The Mortgage-Mess Fable

The Sept. 22 Wall Street Journal had a good opinion piece titled "A Mortgage Fable" that begins with a bit of humor, but then gives a nice overview of the key people and institutions at fault -- as they describe it, "Let us take the roll of political cause and financial effect". Included are: The Federal Reserve, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, A credit-rating oligopoly, Banking regulators, The Bear Stearns rescue, and The Community Reinvestment Act.

Diamonds and Rust

The latest song that I've really taken a liking to, that I was introduced to via my personal Pandora station, is "Diamonds and Rust". Now, I vaguely remembered this song and of course it is from Joan Baez's 1975 album of the same name. (What I didn't remember at all is that Judas Priest did a version of this song on their 1977 album Sin After Sin."

But the version that Pandora introduced me to is from a group that is new to me: Blackthorn's Night. The wikipedia entry on Blackthorn's Night describes them as a "Renaissance-inspired folk-rock band". They have an official website here (warning: music starts to play automatically at this site!). I've heard clips of several of their songs, and I like their sound, so might try to get one of their albums from eBay sometime.

You can listen to their version of Diamonds and Rust via a video on YouTube.

Some stats on North Korea and South Korea

Sometimes a few numbers helps to make already clear distinctions that much more so. The Sept. 27th issue of The Economist magazine had a series of articles on North and South Korea. A sidebar in one of the articles had some numbers that are quite striking:

• North Korea Population: 22.9 million
• South Korea Population: 48.5 million

So North Korea has 47.2% of the population that South Korea has.

• North Korea GDP: 25.6 billion ($)
• South Korea GDP: 957.1 billion ($)

So North Korea has only 2.7% of the GDP that South Korea has! Wow. This works out in GDP per capita to $1,118 for North Korea and $19,751 for South Korea.

Another interesting difference is Power Generation, measured in kWh, 100m:

• North Korea: 225
• South Korea: 3646

Again, that works out to North Korea producing only 6.2% of what South Korea does. No wonder night-time satelite images of North Korea always appear so completely dark!

And while there are no doubt a variety of factors involved in life-expectancy, I would assume that if Korea had been one country for the past 50+ years, the life-expectancy between people in the north and people in the south would be fairly similar. Instead, it seems safe to assume that the policies of the North Korean communist regime are greatly reducing the life expectancy of its people: North Korea's is 67.3 and South Korea's is 78.6.

I'm no expert on North Korea. I learned a lot from my friend Don Parrish's trip report, and from what I gather from news sources, the people in North Korea have systematically lied to for many decades and are very, very isolated. If/when the North Korean Communist regime falls, and the country opens up and attemptes to reintegrate with the rest of the world... what will it be like for the common individuals of that country? It is hard to imagine... and sad to think about... but I just hope we have some good reporters and/or social scientists on the ground when it happens to chronicle it all.

On the Ten Post-1942 Old-Timers Nominated for the HOF

My first new baseball writing for Seamheads.com is the posting I did today titled "On the Ten Post-1942 Old-Timers Nominated for the HOF". (This essay is similar to my writing on the pre-1943 candidates here.)

I'm now writing for Seamheads.com

I am pleased to announce that I am now a writer for Seamheads.com, a popular baseball blog site. Going forward, most of my baseball blog postings will appear, with just a brief note here at Philosopher Stone linking to those postings. I will also re-publish some of my past baseball writings from here over at Seamheads. (For instance, I did that for my 9/15 posting here on the ten Pre-1943 Old-Timers nominated for the HOF, which is now included at Seamheads here.)

The Other New Yankee Stadium

Humor site The Onion has a great video about another new Yankee stadium in the works. Good stuff.

Bizarre Pork Along For the Ride

The "new and improved" (LOL) bailout (errr.... rescue) plan that was finally agreed to by Congress and the President naturally includes plenty of "pork" spending. A lot of this comes by means of bizarre, very specific tax exemptions. This USA article describes this, but I got a groan-laugh from the sidebar content that lists "some tax breaks in the current bill":

• Bicycle commuters. Provides employees who commute by bicycle limited benefits to offset commuting costs. Estimated cost: $10 million over 10 years.
• Children's wooden practice arrows. Exempts wooden practice arrows from excise tax, currently 39 cents. Estimated cost: $2 million over 10 years.
• Film and television productions. Allows more film and television show production companies to use the domestic production deduction. Estimated cost: $397 million over 10 years.
• Commercial fishermen. Allows commercial fishermen and others affected by the Exxon Valdez oil spill to average any settlement or judgment-related income over three years. Estimated cost: $49 million over 10 years.
• Motorsports complexes. Extends seven-year cost-recovery period to the end of 2009 for land improvement and support facilities placed in service after Dec. 31, 2007. Estimated cost: $100 million over 10 years.

Sigh... Think about the waste in our system of government, such as the time and money spent by lobbiests on these issues, some perhaps over many years. And then think about how none of these things have anything to do with the bailout plan being voted on -- other than the specific congresspeople who wanted these earmark items, do the others even know they were tacked on for the ride? Probably not. How pathetic. Something like the Read the Bills Act might help with this craziness. But of course, to really fix things much more dramatic changes in our government would be needed: greatly limiting the federal government, indeed all government, to its proper functions -- protecting our individual rights. That would do away with all "pork" spending, lobbying for money, etc. Obviously... I'm not holding my breath for such a principled change in the US anytime soon.

New Online Poker Legislation Introduced

The Poker Players Alliance sent out a press release recently about legislation introduced by Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) that would license and regulate online poker. While I'd prefer that online poker were not regualated, at least legalizing it and regulating it would be better than the current situation for Americans where are rights are being violated by the law passed a few years ago that effectively makes it illegal to play. So I hope this bill can get passed at some point -- after the new year perhaps?