Posts Made By: James C Chandler Jr

c.

Jim Babcock said:

This is the best and the brightest that the ivy league educated community organizer could come up with to get us out of this mess. How sad. No wonder that there is no confidence in what these idiots are proposing. They haven't a clue about what they are doing, except redistributing wealth and trying to socialize the economy. Beyond that they simply see the recession as an opportunity to push more kooky liberal ideas.

Well, Bernanke came on-board under Bush, though he's a smart enough economist that there does not seem reason the democrats would have kicked much. The fellow does have credentials.

There were comments he made a long time ago, surfaced during the confirmation hearings, that earned him the nickname 'Helicopter Ben' because he said he would throw money out of helicopters to avoid a recession. That is just standard Keynsian Economics, though. Apparently the guy is kinda in the same school as old Milton Friedman, who wasn't a dummie either, and not a strict Keynsian.

Hearing his answer, though, hits me the same way if the plane loses an engine, you ask the pilot what he's gonna do, and he replies, "Well, I read a book about it."

Jim Babcock said:
Obama ran for President as a comparatively inexperienced politician. During the Bush years the left constantly said that Bush was just a puppet of various individuals and groups, and that he is an idiot. At the same time the left has constantly spoken about how brilliant their politicians are. Well he is President and since he only speaks using his teleprompter, it seems to me to be a fair question about whether he is just a teleprompter reader, a puppet, and whether he actually has a brain. So to answer your question directly, it depends. It is hard to know what the community organizer actually is thinking and doing, except reading (very well I might add) notes from others. Another politician (Clinton for example) it would not be as big of an issue.

The teleprompter issue is relevant enough. Strong speaking is fine but strong ideas have higher priority.

I'd rather hear strong ideas from a speech impediment, than drivel from an expert orator. But in reality if the speaking is sufficiently inexpert one can't stand it.

Glib delivery does seem to matter, but if we just want someone that looks and talks like a movie president, then why not ALWAYS elect actors? Perhaps the fellow who was president in "The West Wing", or maybe the guy who was president in "Independence Day"?

Is that becoming our problem-- Any candidate MUST look and sound like a movie president? Perhaps if we could find the best leader hidden away somewhere, it would turn out to be a fat short bald-headed homely fellow with multiple PhD's, coke bottle glasses, and cleft palette? A very bright feller who would make Nixon look handsome, or make W sound like a world-class orator?

Even Obama's strongest critics say he is a gifted orator (at least with the teleprompter), so I suppose it it true. The delivery bugs me for whatever reason. Of course he 'masterfully' delivers ideas that seem unwise, but dunno if that is the problem. If O was preaching libertarianism then perhaps it would be more tolerable, but I suspect that the delivery would STILL be somehow annoying. Perhaps the timing or inflection sounds wrong. Ferinstance, stress on inappropriate words, or terminating declarative sentences with a pitch rise which makes them sound like a question.

The ear of the listener... Hilliary fans complained of Palin's vocal tone. Sure, Palin's timbre ain't ever gonna compete with Ella Fitzgerald, but Palin did not sound nearly as annoying as Hilliary. Hilliary's timbre would be annoying even if she was delivering a speech awarding me with a million bucks .

The strongest speech I saw this election cycle, was Bill Clinton at the democrat convention. Got tired of hearing Bill Clinton during his presidency because of over-exposure.

I don't agree with Bill, but was never tempted to change stations or mute the audio on his convention speech. The man is GOOD! That old silver tongue devil just knocked it out of the park, regardless whether you agree with the content.

Public speaking used to be a better craft among politicians. Or so it seems. Maybe we only recall the better ones.

I used to 'greatly dislike' Spiro Agnew and have no reason to revisit the opinion. Didn't notice special eloquence at the time, but a few years ago saw some of his old speeches on TV. Spiro was not as good as Bill Clinton, but it it striking how good a speech that old crook could deliver, compared to current politicians.

It is difficult to divorce the content from the grammatical elegance and delivery. Spiro's ideas and history get in the way of listening for good construction and delivery. I quick-googled a few examples which may not be the best the scoundrel ever delivered. They are just samples, if you are young enough not to even know who he is. Maybe someone else would consider it very poor speechifying. Different strokes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcKMtNWB2u4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ty2hHaCU1o

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/spiroagnewtvnewscoverage.htm

I heard that the higher rates will collect $1 trillion in 10 years. Assuming that figure accurate, it will take 10 years of that tax increase just to finance PART of what congress blew before March this year.

Such revenue estimates are often optimistic, so maybe it will take the higher tax on the 'rich' LONGER to pay for what congress blew the first two months?

