Eschaton

Doing It Wrong Everywhere

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 18:39:00 +0000

England has recently followed our great lead and decided that the price of a university education should be sufficiently high to ensure everyone graduates with a massive amount of debt. It was moving in that direction when I taught there. I tried to warn people that aside from the 'making people pay' part, it would transform academia by turning students into customers. Hello student evaluations and competitive pressures!

The basic thinking seems to have been that it was wonderful for university to be free back when most people who attended were quite wealthy, but once the masses started getting ideas about going it was time to force them to pay. And there again is your generational divide.

The Great Thing About Free Money From The Government

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 17:45:00 +0000

Is you can use that money to lobby for...more free money! Even from other governments!

The Royal Bank of Scotland has spent more than $4m (£2.5m) of British taxpayers' money on lobbyists in Washington since it was bailed out by the government, documents disclose.

Wanker of the Day

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:32:00 +0000

Larry Summers.

Nobody Has Any Money

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 15:11:00 +0000

It's sort of amusing reading various articles about, for example, generational divides in the housing market, otherwise known as "young people don't think they'll ever be able to buy a house." There's too much of a desire to attribute to preferences instead of income, prices, and access to credit. I'm not saying preferences for such things can't change, but right now what's happening, both in the US and much of Europe, is that younger people are getting screwed. The game has changed for them. They're facing crap job prospects, crap income, no possibility for defined benefits pensions, and perpetual threats to completely gut retirement systems.

I'm not saying young people are the only ones being screwed by our incompetent and evil Galtian Overlords, but if you're looking for generational divides, that's your divide.

Who's The Boss

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 14:43:00 +0000

I'm not surprised that the conservative powers that be might be rethinking the awesomeness of Citizen's United. Basically, in the previous campaign finance framework, rich people had influence but none of them individually had too much influence. Suddenly, the money really is king, and those who managed to obtain influence and power in other ways aren't as important anymore.

Not Good Enough

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 14:26:00 +0000

As the downers at the EPI remind us (email), today's growth numbers aren't good enough, and with various bits of fiscal contraction looming next year...

“Gross domestic product grew in the 4th quarter of 2011 at the fastest rate since the first half of 2010 – but any celebration should be muted. The 2.8% growth rate for the quarter was well below expectations and the year-round growth rate for 2011 was only 1.7%, a rate that would not generate reliable declines in unemployment should it continue.

“It seems clear that the sharp withdrawal of fiscal support currently embedded in law for 2012 would result in growth wholly insufficient to reliably lower the unemployment rate. At the very least, a year-long extension of extended unemployment insurance benefits and the payroll tax cut should be passed to keep 2012 from being a year of no improvement in joblessness.”

Free Money

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 13:27:00 +0000

It isn't pointed out often enough that we've been giving massive amounts of free money to banksters, and that it would be more effective to give free money to this rest of us.

Helicopter money is precisely what the government has for three years been dropping into bank vaults, to the tune of some £850bn in cash, loans and guarantees. Ministers pleaded with bankers to lend it on to firms in the high street, but the banks preferred to keep it for themselves, to cover their gambling debts and bonuses. Dropping the stuff from helicopters is more effective since it does what it says on the tin: it instantly unleashes demand. It is an emergency blood transfusion straight into the veins of the economy, through high-street tills, job recruitment, restocking, warehouses and order books. It does not pass through the constricted arteries of bank managers.

Fortunately There's A Policy For That

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 12:42:00 +0000

So we should have this all fixed up pretty quickly.

Spain’s unemployment rate rose to 22.9 percent, the highest in 15 years, increasing pressure on Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy to change labor rules and deliver on his election pledge to create jobs in a shrinking economy.

The unemployment rate rose in the fourth quarter from 21.5 percent in the previous three months, the National Statistics Institute in Madrid said today. That’s more than twice the euro- region average and exceeds the median estimate of 22.2 percent in a Bloomberg survey of seven analysts.

