Ivan Eland of the Independent Institute has a piece at The San Francisco Chronicle on how presidents are evaluated….and how they should be evaluated:

“Surprisingly, Democrats Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton actually reduced government spending as a fraction of GDP. Dwight Eisenhower, the best of the modern Republican presidents on this score, held spending roughly constant as a portion of GDP. Carter also deregulated four major industries – financial services, energy, communications and transportation – and eventually appointed a Federal Reserve chairman who set a precedent for a tight monetary policy, which ultimately led to national prosperity during the Reagan and Clinton years. Reagan continued Carter’s deregulation but weakened it.

Bias Toward Activism

The fact is: Most presidential scholars have a bias toward activism rather than outcomes.

A president who creates new government programs to deal with societal problems generally will be rated as a better president than one who deals more cautiously – and cost-effectively – with problems. This is true even if the activist president’s programs do little good or even exacerbate the problems they were intended to solve.

Thus,  Johnson and Roosevelt receive high ratings from most historians, though many of Roosevelt’s economic-recovery programs were wasteful and ineffective, and many of Johnson’s Great Society programs increased government dependency and made poverty more intractable. Bush added a Medicare drug benefit – the first new entitlement program since the Great Society – to a system more insolvent than Social Security. And while Reagan is remembered by historians as an advocate of small government, he expanded government substantially.

Presidents should be judged on results. And results should be measured not by the number of new laws passed, the size of a stimulus bill or the number of jobs added or saved during the president’s term.

Results should be measured by the degree to which his actions, or his deliberate inaction, contribute to peace, prosperity and liberty.”

My Comment:

This is a very thoughtful piece and it highlights one of the worst traits of democracy – the incessant pressure from voters to act, to show results.

Interestingly, that’s also one of the underlying reasons behind the increasing volatility of markets today. Firms and analysts are more and more driven by quarterly performances, which results in all-kinds of short-term juggling of balance-sheets. In turn, that contributes to overall market volatility.

In politics, the relentless pressure to act– to take charge – is equally dangerous, because it feeds the delusion that the economy can be made to do what you want in some direct, hands-on fashion.

Well, what about leadership, you might ask? Isn’t there something a leader can do?

This again depends on what you think of the notion of leadership.  I’ll reserve my thoughts on that for a separate post, but for now I’ll say that what seems to be required today is an appearance and demeanor acceptable to the masses of voters. That’s what “charisma” amounts to.

In practice, this means how well a person can read a teleprompter, how personable they are on TV, how personable their family is, how decisive their utterances seem, and so on.

Now, since that varies with the moods of the voters, it follows that opinion-testing (polls, focus groups) becomes very central to this notion of leadership. 

And, opinion-testing is often nothing more than opinion-forming. The leader molds the crowd, and the crowd in turn molds the leader.

This two-way dynamic is also influenced by expert opinion. You would normally suppose that that would exert a moderating influence on the activism of a president. Experts, you’d think, would provide some of the ballast, the weighting to hold back the crowd –  along the lines of the role originally conceived for the Senate, for instance.

But the expert class – and I’ve discussed this at length in The Language of Empire – also has an inbuilt bias toward activism.

Ergo, everything tends to make presidents more activist than it’s wise for them to be.

Thanks to a reader for sending this in:

The Surgery Center of Oklahoma

Check out the costs of different procedures below. They are far below standard costs.

I hope the information helps someone in need of inexpensive alternatives.

Please note that I am not a medical expert of any kind and have not checked this facility. I know nothing about the quality and posted it here simply to show readers that there are alternatives. It’s up to each person to check, do their research, and ask questions.  I take no responsibility for anyone who uses this facility and is dissatisfied, injured, or hurt in any way.

From the website:

“It is no secret to anyone that the pricing of surgical services is at the top of the list of problems in our dysfunctional healthcare system. Bureaucracy at the insurance and hospital levels, cost shifting and the absence of free market principles are among the culprits for what has caused surgical care in the United States to be cost prohibitive. As more and more patients find themselves paying more and more out of pocket, it is clear that something must change. We believe that a very different approach is necessary, one involving transparent and direct pricing.

