Stocks, Gold and War

My Research magazine article "Stocks, Gold and War," on how World War I's outbreak transformed American finance, is now online. It's a story I find quite relevant to the present. Excerpt:

During World War I, the U.S. became, as William Silber puts it, “a financial superpower.” For a while, the U.S. and Great Britain shared that status. But by the 1920s, the U.S. was looking like the top dog on the financial heap. Britain, its wealth depleted by the war, suspended its gold standard in 1919 and then restored it in 1925. The overvalued pound had to be propped up with high interest rates, further damaging Britain’s economy.

A crucial element of [Treasury Secretary William] McAdoo’s success in handling the financial crisis of 1914 is that his actions were temporary. Emergency currency was issued, but with a tax on banks to ensure they didn’t hand out too much of it. The stock exchange was closed, but only for long enough to allow the dollar to be stabilized and the gold standard secured. Thus, investors were reassured that they were seeing a crisis response, rather than a permanent shift to big government dominating the financial sector.

William Silber, by the way, is no relation. I recommend his book When Washington Shut Down Wall Street: The Great Financial Crisis of 1914 and the Origins of America's Monetary Supremacy, which provided much useful information for my article.

Fact checking Krauthammer

"Yes, he was elected, but Hitler was as well." - Charles Krauthammer on Fox News just now, speaking about what's-his-name in Honduras. I'm surprised to hear Krauthammer make this mistake; Hitler was never elected.

UPDATE 5 minutes later: Time to change the channel. Michael Jackson again.

Birchite Paulism

The Times has a piece noting the John Birch Society's claims of a membership surge. (Which may or may not be true. Way back when, the Times credulously reported the Hells Angels' claims of a membership surge, which helped create that very thing.) Reason's Michael C. Moynihan is bemused at the Birchers' paranoid conspiracism. Less funny is that Ron Paul, the politician most associated with libertarianism today, was the John Birch Society's keynote speaker last October; see full video of his speech here.

Lolita economic doom debate

Next Lolita Bar debate: Is America Economically Doomed? I suspect the question may boil down largely to Is the Obama Program Economically Destructive?, to which one could say yes even without agreeing that we're doomed. Or one could take the question with strict literalism.

Update: Audio here.

Free-market ennui

Via Instapundit, Eric Dondero is complaining about movement libertarian responses to the Iranian resistance, which mostly range from low interest to active disapproval. I agree with the complaint, but can't say I'm much surprised. Isolationism (punctuated by occasional denials that it is isolationism) is the libertarian default position these days, and why would you want a democratic government in Iran if you think all governments are incorrigibly evil anyway?

UPDATE: I'd missed this vacuous phrase from Matt Welch: "rehabilitating the world's responsibility for its own affairs." There's a slogan; just don't think too hard about the abstraction of "the world" and when or how it used to take "responsibility for its own affairs." Meanwhile, Will Wilkinson explains that he won't turn his avatar green because "I have no idea what I’m talking about." (Emphasis in original.) Fine, but it didn't stop him from making a spurious distinction recently between "Nixonites" and free-market types who want a less aggressive foreign policy (who was it who disliked detente and the China opening?).

Sanford story

The shifting and murky story about Gov. Mark Sanford's recent absence is increasingly bizarre. Until not long ago, I would've been disappointed to see what I considered a promising Republican presidential prospect marginalizing himself. However, having read his inane comments about evolution, I'm not too invested in his future career.

UPDATE: "Sanford admitted later Wednesday that his secret trip to Argentina over Father's Day weekend was to visit a woman he is having an affair with." To do some amateur psychologizing, I wonder if that guy might have been afraid to be governor, or president.

Pedicab update

A few years ago, Mitch Johnson and I wrote about New York City's misbegotten regulatory proposal to limit and restrict pedicabs. Now, following a recent accident, the city is implementing a regulatory regime that's less obviously anticompetitive than the previous proposal; gone is a limit of 325 licenses that would have automatically excluded hundreds of operators, though it will be interesting to see whether the new system in practice poses high barriers to entry. Richard Epstein makes an effort to sort out reasonable from unreasonable pedicab regulations here.

Space commercial

I'm a fan of this ad, which I first saw at Deep Glamour a few weeks ago. It probably doesn't make me much more likely to buy Louis Vuitton products though (what do they make, again?). As for Virginia's question, "Communications satellites aside, how much has space exploration really changed human life?," I'd give Zhou Enlai's answer about the French Revolution's importance: too early to say. And I don't think all space glamour is necessarily retro; this chick would fit in pretty well on the ski slopes today.

