Give me Stephen Roach any day over Austin Pryor

I'd lambasted Joe Carter, because especially lately, his blog has seemed increasing irrelevant, because, maybe it's a mixed-metaphor, but "morally tone-deaf" seems to be the words going through my mind.

While it's one thing to claim a moral high ground shilling pseudo-science, and mistaking a brain dead woman for a live, concious woman and zygotes for born people, it's quite another to turn a blind eye towards what is now manifestly the most corrupt Republican regime in memory, with all kinds of sins like theft and murder, and lying, rolled into one, creating a bad national karma for the US...

So it is with some interest I read today's entry on Carter's blog from one Austin Pryor on investing. Good, I can work with that, although I don't want to come across as a Borscht Belt comic or dour fanatic as I do it.

So without further ado, I'll resond to Pryor, who, if memory serves me right, is some kind of a "Chrstian investment" guy...ah yes, at "Sound Mind Investing."

Some things can be predicted; most things can't. Since nobody really knows what is going to happen, your plan must allow for the fact that the investment markets will experience some unexpected downturns every now and then. That's where diversification comes in...

Actually there is one thing we can say with absolute certainty: the past will not be repeated. And in fact we can say that about the United States.

Anybody who's read Stephen Roach and related folks (see, e.g., here) or worked at a job in the US that was involved in anything that involved making anything knows that the US economy is a radically different beast than it was in the 1960s or 1970s, or 1980s, or even 1990s. Jobs and many services can be easily outsourced today.

This trend may or may not continue, but it seems that the future does hold that there will be a continuing deterioration in the US economy unless some form of protectionism kicks in, but of course that could start a trade war and a real war. (We already see signs of that in the lumber dispute with Canada, which could get ugly. They export oil to us you know.)

Alternatively, really high energy prices will force a restructuring of the US economy, perhaps not as bad as the clusterfuck nation guy says, and in fact somewhat better.

Anyway, short rebut to this point: there are indeed long term trends macro-economically, and these can be profitablly followed if thought about them far enough in advance. But- and here's the point- there will be uncertainty and volatility. No pain no gain.

Both of SMI's core strategies offer you portfolios that combine stocks and bonds in various combinations in order to reduce volatility and risk while still achieving attractive long-term returns.

While I'm a big fan of diversification, I also think this position - "stocks and bonds provide diversification" is simplistic enough to be potentially disastrous to even the capital preservation of a portfolio.

Think Argentina. Think Turkey (the Turkish lira was once something like $4; today it's thousands to the dollar).

Economies, to use the technical term, shit the bed every now and then. It's good to be diversified in other ways; such as real estate, commodities, and especially foreign assets, especially in a situation where the mid-term trend is a deterioration in dollar denominated assets.

But in the short to mid term, it is likely that some sectors of the US economy may flourish and others not. It's important to know which.

Principle #2: Your investing plan must have easy-to-understand, clear-cut rules. There must be no room for differing interpretations. You must be able to make your investing decisions quickly and with confidence.

I have a better principle, although who can disagree with the statement above translated to "Know what you're doing and why!"

My better principle is: Sell it even when you think it's going to go higher. Buy it if you think it's going higher in the mid-term, even if you think it can go lower in the mid term. Cut your losses. Lock in gains. Practice detachment about it.

Your plan should prevent you from taking risks you can't financially afford. Every day, people who mistakenly thought "it will never happen to me" find just how wrong they were....

Know what you're doing and why.

We receive letters asking us to recommend safe investments that will guarantee returns of 12%, 14%, and more. If by "safe" they mean there's no chance of the value of the investment falling, then we don't know of any investments like that. Investments that are "safe" in that sense usually pay much less than 12%...Consider the story of Jack and Jill: Jack saved $600 in an IRA each year between ages 8-18, then never added to it again; a total of $6,600. Jill waited to start saving until she was out of college at age 26. She put $2,000 per year into an IRA for 40 years; a total of $80,000. Both earned the same 10% rate of return.

Res ipsa loquitur.

There's a great deal of information on the 'net about this. And much of this information is completely free of charge. You can do better than Austin Pryor, but you've got to know more than he tells you.