There are also rosy future estimates of saving $10 billion here or there, but it doesn't give a casual impression that the income and outgo figures are even in the same order of magnitude. Considering that congress ain't even started spending what they want to spend, this year alone.

Am not crying about rich folks getting reamed. Just wondering about my own taxes. The money has to come from somewhere, and the 'fair share' from the rich doesn't seem nearly big enough.

A detail missed in Daniel Gross' analysis on how 'well balanced' we were before the tax cuts-- They cut EVERYBODY's tax. I'll likely never get near the $250,000 figure, but the tax cuts actually did save me some money. Unlike Reagan's tax cut which also raised FICA/Medicaid, and caused me an INCREASE in tax.

So if they just restore the tax on the rich, it ain't the same as restoring the old tax rate in toto, and it won't garner nearly as much revenue, because the camel hump of the population that got tax cuts, won't be getting the tax increase. Or so they say. The check is in the mail.

Paul Kammueller said:

rotfl. And the market was doing so wonderfully up to Jan. 26th, eh? So now that you believe the White House controls the Dow, I trust that when the market recovers you'll attribute it all to Obama's leadership? I will be waiting for that post with baited breath.

Hi Paul

That is a good point to expect reciprocity, given certain assumptions. Do you think the president controls the Dow? If the president DOES NOT control the Dow then:

1. Bush had no hand in the Dow's current shoddy shape.
2. Obama can't ever improve the Dow no matter what he does, unless it decides to improve itself.
3. Obama would be dishonest to claim success improving the Dow when and if it improves under his watch.

By the above rules, one might conclude that if O can't be blamed for the Dow falling, then he can't be praised when it rises?

One could have various beliefs on a president's ability to control such things, perhaps equally valid lacking scientific evidence.

Perhaps presidents have little real power to improve the economy, but they do have sufficient power to hurt the economy? By analogy, poker is another game of chance with few degrees of freedom-- Scant wiggle room to adapt to random changing circumstance. Poor players occasionally win, and good players may lose ALMOST half the time. In that scenario, it seems easier for an incompetent player to lose, than for a competent player to win.

Even if you do everything right, the cards may be against you, but if you DO NOT do everything right, the cards are typically VERY vindictive.

Dunno if there is enforcement from the top on some topics, but one can view the 'underpinning' messaging of controversial topics to see much academic haggling on what should/not be included in the public portion of an article. Some folks throw a lot of time at polishing articles, and the viewable format can depend on the last guy who went in and messed with an article.

Some economics articles are balanced. Some economics articles even appear to have conservative bias. Such that there might be more paragraphs explaining a conservative view, compared to the number of paragraphs with a liberal take. Probably depends on the biases of each article's contributors.

I have nothing intellectually against embryonic stem cell research.

Borrowing a term from a Scientific American 'special issue' a few years ago on stem cell/therapeutic cloning-- Aspects of this technology today, and ultimate practical usage in the future, have a substantial 'yuck factor'. Ordinary folk getting completely grossed-out if they happen to look inside the sausage factory.

One can't predict future tech. If we knew in advance experimental results, then we wouldn't need no steenkin research and development . Depending on as-yet-unknown tech limitations, some eventual "most efficient use of the mature technology" could resemble work of Dr Josef Mengele. If that turns out the most feasible path, if it works it will be unstoppable regardless-- (mostly wealthy) Recipients of cures may not be inclined to look a gift horse in the mouth. Even a bombastic TV preacher or radio moralist who happens to need a replacement body part, may ultimately find the product valuable enough to ignore its means of manufacture.

The yuck factor is not luddite or anti-scientific (IMO). I was at one time interested in psycho-biology, but features such as electrode-sets in the brains of small frightened animals was enough to chase me off, regardless of intellectual curiosity. I persued it for awhile, but the research labs looked like Auschwitz for cute little monkeys, rabbits, kitties and rhodents. Yuck!

Maybe mature embryonic stem cell tech will be neat clean and humane, involving elegant bloodless blinking devices from a Star Trek set. Maybe not. If we don't do it, someone else will. Success will draw customers regardless. A few months extra life is often worth a LOT of money, or folks wouldn't pay the big bucks.

People who wholeheartedly endorse the research being either unaware or unconcerned about potential yuck results of its implementation-- It doesn't seem thoughtful or scientific.

Hi Dan

I'm certainly not youth, but MP3 and other compressed formats is about all I listen to.

Ears can be trained to detect tiny audio details. Since the beginning of electronic audio, every advance in fidelity seems to first astound experts in the field. Experts had become jaded to the tech warts of old tech, and the new tech would have fewer warts.

