Category: Psychology

What the Hell Happened to Childhood?

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Some recent news on how we raise our children. First is a news story about a mother who let her 9 year old son ride alone on the subway. There is nothing wrong with the story, except for the fact that it qualifies as news. Kids have been taking mass transit on their own at that age for years, but in this plan-every-minute soccer mom stamp-out-independent-thought culture we have, it gets a significant amount of media play.

We are raising kids who will never have the smallest adventure, nor the smallest sense of responsibility.

Kudos New York Sun Columnist* and mom, Lenore Skenazy for not buying into the toxic waste paranoia of the phony missing child hysteria of the mid-1980s.

On the darker side, we have a six year old kid who is labeled a sexual harasser for smacking a girl on the butt.

The police were called, and his school record now lists him as a sexual harasser.

This is insane. Did the kid do something wrong, of course he did, and his parents should have been called in, and he should have gotten a few days detention, but it’s not sexual harassment.

We was 6 years old, not 13.

Then we have an 8 year old child suspended because he is alleged to have sniffed line from a marker on his shirt. School administrators are suggesting that he was “trying to get high”, aka “huffing”.

There are two problems with all of this, the first is that we are allowing people who are clearly psychopaths abuse their authority, and the second is that increasingly, there are policies in place to support these psychopaths.

Osama bin Laden does not have to destroy America, we are doing it through what we do to the next generation.

*When I say the phrase “Kudos to NY Sun Columnist”, something is very, very, wrong with reality.

Rational Markets, My Ass

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Normally, I don’t comment on market daily moves, there is too much noise there, but today’s stock market rally, particularly in the morning, bears note, because much of it appears to have been driven by an April Fools gag.

Dedicated short fund manager Doug Kass, of Seabreeze Partners Short LP, put out an early morning, tongue-in-cheek commentary, titled Time to Buy the Bull? The long time Bearish market pundit and writer for The Street.com and Real Money announced that he was raising his year end price targets for the S&P500 to 1,666, which would reflect a yearly gain of 26%.

This was picked up by:

  • The Wall Street Journal
  • CNN Money
  • CBS Marketwatch
  • Barrons
  • Bloomberg

Mr. Kass subsequently apologized, “I apologize to my partners, and to my friends, and especially to the SEC, for whom I have the greatest possible respect. I never intended markets to be manipulated in this manner. I was only trying to make some traders, who have been having a tough year, break a smile.”

You gotta love Wall Street. I wish I had chosen it as my career. I would already have made my millions, gotten busted, done my 22 months at Club Fed, written a book about it, and now I’d have a 2 day a week job as a pundit on CNBC.

I already have a trophy wife though, so I can’t complain.

More Toxic Exports

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We are not talking Chinese toys, or Mexican lettuce, we are talking about “Anglo-Saxon” financial products.

Increasingly the rest of the world is looking at the US and UK system of regulation, more accurately a system of no regulation, and seeing the downside, and becomind disenchanted with the US-UK model.

Henry Farrel cites articles by Wolfgang Münchau, and Steve Clemons about the change in attitude.

They both make the point that this is an ongoing, and IMHO accelerating, loss of power for the US, though Münchau is rather more stark, first because he has been an unabashed fan of what I call US style klepto-capitalism, but also because of his the points that me makes:

  • The Euro would replace the dollar as the world’s largest reserve currency within the next 10 or 15 years. (I rather believe that it will be in 5-10 years, but I’m not an economist)
  • If yours is a global reserve currency today, it is likely to be one tomorrow too. But this works only up to a point – a tipping point.
  • But the Euro is a real alternative. [to the dollar as a reserve currency]
  • This has been a crisis of Anglo-Saxon transaction-based capitalism.
  • Losing the dollar as the world’s leading international currency not only leads to a loss of political power. It constitutes loss of power.

What happens when your bank starts demanding Euro denominated mortgages?

Does Gary Hart Want Cheese with His Whine?

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Well, Gary Hart is saying that by suggesting that Obama is not fit to be president, Hillary Clinton broke the rules of Democratic politics.

As dhutchinson notes, what Hart said in 1984 was far worse, and he rolls the 1984 NY Times:

Senator Gary Hart said today that Walter F. Mondale, as Vice President, was part of an Administration that was “weak,” “inept,” “uncertain” and marked by “days of shame” in Iran…

“Walter Mondale now promises an America that can and will stand up for its vital interests,” the Colorado Senator told an ebullient crowd of hundreds of students at Texas A&M University here. “But Carter-Mondale actually gave us an America held hostage to the ayatollahs of the world.”

