Why I'm Not On Facebook

"Look  at Facebook: combine the internet with stalking. Amazing!"

-- James Altucher, here

Fascist CEOs Agree With Jamie Dimon: We Need MORE Fascism!

And William Cohan buys it, here for Bloomberg, after Jack Welch, Lou Gerstner and Bob Wright all agree with this statement from Dimon:

"[T]he rest of us should hold hands, get together -- collaborate -- business and government together to fix the problems. It’s going to be very hard for government to do it on its own and business can’t do it without collaborating with the government.”

Gee, what a shock. GE, IBM, NBC and JP Morgan Chase and Co. all agree that we should just forget the sins of the past and . . . move forward!

Now where have I heard that before?

Against Obama methinks they doth protest too much. Just the semblance of disapproval is too much for these guys. And with Romney in charge, that farcical posturing will at last be over, and it will be back to business as usual.

I'll bet none of the mothers of these guys ever spanked them once.

Caller To Bob Brinker Claims To Have Collected Nearly 19 POUNDS Of Gold Nuggets!

A guy with a high school education called in to Bob Brinker's "Money Talk" radio program today claiming to have collected almost 19 pounds of gold nuggets and gold dust over the years.

With a purity on average of between say 83 and 92 percent, those nuggets at $1,672 the ounce are worth between . . . $415K and $460K!

What a nice problem to have. He has $40K in the bank, but ten times that in gold.

Previous Bank Trend Treating Gold As Pariah Has Notably Changed

So says Jeffrey Snider of Alhambra Investment Partners here:

The new Basel Rules are positioning gold to enter the all-important ZERO RISK WEIGHTING category (targeted for adoption in 2015). Upon adoption, the new proposed rules would “elevate” gold in the regulatory hierarchy to the same status as cash and OECD sovereign debt in terms of capital ratios and regulatory leverage. Even the FDIC and OCC here in the United States have opened the requisite comment periods to adopt this proposal for US bank treatment. ...

If banks can now, under these proposed rules, keep the physical in their vaults and monetize it as collateral in derivative arrangements (IR swaps mostly), then they have a new outlet to obtain positive cash flows from gold without rendering additional physical selling – an almost exact reversal of the [previous] leasing/swap dynamic. This is also extremely useful if gold is accepted at the zero risk weighting, meaning that it would provide not only direct monetization for gold holders, it would do so with added regulatory and capital leverage (which is all that banks are after for any asset they own). Less selling pressure has been positive for price thirteen years , but it might also lead to banks reclaiming physical stocks from the market place if demand is high as a preferred collateral (which would be the case as uncertainty rises, particularly with regard to currency risk since gold is a good hedge against shifting currency prospects).

Threat From "Regionalism" Mirrors Why Your Rep. Doesn't Know Your Name

If you haven't yet heard of it, the threat from "regionalism" is the attempt to overturn the dominant organizing principle of physical space in America today: the suburbs and the governments formed to serve them. In my most recent local primary election, the Republican candidate favoring the regionalist philosophy not so narrowly won against a challenger who ran opposing it. 

Americans overwhelmingly live in the suburbs not in the least because they like it. There they have four walls of their very own, some green grass to enjoy and a little peace and quiet away from the bustle of life and the crime associated with large cities. Love of country-like living also happens to be an important inheritance from our English past, from which we get the ideal of the country gentleman, the garden and the hunt. Our estates are often less impressive and the ideal not so self-conscious, but few of us can imagine a better way to live.

The war against this way of life has taken many forms in recent times, the war against the SUV and now against the gasoline engine itself being prominent examples. What better way to deprive us of our dream than to compromise our access to and enjoyment of it? Another is to force us back into trains, where TSA VIPR units will soon be frisking us as frequently as they do now at airports. Yet another is to take away the tax deduction for mortgage interest, to make home ownership in the suburbs itself less appealing economically. So many forces are arrayed against the way of life of millions of normal Americans that one might be forgiven for thinking it is all some vast conspiracy.

Lately the war against our preferred way of life has taken shape in the drive toward "regionalism", a dreary subject to most Americans which is really a sleeper threatening to deprive citizens of representation and extend a trend which has been at work since at least the 1920s. At that time in America the US House of Representatives, chiefly controlled by Republicans, voted to circumvent the constitution and fix the number of representatives at the then current number of 435, when on the constitution's principle we should have by now at least 10,267 members in the US House. That's the reason your congressman doesn't know your name, and why you probably don't know his.

