Posted by Marc Hodak on March 20, 2009 under Collectivist instinct, Politics | 
Can't you hear the barking?
Barney Frank says, “Heck, why not just eliminate all TARP recipient bonuses, period.” Uh, because we want at least some return of the massive investment you forced us to make in these firms?
But a zero bonus rule would be too simple. Congress doesn’t want to keep it simple because they’re afraid of getting outsmarted by the bankers, once again. So, like inept batters who keep swinging and missing, they’re simply pulling the backstop to the plate with a catch-all prohibition on “unreasonable and excessive” compensation. Or, to use a card analogy, this would be like handing themselves a trump card. In Tarot the trump card is represented by the Fool, which the French call “L’excuse,” as in “any excuse will do.” This is quite appropriate as we move toward French attitudes about wealth creation.
The market will reasonably interpret this bill, should it make it into law as: TARP = bankruptcy…why draw out the agony? Fair enough. But there are precedents being set here.
Precedents like confiscating or eliminating all pay above a certain level would be bad enough. But precedents where the government gets to decide what is reasonable in broad compensation matters invites unlimited meddling, especially when reasonable is whatever Barney Frank thinks is reasonable. Is Barney Frank even capable of distinguishing reasonable? Isn’t reasonable kind of different from “driven purely in reaction to headlines of the moment that stoke raw, unchecked emotion?
Posted by Marc Hodak on March 13, 2009 under Collectivist instinct |
The Swiss are a peaceful, congenial people. They don’t like to ruffle feathers. They would just as soon be left alone to run their own affairs and stay out of others. And they are much too polite to tell the Americans where they should take their requests for access to Swiss accounts.
Here is how I think they would respond if they weren’t so politic:
Dear Barack Obama, Timothy Geithner, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Kim Jong-Il:
We understand your problem. You want to tax your citizens where ever they are. If they are taking dollars or won on which they have already been taxed, placing them in foreign banks that are investing them in foreign companies, getting back euros or yen or rubles from places that don’t benefit from your institutions of justice, defense, or infrastructure, you want a cut of that, too. Fair enough.
Nevertheless, the Swiss government is not an arm of your governments. Our banks are not subsidiaries of your tax collection units. We are perfectly willing to cooperate in apprehending suspected criminals when you have provided specific evidence that conform with our extradition treaties. However, we see no reason to indulge your political prosecutions with fishing trips through our confidential files in the hope of finding new people to indict. We don’t, as your youngsters say, roll that way.
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Posted by Marc Hodak on February 22, 2009 under Collectivist instinct, Politics |
Reuters began an article titled “Europe says all markets must be regulated” with the following lead:
Europe said on Sunday it was time to get tough with tax havens and strictly oversee all financial markets as part of sweeping reforms to avoid future meltdowns.
Let’s translate:
“Europe said“: The heads of several governments, representing the politicized sectors of their respective European countries said…
“it was time to get tough with tax havens“: they see this as yet another opportunity to shut down tax competition…
“and strictly oversee all financial markets“: and expand their political cartel over areas they don’t currently control
“as part of sweeping reforms to avoid future meltdowns“: to increase their already immense regulatory powers, with no real expectation that they will exercise them with any more success or accountability than they have in the past.
This might be a good time to formalize Hodak’s Law: Politicians will assert that there is no problem in society that can’t be solved by giving them more money and more power.
For some reason, the press always credulously reports these power grabs as if they were the only sensible way of discussing or dealing with problems.
Posted by Marc Hodak on February 17, 2009 under Collectivist instinct |
In the zero-sum world that most journalists inhabit, they can hardly write a story about the crunch in public services without tying it to the billions paid in Wall Street bonuses, presumably directly from the public treasury. Witness in Reuters: Elderly New Yorkers angry as crisis hits poorest:
In New York, with city and state tax revenues tumbling, benefits and services to the elderly are being cut, and many older residents are furiously drawing comparisons to the billions of dollars spent to bail out banks — and pay Wall Street bonuses.
Well, why shouldn’t they draw those comparisons? Hasn’t the mainstream press furiously inked it onto the minds of its readers, capitalizing upon and reinforcing their economic illiteracy?
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Posted by Marc Hodak on February 11, 2009 under Collectivist instinct, Irrationality, Politics |
Today was Circus Day, when “Wall Street Titans” were thrown to the lions in Congress.
First, we hear from Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Michael Capuano: “America doesn’t trust you anymore.” True enough, but rather a strange critique coming from a Congressman.
