British troops are dying in Afghanistan because the government deems the Taliban such a terrible threat.
Yet those who flee the Taliban and the war are denied asylum in this country.
This is an outrage.
The outrage applies to the U.S. with some multiplier (also in Iraq). The least an occupier could do is to offer speedy asylum. However, I don’t think asylum is enough — invader/occupier jurisdiction citizenship, granted on demand, should be the baseline.
Glenn Greenwald’s September 20 piece on the decision processes leading to the Iraq invasion and the current bailout is right on:
I don’t pretend to know anywhere near enough — in terms of either raw information or expertise — in order to opine on the necessity or lack thereof of The Latest Plan in terms of whether the alternatives are worse. But what I do know is that an injustice so grave and extreme that it defies words is taking place; that the greatest beneficiaries are those who are most culpable; and that the same hopelessly broken and deeply rotted institutions and elite class that gave rise to all of this (and so much more) are the very ones that are — yet again — being blindly entrusted to solve this.
Of course the non-financial toll of the Terror War makes it a far greater tragedy, but the financial tab of each will be of the same order of magnitude — US$trillions.
Although the US$0.7 trillion number being cited is apparently made up, Barry Ritholtz’s guess that it could end up costing US$1.5 trillion is entirely plausible, given the systematic underestimation by politicians of wars and public works. Ritholtz’s upcoming book on bailouts will presumably have data on the misunderestimated (really) cost of bailouts. Watch his brief WSJ video interview or on his own blog.
Stop the bailout, which will only prolong the pain and ensure future bubbles. Instead take this “crisis” as an opportunity to eliminate all of the various politically imposed causes of expensive housing.
If the rent seeking dinosaurs of finance die I look forward to new mortgage products designed to hedge risk rather than play chicken with politicians (see beginning of post for how well that turns out). Incidentally, see a recent post on what current housing futures say.
Another year, another fine day to honor draft dodgers, deserters, and anyone with enough sense to not join the murderous gangs sponsored by any jurisdiction.
Some say it is a fine day to criticize politicians (emphasis added):
One would hope that this day, above all others, would be a time for condemning those whose lies and failures resulted in thousands of their fellow citizens being killed.
Though it may annoy to see the current temporary dictator strut with former murder gang members/slaves, now hilariously motorcycle gang members, the above leaves me with two reactions, following.
First, boredom. What day does not pass for a good day to criticize hypocritical politicians? I reserve this day for honoring those who have not taken part and those who got a clue and got out. If anyone must be condemned today, let’s keep it on the level of those actually doing the killing. Take for example this so-sad story of a gang member and gang recruiter who killed himself:
“He told me he kicked down over 1,000 doors,” Maxey said. “He was the lead guy, the first one to go in, and most of the time it was the wrong place. There would be terrified old people and little kids sitting there.”
Good riddance.
Second, the author of the first quote above is part of the problem, for buying into nationalist rhetoric. If he really had to dwell on the higher ups, he should have written this:
One would hope that this day, above all others, would be a time for condemning those whose lies and failures resulted in thousands of murders.
Did Johnny Reb have a Fighting Chance? A Probabilistic Assessment from European Financial Markets (PDF) by Kim Oosterlinck and Marc D. Weidenmier looks at Confederate gold bonds traded in Amsterdam from August 1863 through the end of the war, taking bond price (probability of repayment) as the probability of Confederate victory (meaning survival as an independent state that could service its debts).
A very interesting new window on history, one that is crying out to be applied to other situations were a government faces an existential threat, as the authors point out:
Although this study has focused on the American Civil War, the methodology employed in this paper could easily be applied to several other historical or modern day episodes to provide some insight into the evolution of victory probabilities during a period of civil war/revolution. The methodology might be particularly interesting to apply to a communist revolution given that Marxist regimes generally repudiate a country’s debt obligations and do not recognize international capital markets. For example, it might be interesting to know the evolution of victory (defeat) probabilities during the Spanish Civil War or the Cuban Revolution of the 1960s. Another possibility is to use the technique to estimate the probability that the thirteen colonies would win the American Revolution. The methodology could also be extended to estimate the probability of a victory by Germany during World War I or the Nazis during World War II. Applying the methodology to the world wars would be more complicated given that it is not clear whether the recovery value of the war bonds would be zero in the event of a defeat. We leave these items for future research.
What do bond prices say about contemporary Iraq? I don’t see any nice graph over time, but apparently current prices imply an 80% chance of default over the lifetime of one issue (through 2028), and apparently the “surge” hasn’t improved bond investor outlook.
Interesting, but survival of a government willing to repay past debts is way too coarse for most policy decisions and the probability of various policy decisions are not disaggregated. For these reasons prediction markets contingent on policy implementation and electoral outcomes are badly needed.
What Does Iraq Cost? Even More Than You Think. by Tyler Cowen cites sources putting the direct financial cost to the U.S. government at over $1 trillion, though Cowen’s point is that taking into account opportunity costs, the price is higher.
I don’t believe I’ve posted about this trillion dollar fraud since January 2006. I just have to point out yet again that there’s nothing unusual about Iraq: advocates of war routinely underestimate the costs by a factor of ten (which makes such estimates fraudulent, in my estimation).
Immigration is a hot topic of late. I haven’t had time to write about it, so here’s a linkdump as I close tabs.
Iraqis who can are leaving Iraq, but they face severe restrictions on living and working elsewhere in the region, and the U.S. is only accepting a trickle. Tragedies abound in this NYT magazine piece, almost all worsened by anti-immigrant policies.
Landlords are beginning to be drafted to uphold apartheid in the U.S., following increased anti-employment raids.
