occurred to me yesterday that amidst all the doom and gloom about the economy, the recession, and the bleak prospects for the near-term future in America (most of which are accurate, if depressing), it's also important to keep an eye on the big picture, and realize that we're going to be living in (and hopefully through) some historically very significant times. It's been 70ish years since the Great Depression ended, and almost everyone still alive today either wasn't alive then, or was too young to remember living through it. The people living in America today will most likely be living through a similar, but probably even more severe, Depression in the next decade, and it's going to be a very interesting experience. Now, I'm sure some people would object that the current situation is substantially different from the 30's, and I'd be forced to agree. Although the 30's saw a large credit bubble which inflated asset valuations to unsustainable leve...