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July 2, 2009
 Autobiographical Corner
To be a good coach, you have to be smart enough to understand the game and dumb enough to think it’s important.
I’m not a good coach. My team won the little league championship last night in a rout, beating the previously-undefeated regular season league champions. I was thrilled, but I’m glad the whole thing is over. I’m simply not fit for coaching. My oldest son moves up to a different league next year. I’m really hoping to ditch out on coaching for the rest of my life, but I have a younger boy on the team who may wonder why I’m not involved anymore. I’ll see.
Thing is, I’m not even a sports guy. I didn’t play team sports after age 11. Although I follow sports and can spit out baseball statistics from 1890 to 1975 like I memorized them yesterday, I don’t know much about the game itself: its etiquette, its dynamics, even some rules. I feel sheepish when kids even ask me for advice. Though I have picked up quite a bit of baseball knowledge over the past two years by watching other coaches and videos, it’s still clearly not my area. My only consolation is that I don’t try to fool anyone about it. I see some coaches put on the Sparky Anderson facade. That just leads to unfortunate results.
The coaching also causes too much excitement and takes up too much time. I’m basically a walking coronary victim right now, with pressures from the office and other commitments piling up, but I had to take out ten hours this week to deal with playoff games.
Yet I was still really into it. Very odd, but common: Once your attention is riveted on something, it assumes subjective importance far beyond its objective importance. That’s me and little league. I’ve never thought youth athletics are terribly important (on the mundane plane alone, not to mention higher planes), and I think youth sports have assumed grotesque dimensions in our culture, but I had two sons on a team that needed me to coach it in a fashion that would let them win the championship (we were some people’s pre-season pick to win it all), so I did it. And I became more absorbed than a tennis dad. The absorption was bad enough that, quite frankly, I hated it every second that I wasn’t actually dealing with it, if that makes sense. Fortunately, I was pretty good at turning the attention faucet off-and-on (which isn’t always one of my strengths), so it became a part-time obsession, not something that absorbed me 24/7. When I wasn’t actually dealing with it, I didn’t think much about it, other than dreading the prospect of going back to deal with it.
The only think I liked about the whole thing: I actually grew fond of the other boys on the team. I suffer from a fairly intense case of what Tolstoy called “family narcissism” (the world can go to hell, just as long as everything’s alright with my little Andre). It’s not a good trait, but I’ve always given myself a pass due to the fact that I have seven children. For the past two years, and especially this year, I’ve had to deal with eleven other children. I was there to spend time with my two boys and help them have a good little league experience. Although I intended to be fair to everyone (my older son played a lot, my younger son–who’s still developing–played a lot less), it wasn’t my intent to grow fond of the other boys, but I did. Very much so, and I think a few of them sensed it. When I walked away from the celebration at Dairy Queen last night, one boy–a highly talented kid who doesn’t smile and often seems to snarl at me–looked up and said, “I’m going to see you at the all-stars! Right?! I’m going to see you at the all-stars.”
I think he thinks that I’m going to help coach. I just weakly smiled at him, patted him on the head, and said, “Sure.”
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July 1, 2009
Jack and Michael play for the Little League championship later this afternoon. I have a lot to get done before heading over to the fields. No time for blogging.
Please pray for our victory. Not just for Jack and Michael, but for the group of neat boys on their team, some of whom could really use a lift like this in their lives.
It may seem like a small thing, but as George MacDonald said, “Anything large enough for a wish to light upon, is large enough to hang a prayer upon.”
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June 30, 2009
 Tuesday Twitter
Revenge of the Fallen
Last week, my older children and their cousins and uncles went to a late showing of Transformers II. Even though I liked the first movie, I stayed behind because (i) they wouldn’t get back until almost midnight, which is almost two hours past my bedtime, and (ii) the reviews were so bad. Don’t make the same mistake. Most everyone in the group liked it, and Big Hollywood is receiving a lot of positive comments.
