Simon Johnson's Words Still Ring True

Simon Johnson weighed in a year ago with sober words about cultures around the world, which all share one characteristic in common: their economies have gone belly-up, and needed to be rescued by the IMF.

Typically, these countries are in a desperate economic situation for one simple reason—the powerful elites within them overreached in good times and took too many risks. Emerging-market governments and their private-sector allies commonly form a tight-knit—and, most of the time, genteel—oligarchy, running the country rather like a profit-seeking company in which they are the controlling shareholders. When a country like Indonesia or South Korea or Russia grows, so do the ambitions of its captains of industry. As masters of their mini-universe, these people make some investments that clearly benefit the broader economy, but they also start making bigger and riskier bets. They reckon—correctly, in most cases—that their political connections will allow them to push onto the government any substantial problems that arise.

As the great-and-good of the world gather in Canada to plan our futures, his words bear reading again.

Had To Confirm It Just To Make Certain: California Welfare Cash Cards Used In Casino ATM's

So, making our way through North Carolina to visit with friends, on the 'Never gonna drive through Atlanta ever again' route.

NPR on the radio, 'cuz country radio is like fingernails on a chalkboard these days.

Floating up through the speakers, a constant flow of polite talk on innocuous subjects, competing with the road noise, and suddenly we hear someone being interviewed about State of California cash cards issued to welfare recipients being used to withdraw cash in the ATMs of over half the casinos in California.

What???!!! Mrs. Os and her stunned husband listen in disbelief as Jack Dolan of the Los Angeles Times calmly (and wittily) tells the tale of what he found by checking the publicly available records.

Of course, the Guhvernator is all over it, by gosh and by golly.

Turns out, 1.8 million dollars flew out California's door via these ATM's since October 2009.

Now, given the fact that California hands out some 6.6 billion dollars in cash assistance every year, 1.8 million is really in the statistical realm of a rounding error. Or, one can contemplate the fact that 1.8 million is a drop in the bucket of the breathtaking 6.6 billion welfare tab that California spends every year.

Six billion six thousand million, heading out the door, most of the money borrowed from the rest of the world.

It's not about the money. It's about a culture where this sort of behavior is chatted about cheerily on NPR, in almost an amused tone of voice.

The days off in Florida were all too brief. It took two days just to begin to get caught up on sleep from the previous month's non-stop work. OS and the sainted Mrs. OS have spent the past twenty years working and parenting, parenting and working, and working and working and working...and paying taxes...and paying taxes...and see government at all levels spend more and more, and give the money we earned and the taxes we paid to people who take it to casinos for gambling.

The words to describe the feelings just won't line up tonight.

Local Arizona Sheriff Pleads For Troops, White House Assures Us All Is Under Control

View and compare these two bits of video, one from the local sheriff in Arizona who admits that law enforcement cannot contain the drug cartels, and the White House spokesman who all but calls Senator Kyl a liar, as he assures us everything is under control.

Whose words do you believe?

Sovereign Default Hall Of Shame: May I Have The Envelope?

(H/T to Mish, the one and only Chief Rabbi of Economics)

Mish points us to the latest Credit Default Swap quotes.

It's sort of like golf: The higher your score, the worse your situation.

So, drumroll puhleezzze, for the Sovereign Default Hall of Shame!

Venezuela
Greece
Argentina
Pakistan
Ukraine
Dubai/Emirate of
Iraq
Illinois/State of
Portugal
California/State of

Wait-a-minit-thar, bubbah! OS gots a question or toooh 'bout this heah' list!

Illinois ranks below Pakistan, Iraq, and Dubai? Two of those states are in war zones, and one of them is run by a profligate royal family.

Now, where izzit that The Winner of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize hails from?

Isn't that Illinois?

Didn't He serve in the state senate there and vote on spending bills that now have to be paid for?

And isn't that guy Chavez in Venezuela someone The One and his posse positively admire?

And isn't Argentina that country that wants to get another war underway over the Falkland Islands, with the active help of The Winner of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize and Miss Hillary?

And isn't California the place that keeps voting Democrat, and building the welfare state, and is overrun with Mexicans--and isn't that where Miss Nancy Pelosi hails from?

Aren't they trying to do to the country what they did to their states?

