Steubenville, “those poor boys”, and feeling sad for the consequences of actions

So, the rapist football players of Steubenville have been sentenced to not very harsh sentences (because they’re juvenile delinquents), and CNN went and illustrated everyday rape culture perfectly:

Incredibly difficult, even for an outsider like me, to watch what happened as these two young men that had such promising futures, star football players, very good students, literally watched as they believed their lives fell apart…when that sentence came down, [Ma'lik] collapsed in the arms of his attorney…He said to him, ‘My life is over. No one is going to want me now.’

While CNN probably didn’t mean it that way, it shows perfectly that rapists are not criminals lurking in the shadows but people who fit all currently accepted mainstream measures of success and solidity. Mallory Ortberg goes on to discuss possible non-malign reasons for CNN’s reporting yet also points out:

For readers interested in learning more about how not to be labeled as registered sex offenders, a good first step is not to rape unconscious women, no matter how good your grades are. Regardless of the strength of your GPA (weighted or unweighted), if you commit rape, there is a possibility you may someday be convicted of a sex crime. This is because of your decision to commit a sex crime instead of going for a walk, or reading a book by Cormac McCarthy. Your ability to perform calculus or play football is generally not taken into consideration in a court of law. Should you prefer to be known as “Good student and excellent football player Trent Mays” rather than “Convicted sex offender Trent Mays,” try stressing the studying and tackling and giving the sex crimes a miss altogether.

All this notwithstanding, the reliable false balance commenter shows up:

Fuck everyone who doesn’t feel at least a bit sorry for what happened to these kids. First, what they did was horrible, terrible, inhumane, and disgusting. That much is clear. But at the end of the day we should all be feeling sad about the WHOLE situation-the rape of the girl, AND the ruining of all three lives. Kids make mistakes, even extremely huge mistakes, but mistakes nonetheless and I really don’t believe they should keep getting punished when they are in their 40′s and committed the crime more than 20 years ago. I feel sorry for all of them.

Well, fuck me then! I don’t feel sorry for what happened to these male “kids”, at least not as relates to the verdict, in the same way I wouldn’t feel sorry for someone getting sentenced for manslaughter after getting into a car drunk and running someone over, or for someone someone getting sentenced for wrongful death after showing off a firearm and accidentally shooting someone in the head. I don’t feel sorry for someone getting punished for committing an indisputable crime, such as violating the bodily autonomy of someone. I do feel sorry for the girl that was abused by the rapists, by her town, and now by the wider media.

And I am pissed, pissed at parents that apparently didn’t teach their sons that it is wrong to abuse other people, at high school teachers and coaches who didn’t teach this, at a community who didn’t teach this, at a popular culture that doesn’t teach this. Brute Reason on Freethought Blogs says it more extensively and better than I do.

The headwinds of America

Ars Technica has a short post up reporting on a discussion about slowing US economic growth at a TED conference. The first speaker apparently characterized the problem thus:

In his talk today, Gordon named four “headwinds” that confront the nation—demographics, education, debt, and inequality—which point to an ebbing American economy. Combined, these four factors cut growth in half, and innovation is needed to offset this trend. But that innovation is not likely to materialize, said Gordon. If we have less innovation over the next 50 years, there will be even less growth.

A view on bubbles

Interesting post up at New Economic Perspectives:

Sometimes, something interesting and seemingly contradictory can happen in the economy. And when it does, it has important implications for the economy’s financial stability. That interesting thing is this:

Private sector net worth can increase even if private sector net financial assets were negative, as they were from 1997 to 2008 (except for a brief period in 2003/2004).

The reason this was possible is that net worth is dependent upon valuations, whereas accounting flows are not dependent upon valuations. One important financial asset class that enters into private sector net worth calculations are stocks.

If the market price for a stock is $90 and then I buy one share of the stock from you for $100, all that changes in the transaction itself is that I have $100 less than I had previously and you have $100 more than you had previously, and I have one more share of stock and you have one less share of stock. But what also happens is that the stock’s quoted market price increases from $90 to $100.

