I also think that Obama's foreign policy is sound; I've believed in "Speak softly and carry a big stick," since I first heard it.
.
I have always judged a chief executive primarily by foreign policy, since that is where he has a freer hand and can show what he's made of. Besides, Congress runs the domestic show.
.
I thought both Reagan and Thatcher promoted fiscal and financial regulatory policies that were mad, but I supported both because they were so firm against the USSR.
Tip and Ron fought their political battles, but neither was a rigid ideologue, and they were also friends who understood that it was their responsibility to do their best together for their country. It took immense political courage to reform Social Security; consider how badly off we'd be it were not for their cooperation and their guts.
.
Any way to get them back to replace what we've got? I've always believed that we do better with a Republican President and a Democratic Congress. No wonder we've had so much trouble since GHW Bush lost [I'm *still* pissed about that] - we're doing everything bass-ackwards.
I think the GOP is bent on suicide. Then we can put together a center-right party that understands, as the Republicans used to, that a stable two-party system requires that both parties compete for the middle third of the electorate. Boy Wonder Rove's 50%+1 made me angry enough to chew nails. For me, it really amounted to a violation of what has been an unwritten part of our Constitution.
And what about the welfare-dependent Whites who vote Republican because LBJ made them treat Blacks like human beings? Be careful about unsupported comments on the economic make up of both sides' voters. You are aware that Blacks only make up 12.5% of the population, aren't you? And you're not silly enough to imagine that there aren't plenty of rich democrats, are you?
.
Last I heard, the typical welfare recipient was a White woman and her kids, who had been abandoned by her husband. It may no longer be the case; I welcome correction.
.
Support your numbers, or don't waste our time.
The Fed's independence has already been damaged by Congress' dumping the whole economic problem in Bernanke's lap. Jobs fiscal policy has been ignored for ideological rather than intellectual reasons, and this ideological preference has forced the Fed into contortions of unprecedented type and scale, that have accomplished very little, and may be both difficult and dangerous to reverse.
Look at the expenditures since 9/11 on alleged security, not forgetting the wars in Iraq and in Afghanistan. Consider the routine harassment Americans undergo in the name of security theater. And all this in response to the threat of terrorism - nasty, but scarcely a threat to our existence. If faced with a genuine existential threat, as the Axis was in its day, I don't think that we would be much bothered by what amount to inconveniences.
"The UK surpassed pre-recession peak GDP already in 1933, and grew robustly through most of the 1930s."
.
And unemployment?
.
Perhaps our US unemployed ought to be out celebrating the new highs of the Dow.
You also omit that the UK was in recession in the 1920s as well as in the 1930s, and never experienced the boom from which the US fell so hard and so fast.
.
The Great Depression in the US was so different from that in the UK, that any analogy is fundamentally flawed.
"The other huge famine was that in Bengal in 1943."
How odd that you say nothing more. One might suspect that, as a British periodical, you are covering-up a British mass-murder.
.
Mustn't sully Sir Winston Churchill's reputation. We can't put him in the company of Hitler or Stalin or Mao, can we?
.
"Great men are almost always bad men."
- Lord Acton
If there were no reasons to believe that abuses by the Right were more common, then the IRS was wrong. If there were, in fact, good reasons to believe that abuses by the Right were more common, they were doing their job, and well.
.
So which is it? Everyone is talking about the unattractive appearance of all this business, but no one is talking about underlying evidence that might explain an apparent bias.
Just because it's impossible, doesn't make it utopian. It's a bad idea for lots of good reasons, and would not contribute to the net contentment of the land.
.
And now a brief lesson on usage:
Anyone who writes "to think Utopian," first, ought to have written "utopian"; the capital typically applies only to words directly related to the title of a book written by Sir Thomas More, and to its subject, a land of the same name, where all are content. The title, "Utopia", is an English transliteration of the Greek word for "Nowhere," coined by More himself. Now of course, what the writer really means is "to think utopian thoughts,". Does it sound somehow trendier, a sign of being a very busy man, to chop off the noun? Which brings us to:
.
