Last week: Maria's Carmel Nut Custard Double Crust Pie
This week: Butterscotch Nut Custard Pie
Quite a lot happening these past two weeks. In general, it's been a tough time for the current international system, as the governments surrounding the major resource choke-points suddenly find themselves facing populations that doubt their rulers' legitimacy. This is going to get a lot worse before it gets better, as unemployed young people facing rising food prices have very little too lose. Crushing despair and a growling stomach make batons, tear gas and even bullets not seem like such a bad idea. Eastern Europe had the promise of the EU and (for better or worse) hundreds of millions in aid to help them transition from Soviet Satellite to productive member of the global economy to give populations hope and leaders focused. Today's fledgling democracies were governed by clients of a system that has not fallen, and at least the French have powerful and lucrative ties between their top levels of government and recently toppled leaders.
On the domestic front, the great battles over state budgets have found their focus: Wisconsin. There's an interesting question here about the difference between public and private sector unions, although the President's recent push for manufacturing (and Rahm Emanuel's expressed view on the subject) suggests that at least some Democrats are looking for life after the SEIU, which, they hope, will look a lot like life before them. Best of luck! Someone needs to build the ovens and pie plates, and given the choice between organized labor or a planned economy, your pie maker will take the former.
Speaking of, it looks like your pie maker was wrong. In December, especially after the passage of a very iffy tax compromise, it seemed that the GOP had effectively agreed to stasis and would focus on social issues while conceding to a few minor program cuts. This could be very interesting, as injecting effectively $61billion in losses into the various government contractors and lenders to gov't employees around the country will have rippling effects. It's unclear how or if the private labor and finance markets would absorb such a loss. If it leads to the government actually exercising its resolution authority for a major bank, your pie maker will brew a cup of earl gray in tribute. However, the Democrats are hoping to replay 1995, and the biggest impact will likely be a two week vacation for your pie maker in March.
If that happens, expect to see the traveling rolling pin on the back of a bicycle, or maybe a kayak, as the rush to GPS-dependent NextGen is about to collide with GPS-jamming G4 wireless service. Tough times for the System, indeed.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Two weeks in Pie Making (Jan 29, Feb 5)
Pie of the week: Coconut Cream Pie
Pie of last week: Chocolate Chess Pie
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to your new climate. It's the stuff of crop failures, higher food prices, and hubristic song parodies. Interestingly enough, while nature provides plenty of positive feedback mechanism for accelerating this process, like an amazonian drought and potential for major increases in the amount of methane released from the Arctic sea floor, our global political and economic system appears to have a built-in relief valve.
In other words, a long-predicted crisis of legitimacy in North Africa and the Middle East, in which oil money funded the extraction of water from non-replenishing aquifers to provide cheap food and employment, has finally come to a head. This has implications globally, as the system of socialized banking losses used to guarantee first-world prosperity is only as strong as depositors desire to keep their accounts denominated in dollars, and the populace is willing to accept inflation and lowering standards of living while debts are inflated away. However long this system lasts, the energy intense economies of world will slow down as commodity prices rise, and greenhouse gas emissions will fall. The "invisible hand" might be mother nature's relief valve. Speaking of energy, readers should check out this Economist debate on natural gas vs. renewables.
That's not to say the changing climate, unsustainable water management and its impact on food prices is the only threat to the Westphalian state system. The ongoing "war on drugs" is proving that markets are more powerful than governments more thoroughly than the Cato Institute ever could. The insurgencies that most directly affect US foreign policy are funded by US and European consumption of illicit chemicals, and now it's looking like southern Arizona, California and Florida could be caught up in the wave. P&P wants to know why we aren't taxing this obviously popular product line.
Fortunately, the GOP recognizes that its mandate is weak, especially since the Tories provided such a handy lesson. For those wondering how to assess the impact of large federal reductions, begin with this thought: for roughly every $200k in budget cuts, one employee is laid off. That means one mortgage isn't being paid, and the corresponding increase in the size of the labor pool and housing market both put downward pressure on the two main sources of perceived wealth, wages and home prices. If these cuts happen during a time of robust private hiring, as happened in the 1990's during the Gingrich/Clinton government, the net effect is generally positive since this helps hold down inflation and in some areas improves government efficiency.
Today's world is very different. Instead of the stinging reminder of the S&L failures and their slow process of receivership, national governments implicitly or explicitly own pretty much major bank losses today, while investors move money into safe t-bills, implicitly backed stocks and commodities that allow access to the incomes of non-investors in the way credit-based securities used to (leave a comment if you want citations). Perhaps this is a good thing, but there are doubts about the ability and efficacy of thiscorrupt fiscal/monetary GDP-growing system.
What's really interesting to see in all of this is how the more thoughtful GOP commentators seem to accept the inevitability of growing gov't intervention in the economy. The origin of "government takeover of healthcare" came from someone talking about how despite increased private market competition via insurance exchanges, inevitable increases in regulation would force us into a UK-esque NHS system (P&P aside: how bad would that be? I'm honestly interested in hearing), while Eric Cantor justified his vote on TARP by saying that one massive expansion of government to prevent a Greater Depression was justified because the alternative was even more gov't expansion via social and reconstruction programs. John Kyl's statement that taxes "don't increase the deficit" suggests he embraces a theory of wealth, popular in the late Roman Empire, that all assets belonged to the state (actually, they belong to God, and in Byzantium His vicar was the Emperor, who embodied the state), but were placed in private hands as a sort of conservatorship, until there is an emergency. Also, the reluctance to cut too deeply into science funding, particularly DoD funded research, might reflect an understanding that fundamental and applied research sometimes gets developed before its time.
