On geoengineering as an alternative to curbing carbon emissions

The reason we are faced with climate change in the first place is that particular human beings and corporations, in their pursuit of profit, were allowed to intervene into the complex system that is our planet’s climate in unprecedented ways (i.e., by expelling mass quantities of various gases into the atmosphere). Now, we are being told in some quarters that, because the damage to the profit-margins of particular human beings and corporations would be unacceptable if we limited or stopped the interventions that got us into our present situation, we should intervene into the complex weather system in an even more radical and unprecedented way.

An early confession

This morning in liberation theology class, one of the students took issue with the overriding priority of economic poverty as the issue to be addressed. We discussed this question for a while, and I eventually said that I was something of a “class fundamentalist” or vulgar Marxist myself, then added — “not that I’m actually doing anything about it. In fact, I’m busily making my inroads into the middle class.”

After class, I walked back home and set up a service where people come pick up my laundry off my back porch and then return it completely cleaned and pressed.

Bank changes

I’ve had the same bank account for close to ten years, ever since Olivet started requiring direct deposit for student employees. It’s a regional bank, mainly focused in the Chicago area. When I moved to Chicago, it became more of a hassle as the branch locations tended to be either downtown or in more expensive neighborhoods, but my frequent trips to Hyde Park required a stop downtown, meaning I usually had easy access to a branch. Since my visits to Hyde Park have tapered off, however, it’s become more and more of a pain in the ass, and obviously moving to Kalamazoo will only compound the problem.

If I’m going to switch banks, it seems like I should go for a national bank, since I currently have no idea where I will end up in the long term. All of the major national banks are about equally represented in Kalamazoo, with equal degrees of (in)convenience. I’m thinking of going with Chase, since it has the most ATM locations in Chicago and has those cool ATMs that automatically scan your checks for deposit. I have a credit card through Bank of America currently, but I’m reluctant to support them further since they have destroyed so many great streetcorners with their excessive number of branches. As for Citibank, I just get the impression that I shouldn’t be encouraging them in any way.

Does anyone have any insights to share?

A question about politics

It’s largely taken for granted that American politicians tend to cozy up with the rich. My question is why. On a lower level, it makes sense as a strategic move, because wealthy benefactors can help you move up the chain. But at higher levels of government, it doesn’t make sense to me. Politics is supposed to be the pursuit of power, right? (Maybe this is the Chicago influence talking, but bear with me.) Once you reach a certain level of power, however, it seems foolish to squander your resources making other people more powerful, which is what the “make the rich richer” policy effectively does. Would you not rather want to deprive people of power?

For instance, with the big banks: the Obama administration had at its disposal the option not simply of going against the wishes of the powerful “big bankster” interest group, but of effectively destroying it through nationalizing the huge troubled firms. Or with single-payer health care: why worry so much about pleasing the insurance companies when you have the option of depriving them of all power or influence by putting them out of business? This question seems especially pertinent in the case of the president, where you can basically say, “Okay, listen, I have control over a fucking army — what do you have? You have a ton of money, do you? Well, I get to hire and fire the guy who prints the money.”

A modest proposal

As many of you probably know, conservatives are mobilizing against the imposition of a one-world currency to replace the US dollar. Opposing such a policy is natural — the only problem is that no one is actually proposing it. A similar problem besets conservative opposition to reimposing the Fairness Doctrine. There are good reasons to oppose it, but no one is actually advocating it.

The purpose of this post is to announce to all the conservative conspiracy theorists of the world that I am here to help. For a nominal fee, I am willing to propose whatever crazy policy you wish to polemicize against. For example, testimony at a congressional hearing could include the following exchange: “Secretary Geithner, blogger Adam Kotsko has proposed that the IMF issue a new one-world currency that would supplant the US dollar and undermine American sovereignty. What is your opinion on this matter?” “Like all right-thinking Americans, I believe Kotsko is insane and completely oppose his policy.” Doesn’t that transcript read better than one in which “some” are proposing the crazy idea and the Treasury Secretary hems and haws about how it would be a bad idea, but it’s not one anyone is taking seriously?

