Economic Policy – Page 30 – The Wrongologist

Monday Wake Up Call – January 12, 2015

Rod Stewart turned 70 over the weekend. Married three times with eight children, he is worth about $150 million, give or take, and is still working. There are hundreds of Stewart songs to choose from, but here is the Rodster with Jeff Beck and Ronnie Wood, from the Jeff Beck Group’s album “Truth” recorded in 1968, doing “Rock My Plimsoul”:

A Plimsoul is a guitar pedal. While Beck and Stewart give themselves writing credit for “Rock My Plimsoul“, it is actually by BB King, written in 1964. Here is his “Rock Me Baby“:

Monday linkage:

Remember sub-prime loans? They’re back as auto loans, with the same delinquencies:

Over 8.4% of subprime auto loans taken out in the first quarter of 2014 were already delinquent by November, according to an analysis of Equifax data by Moody’s Analytics…That’s the highest rate of early subprime delinquencies since…2008.

Is our nuclear waste a goldmine? Possibly.

Professional Cuddlers: The Snuggling Industry Takes Off, but Clothes Stay On. The WSJ is on top of all the new trends.

Doctor offers abortions from a ship: In her documentary, “Vessel”, Rebecca Gomperts, provided abortions on a ship in offshore waters.

Tiny computer with Windows 8.1, 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage for $149, debuts at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas:

Is it time for another George Zimmerman defense fund? Who could have predicted that Zimmerman would be in trouble again? Well, anyone with two functioning brain cells could have predicted it.

5 months of air strikes in Iraq and Syria in 4 charts: Since Aug. 8, the US has carried out 1,689 strikes in Iraq and Syria against more than 3,200 ISIS targets. From the first day of strikes through Jan. 2, the bombing has cost $1.2 billion, with an average daily cost of $8.2 million a day.

Analog search before Google: People sent their questions to reference librarians, no matter how strange. The New York Public Library had the foresight to write the questions down, including ones pre-dating the library’s reference desk itself. Like this one:

Ya sleep with a guy worth $27 million, and you don’t get his name? You deserve to remain single and poor.

Thought for the week: Give up on trying to appeal to reason. If appeals to reason worked, the GOP would get fewer votes than the Libertarians or Greens. During Adlai Stevenson’s 1956 presidential campaign, a woman called out: “Senator, you have the vote of every thinking person!”

Stevenson replied: “That’s not enough, madam, we need a majority!”

Where are We Going in 2015?

2015 got off to an early start here at the Global Headquarters of Wrong, when the smoke alarm system went off at 5:45 am. Naturally, our guest revelers were still tucked in their beds, trying to sleep off too much Vueve Clicot and caviar, and there was no smoke. It fell to Wrongo to disarm the system, change a smoke detector battery, and subsequently explain to the human who called from the central alarm call center that indeed, there was no fire.

So, despite Wrongo’s plan to avoid posts until his company leaves, here, for your amusement is a quote that describes a point in the past, and that might yet be prophetic for 2015:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

The opening paragraph of “A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens. The two cities referred to were London and Paris during the French Revolution that lasted 10 years, from 1789 to 1799. The book was written in 1859, seventy years after the start of the revolution.

Today, the two cities could be Washington DC and any one (or more) of the following: Teheran, Beijing, Moscow, Mumbai, or Riyadh.

But the domestic problems and burgeoning turmoil in the US today is loosely analogous to what France was going through in the 18th Century.

What are the chances that the outcome will be similar?

Friday Music Break – December 19, 2014

Today, a little more about Cuba. In January, while on a US government-sanctioned trip to Cuba, Wrongo met and became friendly with an award-winning author who also teaches at a local college in Havana. He is not a member of the Cuban Communist Party. Yesterday, I sent him a congratulatory email. Here is his reply:

What a great day for the future of this country, thanks to everyone´s support. We are starting a new path and I hope the future is prominent for all who genuinely dreamt of this great opportunity. Personally I will keep up the fight to bring both countries even closer. We all deserve it.

