This week in Pie Making (Dec. 17)

This week in pie making is a good one. Last week, we saw that the US Congress is perfectly willing to hold its nose and dole out goodies to everyone for as long as credit markets will allow it to do so. In a way, this is good, because it means that if circumstances change for the worse, as long as everyone suffers, the will to solve serious problems does in fact exist.

The "conservative" narrative that all government activity is bad, even when it's proposed and promoted by "conservatives", continues. It would appear that the central players in the USG have accepted that the major banks and pension funds are themselves vital instruments of national power, but that's old news. Very interesting that the current crisis hasn't yet produced a Charles Keating, but maybe that's coming next year with the BoA data dump. You'll note the lack a reference to any Australian-founded websites here in the spirit of this brilliant piece of information management by the State Dept. that's related to why all of the milblogs have been tying themselves in knots this week. Unfortunately, they are not in Congress and so can't have their porkcake and eat it too.

Interestingly, one of the preferred forms of pork (security) has hit the point where even in the DC metro area there is active resistance to committing substantial resources to the Metro system's security. In fact, the Metro proposal is pretty modest and very likely to not select stations randomly at all. A measured response to several serious threats (one suspicious package, one kid describing his pipe bombing plans and an FBI sting) is almost commendable. We'll have to see how it goes. Hopefully better than current anti-piracy efforts.

Meanwhile, your pie maker got to experience something very like skiing while riding home yesterday. He could have waited for a car to carry him home, but he has heard of people putting on warm clothes and subjecting themselves to high winds and wanted to give it a try. Also, one of the robots at work "attacked" him, and getting to an icy road seemed safer than giving it a second chance. Getting to watch two bald eagles, see trackless snow on a large meadow and the patterns of ice formed on the river more than made up for mild discomfort.

There seems to be a growing call for the President to fire the behavioral economists on his staff. This NYT article is a good example of them, essentially saying that the current administration is being too subtle about its means and objectives. The moment is clearly calling for something big to happen.