http://docs.google.com/TeamPresent?docid=ddp4zq7n_0cdjsr4fn&skipauth=true

This matter of Paulson bailing out country club friends in a do or die effort to save capitalist corruption is like not being able to see the trees for the forest. Paulson et al, are not thrahing around gasping to save society, but these are wounded sharks bleeding in a fight of their own making. Paulson and clowns are swimming in a giant tsunami of parana fish in a bloody battle between moral hazard and the need for social change. IMHO, the sooner their flesh is destroyed the better for all of us.

Once we get rid of Jaws, the seas will be safer for the little fish and with less blood in the water, the parana population will equalize and balance will be restored. Until then, don’t go in the water!

See/Hear: When a gigantic great white shark begins to menace the small island community of Amity, a police chief, a marine scientist and grizzled fisherman set out to stop it.

Heck, get some hungry tigers, wolves, etc and turn them lose, too….

If they’re stuck in a debt trap where excess earnings go to pay for past misadventures, then their future growth will simply lag. This is more or less what happened in the ‘Great Depression’, it wasn’t so much the stimulus war spending that ended it, but rather it was a mechanism to eliminate the overhang. It is also the reason why a country like South Korea was able to grow quickly once they were able to restructure their debt and spending while a country like Japan has stagnated.

That Kedrovsky piece is a small gem with many facets. He neatly describes a method—formulate a problem set, forecast conditions, and track the aggregate outcome—which is a good way to proceed. In the array he runs by his readers, he includes the necessity of long US rates rising; well yes. But a fascinating point not on my radar screen, or I suspect that of many others, is that the broad global downturn we have now all but mandates a resynchronized global upturn at the end of it. That is a very cogent observation, and in my view also he is right to frame this as a major _problem_. (In fact, we already had a synchronized ‘upfroth’ in consequence of the collapsing bubble, so the phase-locking he describes has already been in place. But that does nothing to undermine his observation going forward.) A valuable ‘think piece.’

And his headline of the quote he mentions from J. B. S. Haldane, what a brilliant guy Haldane was, and enviably quotable. His ability to get a complex issue summarized in a pithy but dead accurate sentence of under ten words is to die for. That’s what an Oxbridge education _used_ to get you. We don’t do ‘perspicacious wit’ in the US, though, just dumbskull sports metaphors.