Monarchism watch

"I don’t believe there’s a great salvation in the political process at all. I believe in different, far different things. I mean I put democracy far down the line, in the ... I think a devoutly Christian, conservative, traditionalist country, even if it’s a monarchy, is fine with me." -- Pat Buchanan, espousing some of the enlightenment values that I recently read define the current-day right. Or would he be right-wing only if he were an anarcho-monarchist?

Kangra Fort

The Kangra Fort is in the Kangra Valley in Himachal Pradesh province, northern India. The pic was taken during our trip in March 2009. The fort is about 1,000 years old and was used as an outpost by successive empires, including the British up to half a century ago. Well worth a visit.

The doubts grow

WSJ: "Public Wary of Deficit, Economic Intervention." I've noticed, in speaking with people who are broadly pro-Obama, that often they do harbor some nagging worry that maybe, just maybe, this massive expansion of debt, spending and regulation will have some unpleasant consequences at some point. The thought gets puts aside for now, but it's there.

By His Own Rules

Current reading: By His Own Rules: The Story of Donald Rumsfeld, by Bradley Graham. It's an awfully long book on Rumsfeld's career, a subject I find important but depressing. So if I do manage to finish the book, that alone would count as a positive review.

UPDATE 6/26: Still reading it. Don't rush me.

UPDATE 7/4: Review here.

Disciplinary differences

Some interesting research on "Why do students in different disciplines have different political attitudes?" (Found via Ryan Sager's Neuroworld.) The upshot of one study is that self-selection is the major effect; students go into sociology, say, because they're left-leaning, more than that they become left-leaning because they go into sociology. That jibes with my own experience. I would never have majored in sociology, and chose economics and history instead partly on the expectation that they were less prone to leftism than some disciplines (a plausible view, particularly regarding economics).

Gone green

Yes, it's a crummy look, but I'll keep it for a while. I don't want to be outdone by Eliza Dushku.

UPDATE: On second thought, I think making just the word "Quicksilber" green works nicely.

Iran pictures

A must-see.

Right, left and wrong definitions

At New Majority, I say this: "Yes James von Brunn Was Right Wing." Excerpt:

An unfortunate tendency on the right these days is to attempt to win arguments through tendentious and shallow redefinitions of what constitutes “left” and “right.”

That tendency flared up in recent days with efforts to rebut any notion that the Holocaust Museum shooter was a right-wing extremist and, instead, to rebrand him as a leftist – or “vile leftist monster,” as Rand Simberg put it in one such creative feat of ideological legerdemain at Pajamas Media.

Whole thing here.

UPDATE: The piece's title has been changed to say "... Is Right Wing," because von Brunn, undeservedly, lives.

UPDATE 6/16: James Taranto had some comments at WSJ's Best of the Web yesterday.

We'd say Silber is mostly right--that is, correct--about this. It is silly to characterize von Brunn as a man of "the left," even if his views and hatreds do converge with those of some extreme leftists.

But we quibble with Silber's assertion that "it does no credit to current-day conservatives" to attempt "to redefine the extreme right out of existence." For all its taxonomical dubiousness, the effort is a morally defensible one. In fact, it would do modern-day liberals credit if they were as eager to dissociate themselves from the hateful elements of the extreme left.

I agree with the last sentence, but not the penultimate one.

Wrong right definition

Rand Simberg has an interesting article on "A 'Right-Wing,' 'Christian' Hate Crime." I also think it's basically wrong in its presentation of what constitutes right and left, and commented so here and here.

UPDATE: Charles Johnson makes a similar point (to mine) here.

UPDATE: Rand continues contending with critics, including me, here.

UPDATE: More above.

Obama rate spike

"Rate Rise Clouds Recovery." So much for refinancing. And so much for the Obama team's boasts that their policies were bringing mortgage rates down. There was no way the government could quadruple its deficit without raising inflationary expectations and driving long-term interest rates up. It's something the Clinton administration, famously focused on the bond market, would have understood.

Worst von Brunn post

David Klinghoffer should be ashamed of himself for writing this: "James von Brunn, Evolutionist." I'm glad to see his commentors rip the post apart. As one points out, it's like saying "Dr. Baruch Goldstein, Jew." It's also like tarring all anti-abortion advocates with the murder of Dr. Tiller. And, even if von Brunn were motivated by evolution -- a theory he shows no sign of actually understanding -- that wouldn't have the slightest bearing on whether evolution is true.

UPDATE 6/11: Curiously, a number of the comments criticizing Klinghoffer now have vanished. Is that a glitch or a policy?

I don't tweet

Lest there be any confusion, I'm not the Ken Silber who's writing here.

UPDATE: As for other social networks, I am the Ken Silber who can be found here and here.

UPDATE 6/13: And here.

UPDATE 12/4/09: Changed my mind.