Saturday, March 07, 2009
Econ
It's odd how I've been reading a lot of news about the global economy lately; I know that it's been all over the news, but it's still remarkable how fresh the recent stories about the topic have been. Here's some that I liked in particular, promise they won't make you guys fall asleep:- The maestro Michael Lewis is back with an in-depth look at the financial troubles of Iceland. Usually, 10,000-word features about financial systems aren't really recommended reading, but remember that opening narration in Elizabethtown about failures and fiascos?
"As somebody once said there's a difference between a failure and a fiasco. A failure is simply the non-presence of success. Any fool can accomplish failure. But a fiasco...A fiasco is a disaster of mythic proportions. A fiasco is a folktale told to others that makes other people feel more alive because it didn't happened to them."
Well, this is a total fiasco, and Iceland might as well be renamed Shitland. The economy is a total clusterfuck (the country's debt is 85 times its GDP), and Lewis gets to the bottom of it while painting a funny picture of the typical quirky Icelandic people (and the unpleasant Icelandic men). It's such a caricature that it couldn't possibly be true, could it?Because Iceland is really just one big family, it’s simply annoying to go around asking Icelanders if they’ve met Björk. Of course they’ve met Björk; who hasn’t met Björk? Who, for that matter, didn’t know Björk when she was two? “Yes, I know Björk,” a professor of finance at the University of Iceland says in reply to my question, in a weary tone. “She can’t sing, and I know her mother from childhood, and they were both crazy. That she is so well known outside of Iceland tells me more about the world than it does about Björk.”
- A Wired Magazine feature titled Recipe for Disaster: The Formula That Killed Wall Street takes a look at the research of David X. Li, a Wall Street actuary who came up with a way to model correlation between securities.
It was a brilliant simplification of an intractable problem. And Li didn't just radically dumb down the difficulty of working out correlations; he decided not to even bother trying to map and calculate all the nearly infinite relationships between the various loans that made up a pool. What happens when the number of pool members increases or when you mix negative correlations with positive ones? Never mind all that, he said. The only thing that matters is the final correlation number—one clean, simple, all-sufficient figure that sums up everything.
The effect on the securitization market was electric. Armed with Li's formula, Wall Street's quants saw a new world of possibilities. And the first thing they did was start creating a huge number of brand-new triple-A securities. Using Li's copula approach meant that ratings agencies like Moody's—or anybody wanting to model the risk of a tranche—no longer needed to puzzle over the underlying securities. All they needed was that correlation number, and out would come a rating telling them how safe or risky the tranche was.
We all know how it all turned out, right? Then from later in the article:No one knew all of this better than David X. Li: "Very few people understand the essence of the model," he told The Wall Street Journal way back in fall 2005.
"Li can't be blamed," says Gilkes of CreditSights. After all, he just invented the model. Instead, we should blame the bankers who misinterpreted it. And even then, the real danger was created not because any given trader adopted it but because every trader did. In financial markets, everybody doing the same thing is the classic recipe for a bubble and inevitable bust." - A couple of weeks ago, CNBC analyst Rick Santelli went on a rant against Barack Obama's housing plan, saying that it rewarded "losers" who took on more debt than they could afford. The whole sentiment carries on a theme in the rich people wing of the American right about going back to Ayn Rand and her writing.
Back in college, some friends of mine were into Ayn Rand, but I never really got into all that. Some of it was because I wasn't really comfortable with Rand' philosophy, but most of it was because I found her writing style to be garbage. But that's just me.
Anyway, it's funny to note that former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan (along with other, uh, architects of this economic collapse) are huge Ayn Rand fans.
That's about the second worst thing to come out of Ayn Rand's career; in 1999, there was this awkward sex scene between Helen Mirren's title character and Eric Stoltz from The Passion of Ayn Rand. - Here's a more pleasant video: Jon Stewart rips another asshole into Santelli and CNBC for their history of fuck-ups, after Santelli cancelled on going on The Daily Show.
