The Weak In Rock

I think most Americans probably do a major eye-roll whenever they hear news reports about the latest meeting of the Federal Reserve Board. Discussions about questions of whether or not the Fed is going to raise or lower the prime rate that banks borrow money from the Fed at most likely leaves most of you feeling like you’re having a bad dream where you’re surrounded by nerds who are discussing stuff that’s way over your head.

Fair enough. Not everyone needs to understand these things. I guess.

Oh who am I kidding. YOU need to understand these things. Why? Because it impacts your pocketbook.

The essential mission of the Fed here is to try to keep the economy from either cooling down too much or overheating. The main gauge of this they use is the rate of inflation. The conventional wisdom is that former Fed Chairman, Alan Greenspan, was a genius at this stuff and that it’s he and not Bill Clinton who should get the credit for the sustained economic boom that occurred from 1994 to 2001 and also for preventing an all-out recession when the dot com bubble burst, quickly followed by wingnuts flying planes into the World Trade Center in 2001.

The thing is, if you start running the numbers in a serious way it looks like the main way that Greenspan “grew” the economy and prevented a recession was by letting inflation, in fact, get near completely out of hand. Conservative pundits claim that inflation has remained negligible, but they base that conclusion on looking at a set up numbers that are mostly irrelevant to the vast majority of working people. They look at the cost of goods sold to major manufacturers, durable goods and major purchases, like automobiles. They don’t look at simple stuff like the cost of buying food to feed a family of four, the price of gasoline (in fact, the price of gasoline is deliberately excluded from all government indexes used to track inflation) or the cost of electricity to light and heat your home.

If you do look at these run-of-the-mill expenses that impact working families at a very basic level then inflation is very clearly out of control. According to statistics compiled by the Center for American Progress the cost of a basic dinner for a family of four has risen over 39% in the past ten years. The price of electricity has risen 25% and the cost of gasoline an astronomical 135%.

One wonders at how anyone could look someone in the eye and say “inflation is not a major factor in today’s economy” when any single basic necessity in the modern economy can have a price jump in ten years of 135%. This is, in fact, the answer to the question I hear from so many people today - where is all my money going? It’s depreciating in value rapidly.

If you use gasoline prices as a barometer of the value of a dollar, then a dollar in 2007 is worth 13.5 cents in 1997 money. Obviously the total value of the dollar hasn’t crashed that drastically. But even if we use the price of electricity as our barometer then that 2007 dollar is only worth 75 cents in 1997 money. That’s a massive loss of value.

But why doesn’t anyone seem to care? Simple. Because what the monetary policies of the US government in the past 10 years have done is effectively set up one economy for business and one for schlubs like you and me. In the business economy everything is cool. Or at least it was until the current credit crisis threatened to make it impossible for big businesses to borrow money. Interestingly enough, the credit crisis was created by everyday schlubs being forced to borrow well outside their means, using ethically questionable mortgages, in order to attempt to own their own homes. That’s a crisis that wouldn’t have occurred if the value of money hadn’t disintegrated for the average American worker over the past ten years.

Housing costs are another barometer of inflation. The house across the street from where I live was sold in 1997 for $353,000. It is currently valued at $917,000. That’s over 250% increase in a ten year period. It’s not reasonable to assume that a house that has not increased in size or been significantly altered would increase in value by that margin in such a short period of time. But most folks have been blindly unquestioning of the so-called real estate boom of the past several years. Not me. If we assume that the price of electricity is a good measure of the average rate of inflation over the past ten years then my neighbor’s house is actually only worth about $690,000. That still puts the house at an appreciation of about 100%. Not too shabby. But if we take the rate of inflation to be closer to what the price of dinner for a family of four has risen at over the past ten years, then my neighbor’s house is really only worth about $550,000, which would mean it’s only grown in value by about 50%, which is altogether more reasonable (and in my neighborhood would fit in with rates of appreciation over the past 30 years).

Heaven help you though if you adjust the value of your home or your investments assuming that the price of gasoline reflects the true rate of the past ten years of inflation at 135%. If you do that, then my neighbor’s house is worth $229,000 less than it was worth in 1997. That’s a loss in value of more than a third. Ouch.

The real number is somewhere inbetween all of these, but that still makes it terrible. So, the next time you hear someone praising Alan Greenspan or his successor, Ben Bernanke, for keeping inflation under control, tell them to blow it out their nether parts. We, as in you and me, are getting screwed.

Technorati Tags: Federal Reserve Board, Alan Greenspan, recession, inflation, Center for American Progress, the cost of gasoline, Ben Bernanke

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction…

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together.

- President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his farewell address to the nation, 1961

Technorati Tags: military-industrial complex, Dwight D. Eisenhower

Wow, amazing that I’m writing about this guy again.  Especially considering that he shat the bed in the Pyrenees and was over 28 minutes out of first place when all hell broke loose on him and his team today.

