Boom or Bust? We’re Always Wrong My father taught me to go left. Not politically. He was a right-wing Republican. At the movies. “Most people choose the right entrance,” he told me. “There are usually more seats on the left side of the theater.” I’ve found that to be true. He dressed like a conformist. But Dad was a contrarian. “If you don’t know what to do,” he said, “do the exact opposite of what everyone else is doing. On average, conventional wisdom is always wrong. Run away from the crowd–and you’ll come out ahead in the long run.” Never has the wisdom of his words been more apparent than now. Acting like Chicken Little proven right–this time, the sky really is falling–government and business are making decisions that are the exact opposite of the right ones. Which is nothing new. Politicians and businessmen also do the exact opposite of what they should do during boom times too. Consider prison…

Haiti News Coverage Turns Sublimely Ridiculous Ah, “1984.” As the cartoonist Matt Bors says, it’s “the dystopian novel that keeps on giving.” Orwell’s main character worked for a government ministry that controlled the future by changing the past. Its most effective tool: the Memory Hole. Pieces of history went in—poof!—never to be heard from again. Afterward, it was as if those particular events had never happened: “The past was alterable. The past never had been altered. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.” American news producers and editors have long been masters of the Memory Hole, purposefully omitting the most relevant information stories that would otherwise make the whatever the current regime is look bad. “President Hugo Chávez,” reported The Washington Post in a typical example of spin from 2005, “has recently accused President Bush of plotting to assassinate him.” Going on to slam Chávez’s supposed “bluster and anti-American showmanship,” the Post left…

Obama Will Drag Down Democrats in November I’m a bit late, but this is the time of year when pundits issue their predictions for the coming year. Normally I stay out of the political prognostication racket. It’s as thankless as writing for Arianna Huffington. Like when I predicted that Howard Dean had the Democratic nomination all sewn up. Nicely played. It’ll be in my obit. I dare not die. Do readers remember that I was the only one to call the Afghanistan War lost back in 2001? That I was the first to note that Bush’s handling of Katrina would mark the beginning of the end for his presidency? That I was the first American pundit to criticize Bush after 9/11? Nope. Anyway… 2010 could end up being a big year politically. So, with nothing more than my already wounded pride at stake (damn you, Howard Dean, you coulda been a contender!), I’m placing my bets. First and foremost, the…

Why the Blood Is On Our Hands As grim accounts of the earthquake in Haiti came in, the accounts in U.S.-controlled state media all carried the same descriptive sentence: “Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere…” Gee, I wonder how that happened? You’d think Haiti would be loaded. After all, it made a lot of people rich. How did Haiti get so poor? Despite a century of American colonialism, occupation, and propping up corrupt dictators? Even though the CIA staged coups d’état against every democratically elected president they ever had? It’s an important question. An earthquake isn’t just an earthquake. The same 7.0 tremor hitting San Francisco wouldn’t kill nearly as many people as in Port-au-Prince. “Looking at the pictures, essentially it looks as if (the buildings are of) breezeblock or cinderblock construction, and what you need in an earthquake zone is metal bars that connect the blocks so that they stay together when they get shaken,” notes…

Lost Your Job? The IRS Thinks You’re Loaded My friend was a survivor. Until she wasn’t. She’d made it through 14 rounds of layoffs at her accounting firm. Then came number 15: “I was a telecommuter. When my boss told me to come into the office for a meeting, I knew I was done for. I told her to cut the crap, save me the trip, and fire me over the phone.” I told her how to file for unemployment benefits. In New York, you can get up to $405 a week plus $25 in extra “Obama bucks” approved by the feds back during the hope and change days. (Most states pay less.) Then I warned her: “Remember, set some of that aside. Unemployment benefits are taxable.” In New York, that means roughly 40 percent. She was shocked. You probably are too. When people lose their jobs, they spend their savings. They take out loans against their house. They’re poor—but…

