News item: Keynesians discover that they were right all along

Amusing.

Why Keynes is the Man of the Year

"It is this flight into cash that makes interest-rate policy such an uncertain agent of recovery. If the managers of banks and companies hold pessimistic views about the future, they will raise the price they charge for “giving up liquidity,” even though the central bank might be flooding the economy with cash. That is why Keynes did not think that cutting the central bank’s interest rate would necessarily — and certainly not quickly — lower the interest rates charged on different types of loans. This was his main argument for the use of government stimulus to fight a depression. There was only one sure way to get an increase in spending in the face of an extreme private-sector reluctance to spend, and that was for the government to spend the money itself. Spend on pyramids, spend on hospitals, but spend it must.

This, in a nutshell, was Keynes’s economics. His purpose, as he saw it, was not to destroy capitalism but to save it from itself. He thought that the work of rescue had to start with economic theory itself. Now that Greenspan’s intellectual edifice has collapsed, the moment has come to build a new structure on the foundations that Keynes laid."

Robert Skildesky has obviously not heard of Adam Smith. Or John Stuart Mill. Or Milton Friedman.

It is so ironic that after more than half a century of Keynesian fiscal and regulatory policies doing a find job of undermining their own intellectual premises with or without independent criticism, thank you very much (Robert has apparently forgotten about the stagflation of the 1970's and the price, wage, and other controls that made it possible), leftists are reveling in the "story" that it was just an elaborate conspiracy by conservatives against the unflinching virtue of progressives in the 20th century.

Sweet story, huh? Good guy liberals save the world from mean, evil, greedy conservatives. Ironic that these guys don't believe in good guys and bad guys, isn't it? Ironic that they believe in progress, at all, given that conservatives are still in our midst unawares, apparently, of the righteousness of the left's march of progress?

Never really occurred to them that perhaps they were wrong.

It will.

Because people get tired of the consequences of bullshit long before they get tired of the bullshit, itself. And there are plenty of consequences that neo-Keynsianism will serve up. Progressives will try to talk themselves out of them.

But that's the beauty of a free and open marketplace of ideas. You can run from the consequences of your poorer ideas. But you can't hide.

And, in economic matters as much as in other matters, the truth will set us free.

Bank on it.

All of us blind

It is bizarre to me that the very kinds of treatment of people that leads Westerners, honestly and accurately, to recognize the barbarity and tragedy of life in places like Iran, is what too many in the West and outside the grip of such repression celebrate as the solution to all of our problems. The final solution, you might say.

Iranian Woman Blinded by Spurned Man Invokes Islamic Retribution

"TEHRAN -- Ameneh Bahrami once enjoyed photography and mountain vistas. Her work for a medical equipment company gave her financial independence. Several men had asked for her hand in marriage, but the hazel-eyed electrical technician had refused them all. 'I wanted to get married, but only to the man I really loved,' she said.

Four years ago, a spurned suitor poured a bucket of sulfuric acid over her head, leaving her blind and disfigured.

Late last month, an Iranian court ordered that five drops of the same chemical be placed in each of her attacker's eyes, acceding to Bahrami's demand that he be punished according to a principle in Islamic jurisprudence that allows a victim to seek retribution for a crime. The sentence has not yet been carried out."

And here are reactions at MediaTakeOut, back in November, when the sentence was first announced.

"I HATE CRAP LIKE THIS.

WTF? LOOK AT THAT POOR WOMAN'S FACE! THESE IGNORANT, SELFISH, SELF-RIGHTEOUS, JEALOUS MOFOS NEED THE BOOK THROWN AT THEM!

THAT HAD TO BE THE SCARIEST, MOST PAINFUL THING TO HAPPEN TO SOMEONE! JUST GIVE ME A BAT, SOME ROPE AND 15 MINUTES ALONE IN A ROOM WITH THIS FOOL!"

"Oh I am liking THAT EYE FOR AN EYE [EXPLETIVE]!!!! Clear up these jails...do to them what they did to their victims and TRUST me CRIME WILL GO DOWN!!!

We dont need to have these nigggas lounging around wit meals, tv and a work out center, smoking cigs and making clicks and sh!t!!!

DAMN why cant we get GANSTA wit these so called violent offenders!!!"

And my personal favorite:

"Damn, and he claimed he did that out of love? Some people's minds are so warped. Anything goes these days, it's just sad.

No sense of right and wrong, no moral compass, no gut feelings, no guilty conscience, nothing...........I'm so thankful I was born in The Bahamas, which is founded on Christian principles."

