Friendly Reminder
As I write this, Election Day is precisely seven days away. As most of you here probably know--and if you don't there's a conveniently stickied diary next to this one on the front page to explain it--the moderators have instituted a "zero tolerance" policy for rules violations regarding insulting fellow Forvmites, in an effort to keep things more civil--with the penalty being a one week suspension from posting here. With the election now one week away, basic math suggests that getting suspended in the next seven days will seriously hinder any gloating/schadenfreude/garment rending/whatever you have planned for Election Night here. There is not going to be any blanket amnesty for Election Night--if you are suspended between now and then, and you can't convince one of the moderators to reverse your suspension on the merits of your individual situation, you are not going to be participating in Election Night festivities here. As things stand now, no one is going to be under suspension on Election Night, and I'd like to keep it that way, so that the evening in question can remain, ahem, fun for all.
Thank you for your support. :-)
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References -
Close enough to an open thread for this comment.
--Fence post turtles -- They don't get up there by themselves, some moron had to put 'em there.
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)n/t
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| parent )which equation is screwed up every time the government with a bailout, mortgage assistance and the like. It wouldn't hurt to have accountability on the part of pols who promote over- or under-regulation of particular industries factored into the mix somehow, but that's probably asking for too much.
Speaking of exchanges and the like, do you know whether the amount of gold supposedly held by the various dealers actually equals the amount represented by gold certificates that have been sold? I've heard that the actual, physical amount of gold may be as little as one third of the certificates issued, and that the same may be true for silver, but I can't find anything from the exchanges an that.
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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)Crispin Sartwell gives it the old (anti-)college try:
I like Crispin; he's a perpetual challenger of liberal orthodoxies and a very smart man, but in this case he's wrong. Sarah Palin actually is intellectually incurious and willfully ignorant. Her treacly dedication to Downs Syndrome children is the natural position of a narrowly focused mind: her kid has it, therefore she cares about it. Maybe she'd even pursue reasonable policies related to special-needs children. But this tells us only that she's a moderately decent human being, not that she is qualified for political leadership. She has no coherent, robust set of political beliefs; she is unfamiliar with our country's founding document and its history of jurisprudence; most damningly, she clearly does not consider these things worth knowing, thinking, or arguing about.
When we listen to a politician's speeches, we instinctively fill in the blanks. With Palin, while the speeches are still there, the blanks cannot be filled in. Sartwell's comparison of Palin and Obama is disingenuous: laying aside for the moment which of the two is more Rawlsian, which is more likely to know who John Rawls is? Does Sartwell believe that Palin is a sort of idiot savant who doesn't need to read books because she has, de novo, constructed the entire canon of Western moral and political philosophy inside her head? (Shades of Victor Davis Hanson and other self-hating academics.)
Sartwell assumes we judge Palin more harshly because she's from a small town and went to the wrong school. (This is ironic on a personal level, because I'm from a small town and attended a small school.) Why the presumption of unusual bias on the part of her attackers? Everyone has biases; they don't render arguments or judgments invalid. Palin has been judged incompetent because that's what she is. Contrarianism can be taken too far.
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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)You mean it's finally ending?
--This place is my vacation.
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)maybe there should be a 'how to cope now its over' thread.
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| parent )There may be lawsuits for the next three months. Remember 2000.
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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| parent )The campaign to derail the administration of President Obama is already well under way.
--Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. -JH
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| parent )the fact that the right wing is currently engaged in a full-throated condemnation of Obama as a Marxist/Black Liberation Theologist/terrorist stooge will likely make it a great deal harder for them to do this.
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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| parent )Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio.
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| parent )When Obama fails to nationalize (more) major industries, hand out reparation checks, and invite Ahmadinejad to tea in the Rose Garden, whatever policy goals he actually pursues will look tame and reasonable.
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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| parent )There's another David Brock in the weeds somewhere. Obama will be under continual assault from the Right, especially after the election and before inauguration. See, they've learned any lie, no matter how demonstrably false will be given its day in the court of public opinion, especially in the Intertubes.