And you don't have to pay him a red cent to do better than he does.

File this under "640K should be enough for most people"

Link

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Broadband wireless technology is likely to remain too cost prohibitive to ever achieve user numbers close to the 2 billion people who currently use mobile phones, according to Andrew Viterbi, co-founder of Qualcomm and currently president of the Viterbi Group LLC, a technology advisory and investment company.

Delivering a keynote address here Wednesday (Oct. 26) at the GSPx signal processing conference, Viterbi said broadband wireless could provide a "nomadic desktop experience" for business and professional users, but that high-speed wireless connectivity is not necessary for the majority of applications that consumers are interested in. Ultimately, he said, the user base for broadband wireless would peak at "hundreds of millions," rather than billions, of users.

"A lot of the dumb things that people do don't take that much bandwidth," Viterbi said, referring to applications such as gaming...

One application that people have been counting on to support the need for broadband wireless is high-quality audio and video broadcast. But Viterbi expressed doubt that people would be interested enough in this capability to justify paying the additional cost.

"We are going to get broadcast, and that is going to need high speed," he said. "But we've had audio broadcast for 100 years and video broadcast for 50 years, so what's new?"

Andy Viterbi doesn't get out much, I think.

Treasongate: Karma for Katrina?

It's the incompetence and corruption which causes the incontinence, and hence the investigations and the resulting suffering, according to Paul Bergala. But karma has a way of working through the nooks and crannies of existence, penetrating its very interstices:

The grand jury, a group of onetime strangers from across the District, has spent two days a week for nearly 24 months in the cloistered, guarded room on the third floor of the U.S. District Courthouse. They have sifted through the day planners of White House aides and listened intently as the prosecutor grilled West Wing officials and reporters who relied on them as confidential sources. They are paid $40 a day, plus $4 for transportation.

Now they might be called upon to make decisions that could deal a crippling blow to the Bush White House and put top administration officials on trial.

There were 23 members at the start, committed for 18 months. Their term was extended in May for six months. At least six original jurors have been excused because of hardships their service created. Some were replaced with alternates.

Like the jury's forewoman, the majority are African American women who appear to be middle-age or older. The jury includes at least two black men, two older white women and three white men. One trim, agile retiree with white hair often entered the grand jury room with his bicycle helmet in hand.

As everyone knows, Bush's standing amongst African Americans went down the tubes after Katrina. And now they sit in judgment of him and his accomplices and toadies.

Iraq vote fraud

Say it ain't so.

The most significant news of the day: indictments

Maybe, of course, the pro-war Washington Post has been beguiled by Michael Moore, Moveon.org, and Cindy Sheehan.

Then again, maybe they've admitted what 90% of Americans polled say: we're dealing with criminality here. Although, at this point if there aren't indictments, we can can the anonymous sources forever, OK?

The prosecutor in the CIA leak case was preparing to outline possible charges before the federal grand jury as early as today, even as the FBI conducted last-minute interviews in the high-profile investigation, according to people familiar with the case.

With Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald in Washington yesterday, lawyers in the case and some White House officials braced for at least one indictment when the grand jury meets today. I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, is said by several people in the case to be a main focus, but not the only one.

n a possible sign that Fitzgerald may seek to charge one or more officials with illegally disclosing Valerie Plame's CIA affiliation, FBI agents as recently as Monday night interviewed at least two people in her D.C. neighborhood. The agents were attempting to determine whether the neighbors knew that Plame worked for the CIA before she was unmasked with the help of senior Bush administration officials. Two neighbors said they told the FBI they had been surprised to learn she was a CIA operative.

The FBI interviews suggested the prosecutor wanted to show that Plame's status was covert, and that there was damage from the revelation that she worked at the CIA.

Underscoring the uncertainty surrounding the probe, two Republican officials said Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove, the president's top strategist, is not sure whether he will face indictment as the case winds down. Rove was said to be awaiting word from Fitzgerald, even as prosecutors questioned at least one former Rove associate about Rove's contacts with reporters before Plame's name was disclosed. The White House expects indictments to come today, according to a senior administration official.

