Blind Leading The Blind

GM CEO Wagoner optimistic after Senate Hearing

Would you be optimistic if someone who had burned down their house playing with matches offered to light your furnace for you?

General Motors Corp. Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner emerged Thursday from a six-hour hearing before the Senate Banking Committee optimistic that a deal can be reached in Congress to help his company survive a critical cash shortage.

Ever heard the phrase "brilliant minds think alike"? Well, so do dumb minds:

Wagoner said many of the questions and suggestions from committee members were compatible with the viability plan GM submitted to Congress on Tuesday in an effort to obtain up to $18 billion in federal loans.

GM and congress agree on a plan? It's doomed.

College: Somebody's Gotta Pay Big Ed

Google News link groupings can provide an instructive contrast. Here's the latest concerning college costs.

The Mercury News brags that California has the lowest college costs in the US. Californians are complaining that the state is raising per unit costs from $20 to $30.

Meanwhile, the Houston Chronicle scolds Texas for getting an F in college affordability. 47 other states also got an F. Do you think the organization handing out the grades might be biased?

Would it be churlish of me to point out that California is a bankrupt failed state while Texas is a well-governed model of economic success? Neither news report said anything about that.

Here is the current state of college costs, again courtesy of the Mercury News:

Nationally, college is getting less affordable every year... Overall, tuition increased 439 percent from 1982 to 2006, while median family income increased 147 percent and the consumer price index 106 percent, the study found.

When is Congress going to drag college administrators before its pompous committees and demand Big Education stop gouging the consumer?

Finally, here's a link to a hilarious look at the 10 Most Worthless College Degrees. Warning: Offensive language!

http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_11125006?IADID=Search-www.mercurynews.com-www.mercurynews.com

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headlinCollege: Somebody's Gotta Pay

http://www.holytaco.com/2008/06/03/the-10-most-worthless-college-majors/e/metro/6144079.html

May a Plague of Bankers Descend Upon You

Beware swarms of failed bankers descending upon the heartland from the east.

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) - Bankers and brokers looking to escape the financial meltdown are scrambling to relocate their families, possessions and rarified talent far from Wall Street to places such as Florida, Chicago, Milwaukee, Virginia and Asia. Read the article...

They've gotta patronize local stores, hire movers and various tradespeople in the process of getting settled in that new house. I hope Joe the handyman and Jill the plumber gouge the crap out of them...

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20081026/D942BR8O0.html

Commies In Our Back Yard

I'm tired of hearing about Russia and China wooing Latin America, and I'm tired of the hand wringing that accompanies the latest news reports of it.

Latin America is not Uncle Sam's back yard. It is a diverse collection of countries full of people who don't like the United States. I think much of the dislike is unjustified and springs from envy, but our history is checkered there, so I won't begrudge the good Latinos their emotions.

It's been a fiery, tempestuous relationship between Uncle Sam and the sexy, exotic land to our south. Latin Americans willfully forget our acts of generosity while cataloging our every sin and carving them in stone never to be forgotten. It’s time we dropped the Sisyphean task of force feeding them aid and democracy. It has done no one any good.

A dedicated core of socialists across Latin America hate the US and romanticize Russia. Well, it’s time they got a taste of what it’s like to be embraced by the bear. Russia selling their pathetic military junk to gullible caudillos does not threaten the US.

The smart governments like Brazil, Chile and Colombia have already forged a confident path for themselves and trade effectively with a variety of world players. They have 21st century economies build upon solid democratic principles. Dealing with China and Russia will do them no harm; avoiding exclusive agreements with one country actually improves their position.

Meanwhile, tinpot dictators in places like Venezuela and Bolivia (Evo Morales has actually donned a tin hat) will cozy up to Vlad the Impaler, thumbing their noses at the colossus to the north. Fine. They've already gone over the edge anyway. Might as well hitch their fortunes to a falling red star; it'll make the inevitable crash all the more spectacular.

http://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2008/11/russia_china_move_in_on_latin.html
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/forecast-for-latin-america-cold-war-winds-from-russia/

Fred Thompson on the Bailout

Why didn't this guy campaign harder in the GOP primary?

