Italy to Balance Budget? Cats to Sleep With Dogs?

This is awesome, great, spectacular news.

Italy: Budget To Be Balanced By 2013 - PM

November 30, 2011

Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti intends for Italy to have a balanced budget by 2013, he said Nov. 30, Reuters reported. Italy will adopt a “vast political and economic operation” Dec. 5 that will implement the austerity measures decided by the previous government, he said. Monti said he will present a new finance law to his Cabinet on Dec. 5 that includes provisions for structural reform and measures to curb Italian debt in the short run, AGI reported.

We all have every reason to be skeptical, very skeptical...but if they can pull this off and maintain it over the longer term, the news is truly earth-shatteringly good. Actually, upon reflection there was never any reason to believe that any government in Europe couldn't pull this off. Their budgets are just a soup of bribes to various constituencies built up over decades, all of which are easily scaled back and/or eliminated. The notion that this was critical spending necessary for proper functioning of their economies was laughable. The ability was always there to balance the budget, just not the will. Now that power is not derived from actual voting, but by Eurocratic fiat, poiltical bribes need not be paid or honored (at least in Italy and Greece). It was hard to focus on that fact through all the Armageddon talk. Maybe Jon Corzine was on to something after all, his timing was just off...maybe...

This, along with the Spanish voting to take their medicine (theoretically), bodes very well for a non-Armageddonish resolution to the Euro crisis. Stay very tuned.

Update: Covert War Against the Iranian Bomb

So all the explosions going on in and around sensitive Iranian nuclear sites (latest here) are starting to get more MSM attention (starting). So let me remind readers that way back in 2008 and 2009, before Stuxnet and all that, I told you that this covert war was coming. Well, it's fair to say that it is here.

So let's recap: Dead scientists, crashing AWACs, mysterious explosions, many dead IRGC poobahs, ultra-sophisticated computer viruses...

So what will Rodger Claire's next book on the denial campaign for the Iranian bomb be titled? I'm taking entries. My first shot: Defanging the Prophet: Inside the Covert War to Deny the Mullahs the Bomb

UPDATE: Time Mag thinks the timing of those Katyusha rockets fired into Israel from Lebanon is no co-ink-ee-dink either.

OWS Fading

Certainly not an indisputable fact, but it sure looks like the OWS movement is losing momentum. If so, that would make, to my mind, three strikes against the Episcopal Bishop of New York, Rev. Mark E. Sisk. I think he was wrong on the theology, wrong on American history, and now it appears he's wrong on reading the sociological tea leaves. In a way, Rev. Sisk is a perfect miniature of worldwide church head Rowan Williams, using Christian theology as a tool to crusade for Rawlsian social justice rather than for the spiritual edification of the individual, all while the vitality of the church crumbles.

Our Fossil Fuel Future

Our bright fossil fuel future rolls on and gathers steam:

- Massive natural gas discovery off of Mozambique;

- India to invest $76 billion in oil and gas development over the next five years;

- Brazil just keeps finding more oil;

...and the church of climate change holds yet another fear-mongering confab precisely as more embarrassing exposure of scientific fraud leaks out (if you know where to look, the MSM doesn't carry this stuff)

UPDATE: and those Third World/Environment-Be-Damned-Develop-At-All-Costs Norwegians will be investing $26 billion over the next two years.

The Global Warming movement is over.

Score Two for My 2011 Predictions

One of my 2011 predictions has now gone about as mainstream as one can get.

And another one gets a score here - the Tea Party is over 40% approval.

Inflation: The Fed May Not See It, But the Folks Do

People have noticed both the stealth inflation that I warned about and, now, the unstealthy kind. As the lady said, "Double Whammy!"

BTW, that warning of mine came back in April. Pretty good, IMO.

Fisking Sisk

While I am crafting a thoughtful, respectful response to Bishop Sisk it is worth pointing out some of the glaring flaws or curious assumptions in this message as starting points for those who wish to reflect upon it. The best methodology I can think of to achieve this right now is what it known in the blogosphere as "fisking."

On Friday, October 21, I visited Zuccotti Park, the site - at least until last night - of the Occupy Wall Street protest. Whatever happens next in Lower Manhattan (and as I write, on the morning of November 15, things are moving fast, with the outcome unclear), there can be no doubt that this protest has struck a chord, and given birth to a movement that appears, in spite of everything, to be gaining momentum.

Is it truly gaining momentum? How is this measured? There are many measures by which we can conclude the opposite.

For some, this chord seems to have sounded like a long awaited trumpet call to action; for others - who have not been shy to express their disdain - it is decidedly discordant.

