The scarce political post

Okay, fine, this must be kinda genius if it can make me giggle at this point.

To the surprise of no one, the White House did explicitly endorse torture, tho' they used the SS-coined "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" label instead. The surprising thing is that apparently it's on paper. How lovely.

This commentary on the strategies against the anti-marriage initiative in California has really depressing commentary. The Mormon Church has thrown in heavily for the measure, and I hear from people I know in California that airtime is now overwhelmingly filled with anti-marriage commercials and ads saying that Proposition 8 must be passed to "protect our families" and all that. Governor Schwarzenegger opposes the measure, but isn't actually doing anything to oppose it other than making the linked statement. Unsurprisingly, Governor and candidate for Vice-President Sarah Palin endorses a Federal amendment against marriage for GBLT couples. You can donate here to the pro-marriage/anti-Proposition 8 side if you want.

The commentary here, in response to Michelle Malkin's condemnation of General Colin Powell's endorsement of Senator Obama for president, are no fun either. Meanwhile, you have the Movement Conservatives building their psychological case for "betrayal" as cause of losing this election, as pretty much all indications say they will. That's a real bad meme. (And yes, I hate linking to DailyKOS; think of it as a link to The Whiskey Bar, since that is a post by that ex-blog's writer, billmon, who I liked to read back in the day.) As part of that, you see Republican Rep. Bachmann calling for Anti-American activities investigations and prosecutions, and Governor Sarah Palin renewing the 2004-era "real America" vs. "traitors" memetics, only this time on the losing side.

As a metacommentary on all of this, I strongly recommend reading this entry at Overcoming Bias: Ends Don't Justify Means. It's not as long as the scrollbar indicates, there are just a lot of comments. This is an explanation of the usefulness of rationality rolled up into a short blog post, and it's that rationality which has almost entirely been thrown overboard in American political culture.

solidly in wave 4 now

Good afternoon.

The TED spread has popped below 3.00, on sharp falls in LIBOR rates. This is a highly significant move at this point. Markets are up, I would think on the news, but more apparently on rumours of another bribe "fiscal stimulus package," and Ben Bernanke's endorsement thereof. Treasury Secretary Paulson is also telling banks outright to lend out their new government capital, and now. That's... one way to go about it, I suppose. If you're fond of command economies, anyway.

GM wants to merge with/buy out Chrysler, but can't get the credit or investor support necessary to do so. They're looking for government support.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reports on a political concensus to let the budget deficit just keep growing:

...the extra spending, a sore point in normal times, has been widely accepted on both sides of the political aisle as necessary to salvage the banking system and avert another Great Depression.

“Right now would not be the time to balance the budget,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a bipartisan Washington group that normally pushes the opposite message.

...

There are also assumptions that help to make America’s deficits tolerable, even logical.

One is that people all over the world are willing, even eager, to lend to the United States, confident that the world’s most powerful nation will always repay on time, whatever its current difficulties.

...

Another assumption, also based on 60 years of post-World War II experience, is that although the economy is sliding into recession, in a year or two that recession will end and the national income (also known as the gross domestic product) will expand once again.

When that happens, the national debt — the accumulated borrowing to finance all the annual deficits — will shrink in relation to the income available to pay off the debt.

That's certainly optimistic. Let's hope they're right this time.

Frugality has become the new keyword. Kevin Depew has a rambling but interesting post here about liquidity traps; Minyanville's Todd Harrison worries about geopolitical action, pointing at articles like this one. Kevin Depew talks about the dollar rally as a function of debt payoff. Brad Setzer at the CFR talks about the renewed importance of the G7, and I think there are some dollar lessons to be learned there as well. In a separate post, he discusses central bank policy divergence, with the US Federal Reserve taking on essentially as much risk as possible as other central banks seek safety. He does not consider this stabilising.

Eric Janszen talks in Harpers about a target of 5,000 on the DOW, and, more interestingly, about the CDO market and the actual payoff value, which could be quite high, and notes:

As the economy contracts, the inexorable logic of the American political economy is to increase protectionist and unilateral measures, as if the United States were still a net creditor as in the late 1970s. If such policies are pursued (which caused the world trade negotiations to collapse earlier this year) the results will be disastrous for America: the current orderly diversification from the dollar may become disorderly.

I'm noticing more protectionist talk on economic fora, particularly in ones where people should know better. It's a bad idea. Brad Setzer thinks the US deficit will fall as demand for consumer goods dries up, which makes sense to me, so tariffs would be ridiculously counterproductive.

Daebo Shipping warns of "serial counterparty defaults." "He added that the bulk market was also being affected by what he thought was a collapse in forward freight agreements and other derivatives."

Far Eastern Economic Review's article "The Great Crash of China" is a little breathless, but does point out the transition China is going through right now as an instability point as it tries to transition from low-grade manufacturing jobs to higher-grade manufacturing jobs. A reverse migration back to the smaller villages - and a wave of resulting unrest - is not at all unlikely.

Hey, Elfquest Fans!

Of course Rayek's gonna be a Tory:

And That's Only Because He Moved To The Left

I should probably save this one, but eh

Remembrance Day, Early