EclectEcon

Richard Posner deserves the next Nobel Prize in Economics
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US Foreign Policy:Speak Loudly and Carry a Small Stick

Tom Sowell, writing at Townhall, has a column which sets out in more detail what I was trying to say when Russia first moved into South Ossetia (even with a similar title!).

There are two problems: (1) What are we going to do? and (2) What are we going to say?

There are lots of things we can do, if we don't care about the repercussions-- but of course we do care. The only thing we have complete control over is what we say.

We have been saying far too much already, especially in proportion to what we were prepared to do. This is a problem that began long before this administration. Sometimes it has seemed as if our foreign policy is to speak loudly and carry a little stick.

American presidents, through several administrations, have been publicly commenting moralistically on the internal affairs of other countries around the world.

We have been criticizing friend and foe alike. Sometimes we have sounded like the world's nanny.

The rest of his column sounds naively isolationist. But it is worth reading.

The question in my mind is how often the US can say, "We really mean it this time," the way parents do when their children come to believe that they do not always mean what they say. To "really mean it" and take on Iraq and Afghanistan (and possibly Iran) is far different from "we really mean it" and taking on Russia as well.

As Sowell points out, the US won the cold-war battles in the late 1980s and early 1990s because Russia had no wealth. But they now have oodles of oil wealth; they will not be defeated or even stopped with the same strategies that worked back then.

Two From The Emirates Economist

The Emirates Economist is back from his summer hiatus with some excellent posts and links.

1. Has the phenomenal growth in the UAE been the result of trans-shipment of goods and a circuitous avoidance of the embargo on Iran?
2. People respond to incentives: since non-gubmnt organizations (NGOs) provide aid to groups instead of individuals, individuals form co-operatives that they probably would not otherwise create.

"Have Fell"?

From today's e-mailed NYTimes headlines:

Palm, Once a Leader, Seeks Path in Smartphone Jungle
By LAURA M. HOLSON
Palm is trying to revive itself as business users have embraced the BlackBerry and consumers have fell in love with the iPhone.

How NOT to Hot-Wire Your Car

After I posted a link several days ago on how to hot-wire your car, my younger son (Adam Smith Palmer) sent me this link:

“Wired Magazine” stuck some foot in a wrong pile today by releasing an article about how to “Hotwire Your Own Car“. If anyone actually follows this advice, they are an idiot. Not only will the directions they give not work, the attempt to make them work can ruin your car. [Emphasis added]

1. Their “what you need” list contains various tools and items. My “what you need” list contains 1 item: a spare key hidden somewhere on the car.

2. The screwdriver. This only works on 2 kinds of cars. The 20 year old Toyota pickup truck with the ignition so worn out that the key looks like a toothpick, and the 20 year old GM plasti-cars with the key that fits in a giant plastic wing-nut on the column, and happen to have a broken tumbler. In any other situation, forcing the ignition with a screwdriver will guarantee that when you do get the key, it wont fit anymore. End result: expensive repair.

3. Pulling off the panel. Nope, you need a screwdriver, and sometimes a special one. If your car has been sitting in a hot sun for a few years, pulling that panel down “carefully” will get it off, but it ain’t goin’ back on, cuz everything that holds it on is now powder. End result: expensive repair.  Or, adding other duct tape colored accents to your interior to match your new column. Oh, and forget the slightly painful electric 12 volt shock, how bout accidentally arc-welding the power wire to a chassis ground and blowing a super-fuse you don’t have or starting a harness fire.

4. Pairs of wires? Ha! this ain’t a phone system, they’re not in pairs, they are in one big shrink wrapped clump you’ll need to cut open. The way to tell the difference here is not the color. I have never seen a wiring diagram for the ignition key in an owners manual, except maybe for an old VW beetle. Your gonna need a Chilton book or something. A handier diagram would be directions to find your hidden key.

5. If your gonna start MacGyver-ing wires together, expect to blow fuses or possibly a computer. Oh, and expect an expensive repair bill.

6. Even if through some miracle, you get the car running, you cannot drive it, the steering will be mechanically locked. The only cars on the road without steering locks are older cars that have the keyhole for the ignition somewhere away from the steering wheel. when was the last time you saw that? for me, its usually older Porsche cars.