He is representative of many of the people I met during the week in Cuba. Many struggle to put food on the table, many are entrepreneurial, holding down 2 and sometimes 3 private sector jobs. And all were optimistic about the future, despite most being cash-poor.

A diplomatic thaw is a hopeful opening for both countries. Time will tell if the governments can match the willingness of their people to create an atmosphere of peace and cooperation.

Wrongo was a freshman in college when JFK gave what some call the “scariest speech ever”. We were playing cards in a dorm room, using a bed for a table as Kennedy spoke. Everyone in that room was frightened, and subsequently, all were drafted, or volunteered for military service after graduation.

Here is a short reminiscence about the times and the reactions in Washington and the Kremlin in 1962:

To help celebrate the end of belligerence between our two countries, here is Phil Ochs with “I Ain’t Marching Anymore” from 1965. It was about Vietnam, but it works for our 55-year disagreement with Cuba as well:

Sample lyric:
Now the labor leader’s screamin’
when they close the missile plants,
United Fruit screams at the Cuban shore,
Call it “Peace” or call it “Treason,”
Call it “Love” or call it “Reason,”
But I ain’t marchin’ any more,

Phil, we could really use your voice now. The fight isn’t over.

See you Sunday.

U-Turn in Cuba/US Relations

Yesterday, Mr. Obama announced that the US and Cuba will resume diplomatic relations after 55 years of dysfunction and belligerence. Predictably, a few Congressional leaders and Republican presidential hopefuls lashed out at the president and the decision. Jeb Bush said:

The benefactors of President Obama’s ill-advised move will be the Castro brothers.

This was followed by these predictable words from Sen. McCain (R-AZ) and his paramour, Sen. Huckleberry Butch Me Up (R-SC), who said that the policy shift reflected that: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

America and the values it stands for [are] in retreat and decline…It is about the appeasement of autocratic dictators, thugs and adversaries, diminishing America’s influence in the world.

The Obama party line is: “the current policy has failed for 55 years. The Castro brothers have outlasted 8 US presidents. Let’s try something different.”

And here we are. This is now possible because the first generation of Cuban émigrés no longer completely control the Cuban voting bloc in Florida, the most crucial swing state to both parties. Consider the following:

• According to the Pew Research Center, there are about 1.9 million Cuban-Americans in the US. 70% of Cuban-Americans live in Florida, making them the most geographically concentrated of the 12 largest Hispanic origin groups.
• We know that the younger Cuban-Americans shifted toward the left during the 2012 election. In 2012, Obama won a majority of the Cuban-American vote in Miami. He won Cubans nationally by two points.

Here is how the political sands have shifted:

Thus, politics no longer drives the decision about our relationship with Cuba. Our 55 year-old hard line position was more about those upper middle class Cuban-American émigrés who hoped that the embargo would eventually force the return of houses that they abandoned 55 years ago when they left Cuba for Miami.

A final reason why this works for both sides right now is the Saudi decision to force lower oil prices. Cuba cannot sustain its economy on its own. As an example, Cuba now imports an estimated 80% percent of the food its people consume, at a cost of more than $1.5 billion per year. Venezuela has been Cuba’s prime financial benefactor, but the Venezuelan economy is in terrible shape, even before the current sharp decline in the price of oil, which is its primary source of state revenue.

They will soon be forced to cut Cuba’s rations. That will be a huge opening for the US, particularly since Cuba’s former benefactor, Russia, has its own economic difficulties as well.

Despite the Republican bleating about Cuba as a communist dictatorship with a horrible human rights record, being a communist government with horrible human rights record hasn’t stopped America from dealing with China, which these same Republicans think is just fine.

So why not trade with Cuba? How can trade with Cuba be a sign of political weakness, but trade with China and Vietnam is vital to global economic progress and a spirit of international harmony?