So, it's black or white, you disdain it or welcome it as a trumpet call? How about something else? Is it not possible to be benignly indifferent to it, to not disdain it and yet not be inspired by it?

Back in October, it was not always easy to distinguish those who were "tourists" - people who swung by to see what was going on out of simple curiosity - from those who were active participants in the protest itself. But what was clear was that this was not some tiny cell of extremists. Those present represented what was, to me, a surprisingly wide swath of the American people. Some, young and not so young, gave the appearance of being seasoned protesters. Others, again both young and not so young, seemed to be first timers: folks who held their banners and slogans with a slight aura of awkwardness.

Again, is this true or is this romanticizing? I too visited Zocotti Park. It appeared to me to represent a narrow sliver of American society rather than a wide swath. Again, how do we measure this?

It is true that it was not easy at Zucotti Park to sort out the substance from the theatre. The media have offered little help, with their focus, unsurprisingly, on the most colorful and extreme expressions of protest. They have highlighted slogans that call for the jailing of bankers, while ignoring placards like the one I saw that said "99% + 1% = ONE" - which I interpreted as intending to highlight our common interests and essential unity as a people.

Is unity a salient, defining principle of this movement? Could the media have been highlighting what was representative of the movement rather than filtering?

Nor, sadly, have those in public leadership often commented helpfully-and they are certainly disingenuous when they point to the protestors' lack of a plan as evidence of a lack of seriousness, when apparently they have no plan themselves.

There is no disingenuousness. The plan is either the status quo or the status quo plus minor refinements, which is grounded in a belief that our society is largely just and moral, or least more so than available alternatives. That too is a legitimate stance, no?

Indeed, all too often the opposing voices that we hear are shrilly dismissive-their aggressive, trivializing tone hinting, to me, at a deep, largely unconscious, level of anxiety. It cannot be lost on many that all this is taking place with the background noise of the Arab Spring ringing in our ears.

I detect in this a presumed equivalency between protesting political opppression and income inequality. Is that the church's stance?

Whatever happens next in Downtown Manhattan, it is terribly important that the core energy behind this protest not be lost behind a blizzard of slogans and rhetoric.

Energy is evocative of emotion, zeal, passion. Slogans and rhetoric are evocative of words, of expressing ideas and endeavoring to persuade. Are Christians to be governed by passion over reason? Is that what is meant here?

The particular motivations of those protesting are, undoubtedly, as mixed as the American people itself. One dominant thread, however, is an (admittedly inchoate) critique of unfettered capitalism.

Is our brand of capitalism really "unfettered"? Many believe it is significantly fettered, and therein lies not only a flaw, but perhaps a great evil.

But the fundamental issue is not that the laws of capitalism are flawed; the fundamental issue is that we are flawed in our attitude to them.

There can be little doubt that capitalism is a productive way to order economic life. But we need to remember, as the protestors have reminded us, that that is all that it is - an economic system based on the entirely reasonable propositions that capital has value, and that supply and demand are the most efficient way to set prices. Capitalism is of no help at all in determining what is morally good - that is something that must instead be determined by the community's wider values.

Capitalism doesn't lay claim to determining moral goods. Are moral goods really determined by a community's values, and thus mutable? I was taught that morality is grounded in the Word of God and is immutable. Earthly arrangements reflect our response to the will of God, but they have no bearing on it.

And there should be no question that when an economic system fails to reflect those communal values, it should be modified and governed until it does.

Many believe our system does reflect shared values - freedom, opportunity, industriousness among others.

To say, as some do, that any attempt to control or guide our economic system is neither wise nor possible is to admit that an economic system has decisive control of our lives. For a Christian, such an admission would be nothing less than to yield to idolatry. (Though I do not claim deep knowledge of other religious traditions, I suspect that this is true for them as well.)

To say such is not to admit to lack of control over our lives. It is flawed to anthropomorphize an economic system. What is at the root of how we organize our society is our humans desires and needs. To say that changes to how we organize society are unwise are reflective of our understanding of who we are, not slavery to some false idol.

God alone is the One, and the only One, to whom we can concede such ultimate authority. For the non-theist to make the argument that the laws of economics are immutable is to concede that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves.

Is anybody saying that the laws of economics are such that they have led us away from what God asks of us? I'm pretty sure that is not what skeptics of the OWS movement think.

That is the same argument that those in the grip of various kinds of addiction make: "I am not in control, my addiction made me do it."

As the OWS protestors point out, wealth in our country is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few, the real income of the broad middle class has not increased in more than a generation, and the ranks of the poorest among us each year become ever more solidified. These are the facts - and the reality behind them is, quite simply, morally wrong.