After becoming accustomed to the new tech, the ears self-train to hear defects which were at first not audible. It is amazing how accurate ears can become with training. Am pretty sure the training happens in the brain wetware signal processing rather than ear physiology. There are aged studio engineers with serious hearing loss who can somehow hear better than younger contemporaries with fresh ears.

Working with audio, it is part of the job to notice tiny details to maintain quality control. Tiny features can become gigantic fatal flaws when you listen close enough long enough. Am not saying that paying attention to detail is bad, but sometimes worked for hours fixing music/audio problems that at the time seemed horrible. Because I was closely 'tuned in' to the detail. Then next day listen to the original recording with fresh ears barely able to detect the 'horrible problem' from the day before.

The quality of the MUSIC matters more than the quality of the MEDIUM. Ray Charles on his worst day, recorded on a portable cassette recorder with a drug-store fifty cent tape, will be WAY better than some lesser artist recorded in the finest studio. Ear/brain has such good built-in signal processing that bad equipment can be 'filtered out' so it doesn't get in the way of listening to the actual music. As long as you don't obsess and get hung up on the equipment flaws.

I haven't noticed recent famous music stars significantly more talented than previous-generation famous music stars, but many non-famous young musicians seem much more serious and capable than when I started. They practice hard and perform amazing feats. Some of the young feller's output seems incredibly-perfect performance of mediocre ideas. Wheras in the past the reverse may have been more common-- Flawed delivery of a fabulous musical idea . But that may just be an old-fogey impression.

Apologies drifting-- It is just that MP3 may not be perfect, but it isn't flawed enough to spoil a fabulous song. And the finest equipment in the world isn't good enough to help a bad song.

Michael Koons said:

So, if I hand Bernie 40K 24 years ago and my last statement said 320K, a nice return over time, am I eligible to recoup the capital gains tax paid to the IRS? Just a thought..... :S

Hi Michael

That seems selfish. In 2003 the republicans already gave you AN UNDESERVED gift 5% of capital gains by rights of god owned by THE PEOPLE. So by paying 15% rather than 20% since 2003, you have received more money in rich folks welfare, than any deserving welfare recipient.

Why don't rich investors such as yourself understand that all money belongs to THE PEOPLE, and the only reason your are allowed to keep any at all, is because of corrupt welfare-for-the-rich in the form of sub-100% tax rates? Consider yourself lucky that you ever had a real $40,000, to say nothing of your ill-gotten theoretical $320,000.

It is so spoiled to whine for a refund on the other 15 %. Rich investors have such nerve! The govt already gave you 85% of your ill-gotten fictional gains! What insatiable greed.

Long ago studied a bit of economics, accounting and management, but am totally ignorant of finance or real-world procedures.

The accounting minutia surrounding 'how do you legally print money'-- Perhaps the details are important enough that a person ignorant of the details would be too ignorant to form a valid opinion? Or perhaps the details of HOW it is done, are less important than the macro-economic EFFECT of printing all that new money? Dunno.

Experience can re-shape OLD ignorance and naivete into NEW ignorance and naivete.

Never being a trusting sort, for a long time was leery of govt bonds from suspicion that the govt may not pay the money back. Naive assumption that if the govt reaches a point that it cannot collect sufficient revenue to service its debt, then the govt would default on the debt rather than brazenly flaunt dishonest accounting.

Can't recall anyone telling me this. It was just an assumption that the govt would have to follow somewhat-honest accounting procedures.

From the last few months, I no longer worry that the govt will default on my iBonds. I now worry that the govt will always pay its debt-- using print-on-demand money.

Because inflation has always been an expected and customary built-in feature of Keynsian economic policy, money has always had a use-by date like lettuce or cheese-- Spend the money quick before it loses value.

It looks like money is gonna have an increasingly short use-by date into the future. The iBonds were inflation hedge-- If an iBond will buy 100 burgers today, then perhaps good odds of buying 100 burgers in the future.

That may still be true, even with mass-produced fiat currency. Maybe when hamburgers cost $1000, that iBond will still buy 100 burgers. But it intuitively feels like monetary cheating or at least a very unwise way to run the money supply.

Have been trying to find some way to store work in a more permanent form than increasingly-ephemeral dollars (or dollar-derived instruments). Have not yet discovered such, but am increasingly leery of dollar-related work-storage devices.

As was earlier discussed, ammo, food, shoes may be better mid-term investments than stocks or bonds. The use-by date is probably no better than 5 or 10 years, but odds seem good that it will take more work to buy a bullet or a shoe (in dollars) five years hence. So the saved shoe is a better investment than the invested money?

Dunno. Am very ignorant of the situation.