Kruse Kronicle

Prophetic YouTube Post on Mortgage Crisis

Vulnerable Congressmen Doomed Bailout

Outside the Beltway: Vulnerable Congressmen Doomed Bailout

Nate Silver compares the list of Representatives voting No on yesterday’s bailout bill with the list of swing districts — that is, those where the re-election of the incumbent is seriously in doubt — and finds a surprisingly strong correlation.

    VULNERABLE GOP = 3 YEAS, 17 NAYS (15%)
    OTHER GOP = 62 YEAS, 116 NAYS (35%)

    VULNERABLE DEMS = 5 YEAS, 13 NAYS (28%)
    OTHER DEMS = 135 YEAS, 82 NAYS (62%)

    ALL VULNERABLES = 8 YEAS, 30 NAYS (21%)
    OTHERS = 197 YEAS, 198 NAYS (50%)

Additionally, almost all the retiring Members voted in favor. ...

Women and Ministry - Scot McKnight

A couple of years ago, Scot McKnight began a series at his Jesus Creed blog called "Women and Ministry" that spanned several months. Many of these posts had more than 200 comments with some fascinating discussion. I find myself occasionally going back to these discussion to review what was said.

Unfortunately, these comments are categorized with some other post that weren't directly related to this series. So for your convenience and mine I've created an index of this series for easier reference.

Woman in Ministry

Women in Ministry: Ruth Tucker

Women in Ministry: Feminization of the Church?

Women in Ministry: Scripture and Feminism

Women in Ministry: Phyllis Tickle

Women and Ministry: Hermeneutics

Women in Ministry: A Letter now open

Women and Ministry: Headship from Home to Church?

Women and Ministry: Paul

Women in Ministry: Biblical examples

Women in Ministry: Sumner Months

Women in Ministry: Sumner Months 2

Women in Ministry in Africa

Sumner Months 3

Women in Ministry: Personhood

Women in Ministry: Manhood

Women and Ministry: God-talk

Women in Ministry: Can we change?

Women in Ministry: “weaker vessel”?

Women in Ministry: “Headship”

Women in Ministry: “I do not permit…”

Women in Ministry: “The Redemptive Trend”

Women in Ministry: Redemptive Trend 2

Women in Ministry: Redemptive Trend 3

Women in Ministry: Redemptive Trend 4

Women in Ministry: Ethnic Stereotypes

Women in Ministry: The Redemptive Trend

Women in Ministry: Redemptive Trend

Women in Ministry: Are you Biblical?

Women in Ministry: Made for Mutuality

Women in Ministry: First Mary

Women in Ministry: Sacred Space

Women in Ministry: Galatians 3:28

Women in Ministry: Three Women 1

Women in Ministry: Three Women 2

Women in Ministry: Three Women 3

Women in Ministry: A Story

Women in Ministry: Why is this such an Issue?

Women in Ministry: Why is this such an Issue? 2

On Becoming Missional in the Twilight of Christendom

I’m in Snowbird, Utah all this week at the General Assembly Council meeting for the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. Today we are having a joint meeting with Middle governing body executives. Through a variety of presentations and discussions we are going to be exploring what it means to be a missional church.

One of the resources we are looking at is an article by Darrell Guder called The Challenges of Evangelization in America: Theological Ambiguities, published in Antioch Agenda. He concludes the article with a series of questions with bullet point observations of Christendom by its heirs must address these theological ambiguities, in constant interaction with the global, non-western community. To do so, it is helpful to ask:

What has the theology of Christendom reduced that needs to be restored to fullness?

• The gospel of the kingdom reduced to the gospel of individual salvation.
• The calling of the church to witness to the world reduced to the management of salvation.
• The baptismal calling of each Christian to apostolic witness reduced to the clergy-lay distinction with different possibilities of spiritual faithfulness and obedience.

What has the theology of Christendom equated that cannot be equated?

• The culture of western Christendom with normative Christianity.
• The kingdom of God with the institutional church.
• God’s promised rule with a particular human program of social, political, and economic design.

What has the theology of Christendom separated that may not be separated?

• The benefits of the gospel from the missional calling of the Christian (Barth’s critique of the ‘classic definition of Christian identity’) – another way of describing the individualistic reduction of the gospel.
• The calling of baptism from the calling of ordination: two or more classes of Christians.
• The present from the future: the loss of the impact now of that which is promised and still coming.

Then Guder goes on to identify some challenges to evangelization:

Confronting the conformities: Romans 12:2

Receiving “transformation by the renewal of the mind” (Romans 12:2)

The crucial role of the world church, calling the heirs of western Christendom to account.

• “Can the west be saved?”
• “Can we be good stewards of our legacy especially our property and wealth, for the upbuilding of the entire body of Christ around the world? Should western churches see themselves as the Hellenistic congregations formed by Paul, carrying out their financial responsibility for the Christians in Jerusalem/the non western Churches?
• “Does the accession of the Christian movement to social and economic power fundamentally change its calling as defined by the NT?”
• Challenge now in the “next Christendom” – African countries officially calling themselves “Christian nations!” while Europe is arguing about how it can refer to its own Christian past!
• Can we really articulate, as a world community of faith and witness, what we commonly believe and testify to, what practices we share that are the same in all their cultural differentness, and what we commonly hope and expect from God’s hand?

These are the issues we are addressing as we reflect on being a missional church.

McLaren Emerging

Christianity Today: McLaren Emerging (by Scot McKnight)

In his last two books, Brian McLaren presents more clearly than ever his vision of the gospel.

The most stable location for the earliest understandings of the Cross, from Jesus all the way through the New Testament writings, is the Last Supper—and not a word is said there about violence and systemic injustice. Other words are given to explain the event: covenant, forgiveness of sins, and blood "poured out for many." Insight into the Cross must start here. In fact, I question whether a cross that only undoes violence is enough to create liberation, peace, and a kingdom vision. Can McLaren's view of the Cross create the emergent understanding of kingdom? ...

50 of the Most Dependable Web Resources for University Students

EduChoices: 50 of the Most Dependable Web Resources for University Students

Knowing where to turn for facts, handy web apps and other types of resources can make student life a lot easier. Read on for a list of 50 of the most useful and dependable online resources for college and university students.

Research Resources

The Internet is a great place to find information and check facts--if you know where to go. Here are 25 web resources that are known for being consistent, accurate and reliable.

1. Library of Congress - The nation's oldest federal cultural institution is also the largest library in the world. Some of the resources you will find here include historical documents, manuscripts, artwork, maps, photos, letters and film.

2. U.S. Census Bureau - The American FactFinder from the U.S. Census Bureau is an incredibly useful tool--particularly if you are looking for population, housing, economic, and geographic data.

3. CIA Library - The Central Intelligence Agency has a library, an online directory of Chiefs of State and Cabinet Members of Foreign Governments, maps and a World Fact Book that offers information on countries all over the world. ...

What? No Kruse Kronicle? What's the matter with these people? :-)

"Presbyfest" and Missional Presbyterians

I'm on my way this afternoon to Snowbird Resort in Utah for PCUSA "Presbyfest." Over the next week there will be the Office of the General Assembly Polity Conference, Association of Executive Presbyter's Meeting, the joint Middle Governing Body and General Assembly Council Meeting, and the General Assembly Council Meeting itself. Saturday I will be spending my time in the Restricted Funds Oversight Committee. Sunday afternoon is the GAC Executive Committee meeting. Sunday night is the beginning of the MGB/GAC meeting that will last through Tuesday morning. Tuesday afternoon is the beginning of the GAC meeting that lasts until Friday at noon. Frankly, I haven't even arrived and just looking at this schedule I'm thinking I need a vacation.

One the highlights of this event will be the MGB/GAC meeting as we explore together what it means to be a missional church. We are reading four papers together that will focus our discussion. They are available online at the MGB/GAC website. Here are the four papers:

• Walking Worthily: Missional Leadership after Christendom (Darrell L. Guder)
• From Mission and Theology to Missional Theology (Darrell L. Guder)
• The Challenges of Evangelization in America: Theological Ambiguities (Darrell L. Guder)
• Rebuilding the Presbyterian Establishment (William J. Weston)

I don't know that I'll have time to get online at the meeting and write much about this but I thought it might be good for some of my Presby friends to know what denominational leaders are exploring. If you want to take the time to read these papers and offer comments here, I'd be interested to read reflections.

Spending on Food and Clothing At An All-Time Low

Carpe Diem

Women rule the roost, and that's OK with men

USA Today: Women rule the roost, and that's OK with men

Around the house, women rule. And men aren't putting up a fight about it, according to a study from the Pew Research Center that examines how gender and power play out at home and in the community.

Of 1,260 individuals surveyed this summer— either married or living together — women wield more decision-making power at home. In 43% of couples, women made more decisions — almost twice as many as men — in the four areas Pew surveyed: planning weekend activities, household finances,major home purchases and TV watching.

The survey also found 43% of men don't have the final say in any of those decisions; they either share decision-making or defer to their partners.

"Across all decision-making realms, it tilts to the woman,"says Rich Morin, lead author of the study, being released today.

"I was surprised by the percentage of men who made none of the decisions in any of the areas. A significant percentage were just bystanders."

Such responses run counter to societal beliefs, says Melinda Forthofer, director of the Institute for Families in Society at the University of South Carolina-Columbia. ...

Why Do Panhandlers Ask for Coffee?

Economix: Why Do Panhandlers Ask for Coffee?

Speaking of our discussions on snack economics and the threat of a depression:

Marginal Revolution, Freakonomics and a few other blogs have pointed to a recent article on the economics of panhandling, and how there are, ironically, online guides to help panhandlers maximize their profits. One bit of advice involves asking for a discrete amount of money, with the example being “I need 43 more cents to get a cup of coffee.”

Here’s something I never understood: Why do panhandlers ever ask for money for coffee? ...

Prosperity: Order and Reason

Yesterday I wrote that, apart from the Judeo-Christian heritage, religion has largely been about bringing life into conformity with the cycles of nature. Ordering of lives is achieved through adherence to a set of stories and rituals that reflect these patterns. The stories and rituals give order to existence.

With Judaism the idea of processing from a beginning toward an end emerges. Revelation and law were given at a point in the past and we “look back” to the codes written long ago to determine appropriate action today as we proceed through time, waiting for God’s final act. Islam has had this as a central element as well.

Jesus was completely disorienting. He reoriented our vision from compliance with the past to compliance with the future. Jesus gave a vision of the future and called his followers to live according that vision. Yes, he gave some prescriptive guidance but the organizing principle is a vision of a future reality, namely the Kingdom of God and the new creation.

