Gary's Blog

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Housing Roller Coaster

See more at www.ritholtz.com

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The Battle for the Soul of the GOP

The Tea Partiers don't care about the debt ceiling. To them, it's a giant bargaining chit to shrink government. Nor do they worry about credit markets. If the full faith and credit of the U.S. government is no longer honored, so much the better.

You see, Tea Partiers hate government more than they hate the national debt. They refuse to reduce that debt with tax increases, even with tax increases on the wealthy, because a tax increase doesn't reduce the size of government. The Tea Partiers' real aim is to shrink the government.

But the Street and big business dislike the national debt more than they dislike government. And they wouldn't even mind a small tax increase on wealthy people like themselves in order to cinch a deal on raising the national debt. They have so much money they'd scarcely notice.

In truth, government has been good to Wall Street and big business. It bailed out the Street. It saved GM, Chrysler, and AIG. And most government spending improves the profits of big businesses -- military contractors, big agriculture, giant health-care insurers, Big Pharma, large construction companies.

Tea Partiers have almost as much contempt for big business and the Street as they do for government. After all, the Tea Party was born in anger over the Wall Street bailout.

This is the heart of the civil war in the GOP.
Read more at www.huffingtonpost.com

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Deficits Are the New Iraq

Amplify’d from www.huffingtonpost.com

The government-haters behind today's austerity economics push have also been planning their moves for a long time, too. Billionaire Pete Peterson proposed a government-downsizing scenario in the early 1990s that's virtually identical to those we'llbe seeing from the Gang of Six and other servants of the new Beltway consensus. The Peterson Foundation is the PNAC of deficit reduction.

The consensus will damage careers - including political ones.

Austerity economics won't work. When that becomes obvious there will be hell to pay. When the suffering really starts, people will look for someone to blame.
Read more at www.huffingtonpost.com

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DNC Whacks The Weekly Standard, Calls Obama Gloating Story Bogus

URL: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/06/dnc-weekly-sta...

Try to follow this story of political cyber-intrigue...

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INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE GOVERNMENT OF ARMIES OF THE UNITED STATES IN THE FIELD (1898)

URL: http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/05/instructions-for-t...

For those of you who want to learn a little about the US Army’s position on torture, check out items #56 and #80.

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Crapshoot Investing: How Tech-Savvy Traders and Clueless Regulators Turned the Stock Market into a Casino

Amplify’d from www.ritholtz.com

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War Criminals Try to Evade Prosecution By Pretending Torture Was Vital to Getting Bin Laden … When It Actually Delayed the Hunt for YEARS

URL: http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/05/war-criminals-try-...

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Monday, May 9, 2011

Ghosts of riverbeds past

URL: http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/05/09/661440...

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The Unwisdom of Elites

URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/09/opinion/09krugman.ht...

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Saturday, May 7, 2011

How to See Magnetic Fields — Quantum Entanglement in Biological Systems

Very cool science geek article.

Amplify’d from jdmoyer.com

How to See Magnetic Fields — Quantum Entanglement in Biological Systems

See more at jdmoyer.com

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Caltech researchers pinpoint brain region that influences gambling decisions

All they needed to do was take a MRI Brain Scan while subject decided.

Amplify’d from medicaldaily.com

"For this particular study, we were interested in what part of the brain might play a role in controlling these strategies that drive behavior," says O'Doherty, who conducted the study along with postdoctoral scholar Ryan Jessup.