Short: Dems should be quiet about healthcare

Ezra Klein has another good column analyzing the dynamics of this election. He explains why the Democrats shouldn't crow about their ACA win at the Supreme Court.

The healthcare reform act remains unpopular, and it's also very complex. This complexity makes it harder to sell but easier to attack. The Dems can't undo the complexity, so a better strategy for them is to work other issues where they're stronger.

This isn't a message partisans want to hear, but I wonder whether the Dems will actually follow this strategy--go with their strengths for this election, and let ACA gradually pick up supporters as its benefits kick in.

Update. Some Dems at least are following the advice. The White House Chief of Staff said that Americans are tired of the health care debate and want to focus on jobs.

Pity Bernanke and his difficult task

Have you ever walked into a situation with a bit of confidence and swagger, and THEN found out how bad it really was? As someone who occasionally has these crisis situations in my job, I can tell you that I dread these times. Maybe I'd like to hide under a rock, or wish it hadn't been my shift that day, but I have a job with responsibilities and I'll damn well perform as well as I can.

So I have sympathy for what Bernanke inherited. His job is to clean up after the biggest financial disaster since the 1929 Wall Street crash. Yes, he also contributed to the problems, but that doesn't make the task less staggering. In fact, I'm nearly dumbfounded just contemplating how huge a task it is. Anyone who pretends they have the absolutely correct answer to this problem is an unmitigated egotist, and I wish I could give such people a withering stare that would instantly deflate such pomposity.

So Bernanke has to deal with an overextended banking system that has many questionable loans and debtors who are facing lower and uncertain income. Naturally, he wishes for a soft landing, but we're past the point where that's possible. Instead, we mostly hope to avoid a full-on crash where the banking system and all private employment just freeze up. That part of the mission was accomplished with the help of the TARP.

The clean-up remains, as does the rebuilding. This is still very tricky, because the banking system still has scads of questionable loans and not-so-solid debtors.

I think Bernanke's choice of quantitative easing might have been the right one. Our banking system was an overstretched balloon that became untethered, flew around spewing out (actually destroying) trillions of dollars of assets. Maybe to stabilize the banks you have to do some partial reinflation. A bank has a better chance if it receives 80 cents on the dollar than if it receives 40. The strong debtors, who are paying back in full, rather have values rise to that 80% level than stay in cellar.

So I don't really believe that Bernanke has been pouring trillions of new dollars into the economy. He's only been replacing some of the destroyed trillions. Is this really true? What are the consequences? Um, um, let me cogitate some more. Or maybe I should just be forthright and say that I don't know if it's the right course, but it looks sensible to me (for the reasons I stated), and I haven't heard any other positions that were stronger. We'll have to see how it works out. And, of course, PRAY.

simplystatedbusiness.com

My reaction to the Obamacare ruling

I don't kid myself that Obamacare isn't a risk. The costs may blow up and sink our budget. It may be a vehicle for unwarranted social engineering and expense in the name of 'fairness.' It requires close scrutiny.

That said, it's miles better than anything the GOP has proposed to address the staggering cost of individual health insurance. Their solutions are simply ludicrous--health savings accounts, out of state insurers. It's like a band-aid on an open artery if you're low or middle income.Those ideas don't have a chance of working, but the GOP pretends that they're sound solutions. As I said, it's ludicrous, but it's also somewhat immoral to lie that way and to care so little for people who aren't getting the jobs that include good health coverage.

So I applaud that Obamacare isn't being scrapped by the Supreme Court. That decision gives us the best chance to reform our healthcare system, hopefully slim it down, but still have a strong base on which to work. This is a day to be happy and to count our blessings.

It's just a scratch. I don't need health insurance.

Graphic: syd-film-blog.blogspot.com

The elusive argument of what the Fed should do

After reading in two separate posts that there are 'many actions' the Fed could take to help employment in this country, I decided to search for a listing of these actions. I'm surprised that I had to search, because one of the first tenets of argumentation is that you support your assertions. So when someone asserts that the Fed could help employment, in the next sentence or paragraph, they should explain how. Simple, right? Not too much to expect, I would have thought.

Well, the arguments for what the Fed could do were largely attributed to Paul Krugman, a Nobel laureate in economics, so it wasn't too hard to find. Nor is it too hard to understand Krugman's suggestions:

1. First of all, be bold and try actions other than the usual limited set of raising or lowering the Fed fund interest rates.
2. Buy longer term government bonds and government-backed mortgage securities. (Krugman reports that the Fed is currently doing this.)
3. Change the inflation target from 2% to 4%, signally that the Fed will continue pumping money until there's enough growth to start having significant inflation pressure.

Once the suggestions are enumerated, it becomes clear that there aren't 'many' actions. #1 isn't a specific action. #2 is already being done. So that leaves a single action--changing the inflation target.

With only one additional action being suggested, I would think our society or pundits could have a substantial debate. So what are the pros and cons, the risks of pursuing this course or not pursuing it?

• Pro, from Krugman: "If the Fed were to raise its target for inflation....it would help persuade investors and businesses alike that sitting on cash is a bad idea.
• Con, from the American Enterprise Institute: Inflation lowers the purchasing power of dollars, which mean higher prices for commodities like oil.