Kournikova at Center
Wimbledon tennis spokesman, Johnny Perkins, says that the tournament operates a casting couch system of play, with the better looking players grunting on Centre Court - with its superior acoustics - and the less attractive wimmin battling it in outer courts.
Received in an Email:
“The object of the game is to destroy American capitalism by having the government take over everything! Tokens include a bus, a teleprompter, a sprig of arugula and a waffle iron. Wanna play? No? Too bad, you’re already playing… And quite frankly, in this game, nobody wins!”
America Coming Out of Its Rock Star Stupor?
“Is Barack Obama approaching the end of his masterly run? . . . Obama’s extreme deficit spending and auto bailouts have for the first time made him responsible for policies people want to change. That’s a novel position for him after running so long against all that people disliked about the Bush years. . . . The fight over health care will be telling. Once again, people are being asked to believe that a trillion dollars in new spending is fiscally prudent. Once again, they’re being asked to believe that the government can manage an enormous, complex enterprise — even more so than the auto companies. Once again, they’re being asked by their audaciously ambitious, supremely self-confident president to suspend their disbelief. If the public doesn’t go along this time, the Obama phenomenon will have experienced the end of its heroic period.” NY Post.
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June 29, 2009
 Vacation and the Epiphany
Well, I’m back.
A most-righteous vacation!
Not really.
It left something to be desired.
Actually, it sucked.
It was my annual week at Houghton Lake with Marie and her family. It totals around 40 in-laws, plus the nine in my family. We have our own place–a little 800-foot cabin situated down the road, about 200 yards from the lake. It has charm, in a white-trash kind of way, and the owners are great people, but I much (much) prefer my house, where the carpet is clean and I know the upholstered furniture hasn’t been soiled by sweaty fat people and their frottage after spending all day ice fishing.
It’s always been my dream to do a “stay-cation”–hang around the house with my books and beer and a handful of domestic chores and maybe a couple of easy hours at the office. After eighteen years of marriage, I’m still waiting to get one, but my wife and I have decided that next year is my year.
Actually, she recommended it to me this year (suggesting I go for only half the week), but I said I wanted to spend time with my children, so I went for the whole thing. That was my mistake. My kids–even my teens–like to hang out with me. But not that week. During that week, even the four-year-old couldn’t care less if I were dead.
 So I read . . . and read . . . and read. On Tuesday, I realized that two of the economics books that I had brought with me were simply over my head, so I switched to other fare. Alas, the other books didn’t captivate me much (with one exception), and I got tired of reading (I had brought two other excellent books, but forgot until Friday afternoon that I had them). By Wednesday evening, I was sitting in the cabin by myself and thinking, “Wow, this sucks.”
But it wasn’t with rancor. I simply don’t like any of the week’s activities–creek walking, bird watching, tanning (yourself, not hides), fishing, golfing, casual drinking for hours. It’s a vacation that revolves around hard-core relaxation. Her family likes it that way. I prefer a mix of light work and leisure. Just different tastes. In the words of Dave Mason, “There ain’t no good guy. There ain’t no bad guy. There’s only you and me and we just [like to do different things].”
On Wednesday, it hit me: No one needs me here, and I don’t need to be here.
It was an epiphany-like moment.
I’ve resolved to stop attending. Marie is fine with it–she can see I’m miserable up there (nothing’s as pitiful as a bored adult). She has asked me to leave open the possibility that I’ll come up for a few days, but I don’t plan on it. If I need to do it out of affection or respect for her family, I will, but I’m hoping they understand. It’s a long drive for just two or three days, and to be honest, I’m really looking forward to doing one of those stay-cations. I’ll probably miss my kids terribly for the week, but heck, I miss ‘em terribly for the week I’m at Houghton Lake.
I might even ditch the whole stay-cation thing and take a trip on my own, like to New York City or some other place that isn’t kid-friendly. Last year, I almost attended a Chesterton conference in London. If something like that is offered that last week of June in 2010, I hope to be in the audience. Heck, if they want me, I’ll even offer to speak at it.
