Chyden Finance: profit from hypocrisy

Hot on the heels of The Onion’s report that soccer is gay, BBC News reports agents of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) ejected three dozen scantily clad Dutch women from the stadium during the Netherlands vs Denmark World Cup match, Monday 14 June 2010.

This apparently was because the women were wearing short, tight, orange dresses, and FIFA agents decided that the women were advertising for a Dutch beer brewery, which one gathers is ‘bad’.

So, either FIFA agents don’t like girls or they claims exclusive rights to the color orange.

Either way…

CWE

Why does Pres. Obama continue to refuse to waive the Jones Act???

Labor unions love this WWI-era piece of rent-seeking protectionism, because it forces shipping firms to pay higher labor costs, which translate into higher consumer prices.

More immediately, the Jones Act is preventing advanced oil skimming ships that are specifically designed for the task at hand from aiding with the BP oil spill cleanup, because they are owned by Belgian, Dutch, and Norwegian firms.

The Jones Act restricts commercial activity in US territorial waters to US-built, US-registered, and US-manned ships and boats.

However, statute contains language that allows the president to waive the Act in times of crisis. Pres. Bush waived the Act in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

While Pres. Obama pretends to be ‘furious’ over BP’s failure to stop the leak, he dithers pandering to his labor union support base.

Change™ = Politics as Usual

Invest accordingly.

CWE

The Wall Street Journal reports that Rep. Maxine Waters (D, CA) is sponsoring legislation that would require “each federal financial agency, the Fed Board of Governors, and the 12 regional Fed banks” to create an Office of Minority and Women Inclusion as part of the financial reforms working their way through Congress.

The idea is to ensure that “regulators put the hiring of, and lending to, minorities at the top of their priority list,” even though the housing bubble, sub-prime crisis, and crash of 2008 were unrelated to ethnic and gender issues.

This is an opportunistic and self-serving bid to pander to economically naïve voters by compelling bankers to make imprudent loans, in the same way that the Community Reinvestment Act requires privately owned banks to make politically motivated mortgage loans.

When I was in economics, this kind of thing used to set me off. Now that I have switched to finance, I delight in identifying the short-selling opportunities that my elected officials create for me.

Granted, the Fed already is not independent, and recent events and resistance to an audit suggest that Fed officials deserve a bit of oversight, but a step in this direction makes exactly as much sense as curing a hangover with a couple shots of whisky with breakfast or treating a burn with a warm compress.

The solution to politicization is not more politicization; the solution is greater transparency. The greater the politicization, the greater the inflation:

If the Fed becomes as overtly politicized as Fannie Mae, as when politicians invented the ‘redlining’ pseudo-crisis, ‘credit’ will just be a codeword for redistribution.

We already have redistribution in the form of inflation that is used to transfer wealth from taxpayers to the shareholders and executives of multinational corporations. Instead of calling for an end to government contractor corporate welfare, leftist spokespuppets are demanding their cut.

You can bleed the ox only so much before it dies the death of a thousand slashes.

Invest accordingly.

CWE

Lately, my focus has been significantly less on LMF Theory than in the past and almost exclusively on the more uplifting prospect of fostering international development through business education, specifically finance.

Of course, one way that individuals can prosper is to short-sell stupidity, ignorance, and lies, but that is not the only route that one can take.

Well… I tought I wuz out, and den dey pull me back in!

If you have not seen the video of the US Coast Guard agent doing the bidding of his corporate masters, take a look:

The situation is deteriorating.

The New York Times reports that the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is restricting access to the BP disaster zone.

“Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, tried to bring a small group of journalists with him on a trip he was taking through the gulf on a Coast Guard vessel… [A]t about 10 p.m. on the evening before the trip, someone from the Department of Homeland Security’s legislative affairs office called the senator’s office to tell them that no journalists would be allowed.”

In other words, mid-level agents of the Executive Branch have the power to restrict the movements of elected members of the Congressional Branch. Talk about your checks and balances!

Meanwhile, ABC News reports that local police officers, BP workers, and Coast Guard agents are harassing journalists and blocking their access public beaches to cover one of the biggest news events in modern history.

Pres. Eisenhower warned in his farewell address about the coming of the military-industrial complex. It is here, now.

However, fear not. This latest panic is just one more symptom — in a growing line of many — of the fact that the emperor is wearing no clothes, and the wizard is just a light show driven by a scared little man hiding behind the curtain.

US federal government agents performed pathetically following Hurricane Andrew, and utterly botched the Hurricane Katrina search and rescue. In fact, they were so incompetent that a search and rescue team from Canada — a sparsely populated country north of Buffalo — beat their US colleagues to one Louisiana parish.

Whenever someone who likes garlic and tans easily sneezes, DHS agents go into a panic. One expects that “Yakety Sax” plays in the elevators and on the telephone system at DHS headquarters.

The Space Shuttle is being mothballed. American border guards are killing teenagers in Mexico by shooting across the border, when the kids throw rocks.

And, now… The US Coast Guard is helping the executives of BP, a British corporation, save face before the world.

Meanwhile, officials at the US Treasury have sat hapless by while the Keynesian cultists who run the Federal Reserve — the USA’s central bank — have pumped massive amounts of new US dollars into the economy, even as the US economy shrank.

more money + less stuff = more money per unit of stuff

The wizard talks tough, but the scared little emperor behind the curtain is naked.

We are witnessing the last gasp of the dinosaur.

Invest accordingly.

CWE

Multiculturalism outside of the classroom is not about dancing bunnies, singing unicorns, and lollipop fountains, but about knowing when to push back and how hard. It is also knowing when to anticipate that the other party is going to feel that you have initiated the confrontation.

In some cultures arguing is a normal part of the negotiation process. When those of us, who have inherited the Northern European aversion to overt discord, encounter Mediterranean and Central Asian hotheads, our courtesy can be mistaken for weakness, leading to great misunderstanding on both sides.

Perversely, often the nicest thing that one can do is yell back, rather than bottle it up until one explodes.

We see this sort of thing writ large across headlines with distressing frequency, regarding the relationship between radical Muslim activists and the USA. However, how much of this represents a clear and present danger to Western institutions, and how much of it is just the histrionic posturing of slack-jawed yokels who talk tough in a mob when the cameras are rolling and submit meekly to arbitrary authority in their daily lives?

One expects that it is more of the latter than of the former, and that this ‘Death to America’ phase will run its course, as every epidemic and adolescent stage does.

Once angry young men who travel in packs get it out of their system and grow up, they long for the same creature comforts that even the masses in post-Maoist China long for, and the spell of the old men instigating unrest will fade in time. Judging by the protests in Iran last year, ‘in time’ could be any time now.

Max Weber noted a century ago that authority ceases to exist, when the people stop respecting it. This is similar to the idea that our gods cease to exist when we stop believing in them.

However, those in positions of authority typically cling to their illusions of power and have one final last-gasp-of-the-dinosaur tantrum on the way out.

Today’s radical Islam could be the climax of the story, rather than a harbinger of trends to come. The Ayatollahs are getting old, and half of the population of Iran is younger than 30. Similar demographic patterns exist throughout the Muslim world.

Muslim women were fruitful and multiplied, as instructed. Now, they have their own version of 1968 USA on their hands.

Muslim rulers find themselves surrounded by increasingly modern societies populated largely by girls who just wanna have fun.

[For those who missed the reference, click here.]

Whether it is historical coincidence, the fall of communism, or the result of some shadowy cabal within the American ruling class calling forth a new specter, Muslims have been recast in the West/North the new Outsiders as the same time that the convergence of the global economy and of global culture have become unmistakable.

The USSR is no more — because the people stopped believing in it — India is ascending, China is consumerist, Latin America is middle class, and Sub-Saharan Africa looks set to begin producing Tiger economies. Global culture is converging on an increasingly secular, multi-ethnic, market-based, and information-and technology-driven hybrid that blurs tribalist distinctions while vastly expanding the opportunity set for everyone.

Power is shifting, and to someone devoted to any orthodox monotheistic religion, the world must look particularly wayward and feel as if it were barreling down the slippery slope that leads straight to the ninth ring of Hell.

Those whose world views are threatened by advances in science, technology, and popular culture must be experiencing unimaginable psycho-social agony.

This period could be the last stand for many anachronistic world views.

So, does one speak soothingly, while the dog bites one’s hand, or does one roll up a newspaper and smack it in the side of the head? Granted, this a false dichotomy and not an exhaustive set, but that is what the debate tends to come down to: the carrot vs the stick, represented as appeasement vs incitement in the mainstream media.

Things have gotten so bad that many Belgians, Danes, Dutch, Swedes, and Swiss - generally not on top of anyone’s list of hot-headed nations – are thumbing their noses openly at Muslims.

The situation with the vast majority of moderate Muslims is similar to that of the vast majority of law-abiding inner-city poor in the USA. None dares speak up too loudly, until enough others are willing to stand up.

However, when the change comes, it can be swift, as we saw when the Estonians took to the streets and sang the Soviets back across the river.

Perhaps if enough in the West act like complete buffoons, moderate Muslims will be able to scoff at radical Muslims who take us flat-footed, uncultured knuckle-draggers seriously.

Invest accordingly.

CWE

The Afghanistan Economic and Legal Studies Organization (AELSO) is a nascent public policy research institute that advocates free markets, rule of law, and gender equality in Afghanistan.

AELSO was established — following visits in 2009 by Dr. Tom G. Palmer of Atlas Economic Research Foundation — by a group of university professors, students, and businessmen led by Professor Mohammad Abul Ahrar Ramizpoor, a professor of law who continued to teach under the Taliban until he was threatened with death for teaching that women have equal rights.

According to Atlas, Professor Ramizpoor has an influential circle of colleagues in academia who support the ideas of classical liberalism.

Dr. Palmer visited again in December of 2009. AELSO has an office in Kabul, near Kabul University, where the members hold regular training sessions and seminars. They already have published Common Sense Economics, by Gwartney, Stroup, and Lee, in Dari and are working on an ambitious set of programs to promote the ideas of toleration and freedom through the country’s proliferating radio stations, which are especially important in a nation with such a high rate of illiteracy.

AELSO is also organizing seminars for legislators, journalists (to promote a culture of news and discussion rather than rumor and denunciation), teachers, and students. The men and women of AELSO are brave individuals who have faced down death threats and attempts many times and who are at the front lines of combating Islamic extremism with the ideas of freedom.

AELSO is raising US$1,200 to cover the costs of Internet access at their office near the university, a seminar room/library, an administrative work room with desks, and a small kitchen/tea/discussion room for a year. That would allow them to update their soon-to-be-launched website (in Dari, Pashto, and English) regularly and communicate more easily.

The funds are being handled by Atlas, a 501(c)(3) charitable organization in Washington, DC.

Although I worked for Atlas for three years and set up and managed their first website, I have not been affiliated with Atlas since the mid-1990s, and this call is driven by my fascination with going on record as having provided material support to Afghani libertarians.

For information on how to contribute, even if only a few dollars, contact:

Erin E. Grant
erin.grant@atlasnetwork.org
Director of Development
Atlas Economic Research Foundation
+1 202 449-8444

Donate accordingly.

CWE

A recent conversation with an acquaintance elicited this response from me. I memorialize it here:

Worldwide regulation already is well underway.