Blog reading and blog writing

I think I’m officially sick of political commentary. My obsession with political blogs reached a fever pitch during election season, and it continued through the stimulus debate. In retrospect, my panic at any unfavorable poll fluctuations appears pathetic, especially since the outcome of the election was a fait accompli as soon as the economic crisis hit. Yet it was the stimulus bill that was the real tipping point for me. After all the wrangling, etc., the result was what pretty much everyone expected: a bill within the size range Obama had asked for, partially gutted by the necessities of “centrism.”

Similarly with the bailout plan — Obama had said all along that nationalization was off the table, and Geithner came up with the best plan he could without coming to Congress for more authority. So the result is no surprise. All the tea-leaf reading about how maybe Obama is leaving the door open to receivership was basically fantasy. That’s the great benefit of Obama: he’s totally predictable. He generally is going to give it the old college try on what he’s said he’s going to do, and as long as the Republican abuse of the fillibuster empowers the “nihilist centrism” caucus in the Senate, any “progressive” priority is unlikely to pass in a satisfying form.

Even if my analysis here is wrong on some points, the question still remains: exactly what am I learning by following the “inside baseball” nonsense? Okay, I’m learning about the latest Republican smear and why it’s false — but I already know Republican smears are going to be false. I’m learning about how the latest “nihilist centrist” is actually going to bat for corporate interests rather than following any kind of principles — but again, that’s how they’re always going to act.

My blogging center of gravity is shifting decisively toward econ and finance type of stuff. It’s not simply that those topics are where the action is currently — it’s that the best blogs in the category very often have in-depth posts about things that I don’t already know about. This is especially true of The Baseline Scenario, with its in-depth intro-level posts, but also of Naked Capitalism and The Big Picture.

Somehow the emerging mainstream of finance bloggers has managed to slow down the pace for commentary on something where it’s very easy to get sucked into the minute-by-minute drama of market movements, while the mainstream of political blogs has chosen a hysterical pace. If we think of the contrast between a movie scene portraying the drama of the trading room floor and a given hour of C-SPAN, this difference becomes almost shocking.

Political bloggers could be doing so much more — giving historical context, for example — but the most successful among them are tied to the cable-driven “news cycle.” (Ironically, perhaps the most minutae-driven political blogger, Josh Marshall, has a PhD in history!) A broader perspective would be a genuine value-add of blogging over against the day-to-day reporting of news — as opposed to, say, the endless hammering away at the mainstream media’s tendency to normalize Republican abuse of the fillibuster, a tendency that is, once again, completely predictable given their knee-jerk desire to be fair to both “sides” and therefore extremely unlikely to go away.

Do we really need a medium that even further slices and dices news cycles? Maybe there need to be easy talking points — left-leaning innoculations against certain tendencies in mainstream discourse, etc. — but do I personally need to be keeping up with them on a daily basis? Do any of us? Can’t we just leave the earnest among us to their Kos diaries and move on?

Obama the failure

The pundit class is united: Obama has crossed the Rubicon into Jimmy Carter territory with this AIG bonus scandal. His presidency is now officially a miserable failure, and the nation is doomed. Weirdly, however, the American people don’t seem to have changed their opinion of Obama as a result of the AIG thing. How can we explain this discrepancy?

It seems to me that the answer is simple: for all their faults, the American people as a whole don’t seem to be a bunch of hysterical political junkies obsessing over every single news cycle. If they were, then presumably McCain would’ve won the election, right? He won every news cycle, after all, and all the pundits were in a panic that Obama was sitting back and letting the presidency slip through his fingers by not going full-throttle against every stupid thing McCain said.

In short: I suggest that everyone just calm down a little.

The Geithner Plan: Good?

It is of course my sworn duty as a left-leaning blogger to believe that putting the big banks in something akin to FDIC receivership is The Only Way Forward, but I was interested to read this post in which Brad DeLong breaks ranks and says that the Geithner plan just might work. I must admit that there’s something appealingly counter-intuitive about the idea that the way to solve the problems caused by banks with engrafted hedge funds is for the government itself to set up the biggest hedge fund in history.

Bonus!

The bill to tax bonuses from bailed-out firms at 90% has passed the House. Now I assume that centrist moderates in the Senate will craft a delicate compromise mandating the payment of even greater bonuses that would be tax-exempt.

A naive question

What would be the practical consequences if the global financial system collapsed? What does “the global financial system” mean in the context of claims that letting AIG or a big bank fail would bring it down (or that letting Lehman collapse nearly did bring it down)? What would be left in place?