It’s been wrong for the US to continue to hold a cold war grudge against Cuba. The US could most readily help the people of Cuba by opening up trade between the two countries.

Let’s close with a song about going to Cuba by Jackson Browne:

Sample lyric:
I’m going to drink the Ron Anejo
and walk out on the Malecon
in one hand a Monte Cristo
and in the other an ice cream cone.

And they truly love their ice cream.

Good luck to the Cubans, a lovely people, and a lovely country.

Monday Wake Up Call – December 15, 2014

Today’s Wake-Up Call is for Congress and the president. Mr. Obama’s support of the “CRomnibus” year-end spending package showed how the next two years in Washington will play out, and it doesn’t bode well for anyone (you) who doesn’t employ a registered lobbyist.

You already know that the budget bill included a rollback of derivatives reform, and a nearly ten-fold increase in the donation limits for party committees. What may have been less obvious is that the bill cuts $60 million from the EPA and $346 million, about 3%, from the IRS. The IRS cuts tell wealthy earners that tax avoidance is safe, with little expectation of an audit.

The White House basically turned on its own party, accepting roll-backs of liberal priorities. It’s clear that this kind of legislative sausage-making will be the rule in 2015.

Other benefits for specific lobbies:

• Private Pension Plan trustees could cut pension benefits to current retirees, reversing 40 years of promises to workers who earned their retirement packages.
• Voters in DC who approved legalized marijuana will see their initiative die, since Congress prevented the DC government from taxing or regulating the drug’s sale.
• Trucking companies can make their employees put in an 82-hour work week without mandatory time off.
• Pell grants for college students will be cut, with the money diverted to private student loan contractors.
• Blue Cross and Blue Shield will be allowed to count “quality improvement” measures toward their mandatory health spending under Obamacare’s “medical loss ratio” provision, a windfall that saves millions of dollars.
• The EPA is blocked from regulating certain water sources for farmers.
• Reduced nutrition standards in school lunches and the Women, Infant and Children food aid program was a gift for potato growers.
• The bill halts the listing of new endangered species.
• It stops the regulation of lead in hunting ammunition.

The White House never threatened a veto of the CRomnibus over these riders, and actually supported the bill. House Democrats complained of being “lobbied by the White House” on the legislation. This is sure to be a recurring policymaking feature of the next two years.

So this is the new normal on Capitol Hill. The precedent for making changes on headline issues by tucking rollbacks into must-protect or must-pass legislation has been set with the White House’s active cooperation.

In other words, there’s your proof that elections have consequences.

Here are a couple of wake-up tunes for Monday. First, in keeping with the prime directive (well, maybe it’s the sub-prime directive), that the banks can never fail again, here is the late Pete Seeger doing “The Banks are made of Marble”:

The song was written by Les Rice in 1948 or 1949. Rice was a farmer in Ulster County, NY. Seeger lived across the Hudson from him, and apparently they met on several occasions.

Our second tune is in keeping with the other prime directive of a holly, jolly season. Captain Picard does “Let it Snow”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-zdMkOZTKs&app=desktop

Monday’s Hot Links:

The US attempted to co-opt Cuba’s hip-hop scene to foment revolution: USAID tried to recruit underground rappers in Cuba to sow unrest against Raul Castro’s government. They failed. Compared to the CIA torture story, this is small potatoes, but still another example of how we can’t stay out of any country’s internal affairs. Because, freedom!

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York ruled that insider trading is ok as long as the person accused of insider trading didn’t know that the original tipper disclosed the information in return for personal gain. Guessing that you’ll never know.

Thirty years after the Bhopal chemical accident, the worst in history, the spill’s effects are hitting a new generation. Professional clean-up hasn’t happened and there are no signs that the environmental catastrophe will end.

Congress and the President are going in the opposite direction from the Federal Reserve. The Fed is making the banks pony up more reserves to protect their balance sheets, while Congress and Obama are saying “go big on derivatives baby, we’ve got your back”.

