The Stand


From the Sludge Report,

A parting gunshot from a vehicle leaving Waffle House in West Asheville, NC shattered a window and caused a minor injury, police said. The shooting happened around 3:00 a.m. Saturday after a group of whites argued with a group of Hispanics at the 24-hour restaurant on Smokey Park Highway, Asheville police Lt. Wallace Welch said “The two groups were jawing back and forth with each other over citizenship issues and whatnot,” Welch said. As the Hispanic group drove off, someone in the vehicle fired at least once into a large window near the front door, he said.

If the Waffle House isn't safe for good ol' boys, than where is? The time to act is now...

"Something-Something-D-O-O Economics..."


The Pink Avenger tells us that the country time forgot is reading from last century's playbook and came up with this original idea to try and catch up,

The Mongolian parliament’s surprise passage of a hefty windfall tax on copper and gold late last week was intended to raise funds to improve welfare in the poverty-plagued nation. But the move could undermine one of its most vital industries. In a session on Friday, the Great Hural approved a private member’s bill imposing a 68 per cent tax on profits from sales of copper when its market price is above $2,600 (€2,025, £1,380) a tonne and on gold when it passes $500 an ounce. Officials and politicians in Ulaanbataar said the final text of the tax measure had yet to be released, but that it was a separate act of legislation from the country’s longdebated minerals law. The bill reflected widespread resentment at the profits made by foreignbacked mining companies in a democratic country where large sections of the population are mired in poverty. It was backed by members of both the ruling Mongolian People’s Revolutionary party and the Democratic party, the largest opposition group. Observers said the measure was aimed in the shortterm at the Erdenet Mining Corp, a joint venture copper mine with Russia that opened in the 1970s. Erdenet is already a large source of revenue for the Ulaanbataar government and was honoured in a ceremony in the capital only last Friday, the day the measure passed through parliament. But backers of the windfall tax argued that more of the joint venture’s profits that flow to Russia or are retained could be better used to fund public child support payments and economic development.

"Economic development" huh? Last I checked, economic development, much like sports, usually consists of two parties. It'll be very interesting to see how they get people to play ball with these kinds of incentive. But one thing you can rest assure of is this, Whatever the magical thermostat setting on the laffer curve might be, it's well below 68%. And you can sure as hell bet Mongolia ain't going to look anymore like Sweden after this tax than it does today. Now grant you, some secret elder brianiac in Mongolia might forsee either a contraction in the eurodollar supply, or a bottom falling out of commodities and is trying to get in while the getting is good. I don't know. It's kind of hard not to feel sorry for Mongolia, in the grand scheme of things. It's a country that spent the last century snuggled in between cuddly China and the former USSR. So we're not exactly dealing with the best hand delt. I'd be interested to see just how much of this "people's tax" actually ends up in the hands or the service of the people.

Anatolia and America: A Comparison

The word "empire" is lobbed around a lot these days. Pretty much any political disposition not of a neocon persuasion speaks of America as an "empire". The usual comparison is to Rome. It's the quintesential Western European model for an empire. Bonnie Prince William once said that he believed America should be the new Rome and new globo-cop. Regardless of how acruate this may or may not be, let's see how America juxtaposes against Turkey.

The Ottoman empire was largely the product of the culture it inherited, from the Arabs. America is a largely a product of a culture it inherited, from the British. The Turks are a very heterogenous people, the region has absorbed countless groups upon countless groups. America followed a similar route, but for different reasons. America was able to pull this off because nationality was not grounded in the tradtional recourse of blood, but citizenship. Much of Turkey's absoption was due to conquest. Like the Turks, American have been resented by their neighbors, to varying degrees.

