Re: Hard to see this ending well either.
 

unclear as to Nettie, but as to Obama, 2!
I believe fair people everywhere will be chagrined and all Americans ashamed at what Obama and Hillary have done to the only certain ally and 1 or 2 democracies in the mid east. Of course, if israel can hang on until 1/2013 it appears they will get relief.

Re: Hard to see this ending well either.
 

At the least, there is a gross inconsistency between lauding Israel as a democracy and denying representation in any national government to Palestinians. Be careful about saying too much about democracy -- history may see you hoist on that petard.

And it's not like Obama has done anything to really change US policy towards Israel, so rhetoric like the above seems much more grounded in internal US politics than in any developments in the world.

Re: Hard to see this ending well either.
 

We don't give Egypt 2 billion to let it burn down the Israel embassy, and letting that happen is a "change" in how we treat Israel. So there's one.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

You really want to compare Carter/Kennedy with Obama/Nader?

Re: Hard to see this ending well either.
 

You're funny. And to think that you executed the u-turn from talking up democracy to this in exactly one post!

Re: Hard to see this ending well either.
 

I thought the Israeli embassy was burned in a wave of Egyptian democratic sentiment -- which, as we know, was unleashed by W and the invasion of Iraq.

How would the US President have gone about stopping that?

Re: Hard to see this ending well either.
 

As the mob gets close to the embassy, you tell them that there's a pile of two billion one-dollar bills over on the other side of Cairo.

Re: Hard to see this ending well either.
 

We are sending Money to someone, we should have told that someone we will cut the aid if they don't put soldiers around the embassy. since we didn't do that we should cut it in half next year. 2 billion mostly for its military. We are building up the Egyptian military so Israel will have a worse time when/if the war happens.

As to w, he made sure that Iraq became a country we can co exist with. Obama seems happy with whatever happens.

Re: Hard to see this ending well either.
 

Sad.

Re: Hard to see this ending well either.
 

You and I both agree that Egyptian military should not have let that mob attack the Israeli embassy. When we last talked about it, I suggested that the Egyptian military allowed it to happen for reasons relating to internal politics. But the idea that this is an indictment of Obama is absurd. Israeli is increasingly isolated from neighbors like Egypt and Turkey, and its rulers seem intent on heightening that isolation. Why should Americans spend their tax dollars to insulate Israel from the consequences of its policies?

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

I know he was at the gym and the cleaners today, but haven't received a lunch update.

Re: Hard to see this ending well either.
 

You asked what Obama has changed. Now you're arguing about whether it's a good idea he changed it.

Re: Hard to see this ending well either.
 

The idea that Obama unleashed the Arab Spring is about as implausible as the idea that Bush unleashed it. You are wildly prone to overstate America's influence in domestic ME politics, but at least you do it in a bipartisan way.

Re: Hard to see this ending well either.
 

Obama didn't unleash it. he failed to release it

Re: Hard to see this ending well either.
 

You really think there's isn't popular support in Egypt for what was done to the Israeli embassy?

Anyway, obviously you think the fact that Egyptians are upset with Israel is a problem that Obama should take care of, rather than a predictable result of Israeli policies.

Re: Hard to see this ending well either.
 

I think "Israel's unpopularity" is flat out Jew hatred. And it is almost homogenous across the mid east (or so I've read. I admit shit I don't have personal knowledge of). Our government has always forced our "allies" to keep that under control. Obama seems to think it better to keep hands off.

Maybe that is the right thing based upon Israel's "policies", but again you asked what Obama has done differently than past administrations. so there's a change.

I believe, even within what remains of his apparent single term, may include the requirement for making a stark military choice between saving Israel or leaving our "allies" to their actions.

Re: Hard to see this ending well either.
 

And you think there is no connection between these two things? That "Jew hatred" in the middle east is unrelated to the oppressive regimes that used it as a means to deflect from their own failings while "keeping it under control?"

Re: Hard to see this ending well either.
 

I don't disagree that there is a hefty dose of that, but there's a lot else as well. E.g., the state of Israel looks a lot like Western colonialism. And what Israel does to Palestinians bothers a lot of people.

A lot of countries in the region like to use Israel to divert attention from their own failings, etc. You see our government forcing Arab leaders to keep the lid on -- I see Arab governments doing something else entirely. You flatter the US if you think it can force Arab governments to do things they really don't want to do.

I don't see it.

Israel doesn't us to need us to save it. Not militarily, anyway.

Do you have absolutely no capability to criticize the Israeli government's actions, or do you just choose not to say such things out of some form of loyalty?

Re: Hard to see this ending well either.
 

Ty asked what is different in how obama deals with the israel issue. Then I told him

Then you and Ty tried to engage me on whether it doesn't make sense obama changed things. Admit that Obama has dramatically changed how we act in the mid-east if you want to hear my opinion.. Once you and TY have admitted as much as
I

will see where we can co

Re: Hard to see this ending well either.
 

This is nonsense on stilts.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Re: Hard to see this ending well either.
 

I think the ME has changed more than our approach to it has changed.

