April 28, 2011 archive

Surely end-times are upon us when an economist and major investment fund manager accurately perceives and characterizes reality independent of his wish to make oodles of lucre based on a mark-to-fantasy “model” of reality.  To be fair, Wiki characterizes Jeremy Grantham thusly:

Grantham’s investment philosophy can be summarized by his commonly used phrase “reversion to the mean.” Essentially, he believes that all asset classes and markets will revert to mean historical levels from highs and lows. His firm seeks to understand historical changes in markets and predict results for seven years into the future. When there is deviation from historical means (averages), the firm may take an investment position based on a return to the mean. The firm allocates assets based on internal predictions of market direction.[4]

In his own words, Grantham is an anti-bubble investor:

“For the record, I wrote an article for Fortune published in September of 2007 that referred to three “near certainties”: profit margins would come down, the housing market would break, and the risk-premium all over the world would widen, each with severe consequences. You can perhaps only have that degree of confidence if you have been to the history books as much as we have and looked at every bubble and every bust. We have found that there are no exceptions. We are up to 34 completed bubbles. Every single one of them has broken all the way back to the trend that existed prior to the bubble forming, which is a very tough standard. So it’s simply illogical to give up the really high probabilities involved at the asset class level. All the data errors that frighten us all at the individual stock level are washed away at these great aggregations. It’s simply more reliable, higher-quality data.”[5]

Grantham’s latest newsletter (pdf) is absolutely chock-a-block with dire warnings about the Mother of All Bubbles (hydrocarbon-based human population growth) and what can only be referred to as extreme, anti-orthodox, economic heresy.

Our regular featured content-

• Six in The Morningby mishima
• On This Day In History April 28 by TheMomCat
• Punting the Pundits by TheMomCat
• Evening Edition by ek hornbeck

and these featured articles-

• Turning Japanese by ek hornbeck
• 9/11 First Responders Bill: Not Quite Right by TheMomCat
• Notes on the Economy and the Budget by TheMomCat

The Stars Hollow Gazette

This is an Open Thread

Cardinal George offered a post as president of a nearby high school to Father Michael Pfleger who has been at St. Sabina for 30 years. St. Sabina is a black church on the south side of Chicago.  (For those of you who don’t know – Pfleger is a visible – very visible – outspoken critic of those in power – including the Church and the Daley and Bush administration.  He may still be in O’s camp but I can assure he is in the camp of the poor and voiceless.)

Father Pfleger refused. The Cardinal asked him to leave the Church. You know he is shrill!  He has been a thorn in the side of the Church for a long time.  He is an antiwar activist and a noisy one.  He can be a SOB.  But he was at most of the antiwar and affordable housing rallies in Chicago. Shouldn’t a priest be with his people – even the Liberal ones.

He is an inspiring speaker.  I didn’t like what he said about Hillary.  But look, he is a man who speaks out.  He spoke out for the Iraqi people. He spoke out for his black parishioners.  He spoke out for Obama (unfortunately) but at the time many people were fooled or desperate for a change.

What shocked me were the comments I read after the AP article.  And here is where I am a naive little girl (albeit an older one).  People who commented don’t like him.    They said in effect “Good bye – here’s your hat; what’s your hurry.”  Many terrible remarks about Liberals also slipped in.  You know when you spend time on the liberal/progressive blogs, you forget about the hatred out there heaped on people like us.  He was called Communist, anti-American, a cafeteria Catholic (that’s me btw).  

We were roundly mocked and yelled at during the first marches of the Iraq War.  But the marches became so large that the police were forced to be careful – and had to wear name tags for one.  They tried to get away with that.  You wouldn’t know about the rallies because the non-shrill press and tv personalities did not give any airtime to us. The riff-raff.  Father Pfleger always stood with the riff-raff.  I wish him well.

You have to hand it to him!  He was a political genius to stay in that position for as long as he did.

