It doesn’t. What’s even worse is that the legislation turned out to be a golden opportunity for right-wing populist organizing with a level of emotional intensity that France hasn’t seen in a long time. The traditional Gaullist roght wing party is going to be very tempted to accommodate these proto-fascists. Hollande has all the sleaze of Mitterrand but only a tenth of the talent.

The places where they want to frack ate in the Quebecois heartlan where the same families have been living for close to 300 years. The areas are also overrepresented in the Quebec National Assembly, so there’s not a chance in hell the local government will give the go ahead no matter what. The area is also seismically unstable, and neither the faults nor the underground waterways have been completely charted. Last year an entire house just got swallowed up by the earth when one of these underground sinks collapsed. In the unlikely event the company gets a court order permitting them to grack, they still face the danger of their trucks and equipment being sabotaged. The police will look the other way.

Hope springs eternal, but it looks like the teflon is wearing thin. Of course there’s always the persecuted Black gambit to pull out of the hole if things get really bad. The thing is, it’s partly true.

Iftne Republicans are savvy (and there is no evidence they are), they can turn this nto a Watergate. I doubt very much that Holder would fall on his sword for Obama, and at this point I don’t give a shit what happens to the sitting President. Biden would be an improvement.

DHS is going to be or own homegrown KGB (without the brains). It’s mandate is unrestricted and armed with an unreviewable executive order, it can do what it wants–and none of that damned habeas corpus standing in the way. What a country. You gotta love it.

Maybe there’s hope for the Republicans after all. IThere certainly isn’t for the current crop of Democrats. Plitics abhors a vacuum, and there is a lot of opportunuty for the party that decides to do what 70% of the electorate want.

Good evening Fatser and the pups. The muders in Sicily are part of an on-going saga here in Montreal which would make a great script if it weren’t for the fact that the Sipranos got there first. The short story is this. Thete are two mafias in eastern Canada: the Calabrese and the Sicilians. The head of the Sicilian clan Vito Rizzuto served time in the US for ifI recall correctly his connection with the Bonanno assination, though it might have been something to do with the drug trade. Anyway, in his absence, a gang war broke out. His son was mudered taking his breakfastt coffee in the kitchen, and there have been a raft of murders in addition on borh sides, Everyone agrees it’s a mess and some of the Black gangs have gotten involved, which has only added to the mayhem.

Fernandez, who turned up dead and incinerated the day before yesterday in a suburb of Palermo I know well was in the gang that opposed Rizzuto. Rizzuto got out of prison a month ago and is restoring order.

In tne meantime, yeaterday the police attested the mayor and 38 officials of the third largest city in Quebec(Laval) for bribery and collusion with firms connected with the Mafia. Who needs HBO when you can get all this for free?

I’m wondering whether she will run. After Obama is done wrecking the economy and the Democratic party along with it, I’d be surprised anyone associated with this unrelenting disaster would want to face the heat. I was thinking the other day that it might be nice f Al Gore took another shot at it. His hands are clean. In any event politics abhors a vacuum and the thugs are firing at anything in sight. They have a predilection for reighting the same wars. Whitewater, anyone?

The only honest thing to come out of his mouth.

Guys like him have no talent except sucking up at the right time and the right place. They will do anything to hang on to the perch. No doubt he’s deluded himself into thinkng what he writes makes sense, but that just illustrates his lack of talent. Same holds for Tommy Friedman.

This is not going to end well. If it looks like the US is making gains, other players (Cina, Russia) will get in the act, and unlike the nuclear bluff, the US has no natural economic advantage in this game. Proof: Afghanistan and Iraq.

Her sister diied; she’s grieving. This is how she copes. Making lots of money can be therapeutic.

Youu got it. But it didn’t use to be that way. When I was doing graduate economics at Yale in the 1960s, there was still a real scientific ethos, though the Chicago worksops were already alpha-male sparring matches. I think things started to go down hill in the 70s, with the influx of ambitious math types who saw a better future for themselves in economics than being poorly paid math professors. Once the tipping point was reached towards the end of the decade there was no turning back. Economics for these people was not a vocation, like literature, history, or philosophy, but a way to arbitrage their brains into substantial income and a great life style. Few of them ever studied actual economies; they looked at the data like they would look at the output of a high-energy particle experiment, and interpret them according to the simple models they were taught when they were turning themselves from mathemeticians into so-called economists. It’s a mindset.

What people on the outside don’t get (and what many on the inside want to deny) is how authoritarian the discipline has become in the last 40 years. The elite professors control the journals; the journals control promotions and academic tenure. If professor X says this is a good thing or that person is the sharpest person since the knife that cut butter, it is accepted by the majority ad gospel truth at tenure time. It is as if the ordinary non-radical work-a-day economist were afraid to think for himself. It is hard to convey to outsiders how utterly stultifying this is. In my view it is the main reason why economics has had so little to say about anything for the past 25 years ( with notable exceptions).

In this respect the Rogoff-Reinhart scandal is a real game-breaker. Economists might be willing to give them a pass out of self-preservation, but the hard scientists and humanists who seek truth for a living are not going to let them off the hook so easily. Why should economists make on average 30 to 50 percent more than their colleagues in Arts and Sciences? Either they clean up their act or somethings gotta give. Peer review by other economists is not going to do the trick. R and R were peer-reviewed. Summers can ‘but, but, but…’all he wants. It doesn’t change the fact that Rogoff and Reinhart and the whole enterprise of which they are a part are cargo-cult science.

You need a really good financial manager. The problem is that unless you have a couple of million dollars in your account you’re not likely to find one.

I agree with everything you say about the economics, but I think we are well past the tipping point with respect to political correction. Obama drove a stake into the feeble heart of American democracy. I know we should never give up, but the future looks pretty bleak. Our next president is likely to be a failed general (name your pick).

Summers was actually respectable back in the 80s. It was the stint with Clinton that drove him over to the dark side. Here’s a piece of Summers trivia. His dad was a well-known economist. When he was finishing up his dissertation, while working as an assistant professor at Yale back in the 50s,when tou didn’t need a dozen articles just to get hired, James Tobin took over Summers père teaching load for a term so he could finish his thesis and keep his job. Different times and different people.