But regardless, and accepting for the sake of argument that there has been a change, why would you prefer the prior approach, which is what got us to this point in the first place? What's the end game in the world in which Israel's neighbors are all strong men propped up with U.S. support who use it as a foil?

Re: Hard to see this ending well either.
 

Huh????

Re: Hard to see this ending well either.
 

I think you may want to look back to the Nixon Administration to find the change you seek. That was the big shift.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

And Yglesias, based on the Suskind book, suggests that Obama was privately saying something close to Sebby too. Wow.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Ty's article is fucking scary. It's not just that the guy's delivery is so lucid, but that his prescriptions for fixes are mostly politically impossible in the current DC climate, and that they are all long term (20-50) year fixes. His silence on what the interim muddle-through will be like may as well be, "Yep. Shit's going to really suck for the next couple decades."*

Your article raises another point: Why are productivity gains and lack of demand viewed as distinct problems? One feeds the other. Seems to underline how blindered economists and policy makers often are that they could work on a solution attacking the cycle from both angles.

I'm coming to the conclusion that perhaps the best way to fix the jobs problem is to break up large banks and massive conglomerates. Do to Wal Mart and BofA what was done to AT&T. I understand this galls people, and may sound odd coming from me, but we're past debates about socialism v. capitalism. We passed that argument long ago... when we started bail outs.

I think breaking up something like Wal Mart would create competition, and tons of new jobs in new supply chains. I think smashing a near insolvent entity like BofA into five or six regional banks would: (1) Create competition (and allow the sectors of the bank holding shit paper in markets like AZ, FL, inland CA and FL to be restructured without imperiling the entire economy); and (2) Lead to smarter "paper" underwriting of good credit risk businesses that can't borrow at decent rates right now because the automated RMS systems - which no nothing about the specifics of the business or its local market - say they're high risk.

It is fact that we are turning into a corporate-authoritarian state. I don't say that hysterically. I say that because it's true - we are governed by a marriage of corporate leviathans and govt stewards sucking all profit out of the thing to the detriment of everyone else.

The arguments against breaking up crony capitalist TBTF entities, and job destroying parasites like Wal Mart are:

1. Things would cost more if we didn't have Wal Mart;
2. What about the shareholders?; and
3. Business's natural course is to grow. You can't punish it for gaining market share.

I'll address these in order:

1. People would have jobs. Jobs + broader inflation that seeps into the housing market = Exactly what we need. (As opposed to the pernicious selective inflation in energy and essentials we have.)
2. Fuck the shareholders. If you're holding BofA, it's a huge speculative play on a shit stock. Caveat fucking emptor. You bet on endless govt backstops to your own detrment. (And you ought to stop listening to sector-supporting whor-... er, I mean, "cheerleaders," like Dick Bove.)
3. You can when it imperils the future economic stability of the state. If we can be forced to backstop banks, banks can be forced to break up where they put the economy at risk.

We will reach a point, I happen to think around 27% U-6, where those of use outrunning the lower middle and middle classes will get crushed, too. We cannot survive with 75 million people in poverty and under/unemployed (that's where it's heading). There will be trickle up poverty. And if all we do is wait for it to become acute, no policy prescription in the world is going to keep us from depression.

The Dems are pining for Obama to channel the wrong Roosevelt. Teddy's what we need.

*Unless, of course, we have a war. Read Marc Faber for endless commentary on how, when faced with the realization our malaise defies simple policy fixes, we will institute policies inevitably resulting in trade wars, which will then be followed by actual war.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Well, generally productivity gains are not viewed as a problem.

Except that AT&T was a monopoly, and Wal Mart and BofA aren't even close to that (well, Mal Mart might be within striking distance). And of course breaking up AT&T was arguably unsuccessful (competition in telecommunications came from innovation in mobile and broadband technology that I don't think is particularly tied to the break up).

But beyond that, why do you think this is a prescription for jobs?

Why does competition mean more jobs? For that to be the case, wouldn't competition have to mean higher costs and higher prices? That's kind of the opposite of what's expected from competition.

I can see bank regulatory/safety reasons for breaking up BofA or Citi, and I think that's primarily what you are saying. The entities may just be too big and too cobbled together to function as banks are meant to function.

But I don't think it will make much difference from a competition perspective. There are literally thousands of banks in the U.S., none with all that significant of a market share on the retail banking side.

Things are more concentrated on the investment banking and in more exotic products, but even the areas that come to mind there have a handful or players and, regardless, aren't the sectors in which you are looking for improvement.

Just out of curiosity, how did Wal Mart get on your list? Did you turn into some kind of lefty when I wasn't looking?

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

They are when they cause radical unemployment.

The pieces grow, and growth requires new hands. Once a thing is enormous like Wal Mart or BofA, in a period of staganacy, the only thing it can do to profit is cost-cut.

Reread the part of what I wrote arguing that higher prices across a broader basket of goods - enough to translate into widespread inflation causing an uptick in housing prices - is preferable to a nation of serfs able to buy cheap shit at big box, shit-job creators like Wal Mart.

