Let me save some of Prof. Delong's valuable time...

... and take out the trash that is the National Review. I may not be a trained economist, but I can copy-paste.

Here's how Buzzchart-guy Jerry Bowyer describes the housing bubble:

[...]there isn't one.

His first argument:

Remember, if it didn’t burst, it wasn’t a bubble.

And here's Wikipedia:

Unlike a stock market crash following a bubble, a real-estate "crash" is usually a slower process, because sellers just decide not to sell. Historically due to inflation, prices do not fall in nominal terms, rather they stay "flat" for a period of 3-5 years.

His second argument:

[...] the economic fundamentals that have been driving housing are still driving it. [...] More people with more money and relatively cheap mortgages is translating to an orderly slowdown in a cyclical market.

Once again, Wikipedia:
And his final argument:

Larry Kudlow, Brian Wesbury, Steve Forbes, and BuzzCharts have been saying [it] all along.

In reply to which I refer you to the world-renowned experts at The Poor Man Institute For Freedom and Democracy and a Pony:

Tell me: how rich would you be right now if, every time something was posted on a right-wing message board, or everytime Drudge had an exclusive, or any time Rush Limbaugh revealed a secret truth that the liberal media won't tell you, you called up your bookie and put down $20 even money on "bullshit"? The correct answer is: "pretty fucking rich". The correct answer is: "I would never, never lose." So, if anyone doubts my methodology, I have a crisp new $20 bill that just told me that I'm 100% right and you're just too dumb to see it. If any of you champs out there think me and Andrew Jackson are both wrong, well then, today's your lucky day, because we're paying 2:1. If you need us, we'll be on the couch playing ESPN NHL 2K5. Peace.

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Big is beautiful

This is the Nightwatch:
You might have heard of it. It is Rembrandt van Rijn's most famous painting. It is also his biggest, measuring 3.60 by 4.37 meters. It's a big painting.

And this is another painting by Rembrandt:

As I hope you can see, it's slightly smaller than the Nightwatch. (I resized the pictures to present them in the same scale but I have no idea what your browser will do with them.)

It is called "The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis". It is not Rembrandt van Rijn's most famous painting. It was commissioned by the Amsterdam burghomasters to hang in the public hall of their new City Hall on Dam Square.

The burghomasters did not like the painting. First of all, they had wanted Rembrandt's former pupil Govert Flinck to paint it, but he died. Bummer. Second, they thought it was too dark. But third and foremost, Rembrandt made the protagonist, Claudius Civilis, look ugly. That was unforgivable.

Claudius Civilis was a Batavian leader who, in 69 AD, had staged a successful uprising against the Romans (successful in the sense that he and his Batavians weren't extinguished by the Romans: they surrendered alright, but under better terms than before their uprising).

The new City Hall had been opened in 1655, just 7 years after an 80-year long uprising against the Spanish Empire had been succesful. The burghomasters had to go back all the way to 69 AD to find another somewhat succesful, somewhat Dutch uprising. In short, Claudius Civilis was a Dutch hero. And you don't spit on Superman's cape. So no they didn't like Rembrandt's painting.

But you could hardly blame Rembrandt: one of the few details known about Claudius Civilis' looks was that he had lost an eye, so he painted him with just one eye. He could have chosen to paint Claudius en profil, but that's Rembrandt for you: always the realist.

In 1662 the painting was removed from City Hall and replaced with a piece by Jurriaen Ovens, a painter so obscure not even Wikipedia has heard of him. Rembrandt himself cut the painting down to size, presumably so he could sell it on to someone with a less spacious abode. It now hangs in the Swedish National Museum.

But, this being a Rembrandt year with his 400th birthday and all, Dutch Rembrandt expert Ernst van de Wetering has done us the favour of matching the current painting with the preliminary sketches. And shit, was this a big painting!



Again, I think most browsers will fuck this up, but trust me. The original painting measured something like 6 by 6.5 meters, that's almost 2.5 times bigger than the Night Watch. It was a huge motherfucker.

My first guess is that if the Amsterdam officials had left the painting where it was, we would now be talking about "The Claudius Civilis" and "The Company of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch".

My second guess is that on that fateful day in 1662 when they forced Rembrandt to cut up his own painting, Amsterdam officialdom started on it's downward trajectory that would eventually lead to them refusing me to build an annex on my roof terrace slightly larger than the maximum 6 square meters in size. They just don't get that big is beautiful.

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Dutch government resigns

And over the Hirsi Ali flap, no less.

Prime-minister Balkenende will be tending Queen Beatrix his government's resignation today.