Not only did Jesus orient us toward the future, but by the very means through which he passed down his vision ensured that we would have to be active participants in the creation and realization of the vision. Despite the endless attempts by some fundamentalist influences in Christianity to use scripture as a codified instruction manual for human behavior, the scripture resiliently resists being boxed in this way. Scripture is an unfolding story with a beginning and end. The author invites humanity to enter the story and participate in its completion. One must interact with the story and understand each portion of scripture in terms of its own context and the context of the larger biblical narrative. It requires wrestling with a general ordering of the world in a future age. One has to deduce and infer appropriate action. In other words, instead of executing directives we must actively reason our way to good decisions, based on a story revealed by a reasonable God.

The necessity of reason in discerning God’s will has had ramifications beyond theology. The discipline of reason eventually turned to the investigation of the material world. If God is a reasonable God, then the world God created must be organized according to orderly principles. Genesis 1 tells us that God is behind and before all the created order. Passages like Psalm 104 teach us that the natural order is not run by capricious gods or powers beyond God’s control. God superintends the workings of the natural order. Scripture also makes clear that God is not part of the natural order and material objects are not to be worshiped.

Therefore, because there is a God given order to nature, we can systematically study and test ideas against observations until we determine the actual order of things. This belief that the world could be systematically studied and that natural objects are not possessed of wills and volition is what gave rise to science. Without the discipline of reasoning our way to God’s vision, one has to question whether scientific rationality would ever have emerged.

This emergence of reason also led to the modern notion of risk. In ancient times, people would embark on a journey and not be heard from again. What happened to them? The gods or the fates did them in. Maybe locals in a distant place invoked magic against them. Whatever the case, people were simply helpless in the face of such events. However, with the emergence of the Judeo-Christian ethos, it became assumed that options could be studied, risks quantified, and decisions could made that improved success in complex endeavors. The first widespread applications of this began in the 1400s as sea trade began to expand and investors sought to maximize and protect their investments through insurance mechanisms. This was crucial to emergence of capitalism in the modern world which at its core is about assessing the financial risks competing decisions.

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McCain Gives Details of Economic Plan

I also like the summary of the Obama plan at the end of the news piece.

McCain�s Economic Plan For Nation: 'Everyone Marry A Beer Heiress'

Look Who's Irrational Now

Wall Street Journal: Look Who's Irrational Now  (HT: Brad Wright)

"You can't be a rational person six days of the week and put on a suit and make rational decisions and go to work and, on one day of the week, go to a building and think you're drinking the blood of a 2,000-year-old space god," comedian and atheist Bill Maher said earlier this year on "Late Night With Conan O'Brien."

On the "Saturday Night Live" season debut last week, homeschooling families were portrayed as fundamentalists with bad haircuts who fear biology. Actor Matt Damon recently disparaged Sarah Palin by referring to a transparently fake email that claimed she believed that dinosaurs were Satan's lizards. And according to prominent atheists like Richard Dawkins, traditional religious belief is "dangerously irrational." From Hollywood to the academy, nonbelievers are convinced that a decline in traditional religious belief would lead to a smarter, more scientifically literate and even more civilized populace.

The reality is that the New Atheist campaign, by discouraging religion, won't create a new group of intelligent, skeptical, enlightened beings. Far from it: It might actually encourage new levels of mass superstition. And that's not a conclusion to take on faith -- it's what the empirical data tell us.

"What Americans Really Believe," a comprehensive new study released by Baylor University yesterday, shows that traditional Christian religion greatly decreases belief in everything from the efficacy of palm readers to the usefulness of astrology. It also shows that the irreligious and the members of more liberal Protestant denominations, far from being resistant to superstition, tend to be much more likely to believe in the paranormal and in pseudoscience than evangelical Christians.

The Gallup Organization, under contract to Baylor's Institute for Studies of Religion, asked American adults a series of questions to gauge credulity. Do dreams foretell the future? Did ancient advanced civilizations such as Atlantis exist? Can places be haunted? Is it possible to communicate with the dead? Will creatures like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster someday be discovered by science?

The answers were added up to create an index of belief in occult and the paranormal. While 31% of people who never worship expressed strong belief in these things, only 8% of people who attend a house of worship more than once a week did.

Even among Christians, there were disparities. While 36% of those belonging to the United Church of Christ, Sen. Barack Obama's former denomination, expressed strong beliefs in the paranormal, only 14% of those belonging to the Assemblies of God, Sarah Palin's former denomination, did. In fact, the more traditional and evangelical the respondent, the less likely he was to believe in, for instance, the possibility of communicating with people who are dead. ...

... Surprisingly, while increased church attendance and membership in a conservative denomination has a powerful negative effect on paranormal beliefs, higher education doesn't. Two years ago two professors published another study in Skeptical Inquirer showing that, while less than one-quarter of college freshmen surveyed expressed a general belief in such superstitions as ghosts, psychic healing, haunted houses, demonic possession, clairvoyance and witches, the figure jumped to 31% of college seniors and 34% of graduate students. ...

Intrade Betting is Suspicious

FiveThirtyEight: Intrade Betting is Suspicious (HT: Greg Mankiw)

The past couple of weeks I've done posts about Intrade and the presidential election. Here is an interesting piece on alleged discrepancies.

There's something funny going on over at Intrade with respect to the pricing of the Obama and McCain contracts.

Right now, Obama is trading at 52.3 points. That is, Intrade implies that he has a 52.3 percent chance to become the next President.

Now, I happen to think that is a patently absurd price. But you don't have to take my word for it. Over at BetFair, another large UK-based gambling and futures site, you can also buy an Obama contract. But the price there is 1.62, which implies a 61.7 percent chance that Obama will become the next President.

That is a huge spread, 51.5 points versus 61.7 points. ...

... It does seem to be Intrade specifically that's out of line, rather than Betfair. At Iowa Electronic Markets, yet another political futures exchange, the probability of the Democrats winning the popular vote is about 61 percent. They don't have an electoral vote contract, but if they did, presumably that number would be a little higher because of the structural advantages Obama has in the electoral college this year that we've discussed here at length. ...

Prosperity: Linear Time and Progress

Throughout history, religions have had a cyclical (or at least nonlinear) view of time. Religious ritual was an exercise in honoring and appeasing the cycles of nature established by the gods. Life was an endless succession of cycles.

One of the most striking features of the Jewish tradition is the notion of linear time. There was a beginning. Time is moving on a course from that beginning toward some destination. For the Israelites, the end of the story was when a messiah would bring shalom to the nation of Israel and lift the nation up to its place as God’s exalted people. Life was about remaining faithful to a covenant laid out by God. Jews looked forward a promise and backward to a code as they processed through time in anticipation of future world.

Christ took this linear view of time and redirected it. Jesus gave a vision of the future and called on his followers to orient their lives based on this future reality. They were to give evidence of the future reality in the present and transform the world in the present. Rather than looking to the past and processing through time, Christians are called to progress through time in active anticipation of a future reality.

The idea of progress is so ubiquitous in our day that it is hard to imagine how astonishingly novel this is in human history. Without the idea of progress there would be little of the drive that has been behind so much scientific research and technological development. Capital markets and the long term orientation required to make them work, would not have emerged without people who were disciplined to think in terms of realizing a different future. Indeed, this is still one of the challenges that confronts economic development in some regions of the world. Even in the U.S., one the common traits exhibited by the chronic poor is the inability to think in terms of the future and pursue change.

It is not uncommon today to hear variety of Christian thinkers speak disparagingly of progress and insofar as this relates to the excesses and hubris of modernist ideologies it is right on target. But the idea of "progress" itself is often cast as a product of the Enlightenment and modernism. Clearly secular visions of progress have been a central theme in everything from evolution to capitalism to Marxism. But these modernist secular versions are merely wayward extensions Judeo-Christian thought and almost certainly would not have emerged without it. The idea of progress is deeply rooted in the Judeo-Christian ethos.

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Big Government to the Rescue

Newsweek: Big Government to the Rescue

Markets can't exist without regulation. The real trick is to craft good regulations that allow markets to work well.

...This crisis should put an end to false debates about government versus markets. Governments create markets, and markets can exist only with regulation. If you want to be truly free of regulation, try Haiti or Somalia. The real trick is to craft good regulations that allow markets to work well. No regulatory structure will be perfect, none will eliminate risk, nor should they. At best they can tame the wildest gyrations of the market economy while maintaining its efficiency. ...

Bingo! Now if we just knew how to do that.  :-)

Saints, Sinners and Regulation

Thomas Sowell writes:

Who was it who said, "crack-brained meddling by the authorities" can "aggravate an existing crisis"? Ronald Reagan? Milton Friedman? Adam Smith? Not even close. It was Karl Marx. Unlike most leftists today, Marx studied economics.

Is the current financial crisis going to lead to crack-brained meddling or to some rational actions? Predicting what politicians are going to do is risky business. We will have to wait and see.

Saints are no more common on Capitol Hill than they are on Wall Street. We can only hope that the political "solution" does not turn out to be worse than the problem.

There are times when government intervention can make things better. But that is no guarantee that it won't make things worse. As they say, "the devil is in the details"-- and we don't know the details yet. ...

The Imago Dei and God the Worker

Vanguard Church (Bob Robinson): The Imago Dei and God the Worker

 

A Christian Perspective on Work, Part 1

According to Genesis 2:2, God is resting (“By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work.”)

However, according to John 5:17, God has continued to work (“Jesus said to them, ‘My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working.’”). And Psalm 107:15 exhorts us to “thank the Lord for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of men.”

It is clear that God is not the watchmaker God, who wound up the Creation and now passively watches his creatures without doing anything. He is still at work. Our God is a worker.

This must mean that God does not “rest” as in taking time off from work. It must mean something else (which we’ll explore later when we address “Sabbath”). Suffice it to say that after the initial Creation, God entered the “rest” of enjoying his handiwork. He entered into a time of dwelling in and with the work of his hands.

God works.

And God creates humanity in the image of the Triune God that works. ...

Looks like Bob is starting a fascinating series.

Intrade: Obama Widens Lead to 18 Electoral Votes

We are now six weeks from the presidential election. Last week I did my initial post on Intrade and the presidential election. During the 2004 election, Intrade picked the presidential race correctly in every state but Alaska. It picked every senatorial race correctly in 2006.