Morning Thread

noreply@blogger.com (ql) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 10:18:00 +0000

Late Night

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 03:41:00 +0000

Rock on.

Applebee's America

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 03:00:00 +0000

I haven't walked by in awhile, and this is of course just anecdote, but an Applebee's opened in the urban hellhole a few years ago nearby where I used to live. It wasn't an African-American neighborhood, but every time I glanced through the window most of the customers were actually black.

More Debate Thread

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 02:14:00 +0000

Enjoy. Or kill yourself.

Debate Thread

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 00:55:00 +0000

Oh good Lord.

Where Are All The People Going To Go

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 23:59:00 +0000

Had an idle thought about where "we" think population growth is going to go. Census hasn't (unless gastritis broke my internet) done a new projection based on 2010 data, but this .xls file (warning! .xls file!) tells us what they thought based on the 2000 data. Short version from eyeballing it is that they thought places that had been growing fast would continue to grow fast, with Nevada and Arizona more than doubling in population from 2000-2030.

Too lazy (right now) to see how the data is tracking projections, but just at a glance they're probably going to get one thing wrong: they project DC population will fall from 572K in 2000 to 433K in 2030. Could happen, I suppose, but they have the 2010 population at 601K and the 2011 estimated population at 617K...

Evening Thread

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 23:12:00 +0000

enjoy

What's He Been Doing For The Past 5 Years

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 21:41:00 +0000

Mitt's had a long time to purify his recent finances. And he didn't bother.

As It Should

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 20:34:00 +0000

One would think that more firms would be a bit worried that the ability to steal all of their customers money might shake a bit of trust in the system.

People such as Mr Kasouf increasingly feel they will never get their money back. As Christmas approached, with a wife and two children to support, he considered selling his house or declaring bankruptcy. Ultimately, the 72 per cent of his funds MF Global’s bankruptcy trustee has since returned prevented this, but his view of the markets has been shaken. “This has practically destroyed my trust in the whole system,” he says.

Is That Really What It's For

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 19:20:00 +0000

I normally don't pay much attention to these sorts of things, but I saw this and...wuh?

The beauty of religion is that it soothes life's contradictions. If I were a policy maker I would come down hard on the abuse of our borders or those who play the benefits system, yet I also love the Church's suspension of judgment in favour of universal love and pity. The apparent muddle over protesters at St Paul's is simply Christianity.

So religion lets you feel good about not practicing what your religion preaches?

Ok.

Probably A Bad Idea

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 18:27:00 +0000

Yes I say this in part because I'm an old fogie who probably hasn't seen closing time in quite a long time, but as long semi-dormant commercial corridors and corner retail spots continue to be revived and would be establishment owners face neighborhood resistance, I'm not sure shifting last call from closing time to 3AM (from 2) is really such a good idea.

Crooks

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 17:29:00 +0000

As I keep saying, I don't know how anybody thinks the housing market and the economy can recover as long as the banking system is filled with incompetence and outright fraud.

Newtered

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 16:30:00 +0000

I admit it's hard to know how to respond to the entity that is Newt. I'd probably have a lot of fun digging up the 3 trillion funny and horrible Newt things that are out there, but it's also so tempting just to root for him.

Hire A Driver

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 14:50:00 +0000

An Eagles player who makes over 2 million bucks/year was a passenger in a car where the driver was arrested for a DUI.

You have money. Get a taxi or hire a driver.

Thursday Is New Jobless Day

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 14:20:00 +0000

377K new lucky duckies. Not so good, not so bad.

A Few Hundred Billion For The Moon, A Trillion To Kill A Couple Hundred Thousand People

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 14:15:00 +0000

I'm enough of a geek to have sympathies for spending some money on a space program, recognizing also that such R&D can have some technological payoffs, but as we're discussing Moon bases and Mars missions can we maybe have a few bucks to spend on SUPERTRAINS or, you know, unemployment benefits. Priorities, that kind of thing.

Should be 5%

noreply@blogger.com (Atrios) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 12:55:00 +0000

And, well, how about an unemployment rate target?