Robert Pirsig


[Skip to the end]

From ‘Lila:’

“Of all the contributions America has made to the history of the world, the idea of freedom from a social hierarchy has been the greatest…”

“And yes, although Jefferson called this doctrine of socially equality ‘self evident,’ it is not at all self evident. Scientific evidence and the social evidence of history indicate the opposite is self-evident. There is no ‘self-evidence’ in European history that all men are created equal. There’s no nation in Europe that doesn’t trace its history back to a time when it was ‘self-evident’ that all men are created unequal. Jean Jacques Rousseau, who is sometimes given credit for this doctrine, certainly didn’t get it from the history of Europe or Asia or Africa. He got it from the impact of the New World upon Europe and from contemplation of one particular kind of individual who lived in the New World, the person he called the ‘Noble Savage.’

The idea that ‘all men are created equal’ is a gift to the world from the American Indian. Europeans who settled here only transmitted it as a doctrine that they sometimes followed and sometimes did not. The real source was someone for whom social equality was no mere doctrine, who had equality built into his bones. To him it was inconceivable that the world could be any other way. For him there was no other way of life.”


[top]

Another from Pirsig


[Skip to the end]

From ‘Lila:’

“The idea that ‘man is born free but is everywhere in chains’ was never true. There are no chains more vicious than the chains of biological necessity into which every child is born. Society exists primarily to free people from these biological chains. It has done that job so stunningly well intellectuals forget the fact and turn upon society with a shameful ingratitude for what society has done.”


[top]

Robert Pirsig on crime and freedom


[Skip to the end]

From ‘Lila:’

“What the Metaphysics of Quality indicates is that the 20th century intellectual faith in man’s basic goodness as spontaneous and natural is disastrously naive. The ideal of a harmonious society in which everyone without coercion cooperates happily with everyone else for the mutual good of all is a devastating fiction. It isn’t consistent with scientific fact…Primitive tribes such as the American Indians have no record of sweetness and cooperations with other tribes. They ambushed them, tortured them, dashed their children’s brains out on rocks. If man is basically good, than maybe it’s man’s basic goodness which invented social institutions to repress this kind of biological savagery in the first place…”

…We must understand that when a society undermines intellectual freedom for its own purposes it is absolutely morally bad, but when it represses biological
freedom for its own purposes it is absolutely morally good. The destructive sympathy of intellectuals lawlessness in the sixties and since is derived,
no doubt, from what is perceived to be a common enemy, the social system. But the Metaphysics of Quality that this sympathy was really stupid.”

The idea that biological crimes can be ended by intellect alone, that you can talk crime to death, doesn’t work…Only social patterns can control
biological patterns, and the instrument of conversation between society and biology is not words. The instrument of of conversation between society and
biology has always been a policeman or a soldier and his gun. All the laws of history, all the arguments, all the Constitutions and the Bills of Rights and
Declarations of Independence are nothing more than instructions to the military and the police.”

A culture that supports the dominance of social values over biological values is an absolutely superior culture one that does not, and a culture that supports the dominance of intellectual values over social values is absolutely superior to one that does not.”

Where biological values are undermining social values, intellectuals must identify social behavior, no matter what its ethnic connection, and support it all the way without restraint. Intellectuals must find biological behavior, no matter what its ethical connection, and limit or destroy destructive biological patterns with complete moral ruthlessness, the way a doctor destroys germs, before those biological patterns destroy civilization itself.”


[top]

Comments on Obama by economist Russ Huntley


[Skip to the end]

We now fact the risk that Obama loses whatever control of Congress he might have had as he loses popular support and the nation goes rudderless, while rising unemployment and faltering financial markets again work to get the deficit where it needs to be via the very, very ugly automatic stabilizers that might have more work to do.

And nothing the right fiscal adjustments (payroll tax holiday/per capita revenue sharing) can’t immediately reverse, but that seems less and less likely with each passing day.

And a national media that continues to have it all wrong.