Study supports the theory that all ‘men are idiots’. Well, it wasn’t a scientific study, but it looked at 318 Darwin Awards cases, of which 282 Darwin Awards went to males, and just 36 awards were given to females. Males made up 88.7% of Darwin Award winners.

Old news department: The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll says that 56% of Americans say the country’s economic and political systems stacked against them. Different result from the NYT survey last week.

Your thought for the week:

I had two options, to remain silent and then be killed. Or I could speak up, and then be killed. I chose to speak up. – Malala Yousafzai, from her Nobel Peace Prize speech

Friday Music Break – December 12, 2014

Today is the birthday of both of the Wrongologist’s parents, born on the same day in different years. Dad was 2 years younger than Mom, they were married for more than 50 years, and both died at 85. They were born during WWI, were teenagers during the depression, and thus missed out on the education that today, we think of as necessary to get ahead.

They lived through WWII, Korea, and Vietnam, and through the greatest expansion of the middle class in our country’s history. They went from horse-drawn vehicles on the streets of Brooklyn to owning cars and consumer electronics. They were Republicans who voted for Dewey and saw Nixon resign.

Their world view was that hard work brought continuous economic improvement. They didn’t feel tied to one job − there was another one out there that paid better, that held greater responsibility, which would pay off your house, send your kids to college and provide for your retirement. They were the last of the majority stay-at-home mom generation. Dad never made more than $40k per year, but they saved enough to buy a waterfront home in Florida, and to live there until just before the time when their money ran out.

Fast forward to 2014, and people have little reason to be so optimistic. On Thursday, the NYT released a poll that found that only 64% said they still believed in the American dream, the lowest result in 20 years. The American Dream for depression-era adults was not about becoming rich, it was about being able to move upwards, to reach a greater level of prosperity, something that, from the 1950s through the 1970s, everyone believed was possible.

Now, that optimistic vision is dying for Americans like my mom and dad, and Washington doesn’t care.

Onward to music. Today we feature Tom Waits, 2011 inductee into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Those who have heard Waits’s work know that he’ll never have to cancel a concert due to laryngitis. We start with a tune that shows how Americans were fools for the advertising of the 1970s. That’s probably an eternal condition in America, one that reflects the continuing (and wildly successful) effort on the part of corporations to sell us shit we don’t really need. Here is “Step Right Up”:

The key lyric is a thought for the ages:
“The large print giveth and the small print taketh away”

We close with “Jersey Girl”. Most people think that this song is by Bruce Springsteen, but it was written by Waits. He wrote it with is soon-to-be wife, Kathleen Brennan. This is a long video for a short tune. You can go to 3:51 where Waits says “this is for Kathleen” and just hear his version of the song, or you can listen from the beginning to his extended shtick with the audience:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDAu-jdXd_c

See you Sunday.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – December 7, 2014

Still thinking about the string of police cases, their very similar nature and outcomes. It isn’t a secret that America has a broad, diverse population and a terrible past trying to deal with our diversity.

Our past isn’t going away. Our diverse population isn’t going away either. It’s who we are. We occasionally celebrate it, boasting that we are a melting pot. But, we might be more accurately described as a smorgasbord, not a one pot dinner. That means you can avoid the pickled herring if you don’t like it.

But it’s always rude to ridicule people who like pickled herring. And many of us have moved way beyond rude to outright hostile, and the whole buffet table could be pulled down right in front of our eyes.

The food fight is already in progress, except it has real casualties. We are many kinds of American, and this is our home. Can we find a way to keep it?

It is all about your perspective:

More perspective:

Other perspectives:

Media explains how to spin the unspinable:

Some kids’ Xmas lists are out of reach:

Cheaper Oil Prices: Who Wins?

When OPEC announced on Thanksgiving Day that it would maintain oil production at 30 million barrels per day, a volume above the world’s current supply/demand equilibrium, the global price of oil dropped precipitously. Today, you can pay more for a gallon of milk than a gallon of gas.