Here's (the extended version of) why:

1. Hirsi Ali had lied on her asylum request about things great and small. I don't blame her for that, she was fleeing a forced marriage. But the marriage was to be with a distant cousin living in Canada. She was living in Kenya before that. The Somalian civil war did not endanger her life. In short, her refugee status was bogus.
   
2. All this was common knowledge, as Hirsi Ali had told of it in interviews, and nobody seemed to mind. However, the conservative VVD party (Hirsi Ali's own party) had internal elections for lijsttrekker in the next elections. Sort of a primary. One of the candidates was Rita Verdonk, Minister for Integration and Immigration. Already known as Iron Rita, she intended to win by sounding even tougher on immigration than usual.
3. A Dutch television program did a documentary on Hirsi Ali where they rehashed all the asylum stuff that was already known because Hirsi Ali had told it. They also took the trouble to go to Kenya where they found some relatives who denied that Hirsi Ali's marriage was forced upon her. Arranged, yes. Forced, no. Or something like that.
4. Opposition party LPF (even more right wing than the VVD, there's a reason Rita was tacking to the right: there's votes in them thar waters) asked the Minister to look into the matter. That's where the farce began.
5. It took Verdonk only three days to declare that, because Hirsi Ali had lied about her birthdate and true name, her citizenship was invalid. This in spite of the fact that the Minister is supposed to have some room for leniency in "special circumstances". To further complicate matters, Hiris Ali was an MP. Getting elected into Parliament using a fake identity is a crime. Even worse, having a fraud MP might very well be unconstitutional. Somehow, these issues went largely undiscussed in the following melee.
6. Everybody piled on Rita. Her fellow VVD Minister Gerrit Zalm said she had disqualified herself from becoming lijsttrekker (literally: "list puller". It's the guy that heads the party list on the ballot with all the candidates for MP. We don't have have elections for government). The backtracking began. Forced by Parliament to look into the matter -again- she suddenly stated that Hirsi Ali's citizenship was still valid during the period of reexamination. Hirsi Ali had already resigned from Parliament and signed up with the American Enterprise Institute, a definitive move up in the scheme of things.
   
7. At some time in this period, Verdonk also made clear that while Hirsi Ali's citizenship can be revoked, the same is not true for her residency permit, on the grounds that it was granted over 12 years ago.
   
8. On May 31st, Rita Verdonk lost the internal election for VVD lijsttrekker to Mark Rutte, who's more to the left (within the conservative VVD).
9. Last Tuesday, Verdonk presented her new findings to Parliament. Surprise, surprise, this time she found that Hirsi Ali still is Dutch. According to Verdonk, Hirsi Ali had presented to her new convincing evidence regarding the appropriateness of her last name and on retrospection the false date of birth did not carry that much weight. Acccompanying this was a statement by Hirsi Ali saying that her father was born "Ali" and only later adopted the "Magan" monniker for himself, thus Somalian customs and laws allowed her to call herself Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She concludes with "These are facts that could not have been known to the Minister and I fully understand that she acted as she did. I regret that my admission [her earlier admission to having lied about her name, je] put the minister on the wrong track."
10. Verdonk seemed poised to survive the debate. Until it came out that Hirsi Ali had only signed the statement while under considerable duress. On Monday she (Hirsi Ali) was in Washington DC looking at rental appartments, when she was called that Verdonk had prepared a statement for her to sign. Only, Verdonk demanded that the signed statement be faxed back to The Hague in time for her (Verdonk's) pre-debate meeting with Prime-Minister Balkenende. That left Hirsi Ali with 90 minutes to find a fax machine, receive the statement, mull it over, and send it back. Furthermore, she was travelling on her Dutch passport. Refusal to sign could mean she'd lose her visum.
    
11. To get this farce over with, Hirsi Ali signed a watered-down version of the statement (she didn't agree with the original). It is unclear wether Prime Minister Balkenende was told of these circumstances by Verdonk. He was the idiot who, in an incredibly stupid move, told Parliament.
    
12. On Thursday morning, Groen-links, a left wing opposition party, called for a vote of no confidence (literally: "a motion of distrust") on Minister Verdonk. Normally such motions only succeed when one or more coalition parties decides to abandon ship. Coalitions have parliamentary majorities, after all. This time however, coalition partner D66 supported the motion, but it still failed. The right wing LPF and the christian-fundamentalist SGP both defended the Minister.
    
