Vital Statistics:
| S&P Futures | 1830.5 | 3.9 | 0.21% |
| Eurostoxx Index | 3074.7 | 14.8 | 0.48% |
| Oil (WTI) | 95.11 | -0.3 | -0.35% |
| LIBOR | 0.24 | -0.003 | -1.24% |
| US Dollar Index (DXY) | 80.72 | 0.089 | 0.11% |
| 10 Year Govt Bond Yield | 3.00% | 0.01% | |
| Current Coupon Ginnie Mae TBA | 103.8 | -0.2 | |
| Current Coupon Fannie Mae TBA | 102.9 | -0.1 | |
| RPX Composite Real Estate Index | 200.7 | -0.2 | |
| BankRate 30 Year Fixed Rate Mortgage | 4.55 |
Markets are higher this morning on no real news. Bonds and MBS are flattish. A snowstorm in the Northeast has many traders at home, so I don’t expect a lot of movement today. The Bernank speaks at 2:30 EST. Can’t imagine he is going to steal any of Janet’s thunder, but you never know.
It is looking like December domestic vehicle sales are not coming in as strong as hoped. Many analysts attributed the disappointment to bad weather.
The ISM New York index of business conditions fell, but is still at the high end of its range. It looks like most retailers deferred releasing comp store sales to next Thursday, so that will be an important data point for the state of the consumer.
Filed under: Morning Report |
FIRST!!
I’ve been sitting on tenterhooks just waiting for Brent to put up the MR simply so that I could go OT with this right away. Happy Friday (and sorry, Brent)!
http://tinyurl.com/WalrusPilates
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goo goo goo joob
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After readind De Blasio’s inaugural speech, it’s my understanding that New York is Thunderdome. Is he the Gyro Captain or Max?
Or Lord Humungous resurrected?
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I thought he was Karl Marx?
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Was he the guy on the motorcycle with the Mohawk?
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It will be nice to be rid of the horse shit smell around Central Park…
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Bill Nye is going to debate a creationist:
http://www.nbcnews.com/science/bill-nye-science-guy-debate-evolution-creationist-2D11844099
Seriously, why does the Left get so bent out of shape people believing in creationism or intelligent design?
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By all means, please go to single payer!
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/obamacare_cant_add_baby
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Brent: Because everything in the state nothing outside the state.
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why does the Left get so bent out of shape people believing in creationism or intelligent design?
I haven’t read the link, so don’t know a thing about the debate itself, but I will comment on your question as a Leftie.
I couldn’t care less whether people believe in creationism/ID (or want their kids to believe it), but don’t expect it to be taught in public schools, included in textbooks bought with tax payer dollars, or be considered during debate in forming policy (see Broun, P, R GA-10). That’s what gets me bent out of shape.
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Why shouldn’t local communities decide on what they’re kids are taught?
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Uh oh.
https://twitter.com/TPCarney/status/419097903487922176
I pray for a great Ukranian wheat harvest.
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Calm down wingnuts! This Double-proves AGW!
Gaia weeps!
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Cause the Adminstration’s been so honest and transparent.
Question, does a hack like Sargent actually believe the Adminstration? If so, why?
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Why shouldn’t local communities decide on what they’re kids are taught?
Why shouldn’t religious believers decide that their religious beliefs be taught in the home and their religious institutions?
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I don’t understand Michi.
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My mindthoughts.
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McWing:
My mindthoughts.
That was both hilarious and disturbing, all at the same time.
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And not that it matters, but I’ve been a huge fan of Bill Nye ever since I lived in Tacoma and watched the local version of SNL that he was on (“Almost Live”).
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I don’t understand Michi.
Why not teach religious beliefs in the home and your religious institutions and not the public schools? Heck, even teach them in religious private schools.
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watched the local version of SNL that he was on (“Almost Live”).
Speed Walker!
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Question, does a hack like Sargent actually believe the Adminstration? If so, why?
Greg is a soldier. He believes in the cause and hates the enemy. Any shortcomings of his leaders are miniscule compared to the flaws of his enemies.
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I think theology is a core subject matter. The are a lot of people who believe in creationism. Being ignorant of that and what it is helps nobody. Same thing with other religions. That doesn’t mean you endorse it.
But the reason for the opposition is that religion is a enemy of the state and should be stamped out of polite society.
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Speed Walker!
I’d forgotten that! You’ve seen it!
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Michi, why can’t patents use the tax dollars they pay to send their kids to get any kind of education they want? I guess that I don’t understand why, if they want their kids to get a religious education, why can’t they take, say a voucher, and use it at a religious school?
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I think theology is a core subject matter.