 Blogging Forecast
Many thanks for your patience these past two weeks. Daily visitors still exceed 500, so I’m pretty geeked. I feared that visitors would be dropping like flies after the parade of lame posts, but it didn’t happen.
Unfortunately, I have two grueling weeks ahead of me, and then I’ll be away from home for awhile, so blogging could be hit-and-miss.
But it should be better than the past two weeks. Three reasons:
1. I’m in the process of re-keying a handful of articles that I published years ago, but that aren’t available anywhere on the Web. I plan to turn them into feature pieces. They’re pretty decent, and I’ll be spicing them up with pictures, headlines, links, etc.
2. I was able to put together two decent essays while at Houghton Lake. I plan on running them while I’m gone.
3. I’m getting an iPhone.
I’m pretty stoked about the iPhone. I’m going to get an iPhone with Internet/email, four companion phones for Marie and the kids, and other neat features . . . and pay $15 less per month than I’m currently paying (with only four phones, no smart phone, no Internet, etc.)/ I’m currently getting screwed, yes, but I’m numb to it, plus my office’s computer consultant said I’d get a lot of productivity out of the iPhone. I’m hoping to do some decent blogging with it as well. We’ll see how it goes.
If anyone has any recommendations for blogging with an iPhone, I’m “all ears.” I’m picking it up today.
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June 24, 2009
Premise: The opening question that any political philosopher must grapple with: Can the state ever go past legendary King Pausole’s one law: “Hurt no man, then do as you will.” If so, when?
On the surface, this is an easy question to answer: If another person isn’t getting hurt, the state should back off. But does hurt include emotional hurt? A hurt reputation? Fraud? If not, can the state take steps to prevent plots to hurt someone physically? If a person entertains violent thoughts, he’s more likely to act on them. When can the state intervene in thoughts? It can’t. So thoughts are off limits. But what about aids to violent thoughts (e.g., pornography and the Octagon)?
It’s a question of proximity. I suspect tort common law on the issue of proximate cause could help with this analysis.
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June 23, 2009
Curmudgeonly Quotes
“When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in confederacy against him.” Jonathan Swift.
“The great thing about Glasgow is that if there’s a nuclear attack it’ll look exactly the same afterwards.” Billy Connolly.
“In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of the citizens to give to the other.” Voltaire (silly me, I thought there’d never come a day when Voltaire and I agreed on something)
“Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.” Leo Tolstoy
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June 22, 2009
 A Futuristic History
Many readers of this book have probably heard of the United States or its alternative name, “America.” For many years, it reigned as the most powerful nation in the world, both economically and militarily.
Like Rome (studied in Chapter Three), historians differ about when it become the world’s greatest power. All historians agree that the United States’ power grew steadily from its inception in 1776, the year it gained independence from England (a country that roughly comprised the area today known as Northwest Quadrant One of the European Commonwealth—England is discussed in Chapter Nine). Most historians believe its status as the world’s greatest power started in 1945, following World War II (see Chapter Twelve), but some say it didn’t gain absolute power until 1991 and the fall of the world’s other great power at that time, the United Soviet Socialist Republic.
Historians are even more divided with regard to when the United States’ status as the world’s greatest power ended. Like Rome, it was a series of events, rather than a massive fall, that brought it to an end.
In order to understand the end of the United States—and, more importantly, to help the reader form an intelligent opinion about when the United States ended and what lessons can be drawn from its fall—it is first necessary to understand why the United States deserves its own chapter in a world history book.
A Great Experiment
At its inception, the United States was a terribly unique experiment. It sought to combine effectively two opposing, yet desirable, societal characteristics: freedom and order.
It is crucial to understand this goal if the student hopes to have any understanding about what brought about the United States’ demise. Although historians differ about the final causes of the United States fall, all agree that the United States flourished when these two characteristics were effectively hinged together and that the final causes were brought about when these two characteristics ceased to work with each other but instead warred against each other.
