super, just super

Holy shit, Shirley Bassey.




I'm going to work on being able to buzz on a final "ng" like that with my mouth closed. Cripes.

This was the only song I didn't know from last night at the Little Jam. Little did I know, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in Sandpiper. 1965-ish, Barbra and Johnny Mathis.

Money.

Here's a handy-dandy chart showing various modalities the government can use to stimulate the economy. It seems that the most direct route is by stimulating consumer spending (rather than giving upper-income individuals or corporations more money to play with, invest, etc.). This is more or less the heart of the argument for tax benefits being aimed at the lower half of the income spectrum--i.e., people with less margin ('headroom") between their month-to-month spending and total income are more likely to go right out and spend that extra money than folks with no shortage of cash and a more diverse set of priorities. That's the basic idea, anyway.

As an added bonus, the fact that that munnie is in the hands of the consumers allows competition to play out in a way that it would not if it were, say, spread evenly to every business in the land. Winners, losers.

how the hell did

JM ending up saying jamming gaydar is not a federal responsibility???

Ideas?

housequake

I somehow got on the topic of earthquakes yesterday. I guess it didn't register with me how historically ginormous that one was. But when you think of the sheer force and water displacement unleashed, well yeah. Earthquakes are freaky. Apparently they happen when I'm in bed, but I never notice them.

This is fascinating.

Definitely some perspective on things. I don't really make any more money than these people, and I'm a single gay man living in a major city--facts that cut both ways as far as my economic situation goes.

And yet--I'm fairly well-educated, and generally do not partake of the hopelessness expressed in the article. Partially because I live in a relatively prosperous city with a relative wealth of opportunities, and partially because the folks in my family tree have done more-or-less what they wanted to do and lived fairly comfortably for several generations now. Stuff like that affects (if it doesn't determine) your outlook--total failure seems like a distant possibility, even if it isn't.

There's a part of me that's attracted to the gothic, extravagant decay of places like the towns in the article. Over the last four or five years, I've looked at a few job opportunities that would've taken me to strange small(er) towns. Never got anywhere near pulling the trigger, but thought about it, imagined it. Maybe.

sugar-bear-monkey-on-a-stick

I'm pretty bad about this. Like the story says, I think I'm being "nice," or maybe comforting. Then again, I call pretty much everybody "sugar." I've turned into the papery old queen I long feared . . . .

OH, and--if I call you sugar, there's only a 4.3% chance I'm making fun of you for being incompetent . . . .

the trouble with tribbles

Here's a post with a lot of zeros in it.

I should preface my response by saying that it does hurt my heart to see government money fly out the door (though apparently not fast enough) to accomplish nothing more than maybe kinda sorta keeping Amurika open for bidness. But you fight with the Army you have, not . . . .

Fundamentally, though, I have trouble with the knee-jerk certitude that this is a Bad Idea. After all, most of the smart money seemed to be on the downside-of-no-bailout being a swift and terrible credit contraction followed by East German levels of unemployment and a generally deep and prolonged recession. Which we may be seeing the first act of anyway, by the by. Let's game it out: we'd only know for sure that it's a bad idea if it hadn't passed, and then nothing happened, more or less. It's worth remembering, though, that more wealth has been destroyed today than the whole thing will cost, under the worst and direst assumptions.

Perhaps equally, if all that government money doesn't forestall the big recession, then it wasn't worth it. Fundamentally, the real fun starts when credit gets so tight that big businesses can't meet payroll. If we get to that point, I don't think arguments along the lines of "think how much worse it'd be without the bailout . . . " will have any force.

Much more likely outcomes: 3) no bailout/contraction-recession, or 4) bailout/less clear outcome, especially in the near term. My money's on this last. If all the charnel-house scenarios outlined by prominent economists are headed off, it's true--we can never know if the bailout was totally necessary. But it would seem that there's a better than even chance that it was. Problem with advanced-opinion is that an argument wasn't made one way or another on this question. It was, "Ohmigod, look at all those zeros."

A-O then pivots and gets in some 3rd party hacks. I'm just not convinced that there's anything necessarily inimical to my generally Democratic Party-type principles in this package. Given a choice between shoring up the savings and investments of millions of people and sticking it to some CEOs, I know which way my commie blood flows. So, no, I'm not "disappointed" in myself for not being full-throatedly against this thing, nor am I shocked at the flawed bill that ended up being passed. I'm reserving judgment and waiting to see what comes of it.

I don't think most Republicans should have a big problem with it, either. Once everybody gets the Lou Dobbs moment out of their system, unless you believe 1) the mass of expert opinion on this was just wrong, and you and your Internets were right, or 2) small government and fiscal probity are principles that can't be sacrificed for anything at all ever, you are at worst taking a wait-and-see attitude on this bailout.

You're definitely not voting for Cynthia McKinney, for God's sake.