- On the other side of the intellectual spectrum, you really ought to be reading New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman these days. Krugman named his blog after his book, "The Conscience of a Liberal", and his work deals with the "politics and economics of inequality". His columns don't go over the head of the regular reader (regular readers of NY Times, at least) while he saves his nerd shit over on his blog.
Krugman isn't a very big fan of Obama; unlike most of Obama's critics, Krugman though feels that Obama doesn't go far enough, and his criticism of Obama's stimulus legislation drew a reaction from Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel.
Anyway, Krugman was pleasantly surprised over budget proposal, and in his most glowing piece about the new administration yet, explained why there's so much to be excited about, and how excited he is about the transparency of the document.[Budget priorities] are laid out in a document whose clarity and plausibility seem almost incredible to those of us who grew accustomed to reading Bush-era budgets, which insulted our intelligence on every page. This is budgeting we can believe in.
But can Obama deliver on his promise to reduce the deficit? "Yes, he can!" writes Krugman:Right now the deficit is huge thanks to temporary factors (at least we hope they’re temporary): a severe economic slump is depressing revenues and large sums have to be allocated both to fiscal stimulus and to financial rescues.
But if and when the crisis passes, the budget picture should improve dramatically. Bear in mind that from 2005 to 2007, that is, in the three years before the crisis, the federal deficit averaged only $243 billion a year. Now, during those years, revenues were inflated, to some degree, by the housing bubble. But it’s also true that we were spending more than $100 billion a year in Iraq.
So if Mr. Obama gets us out of Iraq (without bogging us down in an equally expensive Afghan quagmire) and manages to engineer a solid economic recovery — two big ifs, to be sure — getting the deficit down to around $500 billionby 2013 shouldn’t be at all difficult. - Now that he's in office, it's great to look back at this feature about Obama's economic philosophy (I linked to it back in August). The article predicts and predates all of Obama's moves so far, including his plans for large-scale spending, his commitment to deficit-reduction, and even his reluctance to go ahead and nationalize American banks. Awesome.
Labels: barack obama, economics, politics
Friday, March 06, 2009
Baller-in-Chief
This is a couple of days late (I've been busy, you know, working), but this is just all kinds of awesome and really needs to be shared.The Washington Wizards earlier this week played host to the Chicago Bulls, so Chicago native Barack Obama took the opportunity to watch his home town team in the nation's capital. And instead of sitting in a luxury box, he actually sat courtside and mixed it up with die-hard Wizznuts, including this little Tuff Juice fan:
And the President even started to enjoy a cold one:
Then things started heating up on the court, and a Wizards fan started talking trash to Obama, who was rooting for the visiting team:
[Wizards fan Miles Rawls] told the President that if he was rooting for the visitors, he was "gonna have to keep it to a low roar, because we're cheering for the Wizards over here." Obama, in turn, repeatedly needled Rawls about the Wizards' habit of letting leads evaporate, especially when the Bulls made a run.
"We was just going back and forth," Rawls said. "Once Chicago started coming back, he told me, 'Now I think you need to sit down.' When Tyrus Thomas dunked on somebody, he turned around, was talking smack. Then JaVale McGee had that alley-oop, and he gave me the high five. We was just supporting each others' team, having a good time."
Labels: barack obama, basketball
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
And here's to you Bishop Robinson, Jesus loves you more than you will know
Bishop Gene Robinson gave this beautiful opening prayer at the kickoff event for Barack Obama's inauguration:“O God of our many understandings, we pray that you will bless us with tears -- tears for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women in many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.
Bless this nation with anger -- anger at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people.
Bless us with discomfort at the easy, simplistic answers we’ve preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth about ourselves and our world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.
Bless us with patience and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be fixed anytime soon, and the understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah.
Bless us with humility, open to understanding that our own needs as a nation must always be balanced with those of the world.
Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance, replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences.
Bless us with compassion and generosity, remembering that every religion’s God judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable.