And the tentative approval of an Islamic Republic in Iraq has done squat to quell the violence there or nock Treasongate off the front pages.

Worse than Watergate?

Yes, I'd have to agree with Arianna on this one.

Let me be on record as saying

If George Galloway lied to Congress, he, too should be prosecuted.

BRITISH MP George Galloway faces possible
criminal charges after a US Senate investigation tracked $US150,000
($197,000) in Iraqi oil money to his wife's bank account in Jordan.



The Senate permanent subcommittee on investigations will refer the
Respect Party MP for possible prosecution after concluding he gave
"false and misleading" testimony at his appearance before the panel in
May.

The subcommittee will also forward the information to British
authorities, saying it raised questions about Mr Galloway's financial
disclosure and the payment of illegal kickbacks to Iraq.

"We have what we would call the smoking gun," Norm Coleman, the subcommittee's Republican chairman said.

The subcommittee's report, released yesterday, was provoked by
Mr Galloway's clash with the senators in May - which he turned into a
book titled Mr Galloway goes to Washington..

He reiterated his denials yesterday, saying he had "already comprehensively dealt with these allegations under oath"...

But the Senate report provides bank account
details tracking payments from an oil company through a Jordanian
middleman to Mr Galloway's now-estranged wife, Amina Naji Abu Zayyad,
and his Mariam Appeal fund.

"Galloway was anything but straight with the Congress. He was
anything but straight with the American people. There was a lot of
bombast. There was a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing," Senator
Coleman said.

On the other hand, I think, especially after all we've been through, that a degree of skepticism is in order; at the very least, did Gallowayknow his "now-estranged wife" and Mariam Appeal fund (sounds like a charity, doesn't it? does to me) misused the oil for food money? What evidence is there of kickbacks? It might just be that it went to a charity, but if the law was broken, then there should be prosecution, just as it should be for Libby, Cheney, and Bush.

Technorati Tags: Iraq, Galloway, Oil

Reality check for Matthew Yglesias

Yglesias says:

Back in the real world, of course Fitzgerald shouldn't offer up
a charge of "ambiguous perjury" or whatever it is these two are worried
about. We use a "reasonable doubt" standard of proof in the American
criminal justice system, so people charged in cases where the evidence
is equivocal will be acquitted. Maybe Fitzgerald's an idiot who for
some reason doesn't realize this and plans on bringing all sorts of
weak charges to the table so he can suffer an embarrassing court
defeat. But by all accounts he isn't and idiot and nobody likes
an embarrassing court defeat. He won't bring charges unless he thinks
he'll win -- that seems simple enough.

Umm... prosecuting attorneys bring charges that won't win in court all the time for various kinds of reasons, chief among them, to use as leverage against defendants prior to discovery to entice a plea bargain. I don't think that would be the case for all players in Treasongate, but it simply can't be ruled out.

Having said that, though, outing a covert operative even to advance a policy direction is, and should still be treated as a crime if there was fallout from it, such as compromising our intelligence on the ground on weapons of mass destruction. Going back to Aaron Burr again, if there had been two witnesses against him, I think the case could be made that Burr was indeed convictable of treason, because of the damage done to the United States.

So I'd predict that history will view Cheney as John Quincy Adams did Aaron Burr: [his] " life, take it all together, was such as in any country of sound morals
his friends would be desirous of burying in quiet oblivion.""

Technorati Tags: Patrick Fitzgerald, Criminal Justice, Perjury, Prosecutors

Untitled

check

The Nature of Treason

I had wanted to avoid a Fitzmas discussion today, but the discussion about Cheney's role in Plamegate, in the Times and in Kos beg a response, especially in light of the sure to be denials on the part of conservatives.

So I ask my self, "What is treason?" Aaron Burr comes to mind. If this definition from Wikipedia bears any truth, the colloquial way it's been used to describe Treasongate may be quite fitting:

In law, treason is the crime of disloyalty to one's nation. A person who betrays the nation of their citizenship and/or reneges on an oath of loyalty and in some way willfully cooperates with an enemy, is considered to be a traitor. Oran's Dictionary of the Law (1983) defines treason as: "...[a]...citizen's actions to help a foreign government overthrow, make war against, or seriously injure the [parent nation]." It is also generally considered treason to attempt or conspire to overthrow the government...

