Say Anything Blog

I laughed but it certainly makes the obvious point.

An American conservative wouldn’t fib about an Obama judicial nominee, would he? An aberration I’m sure.

Clusterstock points us to a couple of excellent articles on why the Obama Administration’s Public/Private Investment Plan is a bad deal for taxpayers and may not work anyway. Money manager David Kotok uses coin flipping to illustrate why the deck is stacked while Nassim Taleb decries the latest version of the Privatise the Profits/Socialise the Losses exercise which always benefits the usual suspects.

The Obama gang just can’t shoot straight on this one.

Did you know that Tom Jones recorded Black Betty? I didn’t and I sort of wish I’d never found out.

Canada breathed a sigh of relief as the host of FNC’s Red Eye apologised for last week’s satirical segment on Canada’s military and its efforts in Afghanistan. Timing in comedy is everything and Canadian hackles were raised by the sketch’s appearance in a week that saw four Canadians killed while in service against the Taliban.

I don’t think Canadians were aware of the program’s existence before now…probably a lot of Americans were similarly in the dark. In normal circumstances the issue might have garnered 20 seconds on the news and would have been treated as simply another example of Fox ineptness or lame late night comedy but the timing…timing is everything after all.

At any rate, the issue is already dying down and my American friends need not fear a repeat of the 1812 shellacking…your White House is safe.

Back to hockey.

If I was a Say Anything reader wanting to play Yahoo fantasy baseball in a Head to Head format and if I was looking for a league that needs just one more team then I would send me a private message.

Just saying…

Governor Bobby Jindal comes out firmly against governmental interference in volcano monitoring but Rush says he’s smart so cut him some slack…or something like that.

I know that belief in limited government is honestly held and I for one believe that too much government is not a good thing but at some point the Republican party is going to have to look beyond the contemporary conservative echo chamber if it wants to seriously entertain the prospect of effective opposition and an eventual return to government.

Martin Wolf has an interesting article in the Financial Times where he highlights the similarities and differences between Japan then and the World now.

The good news is that the asset price bubbles themselves were far smaller in the US than in Japan (see charts below). Furthermore, the US central bank has been swifter in recognising reality, cutting interest rates quickly to close to zero and moving towards “unconventional” monetary policy.

The bad news is that the debate over fiscal policy in the US seems even more neanderthal than in Japan: it cannot be stressed too strongly that in a balance-sheet deflation, with zero official interest rates, fiscal policy is all we have. The big danger is that an attempt will be made to close the fiscal deficit prematurely, with dire results. Again, the US administration’s proposals for a public/private partnership , to purchase toxic assets, look hopeless. Even if it can be made to work operationally, the prices are likely to be too low to encourage banks to sell or to represent a big taxpayer subsidy to buyers, sellers, or both. Far more important, it is unlikely that modestly raising prices of a range of bad assets will recapitalise damaged institutions. In the end, reality will come out. But that may follow a lengthy pretence.

Pretences are rarely good things.

Don’t try this at home.

Pretty cool though.

via Rumproast

While I am a proud Canadian I have to recognise the genius of America’s “Two Holidays in Cold January” strategy. I continue to lobby for a Gordie Howe Day but I remain up against it.

Enjoy.

According to Harper’s Ken Silverstein, that’s the number of Illinois governors charged with criminal conduct since 1960. I also got a chuckle out of Jeffery Toobin’s post at the New Yorker which contains the delicious anecdote of the racetrack owner who tried to deduct her bribe payments on her income tax.

It seems we have our very own constitutional crisis and it’s on a full boil. The condensed version is that the minority Conservative government doesn’t want a Parliamentary vote on a recent economic statement because it’s likely to lose and thus will have to resign. The Liberal and New Democratic parties have agreed to form a coalition with the support of the Quebec separatist BQ party. The Conservatives would obviously rather hold another election but the opposition parties may be asked to govern by the Governor General if they can demonstrate that they enjoy the confidence of the House of Commons. Prime Minister Harper will be meeting with the GG on Friday in an attempt to persuade her to reject the coalition’s proposal.

I’m of two minds on the issue. On the one hand, Mr. Harper is a bully who roused the opposition’s ire with some ill considered tactics and I’d like nothing better than to see him and his party given the boot. OTOH, we just had an election two months ago, the opposition Liberal party is in disarray, we’re facing the same economic downturn that every other nation is facing and I think that this is the time for the parties to work together rather than slug it out. I was hoping that calmer and saner heads would prevail eventually but Mr. Harper doesn’t appear interested in conciliation if his recent remarks are to be believed.

It should make for an interesting weekend if nothing else.

These guys in India just did…good for them.