June 14th, 2009 by Chris Penningroth
I had been updating one of my useful (not earth-shatteringly important) slide shows a couple months ago in an effort to help explain to my fellow Airmen what had been transpiring in the larger economy and to try to help them understand where we were likely to go. In the process of looking forward I wanted to give a quick look back. I ran them all the way back to feudalism. In the process of researching what I thought would be a bullet that amounted to an historical footnote, I ran across a blog article on Mises.org called The Return of Feudalism that I thought I’d check, just in case we really did end up running the clock all the way back.
Is it possible we could be running all the way back full-circle to feudalism (either through or bypassing mercantilism on the journey)? I can’t say I’m fully confident in the direction we’re heading. It seems like there are too many people who have departed from smart game-playing who keep saying we’ll be able to fix the big problems via gimmicky (nuanced!) trick plays; as though one could get to and win the Super Bowl not with a West Coast offense but by making the fake field goal/punt or reverse handoff their standard tactic. Sometimes I wonder if we aren’t headed toward some sort of feudal version of the information economy. Some people, I’m sure, never doubted we’d left it (didn’t Marxists equate industrial capitalists with medieval robber barons? Why robber barons and why not the prior established aristocracy? I digress).
In the feudal era, those hardy souls who were mightier than the others of their tribe rose to prominence to become chieftains through the divine right of might. These gave way over time to landowning aristocrats who swore fealty to those with the divine right of kings. That age was largely overcome by industrialists wielding the divine right of capital backed by court-enforced contracts. Not satisfied with material wealth, or not appreciating it, we seem at the dawn of the information age to be also entering the age of the divine right of intellect. Who will be the gatekeepers and the power-wielders of this age? So far they seem to be folk so shrewd that they’re fooling no one but themselves.
Good luck plowing the land with your high IQ, fellas!
Posted in Finance, Politics, What's Left | 1 Comment »
June 12th, 2009 by Chris Penningroth
The Air Force has been under considerable pressure from several different people for the past several years. Some of these folks have actually called for the Air Force to be disbanded. I penned a short apologetic piece which I posted over in the pages section.
It’s hard to believe some folks want to ignore lessons learned over the past 80+ years of military aviation; whether out of misplaced pride in one service, general ignorance, or unreasonable disdain of my service. The Air Force must be a separate service in order for aerial forces to perform effectively in battle. Period.
Posted in Military Affairs, Politics, USAF | No Comments »
June 11th, 2009 by Chris Penningroth
I must admit I had my doubts that the Federal Government would be able to reduce the deficit by half within the next few years like it said it would. I thought later that I saw a possible way to make it happen. I spent over twenty pages trying to explain and came to the conclusion that in order for the deficit to be halved, the Federal government will have to raise revenues (taxes) or cut spending. I’ll leave that to you the reader to determine which avenue will be the most likely.
The file I developed should be light reading (if you’re into economics)! Enjoy it if you can! I’ll post it in the Pages section. Unfortunately I was unable to copy the figures (which had been screen shots from graphs generated by an Excel spreadsheet I seem to have left on another computer somewhere). I’ll try to find them and get them updated.
Posted in Bonds, Finance, Politics, What's Left | 2 Comments »
May 10th, 2009 by Chris Penningroth
Most of us know that the government is having Treasury spit money off the presses at the Mint fast enough to beat Jeff Gordon in the Daytona 500. Typically when this occurs, inflation rears its ugly head and devours the real value of any of my holdings in a bank. As I was thinking of ways to build a better shield to ward off this recurring demon, I began wondering if inflation would really become a problem at all.
It may sound insane, but think about it: For the past 12 years, much of our "economic gain" has occurred using credit, or in other words money that wasn’t really ever there to begin with. So perhaps to a large extent the newly minted reduced-value dollars will simply be replacing money that never existed in the first place. Maybe we can afford to print a lot for a little while and suffer no net inflation?
Thoughts?
Posted in Finance, Politics, What's Left | 1 Comment »
May 10th, 2009 by Chris Penningroth
I’d like to see just one article in the weekly Motley Fool e-mailings not mention Warren Buffett.
Could you imagine ESPN never going without mentioning the New York Yankees once per hour? That’s kind of what it’s gotten to be like over there at Motley Fool. Foolishness with a small ‘f.’
Posted in Business, Finance, Internet | No Comments »
April 29th, 2009 by Chris Penningroth
I’ve been offline (obviously) for a multitude of reasons for the past three solid months. That’s not to say I haven’t been writing! I believe one or two of my efforts will be worth hanging here (they’re way too long for a post). I’ll try to do that in short order.
Thanks for stopping by!