To say World War One is more the effect of the Ottoman's collapse, rather than the cause. The true cause of the Ottoman's collapse began hundreds of years prior. The Ottoman's grew haughty in their possession of the caliphate, it was the spiritual and political capital of its world. Put in today's terms, it starting buying its own headlines. Sound familiar at all? Well, while Ottomans were content to control their considerable chunk of real estate, the rest of the world kept changing around them. Europe grew from barely intimidation of it to dictating "requests" to it. These requests were in the form of religious liberties for Christians in various sanjaks in its dominion. Since virutally the War of 1812, America has had to make compirimises with its principles, slowly, but steadily, becoming more distorted with each acquescence. This didn't spell the end of the Ottoman empmire immediately, but it signified a sea-change that was as historically significant as the sacking of Rome and the proclomations of Martin Luther. It spelled out that in a post Westpalia world, states were equals in a community of recognized members, anddemands comprimises amongst members was only good edicit. The Ottomans quitely accepted at this point that it was in no place to refuse, but so long as it was allowed face saving, it would quitely make defference without making a scene. And so while half-brother Europe took the world by storm, the Ottoman's decided it was time to maybe start making some noise of its own. But to win best-of-show in this contest, you had to pull out all the stops. The Ottomans already had the empire, but did it have the bells and whilstles of infastructure? No, the old homefront was definitely due for some renovations. So while modernizations took place, Europe did what Europe always does best, plot to conquor and/or kill each other. And when the Central Powers and the Allied powers said, "You're either with us, or against us". Well, it looks like the Ottomans picked the wrong side.

But the Twentieth century demonstrates that the Turks leanred their lesson and learned well. Ataturk has probably had the most enduring legacy of the all the cults-of-personality that popped up during that blood-soaked century. Mao, Lenin, Hitler, and Tito, would barely recognize their nations. Turkey, on the other hand, is dancing perfectly in step with the script it was given; always have the best bet at hand, and always keep looking for the next one to come.

So, are there more parrallels than not?

Back down from the Mountain...
(Miscellanea by any other name...)


For the time being, anyway.

Miscellanea


Me: Hi Work
Work: Hey, we've got an idea we'd like to run by you...
Me: Oh sure, what did you have in mind?"
Work: Well, how would you like to go home a nurse your blog?
Me: Well, I had planned on actually working and earning cash.
Work: Well, that might be a challenge...

Work decided to send me home today. They sent me home because of a failure to communicate. The failure being wholly on their part (for two work days in a row). Guess it's a good thing love's free. In addition to being free, it's good that those that love me are employed and can support my stupid ass.

But alas, I'm not bitching. Not today, anyhow. I might around paycheck time. But that's then. Today we'll just shake the Pink Avenger's tree and see what shakes loose. I've been slow on the uptake to blog this last couple of weeks. My reasons being that I just didn't really have the volition. Lots of interesting shit going on, still. The Red Heat Saga continues to sizzle. Mostly with Russia politely saying, "Shut up, I'm boss.."

Mainstream finacial news seems to be a cacophany of impulsive waves of frolic brought on by the Fed sump-pumping credit into the economy, followed by the corrective waves of investors getting ansty in the face of fundamentals pointing towards the ever-looming contraction. Technical and Fundamental realities seem to be pulling more and more in opposite directions without any traction to show for it. I'm not going to feign the necessary familiarity with financial news trends to say this signifies a sea-change, but I still get the feeling that the back-and-forth good news/bad news could spell some critical mass being reached in monetary elasticity.

Still, it must never be forgotten that new wealth is constantly being created, and this is what banks are issuing new money/bank credit against. Remember however, this new wealth is not synonymous with the commodity of bank credit/paper money, just as actual cost is not synonymous with price. The problem is that this new wealth reveals itself only in an after-the-fact/a posteori fashion, and that central banks are issuing loans, against this collateral of potential wealth, without any concrete calculation of how much new wealth is being generated.

But while we cannot calculate ahead of time how much wealth is being created, we can infer from past performance that this amount averages somewhere within 2 degrees of standard deviation (roughly 4.5%), to borrow from statistical terms. I imagine because most growth rates falls within this null-hypothesis netherworld, that Keynsian calculation primarily fails. There are periods when new wealth being brought into an economy exceeds this amount, such as currently in China, but these are the exception, not the rule, in fiat-money economies. Also remember China is on the long-end of the stick in its trade imbalance with America.

So what does all this have to the financial melt-down oft foreseen in popular finacial literature? Well, it means that basically while we can know the apriori realities of economics with certainty, we cannot know know when they'll kick in without having numbers and stats that can only be known after-the-fact.