“In national security as in domestic policy,” he said, “we must not leave the American people with a bleak choice in 1984 between two failed pasts – that of Ronald Reagan and that of the Carter-Mondale Administration.”

‘Reagan’s Favorite Opponent’

“After reviewing the record of the Carter-Mondale Administration, I can understand why Walter Mondale is Ronald Reagan’s favorite opponent,” Mr. Hart added.

If Obama and his supporters want to win in November, they need to assume that they have the right where no such right previously existed, to be immune from certain types of criticism.

I was watching Olbermann today (and man does he hate on Hillary Clinton), and he puts up a clip of Obama complaining about how unfair the “red phone ad” was.

Compare that to Gary Hart, or, for that matter, what was done to Howard Dean in 2004 (where they were flat out calling insane), or Al Gore’s use of Willie Horton in 1988.

Clinton is attacking, but she has little interest in making a charge stick. She does not have to.

She is interested in the response, which is always, “It’s not fair.” She is repeatedly bitch slapping Barack Obama, and the response of he and his campaign is, “but it’s not fair.”

It is a message of entitlement, weakness, and passivity, and it will be nothing compared to what McCain and His Evil Minions&trade have in store for him in the general.

Get over yourself and get to work. If you want to beat Hillary Clinton, and John McCain after that, you have to show that you can stand up for yourself before you will convince anyone that you will stand up for them.

Another Bitch Slap

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So Hillary has an interview with Newsweek.com, and she says:

It doesn’t look bleak at all. I have a very close race with Senator Obama. There are elected delegates, caucus delegates and superdelegates, all for different reasons, and they’re all equal in their ability to cast their vote for whomever they choose. Even elected and caucus delegates are not required to stay with whomever they are pledged to. This is a very carefully constructed process that goes back years, and we’re going to follow the process.

And the Obama campaign goes into full whine mode.

Hello, clue here….She is not trying to get delegates to change their votes. She’s trying to make you whine about it so you look weak.

Seriously, if the Obama campaign cannot stand up to Clinton, they have no chance at all against McCain and the Republithug attack machine.

This is embarrassing, seriously. There are any number of responses that are strong, whining about playing hardball when specifically allowed by the rules does not make one look strong, or transformational.

It makes you look like a bunch of punks.

Barack Obama’s campaign sounds more and more like has a glass jaw. Does they shave, or use Windex?

You are being punk’d.

Krugman Has a Good Point, So Nu?*

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Krugman notes that while the capital infusions of the Fed are in the $200 billion range, outstanding mortgages are in excess of $ 11 trillion, so the Fed bailout is about 1.8% of the mortgage market, and the number rapidly dwindles when examined in the context of other markets also in trouble.

The idea is not that the Fed will save these markets, but rather that the it will “slap the market in the face” to calm it down from hysteria, much like those old film noire detective movies.

Thing is, the Fed has done this twice, and it’s not working. What’s more, the interest rates that really matter to the economy, “The rates that matter most directly to the economy, including rates on mortgages and corporate bonds, have been rising”, because people are having to price an unknown level of uncertainty into their lending.

This is what is meant when it is said that the Fed is, “Pushing on a string”. It can lower rates all it wants, but the rates paid by businesses and individuals are now rising.

One of the things that I harp on, but that Krugman does not have the space to deal with in the constraints of a New York Times editorial, is the effect of the strength of the dollar on the Fed, and the effect of the Fed on the strength of the dollar.

Specifically, when the Fed cuts rates, it reduces the returns on the US dollar, which makes the currency less attractive, which drives the currency price down.

While this does help exports and reduces the advantages of imports, it also raises prices, because foreign dollars compete more for US products, like groceries (I posted about this in yesterday’s economics update).

So we are in a situation where we cannot win, and we cannot get out of the game.

*It’s one of the few Yiddish idioms that I grasp as a 3rd generation America Jew. Nu literally means yes, but, “so nu” means, “So tell me something I don’t already know”?

Are Brokers and Financial Professionals Like American Idol Contestants?

