Author Archives: Lila

Walter Williams On Mandatory Health Insurance

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Walter Williams, via Lew Rockwell:

“You are a 22-year-old healthy person. Instead of spending $3,000 or $4,000 a year for health insurance, you’d prefer investing that money in equipment to start a landscaping business. Which is the best use of that $3,000 or $4,000 a year — purchasing health insurance or starting up a landscaping business — and who should decide that question: Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, George Bush, a czar appointed by Obama or a committee of Washington bureaucrats? How can they possibly know what’s the best use of your earnings, particularly in light of the fact that they have no idea of who you are?

Neither you nor the U.S. Congress has the complete knowledge to know exactly what’s best for you. The difference is that when individuals make their own trade-offs, say between purchasing health insurance or investing in a business, they make wiser decisions because it is they who personally bear the costs and benefits of those decisions. You say, “Hold it, Williams, we’ve got you now! What if that person gets really sick and doesn’t have health insurance. Society suffers the burden of taking care of him.” To the extent that is a problem, it is not a problem of liberty; it’s a problem of congressionally mandated socialism. Let’s look at it.

It is not society that bears the burden; it is some flesh and blood American worker who finds his earnings taken by Congress to finance the health needs of another person.”

War On Terror Monitoring Likely to Spread to Latin America

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UpsideDownWorld.org

“Eric Farnsworth, Vice President of the Council of Americas, said he believes that Iran may be looking for uranium, possibly in Venezuela. But Time Magazine reported in an Oct. 8 article that “experts say it’s hardly certain Venezuela even has much, if any, uranium to provide Iran or anyone else.” Farnsworth also claimed Iran’s improved diplomatic relations with countries in Latin America is a boon for its intelligence capabilities.

Dina Siegel Vann, another “expert” who testified at the hearing, cited a U.S. State Department Terrorism report published in April that stated the Tri Border Area of Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil is a hub for Hezbollah and Hamas sympathizers-something that has been widely disputed.  Vann, Director of the Latino and Latin American Institute at the American Jewish Committee noted that the report also cited Bolivia as a possible site for terrorist activity.

“Concerted and decisive action is needed to closely monitor the activity of Iran and the groups it subsidizes, to correctly assess their potential for mischief, and to establish mechanisms to prevent potentially dangerous scenarios,” said Vann.

Coincidentally, these attempts to designate parts of Latin America as potential threats and conduits of terror attacks are in countries that have democratically elected left and center-left governments. And all of this comes as Washington’s controversial military base deal with Colombia awaits approval.”

My Comment

We´ve been blogging for some time now that Latin America seems to be going the way of Asia as a site of resource- warfare cum terrorism-monitoring.  This article signals another step in that direction.

Now, according to the electronic police state rankings of  Cryptohippie for 2008 (I blogged this several months ago), Brazil is still a “green” state – that is, one in which monitoring is lagging.  But articles like this suggest that it will be heading in the direction of the more advanced yellow, orange, and red states (in order of increasing surveillence).

Feds Suspected Rajaratnam Ten Years Ago

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Forbes has a report on an Intel engineer, Roomi Khan who cooperated with the Fed´s to avoid charges in a wire fraud case back in 2001- 2002. Apparently Rajaratnam was making money from inside information even then.

“According to a June 2002 sentencing memorandum for Khan, the earlier case arose after Intel suspected Rajaratnam was getting tips from an Intel insider because he was predicting Intel’s revenue “with extreme accuracy.”

Intel set up a hidden video camera that on March 6, 1998, recorded Khan, employed as a product marketing engineer at the company, faxing an important report concerning Intel’s three main Pentium processors to Rajaratnam.

The memo said Khan on March 24 then faxed handwritten pages that contained pricing information and sales data for Intel chips. “By multiplying those numbers, one can determine Intel’s total revenue for the quarter,” it said.”

Gold Down On Biggest Volume In History..

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Via Economic Policy Journal:

“The exchange-traded fund, SPDR Gold Shares, that holds gold bullion was down 5% Friday afternoon on record trading volume as the gold price fell. More than 70 million shares have traded hands with an hour of trading to go. It’s the highest volume in its history. The gold ETF was launched in late 2004 and has assets of more than $40 billion”

China Warns of Gold Bubble

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The Telegraph reports that China warns of a gold bubble:

“Experts say that China is putting a floor under the gold price but does not chase rallies once they are under way.

