Innocent Bystanders

Fire on the Mountain January 16, 2010

This is my song dedicated to the Massachusettes senatorial election on Tuesday.

[Also, I'm goofing around with my new Cooliris Firefox add-on, which I finally decided to try. It is awesome.]

UPDATE below the break — a message for Martha Coakley.

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The Official Innocent Bystanders STFU Post January 13, 2010

I’m not gonna link the vid but if you read Drudge you know Pat Robertson is talking out of his ass again. This made me think, “Pat Robertson, STFU”. In the comments I invite you to extend a gracious invitation to STFU to the person who is currently rubbing you the wrong way. To save you time “Michael, STFU” is assumed.

This Means You, Pat!

Unbelievable CG Video January 12, 2010

The realism and detail they can achieve these days is amazing.  This is long, and sort of a montage of random images, but you can skip through to get the idea. The frequent images of a camera is misleading — this is all computer generated.

Thanks to Doug for the tip.

Osama’s Revenge – A Working Hypothesis January 12, 2010

In 2001 Osama bin Laden masterminded the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and presumably the White House or Capitol. The strike against the heart of the United States’ financial, military, and political centers left a lasting scar on the psyches of Americans, but fortunately the economic damage was minor and short-lived.

Or so we thought.

Calculated Risk published an amazing graph today that suggests otherwise. Here it is:

What you see are two prominent bubbles – the dot.com bubble in blue, and the housing bubble in red. As the chart shows, unemployment (green) rose when those bubbles burst. But the point here is that in 2002, Bush was faced with an economy in recession that had just taken a blow to its confidence and its financial industry. So he lowered taxes and the prime rate, and promoted home ownership.

The result was a housing boom that helped pull us out of recession and keep unemployment low. But the boom turned into a bubble, with prices far above their price point in a typical market. Everyone was waiting for the bubble to pop, but we all managed to be surprised when it did, mainly due to the unexpected troubles in the financial industry.

So here’s my hypothesis: Bush used the housing industry to stoke the economic fires and get us past the impacts of the dot.com crash and the 9/11 attack. The Fed started increasing the prime rate in 2004 to start throttling back, but the rate increases didn’t seem to affect the housing industry. Eventually the housing bubble collapsed and we were left with an almost(?)-depression on our hands.

I think you can make a case that the 9/11 attacks were a key factor in setting us on that course, and that our present circumstances are due to the actions of Osama bin Laden and his team. At least, that’s the case I’m trying to make here.

So, in some sense, Osama bin Laden is still winning.

As the title says, this is just a hypothesis. Let me know what you think.

From the “Duh” File: Massive Debt May Hinder Economic Growth January 11, 2010

I suppose it’s useful to quantify this a bit, but is this really a surprise to anybody?

A new report that reviewed 200 years of economic data from 44 nations has reached an ominous conclusion for the world’s largest economy: Almost without exception, countries that are as highly indebted as the United States is today grow at sub-par rates.
…
When a nation’s debt exceeds 60 percent of its GDP, its growth rate slows precipitously, the study found. When that ratio exceeds 90 percent, nations’ economies barely grow, and can even contract.

The U.S. national debt is at roughly 84 percent of the country’s GDP, and it’s projected to cross the authors’ 90-percent threshold late this year or early next year.

Golly. Just what critics of the wanton spending of 2009 have been saying. So when exactly did we get so close to that level of debt?

I believe that the debt would have risen significantly regardless of the party in power, but it took the Dems to bring us to these rarefied heights this quickly. The authors go on to say that they’re not sure when it will be apparent that this slowing of growth will occur.

Don’t worry guys, I’m sure it’ll be very clear all too soon.

A Couple of Belated Christmas Pics January 10, 2010

I was a little tied up before Xmas, so I didn’t get a chance to share a couple of photos that I thought were interesting, if not life-changing. The first is a locally famous house that goes National-Lampoon-scale nuts at Christmas. Here’s what I mean:

We try to get by there every year, because it’s always jaw-dropping.

The second photo is a bit closer to home. I missed my traditional Godzilla ornament post this year, but that doesn’t mean I missed out on this year’s ornament. So here you go – meet the Godzilla ornament gang, featuring (from L to R): 2006, 2007, 2009, and 2008.

Ain’t they adorable?