Sit down and consider: This man had his finger on the economic button for 19 years.

"The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that." - Alan Greenspan

Why bother with that? Let's just see if Zimbabwe will float us a low-interest consolidation loan?

And to think I was worried that Social Security would dry up by the time I hit retirement age.

Hell, with policy like that I'd be absolutely rolling in the greenbacks in another 30 years. I'd be able to drop a stack of c-notes without a second thought. That and 15 minutes with my wrinkled old pucker might even rate me a moldy loaf of bread from the local Federal rations officer.

Luckily for us, Greenspan is out, and Ben Bernanke is in.

Ohhhhh. Right.

Note to self: Add several jars of Vaseline, and a carton of Prep-H to go-to-hell bag.

*I think I'd prefer a nice game of chess.

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Instapundit received an email from one of his readers, John Lucas:

One of the most despicable reactions I have seen from the US to this incident was the fact that the initial press reports quoted an unnamed government official as confirming that the KIAs were from Seal Team 6 and the 160th Avn. Bde., which is the special ops aviation unit. This unnamed person requested anonymity because the families of the KIAs had not yet been notified. Whoever this irresponsible government official was, he should be drawn and quartered. I can tell you from personal experience, when families back her he reports of a downed helicopter or some other incident with significant casualties, they are on pins and needles until the names are announced. Their hearts race every time the telephone rings. The fear is magnified if you think the casualties are may be from the area where your loved one is deployed.

The Specials Ops community is very small. And, the number of Navy Seals and 160th Aviation personnel in Afghanistan is even smaller. From the time this government creature could not resist making his unauthorized disclosure, he put every family of every deployed Seal and 160th crew member through unbelievable mental anguish, waiting to hear if their loved one was one of those killed. Having identified the units that the KIAs were from, he put every family on notice that there was a very high chance that their husband, father or son was dead. Is this guy so stupid that he didnÂ’t know this or did he just not care? That some government official would do this shows how out of touch they are with the military and military culture.

I can't imagine how difficult this has been for those people.

Thanks to commenter "Retread."

Posted by: rdbrewer at 05:15 AM | Comments (90)
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Thanks to Andy for covering the DOOM last week. I had a situation come up all of a sudden that had to be dealt with. (I filed this under "A pimp's work is never done", and cross-referenced it in "Keeping my pimp-hand strong." If you let those situations get out of control, you might as well just give up your corner and start selling insurance door to door.)

Lots and lots of DOOM over the weekend. Let's dive right in while the molten lava is still hot.

Not content with giving President Obama the singular distinction of being the very first President of the United States to oversee a downgrade of our sovereign debt, S&P warns that another downgrade might be in the offing a couple of months down the line. It's a hell of a note when a $2 Trillion error in arithmetic still doesn't change the equation much.

Of course, President Obama and the rest of his Administration made do with hectoring S&P and calling them names. Over in Europe, Italy raided their offices and impounded a lot of files. Maybe that will teach S&P to keep their big fat mouths shut!

Brad DeLong illustrates a tendency among economists that I discussed a while back: Being disconcerted when reality diverges from economic theory. Being smart is no guarantee against being dead wrong.

Mark Steyn, who has been doing DOOM since before DOOM was cool, pens another depressing yet terribly insightful column about our predicament entitled "Mad Debt". He also makes a point that I've wondered at myself: this "kicking the can down the road" business implies that we think our future selves (or our children) will be smarter, kinder, more prudent, and more willing to pay down debt than we are ourselves...and this in spite of the fact that the liabilities will be far greater in the future than they are now. Well, twenty years ago, we all thought the same thing of our future selves, and look what happened -- we turned out to be a bunch of spendthrift assholes.

Rick Santelli (the spiritual father of the Tea Party) does a little numerology. I really dislike this kind of analysis, I must say. In fact, I find a lot of technical analysis to be little more than faux-mathematical bullshit. You'd probably do just as well by having a monkey pick stocks at random.

Even the Israelis are raging against the dying of the light.

While the US is preoccupied with our outrage over our debt downgrade, the sovereign debt problem in Europe just keeps getting worse. It provides a certain kind of cold comfort: we are doomed, but everyone else is doomed worse. We live to suck another day! Woo hoo! USA! USA! USA!

S&P's little arithmetic error is a mere drop in the ocean of our debt. That's $223 trillion dollars, kids. Or about three to four times the entire economic output of the planet in a given year.