Immigration up, unemployment down in Spain.
How much of a jerk do you have to be to oppose immigration? has been linked by many, but read if you haven’t:
Both Alex Tabarrok and Dani Rodrik have come out in favor of immigration into US on the basis that the relevant “moral community” one should consider is the world and not just the US natives. It might be the case that immigration from Mexico into US lowers the wages of the unskilled workers here (the extent of this effect is subject to some controversy, see the previous post on Ottaviano and Peri). However, the increase in the migrants’ wages is so large that support for immigration is still justified.This kind of argument provokes the expected response from the expected folks, roughly along the lines that we should care more about native workers – the citizens – then the migrants – the non-citizens. Ok. But how much more? Let’s put on our annoying-economist hat and consider the question; if you consider a foreign national to be only 1/2 a human being (alright, alright, only 1/2 as “important”) as a native citizen, are you justified in opposing immigration? After all, it takes a real jerk to argue that foreign people’s welfare should not count at all. Suppose the foreigners are only 1/10th as important? Surely, if natives’ welfare counts for ten times as much as that of foreigners, we would be justified in banning immigration since it may adversely affect the wages of the unskilled in US? Well, let’s see…
Nathan Smith’s freedom of migration category has lots of good stuff.
CNN needs to fire Lou Dobbs.
Philippe Legrain’s Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them will be available in the U.S. June 21.
Should we end global apartheid? in today’s NYT magazine:
Indeed, Pritchett attacks the primacy of nationality itself, treating it as an atavistic prejudice. Modern moral theory rejects discrimination based on other conditions of birth. If we do not bar people from jobs because they were born female, why bar them because they were born in Nepal? The name John Rawls appears on only a single page of “Let Their People Come,” but Pritchett is taking Rawlsian philosophy to new lengths. If a just social order, as Rawls theorized, is one we would embrace behind a “veil of ignorance” — without knowing what traits we possess — a world that uses the trait of nationality to exclude the neediest workers from the richest job markets is deeply unjust. (Rawls himself thought his theory did not apply across national borders.) Pritchett’s Harvard students rallied against all kinds of evils, he writes, but “I never heard the chants, ‘Hey, ho, restrictions on labor mobility have to go.’ ”
I never understood the appeal of beginning chants with “Hey, ho”, but let’s get on with ending apartheid and destroying nationalism anyway. Atavistic prejudice, indeed.
Speaking of which, I am not fond of the term immigration, which gives special status to political borders. Migration is better. I prefer moving or relocation, regardless of distance or jurisdictions involved.
Again this Memorial Day (U.S.) I honor draft dodgers, deserters and others not stupid enough to be darwinized at the command of their parentlandjurisdiction’s politicians.
Chris F. Masse points out an article describing Bill Moyers’ Buying the War, to be broadcast April 25, in which many “top” journalists admit to being completely bamboozled by patriotism and the security state after 9/11. Willing fools include Dan Rather, former CBS anchor, and Walter Isaacson, former president of CNN.
My favorite article excerpt:
[E]ditors at the Panama City (Fla.) News-Herald received an order from above, “Do not use photos on Page 1A showing civilian casualties. Our sister paper has done so and received hundreds and hundreds of threatening emails.”
“Patriots” are the most likely domestic terrorists, right after the security state itself.
What if there were prediction market tickers for invasion outcomes running in the “footer” (I have no idea what the bottom of a TV screen is called, so I’ll borrow terminology) of the CBS newscast and CNN, or daily prices and inferred probabilities alongside newspaper stories?
Would the traders have been as stupid in aggregate as the journalists?
Robert Pape collected data for every documented case of suicide terrorism from 1983-2003. In Dying to Win he makes a strong case that suicide terrorism is almost exclusively used to combat occupation where there is a religious difference between the occupiers and occupied (together these present an existential threat to the occupied community) and the occupier jurisdiction is a democracy (and therefore less likely to reply ruthlessly and more likely to grant concessions). Furthermore, suicide terrorism seems to be relatively effective under these conditions.
Pape also dismisses two sucicide terrorism myths. First, that it is an Islam-only phenomenon (the Hindu/Marxist Tamil Tigers account for the most cases). Second, that suicide terrorists are primarily poor, uneducated and fundamentalist (they tend to have above average education and opportunities for their communities and often show now fundamentalist commitment before volunteering — an act of extreme commitment to their community by well integrated members of the same).
Although Pape has amassed significant data in support of his analysis, suicide terrorism (largely suicide bombing) has effectively only existed for a little over two decades (though suicide attacks have occasionally been used for millennia, briefly covered in this book). Will suicide terrorism change, or continue in the same pattern? There are two obvious questions, neither of which Pape bothers to pose (though I read the book a few months ago, I could’ve missed or forgotten):
It seems that suicide bombings in Iraq, only the first several of which are included in Pape’s data, fit the pattern Pape has described. Even when not directed against the occupiers, religious difference (Shia vs. Sunni) is involved, as is the potential for influencing the democratic occupiers.
Apart from advising democracies to not occupy jurisdictions with a different predominant religion, which flows obviously from his analysis, Pape’s recommendations are irrelevant at best (e.g., lock down U.S. jurisdiction borders), as Peter McCluskey observes in his review. Nick Szabo and Chris Hibbert have also recently reviewed the book.
If a jurisdiction invades another, the invading jurisdiction must:
A high standard? Disruptive of the politics of the invader jurisdiction? Justly so, considering the invader’s disruption of lives in the invaded jurisdiction.
A particularly savvy would-be invader may decide to skip the invasion step. Regarding Iraq, the U.S. jurisdiction is neither savvy nor responsible.
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