Ruler On Ice Wins Belmont Stakes

Longshot Ruler On Ice wins the Belmont Stakes:

 Ruler On Ice posted a huge upset in the Belmont Stakes, taking the lead from Preakness winner Shackleford in the stretch and winning the final leg of the Triple Crown. Shackleford led from the start Saturday, but when the field of 12 turned for home in the 1½-mile Belmont, 24-1 long shot Ruler On Ice took over under Jose Valdivia Jr., and splashed home first, three-quarters of a length ahead of Stay Thirsty.
The much-hyped rubber match between Shackleford and Kentucky Derby winner Animal Kingdom never materialized. Shackleford finished fifth, while Animal Kingdom got off to a terrible start, never got into contention and finished sixth. Jockey John Velazquez nearly fell off when Animal Kingdom collided with Monzon just after the start.

Government Aeronautical History

The Brewster Buffalo undergoes drag testing in 1938.

The NASA Langley Research Center:

In 1929, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, an organization that would become NASA Langley Research Center, began construction on a massive and unique facility: the Full-Scale Tunnel. Housed in a huge building in Virginia, the nation's first wind tunnel for testing full-size airplanes had a 30-foot by 60-foot maw through which two fans powered by 4,000-horsepower motors blew air at speeds of up to 120 miles an hour. Airplanes would be suspended in the path of the artificial wind. Transducers could convert the energy of the air hitting the plane into measurements for drag and lift.
Though engineers completed the tunnel in 1934, its finest hour was probably during World War II, when it operated virtually non-stop.

That's pretty fascinating.  My family has had a lot of involvement in air movement technology, so I find this to be interesting.

Today's Financial System

Via Ritholtz, South Park nails the finance sector:

The Committee of Five

They were a lot better than the Gang of Six:  June 11, 1776:

The Committee of Five of the Second Continental Congress drafted and presented to the Congress what became known as America's Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776. This Declaration committee operated from June 11, 1776 until July 5, 1776, the day on which the Declaration was published.
On the Monday afternoon of June 10, 1776, the delegates of the United Colonies in Congress resolved to postpone until Monday July the 1st the final consideration of whether or not to declare the several sovereign independencies of the United Colonies, as proposed by the North Carolina resolutions of April the 12th and the Virginia resolutions of May the 15th, and moved in Congress on June the 7th by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia; henceforth the Lee Resolution. During these allotted three weeks Congress agreed to appoint a committee to draft a broadside statement to proclaim to the world the reasons for taking America out of the British Empire, if the Congress were to declare the said sovereign independencies. The actual declaration of "American Independence" is precisely the text comprising the final paragraph of the published broadside of July the 4th. In the broadside's final paragraph is repeated the text of the Lee Resolution as adopted by the declaratory resolve voted on July the 2nd. Hence, "American Independence", of these "Free and independent States", was actually declared in the Congress on the afternoon of July the 2nd and reported as such afterwards, unofficially in a local newspaper that very evening and officially in the published broadside dated July the 4th.
On June the 11th the members of the Committee of Five were appointed; they were, north to south: John Adams of Massachusetts, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, Robert Livingston of New York, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, and Thomas Jefferson of Virginia. At their first committee meeting Jefferson was tasked by the other four members of the committee to prepare the first draft. During the following two weeks Jefferson's evolving draft was critically reviewed by other committee members, likely Adams and Franklin, who suggested minor changes, After just 17 days the document was formally presented to the Continental Congress and given its first reading, on Friday, June the 28th.

Thomas Jefferson seemed to carry the load on this committee, but the final work is pretty well known.  He hated the editing, but some work had to be done.

Naked Capitalism Link of the Day

Today's link: Employers Spend on Equipment Rather Than Hiring, at the NYT:

Workers are getting more expensive while equipment is getting cheaper, and the combination is encouraging companies to spend on machines rather than people.
“I want to have as few people touching our products as possible,” said Dan Mishek, managing director of Vista Technologies in Vadnais Heights, Minn. “Everything should be as automated as it can be. We just can’t afford to compete with countries like China on labor costs, especially when workers are getting even more expensive.”
Vista, which makes plastic products for equipment manufacturers, spent $450,000 on new technology last year. During the same period, it hired just two new workers, whose combined annual salary and benefits are $160,000.