I wish him well!  Shrillness – it doesn’t count for the Tea Party – only for Liberals/Progressives.  I hate the MSM.  And I say with every shrill shred of my soul.

UPDATE:  According to a headline in Chicago Sun-Times, the congregation of St. Sabine took to the streets for a march.  Glad to see it.    

In an essay submitted for a college class, a young woman recently wrote about her sexual relationship and resulting pregnancy with her high school band director.  Though she changed some of the details and names in her paper, enough autobiography was left intact that statutory rape charges against the man have been filed.  Various news agencies, websites, and blogs have pursued different angles when presenting the details of this case.  The story found within the link posted above treats the accused like a common criminal, inviting us to view him in the worst possible light, while simultaneously encouraging our sympathy for the victim.  If this were a clear-cut case of non-consensual sexual assault, then this approach would be more appropriate and justified.  But as we learn more, and confront different perspectives of this multi-layered story, the truth itself begins to drift into grey area territory.  Separating facts from bias might as well be our eternal homework assignment.

Devastating storms swirl into Georgia as death toll rises  

Alabama sees the most damage yet from a massive tornado

msnbc.com news services

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – A wave of tornado-spawning storms that ravaged Mississippi and Alabama, having splintered buildings in its path and leaving scores dead in its wake, is now in Georgia.

Authorities said early Thursday that nine people had been killed in that state,increases the death toll to 82 across four states in the South. Alabama is by far the hardest-hit, with at least 61 deaths, including 16 in Tuscaloosa, according to the city’s mayor. The death toll was expected to rise.

The university town of Tuscaloosa was obliterated, a nuclear power plant had to use backup generators and even a weather service office had to be evacuated because of the storms. The mayor said the city’s infrastructure was devastated.

Crossposted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Culture of Complicity Tied to Stricken Nuclear Plant

By NORIMITSU ONISHI and KEN BELSON, The New York Times

Published: April 26, 2011

Despite a new law shielding whistle-blowers, the regulator, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, divulged Mr. Sugaoka’s identity to Tokyo Electric, effectively blackballing him from the industry. Instead of immediately deploying its own investigators to Daiichi, the agency instructed the company to inspect its own reactors. Regulators allowed the company to keep operating its reactors for the next two years even though, an investigation ultimately revealed, its executives had actually hidden other, far more serious problems, including cracks in the shrouds that cover reactor cores.

Investigators may take months or years to decide to what extent safety problems or weak regulation contributed to the disaster at Daiichi, the worst of its kind since Chernobyl. But as troubles at the plant and fears over radiation continue to rattle the nation, the Japanese are increasingly raising the possibility that a culture of complicity made the plant especially vulnerable to the natural disaster that struck the country on March 11.

…

A 10-year extension for the oldest of Daiichi’s reactors suggests that the regulatory system was allowed to remain lax by politicians, bureaucrats and industry executives single-mindedly focused on expanding nuclear power. Regulators approved the extension beyond the reactor’s 40-year statutory limit just weeks before the tsunami despite warnings about its safety and subsequent admissions by Tokyo Electric, often called Tepco, that it had failed to carry out proper inspections of critical equipment.

The mild punishment meted out for past safety infractions has reinforced the belief that nuclear power’s main players are more interested in protecting their interests than increasing safety. In 2002, after Tepco’s cover-ups finally became public, its chairman and president resigned, only to be given advisory posts at the company. Other executives were demoted, but later took jobs at companies that do business with Tepco. Still others received tiny pay cuts for their role in the cover-up. And after a temporary shutdown and repairs at Daiichi, Tepco resumed operating the plant.

…

In Japan, the web of connections between the nuclear industry and government officials is now popularly referred to as the “nuclear power village.” The expression connotes the nontransparent, collusive interests that underlie the establishment’s push to increase nuclear power despite the discovery of active fault lines under plants, new projections about the size of tsunamis and a long history of cover-ups of safety problems.

Sound like anyplace we know?

Comment!

Brings tears to me!