Others have probably edited more info into the article, but there is no circumstance in which even I, the Geekwrench, would choose hotwiring over a tow truck.

Can We Rescind Gore's Nobel Prize?Over the next few decades, we may need all the greenhouse gases we can get

To the extent that global warming is related primarily to sunspot activity, we may well be in for some serious global cooling, not global warming over the next few decades [h/t David Ricardo Palmer]:

“The sun’s surface has been fairly blank for the last couple of years, and that has some worried that it may be entering another Maunder minimum, the sun’s 50-year abstinence from sunspots, which some scientists have linked to the Little Ice Age of the 17th century,” reports one science blog.

Long-time man-made global warming advocates NASA assure us that significant sunspot activity will return in 2012, but a recent a paper on recent solar trends by William Livingston and Matthew Penn of the National Solar Observatory in Tucson, predicts that sunspots will all but vanish after 2015.

Since the sun, and not carbon dioxide, is the principle driver of climate change, a dearth of sunspot activity would herald a repeat of the Maunder Minimum, the name given to the period roughly from 1645 to 1715, when sunspots became exceedingly rare and contributed to the onset of the Little Ice Age during which Europe and North America were hit by bitterly cold winters and the Thames river in London completely froze. ...

“Based on the past Armagh measurements, this suggests that over the next two decades, global temperatures may fall by about 2 degrees C — that is, to a level lower than any we have seen in the last 100 years….“Temperatures have already fallen by about 0.5 degrees C over the past 12 months and, if this is only the start of it, it would be a serious concern,” concludes David Watt.

Such predictions are of course of little interest to a global PR machine that butters its bread on attributing every weather event, be it droughts, floods, volcanoes or earthquakes, to man-made global warming.

No matter that the last ten years have showed no global warming and the next 10 years are predicted to show no global warming, the fact that temperatures are clearly dropping in correlation to the lack of sunspot activity means nothing to people who are already committed to a quasi-religious belief system and governments that have resolved to squeeze the middle class citing fraudulent claims of eco-apocalypse as an excuse, while the real environmental crises - deforestation, GM madness, cell phone tower radiation, genetic splicing and chemtrails go almost completely ignored.

Thank goodness the US refused to ratify Kyoto. Thank goodness Canada (and most other countries) did virtually nothing to honour their Kyoto commitments. Over the next few decades, we may need all the greenhouse gases we can get!

What is WITH the US Holocaust Museum?

From HMWatch.org:

U.S. Holocaust Museum Removes Falsified Biography of Mufti of Jerusalem       

 The U.S. Holocaust Museum (USHMM) today removed from its website the falsified biography of the Holocaust era Mufti of Jerusalem. The Museum was criticized for blurring the line between facts and opinion, and in so doing, opening the door to Holocaust denial.

The father of Palestinian nationalism, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Hussayni, was a terrorist and a Nazi collaborator, indicted at the Eichmann Trial. The Museum wrote a web biography which presented al-Hussayni as a moderate supporter of non-violence.  Falsifying and omitting key facts from the historical record, including photographs of Hussayni conferring with Hitler, the Holocaust Museum attempted to exonerate him from well documented charges of Nazi collaboration.  The Museum’s website stated that his “controversial…relationship with Hitler’s government…has led some to label him a Nazi collaborator and war criminal….”

Within hours of the widespread dissemination to the press and public of HMWatch's press release describing the Museum's whitewash of the Mufti, the Museum removed the article.

The Museum still does NOT have in its archives the infamous November 28, 1941 photograph of the Mufti meeting with Hitler when he obtained Hitler's assurance to exterminate the Jews of the Middle East. Nor does the Museum  have a factual biography of the Mufti and his role in creating the Nazi-Palestinian alliance.

There are direct historical links between the Nazis, the Final Solution, Husayni, the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda. The Museum chose to falsify these historical roots in the Mufti’s biography because the Museum is determined to be silent about current Muslim anti-Semitism and its connection to Nazism.

We applaud the Museum for removing the meretricious article and call on them to post an accurate one and to break their silence on the roots and connections of current Muslim anti-Semitism and Nazism.

My friend Eva wrote about the museum,

A number of years ago (at least ten) I visited the museum. I was amazed at the political correctness of the displays. If my memory serves me correctly, there was a great deal of the sillier type of feminism. I left the museum perplexed and disappointed.

