CapitalistImperialistPig

Tyler Cowen wonders why Obama fired Rick Wagoner, and offers a pair of tendentious theories: Theory 1: President Obama replaced Wagoner with Fritz Henderson as CEO of General Motors because he is convinced that Henderson will be a better corporate leader. Theory 2: President Obama replaced Wagoner with Fritz Henderson as CEO because the A.I.G. public relations debacle taught him not to appear "soft" with corporate leaders receiving government money. Which theory do you vote for? Which principles do you think should be governing the disposition of leadership in major U.S. corporations? There are more things in heaven and earth, Professor Cowen, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. The principal reason for firing someone ought to be failure to carry out their duties. Wagoner had come to the country, asking to be bailed out with taxpayer dollars. The government gave him some money (many billions!) on the condition that he come up with a plan to restructure GM that would retur...

John of Cosmic Variance posts on Freeman Dyson and climate, and he even got to talk to Dyson in person recently. His believes in AGW, sorta believes the models, and thinks that the consequences might be pretty bad, at least for some (though I think his central valley home is safe from sea level rise for a few generations, at least). He also thinks that the chances for successful action to prevent it are remote. Sean naturally disagrees, and a very slightly disguised (because banned) Lubosh agrees. My own thinking is pretty similar. I don't see the political will anywhere to take serious action against carbon emissions, especially in the three countries that matter most - China, India, and the US. Nor do I see any clear technological path from here to there - but I would be happy to be persuaded if anyone sees one. All we need to give up is eating meat, driving cars, suburbs, electrical and electronic devices, having children, and travel. Either that, or find the magic energy ...

I caught the Timolator on ABC's This Week , and he did a pretty good job of defending himself and the administration. I certainly wish the guy asking the questions had been Paul Krugman instead of George S., but oh well. Meanwhile, Brad Delong weighs in with a good defense: Tim Geithner Is Not a Tool of Wall Street (Brad DeLong quoting Ed Luce quoting Brad DeLong) Nor, says Mr DeLong, is it fair to paint Mr Geithner as a creature of Wall Street. “Hank Paulson is a man who grew up in American finance and cannot imagine a world in which America does well and its financial sector does badly,” he says. “Tim Geithner, by contrast, is a bureaucrat and a policymaker. He has never pulled down a multibillion-dollar bonus. They are not the same type of people.” He meant multi-million dollar bonus. It's certainly fair to claim that Tim G. is not a creature of Wall Street like Paulson, Corzine, or Bob Rubin, but he has spent a lot of time working in its neighborhood. Geithner did make t...

Nicholas Dawidoff has written a long profile of Freeman Dyson in the New York Times magazine. The profile takes a broad look at his life but focuses on his skepticism about the threat of global warming. So far as I can tell, he doesn't doubt the greenhouse effect, or the fact of global warming, but mostly doubts that it is worth much trouble to prevent global warming. In particular, he thinks that James Hansen and colleagues pay too much attention to their models, and mistake them for reality. It’s a nice piece, even if it tells the famous Feynman/Dyson bordello sink story in the lamest fashion possible. Dyson made his reputation sixty years ago with his work on the foundations of quantum electrodynamics, showing, among other things, that the rather different appearing approaches of Feynman, Schwinger, and Tomonaga were equivalent. At that point, he already had a slot at the institute for advanced study, and he didn't even bother with the formalities of collecting his PhD. He ...

It's fun to see how bad bad writing can be, this promised to go to the limit. ...................Joe Gillis in Sunset Boulevard There is a certain awful fascination to reading Gerlich and Tscheuschner. One hundred fifteen pages of incoherent nonesense. An example from their attempts to disprove greenhouse effect claims: In his popular textbook on meteorology Moller claims: In a real glass house (with no additional heating, i.e. no greenhouse) the window panes are transparent to sunshine, but opaque to terrestrial radiation. The heat exchange must take place through heat conduction within the glass, which requires a certain temperature gradient. Then the colder boundary surface of the window pane can emit heat. In case of the atmosphere water vapor and clouds play the role of the glass." Disproof: The existence of the greenhouse effect is considered as a necessary condition for thermal conductivity. This is a physical nonsense. Furthermore it is implied that the spectral tra...

Eli Rabett , who clearly has a masochistic streak, has undertaken the task of cleaning the Augean Stables of Gerlich and Tscheuschner , which some moronic editor has actually published. Among other nutjobbery, G & T claim that a greenhouse effect - any greenhouse effect - is incompatible with the second law of thermodynamics. If true (and of course it isn't) this would be bad for the second law, since greenhouse effects obviously exist and are huge in the case, for example, of Venus. I know that guys like Bill Gray and Lindzen are not quite stupid enough to buy this crap, so why doesn't it bother them to be on the same ship of fools? The legions of denial are not small, but they certainly believe a whole lot of very ridiculous and mutually contradictory things. I guess the guys who think they are victims of a conspiracy aren't bothered by the fact that most their travelling companions happen to be nuts, even by their standards. And Eli - you might need a bigger spoon...

Arbitrage is what the Masters of the Universe think they know how to do, and Geithner's subsidies give them a big opportunity. Tyler Cowen notices what Hilzoy noticed the other day, and puts in some more detail. The scope for cheating could be enormous, and by his calculation, half a trillion dollars could be at stake. With that big an incentive to swindle, does anybody think Wall Street won't be able to figure out how to do it, regardless of the precautions taken? No wonder the market loved Timmy's plan. Way past time for the Timolator to go. Maybe he and Larry can get a shout show on CNFox or something.