fuck you, chip

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the cartoon you sent me couldn't be any more off the mark, because as any fool could plainly tellya

• my chair is infinitely more stylish
• i keep my secondary laptop to my left
• i'm not nearly that fat
• my tv is way across the room
• my cat is long gone
• my faggot ass wouldn't be caught dead blogging in a wifebeater

i could keep going, but you get the point, right?

right?

somebody just kill me now

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a rant in three parts (part 2)

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this one may not be ready for prime time, but if it'll push the last one below the fold, it's good enough.

and for the lost, it's part 2 of this one.

the myth:  the only reason america is still in this recession is because our leaders don't have the balls to crank up the presses and spend our way out of it.

the basis for the myth:  world war II ended the great depression, thus proving forevermore that massive spending solves massive economic crises; ergo, nothing short of another world war II-level stimulus will solve our current economic crisis.

yeah.

ever heard of the broken-window fallacy?  it's a staple of austrian economics, and hazlitt's version goes something like this: 

A kid throws a rock at a window and breaks it, and everyone standing around regrets the unfortunate state of affairs. But then up walks a man who points out that this is not a bad thing after all. The man fixing the window will get money for doing so. This will then be spent on a new suit, and the tailor too will get money. The tailor will spend money on other items, and the circle of rising prosperity will expand without end.

you can see the problem with this scenario immediately, right?  this "circle of rising prosperity" occurs at the expense of the poor guy whose window was broken--the money he might himself have spent on a new suit or other items went instead to something he wouldn't have needed had the window not been broken in the first place.

easy to see the truth when it's just one little window, but apparently not so easy when you scale it up a few orders of magnitude.

consider:  between 1940 and 1945,  the united states of america spent billions of dollars and employed millions of people to essentially do nothing but build lots and lots of really expensive rocks, and throw 'em through the windows of the world.

did all this destruction solve the depression?  not by a long shot--it enriched a handful of bankers and industrialists to be sure, but by the end of world war II, there was nothing left but a world full of broken windows, a huge american workforce and military suddenly left with nothing to do, and an america that was monstrously in debt.

which brings me to my point:  it wasn't world war II that ended the depression, people--it was its aftermath.

in august 1945, we were the last man standing, an untouched-by-war industrial powerhouse to which the destroyed countries of the world, allies and former enemies alike, were forced to turn in order to repair their broken windows.  and we were all geared up for production, had an enormous skilled workforce and a captive market--how the hell could we lose?

now, compare and contrast the america of 1945 to the america of today.

back then:

• america was brimming with wartime factories that could easily be converted to make things the world needed and wanted--and we had virtually no competition.

• government was still small, and had infinite room to expand.

• the bankers and the corporations hadn't yet leveraged the financial and commodities markets into the bloated, voracious monsters they are today.

• there was no medicare, medicaid, welfare or food stamps to drain the national treasury, and social security payouts were barely a blip in the budget.

• personal debt among the citizenry was almost non-existent.

• almost half of americans lived on farms, and produced their own food.

• our underclass was far smaller, far less entitled, and far better behaved.

• the veneer of civilization was far thicker.

i could go on, but you get the point, right?

in other words, back in 1945 we were a lean, mean america whose bubble was just beginning to expand; today, we're a fat, soft, bloated america whose bubble has burst, all the stimulus in the world won't reflate us, and the new lean, mean, more productive economies of the world are circling our cooling carcass and licking their chops.

and you think larry summers and his "spend our way to prosperity" cronies don't understand this?  of course they do.

so if they already know massive spending isn't gonna work, why is it that they're preaching this fallacious gospel, you ask?

well, if i told you now, there'd be no need for a part 3, would there?

have fun with 498, kid

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readers of this blog could be forgiven for thinking mkf only has tragic sex, when the truth is it's just the only kind he writes about.

and it's what happened today.

the pictures hadn't lied:  young, fresh-faced nordic blond, not my usual type.

takes a minute for my eyes to adjust to the gloom from the bright sunlight outside, and by then he's already halfway to the bedroom, talking in that fast, mumbly sorta way they do--the whole time, i have to make him repeat everything at least once.

as i undress, he starts moving piles of laundry off the bed but keeps getting distracted, wandering off to check messages, but finally clears off enough stuff to make room, drops the bathrobe off his perfect lil' speedo body, kneels with his back to me on the edge of the bed, presents.  realizing an opening kiss is probably outta the question, i get down to the business at hand.

i try to pull him towards the center of the bed, but he resists--too far from the laptop, i realize, which pings from time to time with new hits.

eventually i zone it all out, hit my stride and he suddenly groans, pulls away.