The Greek philosopher Plato once observed that society is man writ large. By this, Plato meant that society at large reflects the individual persons that comprise it. By illustration, if a bunch of savages live together in an isolated area, you could reasonably refer to their “nation” as a savage nation (because it is comprised of savages). If a group of individuals in an area are all tall, you could, even if it sounds humorous, refer to the resulting geo-political unit as a “tall” nation.
Those examples do not fit the United States very well because the United States was a big country with hundreds of millions of people, but the point they illustrate should be clear: A society as a whole will reflect the individuals that comprise it.
This is, of course, common sense, but various thinkers and cultures have ceased to be aware of this fact throughout history.
The founders of the United States, however, firmly understood this truth and, at the root of the souls and passions and emotions of the American people, planted the traits of freedom and order.
It was a unique experiment. Most societies throughout history have emphasized order. Order, after all, is the most necessary condition for the continued existences of any society and its culture. If a society is continually disrupted with crime, military invasions, natural disasters, or other violent forces, it cannot long exist because it will have no adhesion.
The emphasis on order, however, often deterred freedom. In the interest of maintaining security, many nations became subject to despots or other oppressive forms of government. If a person, for instance, will disrupt society through a particular idea, some governments would understandly suppress it in order to preserve the necessary condition of order. The suppression, however, would hinge on that person’s freedom, as well as the freedom of society as a whole to hear that person’s idea.
As the reader can see, the competing claims of order and freedom can be difficult to reconcile. Because order is the precondition to freedom (the mere existence of a society and nation presupposes a certain level of order), most cultures emphasized order, often to the detriment of freedom. Order first, freedom second.
The United States was built on the idea of a marriage between these characteristics. Order would no longer dominate freedom and freedom would no longer be subordinate to order. They would be equal.
The reader should begin to see that it was a tricky proposition. Freedom, after all, can undermine order. In the example above, if the person with the idea really will disrupt society, and he or she in the name of freedom is allowed to spread the idea, society will lose order. Indeed, if the idea is particularly dangerous, it could lose all order with the result that it is destroyed altogether, and with the further (ironic) result that the society that gave freedom to spread the idea in the first place would no longer exist and would be replaced with a society that may or may not protect freedom.
Because nations had always emphasized order over freedom, the founders of the United States were particularly anxious to make sure that freedom would be order’s equal. The documents that created the ideal known as “America” and the particular country known as the “United States” were created by two documents that emphasized freedom: The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, respectively. The Constitution (which actually devoted far more time to the order of the United States, but with a steady eye on freedom) was immediately amended with ten declarations that were almost exclusively concerned with preserving the freedom of the American people. (These documents are reproduced in Appendix 27a.)
As part of this “substantive” concurrent concern for order and freedom, the United States’ founding fathers installed “procedural” devices that reflected it.
In the name of freedom, they installed a democracy, a political system that allows the people in society to vote on political matters. In the name of order, they made the Constitution the supreme law (overriding even the vote of the people, unless they could amend the Constitution with a super-majority of votes) and did not allow the people to vote directly on political matters. Rather, the founders allowed the people to vote on senators and representatives and a president, who would, in turn, cast the actual votes on political matters. The founding fathers intended that the elected leaders, by serving multi-year terms, would have the time to consider measures prudently and not be dictated by the “mob like” passions that had been known to disrupt societies throughout history. The leaders, however, could not disregard the people’s wishes because their terms were limited to a particular number of years, meaning that the people would have regular opportunities to remove them from office.
Through the substance and procedure of the founding documents, the founding father’s concurrent love of order and freedom was “stamped” on the mind of the young nation. Its people understood the need for order and cherished its freedoms and seemed to understand, at least implicitly, that the two must always be balanced against one another. They also understood that they were the first major culture in the history of the world to attempt such a thing and hence many early Americans viewed their country as a noble experiment.
This marriage of freedom and order, most historians agree, was the defining essence of the United States. It is also the reason the authors of this textbook have devoted an entire chapter to the United States. And in order to understand why the United States fell, it is necessary to understand the divorce of freedom and order that brought about its demise. . . .
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June 20, 2009
 De-Compressing (or Decomposing?)