On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 Russell Huntley wrote:

I would agree and I am an Independent. I know he has lost the progressives.

I have not seen Obama do anything different that what Bush did:

Still doing extraditions and harsh interrogations (possibly torture)

Still fighting wars and wasting tax payer’s money.

Still imprisoning 3% of our population for profit.

Economy is still a mess because the man who stood for change surrounded himself with a Wall Street team, who know nothing different. So the banks keep barely surviving. He should have put the money in the hands of the civilians and business through a payroll tax cut. Business’s would have had more money to retain employees and employees would have more money to buy goods, and if needed to save. Those savings would have gone to banks.

Health care — will give him credit, he is trying to give it a shot, but probably will end up doing nothing new but lining some pockets along the way.

Cap and trade — again whose pockets does that line. Probably GS and JP Morgan.

Stimulus — Where are our great new infrastructure projects. I thought we were going to build a ladder to stars, not a pit to hell.

By the way — Peter Schiff, the doom and gloomer, gold advocate and a person who thinks the FED should be abolished, gets a lot of press coverage. He recently announced that is running for Senator Dodd’s seat as a Republican. In his first month he raised $800,000. Pretty impressive. I think there is a large mass of the population out there who feel 100% unrepresented and who will support someone who says that they will represent them. Obama did it, but it appears he cannot speak honestly and that he is merely a mirage and probably the reason why his poll numbers are going in Bush’s direction.


[top]

Hong Kong recovery ‘made in China’


[Skip to the end]

Yes, this further supports the notion that some of the world economic improvement was due indirectly to ‘one time’ inventory building and additions to capacity in China, including the eurozone, where exports nudged France and Germany to positive GDP reports.

Hong Kong Climbs Out of Recession as Trade Improves

August 14 (Bloomberg) — Hong Kong climbed out of a yearlong recession as trade improved, adding to signs that the global economy is recovering.

Gross domestic product rose a seasonally adjusted 3.3 percent in the second quarter from the previous three months, after dropping 4.3 percent in the first quarter, the government
said today. The median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey of seven economists was for a 1.2 percent gain.

The Hang Seng Index has gained 84 percent from this year’s low in March as China’s record lending and 4 trillion yuan ($585 billion) stimulus package help the city, which is a hub for
trade and finance. Hong Kong’s government raised its forecast for this year’s GDP to a contraction of between 3.5 percent and 4.5 percent today from a previous estimate of a 5.5 percent to
6.5 percent decline.

“This rebound has largely been ‘Made in China,’” said Brian Jackson, a senior strategist at Royal Bank of Canada in Hong Kong. “Exports to the mainland have picked up, while easy
liquidity conditions there have contributed to recent gains in Hong Kong’s asset prices, providing a strong boost to Hong Kong consumers.”

The economy shrank 3.8 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier, after a 7.8 percent drop in the previous three months. The first-quarter contraction from the previous three
months was the worst since data began in 1990.

Singapore Retail Sales Post Smaller Drop as Recession Recedes

By Stephanie Phang

August 14 (Bloomberg) — Singapore’s retail sales fell the least in three months in June as the nation emerged from its worst recession since independence 44 years ago and an annual island-wide sale supported spending.

The retail sales index dropped 8.2 percent from a year earlier after sliding a revised 10.4 percent in May, the Statistics Department said today. The median estimate of 11 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News was for a 9.2 percent decline. Adjusted for seasonal factors, sales rose 2.3 percent from May.

Singapore’s economy expanded for the first time in a year last quarter as manufacturing and services improved. The government raised its 2009 export forecast this week as policy makers around the world predict the worst of the global recession is past after pledging about $2 trillion in stimulus measures and cutting interest rates.

“We should generally expect gradual improvement in retail sales from hereon,” said Kit Wei Zheng, an economist at Citigroup Inc. in Singapore. He cited “firmer signs of a turnaround in labor markets, and perhaps some positive spillovers on confidence from the buoyant property and equity markets.”

