Happy Summer! Its the longest day of the year, and we have enough reading material to keep you busy all day:
• Will Retiring Baby Boomers Ruin Future Market Returns? (A Wealth of Common Sense)
• Rising Interest Rates and Sector Performance (Invesco)
• The Mayor vs. the Mogul: Michael Bloomberg’s $9 billion identity crisis. (Politico)
• Civility Breaks Out Among the Econ Wonks (Bloomberg View)
• Math Is Different (Above the Market)
• Summer solstice 2015: Five questions and answers about the longest day of the year (Washington Post)
• Twitter’s Top Secret Project Lightning Revealed. (Buzzfeed)
• Pope Francis is urging the world to act on climate change. Here are his key points. (Vox) see also Pope Francis Aligns Himself With Mainstream Science on Climate (NY Times)
• Camming Is Not Like Any Other Kind of Sex Work: Live, Interactive, and Relationship-Based, Camming Is Changing Sex on the Internet (The Stranger)
• Miley Cyrus Gleefully Makes ’Em Squirm at the Adult Swim Upfronts Party (Vulture)
What are you reading?
Shale Drilling
Source: Bloomberg Brief
Krugman is pointing to an important driver of the tribalistic “them” vs. “us” divide in the US:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/06/20/the-issue-that-wont-go-away/
The reason people in certain states are so vehemently against taking free federal money into their state and save their community hospitals, is that the majority of those benefitting most would be from that other “tribe”. Ultimately civilization has not lifted us out from primitive tribalism that make us divide other humans into those that do or don’t belong to “my group/tribe” – and sow hate and fear against those that don’t belong with the “us” group.
That is the conversation we really need to have.
Selling hate of “those people” is most common fascist strategy.
Non-Catholics are quick to jump on the Pope’s encyclical on climate change, yet reject his equally strident views on abortion Catholicism is not a buffet table.
Slicing and dicing a religion to promote singleton preferences is rancid.
Actually all Christians treat their religion as a buffet table. But the suggestion that non-Catholics should bar themselves from treating the Pope’s interpretations of the Bible as a buffet doesn’t make any sense. They don’t think he has a monopoly on interpretation of the bible.
The bible is set up such that you can find support for just about anything you want if you squeeze it hard enough. So whatever you want to believe, just find a pastor who will squeeze that particular flavor out of his bible for you.
I respectfully disagree with DeDude. Catholics may NOT pick and choose by orthodoxy. Granted, most do, which in effect makes all encyclicals that are calibrated outside the Bible itself irrelevant for Catholics going “by the Book”.
That said, thou shalt not kill has a much stronger avenue of support than thou shalt not climate change for obvious reasons.
What non-Catholics do WRT official Papal policy is irrelevant, a red herring; they do not share the faith and are under no obligation one way or another.
The salient question is what do Catholics do when the Pope makes an official judgement.
Failure to “jump on” the Pope’s climate change policy with the same fervor as abortion policy has one implication. Public disagreement with that policy has another.
There was a time when the consequence for the former was flogging and the consequence for the latter was the rack and burning.
Why climate uncertainty justifies action
If you had a 10 per cent chance of losing most of your wealth, would you keep the same portfolio? For the vast majority, the answer would be a loud “no”. You would insure yourself against such a disaster. We cannot insure ourselves with the inhabitants of Mars against the chance that we are wrecking our planetary home. But we can lower the risks.
Just another brick in the wall.
Greek debt crisis is the Iraq War of finance
The truth is that the creditor power structure never even looked at the Greek proposals. They never entertained the possibility of tearing up their own stale, discredited, legalistic, fatuous Troika script.
The decision was made from the outset to demand strict enforcement of the terms agreed in the original Memorandum, which even the last conservative pro-Troika government was unable to implement – regardless of whether it makes any sense, or actually increases the chance that Germany and other lenders will recoup their money.
One would think you’re describing the Treaty of Versaille after WWI
A lot of parallels there!
Try this movie w/ your child. a better perpective: http://www.thestranger.com/film/feature/2015/06/17/22419302/dope-is-a-movie-for-all-but-particularly-for-black-people-left-out-or-demonized-in-tyler-perry-films
why is it the most Christian state in our nation had the the most gruesome hate crime?
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-06-19/the-christian-case-against-the-confederate-flag
SC has about 75% of its population as self professed Christians, but their actions dont seem to follow that . they seem to be among the most unChristian acts imaginable, they only follow the tenants they want to. others they basically igniore
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-06-19/the-christian-case-against-the-confederate-flag
they didnt just tolerate slavery,they were fervent supporters of it. and the current generation doesnt seem to get that 1) they lost the war 2) slavery was outlawed (maybe 100-200 years late. while they can point to the ‘toleration’ of it in the Bible from Roman time, and it is there, whats not noted is that in Rome, more than 90% of the population were slaves. and it wasnt till after the dark ages and the after the plague, that because of population loss , over 30% of the total population was just gone, that society didnt treat people n better than draft animals)
and while many seem to always point to the fall of Rome as being our future, they really dont know why it did, that large slave population meant that for the vast majority of the population, that they had no buy into the empire. and this was a Christian empire for about that last 100 years of its ‘existence’. and i dont really know that there was just a whole lot of difference after it fell, other than there wasnt fewer rulers. course a lot of the knowledge and learning of the empire was lost. but for the most part, that had been true for that last century too, as there had been a large drought, over almost the entire empire, and it a nation that the economy was 90-99% agricultural, that was a disaster. plus it turns out that as bad off as the empire was, those around it, were in much worse shape
Yes and the bible also tolerated both pre- and post-birth abortions.
When Lenin said “Religion is the opium of the masses” he was talking how it anesthetizes intellect to accept pain and suffering imposed by the “masters” who otherwise are abhorrent.
another conservative state bites the bullet?
http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2015/06/shifting_taxes_and_resulting_b.html#incart_river
followed by another
http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2015/06/louisiana_veto_cola.html
why do we think that economics is a moral science? cause it doesnt seem to see any reason to oppose slavery. or any other abhorrent activity?
and why do so many Christians seem to have a new religion. the market is bets
Economics is the application of a moral philosophy, not its basis.
“Officials would not identify their top concerns, but an audit issued early last year, before the Chinese attacks, harshly criticized lax security at the Internal Revenue Service, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Energy Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission — and the Department of Homeland Security, which has responsibility for securing the nation’s critical networks.”
http://goo.gl/Mym6ie (NYTimes)
Meanwhile, lawmakers and top admin officials including those in Homeland Security were spinning about the incalculable damage done by Edward Snowden. Homeland Security especially should never have had an audit with these results.
Let’s have some hearings . . . let’s see some heads roll . . . maybe even see some prosecutions.
and just in case you were wondering all these storms in Texas? are just to soften us up for Jade Helm 15
http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Jade-Helm-HAARP-weather-manipulation-Texas-storms-6333316.php
and you wonder why some these folks can actually drive and talk. or maybe not
How About the “Stupid Boss” Theory of Why It Takes So Long to Fill Vacant Jobs
We are still not seeing rapid wage increases in any major sector of the economy. This implies that either there are not real shortages, just whiny employers, or alternatively we have employers that are so ignorant of the workings of the labor market that they don’t realize they can attract more skilled workers by offering higher wages.
It’s got to be pretty much one or the other; take your pick.