Author Archives: ape man

There is no reward for virtue in this life

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From the El Paso Times…..

Mexico is one of two countries that “bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse,” according to a report by the U.S. Joint Forces Command on worldwide security threats.

The command’s “Joint Operating Environment (JOE 2008)” report, which contains projections of global threats and potential next wars, puts Pakistan on the same level as Mexico. “In terms of worse-case scenarios for the Joint Force and indeed the world, two large and important states bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse: Pakistan and Mexico.

In many ways, Mexico has it worse than Pakistan. Lots of low level types die every day in Pakistan. But most of the elites are never touched because they play a double game. When Pakistan is forced to admit that someone of high level is working with the “bad guys” they put them under house arrest and let them do what they please. In return, the militants rarely kill anyone important in Pakistan.

In contrast, a lot of high level people in Mexico have either been killed (because they did not work with the bad guys) or had to face real jail time (because the government found out that they were working for the bad guys). Both of these things are largely unheard of in Pakistan. This is largely because Mexico is trying to destroy the destabilizing elements with in the country where as Pakistan is trying to get along with its destabilizing elements.

The disgusting thing is that the US is giving far more money to Pakistan (who is not really trying) then it is to Mexico (who are making an honest effort). At least there is a chance that Mexico can be saved. No such chance exists for Pakistan.

And least you think that we can deal with any collapse of Mexico by the simple expedient of sealing our border, remember this: A lot of our oil comes from Mexico, and it will not easily be replaced.

Here Is One For The Anti-Semites

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From The Telegraph…..

“In the night between Thursday and Friday, when the secretary of state wanted to lead the vote on a ceasefire at the Security Council, we did not want her to vote in favour,” Mr Olmert said

“I said ‘get me President Bush on the phone’. They said he was in the middle of giving a speech in Philadelphia. I said I didn’t care. ‘I need to talk to him now’. He got off the podium and spoke to me.

“I told him the United States could not vote in favour. It cannot vote in favour of such a resolution. He immediately called the secretary of state and told her not to vote in favour.”

That is Olmert talking tough to impress an Israeli audience. He even saw fit to mentioned how Condoleezza Rice was humiliated in the same article. I suppose that reveals him to be a true gentleman of the finest qualities.

It may have gone down well in Israel, but I can’t think that it made him very many friends in America. I can’t think of how he could have possibly done more to make it seem like the US was Israel’s lap dog.

Why is this appearing in print?

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From The New York Times….

President Bush deflected a secret request by Israel last year for specialized bunker-busting bombs it wanted for an attack on Iran’s main nuclear complex and told the Israelis that he had authorized new covert action intended to sabotage Iran’s suspected effort to develop nuclear weapons, according to senior American and foreign officials.

I don’t understand why this article got printed. It is a known fact that the New York Times will print anything and everything without regard to national security. But the article reads like a bunch of Bush supporters were trying to do some legacy enhancement. In the process I think they damaged America’s national interests.

Particularly harmful was the article’s assertion that Israel has decided that it can not effectively attack Iran without US help. I have long suspected that was the case. But leaking an official assessment to that effect (or pretending you are) does not help the cause of halting Iran’s march towards nuclear weapons.

It would have been better had there been strategic ambiguity in regards to Israel’s ability. After all, even though everybody and their brother might suspect that Israel could not do much on their own, nobody can be quite sure given Israel’s past history. And that was useful pressure all the way around.

I suppose the article could be full of disinformation. In which case it is all well and good. But hard experience has taught me never to expect government officials to leak things for the right reasons.

You can cry all you want, it will not do you any good

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From the Telegraph…

Russia has halted all gas supplies to European countries including Turkey and Greece.

As best as can tell, this is a bit of stretch on the Telegraph’s part. Some gas still seems to be coming through. But some countries are facing serious problems. From Spiegel….

Earlier on Tuesday, Bulgaria’s Economy Ministry announced that all Russian gas supplies via Ukraine to Bulgaria, Turkey, Greece and Macedonia had been halted on Tuesday morning as a result of the dispute between Moscow and Kiev. “We are in a crisis situation,” the ministry said in a statement. Bulgaria relies almost entirely on Russian gas for its needs and has no access to alternative pipeline routes and with temperatures in the country dropping to minus 15 degrees Celsius (5 degrees Fahrenheit) overnight, the government is asking businesses and households to use other fuels.

The EU is in its normal crisis response mode. In other words, they are crying like babies. From later on in the same Spiegel article….

On Tuesday the European Union called the sudden cutoff of gas supplies “completely unacceptable.” In a strongly worded statement, Brussels complained that gas had been cut “without prior warning and in clear contradiction with the reassurances given by the highest Russian and Ukrainian authorities.”

I guess the much vaunted soft power that the EU supposedly had is not doing it much good. Maybe they should try paying tribute.

Edit: Does it count as tribute if you pay it in the name of another country?

For Crying Out Loud

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From the Belmont Club….

The New York Times lays the groundwork for a campaign that’s just waiting to happen. The new menace is Third Hand Smoke, a danger so great that you instinctively fear it even if you’ve never heard of it.

I say we declare smoking a crime publishable by death and let the smokers choose how they will die as long as they pay for it themselves. I reckon that most of them will chose death by cigarettes.