Today Democrats and Republicans in various places are uniting to extend this trend by forming alliances on behalf of "tax sharing" districts and "amalgamated" governments at the local level in the name of squeezing "efficiencies" out of larger scaled units. In fact the real motivation often turns out to be finding new sources of revenue to pay the exorbitant salaries, pensions and health care benefits of unionized government employees who have been promised the moon by big cities but which can no longer afford it, if they ever could.

There is a new book on the subject by Stanley Kurtz, Spreading the Wealth: How Obama is Robbing the Suburbs to Pay for the Cities, and an important article here by Wendell Cox, REGIONALISM: SPREADING THE FISCAL IRRESPONSIBILITY, a short and helpful introduction to the subject, from which this excerpt:

"[S]pecial interests have more power in larger jurisdictions, not least because they are needed to finance the election campaigns of elected officials, who always want to win the next election. They are also far more able to attend meetings – sending paid representatives – than local groups. This is particularly true the larger the metropolitan area covered, since meeting[s] are usually held in the core of urban area[s] not in areas further on the periphery. This [gives] greater influence to organized and well-funded special interests – such as big real estate developers, environmental groups, public employee unions – and drains the influence of the local grassroots. The result is that voters have less influence and that they can lose financial control of larger local governments. The only economies of scale in larger local government benefit lobbyists and special interests, not taxpayers or residents."

It Takes One To Know One: Liberalism Believes In Nothing

"Caesar ... and Christ; they had them both. And the word is spreading only now."

Oh dear, here, but if the author only understood that he also believes only in death:

[B]y now the base knows what Governor Romney believes, too. By now we all know what Governor Romney believes; by now his beliefs are more manifest and less mysterious than that of any candidate who’s ever run. Governor Romney believes nothing. ... What’s happening in and to the Republican Party this past week isn’t an aberration; it’s happening because of what the party has become . . ..

It's like a bad episode of Star Trek, in which The Enterprise visits a planet bent on civilizational suicide but must follow The Non-Interference Directive and let it go all to hell.

America Is So Much More Than One Man

America is you. America is your children. Have some.

Election 2012: TARP Republican or TARP Democrat? Some Choice! Same as 2008!

They are the TARP men! Goo Goo G'Joob.

Liberals Hate Middle Class: Bruce Bartlett Attacks The Mortgage Interest Deduction

Eliminating the mortgage interest deduction has become something of a fetish for liberals and libertarians in America. The enthusiasm for eliminating the deduction suggests a hatred for bourgeois values.

Liberals use it like a shield to obscure the hidden privileges they enjoy under the tax code, privileges which the vast lumpen proletariat is too dumb to understand. Extracting more revenue from their lessers so that they have more money to play with is the goal of liberals, whose constant refrain is "the money is in the middle." Actually, the money escaping taxation in America is at the top, where nearly $2 trillion of net compensation escapes Social Security taxation, amounting to a tax loss to the feds of about $300 billion annually.

Libertarians use elimination of the mortgage interest deduction more actively. To them it is like a club which they can use as a weapon to drive people from their homes in their effort to turn workers into interchangeable parts, which they can then move around wherever they need them and thus drive down the cost of their labor. If you are unemployed for a very long time because you won't move from your home, to a libertarian like a John Tamny or a Megan McArdle at The Atlantic, you are nothing but a depreciating asset, as she has put it.

Just look how Bruce Bartlett attacks the mortgage interest deduction here, misrepresenting its place not simply by singling it out but also by failing to place it within the spectrum of tax loss expenditures generally:

"The problem, insofar as tax reform is concerned, is that the mortgage interest deduction and that for property taxes reduce federal revenues by $100 billion per year."

If only that were an impressive number compared to the usual categories of tax loss expenditures.

The Joint Committee on Taxation, for example, puts the combined tax loss from deductions for health-related and cafeteria plans at $140 billion.

Tax loss from exclusion of retirement-related benefits comes to $160 billion when you include Social Security and Railroad retirement benefits, capital gains excluded at death, and pension and 401k plan contributions.

The last two together alone come to $91 billion.

Coincidently, reduced rates of tax on capital gains and dividends as a category by itself means a tax loss of nearly $91 billion, more than the mortgage interest deduction at $78 billion. 

The rich may benefit a lot from the tax perspective from the mortgage interest deduction, but they benefit more than anyone from reduced rates of tax on capital gains, and Bruce Bartlett knows it:

For most people, income is simple: it means wages or perhaps a pension or Social Security benefits. Income from capital – dividends, interest, rent and capital gains – seldom enters into the calculation. The vast bulk of such income is earned by the ultrawealthy, like Mr. Romney.

