Colbert at White House Correspondents Dinner: W. not Amused

Commentary:

When the president decides something on Monday, he still believes it on Wednesday - no matter what happened Tuesday.

[...]

As Colbert walked from the podium, when it was over, the president and First Lady gave him quick nods, unsmiling, and left immediately.

Video

Great Men, Part II: John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006)

John Kenneth Galbraith died last night at 97:

Some suggested that Galbraith's liberalism crippled his influence. In a review of "John Kenneth Galbraith: His Life, His Politics, His Economics" by Richard Parker (Farrar, 2005), J. Bradford DeLong wrote in Foreign Affairs that Galbraith's lifelong sermon of social democracy was destined to fail in a land of "rugged individualism." He compared Galbraith to Sisyphus, endlessly pushing the same rock up a hill that always turns out to be too steep.

Amartya Sen, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, maintains that Galbraith not only reached but also defined the summit of his field. In the 2000 commencement address at Harvard, Parker's book recounts, Sen said the influence of "The Affluent Society" was so pervasive that its many piercing insights were taken for granted.

"It's like reading 'Hamlet' and deciding it's full of quotations," he said.

Great Men, Part I: Gorby

I have a great deal of respect for Mikhail Gorbachev. I'm afraid history will judge him harshly as, in the end, he lost control of the revolution he began. But Gorby was right, both about the need for Glasnost and Perestroika, and the need to introduce reforms gradually. It was Yeltsin, not Gorbachev, who set Russia back twenty years.

In this article Gorbachev comments on the 20th anniversary of Chernobyl, it's impact on Soviet history, and the continuation of nuclear arms race:

Unfortunately, the problem of nuclear arms is still very serious today. Countries that have them – the members of the so-called "nuclear club" – are in no hurry to get rid of them. On the contrary, they continue to refine their arsenals, while countries without nuclear weapons want them, believing that the nuclear club’s monopoly is a threat to the world peace.

Libertarian economics: dominant assurance contracts

BrianH got me thinking about Libertarians yesterday. While I was thinking of interesting ways to belittle libertarian economics, I remembered a very cool idea that emerged a few years ago from this school of thought: dominant assurance contracts.

Many Libertarian economists are very bothered by market failures — they simply don't want to believe that there can be such a thing. Others, like Alexander Tabarrok, take a more constructive approach and look for ways to address market failures without government intervention and without coersion of any kind.

Assurance contracts are a mechanism for private provision of public goods. A private escrow agent collects donations for a public project. If enough people donate then the project goes ahead, otherwise the money is returned to the contributors. This could actually work for goods that are excludable. You might be able to get a private road built this way, for example, since you can use trespassing laws to keep non-contributors from free-riding once the project is complete.

Dominant assurance contracts are a way to provide public goods that are not excludable. The escrow agent (or entrepeneur) agrees to pay the contributors a reward if the project doesn't proceed. If the project does proceed, then the entrepeneur takes a cut as compensation for the risk he took. Tabarrok shows in his paper that this changes the equilibrium of the game. Somebody who values the good will always win by contributing, and no longer has an incentive to free-ride.

For large scale projects a financial market could be established. The Iraq war, for example, might have two financial instruments, one for those who want a share in the entrepeneur's potential profit, and another for those who would gain utility from regime change in Iraq.

I don't know if this idea would really work in practice, but it's a neat idea and I hope somebody tries it.

Ethics and anonymous liver donation

Some interesting news I missed while I was away: a healthy Toronto man donated part of his liver to a stranger last year.

Some interesting points:

• "Toronto General Hospital [...] has performed more than 200 living liver transplants with no fatalities"
• Only part of the liver is donated, and apparently the liver regenerates itself almost completely within a few weeks (this was a real surprize to me)
• 141 Canadians died last year waiting for livers

Given these facts, my gut feel is that it would be worth paying people to donate livers. The downside is low, and it will obviously save lives. Are there ethical arguments against this that I'm missing?

Colbert Report: Carl Bernstein

"But listen, this is a war against secret enemies that may not end… Don't we need secret powers that have no limit?" — Stephen Colbert, interviewing Carl Bernstein

I've never seen this show before. Brilliant.

Saving the credibility of the U.N. Security Council

Rice still thinks the security council has credibility:

When the international community reconvenes after the 30 days, there has to be some message, clear message, that this kind of behavior is not acceptable, or you will start to call into question the credibility of what the Security Council says when it says it

If the credibility of the security council rests on whether or not its decisions are enforced, then the obvious way to ensure this is to make sure it's decisions are vague and meaningless. This is a tactic with considerable precident.