Auto Makers In A Death Spiral

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From the Wall Street Journal…

GM, the nation’s largest auto maker, said it sold 220,030 light vehicles in December, down 31% from a year earlier. Car sales dropped 25% while light-truck sales dropped 35%. There were 26 selling days in the month, the same as a year earlier.

And from later in the article….

Ford, the No. 3 U.S. auto maker by sales behind GM and Toyota, said it sold 138,325 light vehicles in December, down 32%.

Also from later in the article…..

At Toyota, December sales fell 37% to 141,949, the eighth-straight month of sales drops for the No. 2 seller in the U.S., which earlier had defied the negative sales trends that have slammed Detroit.

Toyota’s sales fell by more than GM or Ford in percentage terms? What a shocker.

Its probably a combination of the fact that Toyota sales started falling later and the fact that Toyota is more popular in the housing boom areas then GM and Ford were (Think Florida and California). Those who don’t like change will be comforted by the fact that nobody did worse in percentage terms than Chrysler. This from Market Watch….

Chrysler LLC said Monday that U.S. December sales fell 53% to 89,813 vehicles from 191,423 a year ago.

Tell me again how the government loaning money to the Auto makers is going to help them when consumers don’t have the money to buy cars. Especially when the loans to people looking buy cars are becoming more expensive. This from Felix Salmon…..

Yes, despite the falling interest rate environment, 95% of banks have increased the cost of their loans. Sounds like a credit crunch to me — and sounds, too, like the stated aim of the government buying equity stakes in banks simply isn’t working.

Is Russia's real target the EU?

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From the Telegraph…

As temperatures dropped below zero across much of Europe, the Russian prime minister instructed the head of Gazprom: “Cut it – starting today.”

I am starting to wonder if Russia is not using the current spat with Ukraine as an excuse to extract a higher price out of the EU. As long as Russia is sending any gas through the pipeline, Ukraine will be able to take what it needs. So by cutting the gas that Russia is sending down the line, it does not really put anymore pressure on Ukraine. But it does put more pressure on the EU.

Since Russia is getting killed by falling oil prices, it must be desperate to do whatever it can to keep natural gas prices as high as possible. A fight with Ukraine is as good as excuse for undertaking actions towards that end as any other.

As far as Ukraine goes, it simply can’t afford to pay the higher prices that Russia wants no matter what the rights and wrongs of the matter are. This from the Economist…..

For Ukraine, the weakening of its currency presents an additional problem. For several years the hryvnya has been worth around HRN5:US$1 yet since December it has been trading at HRN8:US$1 or weaker. Even if the US dollar import price for gas were to remain unchanged in 2008, this translates into a rise in the import bill for Naftohaz on constant volumes to HRN80bn from HRN50bn in 2008. Even a doubling of transit fees, which currently bring Naftohaz around US$2bn in revenue, would not cover the increase.

In other words, even if Ukraine could somehow convince Russia to hold prices steady in dollars terms (which is how Russia prices its gas to the Ukraine as I understand it), it still would result in a huge effective price increase for Ukraine. Just think of how much worse it would be for Ukraine if they had to pay an even higher dollar price for their gas.

And this on top of all their other problems.

Chicago Fed Argues for Inflation

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From Reuters….

A grim economic outlook highlights the need for the Federal Reserve to step up quantitative measures to boost growth, with official interest rates already effectively at zero, Charles Evans, president of the Chicago Fed, said on Saturday.

Evans said that based on the outlook for rising unemployment, falling industrial production and a wider output gap, economic models suggest rates should be below zero.

“If it were not constrained by zero, those models would want to push it below zero, but that’s not possible,” Evans told reporters after a panel at the American Economic Association’s meeting in San Francisco.

Quantitative easing, a way to flood the banking system with large amounts of money, “is a way to mimic below-zero rates and provide support to the economy,” he said.

The only way to have real below zero interest rates is to have inflation. Why they think that will help matters is beyond me. Part of the reason we are having all the problems that we are having now is because Greenspan cut rates so sharply in 2001.

Truth

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The Daily Beast……

Here’s the really bad news: the full impact of the financial crisis in New York has yet to be felt.

The dirty secret of Empire State budgeting is that New York City depends disproportionately on Wall Street for its budget and New York State depends on New York City.

In the last four months, the financial landscape has changed dramatically. Investment banks that have been the engine of the city’s tax revenue for decades have disappeared entirely or morphed into restricted new entities. According to E.J. McMahon, my colleague at the Manhattan Institute, between 1980 and 2007 the securities industry’s share of wages in the state rocketed from 3 percent to 18 percent, with the average Wall Street salary and bonus rising to $379,000. Wall Street revenues made up 20 percent of the state’s budget. So the 40,000 local jobs lost in the financial sector are only the beginning. We’re not facing a cyclical downturn; we’re facing a fundamental alteration of the facts of financial life in New York. And the 20 percent unemployment in some upstate counties will not help ease the squeeze.

This author puts most of the blame on the Public Unions. And to be sure, they deserve their share of the blame. But a large part of New York’s problems are demographic. New York has a rapidly aging population upstate. Few young people stick around. This problem was always going to kill the state regardless of public pensions. They just make the problem worse.