That means that everyone else who owns a share of the same stock thinks that they are now $10 wealthier per share of stock. The same thing happens any time the stock market goes up, writ large.

The morality and strategy of UAV use

Stratfor has a very interesting post up where they discuss different aspects of UAV warfare. Apart from such aspects as pointing out that according to the Geneva convention conflict forces have to be identifiable or face the consequences and arguing that this is the reason that the collateral damage of attacks on non-military actors can be laid at those actors’ feet, they leave the reader with this:

The problem of unmanned aerial vehicles is that they are so effective from the U.S. point of view that they have become the weapon of first resort. Thus, the United States is being drawn into operations in new areas with what appears to be little cost. In the long run, it is not clear that the cost is so little. A military strategy to defeat the jihadists is impossible. At its root, the real struggle against the jihadists is ideological, and that struggle simply cannot be won with Hellfire missiles. A strategy of mitigation using airstrikes is possible, but such a campaign must not become geographically limitless. Unmanned aerial vehicles lead to geographical limitlessness. That is their charm; that is their danger.

Stratfor qualify very much for the “reality-based world view” label: they may be blinkered by ideology but they face up to the facts, whether it’s w.r.t. the “Arab Spring”, EMU crisis dynamics or the US’ war on terror.

The German austerians are at it again

Remember when the troika not so subtly put pressure on Greek voters before the latest elections – hinting that the loans would be cut off in case Syriza won and followed through on their campaign promises?

Well, now that Berlusconi has been riding on a wave of discontent, they’re at it again as Spiegel reports:

“We are of course not a party in the Italian campaign,” German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle told the center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung in comments printed on Tuesday. “But whoever ends up forming the next government, we are emphatic that (Rome’s) pro-European path and necessary reforms are continued.”
…
Polenz, a senior member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats, said: “Italy needs political leaders who stand for the future. Berlusconi is certainly not one of them.”

They do this by means of the mass media of course and Spiegel is only too happy to do their bidding:

A Berlusconi victory, many fear, could result in an immediate rise in Italian borrowing costs and a return to the critical situation in which Rome found itself in late 2011[.]

Note how it isn’t made clear who the “many” are. And given that Berlusconi polls strong enough to potentially get the most votes, there are obviously “many” who believe he will improve the situation of Italian citizens.

When the US were putting pressure on Nicaraguan voters in 2006, one of their former presidents, Jimmy Carter, spoke out against it. Wish something like this would happen in Europe.

It's the unemployment, stupid!

Reblogged from occasional links & commentary:

• 

You don't have to be a macroeconomist to understand why inflation has virtually disappeared in Greece.

The official inflation rate fell to 0.2 percent in January, while the EU-harmonized consumer inflation rate was 0.0 percent.

And that's because unemployment has climbed to an all-time record of 27 percent.

Which, coupled with cuts in public sector pay and pensions, means that households' real disposable income over the past three years has shrunk by almost a third.

Read more… 13 more words

The Japanese picture is getting clearer (for me)

Heiner Flassbeck discusses Krugman’s take on Japan at his site Flassbeck-Economics. In particular, he criticizes the view of Japan’s lack of inflation as being related to a “liquidity trap”, and points out:

Nominal wages (compensation of employees) have been falling in absolute terms most of the time in Japan since 1998 (chart ULC and wages) and have found their way back above the zero line only recently but with growth rates below one percent. Unit labour costs (compensation per head divided by Gross domestic product per head), clearly the best predictor of inflation in all developed countries of the world including Japan (chart ULC and inflation), have been falling consistently since the mid of the 1990s. They were above zero only in years of sharp downswings of the economy and falling productivity. Real wages were on a random walk below and above zero with the latter associated with periods of absolutely falling prices and increased uncertainty.

Considering the non-monetarist inflation theories of demand pull and cost push it is obvious that against the deflationary forces of falling cost levels for the overall economy and sluggish demand from consumers monetary policy is powerless. The diminished expectations and the uncertainty of Japanese private households concerning their future income and deflation as such prevent private consumption from taking a lead role in a recovery. To call that constellation a liquidity trap is misleading.