All Things in Moderation

Christopher Hitchens is dead. Hitch was a very smart man, a great writer, and a bit of an enigma. He will be missed on all parts of the political spectrum, I suspect.

Back in 2005 I had my own brief “brush with greatness” with him. I was living in England, and had started my own blog, The American Expatriate, which was dedicated largely to critiquing the British media’s coverage of America. I had written a brief post about a debate on Iraq that Hitchens had with George Galloway (a truly loathsome MP who had had his own run-in with the US Congress over the oil-for-food program.) Anyway, unbeknownst to me, a radio personality in the UK named Charlie Wolf had become a bit of a fan of my blog, and when he saw my blog post he contacted me to appear on his radio show to comment on the debate, which I did. Unfortunately, my appearance was cut short when Wolf’s producer managed to get Hitchens himself on the phone in the middle of my comments.

So Hitchens managed to pre-empt my first and only radio appearance. At least he was kind enough not to remark about the bumbling, stuttering clown who preceded him on the show, for which I have forever been grateful.
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QB referenced a New Yorker piece on Hitchens in a more recent thread and while I’m not sure if I found what he was referencing, here are a couple of pieces on Hitchens from The New Yorker:

A 2006 piece on Hitchens’ support for the Iraq War.

A Postscript by Christopher Buckley that I really enjoyed.

And for those who, like myself, aren’t particularly familiar with Hitchens, here is a list (with descriptions) of some of his work.

–Ashot—

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Vital Statistics:

It is Triple Witching Day, and the folks on business TV are excited. I have never understood why – I don’t think options expiry days are any more volatile than non-option expiry days. As an aside, am I the only one irritated by the CNBC / Bloomberg TV insistence on calling it Quadruple Witching Day (to include the expiry of single stock futures)? Does anybody trade single stock futures? Quadruple Witching just sounds more dramatic than Triple Witching.

The consumer price index was released this morning, and it shows that inflation is still behaving. The low inflation numbers were primarily attributed to a drop in the price of energy, as gasoline bounces around close to support and natural gas cannot get out of its own way.

As we close in on the holidays, the markets are only going to become more boring. Zynga priced last night at the top of its range at $10 a share. It is set to begin trading around 11:00 am.

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When the government grows, the private sector shrinks. Or maybe it’s that the private sector shrinks, thus obligating the government to grow.

The 6 Things Movies Love to Get Wrong About the Workplace.

HuffPo says Anti-Incumbent Fever Can Hurt Republicans. Implied, if not explicitly stated, is that it might also hurt the incumbents in the senate and the Whitehouse, as there are, in fact, a lot of incumbent Democrats, too.

Newt Gingrich says the Ryan-Wyden bill is awesome. Wonder who that will hurt more.

Do you like to clip coupons? I do. It’s like money you don’t pay taxes or withholding on. Good deal!

There’s a new Ghost Rider film on the way. I love it when underperforming films get a sequel. That shows moxie!

Climategate continues. Whistleblowers are criminals who must immediately be arrested, if their leaking the wrong kind of emails. Who thinks this is a good idea for dealing with climate skeptics? Whistleblowers were cool . . . back in the day.

Why We Need Serious Welfare Reform. I observed some of the same things over 20 years ago (without the iPhones). I agree in spirit, but it’s not going to happen. There will always be people, and lots of them, abusing the system and teaching that to the next generation. Those incentives will always be present in some form. The blogger is young. She talks like this might change, and it won’t, unless the entire country goes bankrupt. I’d prefer that not to happen, even if it means an ever-growing entitlement class.

Here’s another picture of a puppy:

lmsinca’s Christmas Cookies

I thought this one was pretty good…

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Vital Statistics:

A slew of economic data was released this morning: PPI, Empire Manufacturing, Jobless claims, Industrial Production, and Capacity Utilization. The PPI (Producer Price Index) shows that inflation is a non-issue. Empire Manufacturing showed manufacturing in NY State has rebounded from the summer lows. Industrial Production was surprisingly low, and capacity utilization was flat. Philly Fed indicated strength as well. The best news was in initial jobless claims, which dropped to 366k, a post-recession low. Initial jobless numbers can be fluky this time of year, and we had a headfake earlier this year, but that said, it is encouraging and confirms other numbers that show the labor market may be picking itself up off the mat.

The kabuki dance over the temporary payroll tax cut extension continues. There have been leaks that Democrats are planning to drop their insistence on a permanent surtax on millionaires to pay for the tax cut, which is a nonstarter for Republicans. I’m sure both parties will manage to scrounge up some fake spending cuts in the couch and pass something so they can go home for the holidays.

Perennial Krugman critic Amity Schlaes lays into Krugman for his latest column, which seems to imply that raising the retirement age in Greece means that Kristallnacht is just around the corner. Schlaes points out how austerity in the face of recessions worked well in the past, citing the early 20s recession and Australia. She should also mention the Asian Tigers which went along the austerity route and compare it to Japan, which followed the Krugman prescription to the letter.

Chart: Initial Jobless Claims:

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Ryan-Wyden.

I think that both JNCP and NoVAH have mentioned this was going to be offered.

Wyden-Bennett was the health care bill I favored and although I can mount a defense of ACA, it is huge, where Wyden-Bennett was relatively elegant, and it was partisan where W-B was not.

