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jayackroyd commented on the blog post “Refreshing Contacts”: The Revolving Door Shuffle in Washington
Revolving oligarchs.
It’s not just on the Hill, of course. Political appointees on the executive branch also go in and out of government–and they don’t just revolve between lobby shops and the bureaucracy. They go to the actual industries being regulated, overseen or subsidized, and back again.
It’s completely corrosive–and creates a culture where it seems only fair for a presidential spokesman to leave his job after a couple of years, and get paid multi millions in salary.
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jayackroyd commented on the blog post High Gas Prices Coming from Over-Speculation, Says Analyst
dday,
I am always very dubious wrt speculation driving price increases arguments. The problem is that future prices that are above the spot price plus storage costs for commodity will be driven down by other speculators. Contango is what economists call this. If spot now plus the cost of carry is less than the equivalent futures price, then the current holders will sell forward and reap a sure profit.
Now one thing that can happen in oil markets is tankers can be slowed down, lowering the supply.
In 2005 and 2006 a perception of impending supply shortage allows (sic) traders to take advantages of the contango in the crude oil market. Traders simultaneously bought oil and sold futures forward. This led to large numbers of tankers loaded with oil sitting idle in ports acting as floating warehouses.[4] (see: Oil-storage trade) It was estimated that perhaps a $10–20 per barrel premium was added to spot price of oil as a result of this.
You can’t do this kind of thing forever–when all the tankers are full, you’ve gotta start delivering. But it is hard to tell a story of speculators alone driving prices up.
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jayackroyd commented on the blog post Eurozone Busily Decimating Member Countries
The real problem is that countries with ostensibly representative governments have given up, without a vote, their sovereignty. This can’t end well; if citizens can’t change horrendous public policy at the ballot box, they will turn to other methods for changing the government.
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jayackroyd commented on the blog post Sunday Talking Heads: April 10, 2011
Backchannel for Jay Rosen and Stuart Zechman tonight in IRC.
Channel: #Vspeak
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jayackroyd commented on the diary post We Must Be a Different Base by Stuart Zechman.
DAFT=DADT.
Funny typo.
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jayackroyd commented on the diary post We Must Be a Different Base by Stuart Zechman.
No. Speaking as someone who took a long time to understand what Stuart is saying here, it’s important to recognize that DAFT is NOT window dressing. From the post: On the issues where centrists and liberals (finally, it wasn’t always like this) agree, like repeal of DADT, they made it happen. The NewDemocrat/ThirdWay ideologue is not [...]
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jayackroyd commented on the diary post We Must Be a Different Base by Stuart Zechman.
60,000 vs 400,000 visits a day. According to the Sitemeter links at each site.
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jayackroyd commented on the diary post We Must Be a Different Base by Stuart Zechman.
Thanks for posting this Stuart. It’s taken me quite a while to understand that the program of the New Democrats is ideologically different from, say, New Deal Democrats. What I’ve found most interesting, in a depressing way, is that my inability to understand this is partly a consequence of what can only be an intentional [...]
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jayackroyd commented on the blog post The War on Efficient Trash Collection
My siblings live in places (ME and PA) where the municipality charges by the bag. That is, you have to buy the bags from the town, and they won’t pick up anything else. This works remarkably in encouraging their actually taking their own recyclables in and also makes a compost heap (or at least pitching the garbage to the raccoons) a great deal more appealing. And, of course, the landfill fills up much more slowly….
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jayackroyd commented on the blog post The War on Efficient Trash Collection
Sidewalks
Commie.
