The essay of the week brought to mind Robert Frost’s famous meditation on the end of the world.
Poem of the Week: 10/21/07-10/27/07
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Author Archives: the editor
Rant of the Week: 10/21/07-10/27/07
People need to understand that you can not use the road in disasters. This rant demonstrates why.
Essay of the Week: 10/21/07-10/27/07
The study of history is indispensable to the understanding of the present. How many people understand that Turkey has Kurdish problem because of how they did away with the Armenians?
Spengler’s essay entitled Turkey fears Kurds, not Armenians is an excellent example of the type of historical analysis that you should see more often. How many other discussions of Turkey’s “Kurdish problem” in the newspapers make reference the devils bargain that the Turks made with the Kurds in 1915?
The only problem with Spengler’s excellent essay is its conclusion. Spengler has long argued that that America should embrace the instability in the Middle East and use it for its own ends. In past essays, Spengler has held up as his model for American actions the British Empire’s method of playing tribe against tribe and nation against nation to secure their own ends.
But I think that Spengler “realism” is a fundamental misreading of history. It is true that the British often played a Machiavellian game. But the British goal was always the creation of stability. They wanted the competing powers to balance each other out so that they could play the broker. By definition, you can not control chaos.
It was chaos that eventually destroyed the British system. It was the uncontrolled fighting between Hindus and Muslims in India. It was the fighting between Jew and Arab in the Middle East. It was the fighting between blacks and whites in Africa. The effort to maintain stability became more then British people could bear and their empire fell apart.
With chaos threatening to sweep through the Middle East; with Russia in the middle of a demographic death spiral and sitting on one of the largest stocks of nuclear weapons in the world; with China one serious economic crises away from military adventuresome (how else would the goverment maintain legitimacy?); the US is faced with the prospect of so much chaos that its super power status will cease to have any real meaning.
It does not do you much good to be captain of a sinking ship or a superpower in world without stability.
While I have been away, the world has been ending.
While I have been taking a break from posting, the world has been ending. There is nothing really new in that so I don’t know if I should make a point of recapping what these pages have missed. But just in case you are interested….
Macro Man says “Bloody Hell…..”
That is generally how a lot of people reacted to this week. It was the TIC data for august that had Macro Man all excited but most of the excitement has been centering on the structured investment vehicles of this world (other wise known as SIV’s). All anyone really knows for sure is that something is really wrong with the SIV’s of the world.
We know this because the Treasury department and Citigroup (the largest bank in US) have been banging heads together to try to create one big bail out fund. Seeing as how Citigrou’s own personal pet SIV demons have it on the hook for about 100 billion, the suspicion is that this is a plot to bail out Citigroup. But seeing as how even SIV’s that are not associated with Citigroup are starting to go bankrupt, I think that it is safe to say that this problem is broader then just Citigroup.
In other news, oil has almost managed to break $90 a barrel.
Poem of the Week: 10/14/07-10/20/07
This week’s poem of the week is Andrew’s poem on the envy of the blind by those who can see.
Rant of the week: 10/14/07-10/20/07
I have been told that I am a fool for not investing in stocks while I am still young. They say “stocks always deliver positive real returns over any 20 year period.” They say” This hold true even if you buy right before the stock market crashes.”
I wish I could force those people to read this rant.
Essay of the week: 10/14/07-10/20/07
This is what the speculators are like. Even the best of them tend to build fortunes that don’t last.
Having fun with the tax code
The US mint still puts out gold coins that are legal tender. They are mostly sold to collectors but they are still legal tender. Got that?
In fact, if you try to pass of a forged coin as legal tender the full weight of the law can come down on you regardless of whether the gold content is the same as this case proves.
So what happens if you try to pay your employees with legal tender gold coins and report their income based on the face value of the coins (i.e. the amount that the coin is legal tender for)? The full weight of the government comes down on you for tax evasion because the coins are worth more then the amount they are legal tender for. Thankfully, we still have jury system in this country so the company in question did not get convicted.
Still, I think that it is disturbing that they only got off because of a hung jury. In my opinion, it should have been a straight acquittal. How can you make something legal tender and then demand that they value it according to some other standard for tax purposes?
Granted, the construction company that was doing this was trying to help its workers avoid taxes on their wages. But lots of companies use more dubious methods then this to avoid paying taxes and get away with because it is legal. The way that most companies account for stock options would be just one example. Why pick on the blue collar companies?
If you don’t want them reporting their wages according to the face value, don’t make it legal tender. How hard of a fix is that?
Masud owns Musharraf
Comparing the capabilities of historical figures is always a little ridicules. There are so many variables involved that who is to say that this person is better then that person. But even allowing for that, I think that it is fairly safe to say that Masud was far better commander then Musharraf is.
After all, Masud had the Taliban fought to a standstill for years. And all during this time, Pakistan and radical Arabs were providing heavy support for the Taliban. There are even reliable reports of Pakistani military officers directing artillery fire on Masud positions for the Taliban. And all during this time, Masud received next to nothing from outside sources. It was for being such a pain that they brought guys all the way from Algeria just to assassinate Masud.
Contrast this with Musharraf. He is in command of a massive army that has all kinds of modern weapons. He has received billions of dollars in aid from the US. Presumably the Taliban are not receiving nearly as much aid from outside sources as they use to get. And yet, the Taliban are overrunning Musharraf’s military bases.
It would be one thing if Musharraf was having trouble chasing the Taliban out of the mountains. Every major military in the world has had trouble with guerrillas. America in Vietnam, Russia in Afghanistan, and France in Algeria just to name a few. But it was almost unheard of for the military forces of those nations to lose a fortified military out posts to a guerrilla force. In other words, they were driven out by attrition. Not by losing ground.
By contrast, The Pakistani military is losing ground to Taliban.
I use to think the relatively poor performance of the Pakistani military was because Musharraf did not want to push too hard for domestic reasons. But the latest battle resulted in hundreds of dead Pakistani solders, scores of Pakistani solders held captive, and overrun Pakistani military outposts being used by Taliban. Now the Pakistani government is begging for peace.
Maybe Musharraf has been trying all along to defeat the Taliban and has just been getting his but kicked.
All there is to know about the computer virus "Storm"
If you don’t already know about Storm, you should educate yourself by reading this blog post. Between the information contained in the post and all the links that it has you should have a pretty good idea of why “Storm” worries people.
We are talking about a virus that is so scary some people are talking about it being the creation of some government or other. I don’t buy that theory at all. Lately, who ever controls Storm has been using it to attack anti-fraud sites. That seems like a pretty petty occupation for a government.
But the fact that Strom was not cooked up by some government should scare people more then any conspiracy theory. Cyber gangs are staring to get sophisticated enough that they are becoming truly dangerous.