Paul Ryan thinks before he speaks, a trait he shares with Ron Wyden.  I have linked to Ezra’s take, but I really hope to get NoVAH’s.

Also, I want to know if this may become the law.

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Busy day. Things messing up, meetings coming up and the most inopportune moment, etc. So, in short, I got nothing.

Here’s a picture of a dog.

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To help a brother out, a link to the economic year in graphs

Time chooses the Protestor as its Person of the Year.

And the abstract to a paper in Science about empathy in lab rats.

“Whereas human pro-social behavior is often driven by empathic concern for another, it is unclear whether nonprimate mammals experience a similar motivational state. To test for empathically motivated pro-social behavior in rodents, we placed a free rat in an arena with a cagemate trapped in a restrainer. After several sessions, the free rat learned to intentionally and quickly open the restrainer and free the cagemate. Rats did not open empty or object-containing restrainers. They freed cagemates even when social contact was prevented. When liberating a cagemate was pitted against chocolate contained within a second restrainer, rats opened both restrainers and typically shared the chocolate. Thus, rats behave pro-socially in response to a conspecific’s distress, providing strong evidence for biological roots of empathically motivated helping behavior.”

Empathy and Pro-Social Behavior in Rats

— Mike

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I am really pretty sure some of you will find this funny.

—ashot

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James Taranto, in his Best of the Web column yesterday, highlights Bernie Sanders’ Saving American Democracy (SAD) amendment to the constitution.

Section 1. The rights protected by the Constitution of the United States are the rights of natural persons and do not extend to for-profit corporations, limited liability companies, or other private entities established for business purposes or to promote business interests under the laws of any state, the United States, or any foreign state.
Section 2. Such corporate and other private entities established under law are subject to regulation by the people through the legislative process so long as such regulations are consistent with the powers of Congress and the States and do not limit the freedom of the press.
Section 3. Such corporate and other private entities shall be prohibited from making contributions or expenditures in any election of any candidate for public office or the vote upon any ballot measure submitted to the people.
Section 4. Congress and the States shall have the power to regulate and set limits on all election contributions and expenditures, including a candidate’s own spending, and to authorize the establishment of political committees to receive, spend, and publicly disclose the sources of those contributions and expenditures.

Taranto points out, and it seems correct to me, that if this amendment were ratified, section 1 would deny corporations of literally all constitutional protections. As Taranto puts it:

Among other things, that would mean that the government (federal or state) could subject such entities to bills of attainder and ex post facto laws, impose criminal or civil penalties on them without due process, search their premises without a warrant and seize their property without compensation.

And despite section 2’s clause limiting any potential legislation against corporate acitivty to being consistent with “freedom of the press”, it seems to me the amendment itself would, by its language, eliminate freedom of the press for any corporate media outlet. Afterall, if “the rights protected by the Constitution of the United States are the rights of natural persons and do not extend to for-profit corporations”, that means that, for example, neither the NYT, nor the WaPo, nor FOXNews is protected by the first amendment’s right to freedom of the press.

Granted this amendment has virtually no chance of ever getting passed and ratfied. But I am curious to hear what our resident lawyers have to say about this attempt by Sanders to seemingly eliminate freedom of the press as we know it.

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Vital Statistics:

Stock indices are flattish as the market digests the Fed’s statement and people watch the declining Euro. Supposedly 1.30 is some sort of magic level (the press loves big figures), but people forget that a decade earlier it was around 90 cents. Euro sovereign levels are slightly firmer and commodities are getting hit. Volumes have been light lately and will only dry up further as we head into year end.

The NYT has a story on Comedy-Bank (Commerzbank) and its capital woes. The German state already owns 25% of the company, and the European Banking Authority has said it needs another 5.3 billion euros in capital, which is a tall order when your market cap is only 6.2 billion euros to begin with. Looks like the German Government is going to have to kick in some more equity. A German broker once told me that the men’s room on the Commerzbank equity trading floor has an eye-level window in front of the urinals with a view of Deutsche Bank’s headquarters across the park. Ja, und now we piss on Deutsche Bank! I can’t verify the veracity of this, but it would be funny if it is true.

Today is Mitt Money Day with the NYC finance sector. Big shindig at Steve Schwartzman’s pad tonight, with J Tom Hill, Paul Singer, Dan Loeb and others tonight. NYC Wall Street cash is all-in with Romney and the Republican primary. Obama will raise some cash from the dyed-in-the-wool Democrats, but the Republican nominee is going to raise a ton. Don’t read too much into the initial fund raising numbers on WS yet – Romney hasn’t even gone to bat yet.

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The intellectual difference as to how men and women frame their personal narratives.

Can men and women just be friends?

The men answer no, but leave out the obvious answer: “Well, sure, if she’s not attractive.” 😉

I love the fact that, after listening to all these women say that men and women can be “just friends”, he asks the follow up question: “So, do you think he would hook up with you, if you gave him a chance?”

All the pictures you could ever want to permanently crush any hope you might have ever held for the future of humanity.

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I’ve noted elsewhere that lots of people don’t think Newt Gingrich has a prayer of becoming president, not even the Republican nominee.

Lee Stranahan thinks Newt Gingrich is inevitably our next president. Well, that makes two people (Newt, and now Lee). I still remain very dubious.

From back when the Gingrich campaign was imploding, The 11 Craziest Things Newt Gingrich has Ever Said.

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