Transparent, direct, package pricing means the patient knows exactly what the cost of the service will be upfront. Fees for the surgeon, anesthesiologist and facility are all included in one low price. There are no hidden costs, charges or surprises.

The pricing outlined on this website is not a teaser, nor is it a bait-and-switch ploy. It is the actual price you will pay. We can offer these prices because we are completely physician-owned and managed. We control every aspect of the facility from real estate costs, to the most efficient use of staff, to the elimination of wasteful operating room practices that non-profit hospitals have no incentive to curb. We are truly committed to providing the best quality care at the lowest possible price.”

Brian Doherty writes at American Conservative magazine:

“No call for liberty and constitutional principle seems convincing when Obama is arguing that those relying on government giveaways should have to follow government-set rules. That is, once you’ve allowed them to go ahead with the handouts, the political game is almost over. Under the guise of “managing the taxpayers’ money,” Obama and his crew are rewriting mortgages, deciding executive compensation, tossing out CEO’s. And note carefully that his plans for where taxpayers’ money should go continue to swell, from healthcare to the environment to energy policy to expanded “national service” programs. When taxpayers’ money is everywhere—and Obama is doing his best to make sure it is—then Obama’s control is everywhere.

The Octo-potus is claiming his space and flexing his grip. As far as he’s concerned, it’s Barack Obama’s country. We’re just living in it.”

My Comment:

This would be much more plausible if it were true that the vast majority of people opposed either Obama…or Bush.

But they didn’t.

They could have stood up to militarism..and jingoism…and government hand-outs…and bail-outs…and subsidies..

But they didn’t – that’s the crucial point.

The Octo-potus rules, because, when all’s said and done, that’s exactly the way we (whoever that nebulous creature is) wanted it.

Lila

“April 20 (Bloomberg) — Companies with the most debt and lowest returns on assets are turning the biggest six-week rally in stocks since 1938 into a bloodbath for last year’s best- performing trading strategy.

Investors using so-called quantitative momentum strategies — which speculate that the worst stocks in the past 12 months will continue to decline — have become this year’s biggest losers after banks and companies that rely on consumer spending surged. Quant momentum techniques may have lost 27 percent this month in the U.S., the most since at least 1993, while those in Europe may have dropped 20 percent in March and 24 percent in April, according to data compiled by JPMorgan Chase & Co.

“Not in a million years would we have expected this gyration to be as vicious and enduring as it has been,” Steven Solmonson, the head of Park Place Capital Ltd., a hedge fund that oversees $150 million, said in an interview from New York. “The quants got whipsawed badly.”

The turnaround battering investors who use mathematical models to pick stocks is making heroes out of last year’s worst- performing money managers. Bill Miller, who lost 55 percent in 2008 running the Legg Mason Value Trust after beating the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index for a record 15 straight years, is topping the measure again. Value investors buy companies that are the cheapest relative to their earnings or assets….”

More here at Bloomberg. 

Hat-tip for the lead to Eddie Elfenbein at Crossing Wall Street 

From a recent review of “Mobs, Messiahs and Markets”

It was an excellent read, similar in some respects to one of my all-time favorite investment

books: Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds delves into human psychology and crowd behavior. Mobs, Messiahs & Markets is like a modern-day version with emphasis on investing and explores popular delusions like “real estate never goes down”, “stocks always go up”, “deficits don’t matter”, “you are either with us or against us”. When rational, intelligent human beings become part of a group, they are fine. However, as soon as they become part of a crowd, they lose all rationality and turn into blockheads! I found the book quite entertaining, with great wit and sarcasm to keep me amused. The book talks about people who were determined to make the world a better place by making it conform to their delusions. People like Hitler for example! The authors also talk about how crowd think leads to wars and how wars are futile and never worth the cost. There’s also a complete chapter making fun of Thomas Freedman and his banal book “The World is Flat”. I never liked that book and apparently neither did the authors. There’s also a full chapter devoted to Alan Greenspan which was particularly eye-opening….”