How very disappointing. I do not recall having any of these thoughts or feelings last year when I visited the Holocaust Museum in London (England). Instead, I was quite moved by the displays and information, and I was especially pleased that a colleague where I was teaching then took his students to the museum to make sure they understood the overwhelming horror and significance of the Holocaust.

Anatomy of Mortgage Meltdowns

Stan Liebowitz has just posted a new paper on the mortgage meltdown at the SSRN site. Last winter, as he and I were discussing this paper via e-mail, he set out his ideas quite well, and Arnold Kling summarizes them here.

The way I think of the Liebowitz story (you should read his whole paper) is as follows.

First, various regulators put pressure on lenders to loosen underwriting standards for minorities and low-income borrowers. That provided the kindling for the housing bubble.

Next, increasing numbers of borrowers started speculating in homes. These borrowers were attracted by adjustable-rate mortgages, because they expected to sell the homes for a profit before the rates adjusted. The fact that we now have such a large inventory of unoccupied homes is consistent with the view that many of the new owners were speculators, not owner-occupants.

Liebowitz is a bit weak in explaining how Wall Street was able to sell so much paper backed by these risky mortgage loans. Although I think it is important to point out the role that government policy played in forcing regulated institutions to relax underwriting standards, I do not think that the private sector is blameless here. There was some very serious mispricing of risk going on. Nassim Taleb's Risk Animal and Wall Street over-confidence were important factors.

Kling makes a good addition to the Liebowitz paper. Even if mortgage lenders were under tremendous political pressure to grant more questionable loans, there was nobody forcing tertiary lenders to buy packages of these sub-prime mortgages.

To have a full grasp of the mortgage melt-down, we also must understand why the secondary and other markets systematically underestimated the risk of those bundles of loans.

My own suspicion is that the bond rating agencies, along with the mortgage-lending insurers, desire considerably more scrutiny.

Outlet Stores in Europe

In the 1990s, J. Byrne Murphy was hired to create outlet malls in numerous venues in Europe. It made sense, in a way; after all, many of the brands sold at North American outlet malls originated in Europe, and one might readily think European customers would be delighted to find these brands and others available at deep-discount clearance and outlet centers.

Le Deal is the story of his trials and tribulations along the way to creating 11 such malls in the EEC. This review from the WSJ (via Eva; link expires soon) highlights many of the problems he faced. For example,

Politicians cause Mr. Murphy the biggest headaches. They put one obstacle after another in his way. It takes years for him to get a green light for his first big retail center -- in Troyes, about 90 miles southeast of Paris. "In France," Mr. Murphy writes, "the emphasis is always on job preservation, and not job creation." [EE: sounds quite typical of views in North America when Wal-Mart tries to move into a community.]

In short, it is more rational, from the French politician's point of view, to protect small retailers or established guilds than to open up opportunities. After all, the potential workers at new stores -- let alone would-be customers -- aren't organized. They are not about to march in the streets or kill off re-election hopes. And yet when the mall in Troyes finally opens -- what do you know? -- it's a success. The French, it turns out, are not that different from Americans: For a bargain, they will travel long distances and stand in line for hours.

In Germany, Mr. Murphy faces similar resistance from the political class. He meets the premier of Lower Saxony, a certain Gerhard Schroeder (the future German chancellor), who studies MacArthurGlen's plans for an outlet center. Over cigars, Mr. Schroeder tells Mr. Murphy and his American colleagues: "I'll kill it. I will have to." He persuades them to withdraw a pending bid for a mall site by promising, privately, that he'll back them after he gets through an upcoming election. But after the election, naturally, he reneges. In Italy, Mr. Murphy finds the challenge to be no less difficult though of a slightly different character: He must maneuver around mafia-types and Italy's nonfunctional state to get a shopping center open.

How to (further) Bugger Up the Mortgage Markets

Kip Esquire, commenting on recently enacted New York lending-reform legislation:

It's quite simple really: A mortgage is meaningless, absolutely meaningless, without an enforceable right to foreclose in the event of default. To ask a lender to make a mortgage loan with little or no foreclosure protection is like asking a supermarket to let people take whatever groceries they want and pay whenever they feel like it — or not ever. [emphasis added]

Of course, it was never the function of Fannie and Freddie to buy subprime mortgages in the first place. Indeed, it was the prospect of being able to sell off your loans to the GSEs that was supposed to nudge banks into making only high-quality loans at all. So much for that idea.