After the meetings ended, the Saudi oil minister was smiling victoriously, while representatives of several other OPEC nations were steaming. That group included Venezuela, Algeria, and Iran. From Reuters:

Saudi Arabia’s oil minister told fellow OPEC members they must combat the US shale oil boom, arguing against cutting crude output in order to depress prices and undermine the profitability of North American producers. Ali al-Naimi won the argument at Thursday’s meeting, against the wishes of ministers from OPEC’s poorer members such as Venezuela, Iran and Algeria which had wanted to cut production to reverse a rapid fall in oil prices.

The question before the house is who gets hurt by lower priced oil?

• Iran, Venezuela, Algeria, Mexico, Iraq, Nigeria, and Ecuador have built their domestic budgets based on oil prices that exceed $100/barrel of oil. But, yesterday’s price was $70.54. Venezuela already borrowed $4 Billion from the Chinese, and then spent $1 Billion in a week to cover domestic needs.
• Russia’s break-even budget price of oil is over $100/barrel.
• Canada has managed to increase its production of oil by a million barrels a day over the last decade. But almost all of that increase has come from oil sands that are unprofitable at today’s price.
• Mexico’s oil was selling for $63.72/ barrel on Monday, its lowest point since July 2009. Mexico cannot survive for long at this price, especially considering that oil revenues account for roughly one-third of government finances.
• Keystone Pipeline: The Fiscal Times reports today that it may never be completed. Lower oil prices may make Canadian oil sands output (it is supposed to travel via Keystone to Louisiana) too costly to ship. Also, Saudi is taking aim at Canada, since the Saudi crude competes directly with Canada’s tar sands oil, which is the highest cost oil being produced today.
• The Koch Brothers may now have to produce oil at a loss from their vast holdings of tar sands. But, their party is the Saudis’ best friend, so in a way, this may cause some Republicans to recalibrate their love of Saudi Arabia.

We should be happy with lower oil prices, right?

• Gas prices at the pump are down dramatically. Lower gas prices are an increase in take-home pay for Americans who drive.
• Iran’s foreign policy is very expensive, since it supports Syria, Hamas and Iraq. They may soon have to make difficult choices that entail scaling back their regional commitments. They may have trouble maintaining those commitments and their nuclear program.
• Russia’s currency has fallen steeply along with the price of oil, meaning that it may have to restrict imports of key goods. Russia imports a lot of basic products, including beef, cheese, shoes, TV’s, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. According to Bloomberg, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov estimates that Russia would also lose about $100 billion in revenue next year because of falling oil prices.

We live in a complex world:

1. Our major ally, the Dark Ages Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, perhaps the world’s largest funder of terrorism in the ME, is attempting to prevent our move towards energy independence. As long as the Saudis control much of our energy supply, we will remain involved in these ME wars. Many people think that our State Dept. may have encouraged the Saudis in order to punish Russia for blocking our takeover in the Ukraine.
2. Oil is not used to generate much electricity in the US. Cheaper oil does nothing to effect the economic viability of solar or wind, whose main competitors are coal and natural gas. The primary effect here in the US is twofold:

• Reduce the economic attractiveness of fracking (a good percentage of fracking is for natural gas, and will not be effected by cheaper oil).
• Reduce the demand for electric cars to the extent that their sales are a function of lower gas prices.

Low oil prices over a long enough period will burst the US fracking bubble. We could react to cheap oil by ending fracking and never starting it up again. We could plug the wells, clean the soil, repair the damage from earthquakes, pay the medical bills of the innocent folks forced to live near these sites. And, in a time of water scarcity, save the billions of gallons of water that are used to frack today.

Finally, the economic pressure lower priced oil puts on our so-called “enemies” brings with it the real cost of confirming the neo-con view that the US can still muscle its way around in the world. So, will our relations with Iran, Syria, and Russia will remain intractable? Or, can it lead to a nuclear deal with Iran and a political accommodation with Russia? That has to be the underlying bet by Saudi Arabia and the US.

