blackhedd's blog
Posted at 6:49pm on Jun. 17, 2008 RIP Cyd Charisse, 1922-2008
By blackhedd
The great dancer and movie star Cyd Charisse has died in Los Angeles after suffering a heart attack. After an early career in ballet, she gave a string of unforgettable performances in MGM musicals during the 1950s, dancing with Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, and many others. Tall and graceful, she was also strong as a bull from those years of ballet, and she could dance anything. Astaire famously described her as "beautiful dynamite."
Posted in Culture — Comments (8) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 11:17pm on May 12, 2008 A Question for Senator McCain About Cap-and-Trade
By blackhedd
Senator, I'm a businessman, and your cap-and-trade proposal will have a direct impact on my businesses, which in turn affects the livelihood of the people I employ, and their families.
So this question is not merely of academic interest.
You've proposed, as a matter of moral and scientific urgency, to cap total emissions of carbon dioxide by business operations.
Here's what I need to know: does your plan cap emissions only on the US operations of American companies, or on their emissions from all operations worldwide?
Posted in Economy — Comments (51) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 5:33am on Mar. 17, 2008 Bizarre Interpretations of the Bear Stearns Acquisition on the Left
By blackhedd
As you know, I've been following the Bear Stearns situation closely and passing along information and my interpretations for you. I've tried to stay neutral, data-driven, and politically circumspect in dealing with a situation that is fluid and dangerous, but highly technical and confined to the financial world.
There was a question from a self-identified left-wing libertarian on another thread that got me wondering: how are they reacting to this on the Left?
A quick, unscientific survey of the Left blogosphere reveals their continuing obsession with politics at the Congressional-district level. The only front-page stories contain snippets from New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and wire stories, with no interpretation.
On dKos, there is nothing at all on the front page. They're obsessing over algae blooms, evil credit card companies, how we're secretly losing the war in Iraq, and how Obama is being sold down the river by evil racists (that would be us, in case you were wondering).
There's one diary on Bear Stearns, and it picked up 1000 comments. All it did was regurgitate quotes from the Wall Street Journal and calmly note that the sky is falling.
What was the commentary like?
Wow. I'd forgotten how people think in the reality-based community.
Read on . . .
Posted in Liberals — Comments (46) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 6:16am on Jan. 31, 2008 Let it Snow: China's Leadership Sounds Like Hillary Clinton
By blackhedd
You've probably heard that it's been snowing in China. Actually, it's been snowing a lot in China. All part of global warming, of course.
So far, the official news agency has fessed up to 55 deaths from the severe winter weather, which is the worst in half a century. (Global warming is clearly getting worse.)
Posted in China | Foreign Affairs | Snowstorms — Comments (4) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 8:49am on Jan. 24, 2008 The National Debt as a Proportion of National Wealth
By blackhedd
I keep hearing people say that the national debt of about $9 trillion means that every man, woman and child in America owes a total of $30,000.
Pretty scary.
So since we're doing this on a per-capita basis, I thought I'd see how much every man, woman and child in America owns (financial assets plus real estate).
Turns out to be more than $180,000. The debt is one-sixth of our national wealth.
Posted in Deficit | Economy | national debt — Comments (34) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 11:20am on Dec. 26, 2007 The Housing Crisis and Illegal Immigration
By blackhedd
Submitted for your consideration: is the weakness in the housing/construction industries reducing illegal immigration?
This is a connection I haven't seen anyone else make. Instead, the question people are asking is: why isn't unemployment a whole lot worse than it is?
The recently-departed US bubble in residential and commercial real-estate prices understandably touched off a huge boom in overbuilding in many regions of the country. And this activity created a lot of (real) economic activity and growth, just as the Internet bubble did ten years ago.
Posted in Economy | housing | illegal immigration | unemployment — Comments (20) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 12:21am on Nov. 20, 2007 Radically Reforming the Tax System
By blackhedd
You've heard of counterfactual history. Well, here's a counterfactual future. It's counterfactual because it hasn't a prayer of becoming reality. But then, we're supposed to be the party of ideas, aren't we?
We've had endless debates about different varieties of tax reform, generating very litle change of opinion and very little agreement. That's a sure sign that the inner objectives of the various parties in the debate are irreconcilable. But what if we could actually cast some light on the unstated assumptions that drive the debate? Might we get closer to some agreement?
Posted in Economy | taxes — Comments (45) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 9:01am on Nov. 5, 2007 Does The Weak Dollar Cause Oil Prices To Rise?
By blackhedd
Nearby is a diary that observes this connection and posits a causal relationship stemming from the original Subprime mortgage crisis. Neil Stevens quotes an Econbrowser article that explores the connection analytically.
