Recently, I wrote a diary with one of speculations that speculative markets (such as stock and real estate markets) tend to behave like pyramid schemes at certain stages (like now). The crucial feature is the point when the market valuation grows predominantly because of outsiders entering the market with expectations of profitting from the steadily growing market. When the market volume has nowhere to grow, the latest entrants (if only) suffer dearly.

I am content to find out that my suspicion is not a wack unseen to human mind. Please enter Prof. Hyman Minsky (1919-1996), and his Financial Instability Hypothesis.

This diary originated from a discussion of real estate markets, so we will eventually get to financial matters of today. The sweeping bottom question is: how can an apparently steady growth or progress possibly be halted, or even voided? Do civilisations collapse often, and how? Do they just meet bad luck or barbaric invaders sooner or later,  or do they always collapse once they fully employ a "no-brainer" affluence strategy, like greed or self-indulgence? Can gains of globalization and free markets increase forever, or will they abruptly end just "around a corner"?

Globalization must have the limits of the globe, or not? It works all fine while new markets open and expand, while masses of new individuals enter speculative markets, either directly or via inescapably more aggressive pension funds. Will the global economy continue to prosper when the stream of eager new buyers will dry out?

Deep down, it is not exceptionally remarkable that evaluation of the markets grows while their volume rapidly expands. You can run a pyramid scheme with the same effect!

For once, pro-war LA Times commentator Max Boot put up a reasonable article in his column:

Is Iraq turning into Yugoslavia?

[...] In the former Yugoslavia, as in Iraq, ethnic groups have clashed over the years, but they also have had long periods of peaceful coexistence -- and not only under the heavy hand of a Tito or Saddam Hussein. Croats, Bosnians, Slovenians, Kosovars, Macedonians, Montenegrins and Serbs lived together for centuries under the relatively benign Ottoman and Habsburg empires and later under their own monarchy. So did Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis in Mesopotamia.

 Are they proud of being good in scaring the bejesus out of everyone in each election cycle?

To judge it from their latest ads and talks, the War on Terror is won by terror.

Are Republicans proud of hurting Democrat politicians more effectively than Al Qaeda terrorists?

Are Republicans proud of giving nice promises to their libertarian or Christian base, but never delivering to them?

Are Republicans proud of achieving new corruption standards? Are they proud of accusing the opponents of ethical failures, while doing things far worse?

Are Republicans proud of George W. Bush? Who is proud of George W. Bush? That guy did his worst in following security briefings prior to the 9/11. He did his absolutely worst with Katrina. He is continuing to do his worst in Iraq.

[Sorry, it's just a few scattered one-liners. I have no time or flow to connect them into a beefy diary.]

Are you interested in what an Egyptian democracy activist and professor of political sociology at the American University in Cairo has to say about the New emerging Middle East? Read Saad Eddin Ibrahim in Washington Post. Here are snippets from there:

President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice may be quite right about a new Middle East being born. [But] it will not be exactly the baby they have longed for. [It] will be neither secular nor friendly to the United States.

The law of unintended consequences is very strong for violent meassures - as if no one had guessed that.

Capitalism has made us better people - morally better. That is the core claim of the thick (over 500 pages) book

The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce

by the economist prof. Deirdre N. McCloskey.

And that is only the first of the planned four books, where she is going to prove that all the "left and right intelligentsia" are wrong to criticize capitalism for corruption, social alienation and anti-cultural consumerism.

At best, we have another academic exercise in advocating a particular system to the highest philosophical, and even moral, grounds. How successful is Prof. McCloskey? How different is she from Karl Marx, for example? At worst, this book signals a neo-neo-calvinistic ideology for emerging David Brooksian class of "supermoral" lords, where all morality is decided lonely by the size of the bank account, regardless how the money is earned or spent.

This is a peculiar news byte:

The other night at a Washington book party for the President's sister, Doro Bush Koch, the Supreme Court justice arrived with his wife, Ginny [...]

"We have to pray for your brother. He's in real trouble," Thomas told a wide-eyed Koch [...]

Yeah, Clarence Thomas was praying for Bush the long 6 years. Now he needs some help, apparently. What might be coming up?!