So, Vinokourov got caught doping.  No testosterone pills for this guy.  None of that weak assed shit.  No way man.  Alexander was caught giving himself blood transfusions.  I guess you ought to win some kind of prize of competitive spirit for being ready, willing and able to give yourself a transfusion in an attempt to win a bike race.

Anyway, once again the papers are full of teeth gnashing about doping in cycling.  *yawn*  My local cycling club email list was abuzz with this story today and here’s what I had to say about it:

I have a somewhat radical view on the use of performance enhancing drugs in
sports - I don’t care.

Ok, that’s too harsh. I do care if people put stuff into their bodies that ultimately shortens their lifespans or ruins their quality of life in later years, but beyond that I don’t care.

I think we have a very strange relationship to the application of technology to the human body. You don’t see anyone getting up in arms about how absurdly light carbon framed bikes, wheels, cranks, etc. are. I’ve yet to hear anyone call the use of power meters for training cheating. And we all regularly eat specialized food and chug specialized scientifically designed beverages to help us ride longer, harder, faster.  We also don’t have a problem with people using computer modeling to design optimized training and fitness program to increase their power output, strength, etc.

But when it comes to drugs to enhance performance, well then we’re (and I mean that in terms of western society in general) all up in arms. I personally don’t have a problem with it. If you look at sport in terms of entertainment for spectators then anything that makes the sport more spectacular makes it more entertaining and more valuable as an entertainment commodity. So, if by doping cyclists can pull off feats of speed, strength, endurance and agility that make me as a spectator go “wow!” then why should I have a problem with it. And it only qualifies as cheating, frankly, if you can demonstrate to me that doping is the exception and not the rule, which I doubt anyone could do right now with any degree of credibility.

Or, here’s another way of looking at it, taken from another sport that’s currently mired in doping scandal - baseball. In a recent interview Bill James was asked about the use of performance enhancing drugs in the game.

Here’s an excerpt:

Q: Should players known to use (or strongly suspected to have used) performance-enhancing drugs be treated differently in history? Was the Baseball Writers Association of America electorate correct in not voting Mark McGwire to the Hall of Fame on the first ballot? Are you cheering for Barry Bonds?

A: I’m not cheering for Bonds, but then, I didn’t much like (Henry) Aaron, either. I look at it this way. There’s a rule in basketball against traveling but the NBA has pretty much stopped enforcing it. Well, they still call traveling but they will allow you to take about five steps without dribbling as you are running toward the basket. There was no “decision” not to enforce this rule; they just kind of lost track of it. They started not calling one step and progressed to not calling two steps, not calling three steps, and eventually they just kind of lost track of the rule. Should the players who took advantage of this failure to enforce the rule be banned from the NBA Hall of Fame? After all, aren’t they cheating? They’re not obeying the rules. Julius Erving, out. The Hall of Fame doesn’t need cheaters like you. Kobe, Michael, get out. If you don’t play by the rules the way Elgin Baylor did, you’re not deserving.

Or it is, rather, the responsibility of the LEAGUE to enforce the rule? It seems to me that it might be the responsibility of the league to enforce the rule rather than the responsibility of the media to punish those who didn’t obey the rule that wasn’t being enforced. I won’t name any players, but there are a whole bunch of superstars who are now or are going to be involved in the PED accusations. We CAN’T start picking and choosing who we honor on that basis. It’s hypocritical, and it’s impractical. And it diminishes the game.

This argument can easily be applied to cycling. Pro cyclists were doping 20 years ago, if not longer. The sport’s governing bodies didn’t do anything about it, or make any appreciable noise about it, until the media (particularly the French media, who have an agenda all their own) started harping on the subject.

The problem as I see it is twofold - on the one hand cycling, as a sport and a culture has to decide whether or not it considers PED use a problem. If it decides it’s a problem then it needs to come up with a systematic scheme for eliminating their use that punishes at the team level, not at the individual cyclist level. Punishing Floyd Landis or Jan Ulrich is pointless. These guys aren’t doing this in a vacuum, and perhaps what it takes to get rid of PED’s in cycling is to disqualify every team from competition and start fresh.

But from my perspective that’s silly. How about this - instead of constantly chasing dopers, just accept it. Make the rule that use of any illegal substance permanently disqualifies a rider and his team from future sanctioned competition. Use of legal substances must simply be fully disclosed, and failure to disclose disqualifies the rider and his team for five years. What you’ll get from disclosure is transparency into what each rider is using to help them compete (it’s not afterall a secret which brand of bike a rider uses, for example) and then all the riders can see the laundry list of crap some guy who finishes 150th in the Tour consumed or injected. Then the mystique will gradually wear off and within a few years you’ll see those lists get much, much shorter.

