Irrational Exuberance

Irrational Exuberance
Whatsoever things are true...

Home

Wednesday, May 29, 2002

John Robb has a hopeful view of what's going on in the economy.

Among other things, he says:

Corporations aren't people, despite what the law says. They are a means to an end. If they end up barely producing a profit, but employee salaries rise and consumers get low prices, does that hurt us? No. Sure, the stock market will be a dog, but who cares? The market is merely an abstraction of the wealth creation process and a playground of the wealthy that is often perveted to fleece gullible individual investors.

Sounds right.
4:18:03 PM

Here's a cogent analysis of how the single-minded battle against terrorism has affected our ability to deal with other, more important matters.

But since 9/11 the processes of conflict resolution have been diminished and the norms of international behaviour have been degraded. Al-Qaida's attacks not only terrorised the west, they also coarsened us and narrowed our ability to engage in a pro bono diplomacy. While Pakistan and India were mobilising these past few days, the Bush administration has been completely diverted by the president's tour of Russia and Europe and the continuing agenda of how to respond to the threat of al-Qaida.
Every emergency and every event is now passed through a new and dangerously egotistical filter that was erected by the Americans last autumn and is designed to see events exclusively in the context of American security and peace of mind...
In other words, the understanding of an entire region, its complexities and competing needs, has been swept aside in the pursuit of one western priority.
Whatever one may think about the India-Pakistan row over Kashmir, keep in mind that both sides have nukes. India's leadership is under intense pressure to not let the Pakistanis get away with anything, and Pakistan is lead by a military dictator who has absolute control over how the country's weapons are deployed.

American intelligence estimates put the toll in the event of a full exchange of the two nuclear arsenals at 12 million dead with maybe seven million wounded - an instant slaughter unprecedented in the history of mankind.

Feel the anxiety growing?
(Via Lance Knobel)
3:54:16 PM

In using the Carnivore program while it was still experimental, the FBI apparently captured email from people not the target of an investigation, the Washington Post reports.

According to an internal FBI memo,

... on March 16, 2000, the Carnivore "software was turned on and did not work properly," capturing e-mails involving both the target and others unconnected to the case.

The memo makes clear that the Justice Department's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review (OIPR), which oversees FISA warrants, was enraged by the blunders in the case, in part because the Justice Department office was allegedly not told that Carnivore was considered experimental at the time.

I'm not all up in arms about this one incident; mistakes happen, and software glitches occur occasionally. However, as we as a citizenry accede to more control for the sake of security in this war on terrorism, we should keep in mind that there will be more isolated incidents like this. And some of the incidents won't be mistakes; count on it.
3:32:05 PM

The 4th Earl of Kimberley died recently, and his obituary appeared in the Telegraph on May 29. It would be worth going for a story half this good.

Lord Kimberley was known as the most-married man in the peerage. He married and divorced five times, and hung on to the sixth wife for the remainder of his life. His first marriage was spectacular:

But Kimberley already knew that he had made a mistake. "I couldn't stop it," he said later, "because the King and Queen were there, and I was in my best uniform." Several years ago, in racy memoirs which were then unpublished, he wrote that on honeymoon he had more fun chasing mice around the bedroom than his new wife, and within a year the marriage was all but over.

Skipping ahead to his third divorce...

Three years before that, he had sold Kimberley, a Queen Anne brick mansion built on land held by his forebears for five centuries - "it was the easiest way to get rid of Cynthia. All I could think about was buying a new Aston Martin".
(Via The Corner at National Review Online)
3:09:59 PM