Snapshots From The Libertarian Paradise

[baksheesh]

The question answers itself.

Well you guys must be pretty unflappable then, that's all I can say.

[clinthopson]

Clothes should be all in midnight black which goes perfectly with the pearl necklace.

Not a choker, more pearls so you can spin it around your neck. Like a mullosky hula hoop.

[baksheesh]

Clothes should be all in midnight black which goes perfectly with the pearl necklace.

Not a choker, more pearls so you can spin it around your neck. Like a mullosky hula hoop.

Uh, erm, Mr. Hopson, you do know what a 'pearl necklace' is, don't you?

[Jeffrey Wozniak]

What's Cost Got to Do with It?

By Doug French

5/7/2012

Book buyers have been used to hardback books being the most expensive, with softcover versions being priced much less, while e-book versions are cheaper still.

This pricing scheme comports with David Ricardo's doctrine that the value of consumption goods are determined by the "cost of production" or the labor theory of value. Obviously the production cost of a hardback book is greater than that for a paperback, with both of these far and away more expensive to produce than a Kindle or ePub version.

The costs of book preparation — formatting, editing, typesetting, indexing, marketing, and royalties — are incurred no matter what the book's version. However, with hard and softcover books, publishers must warehouse their inventory and there are costs associated with that. With e-books, as well as downloadable audio versions, no warehouse is required — just a hard drive somewhere.

But that's not the half of it. When Amazon or any bookseller runs through their inventory of a book in the physical form, they have to order and pay for more paper and ink to be constructed into the particular title so that orders can be filled. Replenishing inventory costs money. Not so for an e-book. Once the digital version has been created, it's good until the market doesn't accept it anymore.

So for those thinking David Ricardo had it right, expensive hardbacks and cheap e-books make all the sense in the world. But Austrians see the world differently. Consumers set prices based on their preferences. It doesn't matter what a book costs; what matters is what a reader will pay for it. Likewise, consumers in the Western world determine the prices — not by haggling — but by buying or not buying.

The illusion that costs of production determine price is created by the reality of financial viability. If you can't recover in proceeds what you have spent in production, you have to stop what you are doing or change the way you do it. If your profits are extremely high, you attract the competition to your endeavors, and then your prices have to fall. Over the long run, it's true, your marginal costs and marginal prices tend to equalize. What matters is the cause and effect: the price you can obtain for making something determines how much you can spend making it.

Buying the hardback means paying for shipping and waiting for the book to arrive. The same goes for the paperback. Physical books require shelving and space, which is, again, an expense.

E-books offer immediate availability and thousands of books can be stored in a single thin, lightweight piece of machinery, not to mention the many other cool features e-readers offer.

Carl Menger wrote in Principles of Economics,

There is no necessary and direct connection between the value of a good and whether, or in what quantities, labor and other goods of higher order were applied to its production.… Whether a diamond was found accidentally or was obtained from a diamond pit with the employment of a thousand days of labor is completely irrelevant for its value.

The other day my friends at Amazon sent me an email announcing that Joan Didion's new book, Blue Nights, is available for pre-order. The most expensive format to buy Didion's book is on audio CD or download for $16.50. The large-print paperback version is $15.51. The Kindle version sells for $12.99, and the hardcover is $13.99 for Prime customers (shipping included).

The cost to produce a CD or downloadable audio version of a book is much less than a hardcover. And the cost of producing the hardcover is more than the softcover. And the Kindle version is the least expensive to produce by a long shot, yet that version commands nearly as much as hardcover, including shipping.

The pricing of Ms. Didion's newest reflects consumer preference, not the cost of production.

Some people want personal libraries, but most don't have the space at home to accommodate shelf after shelf of books. Kindle, ePub, and audio versions make libraries possible without the required space.

However, these changes in consumer preference don't happen all at once. Many readers still insist on reading physical books. Giving a friend a physical book seems more personal than giving an e-book as a gift. But what's really at work is that everyone's tastes are different. And with technology creating new format options, consumers have more opportunities than ever to dictate prices.

A young woman visiting my home was aghast at our numerous and prominently displayed rows of books. "Who could possibly want all of these books?" she wondered, thinking the owners were out of earshot.