So, if these folks and their friends are the True and Only Path of Enlightenment for both the government and economy, how come anybody with a buck to invest in sovereign debt runs away from them?

Maybe they know that these folks always take societies and their economies over the cliff?

Senator John Kyl: 'They Want Something In Return Before They'll Do Their Duty'

It's 4:42 long, and is perhaps the clearest portrait yet of the mind and heart of The Winner of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize.



Obama and company are deliberately encouraging the chaos on the border in order to hold the country hostage. When Kyl tells his story, you don't hear indignation in the reaction, you hear that collective release of breath that says 'Oh, dear God in heaven, this is my worst fear confirmed...'

In one sector of Arizona, a 94% decrease in illegal immigration, just by employing the laws and policies already enacted. In the next sector over, a tidal wave of illegals, drugs and crime. And they know it, and refuse to act. Obama will let the blood flow until he gets his 'comprehensive immigration reform'. The bodies stack up on both sides of the border in the meantime.

'It's a nice little country ya got here, it would be a damn shame if it were ruined by illegals running it over. Hey Gino, hey Vito, tell this nice country what happens if we don't get active cooperation! We're just out to protect you, after all!'

This begins to put the Administration's response to the BP oil leak in perspective.

Actually, it puts all of their behavior in perspective, from Day 1.

Da' Chicago Way, in da' White House...

(The White House, of course, denies all, and calls Kyl a liar.)

Feds Halt Sand Berm Project In Louisiana

As OS has stated before, he'll say it again: The Obama Administration doesn't want a solution to the BP problem in the Gulf of Mexico, it wants the problem to exacerbate into a human catastrophe.

It's always, always, always about the quest for power. Once that idea is firmly understood, the administration's behavior appears rational and consistent. Sans that idea, they just look like a 'ship of fools adrift on a sea of nonsense'.

From TV News in New Orleans: WDSU

NEW ORLEANS -- The federal government is shutting down the dredging that was being done to create protective sand berms in the Gulf of Mexico.

The berms are meant to protect the Louisiana coastline from oil. But the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department has concerns about where the dredging is being done.

Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser, who was one of the most vocal advocates of the dredging plan, has sent a letter to President Barack Obama, pleading for the work to continue.

Nungesser said the government has asked crews to move the dredging site two more miles farther off the coastline.

"Once again, our government resource agencies, which are intended to protect us, are now leaving us vulnerable to the destruction of our coastline and marshes by the impending oil," Nungesser wrote to Obama. "Furthermore, with the threat of hurricanes or tropical storms, we are being put at an increased risk for devastation to our area from the intrusion of oil.

Nungesser has asked for the dredging to continue for the next seven days, the amount of time it would take to move the dredging operations two miles and out resume work.

Work is scheduled to halt at midnight Wednesday.

OS again asks the question: If they continue to work, what's US Fish and Wildlife gonna do? Arrest Billy Nungesser? Wouldn't the image of him being led off in handcuffs for arraignment just make it around the world in one hour, and play for weeks? Front page of the BBC, baby! Lead story on CNN, bubbbah! Cut to ObamaBob stuttering out an explanation an hour later.

Charge Billy with? Find a prosecutor willing to try him? Find a jury in Louisiana to convict him?

Sue Plaquemines Parish? And open the workings of the Obama Administration to the legal discovery process? Find a jury anywhere that will rule for the government?
How many law firms out there would love to lead the countersuit for damages?

Send in the Federal Marshals to seize all the equipment, lock up all those workers?

In which jail? Which sheriff? The Sherriff of Plaquemines Parish?

How many marshals? Armed how? Running a blockade of armed shrimp boats? Willing to fire on them?

Send in the Coast Guard, or National Guard? Is the Louisiana guard going to open fire on the citizens of Plaquemines Parish? Is any other state's guard unit going to do the same? They have to go home and face their neighbors, mainly in the small towns from which those units are mustered.

Keep working, Billy. Dredge away. Hurricane season is coming, an Obama wants that oil to show up in Natchez before November.

Protect your parish, your state, and your nation.

Keep dredging.

Just Another Day In Iran

Imprisoning journalists for ten years?

Administering beat-downs on journalists in Iran by bodyguards of the Vice-President?

Arresting students for 'anti-Prophet propaganda', and denying them access to counsel?

Priceless.