The secret to telling a good lie is to endlessly repeat it. The perfection of the reel-to-reel tape recorder brought higher fidelity to Hitler's propaganda machine. When his rants were broadcast over the loudspeakers and the radio, (and let's not forget, his Olympics were the first thing ever broadcast on television) it was a triumph of propaganda.
Choosy Moms Choose Jif. See, people don't really make decisions on the basis of free will. It's a matter of how people react to messages. Jung and the Synchronicity shows we connect all sorts of bizarre and unrelated events into a meaningful whole.
It won't matter what Obama does or says, as it didn't matter than Clinton backed NAFTA, deeply angering many of his Democratic allies. Both Hillary and Bill Clinton were subjected to the longest, nastiest smear campaign in the history of politics.
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| parent )in controlling the narrative, on the part of a GOP apparatus that has failed epically so far. If the right wing's various propaganda organs were capable of taking down Obama, they'd have done it already. He beat them, pure and simple, and I see no reason to think he won't keep beating them. He's twice the politician Bill Clinton ever was (and he keeps his fly zipped). If he agreed with me, I'd be ecstatic. As it is, I'm terrified, and conservatives should be too.
It pays, every now and then, to stop and reflect that a black man named Hussein is about to be elected President of the United States, a scant seven years after 9/11. Then ask yourself what that says about the man.
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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| parent )The Democrats are winning only because of what I call the Democratic Janitor Syndrome. When things get really bad, the Janitors are summoned to clean up the mess.
Up to the point where the economy went crazy, McCain was running neck-and-neck with Obama. Often, McCain would pull ahead if only by a few points. The Palin choice did much to solidify his base. IIRC Obama never cracked 50% until things got really terrible.
When America panics, it votes Democratic. But panic never holds up long term. When the sharp pains of this panic gives way to the dull ache of the recession, Obama and the Democrats will be blamed for everything.
But this blame will be different. The Republicans, in the form of the usual suspects, chief of which is Richard Mellon Scaife. Scaife backed Hillary Clinton, but only to keep Obama away from the nomination, and I'll bet Scaife's name, along with the Heritage Foundation, Media Research Center, Weekly Standard and the rest of them will engage in a concerted effort to discredit Obama, especially as he withdraws from Iraq.
Watch and see: it's coming, sure as tomorrow's sunrise.
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| parent )but I see no reason to believe they'll succeed. Hell, Scaife & Co. wouldn't have succeeded in demonizing Clinton either, were it not for his little failing with Ms. Lewinsky.
It's true that the financial crisis & other factors made this a Democratic year, but Obama wrested the nomination from the heir apparent (and her husband, of course), and it's looking like the general will be a lot more lopsided than it has any right to be. The financial crisis is instructive, actually: Obama stepped back and let McCain fall on his face, which was precisely the right move. He baited McCain into bringing up Ayers in the debate, and baited him again into diverting resources into unwinnable PA.
I expect Obama to keep roping these dopes, occasionally counterpunching to devastating effect, maintaining very high approval ratings & being reelected overwhelmingly in 2012.
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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| parent )legitimate criticism and opposition from a Congressional minority? It sounds like you already are preparing to brand any Republican opposition as illegitimate. Was, say, Barney Frank's and Chris Dodd's opposition to greater regulation of the two FMs in '04 through '06 legitimate in your view?
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent )What makes you think there will be anything resembling need? There is no reason to believe that there will be any legitimate criticism or opposition, only the venality and commitment to degradation of the discourse which has characterized the Republican Party for the past eight years.
The only difference will be that in the absence of a strong hand to contain the factions, they'll likely take to employing the same tactics against one anther.
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )Look who you're talking to, tomsyl. I have nearly as many disagreements with the Democrats as with the Republicans.
That being said, what we are discussing is not policy argument, but flat-out smears a la Vince Foster etc.
On the mortgage mess, honestly I am not qualified to have an opinion. In general it appears that underregulation was the culprit, but I don't know who or what should have been regulated more closely.