Chesterton once said that a rich person has to be smart enough to earn all that money and dumb enough to want it. Wise men through the ages–from Socrates to Russell Kirk–eschewed the money-grubbing life as antithetical to the life of the mind. I’m guessing Sertillanges cites freedom from crushing business concerns as a pre-condition to the intellectual life (though I couldn’t confirm it).
And I know why: when you’re pressed at the office and constantly thinking about career things, you go dull.
That’s how I felt Friday evening when I sat down to write this post. I started scrolling through my normal cyber-stops in search of economic news. I got nothing. Nothing interested me. Nothing made me laugh. Everything hit my head with a thud. I found the cool picture that I inserted at the top of this post (here), but that’s it.
And it followed two grueling weeks at the office: 12-hour days (starting at 6:00 in the morning), followed by little league games with my sons. The result: obsession with business issues, with no time in the evening to unwind with a good book of higher wisdom. And even if I’d had the time, it wouldn’t have mattered. I was too spent at the end of the work day to do anything productive. I was better off at the baseball diamond, spending time with my boys.
Today, I worked only half a day, but it didn’t make a difference. Eight hours after I’d started to de-compress, I was still dull. The immediate future holds promise of good books and beer, so I’m really hoping it sharpens my mind. But right now, I feel like I’m just coming off a nasty hangover . . . and I haven’t drank a beer in two weeks.
Heck, maybe that’s the problem. I’ll soon find out.
Slow posting days blowing ahead (even slower than what we suffered through these past couple of days). Beer with me.
Happy summer.
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June 19, 2009
 Gift Me
One of the nicest small pleasures in life: the unexpected gift. Someone walks up to you and says, “Here, I got this for you.” It happens to me about once a year. It’s often a book, sometimes it’s beer (the guy known as “Meistergoat” in the comments has brought me a few great bottles of beer, including Three Philosophers). Last year, someone gave me the annual catalog to Eighth Day Books.
This year, someone gave me the Beers of the Month Calendar 2009 by World Class Beverages.
June features sour ales and Belgian/French ales. July toasts India Pale Ales (which I simply can’t drink) and American Ales (salute to the Fourth of July). My drinking days come up shortly. Maybe I’ll try them all. I’ll be swinging by a hole-in-the-wall liquor store in a few days that has an amazing selection of beers. I’ll stock up.
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June 17, 2009
 Employment at Wally World
Yesterday, the glory of managing a McDonald’s. Today, the glory of working at Wal-Mart.
EconTalk’s podcast this week is an interview with Charles Platt, a journalist who “went undercover” and got a job at Wal-Mart. He wanted to see how bad it is. He found it isn’t very bad at all. I’ve only listened to a third of the podcast, but the blurbs you can find at EconTalk are interesting. If you want to see his “book” on the topic, check out the feature story he wrote for the New York Post. Excerpts:
First, the basics:
The company states that its regular full-time hourly associates in the US average $10.86 per hour, while the mean hourly wage for retail sales associates in department stores generally is $8.67. The federal minimum wage is $6.55 per hour. Also every Wal-Mart employee gets a 10% store discount, while an additional 4% of wages go into profit-sharing and 401(k) plans. . . .
Next, a dose of subsidiarity:
My amiable, laid-back department supervisor had been doing this kind of thing for 15 years. When I asked him why, he took a moment to process the question. He had to think back to other employers he’d worked for in the distant past. None of them, he said, had treated him so well.
What exactly did he mean by that?
His answer lay in the structure of the store. “It’s deceptive, because Wal-Mart isn’t divided into separate stores like a mall,” he said. “But really, that’s how it works. Each section is separate. This is - my pet store! No one comes here and tells me how to run it. I could go for weeks without a supervisor asking any questions.” Here was the unseen, unreported side of the corporate behemoth. Big as it was, it was smart enough to give employees a feeling of autonomy.