There is also a double-edged twist to news that Barrick Gold, the world’s biggest gold mining company, has closed the final 3m ounces of its notorious hedge book ahead of schedule. While the move is a bet that prices will continue to rise, it also means that Barrick has been a big buyer of gold lately. These purchases have now stopped. One of the key drivers behind the spike this autumn has been removed.”

This article is one of the few out there that takes into account the time lag between an announcement and an action. Many of the events that reporters tout as proof that the gold price will spike much higher right way are actually events that have taken place in the past – for eg., purchases at lower prices – or are hedges that have a more complex function than the usual retail investor has in mind, with the siren call of “gold´s going to the moon, jump in now or you´ve lost it forever” sounding in his ears.

Take trader  John Paulson´gold purchase.  It took place in January, apparently. And remember that it was a position taken by his hedge-fund, with his clients money. Paulson gets his fee no matter how that trade turns out long term, and if his fee is a percentage of the assets under management, a purchase when the price is high is better than one at rock bottom, even if his clients´profits are not maximized that way. (sorry: thoughtless blunder there)

Notice finally that Paulson´s own fortune is in gold to a much lesser extent – only about $250 million of his reported $6 billion net worth. That comes to about 4% of his assets….(Correction: that´s 6.8 billion and less than 4%)

Not an earth shaking proportion by any means.

So, what gives?

Climategate: Freakonomics Author Says Climate Models Driven By Funding

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“Freakonomics” co-author, Stephen J. Dubner weighs in on Climate-gate in The New York Times:

“The current generation of climate-prediction models are, as Lowell Wood puts it, “enormously crude.” … “The climate models are crude in space and they’re crude in time,” he continues. “So there’s an enormous amount of natural phenomena they can’t model. They can’t do even giant storms like hurricanes.”

There are several reasons for this, [Nathan] Myhrvold explains. Today’s models use a grid of cells to map the earth, and those grids are too large to allow for the modeling of actual weather. Smaller and more accurate grids would require better modeling software, which would require more computing power. “We’re trying to predict climate change 20 to 30 years from now,” he says, “but it will take us almost the same amount of time for the computer industry to give us fast enough computers to do the job.”

That said, most current climate models tend to produce similar predictions. This might lead one to reasonably conclude that climate scientists have a pretty good handle on the future.

Not so, says Wood.

“Everybody turns their knobs” — that is, adjusts the control parameters and coefficients of their models — “so they aren’t the outlier, because the outlying model is going to have difficulty getting funded.” In other words, the economic reality of research funding, rather than a disinterested and uncoordinated scientific consensus, leads the models to approximately match one another. It isn’t that current climate models should be ignored, Wood says — but, when considering the fate of the planet, one should properly appreciate their limited nature.”

Dubner´s piece reads Climate-gate as a kind of Rorscharch test for pundits. If you´re pro AGW, then all this is a tempest in a tea-cup (Paul Krugman). If you´re anti AGW, (James Delingpole), then it´s the greatest scientific scandal of the century.

Krugman:

“All those e-mails — people have never seen what academic discussion looks like. There’s not a single smoking gun in there. There’s nothing in there. And the travesty is that people are not able to explain why the fact that 1988 was a very warm year doesn’t actually mean that global warming has stopped. I mean, that’s loose wording. Right? Everything is about — we’re really in the same situation as if there was one extremely warm day in April. And then people are saying, well, you see, May is cooler than April, there’s no trend here. And that’s what — the travesty is how hard it has been to explain…”

Delingpole:

“If you own any shares in alternative energy companies I should start dumping them NOW.”

Well, I think of myself as a critic, but I don´t see the scandal right now as definitively one or the other — either game, set and match…..or a fizzle. It´s obviously a well-timed and massive hit to AGW, but I can think of worse things done in the name of science….from experiments in mind-control on unsuspecting patients… to Lysenko…..

As for its impact on AGW, I´m afraid the spin-machine will quickly rewrite the significance of some of the language used by the rogue scientists.

Still, at the end of the day, it all helps to erode people´s trust in expert authority..and that is always a good thing.

The “Enough Already” Factor

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From AP, Americans signal they´ve had enough of the imperial state:

“WASHINGTON – Americans are turning away from the world, showing a tendency toward isolationism in foreign affairs that has risen to the highest level in four decades, a poll out Thursday found.

