In the latter chapters of Genesis we are told a tale of Joseph and the Pharaoh. I should note, in the interest of honest disclosure I am no fan of Joseph bar Israel. However, for this little tale the important thing to note is that Joseph found himself in a position of control with regard to his government and in a financial crises used that opportunity to centralize the Coptic economy.
Today we find ourselves in a banking crises and it seems one of the results is that the central bank is now no longer an independent government entity. Centralization is occurring. It is likely that this process will continue until the currency and bank are fully under control of the (elected) nitwits on the Hill.
Some generations later, it is unclear how many, the Israelites found themselves due to Joseph’s centralization … to be slaves.
If F.A Hayek is right, we too will discover to our dismay that we too are slaves.
How then will we find our Exodus from that slavery I wonder?
Personally I think a recession would be preferable to acceding government control of the Bank. They should not allow some of the collapse as they don’t hold the paper to take on the debt they plan to assume. A little pain now, will be far better than the bloody revolution our children will be required to shed in order to win our freedom back from slavery.
If one was to look at the tale of two crises and how our respective candidates reacted to them, the difference between them becomes clear.
In the Georgia/Russia scuffles, McCain immediately reacted speaking out against Russia’s aggression. Obama, in brief, did and said nothing of any note for quite some time, until the dust mostly settled and then … asked for a UN security resolution against the act (somehow overlooking the fact that any resolution would have to pass a Russian Federation veto).
In the current AIG/Merril/Banking crises, Mr McCain has asked for the retirement of the SEC head. He has suggested some regulatory mechanisms which he thinks might be helpful, and pointed out that he was warning about a upcoming crises of this sort for some time. Mr Obama has criticised everyone else, but has not actually suggested anything … yet. Like the above, it would be my bet that when a (liberal) consensus of “what to do” has arisen in his camp, he will put forward a relatively useless and vanilla proposal.
Mr Obama, I suggest, is not a leader. He may someday grow to be one after all he is young an inexperienced and has much learning and growth in the poitical process yet ahead of him. But he has not (ever?) demonstrated any leadership qualities. He may be able divise and find a consensus in within a party which has substantial agreement on the basics. But he has not demonstrated he can take the risks and gambles necessary to lead.
Mr McCain is a more instinctive leader, he may lead you astray sometimes, he may not. But he will lead. And that is an important quality in a leader.
…in a single two-panel cartoon at Red Planet Cartoons. The problem seems to stem from folks defaulting on home loans. It’s easy to label the lending institution “greedy” and go from there, but there’s a whole lot more to it than that. One big-government program has spawned this new big-government bailout.
Those with short attention spans will miss the larger picture. The larger picture is the more important one.
Though “stealing” would be more the verb I’d use. In Obama’s latest ad running in the southwest, with narration in Spanish, he ties McCain to Limbaugh and then quotes Limbaugh on immigration issues. It calls McCain two-faced and a liar. But as Jake Tapper of ABC News discovers, the ad itself is where the deceit is.
The Obama camp draws a very tenuous link between Limbaugh and McCain to start the smear. Essentially, they say, they both supported the Minutemen. Well, except McCain didn’t, and Limbaugh has openly and loudly disagreed with McCain on immigration for a long time.
And then the two quotes from Limbaugh are out of context, one in the extreme. They took a quote from Rush’s sense of what American immigration law would be if they were like Mexico’s. He paraphrased protest laws for foreigners in Mexico by saying, “shut your mouth or get out”, and the ad makes it sound like he’s speaking to immigrants.
Tapper’s article has the full context for the quotes and both sides of the story on the “lies”. Karl Rove would be proud.
Oh, and someone please tell Ed O’Keefe of the Washington Post that his entirely uncritical reporting on this new ad does a disservice to his readers (but a rather nice service to Obama).
Used to be that Google would allow pro-abortion groups to advertise with them, but not anti-abortion ones. The threat of legal action in the UK has shown them the error of their ways.