The interesting:
We were given only a handful of outright prohibitions. No swearing in the store, for instance - not even the word “damn,” because some people might be offended. No funny-colored hair or blatant skin piercings, because some people might be offended. In fact almost all the rules devolved to the sacred principle of never, ever offending a customer - or “guest,” in Wal-Mart terminology.
The reason was clearly articulated. On average, anyone walking into Wal-Mart is likely to spend more than $200,000 at the store during the rest of his life. Therefore, any clueless employee who alienates that customer will cost the store around a quarter-million dollars. “If we don’t remember that our customers are in charge,” our trainer warned us, “we turn into Kmart.”
The political:
You have to wonder, then, why the store has such a terrible reputation, and I have to tell you that so far as I can determine, trade unions have done most of the mudslinging. Web sites that serve as a source for negative stories are often affiliated with unions. Walmartwatch.com, for instance, is partnered with the Service Employees International Union; Wakeupwalmart.com is entirely owned by United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. For years, now, they’ve campaigned against Wal-Mart, for reasons that may have more to do with money than compassion for the working poor. If more than one million Wal-Mart employees in the United States could be induced to join a union, by my calculation they’d be compelled to pay more than half-billion dollars each year in dues.
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June 16, 2009
 Hand Me that Spatula!
A writer sends out three hundred résumés in response to job postings. He got only eight interviews and only two real prospects: “I applied for about three hundred jobs. I applied to be a marketing designer at Nascar, a personal shopper at Tiffany, and a methadone counselor at Rikers Island. I applied to be the vice-president of collections and exhibitions at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, a product designer at La-Z-Boy, a housekeeper on a cruise ship, a butler in a mansion, and a baby photographer. I applied to be a customer-service rep at Trump University, a multimedia coordinator at the Clinton Global Initiative, and some kind of manager at Toys “R” Us, Chuck E. Cheese’s, Blockbuster, Home Depot, Starbucks, KFC, and McDonald’s.”
It’s scary stuff, but I scoff at his dismissive attitude to McDonald’s: “It’s not entirely unflattering to hear you’re potential management material, even if it’s for a McDonald’s franchise in a part of New York where the Law & Order cops find dead hookers. . . The McDonald’s brass, with their billions served and hellish turnover rates, had interviewing down to a science, and I wasn’t all that surprised when I didn’t hear back from them, either.”
I had lunch last week with a retired McDonald’s franchisee. He did well with his businesses, and I related to him how a former McDonald’s franchisee client of mine in northern Indiana paid his store managers $60,000 a year (this was about eight years ago), plus medical insurance. He said he wasn’t surprised. Good managers, he said, command salaries in excess of $100,000, plus benefits. He said he smirks when people mock, “You wanna be a hamburger flipper all your life?”
There’s money in them burgers! Don’t be too quick to condescend.
That’s it for today. Long baseball game last night, long days at the office.
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June 15, 2009
 Evil Marriage
I’ve harped on this point before: the marriage of big government and big business. The nuptials have been going on since the 17th century. It infuriated Belloc and Chesterton, and it ought to infuriate the rest of us, but we just keep voting for bigger government even though it merely further lines the pocket of big business.
The most-recent manifestation: Bailouts helping big banks get bigger. Excerpt: “As smaller banks start to fail at an alarming rate, many complain they are being penalized for the mistakes of Wall Street, including excessive trading of derivatives, whose values had little connection to the actual economy. . . . Some 37 independent banks have failed so far this year and more than 300 others are on the FDIC’s watch list. As more and more government funds go to the 800-pound gorillas of the banking sector, there is less remaining for the banks that are regarded as small enough to fail.”
 Philosophy Corner
Interesting complaint from a philosophy student: “I’ve done my time for a BA in philosophy. In my experiences so far, there is a lack of Middle Eastern credit. Maybe I haven’t gone to the big leagues and have an immature preconceived notion about academia. I got to survey from Pre-Socs, Classical, Hellenists, Medieval/Christianity, then there is a jump to Descartes all of a sudden.”
