Voting rights are sacred

There are 4 senate races still to be decided. Wired has a good article summarizing:

Voting machines that recently failed pre-election accuracy tests in Michigan are at the center of a disputed U.S. Senate race in Minnesota that hangs in the balance over fewer than 500 votes at press time.

It really amazes me that after 200 years we can't get elections right. In fact, we seem to have gone backwards. That's not really what I wanted to talk about though. The closing line:

Oregon uses mail-in paper ballots statewide that are read by a variety of optical-scan systems from ES&S and Sequoia Voting Systems. It's the first state that's gone entirely postal.

Lolz. There must've been a better way to phrase that. On the other hand, perhaps that was the best way.

Error rating: Either 0 or 4, depending on your sense of humor.

-Enginerd

I don't like it, so I choose to believe it can't happen

Well, Barack Obama will be the next president of the united states. I speak for about 52% of the country (and who knows how much of the rest of the world) when I say w00t! Now onto the criticism.

The Vancouver Sun just published a column explaining that Obama can't possibly deliver on all of his promises. I tend to agree that even with Obama's proposed taxes he can't possibly deliver universal health care, alternative energy, and a puppy in every house, the Sun seems to believe that he can't even raise taxes:

His plan to raise capital gains taxes, the first such tax increase since 1986, is a non-starter. Similarly, he will have to moderate his proposed tax increase for households with incomes above $200,000.

Um, what? He will have to moderate his plan to repeal the historic tax cut of 2001, which is set to expire in 2010 without renewal? Why, exactly will he have to do that? And what about raising the capital gains tax is a "non-starter"? A faulty spark plug, or a vague, unspecified problem which has yet to determined but will nonetheless ruin everything?

You know what else is a "non-starter"? Limiting executive pay. But it passed in the bailout.
In fact, the bailout itself was a non-starter according to Pelosi. While it's true the government put in some oversight, the plan that passed was pretty similar to his proposal.

Error rating: 3. This whole article is saying "no, that won't work" without saying why.

-Enginerd

Saying you don't want somebody elected is a political statement

In a grand display proving that racism is still alive and well, at least in some parts of the US, ABC news reports that a man has hung an effigy of Barack Obama in his lawn from a noose, in the shape of a ghost. Paraphrasing the report, "In an off-camera interview, he said that he do it for political purposes, but because he doesn't want an African American to become president".

I don't want charity, but please give me a hundred thousand dollars. I'm not sexist, but women are inferior to men. I don't want to say anything controversial, so I'm going to preface a political statement by saying that it's not political.

Honestly, what exactly does constitute a "political purpose"? I'm not going to give a precise definition, but I would say any public comment about a candidate for president is political. I'm not saying that's such a bad thing, there's nothing wrong with criticizing a candidates policies, experience (or lack thereof), or statements. But the statement he was making (assuming you believe the ABC news report) was that black people shouldn't be able to be president. How much more political can you get?

Error rating: 10. "I'm not trying to make a statement, but here's my statement." Honestly. This is of course predicated on accurate reporting by ABC news.

-Enginerd

PS They didn't mention the fact that the effigy had a star of david on the top of its head.

Market manipulation shouldn't be government policy

The weekends over, and that means the latest in the wave of world government clusterfucks rescue plans is being announced. The UK is partially nationalizing the Royal Bank of Scotland and HBOS. I can understand why that might be necessary (too big to fail, systemic risk, yada yada) but the justification given is the dumbest thing I've ever heard:

The Government was forced to take bigger stakes in the banks than it originally intended because of a dramatic slump in banks’ share prices last week. It also increased the amount of money it demanded the banks raise in an attempt to rebuild shattered confidence in the financial system.

That's stupid. Their share price is irrelevant. Look at their damn books, and see how solvent the bank is. Remember when people cared about assets and liabilities? A run on a banks deposits is reason for a bailout; a run on their stock most certainly is not. It gets better:

Mervyn King, the Bank of England Governor, has reportedly told the banks to ask for more than they need, meaning their capital position would be strengthened sufficiently to absorb shocks and a long recession

Take the money now, and because somebody might ask questions later. If we don't give "emergency" loans, disbursed over a period of days, people might actually be able to consider the consequences of our actions. Oy.