And God, we give you thanks for your child, Barack, as he assumes the office of President of the United States.
Give him wisdom beyond his years, inspire him with President Lincoln’s reconciling leadership style, President Kennedy’s ability to enlist our best efforts, and Dr. King’s dream of a nation for all people.
Give him a quiet heart, for our ship of state needs a steady, calm captain.
Give him stirring words; We will need to be inspired and motivated to make the personal and common sacrifices necessary to facing the challenges ahead.
Make him color-blind, reminding him of his own words that under his leadership, there will be neither red nor blue states, but the United States.
Help him remember his own oppression as a minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination, that he might seek to change the lives of those who are still its victims.
Give him strength to find family time and privacy, and help him remember that even though he is president, a father only gets one shot at his daughters’ childhoods.
And please, God, keep him safe. We know we ask too much of our presidents, and we’re asking far too much of this one. We implore you, O good and great God, to keep him safe. Hold him in the palm of your hand, that he might do the work we have called him to do, that he might find joy in this impossible calling, and that in the end, he might lead us as a nation to a place of integrity, prosperity, and peace. Amen."
Gene Robinson is famous for being the first openly gay clergyman to be ordained bishop in a major Christian denomination. Though Obama's people have denied the connection, his appointment to deliver the opening prayer came on the heels of the President-elect's choice to have Pastor Rick Warren to give the opening invocation for his inaugural. While Warren is most famous in these shores for "The Purpose-Driven Life", his selection came under fire because of previous incendiary comments by the popular pastor about gay people--comparing homosexuality to incest, bestiality, and pedophilia--comments that were hurtful, bigoted, and decidedly un-Christian.
I've yet to read this long GQ profile on Bishop Robinson, but it looks very interesting, and I've bookmarked it and should be able to get to it soon. There's also this quick interview with the bishop at Beliefnet, where he talks about, among other things, the Warren selection.
Labels: barack obama, gene robinson
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Person of the year
Time Magazine's person of the year is an obvious choice, but there are still loads of good reads in there. I should go get a copy.The cover was done by the same artist who created the iconic Obama poster
Labels: barack obama, politics, us elections
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
Niebuhr
Watching the introduction of Obama's security team on CNN right now. With focus on the new administration's foreign policy, some attention has been showered upon Reinhold Niebuhr, a theologian born near the turn of the last century who is said to be one of the president-elect's favorite philosophers. Over the course of the campaign and the election's aftermath, various articles came out detailing the scope of influence that Niebuhr has had on Obama, and how his work has shaped Obama's worldview. Obama himself said:I take away [from the works of Reinhold Niebuhr] the compelling idea that there’s serious evil in the world, and hardship and pain. And we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate those things. But we shouldn’t use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction. I take away . . . the sense we have to make these efforts knowing they are hard.
While reading up on Niebuhr, I found out that it was he who wrote that beautiful prayer about serenity: "God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other."
Labels: barack obama, politics, reinhold niebuhr
Friday, November 21, 2008
Geek we can believe in
Chuck Norris-style riffs on Obama's geekiness. My favorites:- Obama called the hotline to kill Jason Todd.
- Obama played a fifteenth level elven fighter/thief/mage. And got away with it.
- Obama knows more Star Trek trivia than you ever will. He just doesn't see the need to talk about it and scare off the women.
- Obama wants to start his inaugural address with "I have come here to govern wisely and chew bubble gum."
- Obama knows that Hal Jordan is the best Green Lantern. But he'd rather hang with Kyle.
(I agree with Coates though, he probably preferred John Stewart.)
- Obama knows that Captain America is not really dead.
(Although I think it would have been better if they said: "Obama always knew Bucky wasn't dead.")