The pieces will naturally compete, as did the pieces of AT&T. And anything that moves banks away from exclusive reliance on algorithmic lending is a plus. You can't lend to small businesses in such a volatile market using eye-in-the-sky credit assessments. I see endless terrible loans still being made to bad credit risks who have tachnically, on-the-surface, excellent credit, while borrowers who ran into one tough patch but are otherwise stellar risks are given shit rates, or avoided alltogether by the meta-focused credit standards.

Oh, and paper underwriting requires humans. More workers.

I don't care where the jobs are created.

I was walking through one recently and it struck me how many other entities might exist if this company couldn't offer what it does so cheaply. I've also litigated against Wal Mart, and counseled a CEO on how to beg them not to pull his product from their shelves. They made the poor old bastard fly to Benton to do so. The guy'd been in business forever, but as all of his retail clients disappeared, Wal Mart became 80% of his market. Without them he couldn't survive. With them - specifically, with their yearly demands he lower prices or lose them as a customer - he could barely stay afloat. The power the company yields over what's left of our manufacturing base is incalculable.

If we must be interventionists, and something needs to go to create more real livable wage paying jobs, Wal Mart is a good start, IMO.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

But that was Romer and Summers' point. They do not believe that productivity gains have caused unemployment, which is consistent with just about every economic theory.

Why do the pieces grow when the whole can't? And if the whole can't, why can't competitors or new entrant grow instead?

How are your high priced new entrants going to protect themselves from cost cutting competitors?

But that's the thing. The pieces of AT&T didn't compete. Two(?) decades later major legislation was implemented to address that fact, and even that didn't really work. Competition came from innovation, not the break up into regional monopolies. They stayed in their regions.

Banking is/will be different, of course, because on the retail side there is already lots of regional competition. Retail customers have literally hundreds of options in any given local market.

Why will regional chunks of the megabanks be better positioned to do this than the regional and local banks that are already out there? That is unless you think the regional chunks will enjoy less of an advantage in financing costs (which is possible).

I'm skeptical that breaking the megabanks into a few chunks would do much to change the number of players in investment banking, derivatives, etc. Although I guess if you just break up BofA, it probably just means that BofA is no longer a player in those areas.

Call me a capitalists, but I do not think a nation is better off for having decreased it's standard of living (i.e., paying more for all its stuff).

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

They're wrong.

The whole can, but not as fast. The new enrant doesn't exist. Too expensive to start.

The cost-cutting competitor, Wal Mart, won't be there. They'll be competing against Target and Costco. The cost of goods would increase overnight just by that gentrification of the market.

In that alternative, the pieces of Wal Mart stay in their unique geographic areas, or sectors they carve out immediately post-break-up. So we've got a bunch of regionals all competing for the same inventory. This creates leverage for manufacturers.

Wrong question. The question is, will they be incentivized to do it? Yes. If they're refocused on a region, rather than a country (at least at the outset), they won't apply national standards to discrete markets. They'll need consider borrowers they otherwise wouldn not have. This means more lending to better-vetted credit risks, rather than blind lending based on a math formula. The regional in MA also wouldn't be handcuffed from risk because of losses suffered in Phoenix.*

Are you aware of any society that deflated, or stagflated, itself to a higher standard of living? Particularly one suffering a debt overhang like ours?

*I would create a "bad bank" for all of the super-distressed R/E market paper in AZ, FL, NV, inland CA, etc. I would also remove all data on AZ, FL, NV, inland CA, etc. from national indexes. Leave those disaster zones to the vultures.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

If this is true, Yahoo has been working even harder to destroy its business than most people thought.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

So you're off the Cowen Great Stagnation hypothesis then? 'cause that is basically the opposite position.

Why? And if it's profitable to do so, why wouldn't the whole be doing everything to do so?

And the existing competitors?

Also, banking and retail have high barriers to entry? Really?

But it's profitable to cut costs, that's why Wal Mart (and everyone else) does it. Why won't someone else do the same thing after you kill Wal Mart?

But Wal Mart is already competing against Target and Costco. And KMart and Sears (weak though they are). And against many other for parts of their business (including discounters like Aldi).

Well, that's back to our fundamental disconnect. I don't see higher prices for stuff as being good for anyone, and I'm not keen to create leverage for manufacturers at the expense of consumers.

I'm not opposed to a little inflation, but you're proposed method isn't that, it's a transfer payment from consumers to manufacturers.

On that, we agree.

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

That wasn't obvious from their decision to hand search over to Microsoft? ;)

Disgraceful
 

Glenn Greenwald is sometimes a bit to sure of his conclusions for my taste, and sometime too quick to reach the worst possible conclusion, but I have to share at least some of his outrage about our government's (Bush and Obama administrations) treatment of Jose Padilla.

caption, please
 

Re: caption, please
 

Is Obama blocking the Solyndra Board member who is now going to be taking the Fifth?

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

For Hank:

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

Can you explain why this would be true? The exchanges are not providing government-funded insurance, are they?

Re: My God, you are an idiot.
 

eta: To the extent that subsidies in the exchanges turn out to be too expensive, you can expect Congress to cut back on them. This isn't rocket science.