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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| parent )And pardon me for mistaking you for ________. Smears are what they are, and I think the populace has gotten pretty good as smelling them out. And mostly will lose interest in smutty stories after the election. Do you know anyone you consider sane who seriously bought into stories like Foster, Mena or the supposed assassination of Ron Brown?
(OTOH, and just as an aside, the theory that Janet Reno kept her job because she had the goods on Clinton has some credibility, given her patent incompetence. That would have followed in the tradition of Justice Dept blackmailer JE Hoover, who forced the Kennedy brothers to keep him on using that exact strategy.)
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent )One of my neighbors is a sweet little old lady named Alice who made up a bunch of flyers for the neighborhood this year. Undeterred by (my wife's) Obama signs, she earnestly tried to make the case to us that Obama is a simultaneous mole of Al Qaeda, the Black Panthers, and the American Communist Party. Strangely, this upset me a lot more than it did my wife, who has known her for about twenty years; she mentioned that Alice was also quite convinced that Clinton was a serial killer. Alice seems sane in most other respects, if a bit on the flagrantly religious side. She has been unfailingly kind to my wife's family, bringing them casseroles when they're sick, housesitting when needed, always stopping in to visit, etc.
The most telling aspect of her flyer was that she used the phrase "anti-white" to describe Obama about fifteen times. I wanted to confront her about this, and ask her if she thought it would be fair to describe a white politician who'd been raised by black parents and selected a black running mate as "anti-black", but my wife dissuaded me. Probably for the best.
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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| parent )My mom and my dad.
I remember the last time I talked about Clinton with my dad. He was telling me how TWA 800 might have been shot down by a rocket launched from the ground. I asked him why anyone would do that and how would the government keep it secret. He didn't know and didn't seem to understand why I would even ask such a question.
We're a happy family, though. Just no talk of politics. Ever.
--Over here on E Street, we're proud to support Obama for President. - Bruce Springsteen
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| parent )are completely separate animals. If the current screeching and ranting about Spreading the Wealth and Ayers-Ayers-Ayers is par for the course during the campaign, can the post-election be any different?
Say it ain't so, Joe. The Republicans will be gracious in defeat, they'll retool their message to fit the times, they'll give up the savage assbiting of the last 20 years and more. They'll be a principled, upstanding opposition party. Bwahaha! Riiight!
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| parent )as legitimate; your response pretty clearly suggests not.
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent )I expect the Republicans will get a far fairer hearing than they ever gave the Democrats.
But this I will guarantee, as sure as God made little green apples, that Judas Joe Lieberman will be given a major beatdown. Honest opposition we've always understood, we've never been terribly united as a party, nowhere near as united as the Repubs. Hell, there are plenty of honest Conservatives I admire, that you know, and I know plenty of Democrats who think like me. Honest opponents we respect. But we do not forgive treachery of his sort, and he will be cast into utter darkness.
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| parent )stepchild, why won't they do that to any Republican who shows the ability to rally his brethren?
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent )The big losers here? The Progressives who think Obama's going to Change the World in 100 Days. This recession will require harsh medicine, and the Liberals will not like it one bit. But it will need doing, and we both know it.
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| parent )Quite hard, I would have thought.
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| parent )as soft on terror and dangerous for the economy. The US economy won't be as bad as other countries caught in the crisis, but we are looking at a few years of somewhat hard times.
Look for a full-throated furor over Obama's handling of the economy (whether he does good, bad, or indifferent), and blame for high unemployment and Wall Street's problems, even though those things were caused by his predecessor. Meanwhile Obama will be painted as "too soft" in the next foreign crisis, regardless of what he does.
--Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. -JH
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| parent )right? Look at what Obama is selling right now in order to get elected. If he doesn't come through, why should he get treated any different from any other pol who can't deliver on campaign promises?
Before you conclude that Bush is responsible for high unemployment and Wall Street's problems, don't you have to consider the role of the Congress that Obama, Biden and McCain were part of at the time the groundwork for many of these problems was laid?
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent )Exactly so.
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| parent )they don't screw up the entire economy the way "deregulatory hawks" like Phil Gramm & Greenspan have done.
