I read the US Senate committee hearings schedule so you don’t have to. On tap for Tuesday, February 5:

10 a.m.
Intelligence Committee
To hold hearings to examine the world threat.
SH-216

2:30 p.m.
Intelligence
To hold closed hearings to examine the world
threat.
SH-219

Spectacular.  As someone who often finds the world threatening, I, for one, am pleased as punch that the United States Senate is finally stepping up to the plate to do something about it.

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Filed under: Profiles in Governance

The money-changers in Wall Street’s temple apparently think it slightly less likely today than they did yesterday that the Fed will call for a 50 basis point cut in the federal funds rate target when they wrap up their meeting this afternoon (trading in futures contracts on the Chicago Board of Trade show about a 75% likelihood of a half-point cut, compared to the 86% just a day earlier) but a cut of at least 25 basis points is still generally taken as a given.

This is on top of the surprise 75 basis point cut the Fed announced Jan. 22, the first inter-meeting action since September 2001 (you might remember a bit of commotion right around then) and the largest single cut since October 1984.

And that was on top of the 25 basis point cut they announced Dec. 11. And the 25 basis point cut they announced Oct. 31. And the 50 basis point cut they announced Sept. 18.

So what all this means is, depending on whose forecast you believe, the funds rate will stand by the end of the day at either 3.25% or 3.0%. That’s in comparison to the European Central Bank’s key rate of 4.0%, and despite the fact that the dollar already stood at historic lows against the euro even before the rate-cutting binge.

It also means the benchmark rate could stand a full point below the 4.1% rate of consumer inflation reported in 2007, the highest rate in 17 years.

So when the cuts come, and when you’ll undoubtedly see a rally on Wall Street, and when Jim Cramer and his ilk complain that they didn’t come fast enough or didn’t come deep enough, just keep one thing in mind, folks:

We’ve watched this movie before. And it sucked.

It was called the 1970s, the era of “stagflation.” Yes, it was a groovy time for sea monkeys, puka shells, Hostess fruit pies, X-ray specs, and other goods hawked in the back pages of every issue of Howard the Duck. But economically? Yeah, the Seventies totally blew, dude.

It especially sucked if you happened to be a Keynesian economist, and had to rethink your entire economic model when you saw rampant unemployment (that’s the “stag” part, as in stagnation) alongside rapidly rising prices (there’s your “flation,”) something the General Theory told us wasn’t supposed to be possible. For a whole decade, our nation’s leaders were hamstrung trying to fix the problem. Nixon rammed through price controls and took us off the gold standard. Ford distributed some nifty buttons. Jimmy Carter opted for the “group hug” approach to solving our economic woes.

None of it much worked until Paul Volcker came in and jacked the shit out of interest rates, dragging us through a fairly prolonged recession that didn’t much ease until the friendly visage of Michael J. Fox started appearing on Americans’ television screens and convincing them it was ok to be consumers again.

Whether “Stagflation Part Deuex: Stag Harder” will have as pleasant a resolution is anyone’s guess, at this point. But in the meantime, as the Fed continues to turn our dollars into monopoly money, it might not be a bad idea to invest in a wheelbarrow.

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Filed under: The Dismal Science, Pop! Goes the Culture

“Jeebus helped me quit drinking,” our commander-in-chief is now reminding the American public, who are left to ponder whether things really could have been any worse had he still been on the sauce. After all, even God himself (that is, Eric Clapton) pretty much went in the shitter once he sobered up.

Of course, were it not troubling enough to realize we the American people actually gave control of the nuclear arsenal for a full eight years to a Friend of Bill W, this Dubya has to raise the stakes by demonstrating that he doesn’t even remember what the first step was:

“First is to recognize that there is a higher power,” Bush said. “It helped me in my life. It helped me quit drinking.”

“That’s right, there is a higher power,” Mosely said.

“Step One, right?” Bush said, referring to the Alcoholics Anonymous twelve-steps program.

