Is Ben Having A ‘Meltdown’?

Debt, Economy, Federal Reserve Bank, Inflation, Political Economy

Or is Mr. Bernanke reading Meltdown? “The Federal Reserve Chairman’s views on asset bubbles,” writes The WSJ, are slowly changing.”

“Earlier this decade, when Mr. Bernanke was a Fed governor, he and other central bank officials said financial bubbles weren’t something the Fed could identify or pre-empt effectively. Its focus was on keeping inflation and unemployment low. [And how well that has been achieved.] Its bubble strategy was to mop up after a bubble burst with lower interest rates to prevent damage to the broader economy.”

In a speech on Sunday at the American Economic Association’s annual meeting, BB repeated the shibboleth about the need for “better regulation” as the first line of defense against future crises. But he also conceded to the need “to ‘remain open’ to using the blunt tool of higher interest rates to avert or pop future asset bubbles … particularly if other approaches aren’t working.”

Why is raising interest rates considered a “blunt tool,” keeping them artificially low is not?

Updated: Jihadis Really Really Hate Us

Foreign Policy, Intelligence, Islam, Jihad, Journalism, Terrorism

Says John Brennan, Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Adviser for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, in an interivew with CNN’s Gloria Borger: “We have made quite a bit of progress this year in degrading the capabilities of Al Qaida organization. We’ve taken the battle to them. We have eliminated a number of their senior leaders and operatives. But that doesn’t mean that they still don’t have a capability of carrying out attacks. And that’s what they’re doing. They’re trying to look for ways and vulnerabilities in our system to get their operatives either here to the United States or in other places to carry out these attacks.”

Replies MICHAEL SCHEUER, the chief of the CIA’s Osama bin Laden unit from 1996 to 1999: “Mr. Brennan is blowing smoke. You have some dead bodies — I agree with that; it’s all to the good — but no impact on the overall organization. … I think it’s stronger than it was at 9/11, certainly because the support and opposition across the Muslim world to American foreign policy is far greater today than it was in 9/11.”

I’ve covered Michael Scheuer, former chief of the CIA’s Osama bin Laden unit, favorably: “When I think of a libertarian-leaning patriotic warrior, I think of Michael Scheuer. The chief of the CIA’s Osama bin Laden unit from 1996 to 1999, Scheuer is also the man behind the enhanced interrogation methods, which the hard-left and their friends on the libertarian left would have you believe are as heinous as the war crime at Hiroshima.”

Still, I’m not sure what he’s advising.

“Yemen is bin Laden’s ancestral home,” Scheuer comments. “More Yemenis than any Arab nationality fought against the Soviets. There would have been more Yemenis in the 9/11 attacks, except they couldn’t get visas as easily as the Saudis.”

And he recommends that, “We stop depending on surrogates. We stop depending on Pakistan. We stop depending on Yemen and use our own strong right arm. There is no — there’s no clause in the Constitution that says President Obama can delegate the defense of America to a Yemeni dictator.”

I don’t know what that means. Do you? Gloria doesn’t inquire. Like most journalists today, she possesses very little intellectual curiosity.

Update (Jan. 4): Is there a reason to so carefully distinguish “Islam” from “Jihadist Islam”? The latter is a redundancy. Jihad is part of Islam.

Updated: The Barbarian West

Europe, Free Speech, Islam, Jihad, libertarianism, Terrorism, The West

What’s another bout with a 48-hour flu, my second this season, compared to the ordeal the heroic Kurt Westergaard—illustrator of the the 12 Jyllands-Posten cartoons, depicting the connection between Muhammad and the violence that disfigures the Muslim world—must live with day-in and day-out.

Satire is a highly civilized and refined way of exposing “folly, vice, or stupidity,” to follow the dictionary. For lampooning the connection between Muhammad, author of Islam, and the savagery and atavism that grip the Muslim world today, Westergaard’s life has been continually threatened.

“On Friday night, a 28-year-old Somali man, armed with an ax and a knife, tried to enter the home of Kurt Westergaard in Aarhus Denmark. Westergaard was at home with his visiting 5-year-old granddaughter when he heard the suspect trying to break in. ‘I locked myself in our safe room and alerted the police.'” (The Examiner.com.)

“Unable to smash the front door with his ax, the suspect was shot once in the knee and once in the hand by police. The wounds are not life-threatening.” [Why not?]

AND:

“Police were aware of the Somali suspect’s background from previous activities in east Africa and had a permit to live in Denmark.”

A pattern.

I’ve said it again and again: This is not a failure of Jihad; Jihad is doing just fine for itself, functioning as it ought to. Rather, attacks on the lives of the likes of the late Theo van Gogh, Geert Wilders, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Westergaard, and Wafa Sultan showcase the West at its miserable emasculated worst.

Contrary to some libertarian opinion, a free society is not one in which civilized courageous, peaceful human beings fear for their lives, but one in which such individuals thrive, as their assailants cower in dank corners, hunted and exterminated like vermin.

Updated (Jan. 4, 2010): A little timid for my taste, but well worth a read: “Heeere’s Muhammed!”

Oscar Reads Broad Sides, So Can You

Africa, Family, Ilana Mercer, Relatives, Science, South-Africa

Oscar is my recent rescue: a rare Cape Parrot. Or, more accurately, an Un-Cape Parrot (Poicephalus fuscicollis). One more homie. (You’ve already met T. Cup, my adorable, feisty, Senegalese Parrot.) Oscar is even closer to home (I hail from South Africa; his forefathers from South-Central Africa.)

Oscar_on_cage

The African parrots are the smartest of the Psittacidea family. I wonder why? Is it evolution’s answer to the sorry state of the Continent? Perhaps Africa’s parrots have evolved to take over. (Humor alert for the grim among you.)

The African Grey, in particular, is the most intelligent parrot. It can acquire upwards of 1000 words, sentences included, and displays considerable cognition. Observe Einstein in action. By her own admission, she’s a “Super Star.”

The pioneering researcher into African Greys is Dr. Irene Pepperberg. Here she is on CNN explaining how her work with the late Alex (for “Avian Learning Experiment”) shattered all preconceptions about the parrot as no more than a mimic. Pitted against a primate, Alex always won out.

Here Dr. Pepperberg both demonstrates and explains Alex’s cognitive and communicative accomplishments. (Of course, Alex would never have committed the syntactical infelicity committed by the human who titled this YouTube segment: “ALEX – One of the most smartest parrots ever!”)

My Oscar has the potential to be as smart as the Grey, but first he has to overcome the stunting effects of shop life. No matter how dedicated the breeder, three years with little individualized attention leaves its mark on such a sentient, sensitive, highly intelligent creature. In the case of Oscar, it is a plucking habit.

Here Oscar has climbed to the top of his giant castle, and is posing alongside my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society.

The Second Edition features bonus material. Ask Oscar. Get your copy (or copies) now!

And do pray that no more little, fluffy green feathers find their way into my gentle giant’s mother-of-pearl beak.