Respectfully, these are not the facts. Income inequality is a highly nuanced, contentious subject within the field of economics. It is not sufficiently clear how imbalanced the distribution of resources is, nor is it clear how the relative balance equates to individual well-being or even social well-being.

Ultimately, left unchecked, that reality is deeply dangerous. It is at odds with our vision of ourselves, and as Americans we ignore it at the peril of our most cherished national ideals.

Again, what are our most cherished national ideals? Income equality was never a principle enshrined in our founding arrangements. We didn't fight a civil war over income inequality. We didn't act upon the world stage in the 20th century in the name of income inequality. That is no implicit condemnation of the notion, but let's not afford it a status it doesn't have.

As Christians, we ignore it at the peril of our souls.

Really? I was never taught that the fate of my soul depended on how much earthly riches I had relative to others. I was taught the love in my heart for my fellow man, God's love, mattered regardless of whether I had more or less than my neighbor.

The way forward is not simple. In spite of what some in the public square would have us think, there are no obvious and easy solutions for complex problems. But what we must strive for is clear. We must - and I believe that this is what lies at the core of the OWS protests - rein in the imbalances that have caused our economic house to careen off course as though it is a self-perpetuating, self-governing good.

Why do you elevate the relative distribution of wealth as what Christians must strive for? Does God keep score in monetary units? What about love, faith, virtue? These are the things I hear about on Sundays. I've read too of societies that focus nearly exclusively on the former and exhibit none of the latter. Again, what is it really that we should be striving for?

The solution that we find will not be perfect, just as human beings are not perfect; but to surrender to forces as though we are helpless before them is not an answer, but an excuse.

We can do better. We are not helpless. We can, by working together, build a better, more just, society: a society founded on the American ideal of a nation in which there are "certain unalienable Rights," including those to "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

How does income inequality follow from these three attributes? Why do we define "just" in terms of monetary values?

We can look to the heart of who we are as a people and draw upon our better lights to seek the common good.

Is a perpetual argument over who has more, who has less and who is worthy based on what they do or don't have in the interests of the common good?

That is our challenge as a nation. As followers of Jesus, we know that our calling now and always is to seek the welfare of the people, the children of God.

As a follower of Jesus I am tasked with reflecting his love and his sacrifice for us out into the world and to use the gifts he has given me for good. The welfare of the people may flow from that, but I'm pretty sure my explicit calling is not to address monetary imbalances here on Earth.

Finally, does God love "communities" or "societies"? I don't think so. God loves us - me, you...actual people. Does God exhort us to arrange our affairs for a proscribed amount and particular notion of justice? Maybe, but that's not what I've learned over a lifetime as a Christian. God exhorts us each to be just. Does God act on a collective basis? Again maybe, but I was taught that God acts upon the hearts of each of us. Jesus did not exhort his followers to build things in his name or achieve explicit societal goals in his name, he exhorts his follows to be "fishers of men" to act upon the individual, to secure hearts to his name. Sounds like Bishop Sisk is more a disciple of John Rawls than of Jesus Christ.

Be Careful What You Wish For

Demonize banks and clamp down on banking activities...fine. Understand the consequences though, direct and indirect.

The Episcopal Church Hearts OWS

In commenting on a report about a lack of church going among the political left, the other day I pointed out that the left seems to me to be quite well entrenched at least in some churches. For further proof, I give you a missive just received...

We Must Not Serve Capitalism - We Must Make It Serve Us

by the Rt. Rev. Mark S. Sisk, Bishop of New York

---

On Friday, October 21, I visited Zuccotti Park, the site - at least until last night - of the Occupy Wall Street protest. Whatever happens next in Lower Manhattan (and as I write, on the morning of November 15, things are moving fast, with the outcome unclear), there can be no doubt that this protest has struck a chord, and given birth to a movement that appears, in spite of everything, to be gaining momentum. For some, this chord seems to have sounded like a long awaited trumpet call to action; for others - who have not been shy to express their disdain - it is decidedly discordant.

Back in October, it was not always easy to distinguish those who were "tourists" - people who swung by to see what was going on out of simple curiosity - from those who were active participants in the protest itself. But what was clear was that this was not some tiny cell of extremists. Those present represented what was, to me, a surprisingly wide swath of the American people. Some, young and not so young, gave the appearance of being seasoned protesters. Others, again both young and not so young, seemed to be first timers: folks who held their banners and slogans with a slight aura of awkwardness.