Christian and other religious groups opposed to abortion were allowed to advertise on Google for the first time from today, after the search engine capitulated in the face of a legal challenge.
Google had banned pro-life religious groups from buying adverts against search terms such as “abortion” and “abortion help” but was forced to abandon its policy after it was accused of breaching equalities legislation.
The challenge was brought by the Christian Institute, a cross-denominational pressure group, who said that Google’s change of heart was an acknowledgement of the rights of everybody to hold an opinion on the subject.
Mike Judge from the Christian Institute said: “Google were taking adverts from pro-abortion groups, and our view is that was a free speech issue. What we want to do is set out the acts in a pretty factual and pretty sensible way”.
Google had been taken to court by the Christian Institute earlier in the year, arguing that its policy was in breach of the Equalities Act of 2006. Initially, Google said it would fight in the courts, but changed its mind over the summer. Its new policy applies globally.
Acknowledging that the issue of abortion was “an emotive subject”, Google said that it reconsidered its policy following the Christian Institute’s challenge, and said it would be “creating a level playing field and enabling religious associations to place ads on abortion in a factual way”.
The United Nations continues to get stonewalled by Iran, and intends to commit the situation to further study. In the meantime, there’s good evidence that Iran’s nuclear program is more than just for “peaceful purposes”.
Iran is continuing to stall on UN investigation into its disputed nuclear programme, refusing to provide access to documentation, individuals or sites which could reveal the true nature of its activities, the UN atomic watchdog said Monday.
Furthermore, the Islamic republic is defying international demands to suspend uranium enrichment, a process that can be used to make the fissile material for an atomic bomb, the International Atomic Energy Agency said.
The United States warned Iran could now face possible new sanctions in the wake of the IAEA’s findings.
The agency complained that it was making little headway in its investigation into allegations that Tehran had, in the past, been involved in studies to make a nuclear warhead.
The IAEA “regrettably has not been able to make any substantive progress on the alleged studies and other associated key remaining issues which remain of serious concern,” said the restricted report, a copy of which was obtained by AFP.
One of the primary talking points of Mr Obama’s campaign is that what is needed (as a change) are “smart” policies. But there is a fundamental problem with that, it’s wrong. Let’s start with this quote which is in line with what I’m trying to say:
America’s regulatory structure is mostly the child of the Progressive Era, when well meaning, well educated protestants thought that they could save the world by putting bright technocrats from the right kind of families in charge of the messy, sprawling economy and make it clean and tidy and safe. That sounds sarcastic, but it wasn’t entirely unreasonable. The first great victory of the Progressive Era, the major revolutions in public health, did just that: made life safer and nicer for everyone, with minimal inconvenience, by putting experts in charge of things like sanitation and quarantine and the water supply. Before Hayek, we didn’t have all that much reason to think that this feat couldn’t be repeated elsewhere.
But now we have had Hayek, and the failure of the Soviet Union, and a hundred other ways to learn that in any sizeable economy, the information problem is simply too big. Even leaving out the various incentive problems ably detailed by both Marxists and public choice economics, a well-intentioned bureaucrat cannot know enough about what’s going on in the world to thoroughly manage even a static economy, much less one that has to cope with millions of constant changes, from hurricanes to new babies.
In the context of the current financial kerfuffle, an oft noted claim has been that what is needed is “better smarter regulation.” As if that will somehow so fundamentally change the market structure so that risk will not be taken and occasionally those risk takers will overreach. Economic and social management cannot be done by “being smarter” as the complexity the problem means it is intractable. The only solution is to yield control. The setting of policy has to be done by the millions not by the hundreds of experts. Individually those experts may be nominally smarter than a great majority (but likely not all) of the millions for whom their decisions are replacing. But the complexity of modern society means the problems and issues cannot be comprehended by any single or group of experts no matter how smart they are.