Bruce Bartlett has made it a regular habit to sniff at the proposals of Republicans, who recently restored the mortgage interest deduction plank in their platform, the real inspiration for his screed.

In this he reminds me of no one so much as Katie Couric when she went nosing around the "unwashed middle" before her ilk got hosed off in the November 2010 elections. But liberals still have a certain air about them.

I think they need another bath.

Mish Complains About "Useless" College Degrees, And Lousy Google Translate

"You're umbday in any language"

In ye good olde days, a college degree came with a foreign language requirement in addition to demonstrated facility with the finer points of English.

Holders of college degrees could reliably be counted on to read something in Italian, German or French and put it in a presentable form in their own language. In addition to knowing how to type, the skill supplements the work, say, of a financial blogger, unless your name is Mish, who has a degree in civil engineering.

On August 21 he's trying to plumb the depths of stories about the European Central Bank, noting here:

Every day I get links from Spain, Italy, Germany, and Australia. The first three frequently cause problems. Translation from German is particularly difficult.

For example, a Google-translated headline on Welt Online reads ECB chief demonstrates German banker. ...

With the help of Bran from Spain, Andrea from Italy, and "EM" from Germany I can frequently provide much better translations of foreign articles than I could otherwise.

Then three days later he complains here in a lengthy diatribe that colleges today turn out too many useless degrees:

Yet colleges churn out thousands of graduates, year after year, with perfectly useless degrees.

Clearly his own degree has failed him, not in the least because, even after all that, he still doesn't recognize it.

Education And Health: Inflation Is Highest Where Government Interferes The Most

Mish has the chart and discussion here.

Rasmussen Polling Also Shows Florida As A Must-Win For Romney

Based on Rasmussen's electoral college map tonight, Gov. Mitt Romney must win Florida to prevail against Obama.

Rasmussen shows Obama presently with 247 and Romney with 206 electoral college votes, and just six states in toss-up status (unlike RCP's ten in toss-up status): Colorado (9), Iowa (6), Wisconsin (10), Ohio (18), Virginia (13) and Florida (29).

My hunch is Obama figures Iowa is key to himself because he's counting on heavily union-dominated Ohio going his way, but Obama is so far making an effort not to telegraph this fact. Together those two toss-ups put him at 271, just enough to win. That's why he's spending so much time in Iowa after the pick of the 42 year old Rep. Paul Ryan by Romney, and why Byron York is fixated on Iowa in a recent column, but for the wrong reason. Iowa is more winnable for Obama than it is for Romney. In other words, Obama is theoretically right now conceding in a worst case scenario Florida, Virginia, Wisconsin and Colorado to Romney, which together give Romney only 267, not enough to win, because he believes he can win in Iowa and Ohio.

A Romney loss in Florida and an unlikely sweep of all the rest of these Rasmussen toss-ups means Romney still loses with 262.

Romney must prevail in Florida to win, if Rasmussen's map is correct. That's why Romney has focused on Florida right out of the box in sending Rep. Paul Ryan to Florida to appear there with his mother, reassuring the seniors on Medicare.

This election is going to be about the economy in general, but spending for Medicare is the tip of the Republican spear, while the president parries with appeals to the youth vote, which in Iowa turns out second only to Minnesota. For a state Romney at one time early decided not to contest in the primaries, Sen. Rick Santorum's narrow victory there identified Iowa to Obama as a state vulnerable for a candidate Romney.

The Des Moines Register reports here on five visits to Iowa by Obama in recent days:

The sitting president of the United States is coming back to Iowa next week to do some more campaigning, on the heels of a super-sized three-day visit to the state last week.

Obama is spending so much time in such an insignificant place because of the electoral math somewhere else, combined with the probability of winning Iowa's youth vote.

Female Domestic Violence Lawyer Used "Legitimate Rape" Phrase In '09 Newsday Article

But when Rep. Todd Akin uses it it's wrong?

Well obviously! He's a man, a Protestant, and holds an MDiv degree from a theologically conservative seminary, making him once, twice, three times a . . . baddy.

Here:

Lois Schwaeber, director of legal services for the Nassau County Coalition Against Domestic Violence, said cases where people make false reports of rape hurt all legitimate rape victims seeking justice. But she said prosecuting someone who has made a false report will discourage real rape victims from coming forward as well.

10tv In Ohio Uses "Legitimate Rape" In April 2012 Headline

But in August 2012 Rep. Todd Akin can't use the phrase "legitimate rape" and remain the Republican nominee for the US Senate from Missouri?

The story is here.