It is true that it was not easy at Zucotti Park to sort out the substance from the theatre. The media have offered little help, with their focus, unsurprisingly, on the most colorful and extreme expressions of protest. They have highlighted slogans that call for the jailing of bankers, while ignoring placards like the one I saw that said "99% + 1% = ONE" - which I interpreted as intending to highlight our common interests and essential unity as a people. Nor, sadly, have those in public leadership often commented helpfully-and they are certainly disingenuous when they point to the protestors' lack of a plan as evidence of a lack of seriousness, when apparently they have no plan themselves. Indeed, all too often the opposing voices that we hear are shrilly dismissive-their aggressive, trivializing tone hinting, to me, at a deep, largely unconscious, level of anxiety. It cannot be lost on many that all this is taking place with the background noise of the Arab Spring ringing in our ears.

Whatever happens next in Downtown Manhattan, it is terribly important that the core energy behind this protest not be lost behind a blizzard of slogans and rhetoric. The particular motivations of those protesting are, undoubtedly, as mixed as the American people itself. One dominant thread, however, is an (admittedly inchoate) critique of unfettered capitalism.

But the fundamental issue is not that the laws of capitalism are flawed; the fundamental issue is that we are flawed in our attitude to them.

There can be little doubt that capitalism is a productive way to order economic life. But we need to remember, as the protestors have reminded us, that that is all that it is - an economic system based on the entirely reasonable propositions that capital has value, and that supply and demand are the most efficient way to set prices. Capitalism is of no help at all in determining what is morally good - that is something that must instead be determined by the community's wider values.

And there should be no question that when an economic system fails to reflect those communal values, it should be modified and governed until it does. To say, as some do, that any attempt to control or guide our economic system is neither wise nor possible is to admit that an economic system has decisive control of our lives. For a Christian, such an admission would be nothing less than to yield to idolatry. (Though I do not claim deep knowledge of other religious traditions, I suspect that this is true for them as well.) God alone is the One, and the only One, to whom we can concede such ultimate authority. For the non-theist to make the argument that the laws of economics are immutable is to concede that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves. That is the same argument that those in the grip of various kinds of addiction make: "I am not in control, my addiction made me do it."

As the OWS protestors point out, wealth in our country is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few, the real income of the broad middle class has not increased in more than a generation, and the ranks of the poorest among us each year become ever more solidified. These are the facts - and the reality behind them is, quite simply, morally wrong. Ultimately, left unchecked, that reality is deeply dangerous. It is at odds with our vision of ourselves, and as Americans we ignore it at the peril of our most cherished national ideals. As Christians, we ignore it at the peril of our souls.

The way forward is not simple. In spite of what some in the public square would have us think, there are no obvious and easy solutions for complex problems. But what we must strive for is clear. We must - and I believe that this is what lies at the core of the OWS protests - rein in the imbalances that have caused our economic house to careen off course as though it is a self-perpetuating, self-governing good. The solution that we find will not be perfect, just as human beings are not perfect; but to surrender to forces as though we are helpless before them is not an answer, but an excuse.

We can do better. We are not helpless. We can, by working together, build a better, more just, society: a society founded on the American ideal of a nation in which there are "certain unalienable Rights," including those to "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." We can look to the heart of who we are as a people and draw upon our better lights to seek the common good. That is our challenge as a nation. As followers of Jesus, we know that our calling now and always is to seek the welfare of the people, the children of God.

I can't make eloquent commentary just now, as this is hot off the presses and demands some deep reflection, but I will...

Obama Admin to Close Barn Door...

Is this a bad joke? We just did the diplomatic equivalent of sticking a needle in our good friend and key energy partner's eye, and now we're setting up an energy shop within the State Department? Laugh. Cry. Whatever.

Healthcare Fail Hits Close to Home

After enduring a 57% increase in my healthcare insurance costs over two years, I've just been informed that my insurance carrier is dropping several of its plans, mine included. My carrier, like a handful of others, is abandoning the small company market here in New York.

While Empire issued a statement saying it has “no intentions to withdraw from the New York Small Group market,” brokers say Empire's actions, in effect, mean just that. Empire will only offer expensive, noncompetitive products to New York City small businesses with between two and 50 workers.

“They will pull the majority of sellable products, and the four or five left are all ones people don't really care about,” said one broker.

Empire is not alone in facing extreme conditions in the small group market that make it difficult to turn a profit. The insurer experienced its first year-over-year financial loss in its small group business, a trend “that cannot be sustained,” Empire said. Since late 2006, several insurers exited the small group market in New York City, including CIGNA and HealthNet.

Fewer providers obviously means higher premiums, on top of the drastic increases we've seen to date. New York state has always had a disastrous healthcare insurance market (because we've had key elements of ObamaCare before the feds spread these toxic concepts across the nation), ObamaCare made it that much worse, and now the fallout is finally starting to crack the system. I'll have to see what my new options are but I fear that healthcare insurance costs may have finally reached the tipping point - as a small businessperson I absorb all the increase in costs - where I choose to self-insure. That'll be five more added to the rolls of "the uninsured." Way to go geniuses in Albany and Washington!