He goes to school in California. Maybe he ought to try to an authentically-Catholic college. Most Thomists are unabashed admirers of Averroes, Avicenna, and the many Muslims who labored to preserve the works of Aristotle at a time when Europe was not able to do so. I’d suggest to the student that it’s not a conspiracy against Islam, as much as a total blind spot toward all things Aristotelian. Aristotle, after all, thought that the brain cools the blood, right? He must be a doofus.
The student says he received a dose of medieval/Christian philosophy. That surprises me, and I’m a bit incredulous. If he really received some, I’m guessing it was in a dismissive way (”For the record, some medieval Scholastics, when they weren’t obsessed with how many angels can dance on the head of pin, addressed some of the ontological arguments raised by modern existentialists, but let’s talk about Sartre”).
Autobiographical Corner
Whew, yet another whirlwind weekend. Two baseball games (the first one, Friday night, for the regular season league championship–we lost in extra innings), high school meeting for kids going on a Mammoth Cave expedition, niece graduation party, son birthday party. I really enjoy all the people events, but I really (really, really) wish these things were spaced out more. Every weekend for the past six have been a blur, and it’s really getting to be a drag.
But I’m thinking that might change at least a little bit. Vacation time is coming up, and I should have plenty of time for reading.
But vacations also mean an even bigger distraction from blogging. When I am away from my computer I will arrange for something to be posted every day, but some of the posts might be brief and otherwise kinda lame. When you see something unusually short, you can figure, “Scheske must be away today.” I recently received a few books of curmudgeonly quotes. Some are pretty good (”When a new book is published, read an old one”–Samuel Rogers). I suspect the slow-posting days will feature ‘em.
Not Your Father’s Roach Coach
“A new generation of lunch trucks is hitting the streets. They serve high-end fare such as grass-fed beef hamburgers, escargot and crème brûlée. As they rove cities like Austin, New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, they alert customers to their locations using Twitter and Facebook. Their owners include highly trained chefs and well-known restaurateurs.” Link.
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June 13, 2009
 Benny’s House of Pain
Another financial journalist recommended by Nassim Nicholas Taleb is James Grant, of the Interest Rate Observer (annual subscription a mere $850). He recently commented on CNBC: “If the Fed examiners were set upon the Fed’s own documents—unlabeled documents—to pass judgment on the Fed’s capacity to survive the difficulties it faces in credit, it would shut this institution down,” he said. “The Fed is undercapitalized in a way that Citicorp is undercapitalized.”
Yeah, but it’s not a big deal. The Fed can just create the money digitally.
Oh wait, therein lies the real problem . . . therein lies the looming risk.
I’ve read at least two contrarians this past week who said, “Everyone is bracing for inflation, but what if deflation is coming down the pike? Then everyone’s investments–like in commodities indexes–are upside down wrong.” They’re right, of course, but bracing for deflation is like bracing for a snow storm in, say, May. Possible, yes, but all the indicators and general economic common sense point otherwise.
If you’re worried about rampant deflation, by the way, pay down your debt. Debtors get screwed by deflation (harder to pay their loans) and unjustly benefited by inflation (easier to pay their loans). That simple truth is the real reason we won’t see deflation: we’re a nation of debtors. Politicians who allow deflation won’t be re-elected because voters will feel the economic squeeze, even if they can’t quite identify what’s going on.
Which is ironic, of course: Inflation mostly benefits the government. Because it can create the money (through the Treasury’s printing press or the Fed’s creation of credits), it first benefits from the new money, before its effects ripple throughout the economy and raises prices, with the result that people who get the new money later don’t benefit as much or don’t benefit at all. So the federal government wants a nation of debtors because the debtors then vote in inflating politicians, who then use inflationary policies to support their free-spending ways.
It’s not really ironic, of course. But it is convenient. I wouldn’t call it a “conspiracy,” but I would call it “intentional.” It’s also basic economic sense with a long history (the battle between the kings who devalued the currency for their own benefit and the people who fought against it) |
Busier than Phyllis Diller at the hairdresser’s. No time for blogging. Just a few quick things: