Football is here, and it's time for a prediction!

I have but a few hours to get my predictions in on time.

1. Iowa is the second best team in the Big Ten.

2. Michigan will win 7 regular season games this year.

3. Michigan State is better than most seem to think.

4. Ohio State is going to another BCS title game, this time undefeated, and this time we'll win.

Have a great football season!

The Battlestar and the Shark

It is a sad thing to see a good show deteriorate, to see pusillanimous producers stretch a concept thin rather than face the daunting task of developing a new show to fill a vacant slot. I hope it can be shown, on some bright tomorrow, that not only is artistic integrity preserved when a story is allowed to run its course in its natural time frame, but the bottom line as well. Might a show not be more profitable if it stays compelling, even if that means fewer seasons, perhaps even fewer episodes per season? It is devoutly to be hoped.

One of the great jewels of television of recent times, which could not escape that purgatory of mediocrity to which so many erstwhile masterpieces are consigned, is Battlestar Galactica. Through two seasons it remained as gripping a story as any ever told. There were moments of such fantastic intensity that I, as a viewer, was afterwards left in that quivering state of post ecstatic bliss which so eludes and embarrasses the infallible Holy See. Alas, it was not to last, and yet the decline was not due to producers who refused to say goodbye, like family members who keep a loved one on life support long after the part they loved is gone. BSG lasted only four seasons, an expiration date that was set early on, i.e., it began not only with a good story, but under the most favorable of circumstances: with a finale already scheduled and not too remotely in the future.

The malady that afflicted BSG, that sapped its vitality, hobbled it, caused it to become frail, was not the Stretching Disease that felled The Simpsons. Instead, the writers committed a series of blunders that worked like successive body blows in boxing. Was BSG left standing when the bell sounded? Perhaps, but it was bruised, bent over in pain and sucking oxygen.

The finale of BSG was always going to disappoint. This is due to the simple fact that the creators did not know where they were going, only how they were going to take off. The longer they went without sketching a climax, the more their odds of getting a good one came to resemble those of the chimpanzee with a typewriter trying to make a sonnet appear on the paper. This handicap, however, was not the ultimate problem. It started to manifest itself only in season four when, for instance, the writers revealed the history of the cylons from a hospital bed rather than through some interesting episodes, a clear sign that they were throwing together a hastily conceived conclusion. When that insipid bit of storytelling occurred, the show was already in decline.

The characters of BSG were, one by one and almost without exception, removed from interesting circumstances in which they began and placed in positions with fewer possibilities. The totality of these moves was as damaging to the show as anything else that happened to it. Consider Lee Adama, once a fighter pilot and CAG with an extremely talented but insubordinate and emotionally damaged ace to keep in line. He wound up as a politician sitting around a table making speeches. A storyline wherein the CAG had to maneuver through politics for some reason, something quite foreign to him, would make for an interesting episode. Unfortunately, it was not just an episode but an entire change of character, and the show suffered for it.

Boomer was one of the most compelling characters as she slowly realized, with horror, that she was a cylon. That made Chief Tyrol, her lover, more interesting as well. This particular storyline was wrapped up early but done so brilliantly I wouldn’t change a thing. Nevertheless, it is another intriguing part of the series that came to an end and left a hollow that was never filled with something as satisfying as what they originally had.

President Roslin, thrust into the role of Head of State when dozens of higher ranking officials were killed in the cylon attack, struggled to learn her new job and guide humanity to salvation even as she herself was dying of cancer. Her role lost luster when the writers decided to cure her. As if realizing this, they brought the cancer back, but it felt like a cheap trick. They should have had the guts to let the cancer kill her in the waning hours. Better yet, she, knowing she was nearing the end, should have sacrificed her life at some key moment, a sacrifice that kept the dwindling human hopes alive.

Baltar was probably the most fascinating character in the entire show. A cowardly yet brilliant scientist, he discovered that a cylon tricked him into giving away key defense secrets, thus ensuring the sneak attack would be successful. Even as the remaining humans relied on his skills to survive, he had to constantly be alert to keep his secret safe. Moreover, the cylon seductress who tricked him seemed to leave some sort of program in his brain, and he saw visions of her at the most inconvenient times. This storyline is so integral, its resolution should have been saved for the very end, culminating in something fantastic and inextricably woven into the climax of the entire series itself. At some point he definitely should have committed murder to safeguard his secret. Instead, they wrap up that arc and then spend a while trying to find something interesting for him to do before finally settling on a silly religious prophet with nothing at stake that relates to what the show is actually about (or should have been about).

Helo was once a fugitive, stranded on Caprica, running out of anti-radiation shots to keep himself alive on the now radioactive planet. He encountered another Boomer, but we knew she was a spy for the cylons. This new Boomer, soon to be called Athena, struggled with which side she should fight for, much like the original. When they reconnected with humanity, they still provided some mildly compelling storylines but they were always more interesting on Caprica. They should have spent the majority of the series there. They could have made contact with the human resistance movement and, when they finally did escape, discovered some key secret to the cylon plans to bring back to the humans. The revealing of this secret would have been a great beginning for the series’ last act. Keeping Boomer alive and in prison until Athena and Helo returned would have made for some possibilities too.

Just as deleterious as the increasingly lackluster characters was what happened to the cylons. We got to know them far too well. At times their motivations were bizarre, such as when they decided to occupy New Caprica in a blatant attempt to have something to say about the Iraq War no matter the damage done to the integrity of the show. They became a petty band of squabblers essentially indistinguishable from human beings. Other shows, such as Star Trek: The Next Generation, have dealt with artificial intelligence and at what point such a creation should be considered a conscious being with rights like a human. Star Trek ultimately made Data very human, and it worked in that context. The writers of BSG went that route as well, but the consequences were disastrous.

At the show’s outset, the cylons were menacing, conscienceless killers who were out there somewhere, and might appear at any moment to wipe out the rest of humanity. They were like sharks in the ocean. One of the most terrifying parts was that they had built some models that looked human. The opening sequence set the tone: a beautiful robot meets a human at an established meeting point which the cylons have neglected for decades. She commits a most human act by kissing him… and then the station is destroyed. She displays no fear, for her program will be downloaded into a new unit. She does not suffer from mortality. Any indication of a conscience is absent. Another of the same model crushes a baby’s neck with no more remorse than we would have from swatting a fly. She does it merely as an act of curiosity. When that same model has sex with Baltar, her spine glows red, a characteristic which was a fine way to cast them as inhuman but which the writers forgot about, or abandoned, afterwards.

It is quite clear that these cylons were not humans. They should have remained machines, terrifying, hidden and never completely knowable. In proportion as the cylons regretted their actions, bickered among themselves and became too well known to us, they lost their mystique and ability to frighten. The show could not but suffer for it.

There were other problems too, but they were comparatively small and easily overlooked. It was the mishandling of characters and the cylon “race” that spoiled the project long before the lack of a total vision became apparent. It is a shame, and we do ourselves no favor by inventing excuses. BSG limped to the finish line, perhaps crawled over it, and the reasons are clear. Let the lesson be learned, so that the next promising start may have a better end. Do not launch until you know where you want to land. If you manage to create some interesting characters, realize what makes them interesting and keep them that way until the right time to finish their character arcs. And never, ever, ever ruin your villain until you are ready to drop the curtain.

String Theory and Capitalism

It is time to recognize that String Theory is buncombe. This has yet to dawn on the majority of physicists, who are enthralled with the thing, and may be many years away from general public recognition, but nevertheless it seems plainly evident to anyone who manages a sober reading of the issue. A general and brief overview of String Theory is enough for the purposes of this essay: the theory is not testable, is background dependent, has not been proven to be finite, is not responsible for a single practical technological advance despite the constant efforts of thousands of physicists over a quarter century, is at odds with actual observations and comes in a quantity of varieties that may exceed in number the population of atoms in the universe. Can one imagine a more formidable array of obstacles? More promising theories have died on the tip of just one of these spears.

The purpose of the present piece, however, is not to convince the good reader that String Theory has been a waste of time. Its own practitioners have supplied the curious investigator with ample proofs on that point. The intent today is to demonstrate that government is at fault and that Capitalism would have spared us almost the entire endeavor, whose opportunity costs are incalculable.

Is there a private citizen more sheltered from the Market’s vicissitudes than the college professor? He has tenure, which means that, short of being caught in bed with a nine year old Cambodian sold into white slavery, he cannot be fired. He is free to indulge those whims which most please him without affecting his salary, which is paid to him whether or not he produces something that someone wishes to purchase. The result is that he may consume without first contributing anything worth consuming. Contrast this with the common laborer, who no doubt would prefer to study the effect on batting averages of lowering the pitcher’s mound but who must instead, at the prompting of his landlord, stand at an assembly line for forty hours of the week.

We can see that the university environment permits capricious and non-productive behavior. Who among us would not alter his activities if his salary were guaranteed, would not seek to please himself not just at the point of purchasing, but at the moment of earning as well? If String Theory catches the fancy of a physicist, he may pursue it past the outermost limits of sensibility. That it has not led to any practical discoveries has not affected any salaries, and therefore it has not affected any physicists. The realities of the marketplace would permit very little of this behavior. It is certainly true that a rich patron, fascinated with science and dedicated to research, might be taken by the specious promises of String Theory and convinced to support a team of researchers while they scribbled endless equations only they understand. Insofar as that rich patron is spending his own money, this patronage is his consumption and he is welcome to it. But how many curious souls have been so delighted by String Theory that they would have spent, of their own volition, an amount of money equal to what has actually been given over to the pursuit of strings?

That is the truly appalling aspect of String Theory, not that a few physicists might have grown fond of it, but that it has taken hold of nearly the entire community of physicists and is researched to the exclusion of anything else. The nature of the sheltered community of particle physics has not just failed to put up barriers and discouragements to a non-productive activity like String Theory research, it has aggressively cultivated and expanded the phenomenon. Here too, we can see that exposure to Capitalism would resolve the problem.

Our statist universities pump out more Masters and PhD’s each year than is warranted even by the artificially inflated demand for them, a situation that is true in many areas, not just physics. These overly abundant young physicists are then forced to compete for a limited number of positions which are doled out by the old tenured professors in the field. The relative numbers of positions compared to applicants gives the advantage to these hoary professors, who find the aspiring physicists competing for their favor but who feel little pressure to compete for applicants. They choose youngsters who flatter their egos, who profess an interest in what they want to see studied.

It so happens that, due to a very respected member of the society declaring for Strings in the 1980’s and human beings’ well known propensity to get carried away by fads, String Theory came to dominate the upper echelons of physics society. That it has continued to dominate may, to some extent, be explained by the nature of String Theory itself: it is exceedingly complex, requiring many years of study before the relevant equations can be mastered. By the time a middle aged physicist has finally gotten a handle on the theory, he has devoted a very large portion of his career to just getting started and, like the war widow who supports the cause all the more strongly rather than face the truth and admit that her husband – or son – was killed for no good reason, finds himself unwilling to acknowledge how much of his time he has wasted.

Was String Theory always destined to seize the halls of physical academia? Was it a freak occurrence that made String Theory king and keeps it on the throne? The answer to that question is beyond the scope of the present piece, which is simply to note how Capitalism would cure the problem, a problem that besets any human endeavor when our natures clash with our environment.

Picture a company’s manager with no power to tax, and no possibility of indirectly receiving such coerced payment from the populace at large. Imagine him reviewing his books and noticing that his String Department has consumed a lot of capital and shows no promise of a breakthrough that he might use to increase the company’s profits. Imagine as he talks with his String Theorists and discovers that the theory, rather than honing in on an elegant explanation, keeps getting more and more complex as every emerging problem is addressed by further complications, distortions and conjectures. Whatever company saw profit potential in unifying physics, they could surely see scant reason to continue to underwrite String Theory research.

The universities, too, would get scrubbed clean in a fully capitalist world. Imagine an entirely private school system that had people ready to enter the work force after high school. Imagine businesses that did not fear law suits such that they could hire whom they pleased and did not need to allow universities to do their discriminating for them. Imagine universities being funded without taxes, which means with student fees, and therefore gearing themselves towards students. The whole prestige of research departments would fade, as would the impulse to manufacture higher order degrees which serve the university but rarely the student. Imagine a system where students, who need college less after being better prepared by their high schools, decline to pay the kind of tuitions needed, in the absence of taxes and Pell Grants, to fund major research. Companies would no longer be able to foist the costs of research onto the tax-paying public and allow the universities to do it for them. They would also be less able to let taxes pay to train their workforce.

In such a system, in such a world, it is difficult to imagine that a barren area of research like String Theory could long survive. It could still emerge and be pursued for a time, for there once were sound reasons to pursue it, but a capitalist system would have recognized long ago that nothing good was likely to come of String Theory. The discovery that Calabi-Yau Spaces might number 100,000 would have been a signal, to a profit-driven capitalist, to abandon the project. The discovery that there might be 10^1500 different vacuum states in String Theory would have been an even more powerful signal. The inability to prove the theory finite would never cease to provide its own signal, and certainly the acceleration of the universe’s expansion, which String Theory can accommodate only in the wishful daydreams of invested String Theorists, would have done it.

Instead, we are left with String Theory and its theorists. In a capitalist system the buyer pleases himself and the seller, if he wishes to remain in business, pleases the buyer. In String Theory, the “buyer”, compelled by taxation, pleases the seller. Certainly this delights physicists, who never find themselves in a position to curtail their impulses and do something of service for their fellow man, but it is a waste for, and a crime committed against, the rest of the populace. Add it to the list: Reason number 43,586 to abolish government and allow Capitalism to work its magic.

A Few Lists Compiled by the Humble Blogger

Many thousands of my fans who come to this site every day have written emails inquiring into the reason for the long absence. Why did February pass us by with no blog posts? The reason, my dear friends, is because your humble blogger was busy compiling a few lists, making sure to include every applicable name or item that belonged on them. At long last, he is ready to divulge the contents of these lists.




List of People Who Need to Tap Dance in a Mine Field

1. Anyone who uses feminine pronouns as neutral pronouns.

Take your time to peruse the list, and then consider the second one.



List of People Who Need Their Face Sat On

1. Your humble blogger


Next, a companion list.









List of People Who Need To Do Some Facesitting
1. Megan Fox



One final list for those who will be doing some gambling in the coming year.

List of College Football National Champions in 2010

1. Ohio State Buckeyes

There we go. That should clear a few things up around here. Next week we'll discuss lascivious cradle-robbers and how to spot them.

Wealth, the Economy and Why Barack's Plan Will Fail

Economics is the science of human action, understanding the actions man takes to achieve his goals and increase his happiness. A human being is faced with needs that he must satiate or face extinction. He survives to the extent that he does so. The same human will have desires and he thrives, or flourishes, to the extent that he satiates these. In all cases, this satiation, this consumption, requires labor so that the raw materials of nature can be changed in such a way as to satisfy him. The change can be something as simple as location, e.g., moving food from one place to another; or it can be something more drastic. Materials can be melted or frozen, combined, reshaped, improved upon. All this is in service of satisfying his needs and desires.

When a man, through labor, transforms material into a state that he values more, he has increased his wealth. When he trades something he values less for something he values more, he increases his wealth, as does the other party. Wealth is subjective; another way to describe wealth is happiness, and when we realize this we see the uselessness of statistics like GDP.

His general prosperity can be increased only if he increases his capacity to produce more of the things that make him happy. There are two basic ways to do this. He can divide his labor in cooperation with others, and he can invest in capital improvements that increase his productivity.

The division of labor takes advantage of the fact that humans are a heterogeneous group with respect to their knowledge, location, proclivities, abilities and other traits. To take a simple example, if Sarah is good at making clothes and Martin is good at building houses, it behooves them to divide their labor and exchange their surpluses. Instead of Sarah having nice clothes and living in a crappy house while Martin has a decent house but crappy clothes, they may both have nice clothes and houses if Martin dedicates himself to building the houses and Sarah to making clothes. They can each make more than they personally desire in preparation for trading the surplus for the surplus the other has. They will also infuriate feminists, which will make the humble blogger wealthier.

Capital is any asset that aids in the production of other assets. A tractor, education, money, a building… all these things are capital assets. A man with a hammer can build a house more quickly than a man who has no such tool. The hammer makes him more productive, i.e., allows him to transform more material to higher valued uses in the same span of time.

It is quite clear, now, that productivity determines prosperity. Unfortunately, there are many witch doctors and charlatans who claim that the money supply must be increased to increase prosperity, or at least must go along with increased production. Without spending too much time on the subject, the good reader who has followed us thus far will no doubt have little difficulty in seeing that an increase in the supply of money does not increase productivity, it merely increases the amount of claims tickets in circulation. This will do nothing to increase actual prosperity in general, although the parties which get the increase in money first will benefit initially.

Last year, the humble blogger wrote a piece explaining money and prices, and how the latter help to regulate an economy and ration scarce resources. The good and faithful reader may wish to review this post before continuing.

Now that we understand a bit about economic activity and what wealth is, as well as money and prices, we can understand what has caused the recent recession and why Barack Obama and his band of tools and fools will only make things worse. When a central bank, like the Fed, increases the supply of credit, the interest rate will go down. The interest rate is the price of credit, and like any price it brings supply and demand into equilibrium.

A loan can be made when someone forgoes consumption that they have earned on the market, which is referred to as saving, and this foregone consumption, generally in the form of money held at a bank, can be lent out to a business interest which can use the loan to make capital investments. The market, remember, has a price structure keeping things in equilibrium. Consumers spend so much on consumption, and there is such and such supply of consumer goods to be consumed, and these forces determine market clearing prices. What is not consumed right away is saved, allowing for investment in capital goods and maintenance of the capital structure (which, we must remember, decays over time). The demand for loans and the desire to save coordinate to give us an interest rate.

When credit is artificially increased, it lowers the interest rate, and something similar to the situation detailed in the post on money occurs: people start saving less and consuming more – the lower interest rate attracts less saving – and businesses take out more loans for long term capital projects, something also induced by a lower interest rate. However, the underlying goals of the people in the economy have not changed. People have the same demand schedules as before, an interest rate change has simply changed their incentives.

The new money allows those who first get their hands on it to bid up the price of whatever it is they are investing in, and the economy starts to reshape itself around this apparent demand. Projects which before seemed unprofitable now look good with a lower interest rate. Banks lower their lending standards because they have already made the best loans available to them, and with the flood of new credit they must lend it out to less likely candidates that remain. New businesses arise around the apparent reality of the lower interest rate and the spending preferences of those who get their hands on the money.

This boom must eventually end, however, and when the money works its way through the economy, eventually the underlying reality asserts itself. Workers wages eventually go up after a period of lagging behind and this return to the old purchasing power balance means that the economy that reshaped itself around the influx of money will now go back to its original shape. Many of the new loans start to default. The projects which looked doable when the big spenders got their new money and the interest rates were low are now revealed to be mistakes and must be liquidated. This liquidation is the recession.

The process can be extended for a while, but each influx of new money makes the distortions bigger and requires more and more inflation to keep it going. Eventually, the distortion becomes so big that it either must be allowed to explode into a recession or the inflation needed to keep it going will actually destroy the currency… and the recession will be had anyway (For more on this, go to www.mises.org and search for the Austrian Business Cycle Theory).

Once this is realized, it becomes obvious that the influence of John Maynard Keynes haunts us still, and leads us down the wrong path. We are told to spend, and yet spending is for consumption. The greater the level of savings, the lower the interest rate, which means the less liquidation of investment will have to occur to get the economy back on track. Saving is the way to reduce the pain of recession, not spending! Geithner, Bernanke and Obama want to inject more credit into the economy, but this is more of what got us into trouble and will either destroy the dollar, not be enough to fend off the recession, or prevent the needed liquidations from happening, keep unsustainable businesses afloat, and prevent a return to firmer ground and a recovery.

The way out of our troubles is to let the liquidation happen and get it over with. The sooner this is done, the less painful it will be when it happens. To make things easier, the capital gains tax could be eliminated (any impediment to the accumulation of good capital restrains progress and prosperity). Any other taxes should be eliminated or at least reduced. No cheap loans to failing businesses should be made. And the more Americans save, the less liquidation has to take place.

If the humble blogger’s recommendations are followed, the recovery will happen soon and a truly stronger economy will result. I fear, however, that we are doomed to another Keynesian depression and many many years of hardship.

Are Women Winning the Battle of the Sexes?

I have in another window on my computer screen the most amazing piece I have read in recent times: a report on prostitution. A healthy heterosexual male being unable to help but be at least mildly interested in what the ladies of the oldest profession are up to, and your humble blogger being no exception to this rule, I opened the report for my eager eyes with a click of the mouse when I saw a snippet about it on another page. It turns out that this report has nothing to do with your typical working girl, but rather goes into some detail about the highest price hookers, the upper class hookers, the ones Bill Gates dials when he wants booty by delivery. I am astonished and appalled by what I find there.

First I see that some of these dames will charge upwards of $10,000 for a single session. This in itself is not appalling. The greatest football players will make many times what their less talented brethren make because of their talent for the job. The finest wines cost far more than the prosaic selections because of their taste and beauty. Then may not a prostitute, through expertness of technique, exquisiteness of odor and flavor, and excellence of pulchritude, earn a sum that exceeds those of the low-end variety by nearly an order of magnitude? She may indeed: the market has spoken.

I read also that those ladies of joy at the very pinnacle of the industry may charge a monthly retainer in addition to service charges per session. Again, I can see nothing objectionable about this. The lady has placed herself at his beck and call, and the rent is due each month whether he has it in him or not. This is simply a hedge against erectile dysfunction.

The part that stupefies me is where I read that these white-collar sex workers may make a potential john see them for months before surrendering their chamber of Venus. So the man lavishes money on her and takes her out for weeks and months before she puts out? That’s not prostitution, that’s dating. If she’s a hooker then so am I the Archbishop of Canterbury. That she has a handful of johns – but what do I mean by johns? These men are boyfriends! – as clientele merely means that the lady is promiscuous. That he knows she has these other beau’s and does not protest merely means that he is liberal-minded. The plain fact of the matter is that she has no business besmirching the good name of prostitution.

The advantage of prostitution over dating, apart from the man’s ability to pick exactly what he is looking for, is that he may, if he is of a mood, dispense with flirting and courtship and cajoling and get down to brass tax. Imagine if other industries operated like these high-end hookers: supermarket managers insisting on an interview before clients can shop, plumbers turning down paying customers on a whim, waitresses withholding food until your sixth trip to the restaurant! The absurdity of it is hard to overstate. With ten thousand dollars and a few months to work with, I could get a Notre Dame Nun to put out. The Nun may feel guilty afterwards, and may give most of the money to charity, but it is not on the manner in which a woman spends her money, nor how she feels about it, that we may distinguish her as a prostitute; she is a prostitute based on how she gets the money. When she gets the money under the same terms that a bride of Christ could find agreeable, or at least acceptable, she has no claim to being a prostitute.

In pondering this issue, one starts to wonder if women might not be winning the battle of the sexes. Perhaps some of our brothers have betrayed us. My understanding was that this battle was a tie, that men did not get what they wanted from a woman, and women did not get what they wanted from a man. Nobody is happy and everybody is content with this. I see now that this is incorrect, at least in a few cases that nevertheless are enough to break the deadlock. Some women get exactly what they want. They get a man who is rich and successful enough to shell out nearly six digits a month, the satisfaction of his earnest pursuit, and just enough variety to avoid boredom in the bedroom.

Am I correct in stating that we are losing? Can we mount a comeback? Is there no man who gets exactly what he wants out of women? Ah, I almost forgot.

Kid Rock.

Let's Fix the Economy!

Better to remain silent and be thought of as a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. This quote is attributed to Abraham Lincoln who, however many execrable qualities he possessed, seems at least to have been touched with a bit of wisdom. Recently cnn.com solicited from fifteen of our fellow Americans their opinions on what the government should do about the current economic crisis, and they proved nothing so much as that whatever heavenly grace brushed baby Abraham and imbued him with some mental acumen was entirely absent at their births.

I do not know what it is about the science of economics that invites so many know-nothings and bounders to render their opinions on it, and out loud to boot. Imagine, good reader, that some yokel approached you and, on whatever area of expertise you claim, proceeded to expound in the most grotesque manner about his ideas on the matter, even going so far as to suggest how you ought to do it better. Imagine his appalling ignorance, how he stumbles over the plainest and simplest facts that any journeyman in your profession has long understood. Imagine a garbage collector explaining cell biology to Richard Dawkins. Picture a chimney sweep correcting Franz Liszt’s compositions. If you can do this, you can conceive of the plight of the professional economist. And it’s not enough that these simians disagree with experts in the field, but they usually go so far as to refuse to allow any real education on the matter to be delivered to them.

Cnn.com has done us the disservice of encouraging this sort of behavior by not only printing their recommendations, but also massaging their vanities with a color photo. Karen, Darren, Lori, Michelle, Tom, Tim, Dino, Tatiana, Eamon, Carolyn, Chris, Joe, Jeff, Howard and John were all given the spotlight to embarrass themselves, and nearly every one of them did a very decent job of lacerating their dignity. Called upon to sing an Aria, they howled like alley cats. Lest the singers refuse to leave the stage, allow me to boo as loudly and as cruelly as I may.

Karen Case

I've been in the workforce for 43 years. I have been paying taxes since 1966. I am a divorced mother of four, two still trying to get out of college, a cancer survivor still under treatment after 10 years.

While the good reader is frowning at the sentence construction, don’t forget to take note of her qualifications as an economist.

I have one credit card, not maxed out, that was at 13% interest. I have always paid at least 150%, if not more, of the required payment, never missed a due date, but it was jumped to 22.9% in November. When I asked to have it reduced back I was told "every person with our credit card has been moved to this, and it cannot be changed.

What Obama can do is mandate an interest rate cap on all credit cards to a manageable figure (12%?). And not allow credit card companies to retroactively increase APRs. This would be the best news families could receive, other than lowering their mortgage payments.

She is, unfortunately, correct when she says that Obama can do this, even if she doesn’t know what retroactive means, but in her eagerness to not uphold her end of the contract she freely entered into with her credit card company – a contract that apparently included a provision for raising the interest rate – she forgot to learn the function of price in a market. If there are ten apples, one apple seller, and thirty other people who each want one apple, of necessity apples will be rationed. This can be done in many different ways, but in a setting where 1) people are allowed to own and exchange property, 2) relationships are voluntary and 3) there is a general medium of exchange (money), the apples will sell for a price which will rise until twenty people are without apples and the ten willing and able to pay the highest price have their apple. This is called the market clearing price, which clears the market in that there is an apple for everyone who wants to and can purchase one. The others no longer want an apple at the increased price.

An interest rate is also a price; it’s the price of credit. When you have debt on a credit card, it is because you spent money you did not have, i.e., you consumed before you were able to produce something to exchange for whatever it was you consumed. This cannot happen unless someone else forgoes his consumption and lends you the money (presumably, this was done under terms which Karen now wants the government to violate in her favor). If the interest rate rises, it is reflecting changes in the supply and demand for credit. Why does Karen not take out a new credit card with a lower interest rate, transfer her balance to the card with the lower rate, and then close the old card? I’m guessing it has something to do with the fact that all interests rates were up because either credit was scarce, demand was greater, or a combination of both.

What would happen if interest rates were capped at a “reasonable” rate? If that rate is below the market rate, then more people will demand credit cards than otherwise would, but less capital would flow into the credit card industry due to reduced profit potential, meaning that even fewer people would be able to get credit. Karen goes on to say: Credit cards help the American public get the car fixed, pay for the child's college, medical bills, the roof that needs repair, the large deductible now required on medical insurance.

If that is so, why don’t you leave the industry alone, Karen?

Darren Schwindaman

A government-sponsored health insurance program, drawing from a large pool of people with low premiums, would be ideal.

Darren’s atrophied cerebrum can do no better than call for some Canadian-style health care system, where patients typically wait months for procedures that Americans can get in a matter of days or even hours. The American system has plenty of flaws, but they all come from government interference, something which Darren has chosen not to learn about but which he reserves the right to have an opinion on. The Canadian system suffers from even greater problems than ours, much of it due to price distortions or even eradications whose effects were partially discussed above.

Furthermore, I'd love to see a comprehensive program that encourages local commerce.

Apparently the opportunity to profit will not suffice?

Strong federal, state and local initiatives to help local business owners network with each other and build professional relationships would be helpful.

Darren is enjoying the pulpit so much he can’t bring himself to sit down and shut up. Not only is he designing an ignoramus’ solutions for America’s problems, he is conjuring up difficulties that don’t exist so that he may pontificate on one more topic. A true Federalist, Darren wants initiatives at all three levels of government to get these businessmen to build relationships with each other.

Lori Van Etten

The job market in rural Idaho doesn't exist. Up here, we're near the Canadian border, and it's freezing cold. But when you drive by the bus stop, you see people waiting with no winter jacket on. They just can't afford it because they've lost their jobs.

Were they leasing these winter jackets? Renting-to-own? How exactly did they lose the winter jacket they owned when they had a job? Living in Idaho, they did buy winter apparel, right? A search of just two Idaho zip codes at Goodwill’s website turned up twelve different Goodwill stores for those who came to Twin Falls in a thong bikini.

Anyway, Lori, tell us your solution.

Instead of handing the money over to six-figure-salary executives who use it for lavish company retreats, Obama should give each head of household $25,000 to $35,000 so we can bail ourselves out.

If the money were given to the people, they could pay down mortgages or pay off car loans, and that would in turn go to the bank. That would ease people's income loss while also putting the money back into the economy.

They could also buy winter coats. But why stop at $25,000 to $35,000? If $25,000 would ease people’s income loss while putting money back into the economy, then why not give everyone $453, 372, 345, 213, 934, 342, 876.43? This $25,000 could be given to some families in the form of a tax cut – which would be one good way to help the economy – but you never mention a tax cut. You just want a bail out, and giving every head of household that much money would require a lot of money printing. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t create anything more to buy with the money, so prices would go through the roof.

Of course, when your mortgage is a fixed amount, cheap money becomes very enticing. Get a house now that you can’t buy, pay it back tomorrow with cheap, almost worthless money! Fantastic!

Until one stops to think that someday, your children may wish to borrow money too, and who is going to lend money when lenders get screwed over by government printing presses? You did realize that money, real money, doesn’t grow on trees, right Lori?

Michelle Herrera

I think Obama will turn our economy around. I have never seen so much strategic planning done in every sector of our government.

It worked for the Soviet Union, right?

He needs to keep businesses here and should limit American companies from outsourcing jobs to other third world countries.

Because who wants to pay lower prices?

He needs to provide free health care to every American…

Are you talking about Gandalf the White or Obama? There is no such thing as free health care. Air is free because it is superabundant. Health care is not; it has to be provided by someone. Ergo, it has a price. Someone must pay for health care. Now, sometimes lobbying groups can get Congress to force others to pay for things for them, but someone, somewhere, has to pay.

…and should regulate how much doctors charge for services.

Ask Karen about price caps.

In addition, he needs to initiate a total overhaul on the pharmaceutical companies.

Why does it matter where he does it? What I want to know is OF what does he need to initiate a total overhaul?

They have been ripping us off for many decades now. If they don't want people going to Mexico to buy their prescriptions at a cheaper price, then lower the prescription medication costs.

The costs are not under their control to lower, but I suppose they could lower the price. But that would not be profitable unless the costs were lowered. Hey, maybe while Obama is sitting on the pharmaceutical companies, he can initiate a total overhaul of the FDA!

He needs to stop illegal immigration and punish (send back) those who come to this country illegally.

Solidarity, Hermana Herrera!

This country needs to stop the greed. This is why we have these problems.

Actually, this is a beginning that a more promising intellect could pursue to a satisfying conclusion. Unfortunately, I believe you are probably one of those that Joseph Sobran talks about when he says that, “Today, greed is defined as wanting to keep your own money, need is defined as wanting someone else’s, and compassion is when a politician arranges the transfer.”

Tom Julian

The current mood of the country is making us rush to bailouts for various reasons in order to kickstart the economy. But if you give individuals money in an attempt to affect our country as a whole, it should be structured so they buy something that makes a difference -- not flat-screen TVs.

Tom cannot, it would seem, be bothered to tell us what makes a difference, nor why specifically a flat-screen TV will not.

When government gives you funds, it should be coupled with an idea of service. What you buy should be something for the long-term good, in the tradition of asking `not what you can do for yourself...

The humble blogger suspects that not even Tom understands what he means by this, but I think he has a promising career waiting for him as some candidate’s speech writer.

I've been a homeowner for the past three years, and in wintertime my wife and I have large heating bills. It is very expensive to weatherize your house with windows and insulation, and we wouldn't see a return on our investment for 10 or 15 years. People need a push in the right direction.

Congress should give a 100% refundable tax credit for making green improvements to your house or business. Any money spent on items like energy-efficient windows, insulation and solar panels would be paid back by the government over a four-year period.

In the tradition of conveying information when one writes, the humble blogger would like to point out that the last sentence of the first paragraph above has fuck-all to do with the rest of the paragraph. As for his “green improvements” idea, how is it helping our economy to take our money from us on April 15th and then pay it back over four years if we buy certain “green” items that apparently take a devilish long time to pay for themselves. It is worth mentioning here that everyone has a time preference. All else being equal, a good today is worth more to us than a good tomorrow. The higher the time preference, the more future goods are discounted in value. Maybe getting money back in a slow trickle over 15 years doesn’t seem like a good investment for someone who already has windows in the first place, or doesn’t plan on being in that house very much longer and would rather spend the money on something else. Why should he be taxed and teased because Tom Julian and his band of merry green bandits don’t like what he chooses to spend his money on?

This would stimulate the local economy as entrepreneurs set up shop to deliver these improvements.

No, it would merely distort the economy. The money spent on “green” things would be money not spent somewhere else. This draws resources from one sector and into another, it does not stimulate the economy. The only way to do that is to save money, the which can be lent out for the purpose of expanding the capital structure, which will expand our ability to produce.

Home owners would see the values of their homes rise instantly

And home buyers would see their dream home suddenly out of their price range. On net, even if this were true, there is no gain for the country. A net gain for the country, economically speaking, can only be done by expanding the division of labor and expanding the capital structure.

And Americans would instantly begin saving money on energy, and our country's carbon footprint would begin trending down.

Green initiatives can reduce carbon footprints on both a community and countrywide scale. They create jobs for your neighbors, which is the point.

I thought the point of green initiatives was to save us from a putative one degree of warming over the next one hundred years, but I’ll not split hairs here. I’ll simply note that creating jobs is the means, not the point. The point is production so that we may consume.

I support extremely generous tax cuts that encourage people to do things that are good for our country.

That’s rich. As Croesus. When the government decides to take less of your money, pending, of course, your compliant behavior, it is suddenly generous. What was it Joseph Sobran said again?

Tim Logue

I supported Bush (though until November I hadn't voted since the first Clinton election) because I thought his foreign policy was what we needed at the time.

A little taste of more brilliance to come.

We do not need to all receive $500 checks. We need to have the government invest in the work ethic of the American people.

How exactly does one invest in a work ethic?

We need some projects that will put folks back to work and repair our interstate infrastructure at the same time.

Interstate infrastructure? Either say highways or admit you’re using big words whose meaning you don’t know to impress people.

We need to get money flowing to the innovative sectors in this country that can put us on the course to cleaner energy both for our homes and the automobiles that we drive.

Do not allow the people who work to earn the money decide how it is to be spent; get politicians to redirect it to what Tim wants.

Dino Ianniello

As a small-business owner in Atlanta with a wife and two small children, I think what's on my mind isn't too far off from other small-business owners' minds: Let us keep more of our hard-earned money.

Seven people into our fifteen member panel of experts and we encounter one whose brain is not paralyzed. The rest of his explanation is just expounding on the idea of lowering taxes, which is a good idea. Now, if Dino can learn the evils of a central bank and fractional reserve banking, we may just have our man!

Tatiana Harrison

I hope that Obama will stop bailing out big, inefficient businesses, and instead let new, more robust businesses emerge.

Two in a row! The streak of economic idiocy, shoddy writing and sheer stupidity is over!

Instead, let's fix our failing infrastructure and give people jobs in the process. Let's fix our roads and bridges, let's do more public transportation, particularly trains. We are so behind all the other civilized countries in the world. Even Russia is way ahead of us in public transportation area!

The last part hurt her grade. Why not let the private sphere do that, since only the private sphere has a profit/loss test to determine how to allocate resources? If there is demand for public transportation, such transportation will arise in the free market. How can the government possibly know where public transportation should be built, and to what extent, and in what manner?

Also, our roads are probably overbuilt as it is. Investing in the roads works against your idea of public transportation. The roads should be privatized because, as it is now, they are like healthcare in Canada: you already paid for them so why not overuse them? In a free market there would almost certainly be fewer roads, fewer cars, more people living in the cities, fewer in the suburbs and therefore more public transportation.

Eamon McCaffery

I have a lot of debt from my family's medical bills, and I want to take money from my retirement account to pay off my debts. But there's a 10% penalty if you withdraw your money before age 59-1/2.

I want President-elect Obama to take away the penalty that happens when you take out money you've saved in retirement accounts. With the way that the economy is, it'd be easier to let us go get it without all the restrictions. Why should there be those roadblocks? It's red tape over red tape.

This does not go nearly far enough for my anarchist heart, but as far as it does go it sounds good to me.

I'm being charged 28% interest on a credit card, and that's way too high. Obama should reduce interest rates that lenders can charge.

Talk to Karen. She used to think that way too.

Carolyn Anderson

I can attest to the importance of small businesses in building this economy. They are like children who need to be nurtured so that they can grow to have a successful future. Small businesses are the future of the U.S. and they cannot grow in this poor lending environment.

But fewer SBA-guaranteed loans were issued last year than in 2007. And the agency is completely underfunded.

According to Wikipedia: The SBA has directly or indirectly helped nearly 20 million businesses and currently holds a portfolio of roughly 219,000 loans worth more than $45 billion making it the largest single financial backer of businesses in the United States.

That’s 45 billion more dollars than it ought to have. The free market has devised a way to lend money; the SBA is completely superfluous. Worse, it takes money from tax payers who might have saved it anyway, in which case the amount of savings is depleted and interest rates rise, making it harder to get a loan outside the SBA. And if that money given to the SBA from taxes would have gone to consumption, then let it go to consumption. So much of this idiocy comes from people who think that they or someone else ought to decide how everyone else’s money gets spent. This idea, apart from bad economics, is not compatible with freedom.

Chris Moscicki

I've been in the auto industry for my whole working life, over 20 years. I got laid off at the end of 2007 when the Ford dealership I was at closed. I went to work for a local rental car company through August. I lost my job there in a restructuring. Then I was out of work for two months. Fortunately, I found something. I'm now working for a truck rental company.

In the good years I made really great money. Where I'm at now I had to take a 30% pay cut, if not more.

So that’s a pay cut of anywhere from 30% to 100%? May I presume that your idea for America will be a bit more precise?

We're trying to get a loan modification, which is a joke.

It wasn’t a good one. If it had been a good joke, you wouldn’t have had to tell us. We would know by the laughter coming from our own mouths.

We're on our second try. We had to hire a lawyer this time around. We either pay the mortgage or pay the lawyer. We decided to pay the lawyer, because if we can't get this thing modified, we can't afford the house.

Excellent idea. You asked for a modification of your loan and it was denied. Then you hired a lawyer to try and strong-arm a deal for you. You could have paid your mortgage, as promised in your contract, to the people who lent you money because you couldn’t afford a house on what you had saved up, but instead you decided to pay someone else to get you a change in a contract you agreed to after the lender already told you he wasn’t going to change the contract.

Chris, would it be alright with you if I betrothed my sons to any daughters you might have? Or at least nieces or cousins? I would like some of that Moscicki integrity in my family.

When people are out looking for work, they need to look for work with dignity.

A meaningless platitude fit for any politician. And not really relevant to your discussion, but maybe you’ll develop it with the next sentence.

If you put people out of their house, how are they going to do simple things like take a shower and eat?

Disappointment, but not surprise. For the record, the answer is: rent an apartment.

That's why the government needs to focus on keeping people in their homes.

Or else we’ll be a nation of unbathed, starving savages.

For the next 24 months, I think there should be a moratorium on foreclosures. If anybody can pay anything to the bank whatsoever, even if it's a couple hundred bucks, I think the bank should accept that.

I am sure that, with a moratorium on foreclosures, people will do their best to make good faith payments. The banks should accept these, and the homeowners should use the money they are saving by reducing their mortgages to pay lawyers to get them further reductions.

Have you ever heard of a risk premium, Chris? A decision by the government to forestall foreclosures would ensure that the field of lending would be seen as a greater risk than otherwise. This means that any future loans will come with a risk premium – an increase in interest rates – which will hit hardest the people with lower credit ratings. This means when your good-for-nothing son, well schooled in your ethics and in default of thirty three different loans, applies for a loan for his house, he will have to pay that higher risk premium that your policy caused. This may even prevent him from getting a house, which means that when social security goes belly up and you need to be taken care of in your dotage, you will have to move in with him in his three room, one bedroom apartment with his ugly nagging wife and smelly children where you will sit in the corner all day and shit yourself wishing that he could either have afforded a house or had money left over from a lower interest rate to get you into a decent assisted living center.

At least, that’s what would happen if there were justice in the world.

I am a Republican, and I am a believer in the free-market system.

Sometimes, all you can do is stare with your mouth hanging open.

Joe Ryan

My wife, Gilda, and I, sell computer products online as well as handmade goods from Mexico. Our business launched in 2000, and while the business is doing well, our competition has gotten increasingly unfair.

I think the Detroit Lions complained of the same problem this year.

The craftspeople in Mexico do a great job of catering to our customers, making saddles and hats that fit their needs.

But both our electronics business and our artisan goods face a lot of competition from the Chinese, who sell knock-off goods at much lower prices. The quality of these cheap goods can't compare to ours, but Americans, particularly in this tough economy, will see only the price tag.

Those motherfuckers. How dare they choose to sacrifice quality to gain on price, when they should be sacrificing price to gain on quality like you want them to. What do they think they are doing, spending their own money that they earned or something?

I don't mind having competition

The Lions don’t mind competition either; they just want it bound at the ankles.

But what bothers me is that the people who make these cheap products work under labor standards that are not those I expect of the people who make my products.

I believe in capitalism and free trade so long as it's moral. If the workers have to work around the clock, without vacations or breaks and cannot return to their families for years, I have to say that it's a human rights issue as much as it is a trade issue.

I'm impressed that Obama has already taken a hard stance against torture and I hope he can take that same stance against poor labor standards. That may mean people in this country will have to make sacrifices, but if the issue is not addressed, we'll be seeing a race to the bottom and a world system that's built on ruthlessness.