Menger explains,

There is no reason why a good may not have value to one economizing individual but no value to another individual under different circumstances. The measure of value is entirely subjective in nature, and for this reason a good can have great value to one economizing individual, little value to another, and no value at all to a third, depending upon the differences in their requirements and available amounts. What one person disdains or values lightly is appreciated by another, and what one person abandons is often picked up by another. While one economizing individual esteems equally a given amount of one good and a greater amount of another good, we frequently observe just the opposite evaluations with another economizing individual.

Indeed, for those who haul their entire libraries around on a Kindle or iPad, row after row of physical books doesn't look impressive; it looks silly and impractical. Toting a Kindle beats carrying even just a few physical books on a trip. For these reasons and many more, buyers are now willing to spend as much for an e-book as they do for a hardback.

Also, entrepreneurial errors are ruthlessly reflected in book pricing as well. Books produced in big print runs that turn out to be flops hit the bargain bin very quickly and are sold, not for 10 or 20 percent off the retail price but for pennies on the dollar, no matter the cost.

Book sales for all of last year rose 3.6 percent, from $11.25 billion in 2009 to $11.67 billion in 2010. But e-book sales rose a stunning 164.4 percent ($441.3 million vs. $166.9 million) and downloaded audiobook sales increased 38.8 percent, while physical audiobook sales decreased 6.3 percent.

The trends continued in the first quarter of this year with e-book sales up 146 percent from the year before, while hardcover sales grew modestly and paperback sales decreased.

Physical books still dominate total sales, but the consumer preferences are changing rapidly, and it's reflected not just in pricing but in the success and failure of business models. Brick-and-mortar, bankrupt bookseller Borders is in liquidation, while the New York Times reports, "Since April 1, Amazon sold 105 books for its Kindle e-reader for every 100 hardcover and paperback books, including books without Kindle versions and excluding free e-books."

"We had high hopes that this would happen eventually, but we never imagined it would happen this quickly," said Jeff Bezos, Amazon's chief executive, in a statement. "We've been selling print books for 15 years and Kindle books for less than four years."

Individuals engage in trade to make their lives better and satisfy their needs. Those wanting the e-book version of Joan Didion's book will decide (at a particular moment) what is worth more to them — keeping the $12.99 in their pocket or trading it for a downloadable version. What it costs Amazon to produce or obtain it is irrelevant.

Whether it's diamonds and water or hardbacks and e-books, the only cogent explanation for prices comes from the Austrians, not the classical economists.

Doug French is is president of the Mises Institute

[baksheesh]

So let me get this straight. Because in some cases consumer demand/willingness to pay is a factor in the price of some products, under some circumstances, therefore the cost of production has now been 'proven' to be irrelevant?

Bu-bu-bu-but that's brilliant! What an impeccably reasoned argument! This guy Doug French is a freaking modern day hero pointing out that the Emperor's dick has shrivelled in the chilly breeze, and the admiring populace should be laughing and pointing, rather than cheering.

Get this man a high posting in the IMF right away! Our fiscal woes will surely soon be over, if only this course of action is followed!

[clinthopson]

As the cartoon in the New Yorker said: "books are great, but they'll never replace the scroll.

[Jeffrey Wozniak]

Our fiscal woes will surely soon be over

No they won't.

They've only just begun.

Unfortunately the US is following in Europe's footsteps.

All these countries woes are being caused by "economists" who couldn't find their assholes with a funnel.

[jesus marion joseph]

Isn't Austria in Europe?

[Dr Dave]

Too easy:

Chinatown Bus Fail.


"The Chinatown buses were frequently hailed as a smart new transit model and an example of urban ingenuity. But last week’s crackdown and several recent crashes complicate that picture, illustrating that a $15 bus ticket can be like a $3 steak — you don’t necessarily want to know why it’s so cheap. Many of these bus lines were shameful by any normal transportation standards: unlicensed drivers, deadly safety records, a disregard for the streets they drove on. Much of what made them “innovative” was good old-fashioned corner-cutting."

[rollhead]

I ran into a friend of mine, Langdon Winner, at in the grocery store the other day. Langdon teaches at RPI and I was telling him that it looks like many folks today think that the iPad is going to solve all our problems and will make government obsolete.

