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Open thread Sept. 9, 2011

Dan Crawford | September 10, 2011 8:23 pm

Tags: open thread Comments (12) | Digg Facebook Twitter |
12 Comments
  • Mike Kimel says:
    September 11, 2011 at 12:59 pm

    ddrew2u,

    Debt forgiveness is nothing more than giving a party an asset for free or at a hugely subsidized rate.  We’ve already done that a number of ways, its just that the recipients have been, for the most part, banks.  

  • amateur socialist says:
    September 11, 2011 at 4:36 pm

    Professor Krugman reveals the most appropriate emotional response to the last 10 years here:  http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/11/the-years-of-shame/?smid=tw-NytimesKrugman&seid=auto

    Shame.  

  • ddrew2u says:
    September 11, 2011 at 5:09 pm

    Surprised on 9/11/2001 — even more surprised on 9/9/2011

    http://slatest.slate.com/posts/2011/09/09/_9_11_flight_93_heather_penney_and_marc_sasseville_sent_on_suici.html

    I was shocked on 9/11 to read there were only 7 fighter pairs on scramble alert in the whole US.  I was raised under the Russian bomber threat back when the US had 1000 dedicated interceptors — dedicated meaning they were not designed to handle dog fights or bombing just bombers: huge F-89Ds in the 1950s with, first, 6 20 mm cannon and, later, 104 2.5 inch rockets and the biggest radar and (analog?) firing computer of the time.  Later 1000 supersonic F-102s took over and then 400 F-106s filled in with them.

    Russians bombers are long ago but getting down to 14 airplanes that could not cover our largest city or capital city is just out of proportion.  Didn’t we just purchase 3000 F-16s and F-15s starting with Reagan era, not to mention Navy F-18s and F-14s?  7 fighter pairs?

    Now comes a bigger surprise.  The two F-16s designated to take down Flight 93 that crashed were on a suicide mission because no missiles or bullets were available!  !!!

  • amateur socialist says:
    September 11, 2011 at 5:45 pm

    Unfortunately there is no political lobbying involved in actual military readiness and capability.  Just the shiny machinery.  

  • save_the_rustbelt says:
    September 11, 2011 at 6:06 pm

    Krugman should stick with economics, his attempts at political commentary are really really flawedand largely useless.

  • save_the_rustbelt says:
    September 11, 2011 at 6:07 pm

    Friedman needs 400 pages to write a 200 page book, his books are awful but apparently sell quite well.

  • coberly says:
    September 11, 2011 at 10:42 pm

    mike

    i wonder if you aren’t deifying “the price” of an asset.  something is worth what someone will give you for it.   if he gives you an agreement to pay for it over time, you are taking the chance that he will be able to pay for, and it will be worth it to him to keep paying for it.  unless of course you are in a position to make him an offer he can’t refuse.

    lending people more money than they can repay is a time honored financial plan for taking someone’s property which you can use better than he can.

    for some reason the story of David and Bathsheba comes to mind.

  • cursed says:
    September 12, 2011 at 9:50 am

    Krugman by his own admission was motivated towards economics after reading Isaac Azimov’s science fiction. Azimovs “foundation” has a buch of self selected better then thou people who engage in “psychohistory”, which bassically consists of smart people deceptively manipulating events using mathmatical formulas.  

    Krugman has never lost his taste for deception or manipulation or science fiction.

  • coberly says:
    September 12, 2011 at 11:16 am

    lest anyone be confused… David and Bathsheba had nothing to do with lending money, but Nathan made the point of the rich man taking for his own trivial use something that was precious to the poor man.   the rich man can always “make better use” of what the poor man needs for his very life.

  • coberly says:
    September 12, 2011 at 1:01 pm

    rusty  
     
    thing about politics is that your “flawed” may be someone else’s “obvious.”  
     
    cursed  
     
    i think the point of the Foundation was that the mathematics predicted what was going to happen.  the Foundation did not manipulate those events, but attempted to provide for some way of surviving them.  
     
    and while i have no more patience than you do with self selected “smart people,”  i have no choice but to try to be as smart as i can, and try to survive what the dumb people are doing….  even the brilliant harvard grads who haven’t got a clue what they are talking about.

  • coberly says:
    September 12, 2011 at 1:03 pm

    ddrew  
     
    i haven’t been keeping up, but wasn’t there some conspiracy theory that 93 was brought down by a fighter.   being a typical dumb civilian who has watched lie after lie from the government and the press and the liars outside of government, i’d have no way to judge this.    
     
    just the other day i heard a high end radio news person say “the passengers took over flight 93 and forced the terrorists to crash it.”   the logic of that statement is the sort of thing that makes me think people can’t think. or just don’t bother.  

  • coberly says:
    September 12, 2011 at 1:07 pm

    am soc
    you gotta be careful. they’ll take your argument as an excuse to build a squadron of interceptors around every city in america.

    while blaming the “lack of readiness for 9/11”  on Clinton cuts in the military.

    Fact is Soviet bombers were no longer a threat, and no one, not even me, was thinking about hijacked airliners as guided missiles that might need to be shot down.

    we really don’t need to react to every tragedy or defeat as something we should invest our whole treasure and soul into preventing “next time.”  there are still too many higher probability scenarios we need to spend the money on.  not to say our souls.

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