Holy Cow! That was Fast!

Wisconsin starts to get well in a hurry.

Claw-Back Liabiilty Hits Bank of America

Justice grinds slowly, but finely. The WSJ reports today that BofA has entered into a settlement agreement with certain other financial institutions that bought some of the mortgage syndication packages for which BofA was held responsible. The amount of the settlement is more than the profit that BofA has made since 2008, and the settlement is with only with a few of the buyers of these rotten financial products. So more is coming for BofA and its peers. (I should add that most of these rotten financial products were sold by Countrywide, which savings bank, in a spectacularly ill-timed decision, BofA purchased shortly before the crash.)

This explains, of course, why the big banks have been sitting on all of the money with which the government has infused them since the financial crisis arose. They knew it was coming.

This is deflationary. Watch the gold prices as this thing continues to unwind.

Good-bye, Blue Dogs?

So where do I go? The other Beltway party? Please.

(I note that the Politico article to which I link is written by Pete Sessions, a Republican member of the House from Texas. Give me a break, Pete.)

From Andy Kessler

His new book. His article on solving the the Greek financial crisis in the WSJ. Why do I think of the Babylonians and Judah, when I think of Germany and Greece? (Or China and the US?)

Speaking of the US, in case you think that Paul Ryan's plan is "extreme," read this, also from the WSJ.

Hey, Guys, Quit Playing Around. Get on with It!

[R]esearchers at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine reported that a man over 40 is almost six times as likely as a man under 30 to father an autistic child. Since then, research has shown that a man's chances of fathering offspring with schizophrenia double when he hits 40 and triple at age 50. The incidence of bipolarity, epilepsy, prostate cancer and breast cancer also increases in children born to men approaching 40.

-from an article in the 6/25/2011 WSJ entitled "What's That Ticking Sound? The Male Biological Clock"

Steve Quinzi and the Quality Quartet

Steve, the keyboardist on the right, is our music director at church. He is also on the faculty at Miami-Dade College. This group of four faculty members gets together at the college twice a year to jam. But I get to see (and to hear) Steve at least once and sometimes twice a week. Yes, he brings liberty to our worship music. (By the way, "Quality" is the surname of the saxophonist.)

"The theological objections to macroevolution are literally crucial because they tell us whether the Cross was necessary . . . "

This is what Marvin Olasky says in the July 2011 issue of World, page 96.

Mr. Olasky, I look into my heart and can tell whether the Cross is necessary.

Irony in the Brave New World

Gay couples seeking the legal form of marriage, straight couples abandoning it. As to the latter, not just the kids, but the grown-ups, especially them, the ones who should know better.

Adam and Eve?

[M]ost theistic evolutionists have no room in their Darwinist theory for the special creation of Adam and Eve. They say either that Adam and Eve had "souls" inserted into their bodies while they were part of a herd of hominids, or that - as a BioLogos website article theorized - they "were not individual historical characters, but represented a larger population of first humans who bore the image of God."

-Marvin Olasky in his World Magazine review of Should Christians Embrace Evolution and a discussion of chapter 3, "Adam and Eve," written by Michale Reeves, theological head of Britain's Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship. (You can download all of that chapter on the link to Olasky's review. You just have to look for it.) Don't miss World's 2011 Book Issue, just out.

Does "theistic evolution" address an essential of the faith? Our Romans study takes us to Romans 14:1-8 this Sunday, the first part of a longer passage whose theme continues to Romans 15:13. Is this passage helpful in dealing with just what we are to do with the question of theistic evolution, or, to be more precise perhaps, with what we are to do with the brother or sister who is on the other side of that issue from us?

In dealing with our response to "weaker" Christians whose views are contrary to ours, Stott uses the "essentials" versus "non-essentials" dichotomy. He concludes

In fundamentals, then, faith is primary, and we may not appeal to love as an excuse to deny essential faith. In non-fundamentals, however, love is primary, and we may not appeal to zeal for the faith as an excuse for failures in love. Faith instructs our own conscience; love respects the conscience of others. Faith gives liberty; love limits its exercise. No-one has put it better than Rupert Meldenius, a name which some believe was a "nom de plume" used by Richard Baxter:

In essentials unity;
In non-essentials liberty;
In all things charity.

-Stott, The Message of Romans, God's Good News for the World, pp. 374-375.

(For further discussion on the matter of Adam at the BioLogos forum, go here.)

Juan in the News Again.

The latest developments on the case here. Mas aqui. Muy importante in Venezuela y Chile. See the earlier post.

Government Employee Unions Sue Governor Scott

Florida legislature enacts a bill that requires government workers to pay in 3% of their salary to the pension plan. The governor signs the legislation. The Florida governor gets sued in class actions funded by the unions of the government workers. The case will be heard by government workers who wear robes. How will this turn out?

Hint: the Florida legislature and the governor are elected by the people. The government workers in question, their union bosses, and the folks in the robes, at least the ones who hear the appeals, are not elected by the people.

Union Lawyer Serves Up a Dish of Regional Bigotry

Arise, South Carolinians!