Noted ward of the state Fannie Mae is coming back to the taxpayer, bowl in hand, and asking for more gruel. Incredulous taxpayers look down at the ragged urchin and howl, "MORE?!?" (Remember when the liberal brain-trust assured everyone that Fannie Mae was completely sound and would never need a taxpayer bailout? Good times, man. Good times.)

A "read the whole thing" kind of essay from Janet Daley over at The Telegraph. The end of the capitalist welfare-state model is upon us: the band is packing up their instruments, the last drunks are being shooed out the door, and the bill for the party has been presented.

It would be nice to have some effective political leaders in this time of crisis, but alas, all we get are the washouts from the rodeo clown school.

Obama's problem is that he's not a leader. HeÂ’s a college professor, an activist whoÂ’s never had a real job. He asserts; the students nod and write it all down. He pontificates; the audience sits in respectful silence. He hates to be challenged, or to be called out. (Which is probably why Eric Cantor sets his teeth on edge.)

It looks like we're going to have Timmah to kick around for a while yet. (It's worth remembering that Geithner was hired by George W. Bush, not Barack H. Obama.)

In a rather stunning display of bad timing, 45,000 Verizon workers go on strike.

Extreme debtors. What really strikes me about these stories is the huge amount of student-loan debt that people are taking on in the (probably misguided) hope that more education will lead to a better job. Sadly, in many cases, the loan burdens will far outstrip any benefit the additional education confers. This bubble is going to pop soon, mark my words.

So Escape from L.A. was a documentary and not a crappy action movie. Who knew? California is so boned.

Oblivious, irony-immune jackass lectures a whole collection of oblivious, irony-immune jackasses.

UPDATE 1: Why Italy? Why Spain?

UPDATE 2: Wheeeee! The DOW opens down, baby, down.

UPDATE 3: No, I am not going to do some busted-ass Downfall parody about this. Mainly because that meme is more broken down than my girl KiKi, whose great-granddaughter just had her first baby. So...I'm not taking a cheap shot here. But I want you all to know that I could. And it would be funny. Because it's true.
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A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk I have a work station...

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Home Sizes Around the World - And Why Americans Aren't House Gluttons

So here's a graph from the BBC comparing the average size of homes built since 2003 among the US, Europe, and Australia. And unsurprisingly the US comes in on top with an average home size of 214 square meters (2,303 sf). (Note that 1 square meter is about 10 square feet)

I suspect the US being so far ahead is a relatively recent trend since there's also been a housing size bubble going on in the US - well since the early 80's at least.

But there's a huge gap between houses in the US and even the biggest houses in Europe with American houses being at least 50% larger. UK homes are amazingly tiny at only 818sf - practically bonsai houses.

Needless to say this gives ammunition to all the usual critics who complain about Americans consuming more than their fair share of resources including housing.

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Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:19 PM | Comments (529)
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I predicted this yesterday. And I'm just a moron.

"This is a Tea Party Downgrade"

It's "terrorism" to want to hold the line on taxes. It's "terrorism" to balk at a debt ceiling hike that doesn't increase taxes. It's "terrorism" to disagree with the Democrats as they struggle to continue their massive expansion of the federal government and shield the impact of this horrible economy from unions, their voters, and their complicit corporate cronies.

In short it's the fault of the Tea Party, all this malaise. Not the fault of Barack Obama and his 3 year policies. Which include subsidizing Brazilian oil exploration while choking it to death right the fuck here.

We're not done. We're just gettin warmed up.

UPDATE: We are ungovernable when we say "uhm, no". John F'n Kerry piles onto the meme.. Tea Party Downgrade. via andy.

via Treacher more...

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 01:06 PM | Comments (526)
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There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.
-- Donald Rumsfeld

Posted by: Monty at 10:41 AM | Comments (294)
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If you've been in the workforce for more than five years or so, chances are that you've been through at least one re-organization -- even service-oriented firms like restaurants and retail stores go through these things periodically. And management, no matter their line of business, loves their fads and trends.

Six Sigma, Total Quality Management, ISO 9000, and other "quality management" processes come and go. On the software development side, I can't even count the various development methodologies I've had inflicted on me over the years: waterfall, spiral, structured programming, object-oriented programming, functional programming, rapid application development (RAD), Extreme Programming (XP), Agile Development, and so on. And of course every new methodology comes with a variety of books and tools -- being a cynic, I suspect that many of these development methodologies are mainly a way to sell books and software to other firms.

Many of these fads fade away after a few years as the technology changes, and their books and tools fade with them. But occasionally (read: rarely) a book comes along that remains relevant and useful no matter what methodology a development team chooses to follow -- they do not espouse a flavor-of-the-month fad, but rather establish good engineering practice that survives paradigm shifts.