I’d call it “religious studies” and cover more than the western Big Three, but I wouldn’t argue with this. The problem is teaching it without proselytizing, which can be done in older kids but not younger ones. Heck, even as a then-agnostic my favorite classes that I ever took at MSU were my religious studies ones taught by Robert Greene.
I think that you’re wrong about the opposition (although I’m sure that a significant minority feels that way), but the problem is that fundamentalist Protestant doctrine requires proselytizing, and too many religious adherents have focused on the indoctrination rather than the education. That’s why the big push-back against teaching religion in any way, shape, or form.
The UU just opened a religious studies department a few years ago, and that was a huge uphill battle for the department because in Utah, teaching religion is so closely associated in everyone’s mind with indoctrination. If you can decouple the two it’s not really that big a deal.
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Now you’re starting a different argument, “Carl”, one which I’m not going to get in to.
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Mich:
The problem is teaching it without proselytizing…
Teachers proselytize about all kinds of things in public schools. Why not religion?
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Ok. Even with the current disastrous public school structure, why couldn’t a local school district, which is administered by a school board of elected officials decide that they can teach creationism to their students?
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why couldn’t a local school district, which is administered by a school board of elected officials decide that they can teach creationism to their students?
In the context of a religious studies class, sure. In the context of a science class, no.
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But why couldn’t a local school board, made up of locally elected residents decide that preaching is ok in schools? To indoctrinate students?
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McWing:
But why couldn’t a local school board, made up of locally elected residents decide that preaching is ok in schools? To indoctrinate students?
It is not preaching or indoctrination by itself that can be the real objection. As I pointed out, that happens all the time in public schools to no objection at all. It is the content of the preaching/indoctrination that they must find objectionable. Indoctrinating students into, say, the politics/religion of Climate Changism is perfectly acceptable. Not so, it seems, the politics/religion of Christianity.
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Another example of indoctrination. I was taught that FDR ended the Depression through programs such as the WPA and the CRA. That SS was an unmitigated good. There was NEVER any counter arguement to this. It was as if every human acknowledged the innate truth of it.
I bet everybody else here was taught the same horaeshit in public elementary, Junior high school and high school.
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McWing:
I bet everybody else here was taught the same horaeshit in public elementary, Junior high school and high school.
Yup. Although I went to an all-boys catholic high school, so I was taught even more horseshit.
Although I will say that the first time I ever heard the phrase “There ain’t no free lunch” was in my freshman social studies class, and I think far too few teachers preach about that.
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I bet everybody else here was taught the same horaeshit in public elementary, Junior high school and high school.
Well, not exactly. My history teacher my senior year in HS was a PhD in history and a [liberal]R. He asked us to research the contra arguments to the text book treatment of what he called the “alphabet” programs.
I concluded that SS, REA, SEC, and TVA were net goods. I concluded that PWA, the program that hired private contractors to do public works, was a damned sight more effective than WPA, CCC, or NRA, but that they figured that out too late in the game. The best arguments I could make in favor of WPA, CCC, and NRA is that they kept angry mobs of young men from forming. But using PWA instead would have revitalized the business sector, put the same men to work, and not put the fed guv in competition with private employers. It might have actually pulled us out of the Depression [with EZ credit from the Fed, but I did not know that part in HS].
I did not learn about the Fed Reserve’s role in continuing the Depression until I studied Milton Friedman in college.
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I didn’t know about Hayek or Von Mises until well after college. I did know about Marx and Keynes in High School.
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“Michi, why can’t patents use the tax dollars they pay to send their kids to get any kind of education they want? ”
Michi won’t let them buy the light bulbs that they want, so no way she’s going for this.
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Michi won’t let them buy the light bulbs that they want, so no way she’s going for this.
jnc knows me so well. . .
Heck, I’m not even going to let you smoke next to me in a restaurant, so why wouldn’t I take those tax dollars and send all the little hooligans to FEMA re-education camps?!
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Interesting Mark, that even your teachers counter-arguement centered on government intervention rather than a true opposite to FDR. Given that, doesn’t my example still stand?
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Dr. Cranse was more critical than I was. But the exercise was to counter the assumptions in the textbook that it was ALL good and necessary to defeat the Depression.
George, when I was a senior in HS the average American male lived to be 67. Believe me when I tell you that SS looks very different when you pay in for fifty years and collect for 2.
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Well, he’ll do less damage anyway.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/01/obamas-second-term-is-all-about-climate-change.html
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George, when I was a senior in HS the average American male lived to be 67. Believe me when I tell you that SS looks very different when you pay in for fifty years and collect for 2.
I thought you supported SS?
