Happy Birthday to Chris Butler of the Waitresses, 63. I hadn't realized that Butler -- he wrote the Waitresses songs -- was in the crowd at Kent State in 1970, as were (I believe) Mark Mothersbaugh and one or two other members of DEVO and Chrissie Hynde. Or maybe it's just one of those things like the millions of people who were there live for various sports events. Anyway, I saw the Waitresses once, but without Patty Donahue, who had split with the band at the time...Holly of Holly and the Italians was filling in, and needed index cards, if I recall correctly, to get through the lyrics to "I Know What Boys Like." Hmmm...if Wikipedia is correct, that was sometime within a two week window, so I guess I'm sort of lucky, or unlucky, depending how you look at it. I saw them again later with Donahue, though, but they were pretty over the hill by then. Great band, if only very briefly; for those of us who liked them way back when, it's weird that they will apparently live forever mainly because of a Christmas song.
Hmmmm...I seem to have got a bit carried away there. Better get to some good stuff:
1. Tim Noah confronts a talking point about inequality.
2. New research by Lisa Blaydes and Drew Linzer on public opinion -- in particular, anti-Americanism -- in Islamic nations.
3. Good Matt Yglesias post clarifying what Barack Obama actually proposes to do on taxes (using a Tax Policy Center chart). His point is that those puzzled by why rich people don't like Obama should realize that Obama really does want to raise taxes on upper-income folks, and that people don't like paying taxes. Fair point -- but I think what bothers a lot of liberals is that, as they see it, what the rich are buying with Obama is a non-imploding economy, which is worth a whole lot more to the rich than they would be paying in taxes. This doesn't make Yglesias's point wrong! But it requires either the rich not agreeing that there is a systematic reason why, say, the stock market thrived under Clinton and Obama while tanking under Bush, or the rich valuing money lost through higher taxes a lot more than money gained through better economic times.Or both.
4. And, yes, there does appear to be swearing in baseball, from Sam Miller.
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
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I saw them once at the Peppermint Lounge when they were in their prime. Though I love the band on vinyl, it wasn't a particularly good show. Maybe it was a bad night, but in retrospect their biggest problem may have been that Patty was pretty lifeless, live.
ReplyDeleteThat was my sense, too, the time I saw her -- in fact, I have hardly any memory of that show.
DeleteAnother person who was at Kent State at the time was Steve Stone. I had the chance to ask him about it once, and he totally dismissed the topic, said he wasn't political at all and was just there to play baseball.
ReplyDeleteAn old boss of mine was at Kent State at the time, too. And yes, Mothersbaugh and Butler were there.
ReplyDeleteThere meaning someplace on campus, or there meaning right where the shooting was?
Deleteon campus. I seem to remember him saying something about Butler being there at the shooting. I can ask him.
DeleteI was unclear.
DeleteI am a Managing Director of a successful hedge fund, and I have to tell you that few market professionals share your belief that Democratic Presidents are systematically better for the stock market than Republican Presidents. The equity market treaded water for the first two years of the Clinton Presidency when he had a Democratic Congress, and then soared after Republicans took over Congress in 1994. Under Bush, the Dow topped 14,000 in the latter part of 2007 before tanking in 2008 due to the subprime mortgage crisis. The causes of that crisis are complicated, but clearly one factor was the federal government pressuring banks to lower mortgage credit standards so more low and moderate income families could become homeowners. That was a bipartisan error, but Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loan standards were first lowered during the Clinton Administration. How many Democratic politicians are willing to say that a sound mortgage market means that the majority of low and moderate income families will be lifelong renters? It was Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ 5) who proposed raising the minimum down payment on an FHA loan to 5% in 2009, an amendment opposed by the Obama Administration and defeated in the House by Democrats; hence the minimum down payment remains an unsound 3.5% today, and FHA defaults are growing. The stock market started going up after March 2009 under Obama, but increased at a faster rate after Republicans won control of the House in the 2010 midterm elections. You can make a strong case that a Democratic President combined with Republican control of at least one House of Congress is an especially good environment for the stock market, and I would tend to agree with that case. The rhetoric of the Democratic President and leading Congressional Democrats about inequality make many of us multi-millionaires skeptical that they have much concern for the performance of our stock portfolios.
ReplyDeleteThe crash resulted from the deregulation of banks. It was the collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps, not the mortgages per se, that did in the world economy. Deregulation, which also occurred under a Democratic president and a Republican Congress, was a mistake that Republicans seek to perpetuate.
Deletehttp://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/11/hey-bloomberg-the-data-shows-gses-did-not-cause-financial-meltdown/
DeleteScott Monje,
DeleteI'm assuming that you haven't spent much time looking at conservative or libertarian arguments or else you wouldn't be so confident. And if this bank regulation is so important to liberals, then why is the failed Barney Frank the dem head of the relevant committee with the retarded(?) Maxine Waters next in line?
Why should the president and the Congress care about the performance of multimillionaires' stock portfolios?
ReplyDeleteAll in all, it's better when the stock market is rising, but there are far bigger concerns for this economy right now.
Two things:
ReplyDeleteFirst, Yglesias' argument is a bit patronizing and simplistic. Yes, Matt, people don't like to pay taxes. Here's a question: what does the CBO say about how the Obama tax hierarchy would affect the structural deficit? I'd guess it would help, but there'd still be a ways to go beyond it.
So, 99% of Americans will see a reduction of their (already-low) taxes, the net result of which will be a help to the deficit, but more will surely need to be done. Where will that 'more' come from? Could anyone reply, with a straight face, the 99%? Might there be more to this story than the simplistic "don't-do-anything-incrementally-bad-to-me" view of the rich held by Yglesias?
I should digress for a moment and give props to Jeff for acknowledging, in response to the irrelevance of the Buffett Rule, that it was a "wrecking ball" for further progressive taxes. Jeff's wrecking ball is the moose on the table here, its obviously the thing that the rich (understandably) fear wrt taxes, and if anyone bumps into Yglesias, they may wish to share this with him.
Second, this notion of which administration is better for the market is a bit absurd for us little people. The S&P has had two lengthy post-war bull runs; the first was from 1948-1962, in response to increased activity from the expanded industrial base (plus Eisenhower's highways, etc). The second was from 1982-1999, in response to technological efficiencies and globalization. The rest of the time returns have been mostly bad; administrations and congresses have little to do with it (well, a little bit at the margins perhaps, which in fairness is where hedge fund anonymous makes his dough. But not relevant to the rest of us).
One other about Clinton: the period at the end of those bull runs is the irrational exuberance time; the last guy to the party being the loudest. That's Clinton's second term, obviously. Unless you went short in March 2000, the tech bubble in Clinton's 2nd term is probably not something you should celebrate.
S&P 500 is at 1314 as I write. Assuming a 10% nominal ROR, the rule of 72 tells you the S&P 500 should have doubled about twice since the late Clinton Presidency. If 1314 is a fair value today, then the index should have been about 325 or so in the late 90s (325 ~ 1314/2/2). The S&P peaked at 1553 in March 2000, or 4-5X its fair value looking back from today.
When the S&P is at 1553, all sorts of things happen in the economy to support "1553-S&P". Capital is deployed at a 1553-S&P level. People are hired. Etc. When the 'fair' value is only ~20% of trading value (looking back from today), those "1553-S&P-level" investments are overdone; they will be an albatross on the economy when it inevitably turns south at the end of the bull run.
So Clinton's bubble - not something we should celebrate. Unless we are smart hedge fund guys, and we shorted our way to a fortune (as opposed to losing our shorts).