Yes, he said. Langdon calls it "cyber-libertarianism" -- I Googled the term and came up with a piece he wrote about it 15 years ago.

http://homepages.rpi.edu/~winner/cyberlib2.html

[rollhead]

Crime of the Century

Posted on Jul 6, 2012

By Robert Scheer

Forget Bernie Madoff and Enron’s Ken Lay—they were mere amateurs in financial crime. The current Libor interest rate scandal, involving hundreds of trillions in international derivatives trade, shows how the really big boys play. And these guys will most likely not do the time because their kind rewrites the law before committing the crime.

Modern international bankers form a class of thieves the likes of which the world has never before seen. Or, indeed, imagined. The scandal over Libor—short for London interbank offered rate—has resulted in a huge fine for Barclays Bank and threatens to ensnare some of the world’s top financers. It reveals that behind the world’s financial edifice lies a reeking cesspool of unprecedented corruption. The modern-day robber barons pillage with a destructive abandon totally unfettered by law or conscience and on a scale that is almost impossible to comprehend.

How to explain a $450 million settlement for one bank whose defense, in a plea bargain worked out with regulators in London and Washington, is that every institution in their elite financial circle was doing it? Not just Barclays but JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and others are now being investigated on suspicion of manipulating the Libor rate, so critical to a $700 trillion derivatives market.

Caught as the proverbial deer in the headlights, Barclays Chairman Robert E. Diamond Jr. resigned this week and offered a plaintive defense to the British Parliament that he learned only recently that his bank was manipulating the index on which so large a part of international trade is based. That is plausible only if we assume he was paid $10 million a year to be deliberately ignorant. The Wall Street Journal had exposed this scandal fully four years ago but his bank continued to participate in it nonetheless.

“Study Casts Doubt on Key Rate” was the headline on the May 29, 2008, investigative report, which concluded: “Major banks are contributing to the erratic behavior of a crucial global lending benchmark, a Wall Street Journal analysis shows.” Even then, according to the report, it was known that the Libor rate was being manipulated “to act as if the banking system was doing better than it was at critical junctures in the financial crisis.”

Fast-forward four years to Diamond’s testimony before Parliament this week in which the CEO claimed his recent discovery of a pattern of interest manipulation by Barclays had made him “physically sick.” Who was to blame? According to the executive, subordinates acting behind his back.

The American-born banker, who has dual citizenship in the United States and Britain, is well versed in financial chicanery, having started by putting together derivatives packages at Credit Suisse First Boston back in 1996. He was compelled under parliamentary questioning Wednesday to admit that “I can’t sit here and say no one in the industry [knew] about the problems with Libor. There was an issue out there and it should have been dealt with more broadly.”

He couldn’t deny widespread chicanery within his bank because, as in the collapse of Enron a decade ago, investigators had uncovered an email record of market manipulation so glaring that if the top executives were unaware, it was because they didn’t want to know.

As The New York Times editorialized: “The evidence, cited by the Justice Department—which Barclays agreed is ‘true and accurate’—is damning. ‘Always happy to help,’ one employee wrote in an email after being asked to submit false information. ‘If you know how to keep a secret, I’ll bring you in on it,’ wrote a Barclays trader to a trader at another bank, referring to their strategies for mutual gain. If that’s not conspiracy and price-fixing, what is?”

The U.S. Justice Department made a deal with Barclays, and although it may prosecute some individuals in the scam, it agreed not to go after the bank itself. “Such an agreement makes sense only if that cooperation will allow prosecutors to nail other banks that have been involved in setting the rates, including potential cases against Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and HSBC ... ,” the Times editorial said.

Both Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase were reported by The Wall Street Journal years ago to be suspected of rigging the Libor interest rate. The leaders of those banks, despite such media exposure, clearly remained confident enough to continue on their merry way.

The sad reality is that they will probably get away with it. The world of high finance is by design as obscure and opaque as the bankers and their political surrogates can make it, and even this most recent crack in their defense of deception will soon be made to go away.

[Uli]

Crime of the Century

Posted on Jul 6, 2012

By Robert Scheer

Forget Bernie Madoff and Enron’s Ken Lay—they were mere amateurs in financial crime. The current Libor interest rate scandal, involving hundreds of trillions in international derivatives trade, shows how the really big boys play. And these guys will most likely not do the time because their kind rewrites the law before committing the crime.