No, sir, step one is admitting you have a problem. How fitting that he should forget that.

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Filed under: Politics is Personal, Jesus is Magic, Profiles in Governance

I have a lot of questions of anyone running for president, and I expect to get them answered. For example, do you like cherry pie? How many American flag lapel pins do you own? Are you lactose intolerant? The last one is especially important because, while I don’t want to sound narrow minded, I’m very lactose intolerant intolerant. It’s nothing personal, really, it’s just that if you can get taken down by a glass of milk, you’re not ready to be negotiating with nuclear-armed rogue states on this country’s behalf.

And when it comes to a relentless focus of major campaign issues, I’m not alone:

Poll: Bullshit Is Most Important Issue For 2008 Voters

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Filed under: Politics is Personal

We’ve had a lot of race relevant posts here at F & S here recently, which has inspired me to explore the meaning of one of our (infrequently used) tags. The phrase is “The Dismal Science,” which, as we all know, refers to the really exciting academic discipline known as economics.

In modern times, the phrase has been used by economists to refer, in a mood of self-deprecating good humor, to themselves. The joke is that sitting around a faculty office and spending all of one’s time working on regressions and supply curves is considered nerdy and boring, so some of those scienticians have ruefully characterized their careers as “dismal,” according to the old phrase. The truth, as always, is much more interesting.

The phrase, long known among academics, actually comes from English historian and semi-pro racist Thomas Carlyle. It turns out that Carlyle was such a bastard that even some of his fellow Victorian Brits thought he was an immoral shitbag. Trust me, you had to be a real hard core dick to earn that reputation in the 1890s.

So anyway, one of the points of Carlyle’s phrase was that modern economics treats all human beings, in analysis, as equal. When we calculate supply and demand, the racial or ethnic background of the people doing the supplying and demanding makes no difference. One can rightly say that ‘I am a human being with certain abilities and resources, and that is the only thing that matters.’ He considered that dismal. In other words, sad and disappointing. A white man is equal to the dusky heathens of the uncivilized world? Dismal!

Among other things, Carlyle argued that slavery was superior to free trade in labor. Even worse, he argued that that was true not just for the slave owners, but worse even for the human beings who found themselves enslaved by force. He put Orwell to shame, really. Slavery = freedom? His theory was that, (for some people, anyway) slavery > freedom. What a fucking cock.

So the next time you find yourself mired in an endless conversation with some boring nerd who can’t stop talking about his dissertation on post-mercantilist theory, just sigh and remember that free market economics gave one of the most repellent intellectuals of the 19th century perpetual headaches.

P.S. - Suck it, Carlyle. We won.

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Filed under: The Dismal Science

That’s apparently what the WaPo has in mind with The Root, an online web-zine the paper launches today, which it says will combine “intelligent, thought-provoking discussion of issues from a variety of black perspectives and a round-up of news from around the world with an interactive genealogical section, creating a unique online destination devoted to the black experience.”

Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates — who once declared that “To say that black art is a thing apart, separate from the whole, is a racist fiction” — will serve as the founding editor-in-chief. Malcolm Gladwell, Thelma Golden, William Julius Wilson, John McWhorter, and Charlayne Hunter Gault will be among the regular contributors.

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Filed under: Politics is Personal, Pop! Goes the Culture

We mock the G-town set because it’s the easy thing to do. But they have a big heart, too. (Granted, it’s just the one heart, they have to share it collectively among them, and it was ripped from the still-beating chest of a Haitian immigrant mother with AIDS, but hey, it’s a start.)

For instance, did you know that some poor black children don’t even get the chance to play polo? Well, it’s true. There is a notable surfeit of ponies in the ‘hood. Thankfully, the good folks at the First Chukker Foundation are about to change all that.

