Potpourri
==> Tom Woods and Gary Chartier talk anarchy and the law. Just plug your ears when they say maybe I’m not right about this stuff.
==> This oddity in the Ferguson grand jury is definitely a point in favor of the camp that says the government didn’t want an indictment. Then here’s Scalia, though I haven’t read him yet on this.
==> Judith Curry on the legacy of ClimateGate, five years later.
==> Has anybody heard of this John Bugas guy and his thoughts on what sound like consumer sovereignty?
==> His monetary views are nuts, but aww, I can’t stay mad at him.
==> When it comes to his weight, Krugman adheres to morality tales and punishment for the boom’s excesses. I, on the other hand, have engaged in several rounds of quantitative easing in the last few years, yet it went hand in hand with belt tightening.
==> Speaking of business cycle analogies that aren’t actually analogous, Larry White caught this interesting tidbit from Chris Rock’s interview:
What has Obama done wrong?
When Obama first got elected, he should have let it all just drop.
Let what drop?
Just let the country flatline. Let the auto industry die. Don’t bail anybody out. In sports, that’s what any new GM does. They make sure that the catastrophe is on the old management and then they clean up. They don’t try to save old management’s mistakes.
That’s clever. You let it all go to hell.
Let it all go to hell knowing good and well this is on them. That way you can implement. You hire your own coach. You get your own players. He could have got way more done. You know, we’ve all been on planes that had tremendous turbulence, but we forget all about it. Now, if you live through a plane crash, you’ll never forget that. Maybe Obama should have let the plane crash. You get credit for bringing somebody back from the dead. You don’t really get credit for helping a sick person by administering antibiotics.
Liberals don’t think they are living in a real world. They are above the consequences of their policies. The world is an ant farm. Allowing many of the ants to die while cleaning the place is just something to teach the ants a lesson. It is a severe lack of empathy covered up by constant shouts of “I care about you” and “I feel your pain”.
Regarding Krugman:
Bob, you cannot compare that the real economy. As if there were such a thing as capital consumption. And even if, then capital consumption was a good thing now. It is equivalent to a flood or a hurricane, but with the benefit that we enjoy consumption, no one dies and it works slowly and doesn’t come as a shock. Less capital means, higher MEC so this would get us out of the liquidity trap. Austrians really don’t understand what is good for us. Capital consumption will remain a dream I guess. People just save too much..
Poe?
Edgar?
That “oddity” doesn’t seem to mean what you think. I read it to mean the prosecutors didn’t want the grand jury to refuse to indict because of Missouri’s unconstitutional law regarding police shooting.
I think Chris Rock stumbled on a great analogy but he confused the league for the team. Obama is the league, funneling the best new resources to the worst run teams.
Chris Rock is not suggesting that “let it all drop” would have lead to a better economic outcome. He’s suggesting it would have lead to a better political outcome for his (Democrat, black) tribe-If, it should be stressed according to his perspective, Obama intervened heavily in the economy afterwards to fix the damage, which he assumes would not get fixed on it’s own.
Moreover it must be stressed he is faulting Obama for, he believes, successfully saving the economy. Thus the line about “antibiotics.”
This guy is not on our side. He accidentally said something that sounds like he is, but he’s not.
“I, on the other hand, have engaged in several rounds of quantitative easing in the last few years, yet it went hand in hand with belt tightening”.
Bob: the fitness analogue of Roderick Long’s capitalism …