Disqus - Latest Comments for lupercal5

Re: Panetta and Petraeus: Obama's New National Security Team | Swampland

lupercal5 — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 14:34:03 -0000

we make it that way. go read the comments in each respective thread.

Re: Panetta and Petraeus: Obama's New National Security Team | Swampland

lupercal5 — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 11:18:53 -0000

i just don't see why petraeus was appointed here. besides political convenience. and im not buying that the next secDef's most important job will be to cut spending. it ain't ever gonna happen. besides panetta doesn't have the credibility to do it. i see no reason for pulling panetta out of Langley and for pulling petraeus out of Afpak.
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obama supposedly is a foreign policy realist. i don't see how any of these appointments forward that. i mean there are so many other, and better options. chuck hagel. kerry. hillary. jack reed. or even an ingrown career person at the pentagon, military, or state.

Re: After Gates: Obama’s New Security Team | Swampland

lupercal5 — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 10:42:41 -0000

im very apprehensive about those appt. what expertise does petraeus bring to the cia? panetta is a backroom kinda guy. the consummate bureaucrat. this is what worries me the most here. and he's so territorial that you're gonna see the defense department increase by 10-12% each year. you might see more hardlines toward wars too since he's gotta prove himself. the new afghanistan guy has never set foot in afghanistan. ryan crocker as ambassador? prolly most justified appt. career diplomat.
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replacing gates is hard, yeah, but really? i know clinton is beat up and is finally just figuring out how to be an effective state secretary, but leon panetta? and make no mistake, if it's hard to get excited when you appoint them, you never will. they only become less palatable as time goes by.

Re: Drill, Obama Drill - Politics - The Atlantic

lupercal5 — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 19:40:10 -0000

i hope the snark in my post was pretty apparent for all to see.

Re: Drill, Obama Drill - Politics - The Atlantic

lupercal5 — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 10:56:07 -0000

brilliant analysis. I remember the same arguments were being made about the health care legislation. they didn't start with some lefty plan. they went straight to the Heritage Foundation and Mitt Romney. They neutralized big business. oh boy the optics are freakin' amazing.

Re: • ECONOMISTS, OUR NEW PHILOSOPHER KINGS?

lupercal5 — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 21:03:00 -0000

so, the 'human nature' does not refer to the collective behavior of consumers, but rather with those at the top levers of power, if i understand you well. I which case, we agree whole-heartedly. Distinction without difference. Ethics have been my pet cause, and perhaps the only reason i care about politics. I don't mind special interests exercising their constitutional rights to lobby, but i object strenuously to them drowning out the voices of the People. I want the American People to be the biggest special interest group there is. And yes, i think, any such official who gives such special favors should be brought to justice. Yes, no matter how good of a theoretical framework you have, making it work in practice is utterly difficult, because-again- the assumptions you make with your theory aren't valid in reality. Which is why Tim Geithner is important. He actually knows how to efficiently manage the whole cumbersome bureaucracy at treasury. He's not a doctor of economics but someone who's got a great structural mind melded with a tremendous hands-on experience with what works. So what ever Larry Summers comes up with will first have to go through the filter of Volcker- whose team i expect to include Warren Buffet- for some realism, and then through the last filter of practicality with geithner. I will abstain from commenting on the bailouts. It can be argued that their purpose was to prevent the financial market to collapse and not to right the economy all at once. But that's debatable. In either case, it's easy for me to pontificate and postulate about the merits of what actions are taken because im in the fortunate position of 'great influence but little accountability'.
I still argue that if the problem is red tape and unethical conduct at the highest echelons of gov't, what we need isn't a philosopher economist.

Re: • ECONOMISTS, OUR NEW PHILOSOPHER KINGS?