Error rating: 7. MARKETS FLUCTUATE

-Enginerd

You'd think our leaders would understand finance

The financial crisis is all everybody seems to be talking about these days, and the buzzword of the month is "bailout". British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is no exception. With regards to his attitude, CNN reports:

Sarkozy said the economic crisis required a global response, but Brown said that no strong bank should be allowed to fail for lack of solvency.

I am speechless. How exactly do you define a bank as "strong" without including solvent? Many individuals (and likely some companies) are technically "insolvent"; all you need is more debt than assets. This doesn't drive you to bankruptcy necessarily, if you have a job to bring in income to service your debts, you may do fine.

But for a bank, solvency is critical. They make money off the spread between interest paid to depositors and paid by borrowers. The only way to re-achieve solvency in any reasonable time is through high-yield (re: high risk) lending. Many S&Ls tried this; it didn't go well. Or you can hope that the loans you wrote off will somehow magically increase again in value. That's likely.

If a bank is insolvent, it should be shut down.

Error rating: 6. Shouldn't be shut down for lack of solvency? Double You Tee EFF?!

-Enginerd

We're doling out that "bad economy" line because the economy is bad

Donald Luskin at WaPo is apparently in the Phil Gramm camp, saying that the country has a lot of nerve bitching about the economy, and that it's really not so bad. In general, I actually agree, but with that rather crucial caveat that things are likely to get a whole lot worse before they get better. How much worse, nobody knows, but that's why we worry. A paragraph of the article which sums up the gist:

Things today just aren't that bad. Sure, there are trouble spots in the economy, as the government takeover of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and jitters about Wall Street firm Lehman Brothers, amply demonstrate. And unemployment figures are up a bit, too. None of this, however, is cause for depression -- or exaggerated Depression comparisons.

First, companies which own or guarantee $5 trillion dollars of mortgage debt are more than "trouble spots". Remember when Bernanke said that certain housing markets are "frothy"?
I'd like to focus on one particular statistic he cites:

Here's another one not to be too alarmed about: Obama is flat-out wrong when he frets on his campaign Web site that "the personal savings rate is now the lowest it's been since the Great Depression." The latest rate, for the second quarter of 2008, is 2.6 percent -- higher than the 1.9 percent rate that prevailed in the last quarter of Bill Clinton's presidency.

Here's a graph of the personal savings rate (from the St. Louis Fed):


Pretty fair guess that that spike is from the rebate checks. Anyway, Obama might get the exact statistic wrong but he gets the idea right. The personal savings rate has dropped steadily since 1980. People don't have money to save anymore.

People can use truthful statistics to lie, simply by selecting noise points. Luskin needs to get a more complete data set. Or he's a liar.

Error rating: 3

-Enginerd

The idiocy of John Stossel

Most people would say they are in favor of energy independence, because any type of independence sounds good. John Stossel isn't:

Most every politician and pundit says "energy independence" is a great idea. Presidents have promised it for 35 years. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we were self-sufficient, protected from high prices, supply disruptions and political machinations?

The hitch is that even if the United States were energy independent, it would be protected from none of those things. To think otherwise is to misunderstand basic economics and the global marketplace.

The US could never be completely protected from supply shocks, but if we could produce enough energy to supply ourselves, then we could outlast an energy embargo indefinitely. Maybe that's overkill, but it's true. While I see Stossel's point that energy independence might not be a good use of resources, he makes much more blatant claims about it being actively harmful:

To be for "energy independence" is to be against trade. But trade makes us as safe. Crop destruction from this summer's floods in the Midwest should remind us of the folly of depending only on ourselves. Achieving "energy independence" would expose us to unnecessary risks -- such as storms that knock out oil refineries or droughts that create corn -- and ethanol -- shortages.

This is confusing several things. Stossel makes the logical leap that in order to create energy independence, the US would have to ban energy imports, and then generalizes that to imports in general, bringing us back to his main point: free markets always best, any government intervention bad*.