There are few things as entertaining in this world as a good, thumping fraud. Joey is peeved that people would choose to buy products other than his, and doesn’t feel like changing anything about his production to conform to consumer demand. That’s what he spent the first half of his post telling us. Now, in the second half, he wants us to believe that he wants trade restrictions not to help him economically, but because of all the bad labor conditions in China.

Joe, after you die, I hope you come back as a suppository. The labor standards of any poor country are going to be abysmal, just like they were once in the US. What good for these workers for whom your magnanimous heart so copiously bleeds do you expect to accomplish with trade restrictions? If they lose their jobs because the awful businesses they work at go bankrupt, do you think nice, air-conditioned office jobs will be waiting for them all of a sudden?

Jeff Oviedo

Worried about the economy, I have prepared both my personal and business finances for a sour economy. I have no debt, and my wife and I are conservative with our spending - even with four kids. As a result, my green consulting and engineering business is steady, and I'm living comfortably.

Green consulting and engineering? I feel sure his idea is going to be magnificent.

Unfortunately, he will push the economic stimulus. That means more debt that we simply cannot afford. We were already in debt before this mess started. Debt is a four-letter word, and I'm really not sure how we'll be able to pay it back.

Instead of throwing money at the problem, the administration should do what I've been doing in my personal and business life for years: Cut the fat. I have sold my house, downsized my business, and I am still functioning very well. The solution lies in trimming the expenses.

Mother of God. A greenie-weenie wants to reduce the size of government? Am I reading this correctly? I’ll not even quibble and point out that trimming the fat of government would leave us with exactly no government.

Obama is already making steps to do this by pushing for greener buildings, which could save a lot of money. I hope he applies this mentality to other endeavors so that we can come out of this with less debt.

Ah, so it’s not exactly trim the size and scope of government, it’s get a better bargain but keep all the government we have.

If going green saved money without losing anything else in the bargain, government wouldn’t need to push it. I will note that polluters should pay the cost of their pollution and that this would make them recalculate some of their decisions, but we don’t need government pushing green solutions.

And CO2 is not pollution.

Howard Butler

The Big Three automakers have themselves to blame, so I'm not in favor of a bailout.

Good.

Obama should give people and businesses a two-year tax credit equal to the price of any American car up to $40,000, to be purchased in 2009.

How about just a plain old tax cut? Christ, why do people have to buy what you want them to just to hold on to the money they earn?

But the really big issues are Medicare and Social Security. It's time to call it an entitlement program.

Take the kiddy gloves off and call it what it really is: a pay-as-you-go Ponzi scheme.

Phase out people 50 and younger; grandfather in those already on SS and Medicare; Phase out people between the ages of 55 and 65, proportional to the years toward their promised benefit; replace the current payroll tax with a pay-as-you-go tax for the needy, based on net worth and income qualifications.

Means testing, including net-worth testing, is the only way to rectify this mess. Let's stop taking money from people who are working to pay for these programs we can no longer afford.

Anything that reduces SS and Medicare is fine with me, but let’s be bolder and just get rid of them. We can argue about how later; right now let’s just agree to do it.

John W. Scherer

Fact: Good people want to buy houses from people that want to sell them. Or buy homes to rent to others. But they want to buy.

Where did you get this fact? Was it peer reviewed? Does this mean that my friends who live in apartments are bad?

Problem: The system is such a mess, they can't. Even the most qualified of potential buyers.

This is bull. There is credit out there for people with decent credit ratings. There won’t be if some of the suggestions of our experts are followed, but there is right now.

Result: Chaos.

Dictionary.com says that chaos is a state of utter confusion or disorder; a total lack of organization or order. I fail to see how what is going on is chaos. What is happening now is a return to sanity, if the government will just get out of the way.

The political pendulum has swung from "anything goes" to "no way" since the system crashed last fall.

How about swinging back to the middle? The way buying and lending used to be; fair and equitable terms for qualified people. Apply the same rules for all borrowers and lenders. Then enforce them.

Your mortgage payment shouldn't be more than 1/3 of your income. Your income must be verifiable, and you have to show a proven and stable record of paying your bills on time.

I think the market was doing that on its own before the government pumped a bunch of cheap credit into the system.

Let's peg the interest rates at no more than 5%.

Which interest rates? All of them? And why 5%? What if the market clearing price is different? Talk to Karen.

Let's provide this additional inventive [sic] for investment property buyers: No Capital Gains Tax on proceeds if the house is sold within ten years of original purchase.

Anything that cuts taxes is good in at least that aspect, but why the strictures? How about a cut in taxes across the board?

Once we get qualified buyers into houses, there will be a positive impact on our economy. These homeowners will buy new carpet and drapes. They'll install cable or satellite TV. Maybe even buy a new TV and sofa. They'll buy building materials to expand or improve their property and hire trades people to fix anything from a leaky faucet to repairing a roof.

All this creates jobs. Good jobs.

New carpet and drapes would also be bought for the apartments they lived in if they don’t get in a home. Again, rather than improving the economy this is just reconfiguring it.

I don’t think “we” need to do any of this. The market has found a way to extend loans to qualified recipients for all sorts of purposes, home buying included. We just need to prevent government from injecting cheap credit into the system ever again.

Let's dispel a myth right now. Government doesn't create jobs.

Not true. Talk to FDR about that. I would agree if you said that government doesn’t create efficient jobs, or efficiently allocate resources, but it creates many thousands, even millions of jobs. They are usually worthless and frequently counterproductive, but they are jobs.

Government is pouring billions of dollars into banks. Let's just attach one string. The banks have to make this money available for investment. A trillion dollar deficit isn't the answer. A trillion dollar investment in real estate is. Not by government, but qualified and responsible buyers.

This has been the core of this nation's economic success for over two centuries.

Let's move forward by looking back at what worked so well in the past and will work in the future.

Please stop printing money we don't have. It's not as complicated as Washington is making it.

So you want government to pour money into the banks, to the tune of at least a trillion dollars for real estate investment, and force the banks to lend it. And then you ask the government to stop printing money we don’t have?

And this is what has been the core of our success for over two hundred years?

It is little surprise that we get the politicians that we have. This is the electorate that is voting for them.