13. This left D66 in a rather awkward position. The D66 ministers tried one last time to force Verdonk to resign, but when the coalition partners (VVD and the christian-democrats CDA) would not budge they had no option but to resign and withdraw support from the government.
14. This left Prime Minister Balkenende in a rather awkward position. With his government coalition down to two parties, it no longer commanded a majority in Parliament. But there had been no "motions of distrust" passed against Verdonk, let alone one against his cabinet as a whole. The two remaining coalition parties could simply continue as a minority cabinet. But that was last done before World War II. Or, conversely, Balkenende could resign, opening the way for new elections.
15. Balkenende went for new elections. He offered the Queen his resignation this morning. Now, the debate can focus on when those elections are to be held. Specifically, will they be held before or after the third Tuesday of September. Because that's the day when the new budget is announced. Since the economic news has been rather good lately, there's room for vote-wooing measures in the budget (although officially, a government that is demissionair, i.e. that has resigned and is awaiting new parliamentary elections, should only mind the shop and not present the old Parliament with fancy new plans). Also, the VVD and CDA are down in the polls. Clearly, delaying the elections until after the budget is in their best interest, even if it is also common sense: you can't have a general election during the holidays because of low turnout, and you can't reasonably expect a new government to present a new budget on Prinsjesdag unless elections are held within a month.

And that's it. Elections will probably be held somewhere in the fall.

UPDATE:
Slight editing to take the gaffe of Balkenende into account.

More importantly, it seems that the VVD and CDA (the rump cabinet) are going for gold. Although Queen Beatrix did accept Balkenende's resignation, she also appointed former Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers (he of the groping at the U.N. fame) as informateur. Normally, an informateur is appointed after general elections. His job is to see if a (majority) coalition can be formed, if the involved parties agree in principle. After that, a formateur is appointed by the Queen to hammer out a detailed agreement between the parties.

However, Ruub Lubber's brief is to see wether a CDA/VVD minority cabinet is possible. There already is a CDA/VVD minority cabinet, so that shouldn't be much of a problem. Lubber's main job is to see wether a majority of Parliament will let the current crew continue. If so, then the Queen will probably also appoint a formateur, although, to quote Wikipedia, "neither of these positions described in any law, instead they are part of Dutch political tradition". There really is no need for a formateur this time, but traditions are there to be followed.

The upshot of all this?

(1) The rump cabinet will not be demissionair, so it has the right to present Parliament with new (instead of just ongoing) legislation. In practice, this will probably mean stuffing the budget with all sorts of new and unexpected goodies.

(2) The CDA and VVD will get to choose when the new elections are held. Once a cabinet is demissionair elections have to be held within three months, but now the active rump cabinet can continue, in theory until May 2007 (general elections have to be held at least every four years). But any misstep they make can be punished, so they won't even try it. They aim to have elections in November, shortly after the new and improved budget is presented.

(3) Since the existing cabinet has resigned only to be replaced by the existing cabinet, officially Balkenende will have headed three Dutch governments in 6 years. The first (CDA/VVD/LPF) lasted 87 days. The third (CDA/VVD) will last something like 120 days. Italiaanse toestanden.

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With flacks like these, who needs enemies?

Martin Peretz is a self-confessed Al Gore fan who wants Al Gore to run in 2008. Nevermind that on Iraq they don't really agree, with Gore being right (he endorsed Howard Dean in 2004) and Peretz, endorsing Bush, being wrong. Apparently Al Gore is now the guy Marty wants to drink a beer with.

And lo' and behold, Peretz has a post up on the TNR blog, titled: OK, I'm a Gore flack.

Now, I would normally just have posted a comment, but TNR blogs only allow comments by subscribers. Here's my question: is it too much to ask from a self-confessed flack that he refrain from repeating negative lies about the flackee? Here's Peretz praising Gore:

Now, Gore is not all serious. Tonight he'll be on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" on Comedy Central at 11 p.m. (Eastern). Tomorrow morning he'll be on ABC's "The View." Anyone who does these rounds is comfortable in his own skin, even if he once took some bad advice to wear "earth tones" from Naomi Wolf. (emphasis mine, je).

Both Naomi Wolf and Al Gore publicly denied this "earth tone" business back in 2000. It was a fabrication. Not even an embellishment of wardrobe-related comments. It never happened.

But never mind. Suppose that it had been true. Why would an honest flack bring it up?

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The not-so-beautiful game

From the Guardian World Cup weblog comes a good analysis of why Valentin Ivanov is a lousy referee. And yes, that game is still bothering me.

Valentin Ivanov, for example, should be released from further refereeing duties on the grounds of ill-health since the Russian is displaying all the symptoms of Kreitlein's disease, an affliction which takes its name from Rudolf Kreitlein, the bombastic little West German who was put in charge of the 1966 quarter-final between England and Argentina at Wembley. After booking numerous Argentinians, Kreitlein sent off their captain Antonio Rattín because he objected to the expression on the player's face.