Achieving "energy independence" would expose us to unnecessary risks -- such as storms that knock out oil refineries or droughts that create corn -- and ethanol -- shortages.

No, that would be energy protectionism, where we forbade import of energy of any kind. That's not the same thing.

The plan to create energy independence would be to invest in domestic supply. Taxing imports would certainly help, but since it would make gas more expensive it's not on anybody's to-do list. One of the merits to the argument is that if the US is running low on energy, this should spur the market to invest in new sources which are now profitable. So the US would produce more energy, but no government intervention needed. Any intervention would be using resources less optimally than they could be. TANSTAAFL (which, at least how I pronounce it, rhymes with "John Stossel").

One of the major drawbacks to this argument is that the free market won't take certain things into account: climate change, long-term political instability. Oil prices may have gone way up over saber rattling between Bush and Ahmadenijad this year, but we hated them and they hated us just as much in 2000, when oil was dirt cheap. And given that the time scales involved in either researching new technologies, or bringing new oil fields online, are at least 10 years.

Similarly, global climate change was anticipated decades ago by many who were called kooks. Even now, there's not likely to be significant change for another few decades. But changing now will be a lot easier than changing in 2040, because it can be done more gradually, and less damage will have been done in the interim.

The market typically doesn't think decades in the future.

Although Stossel is right that McCains $300 million prize for an electric car battery is stupid, because market incentives are strong enough to make the prize superfluous.

There's other stuff in the article about whether we're transferring wealth to the Middle East by buying oil. Stossel correctly points out we buy mostly from Canada and Mexico, but because our demand pushes up prices globally, we are transferring wealth to the Middle East indirectly. Also, since we get something for the purchase, are we really transferring wealth? Economics 101 would say no, but econ 101 assumes people are rational, have perfect information, and make perfect choices. So I could argue the point, but it's possible.

Error rating: 3. Article is really an average of 6s and 0s.

-Enginerd

*The fact the people equate "free markets" with "lack of government regulation" baffles me, but people always seem to think that.

No good deed goes unpunished, or TANSTAAFL

BusinessWeek has an article about California's public pension funds, and how following a socially conscious agenda allegedly has cost them money:

Eight years ago, then-state treasurer Philip Angelides launched his "Double Bottom Line" initiative, espousing a philosophy of profits and social reform. ... The strategy has been a drag on the returns of the funds, which overall have still trumped the S&P 500-stock index over the past five years. CalPERS, the largest pension fund in the U.S., left $400 million on the table by screening out investments in China, Colombia, and other countries. CalSTRS revealed that its cigarette ban cost it $1 billion in lost gains. With California home prices down nearly 40% in the past year and commercial properties off 15% , the funds' real estate bet could fizzle.

The first thing to notice is that the funds still outperformed the S&P 500. So relative to a completely passive investment strategy, the funds did perfectly fine.

What the article really says is that the funds changed strategies in 2000, and underperformed the returns they would've had if they hadn't changed strategies. Alright, fair enough. The slave trade was an extremely lucrative business back in the day, and if pension funds existed at the time, they likely would have invested in the slave trade.

It may be more moral for a poor person to make money immorally than a rich person, but to a point. Stealing a loaf of bread to feed your family is one thing, investing in companies which treat their employees like slaves is another. Now, I'm not saying that investing in tobacco companies or companies with questionable (at best) labor practices is the same as buying and selling slaves, but the principle is the same. You're making money off of other people's suffering. That's wrong, no matter who you are, or how much you need/want the money.

The article closes with a quote: Says Joel Kotkin, a fellow at Chapman University: "What you're seeing is good intentions going bad."

No, what you're seeing is the cost of good intentions. Nothing comes free, including being a good person.

Error Rating: 6. Really, BusinessWeek should be able to recognize that helping others often means hurting yourself.

-Enginerd

The time to worry about creating a moral hazard is when it's hardest

The most recent casualty in the never-ending credit crisis is IndyMac (times like this I'm glad the FDIC exists). There has been a great deal of talk of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae going under. As Steve Pearlstein over at the Washington Post says, "We're nearing that delicate point in the cycle when even the usual cheerleaders have hung up their pompoms...".