Looking at the financial crisis makes one almost yearn for the good ol' days of paltry conflicts of interest, earmarks, favoritism, crooked books a la Fannie & Freddie, cash in the freezer, etc.
There's a big difference between stealing some golden eggs and cooking the goose.
--Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. -JH
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| parent )The sucker punch he threw on brokerage house margin deregulation was back in '00 IIRC. What did Sentate Dems do to either undo it or at least publicize likely negative consequences in the time since then?
Greenspan led the Fed from 1987 through 2006, meaning he was reappointed twice by Bill Clinton. Haven't people called Clinton the wisest president w/r/t the economy?
Me, I'm sticking with the belief that central banks manipulated the economies of the US and the EC far more than banks or brokerages. No one seems to think the Fed, Deutshe Bank* or any of the others should be called to account for some reason.
*Not a central bank, I know, but with the same influence.
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent )and I'll also stipulate that, while the good times were rolling, everyone thought Alan Greenspan was a genius. That was a bipartisan assessment, with only a few lonely voices (Krugman) in the wilderness calling the policies into question.
But none of what has happened could have happened to the degree of severity it has without specific steps taken by Republican "deregulatory hawks" in Congress and elsewhere. The mortgage crisis would've already come & gone without bringing the whole economy to its knees.
They did have Democrat supporters, true. But it's important to identify the ideology responsible and its source. Else we're just asking to repeat the same mistake in a decade or so.
--Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. -JH
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| parent )I'm happy to learn that apparently I wasn't the only one who had no clue what Greenspan was saying; looks like the executive and Congress didn't know either, or thought they did and were misled. Congress needs to step up and recognize its responsibility for Fed oversight. That means achieving some level of understanding of what the Fed does and why. Which also would be a nifty way of keeping track of whether those actions are successful in achieving their intended results. None of which happens now AFAICT.
I think it's fine to identify ideology and source, so long as the difference between free markets and completely unfettered markets is recognized. An ideology that demands regulation by the government of everything businesses do will do just as much damage, if not more, to the economy. And there are many Democrats who would be in favor of just that, without either understanding or caring about economic effects.
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent )The more risk is involved in a given transaction, the more regulation is required, both internal and external.
Does that meet your approval? Free markets cannot be truly free if there's no merciless segregation of winners from losers. Ain't nothing sadder than the outtrade line at CBOT, some poor schmuck trying to match a trading ticket. And it has to be that way. Losers gotta lose like fish gotta swim and birds gotta fly.
Can't help lovin' those markets.
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| parent )it should be delta Return delta Regulation. If the return is high either there's a lot of risk involved or something funny is going on.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )..returns are easy to measure while risk is in the eye of the beholder (until the shooter rolls 7, anyway.)
But I'll go one step less far and say that you've all got a fundamental flaw in your requests. You cannot regulate risk. Not short of completely shutting down the activity in question, which I'm sure you'll agree has costs of its own. I'll also guarantee that while your equation of return and risk is correct, no regulator will be able to capture true returns quickly enough to regulate anything new.
The logical course is mostly not regulation of "do this" or "thou shalt not do that" variety, but ensuring a high level of transparency and placing some cap on leverage.
--The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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| parent )most insurance activity involving actuarial tables are pretty straightforward, and actuarial tables, despite the usual association with human health and longevity actually cover many more types of activities.
You are incorrect in saying that one cannot regulate risk. Anything can be regulated, it's just a matter of how effective the regulation will be and how difficult it will be to enforce. Reporting and transparency should be the default position to take on all financial transactions. I also agree with the limitations on leverage.
My point is that return should be the indicator of where regulators should be looking, since it is so easy to measure on a monthly or quarterly basis. Whenever historically unusual returns start showing up, that's an indication of market failure (at least if you believe in the efficient markets hypothesis) or someone pulling some funny business. It's a way of making sure that problems are detected and don't increase. It also will have a salutary effect on the market, if people realize that outsized returns will invite scrutiny it will tend to at least make for better and more sophisticated scams.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )....are actually a fairly crude measure, in my estimation. But that's neither here not there, I'm wholeheartedly in agreement with the idea that risk can be measured over time, as per below.