According to state-by-state Intrade markets, Barack Obama will win by 18 electoral votes. Last week the margin was 8 votes. I broke down the votes for both candidates into two categories. If the candidate is trading 60 or higher to win in a state, then I considered that state a solid win. If the candidate is trading in the 50.1 to 59.9 range in a state, then I considered that state to be leaning toward that candidate. Here is a map showing the outcomes by state:

 

Electoral Votes

McCain – 260
Obama – 278

What changed is that that Nevada went from leaning significantly toward McCain to leaning slightly toward Obama. Furthermore, Colorado and New Mexico went from leaning toward Obama to being solidly for Obama. Ohio went from being solidly for McCain to leaning toward McCain. In short, all the shifts in the key states were toward Obama.

Leaning States

In the following analysis it should be noted that there are two types of Intrade contracts worthy of mention. One contract says McCain wins and the other says Obama wins. Because they are traded separately, the sum of the two prices rarely equals exactly 100.

Nevada (5) – Currently leaning toward Obama 52.9 (+7.9 over last week) while McCain is at 59.8, with Obama at 45. Last week Neveada was leaning toward McCain.

New Hampshire (4) - Still leaning toward Obama at 59.8 (+3.3), with McCain at 41.5 (-2.0).

Ohio (20) – Currently leaning toward McCain at 54.9 (-6.0) and Obama now ate 47. Ohio had just barely been in the safe category for McCain last week.

Virginia (13) – Still leaning toward McCain at 53 (-4.0), with Obama at 45 (+0.1).

Four other states of interest (Winner in the 60-70 range.)

Colorado (9) – Obama at 60 (+5.1) and McCain at 39.2 (-8.6). Was leaning toward Obama last week.

Florida (27) – McCain is at 61.9 and Obama at 38.4 after being solidly for McCain last week.

Michigan (17) – Obama currently is at 67 (+2.0) while McCain is at 35.

Ohio (20) – McCain at 60.9 after trading in the 30s in July and the 40s in August.

Pennsylvania (21) – Obama  is at 66.7 (+0.7) while McCain is at 31.6.

States now of less interest.

Minnesota (10) – Now solidly for Obama is at 71.5 (+3) and McCain at 27.1.

New Mexico (5) – Solid for Obama at 74 (+14.5) and McCain with 31.1 (-8.8). Had been leaning Obama.

Thoughts

Intraders clearly sense a shift in Obama's direction. If their perceptions are right, then McCain can't win without bringing at least on of the four states of interest into his column. If things stand as they are now but McCain either wins Colorado or brings in the combination of New Hampshire and Nevada, then we will have a tie 269 votes.

Intrade on the overall question of who will win the White House

McCain - 48 (-2.5)
Obama - 50.8 (+1.9)

For a look at the election from polling data you can visit Real Clear Politics. Here is their map. Notice that polling data shows the race in several states to be much less certain.

 

Real Clear Politics polls indicate the following changes since last week:

States that were solid for McCain now leaning McCain: MT, NC, ND

States that were leaning for McCain now a toss up: FL, IN

States that were a toss up now leaning Obama: MI, NM

States that were leaning Obama that are now solid Obama: IA

States that were leaning Obama that are now a toss up: WI

Intrade on Next Months Canadian Elections

Oh my! What Obama or McCain wouldn't give for numbers like this.  :-)

Conservatives Try New Tack on Campuses

New York Times: Conservatives Try New Tack on Campuses

COLORADO SPRINGS — Acknowledging that 20 years and millions of dollars spent loudly and bitterly attacking the liberal leanings of American campuses have failed to make much of a dent in the way undergraduates are educated, some conservatives have decided to try a new strategy.

They are finding like-minded tenured professors and helping them establish academic beachheads for their ideas.

These initiatives, like the Program in Western Civilization and American Institutions at the University of Texas, Austin, or a project at the University of Colorado here in Colorado Springs, to publish a book of classic texts, are mostly financed by conservative organizations and donors, run by conservative professors. But they have a decidedly nonpartisan and nonideological face.

Their goal is to restore what conservative and other critics see as leading casualties of the campus culture wars of the 1980s and ’90s: the teaching of Western culture and a triumphal interpretation of American history.

“These are not ideological courses,” said James Piereson, a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, which created the Veritas Fund for Higher Education to funnel donations to these sorts of projects. The initiatives are only political insofar as they “work against the thrust of programs and courses in gender, race and class studies, and postmodernism in general,” he said. ...

Men with sexist views 'earn more'

BBC: Men with sexist views 'earn more'

Men who grow up thinking women should stay at home may be labelled "old-fashioned" - but could end up well ahead in the salary stakes.

A US study, published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, suggests that they will consistently out-earn more "modern-thinking" men.

On average, this meant an extra $8,500 (£4,722) a year.

One UK psychologist said men inclined to wield power in their relationships might also do this at work. ...

It strikes me that men who hold these views probably have more of their identity tied up in being good breadwinners and are therefore possibly more highly motivated to be good breadwinners.

Prosperity: Respect for the Individual

We hear much today about the destructiveness of individualism. It know doubt is a significant cultural issue. But only in the recent past has such excessive focus on the individual emerged. Throughout most of human history around the world, individual human beings were considered subordinate to society or the rulers. An individual’s existence and liberty were maintained largely at the pleasure of the societal elite. Elaborate religious and cultural customs often emerged that offered some protection for individuals, but the idea of all human beings being of equal status in some ontological sense was foreign to ancient cultures. Thus, even though the Greeks experimented with democracy for powerful Greek men, Greek philosophers also tendered instruction on how these men should manage and pacify their wives, slaves, and other social inferiors.

Judiasm offered the unique concept of bearing God’s image. Ancient Near East kings erected images (eikons) throughout their territory to symbolize their authority throughout the region. No doubt the first chapters of Genesis were calling this idea to mind when the first humans were called “images of God,” told to fill the earth, and to exercise dominion. They would be God’s junior partners showing forth God’s authority throughout the world. Unlike wooden or stone eikons, these living eikons would share the faculties of reason and creativity. As God’s eikons, each individual human being has intrinsic value.

Extending from this “image of God” idea is the notion of human rights. While we often have a hard time defining precisely what we mean by human rights, we do have the belief that people should not be deprived of freedom or killed arbitrarily. We can also say that the ideas of “image bearing” and of stewardship are interwoven into the mindset that gave rise to the Western world and its economic institutions. We are steward-owners who have a sense of responsibility to those who, for whatever reason, are in need of basic necessities. People have great intrinsic value and should be treated as such. In an era of hyper-individualism, it is hard to appreciate just how profoundly exceptional this valuing of individuals is in human history.

We also see the impact of this “image of God” thinking on property rights. The Old Testament code lifted up the private ownership of property not as a tool that serves the best interests of the state but as the rightly ordered state of affairs established by God. Considerable portions the Old Testament law is devoted to managing property disputes and the Leviticus 25 jubilee provisions were to ensure that not one would become permanently alienated from the land God had entrusted to them.

God calls us individually and corporately to be stewards of the created world. Property is to be held and used in trust for God not the state. Since our personal survival depends on our ability to create and manage resources for our own well-being, economic freedom is closely tied to personal and political freedom. Therefore, while ownership is not absolute, neither is it to be arbitrarily violated by the state or other powerful people. Property ownership is intrinsic to the mission of being an eikon of God in the world. That some Enlightenment and Modernist philosophies have sought to make property rights paramount because of their indispensable role in pursing personal autonomy doesn’t alter the origin of this elevation property rights.

Property rights and human rights as we know them could not have emerged without the idea of humanity in the image of God. Some will argue that the Enlightenment had a more significant impact on these concepts but the Enlightenment itself was inextricably connected to understandings of human nature from Judeo-Christian thought. While the concept of human rights has now become a global feature there are still many cultures that are resistant to Western notions of human rights that played such a key role in the rise of Western prosperity.

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Talk About Holding a Grudge!

Check out this excerpt from a recent BBC article.

... he introduced me to Bargrat Djikayev, a 75-year-old former Soviet soldier who originally came from the breakaway Georgian area of South Ossetia, the scene of the August fighting.

Mr Djikayev still had family there and he used to go back regularly until, he said, it became too dangerous.

As he told his story, his face became tense and his eyes welled up.

He told of torture and murder by Georgians of South Ossetians - of men executed, women dragged away and girls being raped and then burnt alive.

His speech was rushed and urgent and our interpreter could only just keep up.

"Hold on," I said. "You're saying this happened just now?"

He looked confused at he question.

"No, he said this was in the 12th Century".

"The 12th Century?" I said in disbelief, "but why does what happened then make you so angry?"

Mr Djikayev cut his hands through the air.

"Oh, it started long before that," he said. "The Georgians attacked us back in the 2nd Century."

"But you have to move on, surely," I suggested.

He shook his head. "No. I want to go back and kill Mikhail Saakashvili," he said, referring to the Georgian president. ...

Michael Phelps at a VERY Early Age

(HT: Ben Witherington)

Andrew Cuomo and Fannie and Freddie

Village Voice: Andrew Cuomo and Fannie and Freddie

This is an interesting, if lengthy, piece written last month on the origins of the Fannie and Freddie debacles that led to the present financial crisis.

How the youngest Housing and Urban Development secretary in history gave birth to the mortgage crisis.

There are as many starting points for the mortgage meltdown as there are fears about how far it has yet to go, but one decisive point of departure is the final years of the Clinton administration, when a kid from Queens without any real banking or real-estate experience was the only man in Washington with the power to regulate the giants of home finance, the Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (FHLMC), better known as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Andrew Cuomo, the youngest Housing and Urban Development secretary in history, made a series of decisions between 1997 and 2001 that gave birth to the country's current crisis. He took actions that—in combination with many other factors—helped plunge Fannie and Freddie into the subprime markets without putting in place the means to monitor their increasingly risky investments. He turned the Federal Housing Administration mortgage program into a sweetheart lender with sky-high loan ceilings and no money down, and he legalized what a federal judge has branded "kickbacks" to brokers that have fueled the sale of overpriced and unsupportable loans. Three to four million families are now facing foreclosure, and Cuomo is one of the reasons why.

What he did is important—not just because of what it tells us about how we got in this hole, but because of what it says about New York's attorney general, who has been trying for months to don a white hat in the subprime scandal, pursuing cases against banks, appraisers, brokers, rating agencies, and multitrillion-dollar, quasi-public Fannie and Freddie.

It all starts, as the headlines of recent weeks do, with these two giant banks. ...

Prosperity: Opening Thoughts on Cultural Environment

We have visited five elements within the cycle of prosperity: technology, food supply, human capital, economic growth and wealth, and trade. We have seen how each of these five interacts in mutually reinforcing organic ways to generate prosperity. We have also seen how environment and natural resources can influence the way an economy develops. We turn now to the cultural environment.