Posted in Administration | No Comments »
January 19th, 2009 by Chris Penningroth
I’ve been (extremely) slowly reading through Bertrand Russell’s The History of Western Philosophy. I have to take umbrage with Russell many times; he seems to think his admittedly fine intellect results in the final answer to whatever philosophical subject he covers. He also tends to put his personal stamp of approval or disapproval on his subjects rather than allowing the reader to decide the relative merits of any particular philosopher or school of philosophy. But overall his History is informative and gives a decent overview of Western philosophers and philosophic schools from pre-Socratics to 1930s logic. Below are two passages that struck chords with me. I’m simply going to post them below without commentary for now. Enjoy!
“The reason that Hobbes gives for supporting the State, namely that it is the only alternative to anarchy, is in the main a valid one. A State may, however, be so bad that temporary anarchy seems preferable to its continuance, as in France in 1789 and in Russia in 1917. Moreover the tendency of every government towards tyranny cannot be kept in check unless governments have some fear of rebellion. Governments would be worse than they are if Hobbes’s submissive attitude were universally adopted by subjects. This is true in the political sphere, where governments will try, if they can, to make themselves personally irremovable; it is true in the economic sphere, where they will try to enrich themselves and their friends at the public expense; it is true in the intellectual sphere, where they will suppress every new discovery or doctrine that seems to menace their power. These are reasons for not thinking only of the risk of anarchy, but also of the danger of injustice and ossification that is bound up with omnipotence in government.” (Russell, pg. 556)
“As we saw, he [Spinoza] believes that hatred can be overcome by love: “Hatred is increased by being reciprocated, and can on the other hand be destroyed by love. Hatred which is completely vanquished by love, passes into love; and love is thereupon greater, than if hatred had not preceded it.” I wish I could believe this, but I cannot, except in exceptional cases where the person hating is completely in the power of the person who refuses to hate in return. In such cases, surprise at being not punished may have a reforming effect. But so long as the wicked have power, it is not much use assuring them that you do not hate them, since they will attribute your words to the wrong motive. And you cannot deprive them of power by non-resistance.” (Russell, pg. 580)
Posted in Education & Training, History | No Comments »
January 18th, 2009 by Chris Penningroth
I don’t know that we’ll ever hearken back to this period in history as "The Good ol’ Days." But maybe even more than after the Roosevelt administration in the 1930s, we’ll look back and realize that it might have been a whole lot worse without pretty solid leadership at the top. "Solid" doesn’t mean "Mistake-free," and there were certainly a lot of mistakes. Lucky for us, the most of the mistakes (thus far) weren’t strategic ones (I take certain points of view from certain folks in the MSM who would disagree with me as confirmation that I’m correct). The current Commander-in-Chief was no Ronald Reagan, but then as Victor Davis Hanson would point out, Ronald Reagan himself was sometimes "no Ronald Reagan."
That said, I was pleased (and not a little astounded) to read this. (H/T Uncle D)
Posted in History, Internet, Media, What\'s Right | No Comments »
January 18th, 2009 by Chris Penningroth
For the year 2009, I believe the only event that could top this one would be landing a man (preferably me) on the planet Mars. I think the last thing that President Bush should do before he leaves office is award this man, US Airways Capt Chelsey Sullenberger the Presidential Citizen’s Medal or maybe even the Presidential Medal of Honor (the Congressional Medal of Honor is the one for military members only, and although Capt Sullenberger is a veteran USAF F-4 fighter pilot, he’s not really eligible for that award, nor would it be appropriate in this situation).
Great going, Capt Sullenberger! You handled a difficult emergency procedure well. You know what they say, any landing you can walk away from. . . .
Perhaps the new Sullenberger Corollary to that rule would be ". . . or the passengers and you can swim or boat away from. . ." is a good landing! The best part was walking up and down the aisles making certain everyone else was off safe.
Given the good outcome, I think it might actually have been fun to have been aboard (except I would have ended up losing my laptop as I egressed the plane). Oh, well. One can’t be everywhere. I’ll have to settle for the one time I pointed out to some pilots that our small turboprop passenger plane’s cabin pressure wasn’t enabled.
Thanks to LifePundit for inspiring me to write this post!
20090119 Update: I am remiss in not giving credit to the co-pilot, the flight attendants, and indeed to the passengers who by all accounts sounded like they remained pretty calm during the event. The Captain may get most of the credit, but the Airbus is a crewed airplane, and whatever the crew did or did not do that helped the Captain land entitles them to an heroic part in this event as well.
Posted in History, Travel | 1 Comment »
January 11th, 2009 by Chris Penningroth
I ran across this gem at the Motley Fool this morning while speeding through my e-mail. It was a post called Sizing Up Banking’s New Giants and was written by Morgan Housel. I emphasized my favorite part of the quote.
Back in August, I wrote, "If something is too big and complex to fail, perhaps we should make it smaller and less complex." Now’s probably not the time to throw another wrench in the financial system, but someone, someday is going to have to realize that if something’s too big to fail, it’s also probably too big to bail.
Posted in Banks, Business, Finance, Politics | 1 Comment »