Monthly Archives: January 2012

Economics, Politics

The Big Truth

What caused the financial crisis? The Big Lie goes viral – The Washington Post.

…they relied on the credit ratings agencies — Moody’s, S&P and Fitch. They had placed an AAA rating on these junk securities, claiming they were as safe as U.S. Treasurys.

After this display of incompetence, why is anyone paying attention to these agencies anymore? Who cares how they rate the US or Europe financially? They don’t know what they are doing.

General

Tintin | The Adventures of Tintin

Tintin | The Adventures of Tintin.

I saw the Tintin movie last week and was reminded of fond childhood memories.

I was reading Tintin 50 years ago at my friend’s house and we had to ask my friend’s father to translate them from the French (he had been raised in France).

The movie seemed to combine three different books for the overall plotline and used characters from other other books.  So many of the images leapt to life . The portraits in the opening shot were old familiar characters. Thomson and Thompson were there. In the opening credits there was the rocket to the moon (and many other cameos but that one jumped out at me). No Professor Calculus though; I suppose you have to sacrifice something for the cinema.  The prize scene was watching Snowy drag the dinosaur bone through the desert and everyone else completely oblivious to it. I remember that from long, long ago.

As for the movie, I thought it captured the spirit of Hergé very well, it was fun, not too dark, and it took you on adventures around the world. Steven Spielberg is a pretty good director, he captured his subject well. I thought the sword fight at the end, with dueling cranes, was a bit over the top, but I didn’t see it in 3D. I hadn’t been reading any of the pre-release hype, so it surprised me in the credits to see Peter Jackson as second unit director.

Politics

Dear Neighbor

I recently received a letter from my Congressman, Doug Lamborn – R-CO. He opens by stating that he is concerned with the direction our country is going in, like me.  And then he outlines his solution to the ‘fix’ the direction, said ‘fix’ being the direction I am concerned is the wrong way.

What I find most objectionable is his comparison of the Federal Budget with a household budget. Take away eight  ‘0’s at the end of the federal budget and you have an easily understood household budget.   I object to any comparison of a governmental budget to a household budget. The two are not the same and glibly waving your hands over the numbers is not going to make it true. I would also like to suggest that if you insist upon using a household budget analogy, cutting spending is not the only way to reduce accumulating debt. Go out and get a job.  Increasing revenue is a much better and more efficient method of reducing new debt and in addition to some spending cuts it may even work to reduce the overall debt over time.  (And one of the last things you need to spend money on is on a new high-tech, state-of-the-art security system for your home when you are drowning in debt.)

And while I am thinking about it, not only are governments not budgeted and managed like households, they aren’t budgeted and managed like businesses or corporations. An efficient government is not a desired end result, an effective government is. Businesses have different goals and objectives and they need to satisfy different parties to reach those goals.

I think it is fair to say that the Congressman and I do not see things the same way.

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