Examining our cultural environment is a bit like trying to describe water to fish. It is so much a part of our experience that is all but invisible to us. It rarely occurs to us that life could be ordered in alternative ways. Yet assumptions we make about the order of the world, about human nature, and about matters of ultimate meaning deeply affect how we function with regard to economic decisions, sometimes in very subtle but important ways. Here are just a few questions that highlight some of the issues.

* Is time an endless cycle of recurring events, or is there a progression from the past leading toward a better future? What impact would this have on the idea of economic growth or developing technology? What impact would it have on the human capital society develops in its members?

* Do the fates or the gods arbitrarily enter into human affairs and the functioning of the natural order, or is there a predictable orderliness to the way the world works? Are deities and nature separable? What impact would this have on developing technology? What impact would it have on assessing risk for any activity? What impact would it have on the development of human capital?

* Can individuals own land or is land communal property? Or maybe land is held only at the pleasure of a ruler who has ultimate ownership? What impact would values about land ownership have on agricultural practices and the food supply?

* Do individuals have a right to keep the fruits of their labor and not be imprisoned at the whims of powerful people? What impact would this have on wealth accumulation and investment? What impact would it have on human capital?

* Are people outside of society enemies or subhuman, or are outsiders fellow human beings with whom interaction can be beneficial? What would this mean for trade?

History shows that European culture was late to the scene compared to the Near East fertile crescent, or civilizations of Egypt and China, and possibly even civilizations in the Americas. David Landes in “The Wealth and Poverty of Nations” notes that the water wheel, eyeglasses, the mechanical clock, printing and gunpowder were all developed in China long before Europeans developed and learned similar technologies. As late as the 15th century, on the dawn of Europe encountering the New World, the Chinese had ships far in excess of anything the Europeans could muster in size or technological capability. Greece and Rome were developing various models of statecraft two millennia ago that still have influence on our lives today. Muslims in the Middle East were ahead of Europe in science and technology by the time of the centuries bridging the turn of the first and second millennia. Yet none of these cultures ever approached the widespread prosperity and personal freedom expanding throughout the world today. What was different about the European experience?

A central factor is the rise of market economies. While there have always been markets and trade, market economies and trade in the modern sense began more than a millennium ago in southern Europe eventually taking root in Northern Italy. Later the central activity moved to Flanders before jumping the Channel to England, on to America, and then out to the world. Over the next few posts I will explore four features that emerged in European culture that I believe had a central impact on the unique rise of Western prosperity that is now expanding throughout the globe. Each of the four links to distinctly Judeo–Christian perspectives on life and the world.

Two caveats. First, I’m not saying that these cultural characteristics alone led to European prosperity. For instance, I’ve already mentioned Europe’s unique geography as contributing factor in the previous post. Second, I’m not saying that everything introduced by European culture has led to the most desirable outcomes in terms of a shalom filled world. But I am saying that I don’t think we can look at bringing others into the cycle of prosperity we have experienced without first examining “the water we are swimming in” and asking if those we are engaging share swim in the same water.

We now turn these four cultural features.

[Index]

Globalisation: A Bigger World

The Economist: Globalisation: A Bigger World

Globalisation is entering a new phase, with emerging-market companies now competing furiously against rich-country ones. Matthew Bishop (interviewed here) asks what that will mean for capitalism.

GLOBALISATION used to mean, by and large, that business expanded from developed to emerging economies. Now it flows in both directions, and increasingly also from one developing economy to another. Business these days is all about “competing with everyone from everywhere for everything”, write the authors of “Globality”, a new book on this latest phase of globalisation by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

One sign of the times is the growing number of companies from emerging markets that appear in the Fortune 500 rankings of the world’s biggest firms. It now stands at 62, mostly from the so-called BRIC economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China, up from 31 in 2003 (see chart 1), and is set to rise rapidly. On current trends, emerging-market companies will account for one-third of the Fortune list within ten years, predicts Mark Spelman, head of a global think-tank run by Accenture, a consultancy.

There has been a sharp increase in the number of emerging-market companies acquiring established rich-world businesses and brands (see chart 2), starkly demonstrating that “globalisation” is no longer just another word for “Americanisation”. Within the past year, Budweiser, America’s favourite beer, has been bought by a Belgian-Brazilian conglomerate. And several of America’s leading financial institutions avoided bankruptcy only by going cap in hand to the sovereign-wealth funds (state-owned investment funds) of various Arab kingdoms and the Chinese government. ...

New Agency Proposed to Oversee Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae

New York Times: New Agency Proposed to Oversee Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae (HT: Strategic Thought)

(Note: This article is from Sept. 11, 2003. In light of recent events, sometimes old news is news worth revisiting.)

 The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.

Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.

The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios.

The plan is an acknowledgment by the administration that oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- which together have issued more than $1.5 trillion in outstanding debt -- is broken. A report by outside investigators in July concluded that Freddie Mac manipulated its accounting to mislead investors, and critics have said Fannie Mae does not adequately hedge against rising interest rates.

''There is a general recognition that the supervisory system for housing-related government-sponsored enterprises neither has the tools, nor the stature, to deal effectively with the current size, complexity and importance of these enterprises,'' Treasury Secretary John W. Snow told the House Financial Services Committee in an appearance with Housing Secretary Mel Martinez, who also backed the plan. ...

... ''These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis,'' said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ''The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.''

Representative Melvin L. Watt, Democrat of North Carolina, agreed.

''I don't see much other than a shell game going on here, moving something from one agency to another and in the process weakening the bargaining power of poorer families and their ability to get affordable housing,'' Mr. Watt said.

There is lots of blame to go around in this mess but Bush creating "unfettered markets"  was not one of the culprits.

Who killed New Labour?

The Economist: Who killed New Labour?

The death throes of Britain’s ruling party suggest several possible culprits.

“WE MEET in a spirit of hope,” the new leader of the Labour Party told its annual conference. “For the first time in a generation”, he declaimed, “it is the right wing that appears lost and disillusioned.” The speech ended with an incantation: “New Labour! New Britain! New Labour! New Britain!”

That was Tony Blair, in 1994. It was a speech that announced the birth of New Labour—the flexible social-democratic movement that dominated British politics until very recently. Next week, at this year’s party conference, Gordon Brown—Mr Blair’s successor as Labour leader and prime minister—will also give a speech, conceivably his last big address in those offices. This one may come to be regarded as New Labour’s elegy.

New Labour is dying. It has lost the three vital qualities that kept it alive and vibrant. First, discipline. A shared purpose and scowling party apparatchiks once bound Labour MPs to a party line; now some are calling for Mr Brown to stand down—and he may yet have to, little more than a year after he moved into Number 10. The rumblings about his leadership already constitute a crisis, and a humiliation, for him and his party.

Second, intellectual confidence: the party that once defined the intellectual terrain of politics has been reduced to aping its opponents’ policies. Most important, New Labour has lost the habit of winning.

What has been one of the great election-winning forces in British political history has been routed in a run of parliamentary by-elections and local votes. Its poll ratings are so bad—a survey released on September 18th gave the Conservatives a 28-point lead—that recovery before the next general election, due by June 2010, looks almost impossible. On current form, the resulting defeat may be Labour’s worst since the second world war. In the aftermath of such a rout, some Labour supporters fear, the party may disintegrate, with a revived Old Labour faction, wedded to the ideals of punitive taxation and a monolithic state, reasserting its anachronistic grip. ...

The Social Animal

New York Times: The Social Animal  (David Brooks)

The following appeared last week in the New York Times and I just discovered it. With a few caveats (I'm not clear on his British Conservatism analogy in the last sentence, for instance),  he express my sentiments as well.

Near the start of his book, “The Conscience of a Conservative,” Barry Goldwater wrote: “Every man, for his individual good and for the good of his society, is responsible for his own development. The choices that govern his life are choices that he must make; they cannot be made by any other human being.” The political implications of this are clear, Goldwater continued: “Conservatism’s first concern will always be: Are we maximizing freedom?”

 Goldwater’s vision was highly individualistic and celebrated a certain sort of person — the stout pioneer crossing the West, the risk-taking entrepreneur with a vision, the stalwart hero fighting the collectivist foe.

The problem is, this individualist description of human nature seems to be wrong. Over the past 30 years, there has been a tide of research in many fields, all underlining one old truth — that we are intensely social creatures, deeply interconnected with one another and the idea of the lone individual rationally and willfully steering his own life course is often an illusion.

Cognitive scientists have shown that our decision-making is powerfully influenced by social context — by the frames, biases and filters that are shared subconsciously by those around. Neuroscientists have shown that we have permeable minds. When we watch somebody do something, we recreate their mental processes in our own brains as if we were performing the action ourselves, and it is through this process of deep imitation that we learn, empathize and share culture.

Geneticists have shown that our behavior is influenced by our ancestors and the exigencies of the past. Behavioral economists have shown the limits of the classical economic model, which assumes that individuals are efficient, rational, utility-maximizing creatures.

Psychologists have shown that we are organized by our attachments. Sociologists have shown the power of social networks to affect individual behavior.

What emerges is not a picture of self-creating individuals gloriously free from one another, but of autonomous creatures deeply interconnected with one another. Recent Republican Party doctrine has emphasized the power of the individual, but underestimates the importance of connections, relationships, institutions and social filaments that organize personal choices and make individuals what they are.

This may seem like an airy-fairy thing. But it is the main impediment to Republican modernization. Over the past few weeks, Republicans have talked a lot about change, modernization and reform. Despite the talk, many of the old policy pillars are the same. We’re living in an age of fast-changing economic, information and social networks, but Republicans are still impeded by Goldwater’s mental guard-rails.

If there’s a thread running through the gravest current concerns, it is that people lack a secure environment in which they can lead their lives. Wild swings in global capital and energy markets buffet family budgets. Nobody is sure the health care system will be there when they need it. National productivity gains don’t seem to alleviate economic anxiety. Inequality strains national cohesion. In many communities, social norms do not encourage academic achievement, decent values or family stability. These problems straining the social fabric aren’t directly addressed by maximizing individual freedom.

And yet locked in the old framework, the Republican Party’s knee-jerk response to many problems is: “Throw a voucher at it.” Schools are bad. Throw a voucher. Health care system’s a mess. Replace it with federally funded individual choice. Economic anxiety? Lower some tax rate.