I believe the con argument, but the pro argument is less probable. I don't know if the investors who got so badly burned in 2008 will unleash their cash out of fear of inflation that hasn't appeared yet.

What I find strange is the lack of more discussion. Is this all there is? No more ideas for what the Fed could do? It's no wonder that the economy is rebounding so slowly. The Fed can't really do much more, the Congress and president can't agree on what to do, the rest of the world either has its own problems or they aren't looking to pump us up. So, no quick fix. How unAmerican!

Inflate your way to riches.

Photo: tootoo.com

Economist article with comments
St. Louis Fed comments
Background comments by Bernanke
Related argument on quantitative easy from AEI: The low interest rates force investors into riskier investments, like commodity speculation. Lovely.
Four specific suggestions with rationales from an economist. Many times better than Krugman, but more work to read.

Getting Married: To have sex or to have babies

I just realized something. The proponents of traditional marriage who say that the purpose of marriage is to provide a good environment for children are ignoring an important point in marriage traditions. Traditionally, you had to get married before you could legally have sex with the object of your desire. So the purpose of marriage was to have sex. If the sex didn't occur, that is, if the marriage wasn't consummated, the marriage could be annulled as though it had never happened. The lack of offspring wasn't enough to annul a marriage, but the lack of sex was.

Now a vast majority of Americans are having sex before marriage. So we don't need to get married to have sex. I think this is why marriage is breaking down in the US. The problem was that sex outside marriage destabilized marriage for many people.

Then again, I don't think that's the reason. Over 95% of Americans are having pre-marital sex, but 95% of marriages haven't destabilized.

More likely is that when society became more accepting of sex before marriage, it also became more accepting of other changes to tradition:

• Divorce
• Delayed marriage
• Delayed childbearing through contraception
• Voluntary childless marriages
• Alternative sexual positions and techniques
• Sequential relationships and sex partners
• Dating and having sex concurrently with multiple partners (but not too many)
• Raising children outside marriage
• Getting married after the birth of a child
• Women having both careers and children
• Women in high-commitment jobs

Gosh, with all those other changes, accepting same-sex relationships and marriage doesn't seem like such a big deal. After all, it's apparent traditional lost a long time ago.

This isn't the first time tradition has been challenged. Think of the play The Fiddler on the Roof. It's all about Tevye's daughters breaking the tradition of arranged marriage. Maybe the lesson is that people accept the non-traditional when they see good aspects to the change.

You may now kiss the bride and finally have sex with her.

Photo: some twitter thing

Extra: Heavens! Changes to the Nuptial Mass are arcane to the rest of us.

Last outpost of crazy: Agenda 21 paranoia

Environmentalism (the interest in having and maintaining a healthy natural environment) is one of the biggest successes of 1960's liberals. It has energized many people and found solid support with a large majority. Here in Massachusetts, people are happy about the creation of conservation lands and public parks.

Elsewhere in the US, any environmental initiative, including the creation of bike lanes, is seen as part of the Agenda 21 conspiracy for world domination...

I'm basically speechless about this one. To these paranoids, caring about nice surroundings means that you're a puppet of our new world overlords. I guess you can't do anything to help your community lest you be accused of betraying all-American ideals.

Fall colors on the bike path to enslavement

Photo: alltrails.com

"The worst danger facing the US:" A retrospective

Back in the early 1980's, when Reagan was president and the USSR was a communist state instead of a lot of kleptocracies, I read an article about the biggest issue facing the US. At the time, the most devastating concern I had was nuclear war. Do you remember that fear? Intercontinental missiles launched out of silos and nuclear submarines targeting military and population centers in the US and USSR. The explosions would kill millions instantly, and kill most of the rest slowly as society fell apart and we succumbed to disease and starvation. That was a standard fear in my generation, and the film Testament was our closest image of it.
But nuclear war wasn't the subject of this article because the writer didn't have the same fears I did. Instead, she wrote about her fear of the mounting federal debt. I remember scoffing at this. How could anyone worry about the deficit when our society (and more personally my entire family) could be annihilated in a nuclear war?

Now I don't worry about nuclear war anymore. A stray nuke, yes, but we'd get over that isolated disaster the way we got over 9/11.

However, I remembered that prediction in the article. At the time, I noted that the author was a born-again Christian and an avid supporter of Reagan, so I probably dismissed the rest of her ideas. I certainly don't remember anything else--whether she made particular suggestions on how to cut the deficit or spending, or the future effect the deficit would have.

Actually, I didn't dismiss everything because I took the time to note the different way of looking at the world. I decided to remember and check back in a few years. Was she right that deficits were the biggest danger, or was I right that it was nuclear war?

I can't answer that question even today. Back in 1981, nuclear war might really have been the biggest concern. If we hadn't treated it seriously, we might have made serious mistakes in our policies that would have resulted in nuclear disaster. Maybe our fear and concern led to negotiations that were tremendously successful at limiting the danger.

However,we didn't focus on that other danger: the deficits. So they just grew larger and larger as we half-watched. Now, they are a tremendous danger.

Well, maybe so, maybe not. Deficits will never be the same kind of existential danger that nuclear war was. Ironic if the worse danger is easier to solve than the lesser danger. But it will probably be that way. Sigh.

 My solution: Nuke the debt

Image: vi.sualize.us