naked capitalism

Anonymous says:

You read the Mises blog? That fact just made my day!

Richard Kline says:

To IA re: Truman and the Bomb. I’m also a fan of Aperlowitz’s text, and in line with you, I believe that the decision to use the atomic bomb had very little to do with the military and political resistance still posed by Japan, and much to do with the Russian’s intervention in the East Asia. My perspective is a bit different from that usually advanced though. To me, the real problem was the potential that Japan would surrender to the wrong side, specifically to the Russians. I have yet to hear that potential analzyed in detail, and I’m far from certain that the Japanese had even seriously discussed this possibility. After the Russians advanced in Mancuhuria, the potential was very real. Yes, I’m convinced that the Russians were ‘warned off,’ but more specifically the Japanese were directect who the arbiter of the existence and so their immediate fate was to be. They got the message and haven’t budged an inch in sixty years.

Anonymous says:

Lets hope that the United States will be the only country the drops the A or now H bomb..probably very unrealistic but at least its a hope.

Also trying to scare Stalin then the Soviet Union seems a bit over the top. One has to recall that FDR had tried to coax America into another world war without sucess and he was a very popular President. Truman was not FDR’s choice for VP he was pushed on FDR and maybe the bomb drop is a good indication of the forces behind the change in political mood that was considered necessary to move the country into a constant war footing. Those forces are still in charge today no matter what political party wins in November.

doc holiday says:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aoivQmMj.vJ4&refer=home

Yields on agency mortgage securities fell to the lowest in a month relative to U.S. Treasuries after buyers took advantage of some of the widest spreads since 1986.

The difference between yields on Fannie Mae's current-coupon 30-year fixed-rate bonds and 10-year government notes narrowed 10 basis points this week to 197 basis points, data compiled by Bloomberg show, reducing the cost of new home loans. The spread fell from 215 basis points on Aug. 18, the widest since March, when the gap set a 22-year high of 238 basis point.

“Mortgages had gotten extremely cheap, so even if Fannie and Freddie are capital-constrained and might not be as aggressive, other leveraged accounts can put on the same trade that they might have,'' said Gary Cloud, who oversees $500 million in fixed-income securities at Financial Counselors Inc. in Kansas City, Missouri.

“If I'm Paulson, I'm looking at spreads,'' Gary Gordon, an analyst at New York-based Portales Partners LLC, said in an interview. The Treasury may decide to buy the securities itself or take other actions to lower mortgage rates rather than make capital injections to Fannie and Freddie if officials believed spreads were too wide, he said.

Bank of China Ltd., the nation's third-largest bank, said in earnings report that it pared its holdings of mortgage bonds guaranteed by Fannie and Freddie by 22 percent to $5.17 billion between June 30 and Aug. 25.

dh says:

Those stupid bonds!

What about something fun????

For many years I have been tormented by the certainty that the most extraor-
dinary discoveries await us in the sphere of Time. We know less about time than
about anything else.
—Tarkovsky.2

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00002549/01/representation2.pdf

Richard Kline says:

So IA, not only do I recall 04-05, but moreover the Manchurian clashes in, was it 36? But the key issue is that after the latter, the Russians and Japanese _kept their armistice_, which was true with regard to very few other parties with longstanding hostilities. Sure, Japan didn’t want to surrender to the Russians, but in their position it might have looked better than to the US. US terror bombing of Japan in the Summer of 45 was extremely severe, the Japanese had waged—and lost—a no holds barred defensive war in the Pacific, had begun that conflict with treachery US provocations nothwithstanding, and could in principle have expected an occupation equal in severity to that they had imposed on China rather than the comparatively mild outcome that in fact occurred. There was a significant Socialist faction in Japan throughout much of this century which we hear little of in the US, suppressed severely by the Japanese military before the US occupation but in principle a ‘latent force’ such as the German Communists of the time.

This is speculation, sure. But what is most important is that during the Summer of 45 US policy makers came to understand how completely Russia was taking control of occupied areas in E Europe: Arguably this was the main policy preoccupation of Truman’s first six months, even ahead of the still continuing US-Japanese war. The Japanese army in Manchuria, supposedly one of the best units in their military, put up negligible resistance to the Russians, and the idea that the military in Japan would cut a deal with and put themselves ‘in an armistice under Russian protection,’ the terms of which could be discussed later, seems to me very real. They were not give time even to think about it, just as the dates you show. Day 1, Russian invasion; Day 2, mushroom cloud in Nippon. The short time frame, and the extreme sensitivity of this issue means that very little of any top level discussions in the US Admin would have been committed to paper, or discussed afterward. I mean, who wants their name on a meeting minute authorizing the exemplary execution of 110K civilians for raisons d’etat, especially when it is clear that top level US officials had already received surrender overtures from the Japanese and hence knew of a certainty that the bombing was unnecessary?

We’ll never really know. But I wonder whether the American public is ready for the day when others treat us the same way? That will be after my time, I think, but that day will come. Most Americans are blind to the harm we do and our spendthrift way with the lives of others, but the rest of the world keeps a ledger in these things.