The latest example of the mismatch between ideology and reality is the housing crisis. The party’s individualist model cannot explain the social contagion that caused hundreds of thousands of individuals to make bad decisions in the same direction at the same time. A Republican administration intervened gigantically in the market to handle the Bear Stearns, Freddie and Fannie debacles. But it has no conservative rationale to explain its action, no language about the importance of social equilibrium it might use to justify itself.

The irony, of course, is that, in pre-Goldwater days, conservatives were incredibly sophisticated about the value of networks, institutions and invisible social bonds. You don’t have to go back to Edmund Burke and Adam Smith (though it helps) to find conservatives who understood that people are socially embedded creatures and that government has a role (though not a dominant one) in nurturing the institutions in which they are embedded.

That language of community, institutions and social fabric has been lost, and now we hear only distant echoes — when social conservatives talk about family bonds or when John McCain talks at a forum about national service.

If Republicans are going to fully modernize, they’re probably going to have to follow the route the British Conservatives have already trod and project a conservatism that emphasizes society as well as individuals, security as well as freedom, a social revival and not just an economic one and the community as opposed to the state.

Lehman Bros. and Consensus

Climate Audit (Steve McIntyre): Lehman Bros. and Consensus

My interest in climate change derived in part from experience in the stock market where "consensus" is not infrequently established in favor of opinions that are completely incorrect. And, in many cases, the people promoting the views are competent and serious people. How are such things possible? I read about the Bre-X and Enron failures, trying to distinguish between the "shame on you" and the "shame on me" components - i.e. yes, the original misconduct and deceit was deplorable; but at what point should proper independent due diligence have been able to detect misconduct? At what point were regulatory agencies negligent? Obviously we're going to see a new spate of such inquiries in the wake of the recent collapses.

I was particularly intrigued in the cases of Bre-X and Enron failures by the tremendous acolades meted out to the promoters right up to the eve of their collapses.

As evidence of this ongoing interest, a reflection on Bre-X was one of the very first Climate Audit posts (Feb 6, 2005). I observed that Felderhof and de Guzman were lionized at the 1997 PDA convention (March 10-16, 1997) and walked around like royalty only a few days before the fraud was revealed. de Guzman literally disappeared a few days later, supposedly either jumping or being pushed from a plane over the Indonesian jungle. Others speculate that he may have assumed a new identity in a Third World barrio somewhere. The "consensus" disappeared quickly. Take a look at the post.

In another early post, I observed the "consensus" that Enron was not only a well-managed company, but the most outstandingly managed company in the U.S., ...

And here is an important insight:

...I don't want readers to start piling on with accusations or making uninformed comparisons of climate change to these corporate failures. For once, I want to be able to be nuanced statements without provoking a lot of piling on. I personally am unimpressed by "consensus", especially when there is no independent due diligence. That doesn't mean that I'm impressed by "skeptic" proposals either (BTW).

One of the curious aspects to Enron's rise to prominence is that nobody understood how they actually made money. That's one of the reasons why I'm so adamant about wanting clear A-to-B explanations of how doubled CO2 leads to 3 or more deg C and why excuses for not providing such explanations are so disappointing. I believe that forcing oneself to provide such an explanation would be very healthy for the AGW community.

Simply going with the consensus when the dots are not connected is exceedingly dangerous in the business world, as we have seen this week. The same holds true for climate science as well.

Will the real dinosaurs stand up?

BBC: Will the real dinosaurs stand up?

Most of the newly discovered dinosaurs are just that - new to science, an assessment concludes.

With many past fossil finds named on the basis of partial remains, there has been concern that a lot of double counting has been taking place.

Recent studies had even suggested this error rate might be as high as 50% - with some species being catalogued with several aliases.

But the journal Biology Letters reports that modern practice is now very good.

"My research suggests we're getting better at naming things; we're being more critical; we're using better material," said Professor Michael Benton from Bristol University, UK.

The scientist looked at the original descriptions of all 1,047 species of dinosaurs ever named, from 1824 to the present day.

He assessed the quality of the specimens on which the names were founded - the type specimens. Professor Benton said some 500 were genuinely distinct, and the confidence surrounding the latest discoveries - about one new species a fortnight - was now very high.

"The bane of the dinosaurologist's life is species that have been named on the basis of incomplete specimens," Professor Benton explained.

"In Victorian times, palaeontologists were keen to name new species, and in the excitement of the great 'bone wars' for example, from 1870 to 1890, they rushed into print with new names for every odd leg bone, tooth, or skull cap that came their way.

"Later work, on more complete specimens, reduced more than 1,000 named dinosaurs to 500 or so."

Professor Benton said science had now put in place far more rigorous naming protocols, dramatically reducing the "alias problem".

Since 1960, the great majority of new species are founded on more or less complete specimens, sometimes even whole skeletons.

Professor Benton has a critical interest in the topic because he studies the evolution of dinosaurs. He tries to understand how this famous animal group changed and diversified over almost 200 million years.

"There's no point somebody such as myself doing big statistical analyses of numbers of dinosaur species through time - or indeed any other fossil group - if you can't be confident that they really are genuinely different," he told BBC News.

"This is important also for studies of modern biodiversity. People have also been looking at our current knowledge of mammals and insects and other animal groups and asking the simple question: are the species totals and lists we use for important conclusions - including to give political advice about endangered species - are they correct?

"There's been a big debate about vast extinctions among amphibians. We have to know what the species are first, before we can talk about that."

The Financial Crisis About to Get Much Worse

The collapsing Anti-Bush products industry. (HT: Greg Mankiw) (WARNING: Offensive words presented in images.)

Economists Warn Anti-Bush Merchandise Market Close To Collapse

Government steps in again, bails out AIG with $85B

Yahoo News: Government steps in again, bails out AIG with $85B

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. government stepped in Tuesday to rescue American International Group Inc., one of the world's largest insurers, with an $85 billion injection of taxpayer money. Under the deal, the government will get a 79.9 percent stake in AIG and the right to remove senior management.

AIG's chief executive, Robert Willumstad, is expected to be replaced by Edward Liddy, the former head of insurer Allstate Corp., according to The Wall Street Journal, citing a person it did not name. Willumstad had been at the helm of AIG since June.

A call to AIG to confirm the executive change was not immediately returned.

It was the second time this month the feds put taxpayer money on the hook to rescue a private financial company, saying its failure would further disrupt markets and threaten the already fragile economy.

AIG said it will repay the money in full with proceeds from the sales of some of its assets.

Under the deal, the Federal Reserve will provide a two-year $85 billion emergency loan to AIG, which teetered on the edge of failure because of stresses caused by the collapse of the subprime mortgage market and the credit crunch that ensued. In return, the government will get a 79.9 percent stake in AIG and the right to remove senior management.

The move was similar to government's seizure on Sept. 7 of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, where the Treasury Department said it was prepared to put up as much as $100 billion over time in each of the companies if needed to keep them from going broke.

The Fed said it determined that a disorderly failure of AIG could hurt the already delicate financial markets and the economy.

It also could "lead to substantially higher borrowing costs, reduced household wealth and materially weaker economic performance," the Fed said in a statement. ...

$85B? Now that is what I would call a bail out.

Intrade: Obama Wins by 8 Electoral Votes

Greg Mankiw and a number of other economists frequently reference Intrade in their discussion of economic and political events. If you are not familiar with Intrade, then you could describe it as a futures market for either/or events. Here is how it works.

Intrade works through $10 contracts. You think there is a 60% chance Obama will win the presidential election. You bid $6 to buy a contract that says Obama wins. If someone takes that offer then you own a contract for $6. If you hold that contract to the end and Obama wins, then the contract will be worth $10. You will net $4. If Obama loses, then you lose $6. You can sell your contract at anytime before the event finishes so long as there is a buyer who is willing to buy. (More here.)

During the 2004 election, Intrade picked the presidential race correctly in every state but Alaska. It picked every senatorial race correctly in 2006. So I thought I would see what Intrade has to say about the presidential race today. (I may make this a weekly update.)

According to state-by-state Intrade markets, Barack Obama will win by 8 electoral votes. I broke the votes for both candidates into two categories. If the candidate is trading 60 or higher to win, then I considered them a solid state for that candidate. If the candidate is trading in the 50.1 to 59.9 range, then I considered that state to be leaning toward that candidate. Here is a map showing the outcomes by state:

Electoral Votes

McCain – 265
Obama – 273

Leaning States

In the following analysis it should be noted that there are two types of contracts worthy of mention. One contract says McCain wins and the other says Obama wins. Because they are traded separately, the sum of the two prices rarely equals exactly 100.

Colorado (9) – Currently leaning toward Obama at 54.9, with McCain at 47.8. There has been fairly steady movement toward McCain since about a month ago when McCain was trading at 35.

Nevada (5) – Currently leaning toward McCain at 59.8, with Obama at 45. Until the past month, Obama had been trading steadily at around 50.

New Hampshire (4) - Currently leaning toward Obama at 56.5, with McCain at 43.5. Volatile prices with a net move of only a couple of points in McCain’s direction over the last month.

New Mexico (5) – Currently leaning toward Obama at 59.5, with McCain at 39.9. As recently September 8, McCain was trading in the 26-28 range.

Virginia (13) – Currently leaning toward McCain at 57, with Obama at 44.9. Through most of August Obama had been trading in the 50-55 range.

Four other states of interest (Winner in the 60-70 range.)

Michigan (17) – Obama currently is at 65. However, he had been trading in the 70s in July and August.

Minnesota (10) – Obama is at 68.5 after trading in the 80s last month and in the low 70s over the last week.

Ohio (20) – McCain at 60.9 after trading in the 30s in July and the 40s in August.

Pennsylvania (21) – Obama  is at 66, which is a little lower than the low 70s range he had been trading at in recent weeks.

Thoughts

Assuming all this stays pretty much as is, but there is a 3.6 movement in Colorado in McCain's favor, then McCain wins. That is how close it is. Obama is winning right now but all the present trends are in McCain’s direction. There aren’t many places in play at the moment where Obama can pick up more votes but there are several places he could lose them and he only has an 8 vote lead.

Intrade on the overall question of who will win the White House

McCain - 50.5
Obama - 48.9

For a look at the election from polling data you can visit Real Clear Politics. Here is their map.

Russia halts trading after 17% share price fall

Financial Times: Russia halts trading after 17% share price fall

Russian shares suffered their steepest one-day fall in more than a decade on Tuesday, losing up to 20 per cent, as a sharp slide in oil prices and difficult money market conditions triggered a rush to sell.

The heads of the Russian central bank, the finance ministry and the financial market regulator met on Tuesday night for an emergency discussion on ways to halt the crisis.