United States

To avoid the abuses of the English law (including executions by Henry VIII of those who criticized his repeated marriages), treason was specifically defined in the United States Constitution, the only crime so defined. Article Three defines treason as only levying war against the United States or "in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort," and requires the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act or a confession in open court for conviction. This safeguard may not be foolproof since Congress could pass a statute creating treason-like offences with different names (such as sedition, bearing arms against the state, etc.) which do not require the testimony of two witnesses, and have a much wider definition than Article Three treason. For example, some well-known spies have generally been convicted of espionage rather than treason. In the United States Code the penalty ranges from "shall suffer death" to "shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States."

In the history of the United States there have been fewer than forty federal prosecutions for treason and even fewer convictions. Several men were convicted of treason in connection with the 1794 Whiskey Rebellion but were pardoned by President George Washington. The most famous treason trial, that of Aaron Burr in 1807, resulted in acquittal. Politically motivated attempts to convict opponents of the Jeffersonian Embargo Acts and the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 all failed. Significantly, after the American Civil War, no person involved with the Confederate States of America was charged with treason, and only one major Confederate official, the commandant of the Andersonville prison, who was charged with war crimes, was charged with anything at all. The failure to prosecute Confederates was mostly due to the words and actions of President Abraham Lincoln, who considered peace and unity more important than vengeance. During the war, Lincoln issued a proclamation of amnesty for Confederates, and in his second inaugural address (1865) pleaded for a reconciliation "with malice toward none, with charity for all."

Several people generally thought of as traitors in the United States, such as the Walker Family, or Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, were not prosecuted for treason per se, but rather for espionage. John Walker Lindh, the "American Taliban" fighter in Afghanistan, was also thought of as a traitor by many. However, instead of being tried for treason, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to murder US nationals, aiding the Taliban and terrorist offences relating to Al Qaeda, even though he joined the Taliban before September 11, 2001, in the period when the Bush administration was aiding the Taliban to help their destruction of the opium crop.

The argument could well be made the Richard Cheney might have committed treason: it is an act during war time, his acts gave aid and comfort to the enemy if there were assets compromised, and indeed it looks like two witnesses might be able to be found for it.

Of course, whether or not Patrick Fitzgerald really goes for the Powerball charge is not known, and in my estimation, highly, highly unlikely. It only happened once before -with Burr.

But I'm sure then, as now, there was massive denial that Burr was a traitor.

Insert an Ed McMahon chortle here

I hadn't known that Bernanke wanted to make Social Security solvent or that he recruited Paul Krugman to Princeton from MIT.

This is a positive sign.

So is the fact that National Review doesn't like him very much.

Indictments might just be a buy signal...

Technorati Tags: Bernanke, Federal Reserve, Conservative

Reality Check for the Righties

I noticed that Michelle Malkin has propagated the comparison (from the WSJ) of Clinton's lying about sex to the likely indictments to be handed down regarding obstruction of justice and lying to a grand jury in Treasongate.

Like everyone else, I don't know what's going to come down the pike as I write this, but I do know that Clinton's behavior didn't rise to the level of perjury or lying to a grand jury. How do I know? Here's the relevant Federal law:

TITLE 18--CRIMES AND CRIMINAL PROCEDURE

PART I--CRIMES

CHAPTER 79--PERJURY

Sec. 1623. False declarations before grand jury or court

(a) Whoever under oath (or in any declaration, certificate,
verification, or statement under penalty of perjury as permitted under
section 1746 of title 28, United States Code) in any proceeding before
or ancillary to any court or grand jury of the United States knowingly
makes any false material declaration or makes or uses any other
information, including any book, paper, document, record, recording, or
other material, knowing the same to contain any false material
declaration, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than
five years, or both.
(b) This section is applicable whether the conduct occurred within
or without the United States.
(c) An indictment or information for violation of this section
alleging that, in any proceedings before or ancillary to any court or
grand jury of the United States, the defendant under oath has knowingly
made two or more declarations, which are inconsistent to the degree that
one of them is necessarily false, need not specify which declaration is
false if--
(1) each declaration was material to the point in question, and
(2) each declaration was made within the period of the statute
of limitations for the offense charged under this section.