Labels: barack obama, hehehe
Friday, November 14, 2008
Rahmbo
My favorite character from one of my top-five TV shows, The West Wing *, was Josh Lyman, the abrasive Deputy Chief of Staff in Aaron Sorkin's fictional White House **. He had a special gift for getting the dirty work done (with his fine political mind) and for pissing people off (with his cockiness and sarcasm), and his antics are among the best things about the show. The character was based on Bill Clinton's Deputy Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel.Emanuel has been back in the spotlight for his recent appointment as President-Elect Barack Obama's White House Chief of Staff. With the announce of his second WH tour-of-duty, there have been numerous profiles detailing his colorful personality. A Salon article called Obama's Designated A--hole painted Emmanuel as a tenacious negotiator with a proclivity for profanity. An older story noted, "he raised millions of dollars by browbeating donors and candidates with cellphone calls that invariably ended, 'Fuck you. I love you.'"
Off of that alone, the television character that seems closest to Emanuel's personality wouldn't be Josh Lyman, but Entourage super-agent Ari Gold. And it's probably not a coincidence because the character was based on real-life Hollywood super-agent Ari Emanuel--who happens to be Rahm's younger brother! Yep, Obama's new Chif of Staff is Ari's big bro ***.
Speaking of The West Wing, the final season of the show back in 2005 experienced a revival of sorts with its focus on the elections for the new US president. The fictional campaign featured Democrat Rep. Matt Santos from Texas (Jimmy Smits), who had won a hard-earned primary against the establihment candidate (the incumbent VP), opposite Republican Arnold Vinick (Alan Alda), a moderate Senator from the west who has had a record of going against his party. Santos, the charismatic minority newcomer who ran on a message of hope, ended up winning the election.
While molding the character, the show's writers looked for a model on whom to base the character. They found a young, promising politician whose star was beginning to rise on the national scene and crafted their imaginary presidential candidate after the politician.
The politician? Barack Obama.
Funny how life ended up imitating art that imitated life ****.
* - My list, in no particular order: The West Wing, Veronica Mars, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the post-Angel years), Friends, The Office (I'm cheating and putting both the British and the American versions, though Tim will always be the man)
** - Bradley Whitford was so good in the role that Sorkin wrote the part of Danny Tripp for Whitford in his next project, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.
*** - Their eldest brother, Zeke, is one of the foremost experts in healthcare policy. Wonkette had a funny quiz about the brothers. Can you imagine how Thanksgiving Dinner at their table must be like like?
**** - Matt Santos' White House Chief of Staff? Josh Lyman.
Labels: barack obama, politics, rahm emmanuel, television, us elections, west wing
Post-mortem
Here's an interesting tidbit from the New Yorker's report on the Obama campaign:Obama, who is not without an ego, regarded himself as just as gifted as his top strategists in the art and practice of politics. Patrick Gaspard, the campaign's political director, said that when, in early 2007, he interviewed for a job with Obama and Plouffe, Obama said that he liked being surrounded by people who expressed strong opinions, but he also said, 'I think that I'm a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I'll tell you right now that I'm gonna think I'm a better political director than my political director.' After Obama's first debate with McCain, on September 26th, Gaspard sent him an e-mail. 'You are more clutch than Michael Jordan,' he wrote. Obama replied, 'Just give me the ball.
The piece itself is a great look at the people behind the campaign, how they matured and adjusted over the course of the campaign, and how they ultimately won the elections.
Newsweek has a much longer report, in seven parts, that came out this week. The magazine's reporters had previously negotiated for total access with the Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John McCain campaigns with the condition that the stories wouldn't be published until after the elections.
- Part 1 - How He Did It
- Part 2 - Back from the Dead
- Part 3 - The Long Siege
- Part 4 - Going Into Battle
- Part 5 - Center Stage
- Part 6 - The Great Debates
- Part 7 - The Final Days
Haven't read all of it yet. I printed out the whole thing (22 pages in 6-point type) to read for the weekend.