If the credibility of the security council rests on it actually being able to do something useful when most meaningful resolutions will be vetoed, then the battle was lost long ago.

The sad truth is that a credible Security Council, with both international legitimacy and the ability to enforce resolutions, is not in the U.S. interests. The reforms needed simply won't happen. Rice's lip-service is hypocritical.

A Wile E. Coyote moment for the dollar?

You may be familiar with Paul Krugman's New York Times column. Many on the right have been disappointed that Krugman-the-academic hasn't morphed into Krugman-the-neocon, and have portrayed him as a once-great economist, now fallen from grace.

I don't normally read his column, but I have read his textbook and various papers. The test of genius, in my view, is not the ability to achieve great insights, but the ability to explain these insights in a way that makes them seem almost trivial. Krugman has this gift.

Now Mark Thoma gives the full text of Krugman's preliminary paper presented yesterday at Princeton.

I've been following theories about the U.S. trade deficit and it's future impact on the dollar for a couple of years now. You read one day that the dollar will collapse into hyperinflation, only to learn the next day that the trade defict is an illusion created by "dark matter". It's enough to leave a mortal like me off-balance. Did I really study economics so I could be more confused than before? With this paper Krugman comes to the rescue. He summarizes all of the recent theories and, even if he can't provide a definative answer, at least stops your head spinning.

The paper is lengthy, so I don't expect many will read it through. If you do, just skip the math - it's not necessary to understand the concepts. Here is the conclusion for the impatient:

Concerns about a dollar crisis can be divided into two questions: Will there be a plunge in the dollar? Will this plunge have nasty macroeconomic consequences?

The answer to the first question depends on whether there is investor myopia, a failure to take into account the requirement that the dollar eventually fall enough to stabilize U.S. external debt at a feasible level. Although it’s always dangerous to second guess markets, the data do seem to suggest such myopia: it’s hard to reconcile the willingness of investors to hold dollar assets with a very small premium in real interest rates with the apparent necessity for fairly rapid dollar decline to contain growing foreign debt. The various rationales and rationalizations for the U.S. current account deficit that have been advanced in recent years don’t seem to help us avoid the conclusion that investors aren’t taking the need for future dollar decline into account.

So it seems likely that there will be a Wile E. Coyote moment when investors realize that the dollar’s value doesn’t make sense, and that value plunges.

The case for believing that a dollar plunge will do great harm is much less secure. In the medium run, the economy can trade off lower domestic demand, mainly the result of a fall in real housing prices, for higher next exports, the result of dollar depreciation. Any economic contraction in the short run will be the result of differences in adjustment speeds, with the fall in domestic demand outpacing the rise in net exports.

The United States in 2006 isn’t Argentina in 2001: although there is a very good case that the dollar will decline sharply, nothing in the data points to an Argentine-style economic implosion when that happens. Still, this probably won’t be fun.

Gone fishin'....

I'm off to Tartu for the weekend for a debating tournament. Should be fun. They call it the "city of good thoughts". Sounds a little Orwellian, but I'll try to think good thoughts while I'm there.

I'll try to check in on the weekend if I can find Internet access somewhere, but in the meantime you can use this as an open thread.

So how hard is it to develop nuclear weapons?

Apparently not very, as the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory showed in 1964-67 with the "Nth Country Experiment":

The experiment consisted in paying three recent young physicists who had just received their PhDs, though had no prior weapons experience, to develop a working nuclear weapon design using only unclassified information, and with basic computational and technical support.

[...]

The experiment ended on April 10, 1967, after only three man-years of work over two and a half calendar years. According to a heavily redacted declassified version of the summary, it was apparently judged by lab weapons experts that the team had come up with a credible design for the technically more challenging implosion style nuclear weapon. It is likely that they would have been able to design a simpler gun combination weapon even more quickly

Now, thirty years later, I imagine the job would be even easier.

Should the U.S. do something about Iran?

Richard M, one of my favourate American right-wingers, asks on Dalythoughts:

What is the best way to deal with Iran? It seems clear that, no matter what sanction we put in place and what threat we make to them, they are determined to develop nuclear technology. It is highly likely, considering their history of supporting terrorism across the globe, they intend to have nuclear weapons. Can we afford to just “leave them alone” and hope they don’t set a nuke off in Tel Aviv or Boston?

It's usually pointless to discuss the morality of bombing which those from the right - they take it as a given that the U.S. should bomb who who it feels like, provided it's in its best interests, so I respond more pragmaticly:

Since you can’t afford to attack them, it’s not like there’s a choice. Oil is at $72/barrel simply on speculation of an attack.