In any prosecution under this section, the falsity of a declaration set
forth in the indictment or information shall be established sufficient
for conviction by proof that the defendant while under oath made
irreconcilably contradictory declarations material to the point in
question in any proceeding before or ancillary to any court or grand
jury. It shall be a defense to an indictment or information made
pursuant to the first sentence of this subsection that the defendant at
the time he made each declaration believed the declaration was true.
(d) Where, in the same continuous court or grand jury proceeding in
which a declaration is made, the person making the declaration admits
such declaration to be false, such admission shall bar prosecution under
this section if, at the time the admission is made, the declaration has
not substantially affected the proceeding, or it has not become manifest
that such falsity has been or will be exposed.
(e) Proof beyond a reasonable doubt under this section is sufficient
for conviction. It shall not be necessary that such proof be made by any
particular number of witnesses or by documentary or other type of
evidence.

Here's the original complaint of Jones v. Clinton.

What the consensual relationship between Clinton and Lewinsky would have had on whether or not sexual harassment happened doesn't seem to me to be in the least material to whether Jones was sexually harassed; OTOH, leaking the identity of an operative and lying about it does seem relevant to whether an espionage law was broken or justice was obstructed.

Words from Stephen Breyer wort reading...

Link

In September, Breyer published “Active Liberty: Interpreting Our Democratic Constitution,” a manifesto for a progressive revival in American jurisprudence. The book, which is a hundred and sixty-one pages long, was inspired in part by Breyer’s disdain for the method of constitutional interpretation championed by his principal ideological rivals on the Court, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Their approach, known as originalism or textualism, holds that the words of the Constitution mean only what the framers understood by them; the document’s sense does not evolve over time. Constitutional scholars on both the left and the right have criticized originalism for being overly literal and doctrinaire, but Breyer is the first Justice to attempt to elaborate simultaneously a rebuttal and an alternative.

In “Active Liberty,” Breyer argues that the framers never intended for future generations of jurists to resolve contemporary controversies by guessing how the framers themselves would have resolved them. Instead, their goal was to promote what Breyer, quoting the nineteenth-century French political writer Benjamin Constant, calls “active and constant participation in collective power”—in other words, “active liberty.” The Constitution not only sets limits on official power, Breyer asserts; it insures the right of ordinary citizens to shape the workings of government. “There is this coherent view of the Constitution that has taken hold, called originalism, textualism, a kind of literalism, which is a well worked-out theory,” Breyer told me. “And I think people are tempted to say that there is a coherent theory, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, there are simply judges who go around deciding each case as they think appropriate. And that isn’t so. I think there is a more traditional approach, and it’s coherent, consistent, and specific.”

Indeed, if you are shackled in interpretation by what someone else may have said or thought or done ( in most cases we can't really tell)then are you really at liberty?

The Oregonian takes on the bloggers

And comes up short.

Of course, no one expects blogs to be "fair and balanced." Though research on this is still scant, I suspect that many people who turn to blogs for their news like the frankly unobjective style of information they find there. But it does raise a serious question: For the millions of Americans who regularly go to blogs for political news, what picture of reality are they getting?..

But a campaign is an unusual moment when virtually all news organizations and news blogs are focused on the same set of topics. In more routine times, such as last week's mishmash of news about Harriet Miers, Iraq's vote on its constitution, Hurricane Wilma's gathering force, and the arrest and booking of Sen. Tom DeLay, it's likely that people who turn to blogs -- unless they make the effort to diversify their sources -- will come away with a fragmented picture.

And that's the final similarity between blogs and the MSM: No matter which you use, it's best to read more than one.

