Belated March links

Did I let an entire month go without posting? I guess so. Life keeps me busy, so I don't have time to obsess about politics. I even missed the delivery of the Mueller report for two whole days.

My browser ate a bunch of good links, and I'm going to try to avoid that again.

More about the Russia investigation. How Mueller minimized leaks. I think he also tried very hard to maintain high standards of integrity. Others should learn from this. The full text of the letter from the Attorney General summarizing the Mueller report. Claims of complete exoneration are woefully exaggerated and expedient. A detailed timeline with good sources for verification. From that timeline, an article about the various sources on Russian interference during the summer of 2016.

Chinese interference too. In Australia. Especially ironic is the response for the Chinese government.

How scary is global debt? I've been wondering about this. Here's the beginning of a discussion.

Debunking that talking point, Nazi gun control version. Finally, here is a source that flays that talking point. Unfortunately, it will still be used because talking points are more important than accuracy to lots of people.

Alex Jones is such a creep. He claims the lies in the media drove him insane, so he's not responsible for his own horrendous lies. Another death from Sandy Hook. Related: a takedown of the argument that mental illness is the problem with mass shooters.

Image: bloomberg.com

February links

Russia investigation update. Roger Stone is finally indicted. It appears he was the conduit between Wikileaks and the Trump campaign. It was suspected before, but there are some juicy emails providing strong evidence. Chris Christie suggests that Trump's campaign team were so green that they didn't realize they were being worked by the Russians. Well, that's the interpretation by a CNN pundit of Christie's view. Russians are also using pieces of discovery material to create fake information to spew onto the internet. Of course they'll be doing that.

Countdown to Brexit. Ireland has prepared, businesses are not generally ready. This would make Brexit even bumpier, with greater negative effect on the UK economy. Please, admit it's time for a revote.

Attraction of alt-right politics. If you're white man, this may be your best hope for securing a place in the in-group, particularly if you're lower middle class or working class. That's how gangs recruit too.

Hard choices. A teenage girl was being molested by her foster father in a small town. She didn't feel she can get anyone to help from within her town, but got help from a fellow online gamer. However, he asked for proof of the abuse in the form of video. It sounded sick to me, but then his reason made sense. If he was going to come from out of state to pick her up, they better have very strong evidence of the abuse, like a video. So the gamer took her from her abusive home, prompting a search, discovery, etc. The savior is facing 15-30 years in jail for requiring a video.

Economic overview. Lots of debt, and lots of money (liquidity) looking for a place to go. I've been well aware since 2008 that the world is awash in money. I've been trying to figure out what it means. One thing - I'm not afraid of world-wide collapse. (The libertarian nightmares aren't haunting me.)

Facing down blackmail. Jeff Bezos reported that a tabloid (which supports Trump) was trying to blackmail him using photos of an affair he had. The email threats have been released, and they are juicier than photos, which aren't all that rare these days.

Image: davidfeldmanshow.com

Ten years after the crisis

Bloomberg, my favorite opinion site, had a bunch of reflections on the 2008 financial crisis and what has happened since then. Some of it makes me worried. We might have avoided a worldwide depression then, but have we just delayed an inevitable reckoning. Or have we learned the intricate methods needed to deal with financial crises, so that we're probably safe?

Just to review, the Great Depression in the US in the 1930s was rather horrid. Unemployment at 25%, wages low, people hungry, in worn shoes and clothes, living off the kindness of family, scratching out a living. However, many more people lived on farms back then, so they could provide susbsistence living. Should a depression occur now, we'd have that many more people totally dependent on others, with no means to even feed themselves. (And we have a lot more weapons now too. Will crime be a horrendous problem if we have another depression?)

One author is optimistic that emerging economies won't have a crisis like we did in 2008. That was sparked by too much savings chasing risky investments in pursuit of return. Emerging markets are riskier and give higher returns, so they might seem vulnerable to fright-and-flight in a crisis. But that's less likely for two reasons: 1) Emerging markets are now a standard part of large portfolios, not just a high-risk high-return asset, and 2) local investment pools are larger and will grow even more as pensions become important in emerging countries.

Another article isn't optimistic. It's about a world swimming in debt, with little hope to pay it off. Somehow I'm overly worried about this. I figure everyone takes a haircut, tightens their belts, and lives, though less lavishly.