"Helicopter Men, Grounded"

"Helicopter Men" is the label hung on those unelected persons who manipulate the financial markets of our world to make everything all right. Like Ben Bernake. This class of persons is referred to in a list-serve email I received last night from Fernando Crespo, a portfolio manager with J.P.Morgan. His email links to a JP Morgan newsletter written each month by Michael Cembalest, the Chief Investment Officer for that financial firm. The latest newsletter is full of disturbing graphs and other data, but I thought the following portion of Mr. Cembalest's introductory paragraph is particularly worth posting for those of us dealing with our household budgets:

Helicopter Men, Grounded. Over the last 2 years, it has been hard to disentangle how much of the global recovery was organic, and how much was a byproduct of stimulus (monetary and fiscal). We are now going to find out how fast the world can grow on its own, relying on the private sector. Political and economic factors are bringing the era of the Helicopter Men (and not just Helicopter Ben) to an end. Markets are likely to be in for a bumpy ride as this takes place, with reduced return expectations for financial assets. How to adapt? As I said to my wife when we were discussing investments recently, my highest conviction portfolio idea may be this: let’s spend less money. . .

Missing: 160 Million Girls

"Development was not supposed to look like this,” [Mara] Hvistendahl [author of Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men] writes. “For as long as they have speculated about the status of women, social scientists have taken for granted that women’s position improves as countries get richer.”

-Quoted in this Bloomberg review of Ms. Hvistendahl's book.

Why would you take such a thing for granted? You would, I suppose, if you excluded unborn girls from the definition of "women." Or if you had certain views about "progress" and were absent the day they talked about the 20th Century.

Can't Resist This One.

Sorry, Glenn Reynolds made me do it.

Nailing It

Henninger on Perry

Pretty interesting.

Perry-Palin? Palin-Perry? Holy Cow.

Last Night's Debate

I saw a good bit of it. It was worth watching. Here's how I rank the performances:

1. Romney
2. Paul
3. Cain
4. Santorem
5. Bachman
6. Pawlenty
7. Gingrich

I like the way that Romney refused to be lead around by the questions from the so-called moderator. Romney has really "grown up" as a Presidential candidate since four years ago. This is this first time I have seen him in action.

I thought Pawlenty was foolish in answering the Coke vs. Pepsi question straight up from CNN's pro-Obama moderator. And I thought Pawlenty was foolish in paying extended obeisance to the Navy veteran after Romney had already made that gambit. He could simply have said that he agreed with Romney and then went on. Pawlenty had some good things to say, but he lacks Romney's gravitas. I don't think he's a light-weight, but he somehow projects it.

Paul and Cain were simply fun to watch, and I appreciated their candor. They were both refreshing. Paul's views on our military adventures during the last decade now resonate with me in a way they have never done before.

Santorem surprised me positively. The moderator tried to bait him into criticizing Romney on Romney's change of views regarding abortion. Santorem didn't rise to the bait exactly. But if I had been him, I would have said that I would take Romney at his word and then would have gone on to describe my faithful political history of supporting the pro-life movement.

Bachman seems smart and attractive. (Really, the first six on my list are pretty close together. Maybe there is a little more space between Romney and the other 5 of the first six.) But Bachman's no Sarah Palin. Maybe that's good. Maybe it isn't. I'm not sure. Was everyone making that comparison, Bachman and Palin, as I was every time Bachman took the screen?

As to Gingrich, I was already biased against him. It controls my evaluation of his performance. He did quite well. But every time he made a good, articulate point - and he made several - I thought to myself, "What a shame; the guy is so good and so flawed."

(OK, Governor Perry, when are you jumping in?)

Handlebar Palsy

Mary sent me a link to an abstract about "a compression syndrome of the deep terminal (motor) branch of the ulnar nerve in biking."

Here's an anatomical illustration from Gray's to show just where the deep terminal branch of the nerve is.

Added Risk with Non-US Stocks

At least 35 years ago, when I was an expert in stock market investments (generally speaking, I was much smarter then than I am now, not only about stocks but about most everything else), I invested in some publicly traded Canadian oil exploration company stocks. These stocks were somehow connected to William F. Buckley's family, and that gave me comfort. There was nothing wrong with these companies, except for one thing: they were Canadian companies about the time that Pierre Trudeau became the Prime Minister. He was the darling of the left, and one thing he did was semi-nationalize the oil companies, and the prices of my modest positions in those Canadian stocks dropped like a rock as a result.

My view of that investment is that it was money well spent, because it gave me an appreciation that I had never had before of the US stock market environment. This is not to run down Canada (we are blessed to have such a neighbor), but it is a foreign country and investment risks in foreign countries are different than the investment risks here in the US with US companies.

I was reminded of this today in reading reports in the WSJ of difficulties with stocks in Mainland Chinese companies that are traded publicly. One former "small gem," according to the WSJ, is China MediaExpress:

Boasting rapid growth and big profits from selling advertising on video screens in Chinese intercity buses, [Chinese MediaExpress] drew tens of millions of dollars from marquee investors. It listed its shares on the Nasdaq Stock Market, where its chief executive rang the opening bell last June.

Today, MediaExpress is in chaos, its shares no longer traded on NASDAQ after a turbulent few months marked by investors' concerns over the size of its business and questions over its accounting.

It is one of dozens of companies from China that have come under fire by investors and regulators for allegedly misleading investors, exposing a loophole that has U.S. regulators concerned.

This doesn't mean that one should not invest overseas. It simply requires a prudent approach. For the amateur, that means an advisor who prizes diversification, the right allocation, and low expenses, and makes a special effort to determine one's suitability to the investment recommendations he or she might make.

I can't help but observe, however, that it has always seemed the prudent approach to go easy on investments in the home of Tiananmen Square.