Modern international bankers form a class of thieves the likes of which the world has never before seen. Or, indeed, imagined. The scandal over Libor—short for London interbank offered rate—has resulted in a huge fine for Barclays Bank and threatens to ensnare some of the world’s top financers. It reveals that behind the world’s financial edifice lies a reeking cesspool of unprecedented corruption. The modern-day robber barons pillage with a destructive abandon totally unfettered by law or conscience and on a scale that is almost impossible to comprehend.

How to explain a $450 million settlement for one bank whose defense, in a plea bargain worked out with regulators in London and Washington, is that every institution in their elite financial circle was doing it? Not just Barclays but JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and others are now being investigated on suspicion of manipulating the Libor rate, so critical to a $700 trillion derivatives market.

Caught as the proverbial deer in the headlights, Barclays Chairman Robert E. Diamond Jr. resigned this week and offered a plaintive defense to the British Parliament that he learned only recently that his bank was manipulating the index on which so large a part of international trade is based. That is plausible only if we assume he was paid $10 million a year to be deliberately ignorant. The Wall Street Journal had exposed this scandal fully four years ago but his bank continued to participate in it nonetheless.

“Study Casts Doubt on Key Rate” was the headline on the May 29, 2008, investigative report, which concluded: “Major banks are contributing to the erratic behavior of a crucial global lending benchmark, a Wall Street Journal analysis shows.” Even then, according to the report, it was known that the Libor rate was being manipulated “to act as if the banking system was doing better than it was at critical junctures in the financial crisis.”

Fast-forward four years to Diamond’s testimony before Parliament this week in which the CEO claimed his recent discovery of a pattern of interest manipulation by Barclays had made him “physically sick.” Who was to blame? According to the executive, subordinates acting behind his back.

The American-born banker, who has dual citizenship in the United States and Britain, is well versed in financial chicanery, having started by putting together derivatives packages at Credit Suisse First Boston back in 1996. He was compelled under parliamentary questioning Wednesday to admit that “I can’t sit here and say no one in the industry [knew] about the problems with Libor. There was an issue out there and it should have been dealt with more broadly.”

He couldn’t deny widespread chicanery within his bank because, as in the collapse of Enron a decade ago, investigators had uncovered an email record of market manipulation so glaring that if the top executives were unaware, it was because they didn’t want to know.

As The New York Times editorialized: “The evidence, cited by the Justice Department—which Barclays agreed is ‘true and accurate’—is damning. ‘Always happy to help,’ one employee wrote in an email after being asked to submit false information. ‘If you know how to keep a secret, I’ll bring you in on it,’ wrote a Barclays trader to a trader at another bank, referring to their strategies for mutual gain. If that’s not conspiracy and price-fixing, what is?”

The U.S. Justice Department made a deal with Barclays, and although it may prosecute some individuals in the scam, it agreed not to go after the bank itself. “Such an agreement makes sense only if that cooperation will allow prosecutors to nail other banks that have been involved in setting the rates, including potential cases against Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and HSBC ... ,” the Times editorial said.

Both Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase were reported by The Wall Street Journal years ago to be suspected of rigging the Libor interest rate. The leaders of those banks, despite such media exposure, clearly remained confident enough to continue on their merry way.

The sad reality is that they will probably get away with it. The world of high finance is by design as obscure and opaque as the bankers and their political surrogates can make it, and even this most recent crack in their defense of deception will soon be made to go away.

Occupy Wallstreet!

[clinthopson]

Nothing will happen to reign in Wall St. and the bankers as long as congress serves as their bitches.

[Bourne]

That's right, because Congress is the only body that can do anything to restrict lobby spending on the Hill. And they will certainly never do that because they are the ones who benefit most from it.

[Monte Smith]

Is Barclays accused of keeping the Libor artificially high or artificially low or artificially steady?

[jesus marion joseph]

Yes.

[Dr Dave]

Is Barclays accused of keeping the Libor artificially high or artificially low or artificially steady?

Oh, just a "victimless crime."


As the Libor scandal has given an outlet for long-simmering anger against wanker bankers in the UK, there have been some efforts in the media to puzzle out who might have won or lost from the manipulations, as well as arguments that they were as “victimless” or helped people (as in reporting an artificially low Libor during the crisis led to lower interest rate resets on adjustable rate loans pegged to Libor; what’s not to like about that?)