This is the cost of increased mechanization contributing to increasing productivity.  When my former boss and I talked last fall, this was exactly his prediction, that employers would invest in equipment and not hire workers.  He was dead-on. There has to be some major discussion about where we expect new jobs to be created, and what we expect people to do to make a living.  The loss of good paying low-skill and semi-skilled work has hollowed out the middle-class.  This recession follows two smaller, but long-lasting recessions in 1991 and 2001.  Each of those showed a different pattern of rehiring than other recessions, because the manufacturing jobs were going away and not coming back, as opposed to people being laid off while inventories came down, then brought back quickly, as things happened in the past.  Take a look at this chart from Calculated Risk:

This is the slow transition of the economy from manufacturing to services, and the changes in the labor market need to be discussed, but nobody wants to have that discussion.

The Belmont Stakes Separates the Good from the Great

That's the case that Andrew Cohen makes at the Atlantic:

The Kentucky Derby gets the glory. The Preakness gets a pass. For my money, it is the Belmont Stakes, the third and final leg of racing's Triple Crown, which almost always sifts out the very good horses from the truly great horses.
And it will be no different this Saturday afternoon, when New York's Belmont Park hosts the 143rd running of the race. The very good Kentucky Derby winner Animal Kingdom will be there (the 2-1 morning line favorite from the 9-hole). And the very good Preakness winner Shackleford will be, too (at 9-2 from the 12-hole). A victory in the Belmont for either of these colts won't just earn his respective connections some serious lettuce, it will also likely guarantee horse-of-the-year honors. Then again, the Eclipse Award could go to the horse which wins Saturday if it isn't either of those two.
For those colts and geldings who race in all three races especially, the Belmont is the most difficult of the three to win. The race is longer than either of the other two-- three-eights of a mile longer than the Preakness. The Belmont is raced five weeks after the Derby and three after the Preakness; a crowded schedule for any horse, much less a 3-year-old who hasn't raced much in his pampered life. And the Belmont field always contains fresh horses who haven't gone to Baltimore and/or Louisville but who have instead trained for Belmont's great distance.

He makes very good points.  As he mentions, 4 horses in the past decade came into the Belmont with a chance to win the Triple Crown, and all failed.  Today marks the 92nd anniversary of Sir Barton becoming the first horse to win the Triple Crown, since then, only ten other horses have accomplished the feat.  The Belmont is almost always the race that makes the difference.  The 1-and-a-half mile race, 5 weeks after going a mile-and-a-quarter at the Kentucky Derby, and 3 weeks after going a mile-and-three-sixteenths at the Preakness, is just brutal.  One other thing I wanted to include from his post is the video of probably the greatest thoroughbred performance of all-time, Secretariat's 31 length victory in 1973:

Considering Geo-Engineering

at the NYT, via Mark Thoma, first, laying out the problems:

Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are pushing 400 parts per million (p.p.m.) — up from the natural pre-industrial level of 280 p.p.m. Emissions for last year were the highest ever. Rather than drift along until a calamity galvanizes the world, and especially the United States, into precipitous action, the time to act is now.
The biology of the planet indicates we are already in a danger zone. The goal of limiting temperature increase to 2 degrees Celsius, as discussed at the Copenhagen and Cancun climate summits, is actually disastrous.
As we push the planet’s average temperature increase beyond 0.75°C, coral reefs (upon which 5 percent of humanity depends) are in increasing trouble. The balance of the coniferous forests of western North America has been tipped in favor of wood-boring bark beetles; in many places 70 percent of the trees are dead. The Amazon — which suffered the two greatest droughts in recorded history in 2005 and 2010 — teeters close to tipping into dieback, in which the southern and eastern parts of the forest die and turn into savannah vegetation. Estimates of sea-level rise continue to climb.
Even more disturbing, scientists have determined that, if we want to stop at a 2°C increase, global emissions have to peak in 2016. That seems impossible given current trends. Yet most people seem oblivious to the danger because of the lag time between reaching a greenhouse gas concentration level and the heat increase it will cause.

Then there is the consideration of geo-engineering.  Here the recommendations are reforestation and carbon sequestering in the soil.  Pumping sulfates into the atmosphere is mentioned, but the potential problems may outweigh the benefits.  This is interesting, but scary stuff.  Doing large-scale projects with unknown side effects could be disastrous, but potential activities will have to be considered.