My point about public school indoctrination is that public schools indoctrinate children with the among other things, idea that government intervention is always necessary and that the arguement is in how much. It takes faith to beleive that, just as it takes faith to beleive in Creationism. Since that’s the case, it’s purely arbitrary to indoctrinate children with one and not the other. While it’s nice to claim moral superiority, it’s just one’s preference for one over the other and a desire to impose one’s will over somebody else. I fail to see what’s moral about that.
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My point is that public schools indoctrinate children with the idea that government intervention is always necessary
Somehow I missed that little bit of indoctrination. I don’t remember being taught anything like what you’re describing about FDR and the end of the Great Depression, but perhaps I had a substandard public education, coming from a small school in a small town and all.
What I do remember being taught is that the first amendment meant that I wasn’t going to be taught religion as fact, at least not in a public school.
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Michi, I went to a upper middle class public school, in a big city and my education sucked. It was awful. I was taught, among other ridiculous things that FDR ended the depression with his various make-work programs. I learned who Karl Marx was and also who John Maynard Keynes. There was never any discussion about government intervention actually causing, or prolonging the depression. It was taught as unarguable that the government further intervention was necessary and proper.
I am surprised and delighted to find that your schools discussed the merits of dismantling government agencies and regulations to help alleviate the depression. I never had any discussion os such things inside the walls of a public school including college. Hence my anger and contempt for the institution of public schools.
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“Whitaker. Motherfucking. Chambers, on January 3, 2014 at 7:19 pm said:
George, when I was a senior in HS the average American male lived to be 67. Believe me when I tell you that SS looks very different when you pay in for fifty years and collect for 2.
I thought you supported SS?”
I think his point is that with the original demographics, the tax burden on those working was substantially less, so the cost/benefit analysis vis-a-vis the retirees who would otherwise be destitute was a lot better.
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Well, he’ll do less damage anyway.
On the contrary… My bullish take on the U.S. economy depends a lot on cheap energy. well, there was one thing that could mess this up, and going all green is it.
I hope this is just red meat for the green base of the democratic party, but it might not be. If so, obama is about to screw the unscrewable pooch…
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Really excellent analysis of the failure of the first New Deal. Just shit NEVER discussed in public (schools.)
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/genealogy-obamacare_773265.html?nopager=1#
Brent, I guess I don’t believe Obama will have the backing of any energy state Senators for the next year. Therefore he won’t do too much too hurt them in hopes of keeping the Senate. Whether he keeps it or not, after the midterms he ‘s a lame duck and will have decreasing support thereafter.
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McWing:
I don’t think it is possible to provide an education, particularly with regard to subjects like history, literature, social studies, i.e. those outside of hard sciences, without “indoctrinating” students with some kind of subjective value judgments. Teaching necessarily must be done within the context of some kind of value system. So the real question, then, is what to do when the value system adopted by the school conflicts with the value system of the parents.
In the case of private schools, this isn’t any kind of problem, because the parents are neither forced to send their kids there nor forced to financially support the school. They are free to support or not support the value system pushed by the school, as they wish. However, in the case of public schools, it is an obvious problem. The law says that parents must send their kids to at least some school, and it also says that parents must pay to support the value system pushed by the public school. So, again, what to do when the value system offered by the school conflicts with the value system of the parent?
There are two very obvious steps to take to solve to this problem. The first is to establish the value system under which the school will operate at the local, community level. Since local communities are generally comprised of large majorities of people with similar value systems, this will ensure to the greatest extent possible that objectionable value systems are not being imposed from the outside on those communities. Then, to protect the minority within those local communities that might themselves object to the value system being imposed by the majority and for which they are forced to pay via local taxation, a voucher system which allows them to opt out and use their education funds at a school that better reflects their values should be offered. There is no reason, in my mind anyway, that someone like Mich should have to support with her tax dollars a school system that, say, teaches from a religious perspective that she objects to. Another benefit, of course, is that such a system would promote wide diversity of thought, as different local communities adopted different approaches.
Frankly I don’t understand why anyone would object to such system, unless they had an authoritarian desire to impose their own value system on everyone else, even those that object to it.
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How about this, what shouldn’t the Federal government be allowed to do even though there may be a compelling, moral and urgent need to do so?
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McWing:
How about this, what shouldn’t the Federal government be allowed to do even though there may be a compelling, moral and urgent need to do so?
Most things, actually. The federal government should be extremely limited in the powers it has and the ends to which it uses them.
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Question for the AGW supporters, what conditions would have to exist and for how long to disprove made made warming?
What would disprove human contribution to ongoing warming?
No wrong answer, I’m just curious.
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