Earlier, trading had been suspended on both the Micex and RTS stock exchanges as investors ignored assurances by Russian officials and a cycle of distrust set in amid liquidity fears.

Margin calls forced domestic traders to liquidate positions and brokers pulled credit lines. At least one Moscow bank failed to meet payments.

The rouble-denominated Micex Index closed 17.75 per cent down, the sharpest one-day drop since the August 1998 financial crisis, while the dollar-denominated RTS index closed down 11.47 per cent, its lowest lvel since January 2006.

Interbank money market rates climbed to 11 per cent, their highest since a mini-banking crisis in summer 2004.

Chris Weafer, chief strategist at Uralsib investment bank: “We’re in completely uncharted territory where the prevailing emotion is of fear and numbnes. No one knows where this could stop”.

Alexei Kudrin, finance minister, insisted that the financial system was not in a systemic crisis but the central bank injected a record $14.16bn in one-day funds into the money market. ...

The Sarah Palin Effect and Age vs. Gender

Freakonomics: The Sarah Palin Effect and Age vs. Gender

Say what you will about the addition of Sarah Palin to the Republican ticket (here I said that most searches sought “hot” pictures of the Alaska governor); regardless of personal or political viewpoint, it is clear that McCain’s selection altered the political blogosphere.

Looking at U.S. Internet users’ interactions with political websites for the week ending with August 30, 2008 (the week of the Palin announcement), visits to over 800 campaign and blog sites grew 33.8 percent to reach the highest level of online political activity in the last three years. ...

... Checking the demographics of visitors to political sites, I expected that gender composition would show the greatest difference pre- and post-Palin. In fact, the percentage of female versus male visitors was the least affected by the Palin announcement; age was the most affected.

If we look at the age demographics of online politics over time, the 55-plus crowd continues to be the predominant age group (39 percent at the end of 2007). In fact, if we look at online political interest by age group, there is a strong positive correlation: as age increases, so does percentage composition in political site visits.

The age group with the largest increase during the Palin surge during the week ending with August 30, 2008, was the 25- to 34-year-olds increasing to 14.4 percent of all visits from 13.4 percent the previous week (the 18 to 24 and the 55-plus age groups both decreased about 1 percent in the same time period). ...

... Regardless of end-vote, online behavioral data indicate that recent events have ignited our interest in November’s election, especially for the 25- to 34-year-old voter.

The Complementarian Palin Conundrum

What to do with Sarah Palin? Many people in theologically conservative protestant denominations and congregations believe that men and women fulfill complementary gender roles. They describe themselves as complementarian. Men lead. Women submit. Men teach and preach. Women do not teach or preach to men, nor are the ordain to be pastors. There are a wide variety of ways these issues are practically dealt with and some, in fact, seem only complementarian in name when you view actual behavior. Most complemenatarians bristle at that their position implies any inferiority on the part of women. Men and women are “equal in being, unequal in function,” they say. Whatever the case, complemetarian teachers maintain they are upholding the historic teaching of the church.

The virtual credo for the complementarian position is 1 Timothy 2:11-15. Unlike other passages which (on the surface at least) seem to address this topic, 1 Timothy is gives a theological basis for the complementarian position.

The prescription:

“Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent.” Verses 11 and 12

The theological justification:

“For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.” Verses 13 and 14

As you are probably aware, a disproportionate number of American complementarians are politically conservative and Republican. This election year, the vice-presidential slot is filled by a woman, Sarah Palin. Isn’t this a contradiction of complementarian standards? For most, apparently not.

Leading complementarian argue that submission to the husband in the home is not transferable to submission of women to men outside the home. Furthermore, 1 Timothy 2 is only addressing the role of women in the context of public worship or with regard to ecclesial matters. Fair enough, but is this the historical understanding? What is the functional necessity for excluding women from teaching and leadership roles in the church? Church scholars have had fairly consistent pragmatic functional reasons for restricting leadership/teaching to men over the centuries based on passages like 1 Timothy 2. Three stand out in particular.

1. Priest as Mediator - Because the priest is the mediator of Christ to the people the priest must be male in order to symbolize Christ. This is irrelevant to Protestants because our understanding is that there is no mediator between Christ and us.

2. Primogeniture - We find various church fathers commenting on 1 Timothy 2:13, identifying primogeniture as a “functional” reason. But read the following closely with the idea of “equal in being, unequal in function,” in mind. (All quotes below, and several others, can be found in two appendices of William Webb’s Slaves, Women and Homosexuals.):

John Chrysostom (347-407): “It shows that the male sex enjoyed the higher honor. Man was first formed; and elsewhere he shows their superiority.” Homilies on Timothy (Homilies 8-9)

Martin Luther (1483-1546): “Because of God’s work, Adam is approved as superior to Eve, because he had the right of primogeniture.” Luther’s Works

John Wesley (1703-1791): “ ‘First’ - So that woman was originally the inferior [in rank or status]. She was inferior too in bodily strength.” The New Testament Explanatory Notes

We see primogeniture referenced but the implicit, and frequently explicit, reason given for the significance of primogeniture is that it signifies male superiority. Some Reformation scholars, including Calvin, found the primogeniture argument weak. Nevertheless Calvin writes in his commentary on 1 Timothy:

“Since, therefore, God did not create two chiefs of equal power, but added to the man an inferior aid, the Apostle justly reminds us of that order of creation in which the eternal and inviolable appointment of God is strikingly displayed.”

So while Calvin was not to keen on primogeniture reasoning, he resorts to the “inferior helpmate” reasoning instead.

These arguments on primogeniture usually exist as a secondary support for the next reason.

3. Women’s Inferior Nature - Again commenting on 1 Timothy 2:13:

John Chrysostom (347-407): “The woman [Eve] taught once, and ruined all. On this account therefore he saith, let her not teach. But what is it to other women, that she suffered this? It certainly concerns them; for the sex is weak and fickle, and he is speaking of the sex collectively.” Homilies on Timothy (Homilies 8-9)

Augustine (354-430): “And [Satan] first tried his deceit upon the woman, making his assault upon the weaker part of that human alliance, that he might gradually gain the whole, and not supposing that the man would readily give ear to him, or be deceived, but that he might yield to the error of the woman … For not without significance did the apostle say, ‘And Adam was no deceived, but the woman being deceived was in transgression.’” City of God

Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274): “The human group would have lacked the benefit of order had some of its members not been governed by others who were wiser. Such is the subjection in which woman is by nature subordinate to man, because the power of rational discernment is by nature stronger in man.

St. Paul says ’that women should keep silence in Churches”, and, ‘I permit no woman to teach or have authority over men.’ [1 tim. 2:12] But this especially touches the grace of speech. Accordingly that grace [speaking publicly to the whole church] does not pertain to women … because generally speaking women are not perfected in wisdom so as to be fit to be entrusted with public teaching.” “Prophecy and other Charisms” in Summa Theologica 45:133

Martin Luther (1483-1546): “Paul thus has proved that by divine and human right Adam is the master of the woman. That is, it was not Adam who went astray. Therefore, there was greater wisdom in Adam than in the woman. Where this occurs, there is greater authority … He [Adam] persevered in his dominion over the serpent, which did not attack him but rather attacked the weaker vessel … just as he does today.” Lectures on 1 Timothy

John Knox (1514-1572) On women: “For who can deny but it is repugnant to nature, that the blind shall be appointed to lead the conduct such as do see? That the weak, the sick, and impotent persons shall nourish and keep the whole and strong, and finally, that the foolish, mad and frantic shall govern the discrete, and give counsel to such as be sober of mind? And such be all women, compared to a man in bearing of authority. …Nature, I say, does paint them further to be weak, frail, impatient, feeble and foolish: and experience has declared them to be inconstant, variable, cruel and lacking the spirit of counsel and regiment.” The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women.

John Wesley (1703-1791): “The preceding verse [1 Tim 2:13] showed why a woman should not ‘usurp authority over the man.’ This verse [1 Tim. 2:14 ] shows why she ought not ‘to teach.’ She is more easily deceived , and more easily deceives.” “1 Timothy” in Wesley’s Notes on the Bible

Complementarians declare ‘equal in being; unequal in function” and then claim the mantle of upholding the historic teachings of the church. Yet:

1. As Protestants, complementarians have rejected the idea of priest as mediator.

2. Unlike the leading scholars of the church who taught that primogeniture signified superiority (therefore justifying authority and teaching) complementarians point to primogeniture insisting there is in no implication of inferiority and superiority. Yet they offer no reason why primogeniture would have any influence on the practice leading/teacing, especially in light of the fact that God repeatedly chose other than the first born (Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and David, to name a few), implying that God’s gifting and call is what mattered, not primogeniture. (Is it also true that only first born sons should be pastors?)

3. Unlike the leading scholars of the church who taught that women were innately inferior to men and more easily deceived, complementarians bristle at the charge that they are saying women are inferior.

In short, complementarians are not adhering to the historic teaching of the church with their “equal in being, unequal in function” proposition. Neither are non-hierarchical complementarians like myself.

Having abandoned the historical rationale for abiding by certain prescriptions, Complementarians can now offer no functional justification for why women should not lead or teach. During the 1970s, complementarians created the novel formulation of “equal in being; unequal in function” to justify retention of old practices while in theory abandoning claims to women’s inferiority. But the formulation is a smoke screen. While it is true that one of two equal beings may be subordinate to another with regard to some specific limited functions for a limited time, it is not true that an equal being can be subordinate to another equal being in everything, all the time. The latter is what is being claimed for women and men by complementarians. For two beings that have the capacity to will and to act, this is the very definition of an inferior being. And now this formulation is being projected on to the ontological Trinity, declaring that Jesus’ will is eternally subordinate to the Father in a way the Father is not to the Son. But even if we grant that the formulation is true, what is the “functional” distinction that favors men teaching and leading?

The answer isn’t symbolic mediation, it isn’t primogeniture signifying male superiority, and it isn’t innate inferiority of women. Primogeniture absent male superiority is presented as a reason but if it is not about superiority what is it that makes being firstborn a qualification for leading and teaching, especially when God repeatedly ignored it? What is the functional difference favoring men versus women?

The truth is that we have been in Galileo-like paradigm shift over the past century or two. Just as it eventually became clear to the church five hundred years ago that the earth orbits the sun instead of the sun orbiting the earth, we have now seen that women are not fickle, silly, inferiors incapable of leadership and teaching. Just as with Galileo we have had to go back and reread passages that had seemed so obviously clear and rethink how our perceptions might have influenced what we were reading.