Warren Buffett Criticizes What He Helped Usher In

In an interview posted today Warren Buffett describes the economy exactly as I did several times (here, here, and especially here) - pretty good for owners of capital, but pretty lousy for workers. It is worth reprinting a major chunk of what I wrote, because this situation was entirely the work of a rabid leftist policy agenda combined with political rhetoric that I predicted and chronicled all along.

Mark Perry has a post up today that perfectly illuminates what I (and others) have highlighted about this economy - it sucks for the lower skilled but isn't too bad for investors and owners. Perry notes a guy who laments the sad state of the manufacturing recovery using Census data, while Perry highlights, using Census data as well, that manufacturing profits are booming. That's what Washington has created for us, a modest recovery that is accruing to capital and not to labor. How did they achieve this feat? Easy. First we must start with a misdiagnosis of the financial crisis. Politicians blamed it all on the banks and business, when it was largely the creation of government through highly distorted incentives. They further chose to tackle a financial panic, a monetary event, as a traditional business cycle recession and applied traditional counter-cyclical Keynesian "stimulus". Also, coming out of the financial crisis, the politicians ramped up both anti-business rhetoric and an anti-business policy agenda the likes of which this country hasn't see in seventy years. So as the monetary disruptions healed, the government was sucking the oxygen out of the economy by crowding out private capital to borrow and spend on "stimulus" and sending risk-takers to hide under their desks. So as the world beyond our borders recovered, having indulged in less over the top business bashing, US manufacturers have been able to secure alot of business exporting our great products to the world, but have little incentive to hire (ObamaCare) and expand here at home (card-check, EPA, NLRB, etc). Ergo the profits but not too much hiring. So that's how we got an economy that stinks for "workers" but is OK for "owners".

It was a no-brainer to call this one. This is exactly what a leftist policy agenda is designed to achieve and it is all it is able to achieve, and this is precisely what Warren Buffett is describing. As much as I admire Mr. Buffett, I think his political understanding is appalling. He advocates for the politicians that have created this kind of economy, so it is slightly repugnant for him to criticize it or lament it.

Of course, this won't explode the great persistent and pernicious myth that the American left stands for the little guy, the working man. The American left stands for itself and it's friends, full stop. Whatever the American right stands for is subject to debate, but where leftism leads us should be beyond dispute based on today's economic environment.

One More Reason Blue States Are Going Broke

The NY Post did an investigative report a few years ago about a golf club on Long Island where numerous retired transit workers, all receiving disability pensions, gathered to play golf regularly. The Post found that 100% of LIRR workers were retiring on disability pensions. The scam has since been fully exposed as a massive fraud against the taxpayers. Then they followed up with fun stories like the mixed-martial arts competitor on a disability pension and the tri-athlete as well.

Now, the media in NJ is waking up to the same union-engineered scam in NJ. Meet the cop who had an accident with a staple gun and thus garnered hundreds of thousands of dollars of Garden State taxpayers' dollars.

Oil Co. Finds A Billion Barrels in Obscure, Remote Hinterland

The anti-capitalist, anti-development, anti-progress, Malthusian environmental movement bases their opposition to hydrocarbon energy on, let's face it, whatever works. If they can't scare us with global warming, they will make their stand against fossil fuels on more reasonable sounding concerns over resource availability. For years they've been telling us the age of oil is over, then they qualified that to say the age of easy, or cheap, oil is over, saying we'd have to go to the ends of the earth to find increasingly smaller, meaningless pools of oil that are prohibitively expensive to tap.

How many times do we have to prove this wrong to bury the theme and convince the bamboozled public that they've been lied to for years? As North Dakota rockets to the top of the tables as an oil-producing state in a matter of a few years and Pennsylvania becomes the locus of the largest natural gas development prospects on the planet, we now learn of a nearly billion barrel recoverable resource in remote, obscure...wait for it...Colorado.

Anadarko Petroleum Corp. said that land it controls in northern Colorado may hold more than a billion barrels of recoverable oil and natural gas, the latest sign that U.S. energy production is set to surge.

The Woodlands, Texas-based exploration company's disclosure could vault Colorado's Wattenberg field into the ranks of major oil developments in the United States, joining the Bakken Shale in North Dakota and the Eagle Ford in South Texas. These new sources of oil are reversing four decades of declining domestic energy production.

Reminds me of something...