Posted in Economy — Comments (48) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 4:16am on Oct. 18, 2007 Avoiding a Government Bailout in the Mortgage Industry
By blackhedd
There was a comment by Silverice9 to my recent front-page piece about the mortgage industry that I thought was worth responding to here, by way of providing better information that others can see.
If you read my piece, you will recall that Citigroup, the Bank of America, and JP Morgan Chase are setting up a new investment company (called a Master Liquidity Enhancement Conduit, or "M-LEC"), with the help of personnel from the Treasury Department. Actually, it appears that a senior official at Treasury (Robert Steel) hatched the idea in the first place.
Posted in Economy — Comments (2) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 6:29am on Oct. 2, 2007 EBay Lays a Telephone-shaped Egg
By blackhedd
There are several stories out there about this. Here's one. EBay is throwing in the towel on their Skype internet-telephony division.
The huge online auction company will write down the value of their Skype division by $900 million dollars, and take another $500 million dollars in related charges (about which more later). They overpaid badly for Skype.
Posted in Technology — Comments (8) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 4:16pm on Sep. 17, 2007 Unintended Consequences of Ethanol Production
By blackhedd
Ok, so large-scale production of ethanol for use as a motor fuel is a foregone conclusion in the US. It's coming, and there's no way to avoid it.
Why? Because the investments have been made.
Over the last two or so years, a huge amount of private venture capital has flowed into the industrial-scale development of ethanol production capacity. The vast bulk of the new capacity will be the traditional kind (mash up corn, blow hot air from burning natural gas all over it, and ship the fuel short distances in trucks), although there are some side bets going on cellulosic ethanol.
Posted in Economy — Comments (22) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 10:04am on Aug. 21, 2007 What does the candidacy of Ron Paul mean for the United States?
By blackhedd
Nearby you'll find a diary which compares Ron Paul to Dennis Kucinich. Unfortunately, I found that diary to be unserious.
However, I do think the candidacy of Ron Paul raises some existential questions about the nature and global role of the United States.
What did we learn from Ronald Reagan, a former New Deal supporter? We learned that self-reliance, a traditional American virtue, is so important as an element of both personal and national character, that it precludes a large role for the Federal power in the regulation of daily life.
Reagan's understanding of freedom (the "negative" freedom which leaves people free to determine their own lives) stands in contradistinction to freedom as understood by our friends on the Left (a "positive" freedom that seeks to free everyone from pain, suffering, risk, and inequality).
But Paulite libertarianism understands freedom in the sense of "I'll go my own way, and you can go to H*ll if you so desire." It shares with conservatism a deep wariness of government power, which is infinitely corruptible, even as the Left embraces government power as the answer to the infinite corruptibility of individuals.
Paulites thus felicitously cloak themselves in the Constitution, which enshrines the principle of limited government.
Read on . . .
Posted in Culture — Comments (94) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 7:50pm on Aug. 17, 2007 Attention, Ron Paulites: Please help me understand how alternative currencies will work.
By blackhedd
I'm posting this as yet another diary because the other ones have gotten too big to keep track of.
And we are now graced with the presence of some new Paulites here at RedState, so I'm hopeful they'll be able to enlighten us economic illiterates.
I've been trying really hard to understand what you want to do. Here's where I am so far.
Let's leave the global financial system alone for a moment. This world deals with everything, including currencies, on a risk-adjusted basis. They can and do respond almost instantaneously to changes in the risk profiles of various assets. They're also big boys and they can take care of themselves.
Posted in Economy — Comments (106) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 10:15am on Aug. 16, 2007 Answer to Ron Paul's supporters: the Federal Reserve is the Lender of Last Resort
By blackhedd
If you're like many RedState readers, you've been paying some attention to this remarkable thread by Neil Stevens.
It's remarkable because of the amount of controversy that is stirred up by what is really an arcane set of policy statements that Congressman Paul has been making about money.
More...
Posted in Economy — Comments (251) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 12:40am on Jul. 10, 2007 Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Gore
By blackhedd
I really don't like being told what to do, and I don't think very many Americans particularly do either. There's this weird fetish we have about something we call liberty, and we're quite exquisitely sensitive about when people want to curtail it.
Now it's a commonplace of long standing, in fact of the whole of recorded history, that some people will attempt to take away the liberty of others. And this universal human tradition goes by a great many hallowed and honorable names: order, stability, legitimacy, divine right, and many others, the most common one perhaps being simply: history.
Posted in Energy — Comments (25) / Email this page » / Read More »