Second, and much more important, he doesn't respect the difference between a noun and an adjective. But we can make nouns if we leave off "to": "thinking Utopian", means an inhabitant of Utopia who thinks; "thinking utopian" means an individual maintaining impossible ideas promoting contentment who thinks. The same distinction in the use of capitals applies to adjectives. And, just to be clear, we can drop "thinking" and round this off by pointing out that a "Utopian" is an inhabitant of Utopia, while a "utopian" is an individual who hopes for that which is both impossible and beneficial.
.
I wrote this just for fun. Outis will pay any attention.
How ridiculous of you to go from a discussion of how to sanction bankers in major financial centers to the reductio ad absurdum of the UAE. I didn't notice that the mass jailing of S&L malefactors did anything at all to suppress financial risk-taking. Did you? Perhaps if it had received more publicity in the aggregate, rather than as scattered stories on individual trials, it would have had a more beneficial effect.
.
Mens rea is hard to prove. So forget criminal prosecution, and lay on with swingeing civil suits, that will strip the wealth from those responsible for the current unpleasantness, and disqualify them for life from any position of trust.
.
I agree that preventing another disaster is the primary concern, but that suggests to me that we punish, and severely, those regulators who did not do their jobs. They are more culpable than bankers left free to run amok, with the Greenspan Put to back them up if they failed. Given such circumstances, the bankers were rational in their wrongdoing. It was Greenspan, etc. who were insane. What kind of madman believes that financial firms can be trusted to regulate themselves? That was quite a "flaw," Maestro.
.
And a coda on "The Maestro". Any Fed chairman who is not hated is probably not doing his job. Wall Street hailed their "Maestro", because he let them do whatever they felt like doing, and provided a pillow for them to land on when they fell.
The good judge is absolutely right. Paying a percentage of the final product's price for the use of a patent is certainly not a royalty - whatever it may be. I doubt Motorola also offered to pay Microsoft a percentage of the loss on any unsold stock if the product failed in the market, or to receive a decreased payment if any discounts were necessary to make the product sell.
There is nothing worse than open communications for a totalitarian government. It allows the dissatisfied to discover their strength and, if necessary, to coordinate resistance. It's just not as much fun being a dictator as it used to be.
.
I recall reading that the Germans gave away a huge number of radios that were incapable of receiving all but local broadcasts. The article included a photograph that showed people swarming around an open truck, obviously excited to receive what was probably the first radio that many of them had ever owned.
.
Despite the purpose, there is an admirable cleverness in imposing oppression as a gift.
"Slow recovery
.
Following Britain's withdrawal from the gold standard and the devaluation of the pound, interest rates were reduced from 6% to 1%. As a result, British exports became more competitive on world markets than those of countries that remained on the gold standard. This led to a modest economic recovery, and a fall in unemployment from 1933 onwards. Although exports were still a fraction of their pre-depression levels, they recovered slightly.
Unemployment began a modest fall in 1934 and fell further in 1935 and 1936, but the rise in employment levels occurred mostly in the south, where lower interest rates had spurred the house building boom, which in turn spurred a recovery in domestic industry. The North and Wales remained severely depressed for most of the decade. In severely depressed parts of the country, the government enacted a number of policies to stimulate growth and reduce unemployment, including road building, loans to shipyards, and tariffs on steel imports. These policies helped but were not, however, on a sufficiently large scale to make a huge impact on the unemployment levels.
Rearmament and recovery
.
From 1936 onwards, the National Government followed a policy of mass rearmament in the face of the rise of Nazi Germany. By 1937
unemployment had fallen to 1.5 million, but rose again to 1,810,000 by January 1938 suggesting that the recovery was to be short lived."
-Wikipedia, Great Depression in the United Kingdom
Just a reminder of Lord Acton's words:
.
"Great men are almost always bad men."
.
Don't speak to me of your faith, hope and love, nor of your good works for the sick and for the needy - down on your face to kiss the hem of my authority.
.
You know; in bizspeak, "Respect the process".
I also think that Obama's foreign policy is sound; I've believed in "Speak softly and carry a big stick," since I first heard it.
.
I have always judged a chief executive primarily by foreign policy, since that is where he has a freer hand and can show what he's made of. Besides, Congress runs the domestic show.