What we have so far is a lot of drunk under the streetlight behavior: people trying to relate the scandal to the part that is most visible and easy to understand, meaning the loan market that keys off Libor. As much as that’s a really big number ($10 trillion), it is trivial compared to the relevant derivatives. From the FSA letter to Barclays:

The Eurodollar futures contract traded on the CME in Chicago (which is the largest interest rate futures contract by volume in the world) has US dollar LIBOR as its reference rate. The value of volume of that contract traded in 2011 was over 564 trillion US dollars.

This is only one blooming exchange contract, albeit a monster of a contract. There are loads of OTC contracts in addition to that:

Interest rate derivative contracts typically contain payment terms that refer to benchmark rates. LIBOR and EURIBOR are by far the most prevalent benchmark rates used in euro, US dollar and sterling OTC interest rate derivatives contracts and exchange traded interest rate contracts.

Devil’s advocates have also argued that while Barclays submitted improper Libor rates, there’s no evidence they influenced the rates. I read the FSA document quite differently.

Recall that (so far) we have two phases of activity: one from 2005 to 2007, in which derivatives traders at Barclays would lean on the Submitters on a regular basis to place bids that would help improve the profits of positions they had on, and a later phase, during the crisis, where Barclays felt its peers were submitting lowball figures to the daily fixings and it was getting bad press for being an outlier, and it went to posting what it though were competitive, as in artificially low, data.

The earlier period looks to be far more damaging, and the regulators may have gotten only the tip of the iceberg. Readers have told me this sort of manipulation dates from at least 2001; the Economist quotes an insider saying it goes back 15 years. And with so few banks in the end influencing the rate, it isn’t hard to imagine the gaming worked. If you have 16 banks on the panel, as you did in late 2008, the top and bottom 25% of the bids are eliminated and the ones left are averaged. So it’s the average of 8 that remained that would determine the rate.

First, the FSA document suggests that it has only partial information, and it quotes e-mails and some isolated instant messages. A lot, presumably most, of the communication was verbal. But even with what the FSA presented, the traders were often and aggressively working with the submitters to influence their bids, and the FSA found in the overwhelming majority of the time the submitters cooperated. The directions were often quite specific, to hit a certain number, even to submit a figure that would be so high or so low as to get Barclays’ data point excluded from the daily calculation. The enthusiasm and frequency with which the traders were pushing the submitters, as well as the reaction in the market, suggests these efforts were having an impact:

Other individuals with no apparent vested interest in the strategy commented on the EURIBOR rates on 19 March 2007. Trader D stated in an instant message to an external trader “look at the games in EURIBOR today [...] I am sure a few names made a killing”. A trader at a hedge fund communicated with Trader E, also on 19 March 2007, stating “it’s becoming dangerous to trade in 3m imms [...], especially when Barclays sets the 3m very low [...] it does draw attention to you guys. It doesn’t look very professional”

But how could this be? Barclays was only one of a number of banks putting in daily Libor prices.

First, the FSA account notes that Barclays was sometimes working with other banks. It would seem likely that this was more frequent than the paper trail thus far would suggest. Someone working with other banks to rig rates would probably be a bit more circumspect than in internal communications. The fact that the traders would sometimes try to have a rate put in that was intended to be knocked out of the final calculation suggests a collusive strategy.

Second, the derivative traders weren’t working just with the submitters. The report indicates that on at least on occasion, they got the cash desk to cooperate with the manipulation. And again, if the derivative traders sometimes worked with traders in other banks, they might have gotten those cash desks to play along with their scheme.

Third, their objectives for rate moving were to achieve single or a few basis points. Some examples:

Trader B explained “I really need a very very low 3m fixing on Monday – preferably we get kicked out. We have about 80 yards [billion] fixing for the desk and each 0.1 [one basis point] lower in the fix is a huge help for us.

..the Submitter responded positively on 10 November 2006, “of course we will put in a low fixing” and on 13 November indicated they would make a submission lower than the Brokers thought EURIBOR would set that day, “no problem. I had not forgotten. The brokers are going for 3.372, we will put in 36 for our contribution”

As the Economist points out:

The sums involved might have been huge. Barclays was a leading trader of these sorts of derivatives, and even relatively small moves in the final value of LIBOR could have resulted in daily profits or losses worth millions of dollars. In 2007, for instance, the loss (or gain) that Barclays stood to make from normal moves in interest rates over any given day was £20m ($40m at the time). In settlements with the Financial Services Authority (FSA) in Britain and America’s Department of Justice, Barclays accepted that its traders had manipulated rates on hundreds of occasions.

