America: Bringing you campaign nastiness since 1800
Republicans told everyone that the Catholic Smith had commissioned a secret tunnel 3,500 miles long, from the Holland Tunnel to the Vatican in Rome, and that the Pope would have say in all presidential matters should Smith be elected.
Environmental Optimism - Vol. 32
A biofuel startup in Illinois can make ethanol from just about anything organic for less than $1 per gallon, and it wouldn’t interfere with food supplies, company officials said.
Was McCain right about the Bush tax cuts?
One of the most bizarre aspects of this primary season has been the tendency of conservatives to repudiate politicians for holding historically conservative positions. For example, there once was a species of Republicans that advocated for limited government and fiscal prudence. These “deficit hawks”, as they were called, are all but extinct now so most of us younger conservatives don’t recognize them when we see them. A prime example is John McCain.
Fellow Bloggers: A guide on how to lose readers
Using a combination (or all) of the tips below, I can almost guarantee that your readership will dwindle and die (or at least drop a good bit).
Are you ready to lose some readers?
Maybe my French last name will get me some street cred with Conservatives
French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s administration plans to freeze public spending for five years “to eliminate its deficit and reduce spending as a share of national output.” While Congress figures out the fastest way possible to deficit spend $150 billion on a stimulus package that history suggests will do nothing,
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17 responses so far ↓
1 Brad Spry // Feb 5, 2008 at 7:00 am
RE: Environmental Optimism
Wow, ethanol for under $1.00 a gallon. Note General Motors is a primary investor. GM sells ethanol powered vehicles under the Flex label. You can use gasoline or ethanol in a Flex powered vehicle, just run the tank down to near empty before switching fuels.
Plug in hybrids will smash this though, just on the convenience factor. Come home, park in garage, plug in. I wonder what future power bills will look like? Stop smiling over there Duke Power
Generate enough power at home via solar and you’d have yourself a self sufficient system. I’m sure the power company will get into solar too.
2 Justin Thibault // Feb 5, 2008 at 8:13 am
Brad - Probably the best thing to come from $3/gallon gasoline is innovation in what powers us getting around.
3 Brad Spry // Feb 5, 2008 at 8:53 pm
I just don’t want to read the news and see OPEC has switched from U.S. dollars to the Euro to trade oil… that’s our immediate problem.
4 Justin Thibault // Feb 5, 2008 at 10:00 pm
Brad - Does it really matter?
Once you use a foreign ATM - you realize it’s all a bunch of numbers regardless of the currency.
5 Brad Spry // Feb 6, 2008 at 10:10 am
Here’s a number for you:
$70,962,253,676
That’s the U.S. trade deficit at this very moment.
“The effect of an OPEC switch to the euro would be that oil-consuming nations would have to flush dollars out of their (central bank) reserve funds and replace these with euros. The dollar would crash anywhere from 20-40% in value and the consequences would be those one could expect from any currency collapse and massive inflation (think Argentina currency crisis, for example). You’d have foreign funds stream out of the U.S. stock markets and dollar denominated assets, there’d surely be a run on the banks much like the 1930s, the current account deficit would become unserviceable, the budget deficit would go into default, and so on.”
Source: Center for Contemporary Conflict (U.S. Navy)
http://www.ccc.nps.navy.mil/si/nov03/middleEast.asp
6 Justin Thibault // Feb 6, 2008 at 11:06 am
Brad - The trade deficit is as anachronism.
Let me demonstrate.
I’m going to Asia this month to demonstrate some software to one of our clients. Neither the sale of the software nor the training services that I’m giving count against the trade deficit.
Similarly, the work coming out of the NCRC will benefit our area greatly; but will largely be unaccounted for in the calculation of the trade deficit.
The fact of the matter is that a dollar collapse has a “mutually-assured” destruction capability where at the moment of collapse there’s devastating blow to the accounts of both the debtor and the lender; but after everything settles out (not less than a few days not more than a few weeks) there’s a nation with a dynamic capability to produce goods and services productively (us) and a nation whose assets are limited to a fungible commodity that’s in the dirt (them).
Tactically, the advantage is ours.
This chicken-little thinking about systems is similar to the hysteria over Y2K - yet, everything was fine then now wasn’t it?
7 Brad Spry // Feb 7, 2008 at 6:53 am
Y2K was “fine” because of massive investments to fix the problem. If we had sat back and done nothing, Y2K wouldn’t have been fine.
Next up? The year 2038 problem. I’ll be 66 years old then, and I think I’ll let the young whippersnappers deal with that one
More info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem
8 Justin Thibault // Feb 7, 2008 at 8:41 am
Brad -
No, about 25% of the investment made in Y2K was for verifiable problems - the remainder was the result of fear-mongering or just deciding to make necessary upgrads..take it from a guy who spent much of 1999 doing Y2K testing.
The lesson learned from Y2K is that there are plenty of problems that are easily defined and fixable - but it doesn’t do anyone any good (except people who make money doing “chicken little” consulting)to try to fix possible, largely hypothetical conundrums like the one you’ve presented in this thread.
We’ve got an aging infrastructure, workforce imbalances, and other easily definable issues: we don’t need to try to manipulate currency markets to fight an imaginary one.
9 Brad Spry // Feb 7, 2008 at 11:24 am
Imaginary? Please wake up…
“Euros Accepted” signs pop up in New York City
“The increasingly weak U.S. dollar, once considered the king among currencies, has brought waves of European tourists to New York with money to burn and looking to take advantage of hugely favorable exchange rates.”
Full story:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080206/us_nm/newyork_euros_dc
10 Justin Thibault // Feb 7, 2008 at 11:54 am
Brad - Ah, and here’s the economics lesson.
As the dollar weakens, people are coming to America to spend their Euros. Those are then adding to the local economy. This strengthens the US economy and boosts trade. The Americans who hold the Euros will trade them out when they feel the time is right.
Now, think about this. If this continues, merchants in large US cities will start taking Euros, then there will be an internal US market for Euros (much like there are for dollars in other countries) and banks will adapt to assist with this. Making your “OPEC destroying the dollar” fantasy have a little less bite on our system here in the US.
It looks like the market can handle this problem without much government meddling.
11 Brad Spry // Feb 7, 2008 at 12:22 pm
Thanks for the exchange, I learned a lot. I’m no economist, I just read a lot, and it’s often hard to understand the complexities of global markets.
12 Aaron // Feb 7, 2008 at 7:01 pm
Justin: Dr. Friedman couldn’t have said it any better.
Kudos to you sir!
13 Cabarrus County Bloggers: Listen To The Money Talk | Cabarrus Cheap Seats // Feb 11, 2008 at 9:42 am
[...] there was Brad Spry’s comments on currency policy on my latest article collection post. This is the first time I’ve ever seen someone completely concede a point on a blog [...]
14 Brad Spry // Feb 11, 2008 at 11:07 am
Hey, I was just tired; I didn’t concede
15 Justin Thibault // Feb 11, 2008 at 11:12 am
Brad - Oh really?
Y’all - Look at Comment #11…he conceded…can I have an “amen”?
16 Brad Spry // Feb 11, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Yes, I conceded. You win! Feel better?
17 Justin Thibault // Feb 12, 2008 at 3:49 am
Brad - You left the 1000th comment on my blog.