.
I thought both Reagan and Thatcher promoted fiscal and financial regulatory policies that were mad, but I supported both because they were so firm against the USSR.
Tip and Ron fought their political battles, but neither was a rigid ideologue, and they were also friends who understood that it was their responsibility to do their best together for their country. It took immense political courage to reform Social Security; consider how badly off we'd be it were not for their cooperation and their guts.
.
Any way to get them back to replace what we've got? I've always believed that we do better with a Republican President and a Democratic Congress. No wonder we've had so much trouble since GHW Bush lost [I'm *still* pissed about that] - we're doing everything bass-ackwards.
I think the GOP is bent on suicide. Then we can put together a center-right party that understands, as the Republicans used to, that a stable two-party system requires that both parties compete for the middle third of the electorate. Boy Wonder Rove's 50%+1 made me angry enough to chew nails. For me, it really amounted to a violation of what has been an unwritten part of our Constitution.
And what about the welfare-dependent Whites who vote Republican because LBJ made them treat Blacks like human beings? Be careful about unsupported comments on the economic make up of both sides' voters. You are aware that Blacks only make up 12.5% of the population, aren't you? And you're not silly enough to imagine that there aren't plenty of rich democrats, are you?
.
Last I heard, the typical welfare recipient was a White woman and her kids, who had been abandoned by her husband. It may no longer be the case; I welcome correction.
.
Support your numbers, or don't waste our time.
The Fed's independence has already been damaged by Congress' dumping the whole economic problem in Bernanke's lap. Jobs fiscal policy has been ignored for ideological rather than intellectual reasons, and this ideological preference has forced the Fed into contortions of unprecedented type and scale, that have accomplished very little, and may be both difficult and dangerous to reverse.
Look at the expenditures since 9/11 on alleged security, not forgetting the wars in Iraq and in Afghanistan. Consider the routine harassment Americans undergo in the name of security theater. And all this in response to the threat of terrorism - nasty, but scarcely a threat to our existence. If faced with a genuine existential threat, as the Axis was in its day, I don't think that we would be much bothered by what amount to inconveniences.
Inter arma enim silent leges.
In times of war, the law falls silent.
- Cicero
"The UK surpassed pre-recession peak GDP already in 1933, and grew robustly through most of the 1930s."
.
And unemployment?
.
Perhaps our US unemployed ought to be out celebrating the new highs of the Dow.
You also omit that the UK was in recession in the 1920s as well as in the 1930s, and never experienced the boom from which the US fell so hard and so fast.
.
The Great Depression in the US was so different from that in the UK, that any analogy is fundamentally flawed.
"The other huge famine was that in Bengal in 1943."
How odd that you say nothing more. One might suspect that, as a British periodical, you are covering-up a British mass-murder.
.
Mustn't sully Sir Winston Churchill's reputation. We can't put him in the company of Hitler or Stalin or Mao, can we?
.
"Great men are almost always bad men."
- Lord Acton
If there were no reasons to believe that abuses by the Right were more common, then the IRS was wrong. If there were, in fact, good reasons to believe that abuses by the Right were more common, they were doing their job, and well.
.
So which is it? Everyone is talking about the unattractive appearance of all this business, but no one is talking about underlying evidence that might explain an apparent bias.
Just because it's impossible, doesn't make it utopian. It's a bad idea for lots of good reasons, and would not contribute to the net contentment of the land.
.
And now a brief lesson on usage:
Anyone who writes "to think Utopian," first, ought to have written "utopian"; the capital typically applies only to words directly related to the title of a book written by Sir Thomas More, and to its subject, a land of the same name, where all are content. The title, "Utopia", is an English transliteration of the Greek word for "Nowhere," coined by More himself. Now of course, what the writer really means is "to think utopian thoughts,". Does it sound somehow trendier, a sign of being a very busy man, to chop off the noun? Which brings us to:
.