And the idea that one party’s loss from the manipulation was another’s gain is irrelevant to those on the losing side:

….banks will be sued only by those who have lost, and will be unable to claim back the unjust gains made by some of their other customers. Lawyers acting for corporations or other banks say their clients are also considering whether they can walk away from contracts with banks such as long-term derivatives priced off LIBOR.

I expect the firms involved to face a locust swarm of litigation. Lawyers may accomplish what regulators and politicians refused to do: strip the banks of ill gotten gains and bring their preening CEOs and “producers” down a few notches. A day of reckoning may finally be coming.

link

Personally, I lack Ms. Smith's optimism. We're much more interested in whether Katie Holmes can wear heels again now that she's not married to a short guy than in whether any of the people who put on this massive fraud will be punished.

[walto]

I was on a conference call today with a bunch of state insurance depts about an catastrophe backstop bill that may be filed shortly, but is expected to get exactly nowhere in Congress if it costs a penny. And TRIA (the terrorism backstop legislation put in place after 9/11) is also up for renewal next year. Hard to believe that will be renewed--although strong insurer/contributor support leaves that question open.

Anyhow, another Katrina will be really enjoyable in Woz's coming libertarian utopia.

No more country at all, really.

[clinthopson]

How many of those loudmouths even know what libor stands for.

[walto]

Funny how the Romney disdainers/skeevers are now "the extreme left." It was just a few weeks ago that pretty much everybody knew he was an unprincipled liar with silly underpants-- a guy who would say anything to anybody for a vote. If it's his election to lose, it's because the right--extreme and otherwise--is blinded by hatred of Obama. Admit it Woz--you and your friends don't think about much else all day long. ("Sure, we know this bill is good for the country and people like it, but Obama will try to take credit if we pass it. Could get him a couple of thousand votes in some swing state. So NO.")

Sick.

[Dr Dave]

Regardless of how the extreme left tries to spin things this is now Romney's election to lose.

There is no reason to vote for Obama.

There are reasons to vote for Obama. He has said, however equivocatingly, that homosexuality is a human condition that should be acceptable in society. He got a piece of deeply-flawed-so-let's-learn-from-it health insurance legislation passed, probably for keeps despite all those idiotic House votes. And Hillary Clinton is his Secretary of State. And he once did talk the talk, even if he didn't remotely walk the walk. You can still watch his 2007-8 campaign speeches on YouTube. I'm surprised the Administration hasn't had them removed, since it is best in 2012 to deny he ever spoke glowingly of labor, or skeptically of Afghanistan, or righteously about Guantanamo. He did do all that, even though it came not just to nothing, but to worse than nothing: The Kill List.

In a way, Wingnuttia has been valuable to him: By talking about the crazy stuff--he's a Muslim, a Kenyan, a Keynesian, a Marxist--the actual bad acts have been obscured: the gradual creation of war as an institution in the Middle East and South Asia; the Kill List; and the continued refusal to enforce the law in the realm of high-end finance at firms run by high-net-worth individuals.

Those bad acts, along with a cancerous proclivity toward secrecy and burying reality in legalisms, are reasons to not vote for Obama.

There is no reason to vote for Romney, unless you really liked what happened when George W. Bush was President. Romney's platform, as best I can tell, is to do whatever Bush did only moreso. He promises to be President of the 1%, or more accurately, President of the .01%. If you want to see what full-on Plutocracy is like, Romney is your guy. Obama at least pretends discomfort at the power of the Super-Rich; Romney actually is one of them.

[LennyH]

Regardless of how the extreme left tries to spin things this is now Romney's election to lose.

There is no reason to vote for Obama.

The fact that his opponent is Mitt Romney is a big one. And one that appeals to swing voters that I know.

[clinthopson]

Regardless of how the extreme left tries to spin things this is now Romney's election to lose.

There is no reason to vote for Obama.

The biggest criticism of Obama is that he didn't clean up the mess that Bush, Cheney and the Rebubs left. The primary cause for cleaning up twas the Repub congress.