"'Energy supply' is determined not by 'what's out there' but by how good we are at finding and extracting it. What is scarce is not raw energy but the drive and the logic that is able to locate, purify, and channel it to our own ends."

Definition of Chutzpah

Lazy? Lazy?

No respect to the office is merited here. This cat is one nervy son-of-a-bitch.

But I Know Where You Can Find The Rest of Them on Sunday

While this may be true,

A majority of Democrats—52 percent—say they seldom or never go to church, according to Gallup data published Monday.

the other 48% seem to have a pretty clear hold on the Episcopal Church here in the US. At my church, in eight years from 2000-2008 not once did we pray for "George, our President" while we've prayed for "Barack, our President" nearly every week since January 2009.

Is Our Nobel-Winning Energy Secretary Innumerate?

Apparently Nobelist and Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu's reputation is sustaining some damage over the Solyndra scandal. I guess. His reputation ought to have taken a beating over silly statements like this rather than the Solyndra scandal, but Solyndra will have to do. Anyhow, Chu appears to be defending the Solyndra debacle thusly:

Chu cited a report saying that the global green energy market is worth almost $240 billion worldwide, and that photovoltaic systems — which turn light into electricity at the atomic level — are part of an $80 billion market.

“That’s nearly as much as Americans spend every year on beer,” he said. “The difference is that the solar PV market will grow and will dwarf the beer market.”

Holy Moley! Solar is, like, so gonna be bigger than beer!

I hope so. The approximate value of the global energy market is $8.4 trillion and the same figure for the global beer market is $325 billion. So if solar gets to be as big a deal as beer, it will still be less than 5% of the global energy market, closer to 4%.

Are we really well served by throwing precious billions of dollars that we don't have at technologies that, should they meet extremely aggressive growth targets, will still represent a small fraction of our energy sources (and thus have no impact on greenhouse gases, which have a completely theoretical relationship to global temperatures, which may or may not be bad if they were to rise...) ??

This is what happens when smart people like Secretary Chu get caught up in politics. It is a corruption of sorts.

(Not My) Thoughts On Romney

While I thought I was in on most if not all meetings of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, it appears that I am not. Apparently, Mitt Romney was stumping in NYC and I wasn't invited (even after saying good things about him!). So I am unable to to give you the on-the-ground reporting that you've come to expect from me once every couple of years. Fortunately, Spengler was there in my absence and he got much the same impression I got from Herman Cain when I saw him recently in that very same Grand Hyatt ballroom. And Spengler is also ABBO, as I am, so his analysis resonates with me.

Further thoughts: I have always thought that the key attribute of a President ought to be the ability to bring into his sphere a vast array of the most qualified and serious people to guide the thinking on and approaches to issues. Romney has always had that in spades and stands head and shoulders above all the rest in that regard. The question mark was Romney's presentation and putative plasticity. I am glad to hear that Spengler thinks this is not a major concern. I also have posited that Romney is clearly the leader in assembling a campaign war chest to rival billion dollar Barack. And Romney's economic team is miles ahead of what his rivals have.

Don't get me wrong, I am not stumping for Romney. I'm just trying to make knowledge, dispassionate analysis here, and Romney is undeniably formidable in many important respects. That is pure analysis, nothing more. But, having said that, my sincerest desire and fervent plea, should Romney win the nomination, will be for all Romney doubters and those dubious of his true conservative convictions to put their reservations aside and make it a priority to get their asses to the polls and drag others' asses to the polls in November of 2012. ABBO baby. ABBO.

Irony Alert

On-the-take Chinese officials are worried they'll be the victims of counterfeit luxury goods...

The popularity of Château Lafite-Rothschild seems to be waning with the elite of China, especially government officials who like the first growth as a gift or for major face giving. They are worried too much that Lafite is fake, and if they have the misfortune of serving one to a guest or giving it as a present, this would leave a very bad impression on their guests.

I have heard this many times over a week-long trip to Beijing and Hong Kong from various sources. “Everyone is worried that Lafites are fake,” he said. “It’s bad face if you give someone or serve someone fake Lafite.”

Reap. Sow. YadaYada.

$40K Settlement Suggests "Addition by Subtraction"

In Re the apparent settlement amounts paid to Herman Cain's accusers, read this analysis from a lawyer. Let me add two things. First, an accuser with a real claim doesn't go away for $40,000. A legit claim is looking for high six/low seven figures. Second, that $40,000 is a bargain to find out who within your organization is 1) a liar, 2) a troublemaker, 3) lazy, 4) a litigation time bomb or some combination thereof. Having had experience with organizations that are fanatical about attracting and cultivating talent, money spent culling dead wood/the wrong people is as good as money spent recruiting great people. Conventional HR wisdom used to be "what if we invest in our people and they leave the company?" I had an HR manager who always used to say "what if we don't invest in our people and they stay?" Small settlements like this are investments in "addition by subtraction."

