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February 09, 2013

Noted for February 9, 2013

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  • A plain blog about politics: Catch of the Day: "Okay, it's a cheap shot, but Matt Yglesias gets the Catch for his tweet: 'If you want to know what’s wrong with US conservatism, read this from @richlowry', and links to Lowry's hyping of the Paul Harvey ad from the Super Bowl…. Lowry: 'The spot stuck out for how thoroughly un–Super Bowl it was… simple… quiet… thoughtful… eloquent. It was everything that our celebrity-soaked pop culture… is not.' This is...well, it's about as wrong as you can get. Super Bowl Sunday is totally soaked in the kind of hokey Americana that Paul Harvey was so good at!… As for celebrity-soaked pop culture: sorry, Rich Lowry, but some of us still think that Paul Harvey was a celebrity of no little renown…. Lowry then moves to an attack on Beyonce, which is at least the second NRO attack on the halftime show so  far. I can't say I've been a dedicated Beyonce fan, but I thought the show was first-rate…. [A]nyone who couldn't see that it's a perfect fit with Paul Harvey really doesn't understand American show biz… Or, you know, the Super Bowl." Ah. But Lowry's real point is that Harvey is old, rural, and white; while Beyonce Knowles is young, urban, and Black.

  • Michael Lind: The white South’s last defeat: Hysteria, aggression and gerrymandering are a fading demographic's last hope to maintain political control: "In understanding the polarization and paralysis… the appropriate directions are North and South…. As someone whose white Southern ancestors go back to the 17th century in the Chesapeake Bay region, I have some insight into the psychology of the tribe. The salient fact to bear in mind is that the historical experience of the white South in many ways is the opposite of the experience of the rest of the country. Mainstream American history… is a story of military successes…. The white Southern narrative — at least in the dominant Southern conservative version — is one of defeat after defeat… the Civil War… Southern apartheid… shattered by the second defeat, the Civil Rights revolution, which like the Civil War and Reconstruction was symbolized by the dispatching of federal troops to the South. The American patriotism of the white Southerner is therefore deeply problematic…. The other great national narrative holds that the U.S. is a nation of immigration…. But even before the recent wave of immigration from sources other than Europe, the melting pot never included most of the white South…. As difficult as it may be, outsiders should try to imagine the world as viewed by conservative white Southerners, who think they are the real Americans — that is, old-stock British-Americans — and the adherents of the true religion, evangelical Protestantism…. The historical memory of white Southerners is not of ethnic coexistence and melting-pot pluralism but of ethnic homogeneity and racial privilege. Small wonder that going from the status of local Herrenvolk to local minority in only a generation or two is causing much of the white South to freak out."

  • Owen Zidar: The Growth of Modern Finance: "From Robin Greenwood and David Scharfstein…. '[P]rofessional asset management… facilitated an increase in financial market participation and diversification. This likely decreased required rates of return for investors and thereby lowered the cost of capital to corporations. But, there is likely too much high-cost, active asset management, which creates rents for the financial sector and distorts the allocation of talent away from more productive sectors. We also raise concerns about whether the potential benefits of households’ increased access to credit — the main output of the shadow banking system – are outweighed by the risks associated with shadow banking system…. [T]he enormous growth of asset management after 1997 was driven by high fee alternative investments, with little direct evidence of much social benefit, and potentially large distortions in the allocation of talent. On net, society is likely better off because of active asset management but, on the margin, society would be better off if the cost of asset management could be reduced.'"

On February 8, 2013:

February 09, 2013 at 05:29 AM |

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