And no doubt the activist legislators in Albany and other state capitals (not to mention Washington) will eventually respond by dredging up the dreaded r-word to strong-arm banks into making risky loans to unqualified borrowers — and the whole cycle will begin again.

The first "mortgage crisis" isn't even over yet and politicians are already laying the groundwork for the next one.

Back in the early 1990s, a colleague, a student, and I visited Lithuania where we made several presentations along these same lines, emphasizing the importance of having carefully designed bankruptcy laws as an integral backdrop for not just mortgages, but all loans and contracts.

How to Hot-Wire Your Car

Here's the article, with emphasis on YOUR car (via instapundit)

Freedom of Choice vs. Freedom of Religion

It may seem odd to suggest there is a conflict between "freedom of choice" and "freedom of religion". I suspect that is because in many modern western societies, there is not much of a conflict for most people. But what about other societies? What about, say, a theocracy which requires that women be treated as chattel and suffer genital mutilation? Which freedom should dominate then: the freedom of religion among those who prefer that culture, or the freedom of choice, especially among women, to opt out of that religion?

Janet, who blogs with King at SCSU Scholars, presents the case effectively:

For those of you who are unaware, there is a definite two-tier status within Islam, one perpetrated by far too many religious practitioners. Women are literally second class humans. In many Islamic societies women cannot go outside their homes without a male escort. Others, women cannot drive, go to school, practice any sort of independence. There was this report of a 19 year old Saudi woman who was gang-raped and SHE got 200 lashes plus a prison sentence. Why? They claim she was in a car with an unrelated man.

Too many Islamic men decide that when a woman violates their view of Islam, they have the right to murder women because it is the will of Allah (their god). This is the topic covered by Mr. Jacoby. What used to occur "over there" is now occurring "here." Our response should not be a "tolerance" of silence. Any true supporter of women's rights (feminists, pay attention!!!) needs to speak out to condemn this atrocious behavior in the strongest possible terms.

Political differences aside, all women ought to be able to join together in opposition to these barbaric attitudes and behaviors.

When I wrote about this conflict several years ago, several commenters argued that freedom of religion must end when it inflicts harm on others. I suspect that many radical Islamists would not agree, or they would argue that what the victims perceive as harm to themselves is not really a harm if it is God's will.

What I'm trying to say, and not too well I fear, is that this piece by Janet demonstrates all too clearly that freedom of religion must have limitations in favour of other freedoms that I consider more important. But that's probably because I do not subscribe to a religion that severely restricts the freedoms of others.

Addendum: See this, sent to me by JM:

                         SAUDI ARABIA: FATHER KILLS CHRISTIAN CONVERT DAUGHTER          

                         (ANSAmed) - DUBAI, AUGUST 13 - A Saudi man, member of the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, has killed his daughter for converting to Christianity, the Gulf News daily reported, without providing details on the identity of the main characters in the case.        Sources close to the victim said that the man had cut the tongue of his daughter and set her on fire following a heated debate on religion, the newspaper published in Dubai writes. The brother of the victim found in the woman's computer some articles on Christianity she had written on various blogs and regional websites under a nickname and the symbol of the cross. That discovery made her family life unbearable, the woman wrote on the 'Al Ukdoud' website a few days before her death.              According to a testimony of a friend of the victim reported by the 'Free Copts' website, the father is arrested by the police and investigation has started against him for an "honour crime". The honour crimes, perpetrated by a male member of the family against a woman of the same clan to "wipe out the shame of the dishonour" from her indecorous behaviour, are generally punished with mild sentences ranging between six months and three years in jail. (ANSAmed).          

2008-08-13 12:41

New Perspectives on Canadian Content Regulations:Porn Site Promises 50% Canadian Content

The Canadian media are all a-buzz about the latest private broadcaster to seek and receive approval from the CRTC:

A Canadian pay-television pornography channel — which is pledging to show least 50 per cent domestic content at night — has been approved by federal regulators this week, but it must now try to convince cable and satellite companies to carry the service.

The digital channel, which is to be called Northern Peaks, was approved Wednesday by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, after Alberta-based Real Productions first applied for the licence in October, 2007.