Labels: barack obama, politics, us elections
Thursday, November 06, 2008
Just four years ago
Via Lang Whitaker's Slam Online post about the new American president, I came across this old feature on Barack Obama from four years ago, in the middle of his campaign for a U.S Senate seat and months before the speech that catapulted him to political superstardom. I was amazed at this tidbit, considering it was just four years ago:Still loose and alert after a long day, Obama was sipping iced tea in a busy, Caribbean-themed restaurant in a small shopping center in Hyde Park. But he had already spent sixteen months running for the Senate—and seven years as a state senator—and he could ruefully sympathize with the political apathy of the average beleaguered citizen. Tonight, he had turned his cell phone off and dismissed his aides; he just wanted to get home for the bedtimes of his daughters, who are two and five. His wife, Michelle, is also a lawyer, and their daily lives are the familiar three-ring American family circus—even without the steroidal additive of Barack’s political career. Yet Barack had been reluctant to take even a semester off from teaching while campaigning, partly because he needs the income. To survive this campaign financially, the Obamas will take out a second mortgage on their apartment.
(Emphasis mine.)
Also, this:
Jan Schakowsky told me about a recent visit she had made to the White House with a congressional delegation. On her way out, she said, President Bush noticed her “obama” button. “He jumped back, almost literally,” she said. “And I knew what he was thinking. So I reassured him it was Obama, with a ‘b.’ And I explained who he was. The President said, ‘Well, I don’t know him.’ So I just said, ‘You will.’ ”
Labels: barack obama
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Obama wins!
Slate calls the race for Obama. A few moments later, Salon follows suit:After his win in Ohio, and with victories in blue states like California assured, Salon is ready to project that Barack Obama will be the next president of the United States.
As the election currently stands -- and assuming the calls on Ohio and Pennsylvania hold up -- Obama has 207 Electoral College votes, 63 short of the 270 needed for victory. But with California's 55 votes sure to follow, along with Hawaii's four votes and Washington's 11, it's now clear that Obama will get to the magic number and win the presidency.
Labels: barack obama, politics, us elections
Friday, August 29, 2008
4 Years Ago
Barack Obama will be accepting the Democratic Presidential Nomination tonight/this morning in front of a mammoth crowd of 75,000. It's as good as time as any to watch his keynote address from the DNC 4 years ago, The Speech that turned him into an instant superstar:Here's part 1:
Part 2 (watch the reaction of the audience):
And here's the instant reaction from the pundits who were just mesmerized:
Labels: barack obama, politics, us elections
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Michelle
Just watched amazing Michelle Obama's speech live tonight/this morning. It was just as good as Barack Obama's speech four years ago, and you should watch it if you get the chance. It was intelligent and emotional and moving, and it struck all the right chords. A lot of people at the Democratic National Convention in Denver were in tears. It got really, really dusty here in my living room too.Labels: barack obama, michelle obama, politics, us elections
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Joe Biden
I was rooting for Obama to pick Biden when the shortlist for his VP picks came out (prior to that, I was hoping he'd pick New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, who'd been a congressman, an ambassador to the United Nations, and Bill Clinton's Energy secretary, but Richardson wasn't on the list). During the early part of the Democratic primaries, Biden drew heat for some statements he made about Barack Obama, but he also made one of the funniest cracks during the campaign about Rudy Giuliani: "There's only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun, and a verb and 9/11."Anyway, Biden's profile is inspiring, a foreign policy expert as well as a career politician who has remained one of the poorest members of the United States Senate. Then there's the heart-rending tragedy that befell him soon after he won his first term in the Senate:
In 1972, Biden's wife and baby daughter were killed in a car accident. His two young sons were hospitalized with serious injuries. The accident happened a week before Christmas and six weeks after Biden had been elected one of the youngest U.S. senators ever.
One of his sons, Beau Biden, now 38, the attorney general of Delaware and the father of two children himself, recalls that his father said at the time: "Delaware can get another senator, but my boys can't get another dad."
"Those weren't just words," he added. "He lived them."
Beau Biden remembers that his father stayed constantly at the hospital with him and his brother. The boys recovered, and Biden's sister, Valerie, moved in to help care for them.