This is not the place for me to articulate my thoughts on the controversial passages of scripture. I’ve done that in my Household of God series (Scroll down to the “New Testament Household Codes” section and begin there.) My point here is that I believe, unlike the election of Hilary Clinton, Palin serving as vice-president will crank up the dissonance people’s minds between the complementarian prohibition of women teaching and seeing Palin ever before them. Had it been Clinton, it would have been easy to just ignore her as another one of those “radical feminists.” Palin, however, is seen as being of the same culture many complementarians hold dear. The absence of genuine functional barrier will force many to re-examine scripture.

We will see if Palin ends up as the vice president. Should it become so this complementarian dynamic will be interesting to watch.

(Note: Apparently David Gushee has been thinking along similar lines. See his article in USA Today, The Palin Predicament.)

New Evidence on Taxes and Income

Wall Street Journal: New Evidence on Taxes and Income Arthur B. Laffer and Stephen Moore

The new Census Bureau data on income and poverty reveal that many of the economic trends in this country are a lot more favorable than America's detractors seems to think. In 2007, overall real median family income increased to $50,233, up $600 from 2006. The real median income for intact families -- mother and father in the home -- rose to $78,000, an all-time high.

Although incomes fell sharply in the U.S. after the dot-com bubble burst in 2000 (and still haven't fully recovered), these latest statistics reflect a 25-year trend of upward economic mobility. More important, Barack Obama is wrong when he states on his campaign Web site that the economic policies started by Ronald Reagan have rewarded "wealth not work." Based on this false claim -- that the rich have benefited by economic growth while others have not -- he intends to raise tax rates on high-income individuals.

To be sure, there has been a massive amount of wealth created in America over the last 25 years. But tax rates were cut dramatically across the income spectrum, for rich and poor alike. The results?

When all sources of income are included -- wages, salaries, realized capital gains, dividends, business income and government benefits -- and taxes paid are deducted, households in the lowest income quintile saw a roughly 25% increase in their living standards from 1983 to 2005. (See chart nearby; the data is from the Congressional Budget Office's "Comprehensive Household Income.") This fact alone refutes the notion that the poor are getting poorer. They are not.

Looking at the last two business cycles (first year of recovery to first year of recovery), this low-income group experienced a 10% rise in their inflation-adjusted after-tax incomes from 1983 to 1992 and then another 11% rise from 1992 to 2002). Roughly speaking, the Reagan and Clinton presidencies were equally good for them. Income gains over the last 30 years have been systematically understated due to several factors. These include:

- Fall in people per household. The gains in household income undercount the actual gains per person, because the average number of people living in low-income households has been shrinking. On a per capita basis, the real income gain for low-income households was 44% from 1983 to 2005, about 22% from 1983 to 1992 and about 18% from 1992 to 2002. These are excellent numbers by any measure.

- Earned income tax credit effect. The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is a government payment to low income people who work. It was instituted on a small scale in 1975. In 1986, 1990, 1993 and 2001, Congress expanded the program.

Over time the EITC has multiplied the number of poor households that fill out tax forms each year and are thus counted in government income statistics. That's because to be eligible to receive the refundable EITC, a tax return must be filed.

Official tax return data show that in 1983, 19% of returns had zero tax liability; that percentage has climbed steadily, reaching 33% in 2005. (The Tax Policy Center estimates that in 2008 nearly 40% of filers will have no income tax liability.) Thus, we are now statistically counting more poorer families today than we used to. This is a major reason that median and poor household income gains appear to be a lot smaller than they have been in reality.

- Income mobility. In the U.S., people who had low incomes in 1983 didn't necessarily have incomes as low a decade later. People in this country have long moved up over time, and this income mobility continues to be true. While some people do remain in the lowest income group, they are the exception.

One way to quantify income mobility is to examine how many people remain in the same tax bracket over time. We compared the returns of tax filers in the lowest tax rate bracket (zero) in 1987 with their returns in 1996. Only one third of the tax filers were still in the zero tax bracket, but 25% were now in the 10% bracket, 32% had moved up to the 15% bracket and 9% were in the 25%, 28%, 33% or 35% brackets. And that was following them for a decade, not a generation.

From 1996 to 2005, we have the income mobility data for income quintiles. Of those filers who were in the lowest 20% in 1996 and who also filed in 2005, 42.4% remained in the bottom 20%, 28.6% were in the next highest quintile, 13.9% were in the middle quintile, 9.9% were in the second highest quintile, and 5.3% were in the highest quintile.

What is also striking about the data is that the poor today are, in general, not the same people who were poor even a few years ago. For example, the new Census data find that only 3% of Americans are "chronically" poor, which the Census Bureau defines as being in poverty for three years or more. Many of the people in the bottom quintile of income earners in any one year are new entrants to the labor force or those who are leaving the labor force. Obviously, there is also a significant core of truly poor people in this group, but that core is drastically less than 100%.

The data also show downward mobility among the highest income earners. The top 1% in 1996 saw an average decline in their real, after-tax incomes by 52% in the next 10 years.

America is still an opportunity society where talent and hard work can (almost always) overcome one's position at birth or at any point in time. Perhaps the best piece of news in this regard is the reduction in gaps between earnings of men and women, and between blacks and whites over the last 25 years.

Census Bureau data of real income gains from 1980 to 2005 show the rise in incomes based on gender and race. White males have had the smallest gains in income (up 9%), while black females have had by far the largest increase in income (up 79%). White females were up 74% and black males were up 34%. Income gaps within groups are rising, but the gaps among groups are declining. People are being rewarded in today's economy based on what they know and what they can do, not on the basis of who their parents are or the color of their skin.

There are of course Americans who live in poverty, as there are very affluent Americans with $25 million yachts and $10 million homes who hold ostentatious $200,000 birthday parties. But the evidence is plain that all groups across the income distribution have made solid gains during the last generation.

Taking from the rich through much higher tax rates in order to help the poor and middle class makes no sense intellectually and has seldom worked in practice. Reducing rates, on the other hand, does increase the share of taxes paid by the highest income-earning group. For example, in 1981, when the highest tax rate on the rich was 70% and the top capital gains tax rate was close to 45%, the richest 1% of Americans paid 17% of total income taxes. In 2005, with a top income tax rate of 35% and capital gains at 15%, the richest 1% of Americans paid 39%.

We suspect that Mr. Obama will discover that when you put "tax fairness" ahead of economic progress, you produce neither.

The Progressive Case For Free Trade

IBD Editorials: The Progressive Case For Free Trade Joseph Liberman

As recently as eight years ago, when the Clinton-Gore administration ended, a bipartisan consensus existed among Democrats and Republicans in favor of free trade, which leaders of both parties recognized was in America's economic interest.

Now, unfortunately, the consensus has unraveled, with most Democrats in Congress opposing key free trade agreements with some of our closest allies and Sen. Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate, threatening anti-trade policies if elected.

This reversal is very disappointing for many reasons, not least because it is Democratic progressives who should be the strongest champions of free trade. There is a reason that Democratic presidents from Franklin Roosevelt to Bill Clinton have been committed free traders — they understood that free trade advances precisely those goals that have historically mattered most to Democrats, both at home and abroad.

Domestically, free trade today is caricatured by the anti-trade left as sending companies overseas and hurting American workers. But this caricature is deeply flawed. In fact, it is middle- and lower-income American workers and families who are among free trade's greatest beneficiaries. ...

 

Will the informal sector drive third world growth?

Marginal Revolution: Will the informal sector drive third world growth? Tyler Cowen

No:

The overall picture of economic development that emerges from this analysis is in some ways very similar to the traditional pre‐growth‐theory development economics, although it is related to the modern reformulations of economic growth through the lens of development economics (Banerjee and Dulfo 2005). The recipe for productivity growth is the formation of official firms, the larger and the more productive, the better. Such formation must perhaps be promoted through tax, human capital, infrastructure, and capital markets policies, very much along the lines of traditional dual economy theories. From the perspective of economic growth, we should not expect much from the unofficial economy, and its millions of entrepreneurs, except to hope that it disappears over time. This “Walmart” theory of economic development receives quite a bit of support from firm level data.

That's from a recent La Porta and Shleifer paper, just presented at Brookings.  I find this very convincing.  The pointer comes from Greg Mankiw.

Prosperity: Physical Environment

Over the last five posts we’ve briefly looked at the five components of what I’m calling the cycle of prosperity: Technology, Food Supply, Human Capital, Economic Growth and Wealth, and Trade. I identified at least thirteen different types of impacts (arrows A through M) on creating economic prosperity. My intention has been to demonstrate the organic nature of an economic system. All parts are connected to each other. If nothing else, I hope of demonstrated that a singular focus one aspect like free versus fair trade, or economic aid, or improving medical care, is ineffective as a solution for creating economically prosperous societies. But the picture becomes even more complex.

We noted earlier that every economic system presumes to things: physical resources and a society of people. Therefore every economic system operates within two contexts. The first I will call the physical environment and the second cultural environment. We will discuss cultural environment in the next post but first let us examine what we mean by physical environment.

The economy is about people transforming matter, energy, and information from less useful states to more useful states. But people live in a particular physical context and contexts vary widely as we span the globe. There are a wide range of climates and terrains, with widely varying resources, that humanity has called home. Due to relatively limited mobility and thus limited trade, people have been compelled to live within the constraints of their physical environments.

At the most basic level, people can not survive more than a month or so without food. As food growing seasons are limited to a few months in many regions of the world. There must be technology for both producing sufficient quantities of food and then storing adequate food supplies during non-productive periods. Technology can increase the levels of production per amount of input and it can improve storage. But the ability to transport foodstuff across long distances and engage in trade has been essential to making some regions of the world more habitable.  

Terrain can have a significant impact on an economy as well. For instance, water transportation has historically been the most effective and least costly means of transporting large amounts of goods. Look at the map of Europe and notice how much coastline there is. Start in the bottom right in the Black sea, come south into the Aegean Sea, into the Mediterranean Sea, and out into the Atlantic. Then follow the coast around Portugal up through the English Channel into the North Sea. From there you may head north along the coast of Norway or east into the Baltic Sea and up toward Finland. Notice how many nations have direct access to ports along these paths. But then also consider the numerous navigable waterways that extend deep into the interior of European nations. Historically, Europe had many geographic features that made trade easier than in other parts of the world.

The present day United States also had many navigable waterways. The coastline extending from Maine all the way from down around Florida, into the Gulf of Mexico and all the way down to Brownsville, Texas, made access to these costal areas accessible. But despite having some interior waterways, the terrain made foliage made land transportation arduous prior to the industrial revolution. In 1790, the typical means of transportation from Philadelphia to the area of Pittsburgh was not across present day Pennsylvania. People would board a barge on in Philadelphia, sail around Florida into the Gulf, head up the Mississippi into Louisiana, and up the Ohio River to the Pittsburgh area. It was ten times cheaper than the land route. Without the invention of the railroad a few decades later, it is hard to imagine much expansion into the North American interior.