In its application, the company said the proposed service would be "Canada's first adult video channel offering significant Canadian adult content." Northern Peaks will produce its own movies, in addition to events and series from Canada, the company told the regulator.

"During each broadcast year, the licensee shall devote not less than 50 per cent of the evening broadcast period to Canadian programming," say CRTC documents outlining the decision.

         

Before Northern Peaks will be given its licence, though, it must show the CRTC that at least one cable or satellite carrier has agreed to pick up the service. The channel has three years to find an agreement or risk losing the licence.

An announcer on one radio station to which I was listening during my commute said,

The Canadian content will appeal to Canadians by giving them a sense that they might even see some of the stars at their local grocery stores.

To which the co-announcer responded,

Which stores?

Women in Art and Film

I don't watch or blog many YouTube videos, but these two are spectacular [h/t to MA]. The transitions are just amazing.

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The Permanent-Income Elasticity of Demand for Mid-Range Restaurant Meals

About a year and a half ago (January, 2007), King Banaian, Hari, and I went on a pizza crawl while attending the ASSA meetings in Chicago (see here for my wrap-up review and links to the individual reviews). Pizza Uno received my highest rating during that expedition, but now the WSJ is reporting (h/t to MA) that Pizza Uno will miss making a payment to its bondholders today.

The parent of Uno Chicago Grill, a chain of 200-plus pizzeria-themed restaurants, will skip a bond payment on Friday as it tries to negotiate more financial breathing room amid increasingly difficult times for sit-down eateries, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Uno Restaurant Holdings Corp. ... is one of a growing number of regional and national restaurant companies squeezed by falling sales, rising food costs and burdensome debt.

Uno Pizza is not the only mid-range restaurant suffering. From the same article,

Other chains, such as Chevys Fresh Mex and the home-style Perkins and Marie Callender's chains are also in talks with their lenders, say several people familiar with the companies. ... All have had earnings slow as diners cut back on eating outside their homes. ...

During the first half of 2008, same-store sales at midpriced sit-down restaurants declined an average of 1.1%, according to Knapp-Track, which measures sales at 10,000 restaurant outlets.

In the last few months, sit-down chains such as Bennigan's, Steak and Ale, and Vicorp Restaurants Inc.'s Bakers Square and Village Inn chains have filed for liquidation or bankruptcy protection, frequently moving to shutter hundreds of sites and cut thousands of jobs.

I don't know that incomes have actually fallen .... yet.... for the appropriate demographic who tend to eat in mid-range restaurants. But this information suggests that households that might tend to vary the amount they eat in such restaurants expect (with some probability) their household incomes will decline in the future. This expectation leads to a decline in their "permanent incomes" (which are closely related to wealth and expected incomes), and it is this measure of income which seems to have a major role in affecting discretionary consumer spending, including sit-down mid-priced restaurant dining.

Genetically Modified Crops and Climate Change

Tim Worstall shows how increased use of genetically modified [GM] crops leads to reduced carbon emissions. Quoting from the Telegraph,

In 2006 alone, the permanent carbon dioxide savings from reduced fuel consumption since the introduction of GM crops was equal to removing 25 per cent of cars from Britain’s roads for a year.

Contrast the above with the ignorance of our future King.

The UN Commission to Promote Hatred

Whether we like it or not, Durban II is coming. Recall that Durban I was a gigantic hate-fest dominated by anti-western and anti-semitic representatives. And sadly things look as if they will be even worse in this next round.

From Joel Brinkley (via AlanP):

I confess I had forgotten about the U.N. World Conference against Racism, in Durban, South Africa, on Sept. 8, 2001. It turned so quickly into a racist, anti-Semitic hate-fest that Secretary of State Colin Powell stood up and walked out.

The indignant commentary was just getting started when the Sept. 11 attacks swept the coverage away. The event was largely forgotten.

I bring it up now because they’re at it again. The United Nations has scheduled a sequel, dubbed Durban II, to take place in Geneva, Switzerland, next spring. (This time, Durban’s city fathers refused to host it.) And if the 2001 event proved to be an embarrassment for the United Nations and the world, the next one promises to be a shameful travesty that will light up cable news, late-night TV talk shows and multi-media blogs for weeks.