lupercal5 — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 02:29:45 -0000

at the very least, one thing's certain. You take criticism, however misdirected, quite well. But i still find myself disagreeing with you. When i say we need to make sure that we have a structurally sound system, i don't mean bailouts.
I mean that every economic system is sound, so long all the factors that we assume to be constant actually are constant. For a capitalist system, you need a more or less equitable distribution of income, a level playing field. That's why it never flourished in some other countries like most of South America. The institutional power rich landowners have make it virtually impossible to farmers to move up the ladder. But with the oil field discoveries, a new class of city dwellers working on the oil fields created a middle class which allowed for actual flow in a financial system. (Story doesn't end well, the middle class itself becomes the institutionally rich class, and the whole thing starts over, but u get my point). The reason the bailouts didn't put the economy on steroids is because there is no flow of money. the middle class is too squeezed. So, they're not spending. So businesses stop investing. But i guess if anyone expected the economy to just start flourishing all of a sudden while in a crisis that happens only twice in a century, they were too optimistic. So when i talk about structural fairness, i think a middle class tax cut goes a long way toward a long term solution.
I've also heard about job creation. If the plan is to just create 2.5 million federal jobs, then it's not gonna be a great stimulus. But if you're having investments on energy policy, on healthcare (reducing waste and cutting all the paperwork primarily), on education, manufacturing, then there should be a mechanism in place that makes sure that we're gonna have tax incentives for businesses that invest in the new economy. You know like the auto industry.
We already have the system. We don't need to rediscover human nature. We know that self-interest is a powerful drive in a capitalist system, but that unfettered at either extreme, will destroy the system-hence regulations. we've always resolved to take the edge off of capitalism. We just need to make sure that the framework for the system is structurally sound. That everything we assume to be constant actually is constant. I mean you wouldn't wanna have a house that isn't structurally sound, would you? And if you made calculations about how much strain it can endure but your assumptions aren't correct, it doesnt mean ur deficient. it just means ur talking about a different house than the one concerned. So, all these folks saying they don't trust economists because their predictions are wrong lol. it just means that the factors they held constant in their predictions no longer are constant. They're perfectly right, just for a different situation, and lord knows how quickly those factors change.

Re: • ECONOMISTS, OUR NEW PHILOSOPHER KINGS?

lupercal5 — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 16:13:48 -0000

um. seems like we're engaging in some sort of fantasy here. Very abstract piece. And you have a lot of words that get in the way. So it felt more like a 'once upon a time' kinda story. Perhaps that was the intended effect. Perhaps it's because i kinda skipped over most of those words in search of something cogent and succinct. I gathered that you are concerned about the semantic mutations and evolutions of the word 'economist' and the fact that none of modern economists have a concern for restraining, or mistrusting human endeavors. (correct me if im wrong)
Here's an alternate view. We do have philosophic economists. They're all exclusively in the field of normative economics. They marry classical descriptive economics with ethics. That is, their vision of what matters. That's why you have democrats in massachussets who prize helping the indigent and the needy imposing ceilings on the housing market for the trade off of lower quality and lesser of options of housings. That's why you have republicans targeting their tax cuts for the corporate world so they can spur investments, which under the right circumstances expand the production capacity of an economy. I emphasize 'under the right circumstances'.
And that has to do with real economics. Descriptive economics. most people don't dispute them actually. For example, in a simplistic version of an economy, descriptive economics tell you that if you raise prices for a certain product, ther'll be a reduction demand. (if everything else is held constant, like everyone knows everything about the market, and there's no monopolies, and quality is constant). In our particular case, the problem is that, not every other factor was held constant. The income disparity is as large as ever. And the financial structure is unstable. It used to be that lending money to banks would act as a multiplier of money. And if you injected too much money into the system, you'd experience an overload and depreciation of the particular currency. hence inflation. Now, the system isn't reacting as it should have been. Banks aren't creating money (at least yet). The dollar IS depreciated, but that has more to do with borrowing from China. Supply Side Economics does work, so as the fundamental structure of the economy is sound and the factors assumed constant are actually held constant. If all you do is cut taxes for the rich, you reach a point of 'diminishing returns'. The rich becomes super rich. The middle class shrinks. The poor becomes poorer. and thus the whole system is destabilized.
So, i don't mind not have an economist philosopher right now, but highly competent structural thinkers who understand that fairness has to be restored onto the system and that the middle class needs relief. That's how you can have center-left and liberal democrats agree on what to do. It's when the structural soundness of the economy is badly damaged to the point that it needs be tended to. With an 'Energy Economy' as the engine of the economy just as the steam engine and electricity catapulted the US ahead of the economic hierarchy in the past, we can seize the initiative again. Good thing is, we're not too far behind (except in education- we're ranked freakin' 18th in the world!) we might well be on our way to adapting to the current world, instead of fighting the last war like russia, china and company. (i know this is wide ranging, and not exactly a model of organized, efficient, cogent, succinct thought- to get back to my criticism of your piece, but i didn't set out to write all that.) if you're disatisfied, i could make it shorter and more to the point.

Re: • OBAMA – THE FIRST “TELL”

lupercal5 — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 13:36:53 -0000

Incredibly well written prose. Im just gonna bookmark your website, just in case this well thought out piece wasn't an anomaly. Im more of a libertarian/independent democrat. Emphasis on democrat. I avidly support senator obama. I've become more of a fan fo CNN because i haven't come across any other program that strives for journalistic excellence in my 2 years of intense TV/Cable watching. I await the next David Brooks column because at the very least he's putting genuine thought into what he's saying. I dread the ALTERNATIVE MEDIA, not because it's alternative. One needs alternative. But because the concept has been held up to particular ideologies. And im excited about your column because it uses novel thinking to reach the old Republican indictment of democrats on foreign policy :) But no. Seriously. Good piece.