May 24 2009
Fireflies in a Bottle III
Growing Sour on Bernanke
I used to think of Bernanke as a a monetary conservative because he was said to be in favor of fixing inflation within the 2% range. Looking back, this was perhaps wishful thinking. After all, Bernanke made his name in arguing that the Fed was too conservative at the onset of the Great Depression. That part of history may have shaped his earlier thoughts more than anything else.
The New Yorker profile on him, in the Dec. 1, 2008 issue, portrays a loyal Greenspanian:
- “He wouldn’t have gotten into that club if he didn’t go along … Mr. Greenspan ran a tight ship”
- “Bernanke provided the intellectual justification for the Fed’s hands-off approach to asset bubbles” by developing the “global savings glut” (aka blaming the Asians) theory.
- When challenged by critics on the potential of a housing bubble, Bernanke reacted coolly: “really believes that it is impossible to lean against the wind on the way up and that it is possible to clean up the mess afterwards,”
- When he was appointed to the Fed Chairmanship, he stated his first priority would be “to maintain continuity with the policies and policy strategies (i.e. monetary philosophy?) … established during the Greenspan years”
In terms of the people I love to hate in the last eight years, Greenspan comes second only to Dick Cheney. Most people fail to realize what an ideologue he is, or the cost he has brought upon the nation for pursuing a personal belief formed in Ayn Rand’s reading room. Ayn Rand may be a gifted writer, but she’s not someone should be entrusted with secular affairs. She lived through her formative years as a Jew in the Soviet Russia, then escaped to the U.S. and developed a fetish love with a fantasy Capitalism. She once said that she got sexually aroused by the sight of skyscrapers. To think our central bank was run by her Milhouse Van Houten for decades really makes me sick to the gut.
Just saw Richard Posner’s scathing criticism of Greenspan, A Failure of Capitalism: Reply to Alan Greenspan, which went after Greenspan’s self-defense article by article. Lately, Greenspan has been using the “global economy making central bank less powerful” argument (which is exactly what Bernanke’s global glut refers to). Posner was sharp in his pursuit: the Fed is still relevant and we delegated Greenspan enormous power to keep the Fed relevant.
Another example -
He notes the dot-com stock market bubble of the late 1990s and explains that the Fed did not try to puncture it by raising interest rates, fearing that to do so would cause “a substantial economic contraction and possible financial destabilization.” But the article does not explain why he thought those consequences would have ensued.
Isn’t this a case of an ideologue carry out his plot while hiding behind technical smoke screen? Hurry Reid once called Greenspan the “biggest political hack in Washington”. Posner’s pointers are good footnotes.
Self-control, Ability to Suppress, Career Achievement
Jan 12, 2009
Keywords: child development, child psychology, focus suppression, the “marshmallow experiment”, correlation to adulthood achievement. Massive MRI scan on original subjects now in adulthood, trying to identify biological origin of the power of self-control.
Thoughts: Dan Turner’s experiment on watching video with a Gorilla man. Being able to focus, etc.
Same issue.
In reporting the Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem, Arendt must have said something that is pretty upsetting to her fellow Jews. However, whereas Samantha Powers glossed over this in a couple of sentences (in her Forward in the latest edition of The Origins of Totalitarianism), Kirsch wrote 10 pages on the New Yorker to reveal a deeper psych that could have produced such coldness to her own people.
In short, his conclusion is Arendt is less a Jew-hater than a German-lover. She drunk the Kool-Aid of the “Germanese”, epitomized by the work of her teacher-lover, Martin Heiddegger. So much so that she couldn’t overcome her own reasoning on what it means being Jewish.
To me, the article resonated with my own experience and observation of others who try to be “American” or “Western”. Kirsch paints Arendt’s story in a Shakespearean hue, a tragic play.