Well, as they say in the young teen world, Duh. Many, many blogs are quoted by me and most other bloggers I know (of course the right-wing blogosphere tends to be far more stratified, yada yada yada), as well as sources as diverse as the London Times, Der Spiegel (OK, I doubt I quoted them specifically...yet), China Daily, the Financial Times, MSNBC/Washington Post/Newsweek, KCNA, the Bush press gaggles, the Financial Markets Center, Tricycle, Accesstoinsight.org, and a host of other places. This is an eclectic blog, opinionated, to be sure, but heck, this blog sure doesn't have the historical baggage that the Oregonian's been reported to have.

One nice feature of Flock

I can blog while my son watches Duck and Cover. He really likes the atom bomb stuff. Turns out though that he does this stuff in school now again - at the age of four- becaue of Columbine, evidently.

Technorati Tags: terrorism, atom bomb, Duck and Cover, Bush

Useless Factoid of the Day...

"Pee" is the name of the state record company in North Korea.

How appropriate. I wonder if they have any leaks going on...

Technorati Tags: North Korea, Leaks, Bush, Kim Jong Il

I hope James Wolcott is right

And Libby sings, because, after all, he feels left out because Dick Cheney's his own evil genius.

Technorati Tags: Treasongate, Cheney, Scooter, Mushrooms, Bush

Perjury: 5 Years

So the latest meme is perjury is a "technicality." So is apparently a host of other crimes.

Including money laundering, espionage, obstruction of justice and who knows what else.

Reasonable people can only hope that conservatism is shown the door, relegated to the ash heap of history, and given a happy death. Pronto.

Technorati Tags: Republican crimes, Republican untruths, Crime, Conservative criminality, Bush, Iraq

Just get the truth...

Yeah, yeah, we all know that Mao was not so much a savior to the Chinese as a butcher. But the NY Times' Kristof doesn't help much when he writes about Jung Chang's biography of Mao that:

Yet this is a magisterial work. True, much of Mao's brutality has
already emerged over the years, but this biography supplies substantial
new information and presents it all in a stylish way that will put it
on bedside tables around the world. No wonder the Chinese government
has banned not only this book but issues of magazines with reviews of
it, for Mao emerges from these pages as another Hitler or Stalin.

In
that regard, I have reservations about the book's judgments, for my own
sense is that Mao, however monstrous, also brought useful changes to
China. And at times the authors seem so eager to destroy him that I
wonder if they exclude exculpatory evidence. But more on those cavils
later.

But then goes on to say:

This is an extraordinary portrait of a monster, who the authors say was
responsible for more than 70 million deaths. But how accurate is it? A
bibliography and endnotes give a sense of sourcing, and they are
impressive: the authors claim to have talked to everyone from Mao's
daughter, Li Na, to his mistress, Zhang Yufeng, to Presidents George H.
W. Bush and Gerald Ford. But it's not clear how much these people said.
One of those listed as a source is Zhang Hanzhi, Mao's English teacher
and close associate; she's also one of my oldest Chinese friends, so I
checked with her. Zhang Hanzhi said that she had indeed met informally
with Chang two or three times but had declined to be interviewed and
never said anything substantial. I hope that Chang and Halliday will
share some of their source materials, either on the Web or with other
scholars, so that it will be possible to judge how fairly and
accurately they have reached their conclusions...

Take the great famine from 1958 to 1961. The authors declare that
"close to 38 million people died," and in a footnote they cite a
Chinese population analysis of mortality figures in those years. Well,
maybe. But there have been many expert estimates in scholarly books and
journals of the death toll, ranging widely, and in reality no one
really knows for sure - and certainly the mortality data are too crude
to inspire confidence. The most meticulous estimates by demographers
who have researched the famine toll are mostly lower than this book's:
Judith Banister estimated 30 million; Basil Ashton also came up with 30
million; and Xizhe Peng suggested about 23 million. Simply plucking a
high-end estimate out of an article and embracing it as the one true
estimate worries me; if that is stretched, then what else is?

After all this stuff with Judy Miller, you'd think he'd be skeptical. I am, even though I concede that Mao was a murderer.

Technorati Tags: Mao, NY Times, Kristof

You know, if it weren't for outraged media figures...

Like this lady at the Washington Post, I'd probably not have heard of "Happy Tree Friends" until my son found it.

But it's just not that good. Red vs. Blue it's not.