[walto]

There are reasons to vote for Obama. He has said, however equivocatingly, that homosexuality is a human condition that should be acceptable in society. He got a piece of deeply-flawed-so-let's-learn-from-it health insurance legislation passed, probably for keeps despite all those idiotic House votes. And Hillary Clinton is his Secretary of State. And he once did talk the talk, even if he didn't remotely walk the walk. You can still watch his 2007-8 campaign speeches on YouTube. I'm surprised the Administration hasn't had them removed, since it is best in 2012 to deny he ever spoke glowingly of labor, or skeptically of Afghanistan, or righteously about Guantanamo. He did do all that, even though it came not just to nothing, but to worse than nothing: The Kill List.

In a way, Wingnuttia has been valuable to him: By talking about the crazy stuff--he's a Muslim, a Kenyan, a Keynesian, a Marxist--the actual bad acts have been obscured: the gradual creation of war as an institution in the Middle East and South Asia; the Kill List; and the continued refusal to enforce the law in the realm of high-end finance at firms run by high-net-worth individuals.

Those bad acts, along with a cancerous proclivity toward secrecy and burying reality in legalisms, are reasons to not vote for Obama.

There is no reason to vote for Romney, unless you really liked what happened when George W. Bush was President. Romney's platform, as best I can tell, is to do whatever Bush did only moreso. He promises to be President of the 1%, or more accurately, President of the .01%. If you want to see what full-on Plutocracy is like, Romney is your guy. Obama at least pretends discomfort at the power of the Super-Rich; Romney actually is one of them.

Great post, Doc.

[walto]

If the biggest criticism of Obama is that he didn't right the wrongs of the Republicans in his first term as President what makes the extreme left believe that he will in a second term?

The Dims had the White House, The House and the Senate for the first two years of Obama's presidency and all we got is what cost the Dims the House in 2010 and what will cost Obama the presidency in November: A middle class tax hike known as Obamacare.

As you were just as absolutely certain he'd lose last time, I hope you won't mind if I take your predictions with a couple of grains of salt. I myself have no fucking idea who will win this election. But that's a difference between "the extreme right Dims" and you enlightened folks of the center: you guys aren't just saintly, you know everything.

[Bourne]

Romney's platform, as best I can tell, is to do whatever Bush did only moreso.

Unfortunately, the Obama administration has continued the fine tradition of the Bush admin.

I think the only real difference between Romney and Obama is that Romney is going to openly run on doing such deeds.

At least there is the amusing aspect of watching libertarians and other garden variety nutters flock to the polls to vote for the man who essentially designed the blueprints for Obamacare.

[Dr Dave]

This contradicts the claims that Romney is the liar and flip-flopper and that Obama is the one who is on the up-and-up.

If what you say above is true then with Romney you at least know what you're going to get and with Obama it's say one thing and do another.

Unless, of course, your above statement is false.

There's no contradiction. Obama ran a deceptive campaign in '08; he was never confused. Romney seems to have taken positions on all sides of various issues; at minimum, he is often "off-message." Or you could say he is confused.

The most important aspect of their sameness is that they are both beholden to Big Money. No matter which of them is elected, the transfer of wealth to the very richest will continue unabated, and no bankers will ever be seriously punished for their criminal behavior. Oh--and both will happily continue to wage war in the Middle East and South Asia. And both will demand "austerity" as the way forward to economic prosperity, which is a guarantee that we will not see any.

[clinthopson]

If the biggest criticism of Obama is that he didn't right the wrongs of the Republicans in his first term as President what makes the extreme left believe that he will in a second term?

The Dims had the White House, The House and the Senate for the first two years of Obama's presidency and all we got is what cost the Dims the House in 2010 and what will cost Obama the presidency in November: A middle class tax hike known as Obamacare.

As usual the facts were distorted by Wozzie. The Repubs always had enough to filibuster.

By the way, the correct term is Affordable Heath Care. It's only a tax if someone refuses to get health insurance.

[jesus marion joseph]

I'll be interested to see if your liberal friends around here agree with you.

At a minimum he failed to deliver on many things he promised to do.

[Dr Dave]

I'll be interested to see if your liberal friends around here agree with you.

If a liberal has used a doorknob before you, it is permissible to use your lace hanky to wipe it down.