One such book is perhaps the foundational book of all software development: Fred Brooks' The Mythical Man-Month. This book remains insightful and relevant even decades after its original release.

Another such book is the "Gang of Four" book (or the "Gamma" book): Design Patterns: Elements of Re-Usable Object-Oriented Software. Of the gigantic paper mountain of books written about object-oriented software design, this is one of the few books to survive. I've used this book for years as a guide on how to model software systems, and it has proven quite useful even as technology changes.

A newer book, which may or may not survive the test of time, is Mike Cohn's Succeeding with Agile: Software Development Using Scrum. (Scrum is a term borrowed from rugby to describe the process of developers getting together to hash out their approach to a given software design.) "Agile development" is popular both in the software field and more widely in industry, and it seems to fit the new decentralized "smaller, faster, better" philosophy of downsized businesses better than old monolithic models.

One of my favorite "team dynamics" books is Patrick Lencioni's The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. This book isn't just about software development teams, but about any team environment, and it is full of good, hard-headed advice on how to form and manage effective teams. It's one of those rare business books that's actually wise in addition to being explanatory. (This book often strikes some people as "cutesy" due to the pseudo-fictional "parable" format, but I actually liked that approach because it wasn't as dry as the usual business-oriented tome is.)

I am a notorious skeptic about using development methodologies for software -- I've seen too many of them come and go over the years to believe their magical promises of productivity and efficiency. Ultimately (and as always), it boils down to the team, and then more specifically to the individual. No book or method in the world can substitute for individual skill, drive, and initiative. I think that too often the managers at many companies think that process can somehow iron out their people problems, and this inevitably leads to projects that fail. It's rather like cooking: if you don't start out with quality ingredients the food will taste lousy even if it looks good.

What's everyone else reading?

Posted by: Monty at 05:13 AM | Comments (173)
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As I was getting ready to watch a parade of leftists and the MFM (BIRM) on the Sunday shows blame the S&P downgrade on everyone but the actual parties responsible, I went back and refreshed my memory of the timeline.

• February 14 - President Obama releases his FY12 budget. While making the usual false claims about "responsibility" and "shared sacrifice", this budget did nothing to address our long term fiscal problems. This is the budget that would ultimately be rejected 97-0 in the senate.


• April 5 - The House GOP "Path to Prosperity" budget is released and met with howls from the left.


• April 13 - Obama gives that awful, partisan speech castigating Paul Ryan and the House budget plan. A sample:
  

  [The House GOP plan] is a vision that says up to 50 million Americans have to lose their health insurance in order for us to reduce the deficit. And who are those 50 million Americans? Many are someoneÂ’s grandparents who wouldnÂ’t be able afford nursing home care without Medicaid. Many are poor children. Some are middle-class families who have children with autism or DownÂ’s syndrome. Some are kids with disabilities so severe that they require 24-hour care. These are the Americans weÂ’d be telling to fend for themselves.



• April 15 - Jay Carney, in reiterating the administration's call for a "clean" debt limit increase, said it is "imperative" that a debt-limit vote not be "held hostage to any other action, because of the consequences of not raising the debt ceiling."


• April 18 - Standard & Poor's warns of a potential downgrade stating, in part:
  

  We view President Obama's and Congressman Ryan's proposals as the starting point of a process aimed at broader engagement, which could result in substantial and lasting U.S. government fiscal consolidation. That said, we see the path to agreement as challenging because the gap between the parties remains wide. We believe there is a significant risk that Congressional negotiations could result in no agreement on a medium-term fiscal strategy until after the fall 2012 Congressional and Presidential elections. If so, the first budget proposal that could include related measures would be Budget 2014 (for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, 2013), and we believe a delay beyond that time is possible.

  Standard & Poor's takes no position on the mix of spending and revenue measures the Congress and the Administration might conclude are appropriate. But for any plan to be credible, we believe that it would need to secure support from a cross-section of leaders in both political parties.



• July 19 - The House passed the "Cap, Cut and Balance" act (CCB) and sends it to the Senate where it is tabled. CCB is the only legislation ever introduced in this process that may have prevented S&P from downgrading US sovereign debt.

So as you can see, the downgrade was clearly due to GOP intransigence, especially the tea party caucus in the House. I don't think I even need to watch the Sunday shows now.

Related: Another good timeline from Rosetta over at The Hostages.

Posted by: andy at 04:30 AM | Comments (224)
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What up Moron Nation! Another Caturday is upon us. So get properly dressed, grab your proper refreshment and read on. The ONT is here.

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