Also figuring into the equation of economic development was the presence (or lack) of various resources. Many historians have noted the lack of a beast of burden in the Americas comparable to the ox or the horse on other continents. That deficiency limited agricultural developments. However, the introduction of several native American foodstuffs into Europe significantly improved the European food supply.

Thus, we can see that geographic limitations have had a significant impact on the development of different societies. However, in light of globally integrated markets and transportation, there is little reason, from a technical standpoint, why most nations should have to do without basic resources simply because of geography. (There are modern exceptions as we will see.) That is, of course, presuming that the nation is connected and integrated into the larger global market. If not, then natural resource questions can still be significant issues a nation’s economy.

We must also add to this discussion that while the earth certainly provides the resources for economic activity, the earth is not merely a bundle of resources for our consumption. The earth is also our home. As Christians, we also believe that creation has intrinsic value because it was made by God and pronounced good by him, though it is still incomplete. Throughout most of human history nature has been appreciated as an untamable threat. Far from worrying about damaging nature, human life was consumed with not being destroyed by natural events. The idea that we could do harm to nature on any significant scale has been a recent phenomenon that parallels the rise of industrial technology. Consequently, preservation and protection of the environment has emerged as in important economic consideration.

There is certainly much more we could say about the significance of the physical environment and more will be interjected in later posts. For now I merely wish to make us conscious of the impact our environmental context can have on economic life. What said we will turn now to turn cultural environment, which I will discuss at greater length.

[Index]

G.M. at 100: Is Its Future Electric?

New York Times: G.M. at 100: Is Its Future Electric?

THE Chevrolet Volt is expected to be the icing on General Motors’ 100th birthday cake this week. The much-promoted sedan, which will operate as an electric car in typical local driving, is intended to provide a jump-start for the company’s second century.

The timing of the Tuesday event is fortuitous, for much more is riding on the Volt than whether a new model using experimental technologies will be a hit. For if the Volt succeeds, it could put the troubled company on a whole new path after 10 decades tethered to the internal-combustion engine. If it fails, it could drag G.M., and perhaps the entire struggling American auto industry, even further behind Asian competitors.

It was on Sept. 16, 1908, that William Crapo Durant filed the incorporation papers that formed G.M., with a revitalized Buick as its foundation. The centennial should be a time of joy at the company. But, with losses since 2005 approaching $70 billion, and Toyota having accelerated past G.M. into the No. 1 spot in global auto sales, the company’s staff won’t be dancing in party hats.

Instead of toasting the glory days when G.M. owned half of the United States car and truck market — its share peaked at 51 percent in 1962 amid suggestions that it should be broken up under antitrust laws — G.M. executives are looking .expectantly ahead to November 2010. That’s when the Volt, expected to break cover this week in close to final form, is due to reach customers.  ...

Charitable Giving of the Candidates

Tax Prof Blog (Paul Caron): Biden Releases 10 Years of Tax Returns

I wonder, though, if the move might backfire because the returns show that the Bidens have been amazingly tight-fisted when it comes to their charitable giving.  Despite income ranging from $210,432 - $321,379 over the ten-year period, the Bidens have given only $120 - $995 per year to charity, which amounts to 0.06% - 0.31% of their income: ...

...It is jarring that a couple earning over $200,000 per year would give as little as $2 per week to charity.  This giving compares very unfavorably to John McCain, whose tax returns show that he gave 27.3% - 28.6% of his income to charity in 2006-2007.  During the same period, the Obamas' tax returns show that they gave 5.8% - 6.1% of their income to charity....

Fun with Statistics

Greg Mankiw: Fun with Statistics

Princeton economist Alan Blinder says Democratic Presidents are better for economic equality between rich and poor.

Chicago economist Casey Mulligan says Republican Presidents are better for economic equality between men and women.

My take: These articles are completely persuasive, as long as you buy into the axiom that correlation=causation. Otherwise, not so much.

I have Blinder's book but haven't read it yet. I'm suspicious for two reasons. First is the convenient release in the middle of an election year. Second, I've played with data of this type in the past trying to find patterns connected with who holds the White House or who controls Congress. I've seen other studies done and critiqued and the analysis rarely holds up under scrutiny.

Blinder's book analyzes presidencies since World War II. He notes that the Carter Administration is the only Democrat administration that doesn't meet his pattern of decreasing inequality and higher economic growth. That means we have one data point to look at for the Democrats over the last forty years (Clinton)! The American and world economy has changed enormously during that forty year era. Clinton inherited an economy that had just come out of a mild recession and began to inherit some of the peace dividend from the fall of the Soviet Union. He did pass NAFTA (with the aid of the Republicans) and then his administration ended just as the dot.com bubble was bursting. The timing ranged from an economic low in the business cycle at the start to an economic high at the end.

I look forward to reading the book but I'll admit skeptical of these studies.

Pig Mania!

Barack Obama made a reference this week to "lipstick on a pig" that was seized upon by the McCain camp as a veiled insult to Sarah Palin. Hogwash! Of course, over the summer the Obama camp had no qualms about distorting McCain's words to suggest that he wants to keep American troops in Iraq for 100 years. This is why I try to avoid watching to much campaign stuff.

The bright side of the pig controversy is that it inspired Mrs. Kronicle and I to dig out our Pig Mania game. I'm aware that many of my readers have not yet achieved my level of culutral sophistication so I thought I would take this post to aquaint you with Pig Mania.

The equipment includes the following:

The two pigs are placed into the "pig sty," shaken, and then tossed on to the table. Points are scored based on the way the pigs land. Should you roll a "pig out" ...

 

or a "makin' bacon" ...

... your turn ends and it goes to the next player. A "pig out" is when the two pigs are on their sides but not the same side. "Makin' bacon" is when the pigs are touching in any way. [Update: Codepoke reminds me that if you toss a "makin' bacon," you lose all your points for that round of tosses. I knew I'd miss something here.]

The objective is to score 100 points. Here is how the points are scored.

This is a" sider"; both pigs laying on the same side. Points = 1

The one on the left is a "hoofer" (Points = 5) and the other is a "razorback" (Points = 5).

The one on the left is a "snouter" (Points = 10) and the other is a "leaning jowler" (Points = 15).

For these last four, the point total quadruples if the pigs land in the same position. For example, two snouters would be 40 points.

One additional rule is that before the pigs are tossed another player can yell "Sooee!" That player predicts the outcome. If he or she is right, then he or she gets double the points and the tosser must subtract the same number of points. If he or she is wrong, then you do the reverse.

Well, there you have it. Now you have grasped the inner workings of Pig Mania. No need to thank me for adding to your cultural proficiency.

Non-profit capitalism

Economist: Non-profit capitalism

An initial public offering with a difference.

“WE RUN a business here—but instead of selling cars or candy to kids, we’re selling hope and leadership,” says Nancy Lublin, the chief executive of Do Something, a non-profit group which promotes volunteerism by teenagers. On September 17th she is launching an initial public offering (IPO) to raise the $8m needed to double Do Something’s activities by 2011, by which time it plans to be engaging with around 21m of America’s 32m teenagers.

The IPO prospectus, put together by Do Something’s board of chief executives and technology entrepreneurs, contains the usual market data, a description of the 15-year-old organisation’s activities, an overview of the competitive landscape and bold claims about its qualities (“Do Something is also one of the most efficient organisations in the United States”), all designed to convince investors that it can achieve its ambitious goals. The only thing that stops it from being a typical IPO prospectus is the absence of any pledge to make a profit. On the contrary, the opening boilerplate explains that “units offered in conjunction with this prospectus represent a perpetual interest in Do Something; this interest is strictly philanthropic, with no provision for cash returns at any time.”

This imitation of the for-profit IPO process may seem gimmicky, but in fact it is part of a new trend to improve how non-profits are financed, so that they can escape the obsession with short-term fund-raising that is pervasive in the charitable world. ...

Adapt or die: Climate change and the poor

Economist: Adapt or die: Climate change and the poor

Environmentalists have long said the world should concentrate on preventing climate change, not adapting to it. That is changing.

“I USED to think adaptation subtracted from our efforts on prevention. But I’ve changed my mind,” says Al Gore, a former American vice-president and Nobel prize-winner. “Poor countries are vulnerable and need our help.” His words reflect a shift in the priorities of environmentalists and economists.

For years, greens said adaptation—coping with climate change, rather than stopping it—was a bit like putting out a fire on the Titanic: desirable, no doubt, but the main thing was to change course. In July, however, a committee of America’s Senate set aside $20m for international adaptation efforts. That was peanuts; and nothing will come of it anyway because there is no comparable legislation in the House of Representatives. But it was the first time American legislators had showed willingness to put money into global efforts at coping. In June, the United Nations hammered out the details of how to control spending of the first carbon tax earmarked for international adaptation.

Second, evidence is growing that climate change hits two specific groups of people disproportionately and unfairly. ...

Half the nation, a hundred million citizens strong

Economist: Half the nation, a hundred million citizens strong

What the middle class plans to do with its money—and its votes.

EVER since it was first spotted amid the factory smoke of western Europe’s industrialising nations, the middle class has borne the hopes for progress of politicians, economists and shopkeepers alike. It remains hard to define, and attempts to do so often seem arbitrary. But in Brazil, the middle class describes those with a job in the formal economy, access to credit and ownership of a car or motorbike. According to the Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV), a research institute, this means households with a monthly income ranging from 1,064 reais ($600) to 4,561 reais. Since 2002, according to FGV, the proportion of the population that fits this description has increased from 44% to 52%. Brazil, previously notorious for its extremes, is now a middle-class country.

This social climbing is a feature mainly of the country’s cities, reversing two decades of stagnation that began at the start of the 1980s. Marcelo Neri of FGV suggests two factors behind the change. The first is education. The quality of teaching in Brazil’s schools may still be poor, but those aged 15-21 now spend on average just over three more years studying than their counterparts did in the early 1990s.

The second is a migration of jobs from the informal “black” economy to the formal economy. The rate of formal job creation is accelerating, with 40% more created in the year to this July than in the previous 12 months, which itself set a record. Together with cash transfers to poor families, this helps to explain why—in contrast with economic and social development in India or China—as Brazil’s middle class has grown, so the country’s income inequality has lessened (see chart). ...