On the other hand, as long as they allow inspections (which they are) there will be lots of warning before they develop anything truly threatening. Regardless of how annoyed the U.S. is about it, they are adhering to the terms of the NPT. If they stop adhering to the treaty then there might be more support for a military solution. Until then you’ll just have to live with it.

You’ll also have to deal with the fact that any country that wants them will soon have the ability to possess nuclear weapons, if not now then in ten or twenty years. Forget Iran, which is relatively stable, worry about Nigeria, Sudan, or just a random well-funded terrorist group. The technology is over 60 years old and it’s a miracle that it’s been keep under wraps for this long. If you look at it that way then you quickly realize how futile it is to fight these silly wars without addressing larger issues that cause instability.

Dalythoughts seems to have been abandoned, and the page where Richard posted has gotten unwieldy, so I've invited him to continue the discussion here.

Condoleeza Rice's Y2K essay in Foreign Affairs

It's interesting to read Condoleezza Rice's year 2000 essay in Foreign Affairs in light of the recent nuclear deal with India and Hu Jintao's visit to the U.S.

From Rice's essay:

The United States must deepen its cooperation with Japan and South Korea and maintain its commitment to a robust military presence in the region. It should pay closer attention to India's role in the regional balance. There is a strong tendency conceptually to connect India with Pakistan and to think only of Kashmir or the nuclear competition between the two states. But India is an element in China's calculation, and it should be in America's, too. India is not a great power yet, but it has the potential to emerge as one.

I find it fascinating that all the leaders must know about the underlying strategies and motives of the other parties, but still play the game, at least in public. I wonder if they speak more frankly in private: "So George, I hear you're trying to contain us. You really think you can pull that off?"

Saag Paneer (Saag Panir)

This recipe is copied from Greg Tulonen's pages. I've been using this recipe a lot, and I live in mortal fear that it will disappear from his web site one day. This way I know it's safe.

Since fresh spinach is horribly expensive in Finland, I mix 50% fresh and 50% frozen spinach. I think I actually prefer the texture this way - as it's a little more creamy. You may need to drain the frozen spinach a little bit, though, as there's a fine line between creamy and soggy.

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 pounds fresh spinach
• paneer from 1/2 gallon milk
• vegetetable oil
• 6 Tbs butter
• 1 onion, peeled and chopped
• 4 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
• 1-inch piece fresh ginger root, peeled and grated
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
• 1/2 tsp ground black pepper
• 1 tsp garam masala
• 1 tsp kosher salt (or to taste)
• a pinch of tumeric
• 1 cup yogurt

Directions

1. Wash the spinach well. Cook it in a saucepan with 1/2 cup of water for 2 or 3 minutes. When tender, drain and chop.
2. Cut the paneer into 1/2-inch cubes. Heat oil in a large skillet. Fry the cubes of paneer in batches, turning over once or twice, until they are light brown. Remove the paneer with a slotted spoon. Drain on paper towels.
3. In a large skillet, melt the butter with 1 tablespoon of oil over medium heat and cook the onion until just beginning to turn brown. Add the garlic and cook for 2 minutes. Add the ginger and the spices, and stir well. Heat for a few minutes.
4. Transfer the contents of the skillet into a food processer. Add the yogurt and process together until smooth.
5. Transfer the spinach mixture back to the skillet. Add the paneer, and simmer, covered, for 10 minutes. Serve hot.

Naan recipe

Ingredients

• 1 tsp dried yeast
• 1 tsp sugar
• 3 fl oz/75 ml/ 3/8 cup lukewarm water
• 10 oz/275 g/ 2.75 cups plain flour
• .5 tsp salt
• .75 tsp baking powder
• 1 tbsp oil
• about 3 tbsp plain yoghurt

Directions

1. Stir the yeast and sugar into the water and set aside fro 15-20 minutes until the liquid is frothy.
2. Sieve together the flour, salt, and baking powder. Make a well in the middle, add the yeast and yoghurt and knead for about 10 minutes till soft and no longer sticky.
3. Place the dough in an oiled plastic bag and set aside in a warm place for 2-3 hours until double in size.
4. Knead again for 1-2 minutes and divide into 12 balls. Roll into 7 in / 18 cm rounds.
5. Place as many as possible on a baking sheet and put in a preheated oven 400 F / 200 C / Gas Mark 6 for 4-5 minutes each side until brown spots appear. Place them for a few seconds under a hot grill (broiler) until slightly browned.
6. Wrap the cooked ones in foil while cooking the others.

Reference: Sumana Ray's excellent cookbook, Indian Vegetarian Cooking