I'm also in agreement that outsized returns must equal additional risk. That was the gist of my promoted post at Marginal Revolution in August 2007.
What I doubt is that a regulator will easily draw good conclusions about risk from returns, or correctly identify what sort of risk is being taken. As an example, look at the sub-prime mortgage & auto originators in, say, 2006. They weren't wildly profitable, by any stretch of the imagination. They were very often pricing below risk, but you wouldn't have known that from looking at an earnings trend. How to reconcile these facts with our mutual claim in the first paragraph? By 2006, had they been pricing properly for risk, few of them would have made money. The market niche was getting crowded and competition was increasing. This was disguised by aggressive pricing on the (front) originations side and a general willingness to buy anything originated on the (back) securitization side. Then toss in abnormally low losses for the immediate years prior. It would have looked, to a reasonable regulator, as if things were getting a bit wild, but nothing as catastrophic as what actually happened.
This isn't to say that there isn't a correlation between risk and return. It's a foundational bedrock concept that there is. But risk can be disguised or shifted through time, and returns can show up in a number of different ways besides EPS.
Further, it's not clear to me that you want to limit risk, at least for individual players. Andrew Ladhe just pulled down an 800% return betting that sub-prime losses were going to blow up, before retiring to go smoke some fatties. This looks prescient, but there was, as in all such cases, a great deal of risk. Do we want to prevent people from placing bets like that? If there'd been more short money available betting on disasters, the likely result is you'd have gotten a smaller disaster in the end by virtue of the crazy pricing being a little less crazy.
--The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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| parent )I'm not saying that this is the be all and end all of regulation, I just think it's a good indicator to flag areas for further investigation. I don't think it applies to individual investors, more to the products and vehicles that they invest in. I also don't think that every high return transaction necessarily indicates a problem, but it's a good indicator of where to start looking.
And don't get me started on short selling, I think banning it is one of the stupidest reactions to the problems we've been having.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )I risk a million, I lose a million. Nobody says shut down risk-taking, we're paying hundreds of billions to re-start risk taking.
Your black cards can bring you money
so you hide them when you're able
In the land of milk and honey
you must put them on the table
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| parent )I was very precise in my wording, insofar as I don't believe you can (or want) to regulate it.
Measuring it ranges from trivial to impossible, depending on what sort you're talking about and whether or not you believe Nassim Taleb to any extent. I make my living off of it, FWIW.
--The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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| parent )If we have a market in pure risk, such as a futures market, (the only such market space in which I really have any experience) we can tolerate margin trading only insofar as those traders can endure a margin call.
Where a given risk market is dependent on other risk markets, risk goes into the stratosphere. I trade with both risk and profit stops, so I tend to self-regulate. Lots of people don't and get wiped out.
Now, how would we go about "regulating" the CDS market? I'm not the specialist here, but one thing was for certain: it was not regulated effectively. Some firms and banks took on insane amounts of risk and couldn't cover their bets.
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| parent )Margin limits, which in this case would translate into demonstrating that you've either got a net-zero position (i.e. the dealers, who have been little hurt) or that you have a minimum amount of capital to cover losses if you're selling protection (i.e. AIG).
Even here though, there are obvious weaknesses. AIG was not a fly-by-night hedgie. Hank mentioned actuarial tables before; I can assure you that AIG has loads of competent actuaries on staff. The problem may be as much about data as anything else. We have plenty of experience with mortality tables, and we get a little more every day.
--The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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| parent )Some of which, (at least one) was exactly as you describe, fly-by-night hedgies, and it dragged down the rest of an otherwise entirely reputable firm. At least that's the way I'm reading it. Not being the specialist in this area, I'll defer to you if shown otherwise, but these hedgies were trading unregulated instruments.
It seems, and here I again betray the simplicissimes of an argument I don't fully understand, trying to bail out these banks reminds me of flood insurance in some respects. Only the government backs flood insurance, because of adverse selection: nobody in a flood plain can really pay the real premium, hence the National Flood Insurance Program, a hugely controversial program on its face. People just will go on building in flood plains and it can't be stopped, despite the actuarial tables.