Are Tea Partiers Happy Like Danes?

I would guess not, if this story is to be believed:

Denmark has the highest well-being of any country in the world, according to a recent Gallup Poll, with 72 percent of Danish people "thriving." (The worldwide median is just 21 percent.) In addition, during World War II, the country rescued almost all Jewish Danes from impending atrocities.

A kind of positive psychology underlies both accomplishments. People who trust their government and their neighbors, and who resist abuses in their society, are more likely to feel a sense of well-being in their own lives. Social psychology shows that countries with little trust are less likely to be happy. Networks of support between people and groups—what the political scientist Robert Putnam called social capital—promote people's well-being and their ability to react well to crises, from turmoil in North Africa to flooding in the U.S. and tsunamis in Japan.

Trust government? No.  Trust their neighbors? Maybe, as long as they aren't brown people.  Resist abuses in society?  Yes, if the abuses target Christians or the rich.  No, for everybody else.  I would guess they are not happy, then.  Of course, listening to them talk about the President of the United States should answer that question.  They've been pissed off since he was elected. 

I can't say too much, I get pretty angry when I listen to talk radio, or when NPR interviews some Republican douchebag who explains that tax cuts will cure cancer, help paraplegics walk and grow better corn, all while cutting the deficit and helping you lose weight.  I'm not sure how to explain all the anger from a country which has been on top of the world, but I guess it probably comes from us slowly losing our place of privilege.  The last 30 years have been rough on the working and middle classes.  I would assume that drives the anger.

I went to pay my electric bill a little while ago.  A guy went in right before me.  He was at least 55, and probably 60.  He asked the receptionist if they had a senior discount.  She said no.  He then asked if they had a veterans discount.  She said no.  Then he said, "This country needs to start honoring its veterans."  At first, that made me kind of angry.  I have felt the last few years that average people tend to go out of their way in honoring veterans, sometimes even ignoring the possibility that any servicemember ever would do anything wrong.  But I think part of that reason is that because of the all-volunteer force, most people don't have to serve, know few people who do, and won't, and it makes them feel guilty  Therefore, they go out of their way to pay lip service to veterans.  My immediate reaction was that this guy thought he deserved to have other people pay his bills because he served in the military, and while he may have a point, it rubbed me the wrong way. 

But it slowly dawned on me that it was far more likely that instead of being a new customer of the electric company who didn't know their rate structure, he was just in dire financial straits.   I had noticed on the way in that his 2001 Ford truck had a for sale sign in the window.  It was a pretty nice looking truck, but I thought the price seemed a little high for a 10 year-old truck.  If circumstances were tight enough that he was having a hard time paying his electric bill, and had to go in and ask about any senior or veterans discounts, I can imagine he would be pretty frustrated.  Nobody wants to be nearing what should be retirement age, and find himself not able to make ends meet.  After serving his country and working for 40 years, he wouldn't want to decide between having electric in a heat wave and taking his heart medication. 

I don't know what the story was for this guy, but I felt bad for him, while I was disappointed in myself for my quick judgement of him when I was in line.  Times are pretty hard for a lot of folks out there, and they don't really have too many people to turn to.  Maybe this guy was having a hard time making ends meet, maybe he's a skinflint or maybe he was paying his Medal of Honor winner father's electric bill, but I don't do anyone any good getting angry at him.  We're going to churn away in economic frustration for a while yet, and for many folks, things will get worse before they get better.  I should put more thought into how I can help people out, and less into judging them. 

Ferris Bueller, Cultural Icon?

As we approach the 25th anniversary of the release of Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Alan Siegel takes Ferris down a couple of pegs:

A quarter century after its release, the explanation for why Ferris Bueller's Day Off remains a pop-culture touchstone is simple. As a friend put it, "Every kid has dreamed of pulling off what Ferris Bueller did." This was certainly true in my case. I grew up in a place not unlike Ferris's tony North Shore suburb. Naturally, I dreamed about cutting class and zipping around Chicago in a 1961 Ferrari 250GT California. I'm just not sure every kid shared, or even had the means to share, my fantasy. This is the myth of Ferris Bueller. It's portrayed as a universal story, when it's really not.