Worse, the event is certain to cleave an even deeper divide between the Arab states and the rest of the world. It’s pre-ordained. Consider what happened just a few days ago, as reported by the Web site Eye on the UN.

The conference’s planning chairman invited Iran to join his inner circle — the “friends of the chair” — to add Iranian wisdom to the topics at hand: preventing racism and promoting human rights.

Why Iran? Well, the answer will almost certainly leave you asking: What were they thinking?

The planning-committee chairman is none other than Libya. The rapporteur ... Cuba. And the new vice-chair, Iran.

Several Western states are unranked members. But the leaders and their allies are running roughshod over everyone else. These countries have a clear agenda: to batter Israel and the United States and ram through proclamations decrying insults to Islam.

The European Union proposed to discuss freedom of expression. Speaking for the leadership, Egypt declared that freedom of expression is “political in nature and not grounded in objectivity.” As a result, discussion of the subject is “not acceptable.” The EU gave up. ...

The United Nations’ much-maligned Humans Right Council is organizing Durban II, so it’s small wonder that the planning is proceeding as it has. In a recent council session, a speaker asked to bring up a particularly egregious human rights problem: genital mutilation of women. Egypt objected mightily, demanding: “We will not discuss issues related to Sharia law; this will not happen.” He thundered on, joined by a colleague from Pakistan, until the item was dropped.

Remind me why any countries that care about western freedoms continue to tolerate this outrageous challenge to our freedoms.

More Reasons for Macro Pessimism?

I have not been quite as pessimistic about the near-term for the US economy as many writers, but this statistic is disturbing:

One in every 464 U.S. households -- 272,171 U.S. properties -- received a foreclosure filing, got a default notice, was warned of a pending auction or were foreclosed on during the month of July. That represents an 8% increase from the previous month, and a 55% increase year over year.

Falling prices are putting more homeowners equity underwater, and is accelerating the housing decline.

The houses are still there, so there has been little loss of wealth (aside from deterioration from lack of maintenance by foreclosed owners). But the foreclosure and transfer process is neither immediate nor costless, and this is where much of the problem will lie. When houses are idle, housing services are not being produced. And when labour and capital are used to foreclose, they are not available to produce other products.

I expect not all will agree with me, but it is these supply shocks that result from the housing crash that really concern me.

Slavery in Saudi Arabia

This is truly inimical to the concept of freedom [h/t to Judith]:

"According to human rights lawyers, there are many cases of this kind before the Saudi courts."

"Saudi Arabia: Mother moves to block child marriage," from Adnkronos International, August 11:

Riyadh, 11 August (AKI) - The Saudi Arabian mother of an eight-year-old girl is trying to stop her marrying a middle-aged man who made a marriage contract with the girl's father in the province of al-Qasim, in the centre of the country.

The father's consent is needed to validate the marriage contract between the man, who is in his fifties and the child. He reportedly agreed to the union in exchange for an undisclosed sum of money.

According to the Saudi newspaper, Okaz, the news emerged after the mother of the child reported her husband and took him to court to prevent the marriage from going ahead.

Referring to another case where a man in his seventies was charged for marrying a ten-year-old girl in the area of Asir, south of Mecca, the woman also sought the help of local human rights groups.

The mother of the girl said her husband has two other wives, and considering the age of the child, asked for the contract to be withdrawn to allow her to have a normal childhood.

More normal than Aisha's childhood.

According to human rights lawyers, there are many cases of this kind before the Saudi courts.

Emphasis in the original.

The End of Highway Littering?

I wonder whether 10 or 20 years from now, highway littering might be pretty minimal. Here's why:

• I am guessing that law-enforcement authorities will have assembled a pretty substantial data base of DNAs by then.
• I am also guessing that the police will have cell-phone type DNA readers that will scan objects, transmit the DNA to a central data base, and then receive a print-out of DNA matches.
• Highway "adoption" groups will collect bags of garbage, certifying the highways along which the garbage was collected.
• Authorities will scan the garbage and levy fines appropriately.
• Guilty litterers will be required to pay their fines before they can renew their drivers' or automobile licenses.

Please note: the above is not an endorsement of this procedure; rather, it is just futuristic speculation.

Canada at the Olympics

A brother and sister one-two combo: Alan and Rondi Adamson.