Almost half, 49 percent, told the polling organization that the United States should “mind its own business” internationally and let other countries get along the best they can on their own, the Pew Research Center survey found. That’s up from 30 percent who said that in December 2002.

Results of the survey appear to conflict with President Barack Obama‘s activist foreign policy, including a newly announced buildup of 30,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan to fight Taliban and al-Qaida extremists.

“Isolationist Sentiment Surges to Four-Decade High,” the nonpartisan research center headlined its report on the poll about America’s role in the world.”

Muslims Should Withdraw Money from Swiss Banks..

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Teheran Times:

“Turkish State Minister and Chief Negotiator for EU talks Egemen Bagis has urged Muslim nations to withdraw their money from Swiss banks.

Bagis’ comments came in response to a recently approved ban on the construction of new minarets in Switzerland.

Following a weekend referendum, the construction of any new minaret was declared illegal in Switzerland, a move which drew sharp criticism from Muslim and European countries, as well as the UN and the Vatican.”

Coincidence In Nabokov´s “Lolita”

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Anthony Uhlman on Vladimir Nabokov

“Brian Boyd, in his magnificent biography, shows how Nabokov developed an aesthetic method which at once focuses meticulously on unrepeatable particulars, and stresses the importance of pattern. Coincidences, apparently meaningless details, when examined, are shown to be linked by gossamer threads to something other, some still more complex pattern. Clearly, Nabokov could not have known, when he published Lolita, that a then three year old boy called Brian Boyd would grow to become Dr Boyd, author of numerous works on Nabokov, including the definitive biography. Yet, when Humbert first takes Lolita to a hotel after her mother has died and she is at last at his mercy, he meets a conference attendee in the Men’s Room who ‘inquired of me how I had liked Dr. Boyd’s talk, and looked puzzled when I (King Sigmund the Second) said Boyd was quite a boy’ (125).

What can we can say about a pure coincidence like this, one which shows little respect for chronological or logical plausibility? At present, through science, philosophy, sociology, and religion, we are able to say very little: only artists, like Nabokov, somehow help us to consider this, offering a shudder of recognition, allowing us to apprehend how apparently finite lives might achieve an intuition of the infinite.“

My Comment

Coincidences have fascinated me since childhood..probably because I always seem to walk into them..

I seem to evoke synchronicity quite mysteriously. So much so that it turned into an intellectual interest that led me to study Jung´s writing for a number of years and then many forms of symbolic language, mythology and analysis.

Is Amartya Sen Good For Poor People in India?

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Sauvik Chakravarti on Amartya Sen:

“If we observe poor Indians going about making their economic achievements, we see that they are hugely gifted. In Indian markets, it is the poorest who scout around for the best buys and bargain most energetically – while the rich get easily conned! A joke is told about Indians in England – once known as ‘a nation of shopkeepers’: Why can’t Indians play soccer? Because, whenever they get a corner, they put a shop on it! A bania (an Indian trader) is rumoured to be able to buy from a Scot and sell to a Jew and still emerge with a profit! Economists like Myrdal and Sen do not see these gifted people: they see flaws in the people and perfection in their rulers……

Sen, of course, is always on the side of the poor and the marginalised. He believes in the doctrine of redistributive justice; and his most famous work is on famines. However, soft hearts can do a lot of harm; hard heads are far better. A renowned hard head, Lord Bauer, in 1961, in his first book on India, commented that beggary on the streets of India and Pakistan is not a proof of poverty; rather, this widespread beggary exists only because the dominant communities in both these countries, Hindus and Muslims respectively, believe they earn spiritual merit by giving alms to the poor. In these very countries, there are no Parsee, Sikh or Jain beggars because these communities practice collective charity, discourage beggary as a blot on the entire community, and encourage self-help. Today, India has 60,000 tonnes of foodgrain rotting in state godowns. Famine is a thing of the past. And ‘poverty’ needs to be meaningfully understood.

Indeed, notions of ‘redistributive justice’ should be unceremoniously buried……The Law cannot be Robin Hood – and, no matter what, Robin Hood was a thief. Notions of ‘redistributive justice’ have made democracy an ugly game by which some groups gain at the expense of others…..

A majority of the world’s people, all of them desperately poor, need freedom from their predatory states. For their sake, we need economists who genuinely value freedom. Amartya Sen is not one of them.”