Hughes's other movies may not channel Dickens, but they're at least populated with teenagers who've had it rougher than Ferris. In Weird Science, Gary Wallace (Anthony Michael Hall) and Wyatt Donnelly (Ilan Mitchell-Smith) are bullied dorks who are clueless about women. In Pretty in Pink, Andie Walsh (Molly Ringwald) is too poor to afford a nice prom dress. In The Breakfast Club, John Bender (Judd Nelson) is the rebellious product of a broken home. Ferris Bueller, on the other hand, dates Sloane Peterson (Mia Sara), the hottest girl in school, and says stuff like, "-ism's, in my opinion, are not good. A person should not believe in an -ism, he should believe in himself." The line might resonate more if the movie weren't dripping with classism. Ferris is wealthy, white, and still smarting from his recent birthday, when the doting parents he repeatedly and proudly deceives buy him a computer instead of a car. ("What kind of movie hero consciously presents himself as infantile and duplicitous?" Paris Review writer Caleb Crain asks in his recent essay "Totaling the Ferrari: Ferris Bueller Revisited.") Meddling Dean Rooney (Jeffrey Jones) spends the entire movie trying to bust Ferris, but never succeeds. Not that you expect him to. Nothing challenges Ferris. Unlike most teens, his life is free of adversity.

Alan Siegel makes some very good points.  Ferris is too cool, uses nearly everyone else to benefit himself and is extremely duplicitous.  He is also a movie character.  While the movie is fun, I don't think it is meant to be much of a lesson for life.  I would guess that almost all of the people who have enjoyed and continue to enjoy the movie know that stealing and wrecking someone's six-figure Ferrari doesn't make someone a hero.  Even Ferris' main plan to run the car in reverse to take the miles off of it is just plain dumb, and doomed to failure.  The fact that all of his plots and schemes work out for him takes the movie to fantasy level, severing the actual activities from reality, and just making it a fun lark.  Does anyone think Ferris will commandeer a parade float, get Danke Schoen and Twist and Shout ordered up, and steal the show in real life?  I enjoyed the movie, but I don't think it falls into the territory of imparting significant messages about the meaning of life.  Instead, it is just a fun hour-and-a-half break from our real lives.  It also serves as a cultural touchstone, one in which everyone understands what is being referenced.  Just say, "Hey batter, batter, batter, swinnnng batter," everybody knows what you are talking about.

Naked Capitalism Link of the Day

Today's link, The Banking Emperor Has No Clothes, by Simon Johnson at the NYT:

In a major speech earlier this week to the American Bankers Association’s international monetary conference, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner laid out his view of what went wrong in the financial sector before 2008, how the crisis was handled 2008-10 and what is needed to reform the system. As chairman of the Financial Stability Oversight Council and the only senior member of President Obama’s original economic team remaining in place, Mr. Geithner’s influence with regard to the banking system is second to none.

Unfortunately, Mr. Geithner’s speech contained three major mistakes: his history is completely wrong, his logic is deeply flawed, and his interpretation of the Dodd-Frank reforms does not mesh with the legal facts regarding how the failure of a global megabank could be handled. Together, these mistakes suggest that one of our most powerful policy makers is headed very much in the wrong direction.
On history, Mr. Geithner places significant blame for the pre-2008 excesses on Britain and other countries that pursued light-touch regulation. This is reasonable – though surely he is aware that the United States has led the way in lightening the touch of regulation, at least since 1980. A senior British official retorted immediately, “Clearly he wasn’t referring to derivatives regulation, because as far as I can recollect, there wasn’t any in America at the time.”

In the midst of the meltdown, when Obama appointed Geithner, I wasn't sure what to make of the move.  The stock market rallied when he was announced, which was extremely rare at the time, and it was clear that Geithner had been a major player during the roller coaster ride in September, October and November.  I didn't realize how big of a bank whore he was.  This was by far the worst appointment Obama made, with maybe the possible exception of Larry Summers.  Paul Volker would have been 10 times better in my opinion, as he would have taken a big stick to the big banks, who really need busted up.  When placed in contrast to Obama's decision to retain Robert Gates at Defense, the appointment of Geithner is dark, dark night to Gates' brilliant sunshine.  Geithner really needs to move on to some highly-paid Wall Street job, where he can steal from the outside instead of helping banks steal from the inside.  His decision to pay Goldman Sachs in full for their bets on AIG was indefensible, and in a well-run society would get him fired from any post.