My Comment

There. That’s what I like to hear.  And I’d like it even more if you decided to buy our book off this website, thus giving me a few measly pennies, via Amazon. I don’t need to  mention that this will not support me in my old age, but it will make me feel appreciated and more inclined to take the sticks and kicks of public bloggery.

Well, a few posts ago, in “Survivalists for Nationalization,” I noted that oddity of The Atlantic running a piece by a former IMF economist touting the benefits of nationalization just after an article praising doomsday mongering and survivalism. What gives, I asked.

Was one strain of libertarian thinking about to be coopted into the same old big-government vein of reasoning?

Now, reading through  “Pieces of a Grand Puzzle” on Robert Wenzel’s blog I came across a few clues to understanding what that was all about. The IMF is getting a make-over . It’s going to be the new regulatory cop on the global beat.

PS:  Thanks to Wenzel for linking to my blog. It’s much appreciated.

From “A man-made famine,” Raj Patel:

“For anyone who understands the current food crisis, it is hard to listen to the head of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, without gagging.

Earlier this week, Zoellick waxed apocalyptic about the consequences of the global surge in prices, arguing that free trade had become a humanitarian necessity, to ensure that poor people had enough to eat. The current wave of food riots has already claimed the prime minister of Haiti, and there have been protests around the world, from Mexico, to Egypt, to India.

The reason for the price rise is perfect storm of high oil prices, an increasing demand for meat in developing countries, poor harvests, population growth, financial speculation and biofuels. But prices have fluctuated before. The reason we’re seeing such misery as a result of this particular spike has everything to do with Zoellick and his friends.

Before he replaced Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank, Zoellick was the US trade representative, their man at the World Trade Organisation. While there, he won a reputation as a tough and guileful negotiator, savvy with details and pushy with the neoconservative economic agenda: a technocrat with a knuckleduster.

His mission was to accelerate two decades of trade liberalisation in key strategic commodities for the United States, among them agriculture. Practically, this meant the removal of developing countries’ ability to stockpile grain (food mountains interfere with the market), to create tariff barriers (ditto), and to support farmers (they ought to be able to compete on their own). This Zoellick did often, and enthusiastically…..”

More at The Guardian

My Comment

Patel is right about Zoellick being a gag-worthy appointment, as this article of mine at MWC news a couple of weeks ago, noted.

(More later)

I was thinking this morning how we can communicate with each other in a way different from the one encouraged by the ideological mind-set. And I was thinking of it because I rushed to make a response to someone and then had to edit and cut my own words out because they came out sharper than I intended.

Writing, especially on the web, is addictive because it can be done so quickly. So what works? (This is advice to myself…musing out aloud)

(1) Think a minute before you write something. Or, write it and save it but don’t send it.

(2) Try to focus on what the other person actually said, rather than what you think their motives for saying it might be. Even if they do have those motives.

(3) Try to start from some place where you agree with that person.

(4) Try to show appreciation for that person, even if you don’t like their view point. Make a distinction in your response between the person and the opinion.

(5) When you are disagreeing sharply, try to avoid personal pronouns and the active voice. This will tone down the sharpness of your retort. The person is more likely to engage with you in a constructive way.

(6) Don’t get a person’s first name wrong, especially, when you write or comment on their blog. (Sorry, Doug Boggs, at “The Banterer”). Wait until you’ve had coffee in the morning, if necessary.

(7) Try to link as often as you can, even when you comment. People like it.

(8) Try not to let the bitterness of past experience affect your willingness to believe that people might still wish to help you or engage with you. A lot of people who don’t agree with everything you say might support you in spite of that. Appreciate it.

(9) Keep your posts to one or two points and try to be informative. Argument is good too, but focus on reasons and evidence.

(10) On big questions, nobody is ever convinced only by an argument.  They need to be convinced by the person who makes the argument

Since when is a thirst for justice being bloodthirsty?

– Cindy Sheehan on Facebook (link intentionally omitted)