"sorry--did i hurt you?"

"no, you almost made me come and another guy's on his way over."

damn, so close.*

after a minute he recouples, determined to get me off.  i try, but by now i'm so over this beautiful boy i'm forced to fake it--convincingly, of course--and with that, we're done.

five minutes later i'm hosed off and throwing on clothes, and he says, "you're 497, right?"

"huh?"

"497--isn't that you?"  i look up, see the phone in his hand and realize he's talking about the first three digits of my number.

"yeah, 497--that's me."

"cool--turn the bottom lock on your way out, wouldya?"

not a problem.

___________________
*bringing a tweaker to orgasm:  (a) almost impossible, and therefore (b) the LA top's holy grail.

the problem with three-part rants

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is that by the time one gets to part two, it's not really a rant anymore--the immediacy has faded, and one has sobered upit can be put off for another day.

which is what's happened here--but trust me, that day will come, and i promise it will come this week.

meanwhile...

a rant in three parts (part 1)

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The central irony of financial crisis is that while it is caused by too much confidence, too much borrowing and lending and too much spending, it can only be resolved with more confidence, more borrowing and lending, and more spending.

larry summers, director,

white house economic council

and there you have it, folks--laid out in a reuters opinion piece this week for all the world to see by the economist and former treasury secretary whose opinions have held more sway over two of the last three administrations than any other single individual--the neo-keynesian strategy reduced to its essence.

i want you to go back and re-read the above quote--maybe a couple times--and sit with it a minute, see how it plays in your mind.  and then i want you to indulge in a little wordplay with me--imagine just for shits and giggles we take that quote and strip it of its specificity, like this:

The central irony of [a] is that while it is caused by too much [b], it can only be resolved with more [b].

and then substitute for the phrases "financial crisis" "and "too much confidence, too much borrowing and lending and too much spending" the cause-and-effect pairing of your choice.  i'll give you a couple to get you started:

the central irony of lung cancer is that while it is caused by too much smoking, it can only be resolved with more smoking.

or how about

the central irony of flash-flooding is that while it is caused by heavy rains, it can only be resolved with more heavy rains.

see where i'm going with this?  with the possible exception of a hangover, i defy you to come with any [a] caused by [b] which can be resolved by shoving more [b] at it.

yet these-these economists would have you believe that their dismal science is the exception to the rule, and that fixing the mess for which they themselves are in no small part responsible requires that humanity suspend its critical faculties and blindly believe the above bullshit.

and as much i'd love to deride and dismiss larry summers as nothing more than a common dumbass for not only the above statement but many others as well, i'm afraid i can't--because, far from being stupid, this guy has long enjoyed the well-earned distinction of being the smartest guy in most any room he chooses to enter.  in fact, all these guys who espouse this bullshit are smart--krugman, rubin, bernanke, all of 'em.

so how could this legion of geniuses possibly justify something so counter-intuitive as the above, you ask?  simple:  they learned it in the best schools in the country at the knees of the generation of economists that preceded them.  and where did those guys get it?  that's simple, too--all this "spend our way to prosperity" nonsense derives from one great, shining, deliberate lie.

[next:  debunking the "world war II as the ultimate stimulus" myth]

the frugal gourmet

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figuring any ol' red would do, i snagged a dusty bottle somebody'd given me years ago, opened it and after dumping most of its contents into the crockpot, took a swig, found it unusually tasty, googled it outta curiosity and found that the cabernet i was cooking with is currently going for $125 a bottle.

made a decent beef bourguignon, what can i tellya.