National accounting standards are giving way to IFRS, national regulatory structures are converging through international treaties, national legal systems are increasingly a hybrid of common and civil law, Global English is the language of global culture, the US dollar is the unit of account in global trade (perhaps to be replaced by the SDR), race and ethnicity are increasingly indeterminate, and on and on and on…

With regard to the nature of global institutions, they will be influenced most strongly by the pragmatic desires of individuals who comprise multinational firms and transnational networks, and not the machinations of the Freemasons or the ideological musings of some fussy crank like Karl Marx, Ayn Rand, or Ayatollah Khomeini, all of whom longed for the return of some bygone era.

Marx longed for the return to idyllic agrarian society. Ayn Rand longed for a return to pre-WWI hard-money capitalism. Ayatollah Khomeini longed for a return to the 15th Century.

Granted, I would prefer that my daughter be in thrall to Ayn Rand than to Karl Marx or Ayatollah Khomeini during her formative years, but I would hope that she’d outgrow it by the time that she finished graduate school.

In the next phase, some fussy crank will lament the passing of national sovereignty and the institution of global bureaucracy, while ignoring the benefits, and the cycle will continue unabated.

Don’t take my word for it. Watch Hans Rosling’s TED presentation on international convergence from the perspective of a public health researcher.

If you are shopping for jurisdictions, I have provided a handy shopping list. The New York Times, by way of Yahoo!, recently published a list of countries that are increasingly popular among retirees.

Invest accordingly.

CWE

Christopher Lingle, over at the Natural Order blog, raises a very interesting point.

“[B]loggers that write about other blogs might have run into an infinite cycle or an endless loop.“

He is, of course, completely correct.

CWE

The Wall Street Journal reports, “[S]cientists for the first time have created a synthetic cell, completely controlled by man-made genetic instructions.”

What a delightful conundrum for creationists. If life is the product of Intelligent Design, then man is godlike, and God is reduced from infinite to about 5′10″ (180 cm), 175 pounds (80 kg), and an IQ of around 180. Alternatively, if intelligent design is not evidence of Intelligent Design, then what would be?

Setting aside such theological paradoxes, luddites wasted no time weighing in:

“Friends of the Earth issued a statement asking the Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] and the Food and Drug Administration [FDA] ‘to fully regulate all synthetic biology experiments and products,’ while ETC Group, a group based in Canada, called for a global moratorium on synthetic biology.”

A) The jurisdiction of the EPA and the FDA ends at the US border, on the other of which reside about 95% of the humans alive. Burdening the synthetic biology industry in the USA runs the risk of banishing it to jurisdiction where political rulers are more welcoming. Brazil, Russia, India, and China come immediately to mind in this context.

B) Calling on a worldwide moratorium for an industry that promises to produce solutions for pollution, energy, disease, aging, food, etc. probably is not going to have much of an effect, beyond making one look like a pampered prat. Ignoring the obvious military potential is evidence of severe naïveté. If you outlaw synthetic biology, only outlaws will engage in synthetic biology.

The group that achieved this feat has been publishing its interim results in peer-reviewed journals since 1995. The cat is out of the bag, the horse has left the barn, and you cannot unring that bell.

“The latest research was reviewed by a panel of independent scientists, but no one has duplicated the team’s experiment.”

Among those who aspire to be scientists, one publishes a description of what one is doing, why one is doing it, how it relates to previous work in the field, one’s methodologies — think cookbook recipe here — one’s results, and one’s conclusions. Then, someone else replicates the work, following the steps described in the published article.

In the academic world, one publishes the results of one’s attempt to replicate another’s work. In the military-industrial complex, one protects one’s trade secrets somewhat more jealously.

“To set this novel bacterium — and all its descendants — apart from any natural creation, Dr. Venter and his colleagues wrote their names into its chemical DNA code, along with three apt quotations from James Joyce and others. These genetic watermarks will, eventually, allow the researchers to assert ownership of the cells.”

They also expose themselves to lawsuit, should their creation get out and stir up trouble.

The point is that we, as a species, have crossed into a realm as profound in its implications as one can imagine. Life is software.

Invest accordingly.

CWE