Image: en.actualitix.com

April links 2

Red flag laws for guns. Florida passed one after the Parkland shootings. Vermont just did because they had a very close brush with a school shooter arrested as he was planning his shooting spree. Indiana has had one for a while due to random shootings in a neighborhood.

Also, here is a resource on studies of efficacy for certain policies about guns.

Comey's nasty book. I'm not a fan of Comey, who seems mealy-mouthed to me. However, he had enough backbone to stand up to Trump, which not everyone has. His new book seems to have a lot of filler, some of it being creepy. However, he does reveal a non-surprise: Trump trying to spin the Russian hacking.

US/French/British strike on Syria. Interesting detail. How they faked out the Russian/Syria air defenses. A broader discussion. The US isn't striking hard because it needs to have room to ramp up if Syria continues chemical warfare.

History lesson about the end of the gold standard. One of the important moments of history. However, the US hadn't really kept to the gold standard anyway. Fiat currency has its problems, but the gold standard was simpler impossible to make work.

$21 Trillion missing. A Russian shill wrote that the Pentagon had lost $21 trillion. This was just a shill, so he didn't have any real thought in his comment. Consider this: $21 trillion is a huge amount of money that might have worldwide implications. Just imagine the US having double its current debt, but nobody cares. I pointed this out to the shill. He lamely replied "Well, it's from Forbes."

I have to look into this some more, but I've got to clear those tabs off my browser. So here's the dump: Michigan, missing money, truth in accounting, more Michigan,  maybe some details, Reuters. I don't have a link to the Forbes article because it wasn't particularly readable.

Image: acephalous.typepad.com

The dealer's plan to rope us in

I've heard that drug dealers start with free samples, rope you in, and end up owning everything you have. Casino's don't take barter, but in an era of easy credit they can bankrupt you too.

Is the dealer's plan always to get you addicted so that he ends up with all your loot? It's probably always in the back of his mind.

Moving on from analogy to my real point, I wonder about the plan of the banks that loaned so much money to the Greek government, Greek banks, and Greek households. Did they think:

• Greece has good prospects long-term, and I've got loan quotas to meet.
• High payouts now, then fool someone else into buying the bad debt.
• Moderate payouts now, then the EU bails them out.
• Moderate payouts now, then foreclose and end up owning some picturesque property.

The last choice is how the drug dealer figures it, while the honest money left Greece earlier. So I wonder, was that the plan all along? This commenter thinks so:

"In a few years we'll be able to shoo the remaining stone age hunter gathers off some really valuable islands in the Aegean. I can see American, German, and Chinese developers competing to build condo complexes in the Dodecanese. Or maybe Crete will become the 51st US state after it becomes an American Protectorate in a couple of decades.

"A win-win proposition. Americans and Germans get new land to expand into, and the world learns the end result of socialism.  In very stark terms." -- Atlantic comment

And moving from Greece's situation to our own, what are the plans of the US creditors? I've heard the conspiracy theory that the Chinese, mining companies, and billionaires will be buying up the most beautiful parts of the country, the national parks. It seems far-fetched in this country, but not for Greece. Am I kidding myself?

Would Americans stand for selling off our public lands? Would Greeks? If you're the moneylender, or pusher, and your former debtors become your irate neighbors, maybe your strategy wasn't so good. But I don't think pushers think that far ahead, and it seems the banks didn't either.

So how do we stop the drug dealers, er, banks from getting us hooked, or do we have to hope they just won't try?

New owner for Mykonos?

Photo: agreekproperty.com

An ecomonics question: Equity vs. debt

Business schools have been preaching that equity is equivalent to debt. I'm not an economist, so perhaps I shouldn't venture into this debate, but I can't avoid strong feelings on this. Equity is not equivalent to debt. They have distinctly different consequences. (Edit: See a more expert contradicting argument below. Not a surprise. As I said, perhaps I shouldn't venture into this.)

Equity doesn't drive you into bankruptcy or foreclosure.

If there's an equivalent disadvantage in equity, I hope someone will tell me what it is. However, I wonder what could be equivalent, since bankruptcy can be existential crisis that leads to the extinction of a business. Can equity end a business? Can equity force a foreclosure? I don't see how.

I know about "opportunity cost" and how debt can allow you to take advantage of promising opportunities, but that's not equivalent to the danger of bankruptcy. I'm open to an explanation, but it has to be a compelling one.