The “oil weapon” was used in 1973 against the US. We hated OPEC’s war on our economy back then. We of course, used that very same old oil weapon when we embargoed oil sales by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Skip ahead a couple of decades, and it is now smart policy, it’s effective, and it’s now the American way.

Oil, as always, remains the centerpiece of our Middle East strategy.

Who Gets the Dynamic Score?

No, it isn’t Kobe, it’s the corporations that backed the GOP in November. When Republicans took control of both houses of Congress, they won an important new power: They now can change how the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) scores tax cuts and budget cuts. The changes they are planning can be used to make tax cuts appear less harmful to the deficit.

For years, the GOP has wanted to change the way that the (supposedly) nonpartisan CBO calculates — or, in Washington speak, “scores” — the budgetary impact of changes to the tax code. The methodology that the Republicans want to use is called “Dynamic Scoring”. Dynamic Scoring has been popular among conservatives since the 1970s. Instead of just figuring out how much more money a tax increase would produce for the Treasury, or how much a tax cut would cost in lost revenue, the GOP wants to use complex computer models to try to predict the long-term, and broader impact of hikes and cuts on the economy, since they are looking for proof of GDP and tax revenue growth.

Here’s how it would work. In January, Republicans will be in charge of the CBO, which produces official budget projections and the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT), which calculates how tax laws affect revenue.

Today, when the CBO and the JCT calculate the impact of tax laws on government income, they consider how Americans might alter their behavior in response to tax rate changes. But the two staff departments do not evaluate how tax legislation could affect economic growth—largely because those sorts of impacts are hard to predict.

Republicans have believed this as an article of faith since the days of St. Ronnie. Tax cuts lead to greater economic activity, which in turn produces greater tax revenues—a perpetual motion revenue machine that is the wet dream of most Republicans. Scott Walker used this kind of “math” in Wisconsin. The result? A $2.1 Billion budget shortfall. Oh, and there is Kansas, where another Republican governor, Sam Brownback, is staring at $1.3 billion in deficits after cutting taxes and hoping for economic growth.

Math can be much easier when the answer is whatever you want it to be. But, the new math is the first step toward passing the Republican version of tax reform.

A keystone of any successful tax reduction plan is that they ought to be revenue neutral, that is, tax receipts will not go down, despite tax cuts. Using this form of new Republican math, you can inflate the value of possible future revenues from today’s tax cuts. That can be sold to the American people as a new version of “revenue neutral” although it is really a new version of “take the nickel little boy, it’s bigger than the dime”. This is extremely appealing to Republicans, since it makes tax cuts appear to cost the government less than they actually do – it allows them to say that tax cuts mostly pay for themselves—and wave the JCT-CBO seal of approval to justify that claim.

Democratic leaders and progressive economists reject dynamic scoring as an accounting gimmick, pointing to the aftermath of the Bush tax cuts as evidence that tax breaks do not create tax revenue. The Washington Examiner reports that Kenneth Kies, a GOP-nominated former director of the JCT, says that this accounting device falls:

Somewhere between pure mathematics and theology.

The real dynamic score will be by America’s corporations and financial firms.

Think it won’t happen? Incoming Chair of the House Ways and Means committee (which has jurisdiction over tax reform), is Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI). Last week, in an interview with the Washington Post, Ryan said he will push to make sure that the two congressional budget scorekeepers use dynamic scoring when evaluating GOP tax reform legislation. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), incoming Chair of the Senate Finance Committee, said last week that he was open to implementing the change.

Ryan and Hatch can implement dynamic scoring by simply ordering the two budget scorekeepers to accept this budgeting method. If such direct intervention seems too heavy-handed, Republican legislators have another option: They can appoint directors at the CBO and JCT who will use the kind of assumptions the GOP favors. Democrats can do nothing to prevent that.

So, what will stop Congress from using politically motivated economic models that incorporate rosy assumptions? Absolutely nothing.