Maybe that's a bad example. But that's how I'm thinking: here's a whole market segment which went soft and the levees broke. The foreclosure mess reached epidemic proportions, all these CDS-es came into play and it was Solly Cholly thereafter.
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| parent )sounds great. I'm sure there are thousands of loopholes to both, so they would also require well-funded agencies to enforce. Transparency, leverage/capital reserve caps, and budget -- the exact three things deregulatory moves have been chipping away at.
I agree FWIW that government fiat designed to achieve some particular market result (limiting risk to certain classes of investors/institutions) will probably never work as intended.
But making sure certain rules are in place regarding particular transactions, that's something regulators can do pretty well.
--Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. -JH
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| parent )... unless, assuming he takes a 'hard' stance, they decide to paint him as too interventionist, or being needlessly bellicose for the sake of coming off as a tough guy. Which would be rich - but hypocrisy's never scared a good pol off a fruitful line of attack before!
--Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio.
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| parent )fails at all of the things he's promising to do if he gets the brass ring. Where in any of his campaign speeches has he even suggested that he might not be able to accomplish Great Things if elected? The perennial Yoda-like "Change You Need", right?
Yet this thread already is getting filled with excuses for the guy's failure, and he hasn't even been elected yet. At least you can wait until the attacks you anticipate actually happen before raising your defenses against them.
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent )they'll make fun of him using John McCain's song.
--Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. -JH
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| parent )majority, why will you or any of them give a fee about what Republicans say? You can just ignore them, right? Isn't that the whole point of this election from the Dems' standpoint?
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent )...it would prove that the Democrats learned nothing from Republican mistakes.
On the other hand, I have a feeling that the surviving house Republicans will be very right-wing. The moderates are quitting or on their way to losing, since they come from more moderate districts.
The GOP may very well make itself hard to deal with in order to damage democratic efforts at bipartisanship.
--Of course not!
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| parent )Dems in the House as well. Do you really think it is in anyone's interest (except the New, Improved Dem Congress leadaership and Obama if he wins) to have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate? Do you agree that the ability of the majority to filibuster is an important check and balance?
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent )The filibuster-proof majority, if we get it, will be a bonus, but I see moderate Democrats getting exactly what they want.
Obama, if his advisors are any guide to the matter, are nowhere near as liberal as the campaign itself. Jeffrey Liebman and Goolsbee are centrists from the old school: I don't think there will be anything like a Socialist Jubilee come January. Obama's tax policy is considerably more complex than this 250K threshold: Liebman and the Romers are Obama's macroeconomics people, they know they can't just tax the hell out of the rich without chasing off investment. They'll play this very much by the numbers: they will try to close down loopholes here and there, but Obama's real ace in the hole is Daniel Tarullo.
Obama's a nuanced man and I just don't see him playing the Liberal Sansculotte any time soon. If my guess is correct, he will work hard to gain consensus from people on the other side of the fence and will do more than throw spaghetti at the wall to see if any will stick.
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| parent )is a good thing from a checks and balances POV. do you?
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent )It might, but hey, it's a moot point. Checks and balances be damned. The Executive has more powers than ever and Congress has abdicated any responsibility it ever had. I don't think the Dems will attempt to steamroller anything, unless it comes to a SCOTUS nomination.
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| parent )and don't understand why you think they will be all sweetness and light if/when they control both the legislative and executive branches. In fact, I find that statement naive.
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent ). . .the last time they did, they got utterly obliterated in the next election, and a President from their own party sold the survivors down the river to save his own skin. Those who are left from those days might not be inclined to go down that primrose path. For example, I'm betting that neither Obama nor a heavily Democratic Congress will try to directly subvert recent pro-gun rights court precedents--being content to try to pack the Court to do it the long way around. The NRA was too instrumental in annihilating the Democrats in 1994 for the Democrats to want to directly mess with that particular sasquatch again.