On the plus side, the national debate about childrearing and culture continues, quite possibly with a new "Rosa Parks Moment." Of course, the fact that we have tie it, tenuously, to a past event speaks to the ambiguity of this situation, for all that it does reveal the powerful need for more Robinson Community Learning Centers. If Kevin Smith has his way, we'll see more opportunities for smaller community-backed efforts to compete with international companies, which should provide stable and sustainable social mobility than excessive mortgage supports. There is a real possibility that wireless broadband might compete with the big cable/telco dualopolies in enough regions to bring down prices and encourage more telecommuting, and OPM is totally on board with that. Things might get nasty for a while, but it does look like we're heading towards a pie-friendlier world.
Pie of last week: Chocolate Chess Pie
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to your new climate. It's the stuff of crop failures, higher food prices, and hubristic song parodies. Interestingly enough, while nature provides plenty of positive feedback mechanism for accelerating this process, like an amazonian drought and potential for major increases in the amount of methane released from the Arctic sea floor, our global political and economic system appears to have a built-in relief valve.
In other words, a long-predicted crisis of legitimacy in North Africa and the Middle East, in which oil money funded the extraction of water from non-replenishing aquifers to provide cheap food and employment, has finally come to a head. This has implications globally, as the system of socialized banking losses used to guarantee first-world prosperity is only as strong as depositors desire to keep their accounts denominated in dollars, and the populace is willing to accept inflation and lowering standards of living while debts are inflated away. However long this system lasts, the energy intense economies of world will slow down as commodity prices rise, and greenhouse gas emissions will fall. The "invisible hand" might be mother nature's relief valve. Speaking of energy, readers should check out this Economist debate on natural gas vs. renewables.
That's not to say the changing climate, unsustainable water management and its impact on food prices is the only threat to the Westphalian state system. The ongoing "war on drugs" is proving that markets are more powerful than governments more thoroughly than the Cato Institute ever could. The insurgencies that most directly affect US foreign policy are funded by US and European consumption of illicit chemicals, and now it's looking like southern Arizona, California and Florida could be caught up in the wave. P&P wants to know why we aren't taxing this obviously popular product line.
Fortunately, the GOP recognizes that its mandate is weak, especially since the Tories provided such a handy lesson. For those wondering how to assess the impact of large federal reductions, begin with this thought: for roughly every $200k in budget cuts, one employee is laid off. That means one mortgage isn't being paid, and the corresponding increase in the size of the labor pool and housing market both put downward pressure on the two main sources of perceived wealth, wages and home prices. If these cuts happen during a time of robust private hiring, as happened in the 1990's during the Gingrich/Clinton government, the net effect is generally positive since this helps hold down inflation and in some areas improves government efficiency.
Today's world is very different. Instead of the stinging reminder of the S&L failures and their slow process of receivership, national governments implicitly or explicitly own pretty much major bank losses today, while investors move money into safe t-bills, implicitly backed stocks and commodities that allow access to the incomes of non-investors in the way credit-based securities used to (leave a comment if you want citations). Perhaps this is a good thing, but there are doubts about the ability and efficacy of this
What's really interesting to see in all of this is how the more thoughtful GOP commentators seem to accept the inevitability of growing gov't intervention in the economy. The origin of "government takeover of healthcare" came from someone talking about how despite increased private market competition via insurance exchanges, inevitable increases in regulation would force us into a UK-esque NHS system (P&P aside: how bad would that be? I'm honestly interested in hearing), while Eric Cantor justified his vote on TARP by saying that one massive expansion of government to prevent a Greater Depression was justified because the alternative was even more gov't expansion via social and reconstruction programs. John Kyl's statement that taxes "don't increase the deficit" suggests he embraces a theory of wealth, popular in the late Roman Empire, that all assets belonged to the state (actually, they belong to God, and in Byzantium His vicar was the Emperor, who embodied the state), but were placed in private hands as a sort of conservatorship, until there is an emergency. Also, the reluctance to cut too deeply into science funding, particularly DoD funded research, might reflect an understanding that fundamental and applied research sometimes gets developed before its time.
On the plus side, the national debate about childrearing and culture continues, quite possibly with a new "Rosa Parks Moment." Of course, the fact that we have tie it, tenuously, to a past event speaks to the ambiguity of this situation, for all that it does reveal the powerful need for more Robinson Community Learning Centers. If Kevin Smith has his way, we'll see more opportunities for smaller community-backed efforts to compete with international companies, which should provide stable and sustainable social mobility than excessive mortgage supports. There is a real possibility that wireless broadband might compete with the big cable/telco dualopolies in enough regions to bring down prices and encourage more telecommuting, and OPM is totally on board with that. Things might get nasty for a while, but it does look like we're heading towards a pie-friendlier world.
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