I love it when he talks about how reckless borrowing and spending got us into this mess and now our government is doubling down by recommending more of the same.

"This is like tellin' a fat guy that the way to lose weight is to eat more donuts"

Give that drunk another bootle of hooch!

So let me get this straight: It was a bad thing that the US savings rate was negative and that people were borrowing too much and spending money that they didn't have. This contributed to our current economic calamity.

So what's our government's solution? Offer consumers more credit so they can buy more stuff they can't afford!

Nov. 26 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve's new $800 billion effort to combat the financial crisis is designed to make credit more accessible to shaken consumers who aren't sure they want more debt.

The new programs bring the estimated total government commitment to ease credit to about $8.5 trillion, with $3.17 trillion being used to date.

..."It's too early to tell whether the lending has increased or not,'' David McCormick, Treasury undersecretary for international affairs, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television today. "We certainly expect that it will.''

Albert Einstein once said

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

If that don't apply here I'll stick a needle in my eye.

Einstein also said:

"No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it."

Einstein was a genius. The Wall Street pirates and Washington hucksters grappling with this financial crisis just think they are.

Nouriel Roubini at Forbes is a smart man. He discusses solutions that are definitely not the same old thing, and they do involve a higher level of consciousness.

The U.S. economy is confronting a toxic mixture: deflation, a liquidity trap and debt deflation, as well as rising household and corporate defaults. Put plainly, the signs of a "stag-deflation"--a deadly combination of stagnation/recession and deflation--are now clear.

Our departure from reality and sound economic principles has landed us in a very scary place: Irresponsible borrowing has built a house of cards, and we need to egg on more irresponsible borrowing to keep the flimsy structure from collapsing on our heads. I think they call this a downward spiral.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=ag3TJyGD73qk&refer=news

http://www.forbes.com/home/2008/11/26/deflation-stagnation-liquidity-oped-cx_nr_1127roubini.html

GObama!

So far, President-elect Obama is looking pretty good. His finance advisers could have been picked by Mr. McCain. They can hardly do worse than Dirty Hank and the downhill gang.

I really like his foreign policy team. Retired USMC General James Jones is an excellent selection for National Security Advisor. I was so sure he'd pick some lefty civilian pointy head for that job. And Hillary heading up state. If you were Putin, Chavez or even our friend Merkel, how would you like staring that woman down? Scary thought, isn't it? Plus, her foreign policy has never been liberal; it has tended towards cold-eyed realism, and we need more of that.

My argument with the so-called neocons has nothing to do with the left-wing wackadoo charges of nefarious oil-stealing plots and other international buggery. It's simply that they base their trigger-happy foreign policy on pie-in-the-sky fantasies: No, you can't turn a 6th century society with poor toilet habits into a 21st century democracy overnight. And foisting the trappings of liberal democracy upon them is just asserting the conclusion. The neocons have worthy goals, but you can't just ram them through; it takes baby steps.

Speaking of neocons, Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan in particular, I'm always suspicious of anyone who has never served in the military but is hot to use military force. We need more speaking softly and less big stick brandishing. I think General Jones will be an advocate of that. Before you dismiss this as squishy pacifist talk, Special Ops advocates have been saying essentially the same thing for years, criticizing our huge troop presence in the CENTCOM AOR as not much more than turning food into excrement.

Robert Kaplan wrote an article last year detailing our many unheralded successes in places like the Phillipines and Colombia. Small, quiet operations are the wave of the future. As someone who has turned food into excrement in the highly kinetic Middle East as well as performed low-key military assistance missions in Latin America, I say the time is ripe.

So to all my conservative friends, I'm asking you to consider keeping your powder dry. This is not a liberal foreign policy team. We should cheer President-elect Obama's picks. Don't worry, there'll be plenty to criticize soon enough.

http://articles.latimes.com/2007/nov/25/opinion/op-kaplan25