Washinton Post Pravda apparently gave the honor of writing an editorial to the fresh writer Domenich boy. How else would you explain this unapologetic ass licking:

Mr. Bush Unvarnished

PRESIDENT BUSH should hold more news conferences. In his hour-long exchange with reporters at the White House yesterday, he was considerably more effective in explaining and defending his commitment to the war in Iraq than in the three carefully worded speeches he has delivered in the past week. In his sometimes blunt, sometimes joking and sometimes unpolished way, he sounded authentic - no more so than when he was asked what had become of the "political capital" he claimed after the 2004 election. "I'd say I'm spending that capital on the war," Mr. Bush replied.

Greg Palast is back as The Guardian columnist, hillariously.

On the third anniversary of the tanks rolling over Iraq's border, most of the 59 million Homer Simpsons who voted for Bush are beginning to doubt if his mission was accomplished.

But don't kid yourself -- [Bush and Cheney] accomplished exactly what they set out to do. In case you've forgotten what their real mission was, let me remind you of White House spokesman Ari Fleisher's original announcement, three years ago, launching of what he called,

"Operation
Iraqi
Liberation."

O.I.L. How droll of them, how cute.

New Jersey may prohibit anonymous posting on forums:

A bill introduced in the New Jersey Assembly would require websites to collect and make available the legal names and physical addresses of anyone posting on an Internet forum.

The law aims to prevent "false or defamatory messages" from being protected by anonymity.

Specifically, it requires that the legal names and addresses of anyone posting a defamatory message must be made available to any parties who claim to have been damaged.

Tanker runs aground in Alaska, spills oil products

ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Feb 2 (Reuters) - An oil tanker carrying nearly 5 million gallons of oil and gasoline was struck by an ice floe and ran aground while loading oil products at an Alaska refinery on Thursday, causing a spill, a state official and the refining company said.

"At this time we do not have an estimate as to the amount of product released," refinery owner Tesoro Corp. said in a statement.

The Tesoro-chartered double-hulled tanker, the Seabulk Pride, was loading heavy vacuum gas oil and unleaded gasoline from the refinery in Nikiski, Alaska, on the Cook Inlet, the company said.

It said the ice floe parted the mooring line and sent the 600-foot (183-meter) tanker adrift before it went aground about half a mile (800 metres) north of the dock, and that the vessel's tanks were secure.

Is Alaska a good recipe for the American oil addiction?

Some say you can't make the world better than it is. They say you ought to be sceptical about human nature, yet they urge you not to question potentially abusive conduct of the powerful. They say you hate America if you want to give extra opportunities to the less fortunate. Conservativism is bigotry of low expectations.

But what drives us, liberals, to care not only about own well being, but about quality of life of others as well? Are we personally hurt by seeing injustice by abuse of political or economic power? Is it very satisfying to seek optimal social gains by collaboration? Are we concerned that uncurbed greed will have catastrophic consequences to everyone?

Do we think that America is the foremost developer of achievements of the Western Enlightenment? Are we certain that America's success had been assured by an effective balance of civil powers?

One might say, The New Republic journal "the liberal counterpart" of the conservative National Review. If so, it is very Lieberman-lite liberalism at best.

The New Republic has this article now:

THE NETHERLANDS IS NO LONGER A PARAGON OF ALL THINGS LIBERAL
Right Turn
by Abigail R. Esman  

"Open" has long been a catchword for the Netherlands, referring to everything from the flat, low-lying fields of Zuid-Holland and the curtainless windows of Amsterdam and The Hague to the country's liberal stances on marijuana and prostitution, both of which are enjoyed freely and legally in cheerful "coffee shops" and red-lighted bordellos throughout the country. To many, the country has long seemed the apotheosis of a free, liberal, and democratic state.  

But, these days, Filip Dewinter, leader of one of Europe's most extreme far-right political parties, Belgium's Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest), has had nothing but praise for his liberal neighbors to the north. In speech after speech over the past months, Dewinter has repeated the same refrain: "Once, Holland was the model country for everything left and progressive. Now, it is the model for the right and conservative powers."

For one time, let us take Bob Novak seriously. (Despite easy ridicule and nomination for the Misinformer of the year title.) When he talks about conservative problems, he may be trustworthy. He writes in the last column:
Is it really so bad for the cons that their well being is dependant on retirement of a single Senator? Will we see the end of "moralize and moralize, scare and scare, elect and elect" conservativism soon?