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| parent )the economy is the only thing that matters right now. Obama's chances in 4 years depends entirely on the progress he makes in repairing the economy.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )Yeah--nothing 90s about that. Clinton got re-elected, but the rest of the Democrats certainly didn't come along for the ride.
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| parent )perhaps you would disagree. This is more like the 1929, the effect of the credit and market problems haven't hit the wider economy yet.
I don't think you realize the peril that Republicans are in, if Obama can get the economy in reasonably decent shape over the next four years he'll be putting a stake through the heart of the entire Republican economic policy since Reagan.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )That ought to make for some great campaign ads. For Republicans.
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| parent )where in the world did you get that from?
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent ). . .the whole Republican economic policy back to Reagan--part of which was getting rid of the obscene tax brackets from the 40's and 50's.
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| parent )BTW that's also not getting any traction for McCain this year. I was talking about the larger narrative about government being the problem, regulation being bad and smaller government being the only answer. Watch carefully, you're seeing it disintegrate before your eyes. I'm guessing the Rs will take another run with those themes in 2012 before the realization sinks in that it's over.
Or do you think that McCain is going to win and that Palin is the future of the Republican party? You've been kind of reticent to discuss electoral politics lately.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent ). . .after the S&L bailout in 1987--not to mention the giddy mood of Democrats after Bubba won in 1992. Oh, and those guys who wrote that book about a permanent Democratic Majority--ten years ago.
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| parent )but the trends sure seem to be there.
Any comments on McCain or Palin? Do you think they'll win, or that they've run a good campaign?
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )And they are not going to cheer on any sort of Progressive Pitchfork Wielders. Obama wisely campaigned from the left, because middle of the roaders end up in No Man's Land treading on the landmines.
Here's what's naive, Tomsyl. You're projecting Republican thinking onto the Democrats. You don't understand us since you're not one of us. Now, if the tables were reversed, yes, you would run roughshod over us, a-la Gingrich. But that's not what we're about. We're getting elected, not because of what we did, but what we didn't do. That doesn't mean we actually have a position on anything specific, and the truth is we don't.
Now that's what I see, and it's been a long time since anyone called me naive.
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| parent )I'm not projecting anyone's thinking onto anyone. I'm just a realist when it comes to national politics, apparently more so than you. Time will decide which of us is right; tests will include whether the Fairness Doctrine gets reinstated, whether there is a bipartisan consensus on health care, and energy policy (where Obama clearly lags in terms of real-world solutions).
Foreign policy? I think a consensus is more likely there if Obama gets in, because he's smart enough to see that radical changes there are both a bad idea and impossible to implement without a compliant State Department. Which I don't think he'll get because State will continue to believe as it always has that it is an independent fiefdom. Your thoughts on that last point?
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent )I'm sure there will be many a petty slight and settling of scores, but when it comes to big policy decisions, Obama will be aloof and above the fray. I think that's gonna be his hallmark, and will be a great excuse for not taking hard positions.
You will like Obama on foreign policy, I know you will. Here's why. Heretofore, America has always sorta ridden into these riots, said a lot of silly things, paid no attention to anyone and caused no end of harm. Obama will not only listen, but he'll let the other side talk. And they will talk, oh they'll bloviate and generally make all sorts of stupid noises. When they run out of air and stop to draw breath, Obama will parse all their arguments and give our enemies what's called in judo hane goshi.
Obama will take the State Department seriously, especially the old hands, who haven't been taken seriously in decades now. I foresee a new soft force strategy for the military as well: Obama will blur the lines between force projection and statecraft.
What is the big deal about Fairness Doctrine? What a straw that is, a bit of flotsam you're grabbing onto. Give it up, ride the tide in and you'll find Obama clever enough to bamboozle the mobs of every stripe.
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| parent )When I was a small child, all the preparations towards Christmas made me feel like it will never actually happen.
But somehow, someday, it did.
--Dein Grundsatz war, z'erst überleg'n, / a Meinung hab'n, dahinterstehn / Niemals Gewalt, alles bereden / Aber auch ka Angst vor irgendwem -- STS
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| parent )