Devoted to, as they put it: “positive social and environmental change as well as the increasing awareness of Polo in the Greater Washington Metropolitan Region,” the upChukkers are all about bringing the ultimate symbol of overentitled prep school dipwadosity within grasp of the common man.

And they were in full force Friday night with a charity benefit at Georgetown’s hyper-exclusive City Tavern Club (how exclusive, you ask? well, Ole G.W. hisself, along with his boys T.J., notorious for his raging case of jungle fever, and Johnny “Sweet Dick” Adams once chilled in this crib, though Jefferson was known to flout the “coat and tie required at all times” dress code by parading around sans pantaloons)

So, yes, for a whole night, several hundred of G-town’s finest rocked ascots in both Crip Blue and Blood Red, while debs shaked they phat asses to the in-house entertainment, “raisin’ the roof” and “droppin’ it like it’s hot,” whilst adorned in the de rigeur uniform of short black minidresses and vinyl boots from the Heidi Fleiss collection.

All for the cause of introducing poor kids to a sport they’ll almost certainly never be able to afford, and for which there exist no college scholarships of note.

Now, don’t get us wrong. We like charity. Charity, it need not be said, is a good thing. But witnessing the self-parody of this particularly retarded charity leads one to conclude these people are either completely, almost inconceivably clueless, or they possess a level of condescending cruelty that would make Blofeld himself blush.

Or, given that it’s Georgetown…perhaps a little from Column A, a little from Column B.

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Filed under: Politics is Personal, Pop! Goes the Culture, The Homeland

Some have said that Bill Clinton was America’s first ‘black’ president. I’ve never understood that comment, save his predilection for heavy-set white girls.

Yet, registered Democrats in South Carolina, many of whom are black, seem to have treated Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton as if she were the white girl on a black man’s arm walking down the street — with complete and utter disdain.

An Obama victory could have been predicted in a state with so many black voters. However, the thorough ass-kicking Clinton received — 55% - 27% — indicates that her message isn’t only failing to get through to black voters, but that it has garnered a full-on rejection of her and her platform.

The Democratic party establishment should take heed of this defeat. If blacks continue to shun the DNC leadership and its (self-) anointed leader, the Democrats may actually lose the White House in 2008 — further strengthening the idea that they are perhaps the most feckless political entity in recent American history.

It wouldn’t take a large-scale defection of blacks to the GOP — because that just ain’t happenin’ — but if the Dems can’t muster a decent black turn out, there are plenty of people in the fly-over states that will whole-heartedly reject Bill Clinton’s white girl to hand over the White House to another Republican.

The DNC needs to wake up to the fact that Obama is not only their best chance for winning that chair at 1600 Pennsylvania, but that he would also be the best thing (from their side of the aisle) for the country.

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Filed under: Politics is Personal, Mock the Vote

Under consumer pressure, the Hershey Company is discontinuing “Ice Breakers Pacs” because of their strong resemblance to street drugs.

Ice Breakers Pacs remain on store shelves but are expected to be sold out early this year and no more are being made, [Hershey CEO David J.] West said. Kirk Saville, a company spokesman, said they had been distributed nationally on a limited basis.

Hershey has said the mints were not intended to resemble anything, and West said consumers who tested and purchased the product liked it.

Well, if it wasn’t intended, that is the most coincidental cocaine look-alike bag I’ve ever see….er, I mean, I’ve heard they resemble cocaine bags very closely.

Perhaps Hershey & Co. should double-check the marketing department’s drug-screening results. Just a thought.

::sniffle, sniffle::

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Filed under: Consumerism Rulez

Citizens of Milwaukee have decided to erect a bronze statue in honor of Milwaukee’s coolest, perhaps most famous, and certainly fictional citizen: Arthur Fonzarelli. Private groups banded together and raised private money — to a tune of $85,000 — to boost tourism and, well, be cool.

The Fonz is just too cool to be funded by tax money.

A big “Aaaaaaaayyyyyy” to Fark for the link.

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Filed under: The Homeland