This is the truth, nothing but the truth, and the whole truth, with a waterboard as my witness!

Thursday, April 30, 2009

Recent developments and channeling fisher

Germany contracts 6pc as eurozone bank deposits fall at fastest rate since Depression I pointed out in my recent post that it was ridiculous to be formulating policy around a concern about inflation. What Germany and France should have been doing is targeting inflation. I think that history will judge the decision not to go to the wall with stimulus supply side measues will be taught internationally in business courses for years to come.

I will be on a forced sabatical, a euphemism for unemployment soon. I will take that time to brush off some of the old websites from the past, tag back to the waybackmachine and internet archive and have some fun.

I posted a while back that I felt bad about making an assertion at USNI after the pirate hostage rescue that the USA had not "won one lately." As an update there is a thought provoking thread along an ongoing line...

Time to ask the tough questions

In addition there was:

http://informationdissemination.blogspot.com/2009/04/phase-0-operations-for-failed-states.html

And these questions revolve around:

Increasingly, the national security agendas of policymakers will be dominated by five questions: whether to intervene, when, with whom, with what tools, and to what end?



We live in a changed world, are we color blind yet? No but we are getting closer.

I read many editorials wanting to close borders and think it a bad idea for allot of reasons. But this drives the point home:

"Closing borders is dangerous because many goods needed in a pandemic are made abroad, said Dr. Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, including most masks, gowns and gloves, electrical circuits for ventilators and communications gear, and pharmaceutical drugs and the raw materials to make them. ...

'You cut those off and you cripple the health care system,' he said. 'Our global just-in-time economy means we are dependent on others.' Much of our food is from overseas. 'A Kellogg’s Nutri-Grain bar has ingredients from nine countries in it,' he noted."


I watched the Arlen Specter announcement live and thought back to the club for growth election that I covered here and what Wayne Gilchrest went through. I read that Michael Steele wears his hat backwards. Having been a life-long registered repblican I understand the comment. I think that anger and billigerance doesn't sell as well in Maryland and that there is a schism in the GOP. I know I was alienated by some of the tactics that were employed in the GOP primary in the congressional 1st. I also know that Steele is more mainstream (or reasonable, pragmatic, and civil) than many in the GOP who want to be angry. Steele attended the Kent Island Bull Roast in support of Wayne and the attacks upon him are unwarranted.

I just know for a fact that not all of the GOP wants to be like Coulter and Limbaugh.

I think we will know by Sunday what kind of flu we have. I agree with Biden that avoiding public transport makes common sense. This might be an existential event beyond the realm of forseeable events that will take a bad economic circumstance and make it worse. How bad will be understood more fully when math models can be better realized.

In closing channeling Irving Fisher to fight inflation was a mistake, Germany needs to understand that we are all in this together and needs to do what can be done when it can be done prior to things getting worse.

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