Second, and much more important, he doesn't respect the difference between a noun and an adjective. But we can make nouns if we leave off "to": "thinking Utopian", means an inhabitant of Utopia who thinks; "thinking utopian" means an individual maintaining impossible ideas promoting contentment who thinks. The same distinction in the use of capitals applies to adjectives. And, just to be clear, we can drop "thinking" and round this off by pointing out that a "Utopian" is an inhabitant of Utopia, while a "utopian" is an individual who hopes for that which is both impossible and beneficial.
.
I wrote this just for fun. Outis will pay any attention.
How ridiculous of you to go from a discussion of how to sanction bankers in major financial centers to the reductio ad absurdum of the UAE. I didn't notice that the mass jailing of S&L malefactors did anything at all to suppress financial risk-taking. Did you? Perhaps if it had received more publicity in the aggregate, rather than as scattered stories on individual trials, it would have had a more beneficial effect.
.
Mens rea is hard to prove. So forget criminal prosecution, and lay on with swingeing civil suits, that will strip the wealth from those responsible for the current unpleasantness, and disqualify them for life from any position of trust.
.
I agree that preventing another disaster is the primary concern, but that suggests to me that we punish, and severely, those regulators who did not do their jobs. They are more culpable than bankers left free to run amok, with the Greenspan Put to back them up if they failed. Given such circumstances, the bankers were rational in their wrongdoing. It was Greenspan, etc. who were insane. What kind of madman believes that financial firms can be trusted to regulate themselves? That was quite a "flaw," Maestro.
.
And a coda on "The Maestro". Any Fed chairman who is not hated is probably not doing his job. Wall Street hailed their "Maestro", because he let them do whatever they felt like doing, and provided a pillow for them to land on when they fell.
The good judge is absolutely right. Paying a percentage of the final product's price for the use of a patent is certainly not a royalty - whatever it may be. I doubt Motorola also offered to pay Microsoft a percentage of the loss on any unsold stock if the product failed in the market, or to receive a decreased payment if any discounts were necessary to make the product sell.
There is nothing worse than open communications for a totalitarian government. It allows the dissatisfied to discover their strength and, if necessary, to coordinate resistance. It's just not as much fun being a dictator as it used to be.
.
I recall reading that the Germans gave away a huge number of radios that were incapable of receiving all but local broadcasts. The article included a photograph that showed people swarming around an open truck, obviously excited to receive what was probably the first radio that many of them had ever owned.
.
Despite the purpose, there is an admirable cleverness in imposing oppression as a gift.
With regard to monetary policy, you omit to point out that, unlike the UK in the Great Depression, we don't have a Gold Standard to abandon.
Of course, your greatest omission is that World War II ended the Great Depression with the greatest deficit-driven economic stimulus of them all.
"Slow recovery
.
Following Britain's withdrawal from the gold standard and the devaluation of the pound, interest rates were reduced from 6% to 1%. As a result, British exports became more competitive on world markets than those of countries that remained on the gold standard. This led to a modest economic recovery, and a fall in unemployment from 1933 onwards. Although exports were still a fraction of their pre-depression levels, they recovered slightly.
Unemployment began a modest fall in 1934 and fell further in 1935 and 1936, but the rise in employment levels occurred mostly in the south, where lower interest rates had spurred the house building boom, which in turn spurred a recovery in domestic industry. The North and Wales remained severely depressed for most of the decade. In severely depressed parts of the country, the government enacted a number of policies to stimulate growth and reduce unemployment, including road building, loans to shipyards, and tariffs on steel imports. These policies helped but were not, however, on a sufficiently large scale to make a huge impact on the unemployment levels.
Rearmament and recovery
.
From 1936 onwards, the National Government followed a policy of mass rearmament in the face of the rise of Nazi Germany. By 1937
unemployment had fallen to 1.5 million, but rose again to 1,810,000 by January 1938 suggesting that the recovery was to be short lived."
-Wikipedia, Great Depression in the United Kingdom
Of course, rearmament as the Second World War approached had absolutely nothing to do with it.
Just a reminder of Lord Acton's words:
.
"Great men are almost always bad men."
.
Don't speak to me of your faith, hope and love, nor of your good works for the sick and for the needy - down on your face to kiss the hem of my authority.
.
You know; in bizspeak, "Respect the process".
I meant "peacetime developed countries".