Media Backfire?

Did somebody say that cynical hatchet jobs and shoddy, partisan journalism would actually help Cain as conservatives intrinsically gravitate to politicians that the EJM has it out for?

Looks like that somebody was right. (Note: check this out. Cain is making a smart move here, there is almost as much, maybe more, to be gained from appealing to MSM loathing than ducking and hiding. UPDATE: I just watched it again, it's more powerful than I even originally thought. Cain's symbolic linkage with Justice Thomas is brilliant, not just on the media circus, but because Thomas's jurisprudence has become talismanic for conservatives. Republican voters are gonna like Cain more when they hear, see, or even subconsciously feel a linkage with Thomas. And I can't think of more valuable conservative bona fides than to be called stupid by the likes of Al Sharpton or Harry Belafonte. Genius.)

While I'm in a self-back-patting mood, did somebody say that unemployment is going nowhere, that things are baked in the cake, that we're not getting out of this until we are rid of Obama or Obama himself alters his policy program so drastically as to repudiate everything he has ever believed?

As I have said, there is nothing that can revitalize this economy save unabashedly pro-growth policies and this President will not deliver them.

Yes I did and today's jobs data print affirms this view?

Greek Comedy

Greek Finance Minister: "Referendum? Dude, do you know how f**king broke we are?!"

Greek Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos called on the Greek government to categorically rule out a referendum on a crucial bailout plan and do everything to implement the deal.

...

In a speech to fellow Socialist lawmakers on Thursday, Venizelos said the bailout ought to be approved by an increased majority of 180 lawmakers in the 300-seat parliament. He said the debt-choked country needed its sixth tranche of aid from foreign lenders before Dec. 15.

While I sympathize with Daniel Hannan's view that Europe suffers from a lack of democracy and its elites like it that way, we are well past fretting over that now. The time for these deadbeat Greeks to stop dicking around is now and waving the banner of democracy doesn't change the situation. Greece is small potatoes; they can't contribute anything positive, all they can do is burn the house down. Time to shut their antics down, even if it does reinforce the elitism of Eurocrats.

Huh?

I don't know what to make of this:

An unnamed source close to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi confirmed the involvement of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) in the assassination plot against the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Al Arabiya reported Nov. 2. The unnamed source said Salehi’s comments came during a recent meeting with Mohammed Nahavandian, former assistant at the National Security Council and the current president of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The source quoted Salehi as saying the plot was about to be implemented and it was not fabricated by U.S. authorities.

In other words: "You're damn right we're plotting acts of war on US soil!" or alternatively "What are you gonna do about it, Obama...loser?"

UPDATE: Wow. Now we have this. Has the unclenched hand been swatted and singed so bad that it is now clenched and cocked? RTWT, as Ed has all your irony and a full scale run-down of the political hypocrisy at play in re Iran.

UPPDATE: Reporting coming through on Drudge suggests that Bibi was planning to attack and retired Mossad chief Meir Daggan leaked the plans to the press to scuttle the attack. This, IMO, is laughable. I don't think the Israelis are capable of something so clumsy when it comes to the existential threat that is Iran. I think this is a ruse to see if Iran gives up any clues - evasive hardening of sensitive sites, asset repositioning, etc. - as to what they'd do if an attack was imminent. Or it may be an attempt to draw the US and the Brits into a good cop role but a confrontational one nonetheless. This will be really interesting to follow, nothing is what it seems, I am sure of it.

Bitter Clinger Talks Jobs

Clinging to that religion.

"If Congress tells you they don't have time, they got time to do it. We've been in the House of Representatives, what have you guys been debating? John (Speaker John Boehner), you've been debating a commemorative coin for baseball? You have legislation reaffirming that In God We Trust is our motto. That's not putting people back to work. I trust in God, but God wants to see us help ourselves by putting people back to work," Obama said.

Quite bitterly, I might add.

Pretty soon, Lightworker might start sounding like this guy.

Bratty, Anti-Intellectual Harvard Students (But I Repeat Myself)

I can't think of a dumber statement than this:

"There is no justification for presenting Adam Smith’s economic theories as more fundamental or basic than, for example, Keynesian theory."