Columnists everywhere are attempting to name the decade just ended. Here’s my nomination: The Fear Decade. Since 9/11, We’ve Embraced Our Inner Coward Home of the free and the brave. Live free or die. Shoot first; ask questions later. Kill ’em all, let God sort ’em out. These were the mottos of a brash, impetuous, audacious-to-a-fault nation. That nation is dead. Once we Americas did brave things: We sat on boats, crossing the English Channel, knowing that most of us would die on the beach in Normandy. We sat at the lunch counter in the Deep South, waiting for white goons to beat us up. We also did brave things that were stupid: When the president sent us to Vietnam, some of us went, risking death. Others went to Canada, sacrificing everything for principle. We bungee jumped. We tried New Coke. Bravery can be dumb. But it’s still brave. Then came 9/11/01. It was the defining event of the decade…

Why the Imperfect is the Enemy of the Good MP3s exemplify “disruptive technology,” a new product initially ignored by major investors due to its low quality yet catches fire due to its convenience. The history of recorded sound has been at the vanguard of the Good Enough Revolution throughout the 20th century: 78 rpm records sounded better than 33s, analog 33s delivered higher fidelity sound than brittle, cold, digital CDs, which make compressed MP3 files sound like dog poop. People like poop. Wired magazine reported: “Jonathan Berger, a professor of music at Stanford University, recently completed a six-year study of his students. Every year he asked new arrivals in his class to listen to the same musical excerpts played in a variety of digital formats—from standard MP3s to high-fidelity uncompressed files—and rate their preferences. Every year, he reports, more and more students preferred the sound of MP3s, particularly for rock music. They’ve grown accustomed to what Berger calls the percussive…

How to Give America Its Best Christmas Ever Citibank is suspending foreclosures and evictions for 30 days, until after the holidays. Mighty white of them. Who knew bankers could be so amusing? In an interview, Citi mortgage czar Sanjiv Das acknowledged that “moratoriums are not permanent solutions” and said his company was looking for “some long-term fundamental alternatives” to throwing people out of their homes because they’ve fallen behind on their payments. But he didn’t offer a specific example. Here, allow me. There’s one “long-term fundamental alternative” that’s righteous, makes sense, and legal: Let’s foreclose on the banks. It’s time for the U.S. government to show Mr. Das and his buddies down at the country club who is the boss. Seriously. Yes we can. But first, let’s go back to February 2009. Ah, February: a new president, hope and change in the air. Especially for bankers. President Obama’s TARP program doled out hundreds of billions of federal taxdollars to gangster…

The Empty Gesture of Copenhagen Our parents and grandparents fell down on the job. “The politicians in Copenhagen have the power to shape history’s judgment on this generation: one that saw a challenge and rose to it, or one so stupid that we saw calamity coming but did nothing to avert it.” A concise summary of how the world sees this week’s U.N. climate change conference, courtesy of the editorial board of the U.K. newspaper The Guardian. The paper continued: “In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage,” wrote the Guardian’s editors. The implication is that time is short. And that there’s still time. Only two sides of the climate debate get covered by the media: corporate-backed pseudo-scientists who deny the greenhouse effect or claim that it’s inconsequential, and liberal environmentalists pushing for the United States and other major air polluters to act…

Debate Freezes Out the Majority View: Get Out Now The headline ran in The New York Times a month ago, on November 7th: “All Afghan War Options by Obama Aides Said to Call for More Troops.” According to White House insiders, Obama considered three choices for digging our way deeper into the “graveyard of empires”: General Stanley McChrystal, commander of the occupation forces, asked for 40,000 additional soldiers. Defense Secretary Robert Gates wanted 30,000 more. Other generals wanted to send 20,000 more. Obama, reports U.S. state-controlled media, has chosen the “middle option”—30,000 more troops, bringing the total American occupation force to 98,000. Obama is many things: cool, calm and collected. What he is not is unpredictable. Give the man a middle course, a happy median and a compromise to choose from, and he’ll split the difference every time. “Hope”? “Change”? Awesome campaign slogans. The posters will make handsome collectibles. The weirdest aspect of this Afghan spin game is that everyone…