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Michael Lewis asks, “What’s odd about the subprime crash is Goldman Sachs Group Inc. A single firm took a position contrary to the rest of Wall Street. Giant Wall Street firms are designed for many things, but not, typically, to express highly idiosyncratic views in the market.”

Basically, what happened was that in 2006, some smart guys at Goldman, as they did at other places, went to senior management, and said that they thought that the Subprime market was soft, and that they should short it.

This probably a bit of advice that any number of brokerages got over that time, but how they handled it was different.

As opposed to reviewing the data, coming to a decision, and issuing guidance to the subprime traders based on that decision, Goldman Sachs has some different management structures. They

The only difference between Goldman and everyone else was that Goldman had, in effect, an entirely separate enterprise, sitting on top of the firm, with the power to reverse the judgment of its own supposed experts in various markets. They were able to do this, apparently, without ever saying a word about it to their own traders. Instead of telling the fools trading subprime mortgages that they are wrong, and that they should unwind their positions, they simply offset their trades.”

Rolling Heads

All across Wall Street risk managers are being fired, reassigned or hovering under a cloud of contempt and suspicion. Heads must roll, and after the CEO, these guys are the most plausible to guillotine.

But at the same time it’s pretty clear that a lot of these so-called risk managers never really had the power to manage risk. They had to consider the feelings, for example, of the guys who ran subprime mortgages. Morgan Stanley conceded as much when it said recently it was considering changing things around so that the risk manager reported to the CFO, rather than the heads of individual businesses.

But at Goldman there were two intelligences at work: one, the ordinary Wall Street intelligence, which was allowed to get itself in trouble, just as at every other Wall Street firm; the other, more like an extremely smart hedge fund that made its living off the idiocy of big Wall Street firms, including its own people.

(emphasis mine)
There is a frightening corollary to this, that the experts operating in high finance are less like dispassionate experts than they are like those people on American Idol whose friends have told them that they can sing.

MoDo Calls Cheney Crazy

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I think that she intends it as allegory, but I believe that Dick Cheney is actually nuts….Delusional…Batsh%$ insane. He is so confinced of his power, or more accurately the power of the US military-industrial complex, to do anything, including sewing a button on a fart.

Worked great in Iraq.

Insanity is doing something over, and over again, exactly the same way, and and expecting a different outcome.

Her essay is a good, if catty* read, and this time, for once, there is a point at the end:

As Pat Buchanan noted on “Hardball,” “Cheney and Bush are laying down markers for themselves which they’re going to have to meet. I don’t see how … Bush and Cheney can avoid attacking Iran and retaining their credibility going out of office.”

In other words, once our cowboys have talked their crazy talk, they have to walk their crazy walk.

*Like everything she writes.

No Health Insurance? Ten Years in Jail For You!

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This woman is going to jail for 10 Years.

Her name is Tiffany Sutton, and she is just 24 years old, basically a kid, and a troubled one at that, and she is going to jail because she ran out of mental health coverage.

The newspaper misses the point and goes with the sensational headline, Woman sentenced in blood-drinking sex case. (Yes, I know that it is a great hed, but still)

Here are the details you really need to know:

Houck [Suttons’s attorney] submitted a memo to the court stating that Sutton suffered physical and sexual abuse from ages 3 to 13, and she has had mental health problems since she was 14.

Sutton improved with mental health counseling and medication up until her insurance ended six months before her February arrests, Houck wrote.

According to prison health records, Sutton thought she was a vampire for the first several weeks she was in jail, Houck wrote.

No health insurance coverage for her meds, so she self medicates, and she and while drunk and stoned, convinces her 46-year old consort to let her tie him up, and then cuts him and tries to drink his blood.

Does it sound like she was in her right mind????

The judge, one David Udall*, decides that the solution is to sentence her to TEN YEARS IN PRISON.

This woman needs help, and she will not get it under the tender confinement of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

*Anyone know if he is related to the late Congressman Morris or his son Congressman Mark Udall?

Scaife Divorce Schadenfreude

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I really can’t do justice to the reporting of the Washington Post with regard to the Scaife divorce, but it could not happen to a nicer guy than the man who ran the Arkansas project against Bill Clinton, drove Vince Foster into suicide, and very likely contributed to the death of Steve Kangas.