We're so enlightened, aren't we?

What happened to this woman was an incomparable tragedy, obviously. But the truth is that we can't decide what we are and what we want to be when something like this happens. We're sure that we are better until we see something ugly like this and then we decide that maybe all that barbarism isn't such a bad thing.

Apparently the Christian commenter forgot that the central and most courageous challenge that Christ posed to the world was that giving into the temptation of an eye for an eye maintained and reinforced all that ugliness in his world, as much as ours. And that the only way out was to give up that temptation.

Repressive societies, like Iran, regularly give into that temptation and regularly have the most serious problems with issues like brutal violence, especially violence against women.

Jesus posited that the two correlate and that if we wanted to end it, we needed to take forgiveness seriously.

Apparently, my man from Nazareth was wrong and the Iranian mullahs are right.

Good thing we got that cleared up.

True love for trolls

For all of those convinced that the secret to life is having the high hand in negotiations, a reminder of where such out-of-touch douchebaggery leads.

Best of craigslist: SWF who isn't asking too much

From that list:

"-must be willing to pay for dinner at least once a week at a Zagat-rated restaurant after proper research and scouting of restaurant

-must own more than 3 items from The North Face jacket line but no more than 5

-owning a car is a plus, but it can't be a hatchback (some standards)

-I ski one weekend a year, so you ski. No shredders.

-must love Gary Larson, and hate Dilbert

-passionate about animal rights, but willing to take in the circus when it comes to town

-must read at least 3 books a month, no comics unless Gary Larson

-must have read complete works of Jane Austen

-must know how to turn a Word document into a PDF

-must be on T-Mobile for Fave 5 access

-must love pinball and not play ping pong

-3 out of your 5 favorite movies should be John Hughes films

-must agree to watch 'The Hills' on MTV on Sundays but hate that bitch Heidi, she is everything wrong with womankind

-must know CPR and have current certification, ++ for SCUBA certification

-must be home from 2-6pm on Saturdays to receive packages; bonus points if you're an Ebay power seller too!

-NO FELONS!!!

-must have all limbs, no quads (not biased, just poor past experience)"

And the kicker:

"I am willing to make a few sacrifices, but not many. If you see yourself in even a FEW of my specifications, you are invited to apply. Think of it more like a guidebook to my heart."

I suppose if you have the heart of a vapid, shallow, self-centered she-cow.

Note to women:

No man is really attracted to such women. Not even hot women. Not after they have used you and your girlfriends for their advanced anatomy study.

Why people waste their lives gratifying their egos in such useless ways I will never know.

Oh, I remember now. Because thet are insufferable fucktards.

Welcome to true love, I suppose. With yourself, wanker. Congrats to the happy couple.

Bank on it

As to be expected, the Economist nails it exactly.

The left's resignation note

"The proudest trophy of the left is the European social model, a web of labour and welfare laws offering a 'high degree of social protection'. The model emerged during the post-war boom, when living standards soared across western Europe. In his book 'Postwar', Tony Judt, a New York-based British academic, lists many causes: governments turned away from protectionism, people started having lots of babies, energy was cheap and Europe had much catching up to do (in 1957 only 2% of Italian homes had a refrigerator, but by 1974 94% did).

Crucially, the European social model also enjoyed an amazingly low degree of external competition. In 1960 a West German car worker had little to fear from Eastern Europe or Asia. Skodas and Nissans were pretty horrid; Chinese workers were lost to the madness of Mao. When China, India and the ex-Soviet block joined the capitalist world three decades later, the global labour pool grew from 1.5 billion to 3 billion: an explosion called the 'great doubling' by Richard Freeman, a Harvard economist.

Never again will west European workers live in a world with so little competition. Honest European politicians know this—and so, deep down, do most voters. That is why trade unions are still shedding members. It is why the mainstream left cannot credibly promise to reverse globalisation, preferring instead to blame the crisis on ill-regulated markets. But attacking market follies is hardly a distinctive position (listen to Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s supposedly centre-right president). Europe’s centre-left is struggling because its 20th century rationale is dying. If it cannot find a less muddled message that explicitly embraces globalisation, this economic crash could deliver it a fatal blow."

20th century leftists either needs to embrace 19th century liberalism or get used to losing elections, down the line.

You know what I love about the marketplace of ideas? It sticks around and sorts through this nonsense even if you don't like it. Fucking brilliant.

The marketplace believes in you even if you don't believe in the marketplace.

And liberalization, now and forever, is the wave of humanity's future.

Bank on it.