Biden wrote in his memoir that he told the then-Senate majority leader, Mike Mansfield, that he wouldn't become a senator, but Mansfield persuaded him to give it at least a six-month try.
He began a daily commute by train — 80 minutes each way between Wilmington and Washington — rushing to get home in time for dinner, or at least dessert, and to tuck his children in at night and be there when they woke up. His son said that Biden put his children first, making sure he got to ball games and other important events.
Biden has never had a home in Washington. He's always made the commute.
Labels: barack obama, joe biden, politics, us elections
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Friday, August 22, 2008
Obamanomics
I thoroughly enjoyed this piece from the New York Times Magazine about Barack Obama's economic plan. Apart from providing a nuanced, in-depth look at the plan, it also goes into detail about historic economic policies by previous Democratic administrations (Clinton's in particular), and the solutions the plan offers in today's context. Surprisingly readable, if you're into this kind of thing.Labels: barack obama, economics, politics, us elections
Friday, July 25, 2008
Obama in Berlin
Watching the Obama speech in Berlin live right now. Damn. I mean, damn.I've had my misgivings about some of his recent decisions, but this is a hell of a speech. It's brave and it doesn't pander; the tens of thousands of people in Berlin cheer furiously and wave little American flags, and I don't think all of those were American expats. When was the last time this scene happened in Europe?
He doesn't just look like the next President of the United States. He looks like the Leader of the Free World.
UPDATE: The full text of his speech.
Now the world will watch and remember what we do here -- what we do with this moment. Will we extend our hand to the people in the forgotten corners of this world who yearn for lives marked by dignity and opportunity; by security and justice? Will we lift the child in Bangladesh from poverty, shelter the refugee in Chad, and banish the scourge of AIDS in our time?
Will we stand for the human rights of the dissident in Burma, the blogger in Iran, or the voter in Zimbabwe? Will we give meaning to the words "never again" in Darfur?
Will we acknowledge that there is no more powerful example than the one each of our nations projects to the world? Will we reject torture and stand for the rule of law? Will we welcome immigrants from different lands, and shun discrimination against those who don't look like us or worship like we do, and keep the promise of equality and opportunity for all of our people?
Labels: barack obama, politics, us elections
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Obama
It was hard not to become an even bigger Barack Obama fan after reading his memoir. Sure, everyone knows how the story goes by now, but it was still fascinating to read about the details, not least of which is because he writes so well, balancing his stories and his reflections delicately. It was a thoughtful but not sentimental, articulate but not boring. It also held some treasures for a Filipino reader, not just for the cameos of Filipino neighbors in scenes from his early days in Hawaii. He describes life in rural Indonesia, sleeping under the kulambo, playing with tutubi on a string. He writes about Kenya, a steady procession of second and third cousins, all of whom still count as family, just it does here in the Philippines. They're poor, yes, but they can't help but throw a big banquet for the balikbayan Barack. It's fun to imagine that in a few months' time, this man who's had something similar to a Pinoy life will become President of the United States.While I was finishing the book, the blogosphere was abuzz with disappointment about Obama's support for the new Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The controversial provision involved retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies who helped the US government spy on phone conversations. It was such a disappointing, disheartening decision by Obama, and it provided such a gulf between the man from the book I was reading and the man in the spotlight.
Fortunately, there was this incisive article from the New Yorker provided a better look at Obama the politician, and how he cut his teeth in the tough world of Chicago politics.
Like many politicians, Obama is paradoxical. He is by nature an incrementalist, yet he has laid out an ambitious first-term agenda (energy independence, universal health care, withdrawal from Iraq). He campaigns on reforming a broken political process, yet he has always played politics by the rules as they exist, not as he would like them to exist. He runs as an outsider, but he has succeeded by mastering the inside game. He is ideologically a man of the left, but at times he has been genuinely deferential to core philosophical insights of the right.
This was, by the way, the article that accompanied the even more controversial cover that featured Obama as a Muslim and his wife an AK47-toting commie. You ought to read the whole thing.
Labels: barack obama, politics, us elections