(Just what constitutes 'anti-Prophet propaganda', anyhoo?)

Just a reminder about our President, the 2010 winner of the Nobel Peace prize, who is eager to talk without pre-condition to the loony-toony in charge in Tehran, but who lacked the brains to call BP when their well blew up off our coast.

OS finds himself flashing back to 1938, when the free world sacrificed Czechoslovakia to Hitler in the cause of 'peace', vilifying the Czechs for having the temerity to attempt to defend themselves in the process.

What happened in 1939? There was clear warning of Hitler's intentions.

Iran bankrolls Hamas, and imports its thugs to enforce its will in Iran. Ditto Hezbollah in the south of Lebanon. Israel defends itself against both, and is vilified.

The loony-toony in the windbreaker has made his intentions clear as well, has he not?

What happens in 2014 when he has both a nuke and a delivery system?

Mr. President?

'Beneath These Rolling Skies': Spurgeon's Thoughts On Our Present Challenges

We live in an age of great transition, in the culture as well as the economy. It can be frightening, and if you read OS's rants, you sense his distress.

So, as an antidote, and a note of hope, words shared from a respected commentator on our troubled times.

We have many things in our possession at the present moment that can be shaken, and it is not good for a Christian to rely upon them, for there is nothing stable beneath these rolling skies; change is written upon all things. Yet we have certain "things that cannot be shaken," and I invite you this evening to think of them—that if the things that can be shaken should all be taken away, you may derive real comfort from the things that cannot be shaken and that will remain.

Whatever your losses have been, or may be, you enjoy present salvation. You are standing at the foot of Christ's cross, trusting alone in the merit of His precious blood, and no rise or fall of the markets can interfere with your salvation in Him; no breaking of banks, no failures and bankruptcies can touch that.

Then you are a child of God this evening. God is your Father. No change of circumstances can ever rob you of that. Even if by loss you are brought to poverty and stripped bare, you can still say, "He is still my Father. In my Father's house are many rooms; therefore I will not be troubled."

You have another permanent blessing, namely, the love of Jesus Christ. He who is God and man loves you with all the strength of His affectionate nature—nothing can affect that. The fig tree may not blossom, and the flocks may dwindle and wander from the field, but it does not matter to the man who can sing, "My Beloved is mine, and I am His." Our best portion and richest heritage we cannot lose.

Whatever troubles come, let us play the man; let us show that we are not like little children cast down by what happens to us in this poor fleeting state of time. Our country is Immanuel's land, our hope is fixed in heaven, and therefore, calm as the summer's ocean, we will see the wreck of everything earthborn and yet rejoice in the God of our salvation.


Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-92), Metropolitan Tabernacle, London

HT Truth For Life

Downtime: On The Florida Atlantic Coast

OldSouth and the sainted Mrs. OS are taking some down-time, on the Atlantic side of Florida. The oil hasn't reached here, yet.

No particular insights to offer, except to convey a decision made. OS has made his final journey through Atlanta and central Georgia by auto. To encounter major traffic jams fifty miles (and more) from the center of the city, on a Saturday, not a holiday weekend, no major construction underway--simply volume of traffic--was maddening, and disheartening.

Something, somehow has gone terribly awry in that part of our wonderful country. Life was never meant to look like this; late-model cars stacked nose-to-tail as far as the eye can see, on their way to and from housing developments that have eaten every small town and county for as far as the eye can see, each shopping area indistinguishable from the next, all the color and joy utterly squeezed out of existence. Just pine trees, humidity, banality, and traffic.

The New South.

We made a decision--return via Alabama or the North Carolina. The map says it's hundreds of miles of additional driving. Reality says we'll arrive home sooner, and saner.

In the meantime, the golf course awaits,(a Donald Ross course!) and Red Stripe beer is chilling next to the salsa in the fridge.

And, congrats to Northern Ireland's pride and joy on an inspiring performance at the US Open.

OS knew he had it clenched when McDowell was standing over his second shot on the eighteenth, needing par to win, took a short iron and laid up. Third shot safely past the hole, putt-putt. Win.

Three cheers for sanity. And for his gracious humility as he accepted the trophy.

Tiger, take notes. You tied fourth in the US Open, when the USGA could have understandably uninvited you.

Learn, for once, to say blinkin' Thank You.