{ Monthly Archives }
April 2009
- Armageddon - The economy has begun to level off, yet it continues to deteriorate at such a pace that, in the time between the Fed’s formulation of Security Capital Asset Program (”stress test”) guidelines and their release last week, most baseline projections have come to resemble the “more adverse” (worst-case) scenario included therein. At the risk of appearing effusive, this month’s edition of the eponymous blog’s baseline scenario included the following synopsis: “the [Obama] administration has made great efforts that either are yet to pay off or will not pay off.” Allegedly, the underlying cause of this debacle has to do with the inability of investors to see this graph and think that perhaps something had gone awry in the real estate market.
In the absence of career-track employment, many of us contemplate graduate school, the utility of which has fallen so low as to move from the career section of the Chronicle of Higher Education to the New York Times‘ op-ed page.
Unable to effectively export its drug wars to Texas, where the citizenry has been stockpiling firearms for just such an occasion (to shoot errant Mexicans), Mexico has, instead, become the source of a swine flu outbreak that may have already reached a dozen countries on 4 continents. Thus far, swine flu has been cited in the deaths of 7 Mexicans and 1 Texas toddler.
The lack of a visible Anti-Christ, profligate Satanism, or usurious interest rates may be keeping the Rapture Index, which has ranges from 45 to 225, at a tepid 166, but we all know better. Personally, I knew an unfortunate die for the fate of the universe had been cast late last week, when Jason Bay hit a 2-run homer with 2 outs in the bottom of the 9th to rob Mariano Rivera of 11 fantasy points with 1 swing of the bat. Say what you will, Red Sox Nation; sweeping the Yankees in a series of extra-inning games is a sign that global synergy is off kilter.
- Automotive - With just a few days left before testing the President’s bankruptcy ultimatum, Chrysler has begun to align its water fowl. Here is the most curious line from that Times story: “Union leaders on Sunday agreed to a complex deal that changes rules, cuts benefits, and gives the union a 55 percent stake in the Chrysler as partial funding for its retiree health care trust.” Profit-sharing is one thing, but this is an absurd statement on both Chrysler’s lack of value and the current health care situation in America. In order to avoid bankruptcy, one of the largest domestic automobile manufacturers must become, primarily, a vehicle for providing health care to its former employees. Accept bankruptcy. Rebuilding will be much simpler without a muddled mission, and those retirees ought to be lobbying for the kind of social programs provided by every other post-industrial government, anyway.
- Economy - This morning’s release of the advance report of GDP for the first quarter of 2009 indicates that the previously lamented economic sky continues to fall apace. How bad is the news? The positive spin is that decreasing inventory levels mean that production should resume before too terribly long. In other words, there’s nary a good number to be found.
If government reports are a wee bit dry for your taste, then you might prefer the Wall Street Journal’s translation into English.
- Education - If, like me, you occasionally finding yourself trying to remember Green’s Theorem or the difference between a C function and a P function, then you might get a kick out of Khan Academy. That website includes direct links to an array of lectures on mathematics and its applications that are available free, by way of YouTube. As a wise young man once told me, “It’s all derivatives.”
- Theology - A very disturbing article [Note: Login required] in the May issue of Harper’s brings to light the disproportionate representation of evangelical Christians in the military, a brief history of that situation’s development, and the implications thereof. A similar set of stories was broadcast by NPR in the summer of 2005, when the question of religious discrimination at the Air Force Academy was first brought to light.
Stepping around discussion of the Constitutionality of any interplay between religion and the military, which might conceivably be forgone by the replacement of Chaplains with therapists, one might consider the practicality of attempting to subdue religious insurgence within the armed ranks. Given that negligible numbers of military personnel identify as Jewish, atheistic, or agnostic, one is led to believe that, given the option, those among us for whom rationality is a primary motive force tend not to put themselves in harm’s way. Unfortunately, the dangers of becoming a secular state with a monolithically religious set of armed forces — that also happen to be the world’s most potent — being what they are, it may be time for the less mystical of our youth to consider enrolling in the Academies as a matter less gladiatorial than civilized.
At the same time, yesterday’s New York Times included an article describing the increasing tendency for disbelievers to vocally self-identify. For the duration of religious freedom, the comparative sword of non-belief has cut both ways; one is left with more free time but no organized lobby. It should be interesting to see what kind of longevity this movement has, and what it might portend for electoral politics in the coming decades.
- Affiliation - U.S. Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania changed parties today. One may not expect a substantial shift in his voting proclivities, but this does mean that the Democrats will have a nominal super-majority, once Al Franken is finally seated. Given the extent to which Democratic Senators imbued with know-nothing sentimentality, such as Claire McHaskell, have already begun to push back against the administration’s attempts to bring government to the service of economic correction, this may actually be an example of the party being burdened by its fulfilled wish.
- Review - While such maneuvers as the Cincinnati Bowtie, the Rusty Trombone, and the Cleveland Steamer all involve comic indignity enough to earn entry into the lexicon of coital taboo, only the last of them has made even a peremptory run through the cultural zeitgeist. The euphemism of a film entitled The Angry Dragon might elude many viewers. By some confluence of insouciant violence and civil absurdity, however, the Donkey Punch has entered the realm of urban mythology.
As many critics noted upon its release, the movie of the same name embodies its eponymous action’s violation and false promise of superlative gratification. It’s been said that film is a media of time control, wherein pacing is tantamount, and, beyond its poor acting and negligible script, Donkey Punch is a catastrophe of pacing. Opening scenes plod toward the kind of orgy better left to the legitimate adult film industry. The forthcoming fatality, central to the movie’s plot, occurs with such predictability as to punctuate nothing. Henceforth, the viewer is subjected to plodding trails of alleged suspense broken my intermittent surges of needlessly grotesque violence.
That Donkey Punch should be deplorable comes as little surprise. It merely puts into sharper relief the glory of Zombie Strippers!, which had the good sense to forgo any pretense toward gravity.
- Banking - Around these parts, we try to make informed policy speculations without bandying about too much loaded rhetoric in earnest. Fundamentalism without objective distance is better appropriated for satirical purposes.
Nonetheless, given the financial sector’s ongoing implosion and the increased utility to be found simply be converting hard currency into abstracted, transferable values, one begins to wonder how commercial banking fails to be judged important enough for the public good to qualify as a utility. In his criticism of compensation within the financial sector, Paul Krugman appears to take a vaguely similar line of reasoning. Attempts to complicate banking in an effort to breed more money have left us with a system in shambles. If, then, we hope or plan to regulate the industry back into one concerned primarily with facilitating the flow of funds from long-term savers to secure debtors (and checking, etc.), then it will essentially become to monies what the power grid is to electricity or municipal pipe systems are to water and sewage. Maybe it still won’t be a system in which the government ought to have an ownership role, but one can see where the regulatory model might be informed by the functionality of local utility monopolies.
Meanwhile, Jeffrey Goldberg’s article in the May issue of the Atlantic reminds readers that, capitalism being based on the primacy of self-interest, a person really has no reason to succumb to the influence of a broker, financial planner, or other professional adviser. His argument, in the end, seems to be that investment is better left to those with enough capital to afford either discretionary risk or the purchase of influence to coincide with their holdings. Wouldn’t a societal shift from investment- to savings-based financial devices make more capital available to individuals and small businesses through commercial banks, thus ironically subverting the notion of an “ownership society” to the benefit of owner-operators? Suck on that, Larry Kudlow.