Here is the screenshot:

Female Reporter Speaks Of "Legitimate Rape" For Long Island Newsday In 2009

But for some reason Rep. Akin made a mistake using the words "legitimate" and "rape" together.

The story is here by Ann Givens:

On the one hand, they will want to discourage people from lying to law enforcement, and show that there will be consequences for doing so, experts said. On the other, they don't want to discourage legitimate rape victims from coming forward, or discourage people who lied at first from telling the truth later on, experts said.

Here's the screenshot:

Orlando Sentinel Quotes Orange County Official Saying "Legitimate Rape" In 2010

Rep. Todd Akin can't use the words together, but she can?

The story is here:

"There is potential that the recent cases involving false allegations of sexual violence will negatively influence legitimate rape victims from coming forward to receive recovery services, report the crime to law enforcement and ultimately hold their offenders accountable," she says.

Here's the screenshot:

George Neumayr: Romney And His Republicans Are Not Authentic Conservatives

So says George Neumayr for The American Spectator, here, and so do I:

An authentically conservative party would find Romney's unprincipled position far more chilling than Akin's gaffe. If unborn children gain or lose their right to life depending upon the circumstances of their conception, then the party has already conceded that that right doesn't exist. Ronald Reagan understood the implications of that concession and never wavered in his defense of the right to life of all unborn children, not just some of them. ... For all the talk about "pragmatism" and "diplomacy" this week from country club Republicans, they didn't display any towards a candidate who won a primary fair and square.

How One Conservative Voted Against Materialism And The Imperial Presidency In 1976

From Bill Kauffman, here:

[T]he Port Huron Statement, and SDS, emphasized the core principle of decentralization, of breaking overly large institutions and even cities down to a more human scale, “based on the vision of man as master of his machines and his society.”

“We oppose the depersonalization that reduces human beings to the status of things,” declared the authors. The line might have been written by another Michigan lad, Russell Kirk of Mecosta. Kirk was no New Leftist, though he did later befriend—and in 1976 voted for—Eugene McCarthy, the peace candidate of the 1968 Democratic primaries, the distributist-inclined Catholic intellectual who befuddled his conventional liberal supporters with talk of a salutary “depersonalizing” of the presidency, of reducing that office to its constitutional dimensions, shorn of the accreted cult of personality.

Mitt Romney: Today's Symbol Of The Fatal Impoverishment Of Conservatism

"[T]he conservative movement is enfeebled, intellectually and in backing, at the very hour of its popular ascendancy. (By the way, America’s bigger men of business, with very few exceptions, never have been of any help to really conservative causes; if they think of politics at all, it is much as they think of professional sports teams: 'Winning is the name of the game.') This may become a fatal impoverishment. ... 

I am not implying that conservative folk should set to forming a conservative ideology; for conservatism is the negation of ideology. The conservative public man turns to constitution, custom, convention, ancient consensus, prescription, precedent, as guides—not to the narrow and fanatical abstractions of ideology. I am saying, rather, that unless we show the rising generation what deserves to be conserved, and how to go about the work of preservation with intelligence and imagination—why, the present wave of conservative opinion will cast us on a stern and rockbound coast, perhaps with a savage behind every tree. Conservative leaders ought to declare, with Demosthenes, 'Citizens, I beg of you to think!' ...

So it is that thinking folk of conservative views ought to reject the embraces of the following categories of political zealots:

Those who urge us to sell the National Parks to private developers.

Those who believe that by starving South Africans we can dish Jesse Jackson and win over the black vote en masse.

Those who would woo the declining feminists by abolishing academic freedom through a new piece of 'Civil Rights' legislation.

Those who instruct us that 'the test of the market' is the whole of political economy and of morals.

Those who fancy that foreign policy can be conducted with religious zeal, on a basis of absolute right and absolute wrong.

Those who, imagining that all mistakes and malicious acts are the work of a malign or deluded 'elite,' cry with Carl Sandburg, 'The people, yes!'

Those who assure us that great corporations can do no wrong.

Those who discourse mainly of the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderburgers, and the Council on Foreign Relations.

And various other gentry who abjure liberalism but are capable of conserving nothing worth keeping."

-- Russell Kirk, 1986 (here)

Catholic Republicans Gang Up On Protestant Todd Akin

Laura Ingraham calls him a liar, Sean Hannity gives a prominent forum to Ann Coulter, who likens Akin to Eliot Spitzer and elsewhere calls him a swine, and Hugh Hewitt encourages him to drop out. Oh yeah, and throw in the VP nominee, well after the deadline.