What is not needed is an Executive who believes he can either by himself or a counciliar consensus of “experts” figure out the “solution” to the problems that will face him. This is exactly the opposite of what we need. We don’t need a smart leader who thinks (or knows) he’s smart and is seeking an inteligent solution. We need a wise leader who knows he isn’t smart and the best he can do is to suggest a direction and perceptive enough to notice which of us have figured out a “better way” and pass the word.
On fault I have with many progressive/liberals blogs. By and large they fence with the wrong parties. They comment on and discuss conservatism by arguing with the current proxies, such as Mr Bush, Mr McCain and the host of pundits. Who they don’t attack or discuss are the ideas and arguments of the actual conservative foundational thinkers, that is economists like Friedman, Mises, and Hayek, or the social theories of Nisbet or Solzhenitsyn or the political ideas of Jouvenel and so on. On this part, I’d like to make it a more general plea. Liberals (Progressives) and Conservatives alike mourn the fact that the “other side” is bereft of “ideas”. If any of you out there know of a liberal or progressive blog offering counter arguments to those like Friedman, Hayek, Solzhenitsyn and so on, please let know. I’m starving for that sort of encounter in the ’sphere.
…by Francis Cianfrocca, aka “Blackhedd”, at Redstate. His explanation of the situation that the Fed found themselves in with regard to AIG is, for the most part, readable by a non-financier.
He also addresses the anger some are feeling about the government bailing out another huge firm, and against the top brass of that company. In addition, he touches on how this affects free-market capitalists and the eggshells the government is now walking on in this regard.
A good read.
First, the New York Times, from July 3, 1984, on Geraldine Ferraro and the question of experience.
Where is it written that only senators are qualified to become President? Surely Ronald Reagan does not subscribe to that maxim. Or where is it written that mere representatives aren’t qualified, like Geraldine Ferraro of Queens? Representative Morris Udall, who lost New Hampshire to Jimmy Carter by a hair in 1976, must surely disagree. So must a longtime Michigan Congressman named Gerald Ford. Where is it written that governors and mayors, like Dianne Feinstein of San Francisco, are too local, too provincial? That didn’t stop Richard Nixon from picking Spiro Agnew, a suburban politician who became Governor of Maryland. Remember the main foreign affairs credential of Georgia’s Governor Carter: He was a member of the Trilateral Commission. Presidential candidates have always chosen their running mates for reasons of practical demography, not idealized democracy. One might even say demography is destiny: this candidate was chosen because he could deliver Texas, that one because he personified rectitude, that one because he appealed to the other wing of the party. On occasion, Americans find it necessary to rationalize this rough-and-ready process. What a splendid system, we say to ourselves, that takes little-known men, tests them in high office and permits them to grow into statesmen. This rationale may even be right, but then let it also be fair. Why shouldn’t a little-known woman have the same opportunity to grow? We may even be gradually elevating our standards for choosing Vice Presidential candidates. But that should be done fairly, also. Meanwhile, the indispensable credential for a Woman Who is the same as for a Man Who – one who helps the ticket.
(Emphasis added by NewsBusters.org.)
And now, the New York Times, from September 11, 2008, on Sarah Palin and the question of experience.
It is well past time for Sarah Palin, Republican running mate, governor of Alaska and self-proclaimed reformer, to fill in for the voting public the gaping blanks about her record and qualifications to be vice president.
[…]
Voters have a right to hear Ms. Palin explain in detail her qualifications to be standby president with no national or foreign policy experience. More is required of any serious candidate for such a high office than one interview with questions put by one selected source.
The paper of record can’t seem to get its story straight. Any wonder the old media is losing its credibility?
From Bruce McQuain at Q&O, comes a quiz:
1. Who identified and tried to fix what presently ails Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae 5 years ago?
2. Who opposed the plan, saying they were not in any kind of financial crisis?
McQuain gives a hint as to what the answer to #2 is; the same folks who say Social Security is just fine, and Medicare is doing well, too. Bruce has a link to a contemporaneous New York Times article that explains the proposal and the smack down.
Remember this when Dem…er, certain politicians try to place blame for this and try to use it as a campaign gimmick.
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