Singapore’s benchmark stock index has climbed 49 percent this year and home sales by developers including Frasers Centrepoint Ltd. rose 9.1 percent in June from May, according to the Urban Redevelopment Authority.

Singapore employers fired fewer workers last quarter, cutting 5,500 jobs compared with 12,760 in the first three months of the year, the Ministry of Manpower said July 31. The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate held at 3.3 percent.


[top]

Lodging Operators Continue to Report Declines in RevPAR


[Skip to the end]

Will sleep better tonight!

>   
>   (email exchange)
>   
>   On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 3:14 PM, Brian wrote:
>   
>   Don’t worry Warren. Harry Reid is riding to the rescue to save the boondoggle,
>   for govt employees at least.
>   

Don’t “discriminate” plan your boondoggle today!

Finally, some help, perhaps, for Resort Cities. On July 29, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., introduced a bill into Congress, The Protecting Resort Cities from Discrimination Act of 2009 (S. 1530), which will, if passed, “prohibit an agency or department of the United States from establishing or implementing an internal policy that discourages or prohibits the selection of a resort or vacation destination as the location for a conference or event.”


[top]

PCE


[Skip to the end]

Yes, these numbers look to throw a wet blanket on global market psychology. The better than expected earnings season is pretty much fully discounted, and month end/month beginning allocations are behind us.

June was a weak month for government spending that seems to have been reversed in July (from Mike Norman), which accounts for the lower ‘savings rate,’ but those numbers won’t show up for a while.

And the talk by the administration, Congress, and all the critics regarding ‘fiscal responsibility’ and tax increases has functioned to make the point a ‘second stimulus’ is out of the questions without some kind of collapse.

Inflation remains in check with the large output gap keeping a lid on wages and relatively stable crude oil prices keeping costs under control.


Karim writes:

  • Weakness in personal income (-1.3%) a bit more than expected, largely reflecting end of government transfers to households
  • But wage and salary income also still very weak, down 0.4% and down every month this year.
  • Yr/Yr personal income down 3.4% and wage and salary income down 4.7%
  • Drop on personal savings rate from 6.2% to 4.6% largely reflects weakness in income described above
  • Revisions in PCE Deflator reflect same as occurred in GDP data last week: YR/YR Deflator through May now -0.3% vs 0.1% and Core Deflator now 1.6% vs 1.8%.
  • For June, headline deflator rose 0.546% and fell 0.4% Yr/Yr; Core Deflator rose 0.161% and 1.5% Yr/Yr.

Putting aside July auto sales, hard to see meaningful rebound in consumer spending (70% of GDP) with these income numbers; record string of decline in labor income


[top]

Repost: Comments on Krugman


[Skip to the end]

Originally posted March 9th, 2009

Yes, but unspoken is the automatic stabilizers are quietly adding to the deficit with each move down, and the curves will cross and the economy start to improve when the deficit gets large enough, whether it’s the ugly way via falling revenues and rising transfer payments, or proactively via a proactive fiscal adjustment.

With income and spending turning mildly positive in January and other indicators such as the commodities also beginning to move sideways as the deficit passes through 5% before the latest fiscal adjustment kicks in, we may be seeing GDP headed towards 0 by q3 or sooner as most forecasters now predict. Unemployment, however, will continue to rise until real growth exceeds productivity growth.

Bottom line, there will be a recovery with or without a proactive fiscal adjustment. the difference is how bad it gets before it turns north.

Behind the Curve

by Paul Krugman

Mar 8 (NYT) — President Obama’s plan to stimulate the economy was a massive, giant, enormous. So the American people were told, especially by TV news, during the run-up to the stimulus vote. Watching the news, you might have thought that the only question was whether the plan was too big, too ambitious.

Yet many economists, myself included, actually argued that the plan was too small and too cautious. The latest data confirm those worries  and suggest that the Obama administration’s economic policies are already falling behind the curve.


[top]Rep