Here’s a quick sample, then go and read, and enjouy:

The culture of his own marriage is apparently past restoring. With the legal fight still in the weigh-in phase, the story of Scaife v. Scaife already includes a dog-snatching, an assault, a night in jail and that divorce court perennial, allegations of adultery.

Oh, and there’s the money. Three words, people.

No. Pre. Nup.

…

Dickie, as he’s known to his handful of friends, acquired a mean streak at an early age, according to his now-deceased sister, Cordelia Scaife. (She once told The Washington Post that she and her brother hadn’t spoken for 25 years.) His trouble with alcohol started when he was at prep school, and he later was tossed out of Yale when he rolled a keg of beer down a flight of stairs and broke the legs of a fellow student. His father, a below-average businessman, died a year after Richard graduated from the University of Pittsburgh. His mother was “just a gutter drunk,” as Cordelia put it.

Scaife owns a handful of newspapers and newsweeklies, including the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, a conservative answer to the Post-Gazette. When he isn’t tending to this modest publishing empire, he’s underwriting what Hillary Clinton once called “a vast right-wing conspiracy.” His highest-profile expenditure is the $2.3 million he gave the American Spectator magazine in the mid-’90s, to try to unearth prurient and embarrassing details about Bill Clinton’s years as governor of Arkansas. (The magazine came up virtually empty-handed.)

I wish his soon to be ex-wife all the best. Him, I am not so magnanimous in his wishes.

Quote of the Day, Rachael Maddow

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She said the following on Olbermann:

Maddow: “Twelve year old Graeme Frost, meet Cindy Sheehan, meet 9/11 widows, meet Staff Sgt. Brian McGough, meet Michael J. Fox, meet the kids who were targeted by Mark Foley, meet Jack Murtha. I mean, Graeme Frost as a twelve year old now joins an esteemed list of Americans who have been personally attacked, personally slimed, called liars and cowards and frauds, and threatened for daring to publicly espouse a view that the right disagrees with. I mean, just when you think you’ve found the person who they can’t possibly slime, I don’t know, say a twelve year old kid just out of a coma, turns out yeah, the bar does actually go that low, it’s just astonishing.”

We need to realize that there are elements on the right wing who are simply psychotic, and that they are very much in the mainstream.

So Now the Right Wing is Going After a Twelve Year old Boy and His Family

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This is outrageous, and people should be outraged, about what these people are doing to 12 year old Graeme Frost and his family. They are being stalked and threatened with violence simply because he went on the air and told how his life was saved by S-Chip in response to Bush’s radio address..

That being said, there are people out there who do outrage better than I do. Heck, they just plain write better than I do, people like Ezra Klein, Lower Manhattanite of the Group News Blog, Jim Henley, Tbogg, John Amato of C&L, and pretty much anyone else on the internet.

Instead, I want to look at causes, and precedents, and I founc a very old one, Maenadic rites, the charismatic worship of Dionysus, where “The mysteries of Dionysus inspired the women to ecstatic frenzy; they indulged in copious amounts of violence, bloodletting, sexual activity, self-intoxication, and mutilation.”

There were no drugs. A large group of women woud get together in the woods, and begin to pray, and chant, and laugh, and sing, and slowly, as a group, they would work themselves into a frenzy, and then they would then typically find some animal or animals, and rip them to pieces and eat them raw.

There were no drugs, nothing but music, dancing, group hysteria, and catharsis.

Once they were finished, they would look at themselves, and see their bodies covered in blood, and they would be relieved, but they would also be ashamed. It provided release, as ancient Greek women lived very secluded and regimented lives, and needed release, and it created shame, which kept them in line.

It was central to how the Greeks controlled their women, and the Romans, with a far more emancipated role for women, eventually prohibited the worship of Dionysus by more than about a dozen women at a time, because they neither needed nor wanted this form of bondage for their women.

The right wing has created its own Maenads, and it is not a pretty site.

In fact, it is their model for the United States, and its citizens for the future.

Deluge of peanuts brings back ‘Jericho’ TV show | CNET News.com

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I’ve not seen the show, but my dad was one of the thousands of people who wrote to NBC in 1967 to save Star Trek.

Deluge of peanuts brings back ‘Jericho’ TV show | CNET News.com

An online protest involving 20 tons of peanuts delivered to CBS Entertainment in New York and California has succeeded in bringing back the television show Jericho, which the network canceled last month.

….

Peanuts…Heh.