Behold the future − you voted in the Republicans.

In practice, Dynamic Scoring is just another way for Republicans to enact tax cuts and block tax increases. It is not about honest revenue-estimating; it’s about using smoke and mirrors to institutionalize Republican ideology into the budget process.

Monday Wake Up – December 1, 2014

Today’s Wake Up is for entrenched power in America.

Inequality and political polarization has progressed to the point that the “The Hunger Games” trilogy is being taken seriously as literature with an important message for our time.

Its symbols are appearing in protests around the world and have made it into opinion columns:

Some protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, have adopted Katniss’s revolutionary slogan, “If we burn, you burn with us.” In Thailand, students flashing District 12’s three-fingered salute — a symbol of protest in the film — have recently been arrested. (The salute has apparently been outlawed since spring.) In a few short years, “The Hunger Games” and its symbology have become a part of the cultural commons.

America’s upper middle class thinks that inequality is an issue because it means low GDP growth, solely because people can’t buy enough consumer products to create good jobs. However, there could be an inflection point ahead when having more consumer goods ceases to be the goal of the middle class, or the people in poverty.

Look back at the French and Russian monarchies for a lesson about what that transition might look like, and how fast it can come about.

Today’s wake up music isn’t designed to get you dancing. It is the political anthem, “We Can’t Make It Here” by James McMurtry. McMurtry is the son of the novelist Larry McMurtry. The song won the 2005 Americana Music Award for song of the year. Music critic Robert Christgau has ranked “We Can’t Make It Here” as the best song of the 2000s. Bob Lefsetz said that “We Can’t Make It Here” has stood the test of time because of its unmitigated truth. Listen, while thinking that this was written in 2005, not this year:

Sample lyrics:
Will I work for food, will I die for oil,
Will kill for power and to us the spoils,
The billionaires get to pay less tax,
The working poor get to fall through the cracks

Monday’s Links:

Millennials are having to choose between affordable housing and jobs. It has always been true that there are fewer jobs where housing is affordable, but today, those two halves of the American Dream are living farther apart. Jobs with high wages are in unaffordable cities. The affordable homes cluster in the cities with lower wages and less upwardly mobile families.

Governor Christie (R-NJ) gives early sign that he is running for President. Christie vetoed a bill that would have banned crating pigs. New Jersey has few pig farms, but they are widespread in Iowa.

You can unknowingly lease a dog in San Diego CA. People who thought they purchased a dog using time payments actually leased the pet. After 27 months of payments, they could pay a $93.52 fee to end the lease, or $187.04 to purchase the pet. Why not just get a rescue animal? Read the paperwork, people! This is probably the next Wall Street securitization scheme.

Pope raises eyebrows by saying:

When we read about Creation in Genesis, we run the risk of imagining God was a magician, with a magic wand able to do everything — but that is not so…

His point was that Catholics should believe in evolution and the big bang theory. Next, Kansas and Texas will probably try to excommunicate him. Clearly, he’s been confused by those science-y people.

News from Russia:

Are the sanctions working? Russian firms that are under sanctions by the West must refinance $20 billion by April-sanctions are making that difficult.

There is a serious nuclear waste problem in the Arctic, brought to you by Russia. According to a joint Russian-Norwegian report issued in 2012, there are 17,000 containers of nuclear waste, 19 rusting Soviet nuclear ships and 14 nuclear reactors cut out of atomic vessels sitting on the bottom of the Kara Sea. The worst case scenario is described as “an Arctic underwater Chernobyl, played out in slow motion.” Oh, great, and I was worried about Crimea.

Water thievery is growing in California along with the drought. Thieves are cutting pipes and taking water from fire hydrants, storage tanks, creeks and rivers to get their hands on the precious commodity.

Thought for the week:

I always thought if you worked hard enough and tried hard enough, things would work out. I was wrong. –Katharine Graham (Owner of the Washington Post)

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: Economic Policy