Capuano also let go with the following rant: “You come to us today on your bicycles after buying Girl Scout cookies and helping out Mother Theresa and telling us, ‘We’re sorry, we didn’t mean it, we won’t do it again, trust us.’ Well, I have some people in my constituency that actually robbed some of your banks and they say the same thing.”
Awesome.
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Posted by Marc Hodak on January 17, 2009 under Collectivist instinct |
After Friday’s spectacular ditching and rescue of US Airways flight 1549, you’d think the safety nannies would be all smiles. The training of pilot and crew kicked in, and all 150 passengers were saved. Yet, the sub-header in today’s WSJ is:
US Airways Crew’s Lifesaving Role Bolsters Regulators’ Push for New Safety Rules
What would the regulators be pushing if the crew did not succeed?
Posted by Marc Hodak on November 15, 2008 under Collectivist instinct |
Hillary is apparently a top contender for Secretary of State. It’s hard for me to think about what would make this lady, the master of the politics of brute force, so worthy of being the top diplomat. Here is how someone close to her puts it:
“She could weld this world together,” said Susie Tompkins Buell, a Clinton donor and friend. “I think it would be amazing.”
At first I thought that this was just the kind of mindless blather that some of her supporters spout when they’re between thoughts about something they know anything about.
At the same time, it seemed hauntingly evocative of something said by Hannah Arendt:
It substitutes for the boundaries and channels of communication between individual men a band of iron which holds them so tightly together that it is as though their plurality had disappeared into One Man of gigantic dimensions.
Maybe the connection between “weld” and “iron” was too strong in my mind, given my background in materials science.
The “It” Arendt referred to was a condition she would name as “totalitarianism.” Here is perhaps the conclusion that cemented, if you will, her reputation as one of the foremost philosophers of the 20th Century:
By pressing men against each other, total terror destroys the space between them; compared to the condition within its iron band, even the desert of tyranny, insofar as it is still some kind of space, appears like a guarantee of freedom.
Totalitarian government does not just curtail liberties or abolish essential freedoms; nor does it, at least to our limited knowledge, succeed in eradicating the love for freedom from the hearts of man. It destroys the one essential prerequisite of all freedom which is simply the capacity of motion which cannot exist without space.
While it’s dangerous to summarize a thinker as complex as Arendt, she is, in essense, arguing that terror is a the ultimate tool by which the designs of individuals can be completely erased, to be substituted by the designs of a ruler working to implement some kind of ideology.
It’s almost impossible to discuss any politician’s fetish with “binding the people together” in the context of Arendt without risking someone invoking “Godwin’s rule” to end the discussion. But there is no mistaking the context of quotes like this:
We must stop thinking of the individual and start thinking about what is best for society. – 1993
We just can’t trust the American people to make those types of choices…. Government has to make those choices for people – 1993
We’re going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good. – 2004
Not to focus on Hillary, though, we’ve heard collectivist calls to action from our president elect, as well:
Our individual salvation depends on collective salvation. – 2008
And not to pick on Democrats, Obama’s Republican challenger weighed in with:
I can lead this nation and motivate all Americans to serve a cause greater than their self-interest. – 2008
But people seem to fall for it over and over.
Posted by Marc Hodak on August 19, 2008 under Collectivist instinct |
That was pretty much exactly what Minneapolis police told this doctor.
Posted by Marc Hodak on July 16, 2008 under Collectivist instinct |
MMM shows she’s worth whatever Atlantic is paying her in this brilliant fisking of the Chicago ‘Gang of 100’ whine about the proposed Friedman Institute. Her money quote:
Their assessment of the effects of the “neoliberal global order” is forehead slapping, head shaking, did-they-really-say that? stupid. I haven’t heard such transparently wishful claptrap since my fifteen-year-old boyfriend tried to convince me that sex provided unparalleled aerobic exercise. If you put all 100 in a room with unlimited access to Lexis-Nexis and a mountain-sized peyote stash to bring their quasi-communist fantasy life into 3D technicolor, they still couldn’t name a country where neoliberalism has undermined a vibrant democracy.
It hardly gets any better than that.
Posted by Marc Hodak on June 1, 2008 under Collectivist instinct |
This is amazing (not in a good way):
Your head will explode when you’re done. Really.
From that fringe, left-wing cult–the Australian Broadcasting Corporation–telling the average Aussie kid that they should die at about 9 years old to make way for the “good” kids who don’t use energy or have money. Where is the outrage? We’ll check back.
HT: The awesome Coyote Blog