However, the overall gist of his article culminates in one final paragraph:

"A financial crisis is not a morality play. What matters most isn't the precedents that are set, the amount of taxpayer money that's implicated or whether people are made to suffer fully for their financial misjudgments. In the end, what matters most is that we get through it as quickly as possible with an economy and a financial system intact."

I somewhat agree. There's no point in going out of your way to punish people for what you see as excessive greed. However, that's not really the concern. The concern is that taxpayer resources, either explicitly taken through taxation or implicitly through Fed money creation, are used to bail out institutions which brought destruction on themselves.

Nobody likes to hear it, but TANSTAAFL (there ain't no such thing as a free lunch).
During any crisis, there is a real temptation to do whatever is necessary right now and forget about the long term consequences. That is what Pearlstein is advocating. That type of attitude might lessen this crisis, but it inevitably bring about another one (check out this article on how this happened with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac). It is shortsighted and frustrating.

The "bailout" of Bear Stearns is roughly how these things should go. The employees, and especially the shareholders, got royally screwed. Many employees obviously had no hand in the activities which led to a downfall, but when you work at a company you know your job security is dependent on more than just your performance, and the shareholders knew what risk they were taking. Whether the cost to the taxpayer (up to $29 billion) was justified remains to be seen, but there was no moral hazard created by this action*.

The only time when new structures can be put in place to minimize the boom-bust cycle is during the bust. During the boom, it's called anti-business. Now is the time when we need to focus our efforts on maintaining the long-term health and well-being of our populace, and if that means the complete destruction of our present financial system (it almost certainly doesn't, but painful reforms are likely necessary), so be it.

So, Mr. Pearlstein, I give you an error rating of 2. I know you mean well, and you're not totally wrong, but your priorities are a bit out of whack.

-Enginerd


*What many don't realize is the only people who got bailed out were Bear Stearns bondholders, i.e., people that lent them money. This is what will happen if the GSEs need bailing out. However, since the GSEs have $5 trillion of debt owned or guaranteed, that's basically everybody. For reference, the value of all publicly traded companies in the US was $20.5 trillion as of March 2007 (Seeking Alpha), so we're talking real money here.

Common Misconception

I, and many other people, have been trying to erase the historical basis for the calendar of much of the western world. From Conservapedia:

The term "Common Era" (CE) is an attempt to erase the historical basis for the primary calendar dating system in the Western world. "Common Era" has no real meaning, and even the origin of this term is unclear. The 1972 Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary has no entry for "Common Era."

Before going further I should point out that Conservapedia is basically full of shit on every article it contains. The talk page of this particular article contained many statements of people pointing out that this article is basically BS, and gets facts wrong to try to create a conspiracy which isn't there. Conservapedia appears to many conservatives a bad name.

According to Wikipedia (if you think it has a liberal bias, just check the references), C.E. has been used sporadically since 1615, first use by Kepler, although he used a latin phrase "anno aerae nostrae vulgaris", which roughly means "year of our common era" (I could be wrong with the translation).

My main problem, though, is with the idea that people who use the abbreviation C.E. are trying to destroy Christian culture in some way. The alternative to C.E. is A.D., which stands for "Anno Domini", or "the year of our lord". By using this abbreviation, you are implying that your lord is Jesus Christ. For any person not Christian, this would be blasphemous.

Yet there are many non-christians in the western world, who use the Gregorian calendar because it is the cultural norm. Any if C.E. stands for "Christian Era", you are rightly attributing the source of the calendar to the Christian religion. Everybody's happy. No need to start a crazy website, promoting this crazy conspiracy theory as well as Barack Obama being the first Affirmative Action President. So really, C.E. is perfectly fine.

Error Rating: 8. Would've only been a 6 for crazy conspiracy inventing, but they didn't even get basic facts right.

-Enginerd

Suing our way to prosperity

What do you do when your favorite grocery store raises its prices? Do you try to waste less food, switch to generics, or stop buying bottled water? If so, move to Cuba you pinko bastard.