I get that final idea from an analysis of the players most recently punished for doping violations in baseball. To a man they’re all lousy players. Doping didn’t help them compete one tiny bit. If you have no talent or ability at your sport then taking pills, or injecting drugs into your body will not help you. And if you’re talented then you’ll win anyway.

So, how’s that for recycling a bit chunk of an earlier post and calling it a new blog?

In all seriousness, all that these doping scandals are doing is ruining the game/race for those of us who want to watch and soak up the excitement.  And like I said, it’s only cheating if the playing field isn’t level and there’s a sizable contingent of folks in the field of play or on the race course who aren’t doping, and anyone who makes that claim, well, I’ve got some land in Florida I’d like you to help me sell.

Technorati Tags: Vinokourov, Florida

Wow, they’re blooming this week.

First let’s address something that ought to seem obvious - becoming a professional competitive eater probably isn’t good for your health. Takeru Kobayashi is apparently retiring from professional eating competition because he’s messed up his jaw muscles over the years by cramming 50+ hot dogs into his mouth in each competition.

See, I think it might have occurred to me that snarfing down hundreds of hot dogs a year might have some unpleasant long-term health impact. Probably would have led me to reconsider that particular career path.

Then we have Chris Allgier, a prison inmate who killed a prison guard while attempting to escape. Now I get not wanting to be in prison, and I even get resorting to desperate measures to get out, but let’s take a look at this guy:

Dood, if you’ve got tattoos all over your head and face, including a swastika right in the middle or your forehead, how the heck do you think you’re going to evade a police manhunt? It’s not like you can blend into the crowd and disappear. They’re not going to put some nondescript photo or artist’s rendering of your face on the news that no one can tell from any of a billion other guys your age and ethnic background. You’ve got a friggin’ swastika in the middle of your damn fool forehead. You’re going to get caught. Oh, and by the way, you shot a prison guard and killed him. If you thought prison was bad before…

Last but not least, let’s hear it for the biggest asshole and nitwit to ever serve as Vice President of the United States, Dick Cheney. Dick, you’ve really outdone yourself this time. There can be no doubt whatever to your place in history now. You are the most arrogant, stupid and dangerous man to ever be a heartbeat from the Presidency - and this is saying a lot, since your predecessors include Dan Quayle, Richard Nixon and Andrew Johnson, three of the biggest shitheads in the history of American politics.

How have you earned such a dubious honor, Dick? Through your pronouncement late last week that your office is not subject to a Presidential order requiring all members of the Executive Branch of our government reveal to the National Archives how many documents they are classifying each year. Your rationale - your office is not actually a part of the Executive Branch.

Ok, my dear readers, I’ll let those of you who paid attention in your high school civics classes take a deep breath and ponder this one. The Vice President claims that his office is not a part of the Executive Branch of the US Government. Neat. So, we must assume that Cheney believes he is his own special branch of the government, since he obviously cannot conclude that he is part of the Judiciary and his contempt for the Legislative Branch is well known, so he can’t mean that his office resides therein. This jackass apparently doesn’t think he even answers to the President. If I were George W. Bush I’d kick him in the nads.

Technorati Tags: Takeru Kobayashi, Chris Allgier, Dick Cheney, Dan Quayle, Richard Nixon, Andrew Johnson

And no, I’m not talking about mannequins. Those really are quite scary (but that’s a subject for another post maybe some other day).

What I’m talking about are the run-of-the-mill nitwits Bruce Schneier talks about in his latest blog post on the subject of security. Schneier’s blog looks into the recent JFK airport plot and why NYC Mayor Bloomberg seems to be the only public figure to have said anything sensible about this laughable plot that the media have puffed up into some kind of uber-threat.

Here’s a quote:

The alleged plan, to blow up JFK’s fuel tanks and a small segment of the 40-mile petroleum pipeline that supplies the airport, was ridiculous. The fuel tanks are thick-walled, making them hard to damage. The airport tanks are separated from the pipelines by cutoff valves, so even if a fire broke out at the tanks, it would not back up into the pipelines. And the pipeline couldn’t blow up in any case, since there’s no oxygen to aid combustion. Not that the terrorists ever got to the stage — or demonstrated that they could get there — where they actually obtained explosives. Or even a current map of the airport’s infrastructure.

I’ve written about this subject before and linked to previous Schneier articles on the subject. I agree with Schneier’s characterization of most so-called homeland security precautions as movie-plot security. We’re not protecting ourselves from intelligent and dangerous folks, we’re protecting ourselves from people whose imaginations are as limited as the plot to your typical Bruce Willis film. If Jerry Bruckheimer decides to become an Islamist funadmentalist then the TSA and the rest of the Dept. of Homeland Security might actually protect us from him, but they’re not going to do much good against the kind of folks who pulled off the 9/11/01 attack, the Madrid train bombing or cooked up the London bomb plot.

Thanks to Boing Boing for the link.

Technorati Tags: Bruce Schneier, JFK airport plot, Jerry Bruckheimer