When Holland met Portugal on Sunday Ivanov was Kreitlein revisited with knobs on. In a match which produced only 25 fouls the Russian managed to show 16 yellow cards and four reds. Compare that to the anodyne affair between Switzerland and Ukraine in which there were 44 fouls but only one yellow card. Fifa should have been alerted after the scoreless bore between France and Switzerland in which nothing untoward occurred, although Ivanov still managed to book eight players.

True, Holland and Portugal did little to make life easy for the referee. The early hacks on Cristiano Ronaldo by Mark van Bommel and Khalid Boulahrouz, either of which could have brought the Dutch a red card, did as much to sour the mood as Ivanov's flood of cautions and Luis Figo is the luckiest player in Germany to have avoided dismissal for headbutting Van Bommel. That said, Ivanov's failure to control the game from an early stage merely encouraged the teams to dive and swoon in order to get each other cautioned or sent off.

By issuing too many yellow cards too soon Ivanov made himself a hostage to an Abramovich-sized fortune. Three of his four red cards were justified by the twisted logic of his approach to the game. Like Poll, he would have been in trouble with Fifa had he not sent off those who received second yellow cards. Nevertheless the second caution of Deco, for alleged time-wasting after he had held on to the ball for all of two seconds was, in legalese, a case of reductio ad absurdum in which a proposition is disproved by showing that its inevitable consequences would be absurd. This just about summed Ivanov's performance in general.

More wise words in the comment-string (from EJMac):

This has been the worst world cup since I started watching in 1982 (a particularly good year to start).
The refereeing has been atrocious, the diving, feigning injury & all round lack of sportsmanship is at a all time high and you really start to believe that FIFA are doing more harm than good to the game.
Of the 32 sides, only Argentina & Germany have really impressed consistently Italy have been patchy as have Brazil. The other main European contenders have been either poor (England & France) or hugely inconsistent (Spain, Holland, Portugal). for the countries from the minority confederations, Ghana & the Ivory Coast proved African football is on still going in the right direction and will be rewarded with a 6th place when South Africa host the tournament in 4 years time. Asia/Oceania will need to up their game of the 4 countries South Korea & Oz played some decent football but Japan were ordinary and Saudia Arabia & Iran are not good enough. Of the central & North American quartet all showed glimpses of what they can do but in the harsh reality of World Cup football they have had 1 place to many. I think it would make more sense for concaf to merge with South America for the purpose of qualifying.

Word.

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I am back and I bring you football predictions...

The holiday was great, thank you.

Two quick predictions for today:

1. The English will get past Ecuador. The English press and fans suffer from a severe case of nationalistic football hubris (on holiday I read a Guardian article that called the English "one of the favorites" while referring to the Spanish team as "dark horses"). It will not matter wether England squeeze past Ecuador or manage a solid victory, headlines tomorrow will have the English on full march towards Berlin. This will make the gloating over the inevitable downfall all the more fulfilling and justified.
2. The Dutch will not get past Portugal. The Dutch fans suffer from a severe case of nationalistic football hubris. The press, not so much. Since 1974 and 1978 most press coverage of the Dutch team can be headlined either "What could go wrong?", "What went wrong?" or "Why didn't it go wrong?". If the Portugese score an early goal, I expect Dutch commentators to start mentioning the name Huntelaar at half time and not stop until the first qualifier for Euro2008. Gloating over the inevitable downfall will still be fulfilling and justified, but a shade less so then with the English.
   

More in the abstract, I would like the World Cup to be won be a team that (1) plays beautifully and wins convincingly, (2) is, despite of it's beautiful play and convincing wins, an underdog.

Brazil have won far too often, France have won too recently, Germany has won too often and has home advantage. England and Holland suffer from hubris that the Gods will never allow to go unpunished. Portugal or Spain would be good candidates.
That said, I am of course rooting for the Dutch. I will cheer even a totally undeserved win.

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Stanley Kurtz....

...is at it again.

Gay marriage undermines marriage....okay, I admit it. I’m a cranky, stick-in-the-mud conservative who keeps making the same tired old point.

And again, he fails to provide proof, sticking instead to his familiar method of talking out of his ass.

So, once more I get to remind people that Stanley Kurtz is a quack who got his Harvard PhD by expanding Freudian quackery from the mere individual to entire peoples ("psychoanalytical sociology" it's called. You should read Kurtz on the Oedipus Complex of the Trobriand Islanders). Quackety quack.

(Crossposted at A Fistful of Euros).

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