Here in America, when something bad happens, we pick somebody to blame and sue them. Case in point, Congress and OPEC:

The House overwhelmingly approved legislation Tuesday allowing the Justice Department to sue OPEC members for limiting oil supplies and working together to set crude prices, but the White House threatened to veto the measure.The bill would subject OPEC oil producers, including Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela, to the same antitrust laws that U.S. companies must follow.The measure passed in a 324-84 vote, a big enough margin to override a presidential veto.

I feel dirty. This is the second time in the past few months I've found myself agreeing with Bush (other time was the farm bill). The White Houses view:

The White House opposes the bill, saying that targeting OPEC investment in the United States as a source for damage awards "would likely spur retaliatory action against American interests in those countries and lead to a reduction in oil available to U.S. refiners."

Yeah, that sounds about right. Although I'm pretty sure they got cut off before adding that "the Bush family derives most of it's wealth from oil, and so we're making a killing here. Cheney too."

Investigating the cause of current high prices would be a worthwhile activity, and is part of the bill, but Congress has already jumped to its conclusion and pointed the finger. The only effect will be to jeopardize our already tenuous relationship, and drive prices higher. Thanks for that.

Although the real reason for the bill is likely the same as the gas tax holiday. Congress wants to look like it's doing something helpful, but of course it can't.

Error rating: 5.

Winners never quit, except when they do

Many people have been calling on Clinton to quit the race. For quite awhile, in fact. Personally, I'm sort of on her side; the delegate count is very close, and she's closer in popular vote than in delegates. But she's been using dumb arguments. For instance, she's not a quitter:

"You see all those folks on TV, they keep telling me to quit," she said. "Well, I don’t know, maybe I was just raised with the kind of values you were raised -– you don’t quit on people and you don’t quit until you finish what you started and you don't quit on America. And I'm running for president because I believe that I would be the best president and I’m the stronger candidate to beat John McCain."

YOU'RE STILL IN THE SENATE! What exactly have you been doing there for the past 8 years? And what will you be doing there for at least the next 4 (assuming of course, she's not president)?

I've had this argument with people before. One friend of mine took a class in physics, and because it was hard, decided he couldn't quit and had to major in it. Phrased that way, it sounds sort of stupid, right? Did Romney give up on America? How about Huckabee? Or Edwards? Or Richardson? No, they didn't. They accepted reality, and decided how best to use their time and resources.

Her "best candidate to beat McCain" is much better, if people do the math. Democratic primaries are proportional, but the general election is winner-take-all. According to electoral-vote.com, Clinton beats McCain, but Obama loses. I'm surprised the pundits haven't noticed this. It's likely because they don't like doing math.

Anyway, error rating Clinton continuing to run because she's "not a quitter" instead of "I've done the math, I know my chances, and they don't warrant quitting": 3

-Enginerd

Let the masses rule? Impossible

So apparently some radicals think that the public should decide how best to govern the nation:

The foundation has posted its Transparency in Government Act of 2008 on the Web at publicmarkup.org and has invited the public to tweak, add to or criticize any aspect of the proposed bill. The goal, said Ellen Miller, executive director of the foundation, is to change the backroom, secretive way that legislation is typically passed in Washington.

Now, some people think this is a bad idea:

The idea was not as well received by Paul Miller, past president of the American League of Lobbyists. Miller says lobbyists are unfairly portrayed as backroom-deal makers.

There is more transparency in legislation than ever before, Miller said. But he disagrees with putting bills up for all to rewrite.

"I don't think the way you advocate is to put everything online and say, 'All right American people, weigh in on that,' because then what's next?" Miller asked. "Are we going to let the American people decide our defense policy, our trade policy, our immigration policy?"

I'm just going to assume he was quoted out of context, and meant something more like "Policy decisions require a broad base of knowledge and careful, critical analysis, that members of the public simply do not perform." But still, telling the public that they shouldn't have a voice in government decisions IN A DEMOCRATIC COUNTRY seems just a tad idiotic.

Error Scale: 4 (assuming there was some redeeming context)