Not just on the face of it - Smith is every bit as important as Keynes, perhaps more so - but, in the context especially. Aren't these students there to learn? Isn't this an introductory course? What rational basis do introductory students have to dictate course material to an experienced, tenured professor? Furthermore, how is it that introductory students are sufficiently knowledgeable to make conclusions and judgements as to the relative merits of two key figures in economics? Finally, who cares if there is bias in the course? (although based on this defense it appears, in fact, to be scrupulously fair and neutral.) Isn't the point of a liberal (18th century definition) education to learn as much as possible from all perspectives? Can students presume to call themselves educated by taking only courses that hew to one ideological perspective? If they hate taking economics from a Bush appointee, go take one from an Obama appointee or a Clinton appointee, there are several at Harvard. Or supplement your reading on your own and challenge Mankiw in class with what you've learned.

Walking out is about the most childish and anti-educational choice these young people could make. Woody Allen said 90% of life is showing up. Indeed it is. Let these bratty dopes walk out and live their 10% lives.

Or they could take this advice from Thomas Sowell: "Learn all you can before you reach conclusions. There are plenty of people out there who have pre-packaged conclusions for you to reach. You need to build up a level of knowledge and experience so that you are no longer putty in the hands of somebody else who has his own agenda." (at the 45:25 mark here if you are interested)

Sound Familiar?

Funny how coincidence works. The Powerline guys have an episode of Uncommon Knowledge up featuring the great Thomas Sowell. The host, Peter Robinson, quotes from The Thomas Sowell Reader an observation that is not entirely original (simply a basic fact of historical analysis) but powerful and worth noting often: "The members of the Communist League were overwhelmingly intellectuals and professionals. It had the same kind of social composition that would in later years categorize many radical groups in which the youthful offspring of privilege called themselves the proletariat." Translation: Marxism is the conceit of rich kids with fancy educations.

Today we learn some fun facts about various OWS protestors' living quarters.

My Big Fat Greek Margin Call

Thank You Dumb-Ass Greeks for just a little extra volatility to cap off your tragic soap opera of dysfunction. Losers. It'll come out, somebody got whipsawed by this little trick.

A friend said it best to me recently, the biggest problem with the European crisis is that Europeans have to solve it. (We're no great shakes, but the Euroweenies make us look like paragons of fiscal rectitude and decisiveness.)

The Media Is Playing "Pong" in a "WoW" World

Someone just asked me, does this Politico story hurt Herman Cain? My answer: I don't think so. According to the folks at Pew, American trust of the media has never been lower. 66% percent think news stories are often inaccurate, 63% see the media as biased, and overall 55% percent have very little or no trust in the media. (No small irony in where that link takes you!)

Among conservatives those numbers are higher. So right off the bat, roughly 70% of people interested in learning about Herman Cain for the purposes of voting in a Republican primary probably think the story is a biased, politically-motivated attack. This will generate sympathy and give Cain a chance to both showcase crisis management skills and toughness in the face of media confrontation. So, I see it as a minor plus for Cain and a potential bigger plus if he handles it well.

That is just the media dynamics at work. There is a second dynamic, which is the laughable state of the "rights" movement manifested in these very thin claims of harassment. Civil rights, women's rights, and various other victimology aspirant rights' groups have descended into a caricature status as payola seeking opportunists. From Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Push shakedowns to the tens of thousands of laughable claims of harassment/rights violations based on the painfully low, subjective standard setting of the victim-mongers - Americans are beyond suspect of such claims. They are beyond tired of such claims. They are now quite incensed at what is now a shakedown industry operating outside of any normal rules, wreaking havoc across society. Certainly conservatives feel that way, and likely many independents. So the same reaction is in play here - Cain will garner at least some small sympathy, perhaps more depending on the ultimate course of this story. If it turns out that these allegations are as lame as they appear at first blush, Cain will garner more support inversely proportional to Politico's lameness.

If Cain survives the gauntlet and actually secures the Republican nomination, the media might want to ask themselves, do they really want to remind a small army of core Republicans as well as independent swing voters just how cynical, biased and journalistically corrupt they were in service of Barack Obama in 2008 by reprising the same tactics in 2012???

We don't live in a world where someone might write an angry or skeptical letter to the editor anymore. Swarms of independent voices, self-styled watchdogs, and alternative media outlets will tear this story to shreds, if it is tearable, in a matter of minutes; and the ranker the media practice proves to be, the more it elevates its opponents. It is amazing that they haven't learned that.

UPDATE: Natch.

Yesterday was Herman Cain’s biggest campaign fundraising day, the candidate told Laura Ingraham this morning on her radio show. …

About the fundraising news, Ingraham said: “What does that tell you? Don’t let the media set the message for you. He didn’t cancel anything on his schedule. He’s not a hermit. He’s not hiding behind some wall of privacy.” Clearly, she said, “People want a fighter. They see right through the media haze.”