Via Atrios and Krugman, Third Wayer William Galston claims to have discovered, appropriately in The New Republic, "a new theory" of our economic troubles - it is the household balance sheet due to the homeowners crisis:

Movement conservatives argue that the weight of a government that “spends too much, taxes too much, and borrows too much” [. . .] Keynesian liberals, meanwhile, counter that the problem is the collapse of demand and that the government’s failure to offer a large enough stimulus is consigning us to a rate of growth not easy to distinguish from stagnation. What if they’re both wrong? That’s the claim of Amir Sufi, a finance professor at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. The data tell a compelling story, he argues: “The main factor responsible for both the severity of the recession and the subsequent weakness of the economic recovery is the deplorable weakness of the U.S. household balance sheet,” which is, Sufi shows, “in worse condition than at any other point in history since the Great Depression.”

Heh. Tomorrow, Galston will invent the wheel.

Speaking for me only

Why do people confess to crimes they didn't commit? Frontline tonight is airing "The Confessions", the story of the Norfolk 4.

How could four men confess to a brutal crime that they didn't commit? Inside the incredible saga of the Norfolk Four -- a case that cracks open the justice system to reveal almost everything that goes wrong when innocent people get convicted.

Update: Netflix customers are not taking the news well.

Is Netflix shooting itself in the foot by raising prices 60% and de-bundling streaming from physical dvds?

Customers in the United States who want both services will pay $7.99 per month to rent one DVD at a time plus $7.99 for unlimited streaming, or a total of $15.98 per month, the company said on Tuesday. The previous cost of this plan was $9.99 a month.

I think the problem for Netflix is that its offerings are dated. The best of the new movies aren't available for streaming. Why pay $7.99 for a new movie on DVD from Netflix when you can get it the same day it's released in HD for $5.99 via On Demand? (And avoid the hassle of fast-forwarding through four or five previews?) [More...]

Big Brother is back tonight on CBS for Season 13. There will only be 8 new houseguests, as the rest will be retreads from prior seasons. Please don't let it be Rachel or Enzo, but of course, who else would they pick but the most annoying people of seasons past? Those are the best picks for ratings. Hate, like guilt, sells in America. (Update: CBS is so clever. They picked the hated Rachel to return, but also brought Jeff and Jordan back, probably the nicest and most easy-going contestants I've seen on the show. Looks like it will be a great season. There's two really annoying new male contestants, and one overly chirpy soccer mom-type, but the rest of the group seems fine.)

We had the fiercest thunderstorm a few hours ago, right at rush hour. All the bushes in my backyard are lying on their side. The local news had a field day, tornado sirens were going off and they had to keep reassuring viewers there were no funnel clouds. The emergency broadcast system interrupted with flash flood warnings, and driving home must have been a nightmare. Glad I got home before it started. Were any of you out and about?

For those of you not watching Big Brother, and I assume that's all of you reading this, here's an open thread, all topics welcome.

Congrats to Javier Colon, who won The Voice tonight. (He was my second choice after Beverly McClellan, who didn't make the final two.)

How Dia Frampton even made the final four with her whispery voice and her lack of stage presence (despite her very pretty face) was a mystery to me. But when she made it to the top two tonight over Beverly and Vicci Martinez, both of whom outshone and outsang Dia by miles, I figured it out. Carson Daley said last night, Dia's performance on the live show made it to number 1 on iTunes (Javier made it to number 2 of iTunes last night.) Every purchase on iTunes counted as a vote for that artist. So the votes were not just determined, like other shows, by those phoning, texting or the web, but by purchases on iTunes. [More...]

Writing about the Obama Administration actions against confidential journalistic sources and whistleblowers, Glenn Greenwald writes:

Along with the apathetic, who by definition pose no threat to anyone, prominent cheerleaders for the President and his party, who labor every day to keep them in power, are the last ones who will be subjected to such programs. Obviously, nobody in the Obama administration is monitoring the phone calls at the Center for American Progress or ones placed to the large stable of columnists, bloggers and TV stars who daily spout White House talking points or devote each day to attacking the President's political opponents. That's why purported civil liberties concerns manifest only when the other party is in power, but vanish when their own is. Partisan loyalists are indifferent to their leader's ability to deter dissent; if anything, they're happy that their party's leader wields such power and can use it against political adversaries.

While I think the language is too strong (particularly on being happy that the Leader is wielding such power against political enemies), as a general matter, partisans are less concerned about what their Leader is doing. But I think a "so what?" is in order (to me as well on the Libya Congressional authorization question ) in this sense - did anyone expect otherwise? It is time to readjust expectations - there are team players on both sides. I think in general members of the Democratic team have less need for contortions, but will do so as required. I understand Greenwald's frustration, but fixation on what the "team" players are doing is not productive imo. I used to do it myself, but no more. At least, less of it.

Speaking for me only

In a Naked Capitalism post extremely critical of this Ezra Klein piece, I was struck by this part:

We then get to more dictation from the Ministry of Truth via Klein:

What’s remarkable about the financial crisis isn’t just how many people got it wrong, but how many people who got it wrong had an incentive to get it right. Journalists. Hedge funds. Independent investors. Academics. Regulators. Even traders, many of whom had most of their money tied up in their soon-to-be-worthless firms. “Inside Job” is perhaps strongest in detailing the conflicts of interest that various people had when it came to the financial sector, but the reason those ties were “conflicts” was that they also had substantial reasons — fame, fortune, acclaim, job security, etc. — to get it right.

Huh? He can write this with a straight face? He has the incentives 100% wrong. Asset bubbles are very popular. They look like increased wealth to the community. That’s why regulators are reluctant to intervene. If they do, they make people look less prosperous immediately, and they can’t prove the counterfactual, if they had left things alone, the damage would have been worse. [. . .] Did Klein miss the rise of access journalism? Clearly so.

(Emphasis supplied.) I doubt Ezra is unaware of the dangers of access journalism, but he is incentivized to ignore it at this point. But I am not big on motive-based analysis and critiques. I'd rather read the "reporting" and analysis on its own terms. More . . .

Captain Louis Renault: What in heaven's name brought you to Casablanca?
Rick Blaine: My health. I came to Casablanca for the waters.
Captain Louis Renault: The waters? What waters? We're in the desert!
Rick Blaine: I was misinformed.

So Jon Stewart said that Fox News viewers were the most misinformed. The new "fair and balanced" "fact checker" Politifact said that was false, Fox News viewers were not the most "ill-informed." Yes, "misinformed" and "ill-informed" do not mean the same thing. See Media Matters on the success of the Fox News misinformation mission.

Moral of the story? "Fact checkers" are hacks too. Politifact is just the latest. Problem is people like to cite to "fact checkers" when they say what they like. Solution? Stop citing to "fact checkers."

Speaking for me only

Sad news: Legendary saxophonist, Clarence Clemons, who delighted everyone at Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band concerts for decades, has passed away at 69, following complications from a stroke suffered a week ago.

He was always one of the highlights of the concerts for me. When he started playing, everything seemed to kick up a notch. This clip is from Hyde Park in London in 2009. Clarence comes in around the two minute mark.

R.I.P. Clarence.

According to Forbes, and its new list of the world's top ten wanted fugitives, Pablo Escobar can roll over in his grave. The DEA says He's been surpassed by El Chapo, Joaquin Guzman, as the biggest drug lord ever.

Not only that, El Chapo is Number One on the list, surpassing even al Qaeda's Ayman al-Zawahiri.

It's interesting that the U.S. considers a drug trafficker to be more dangerous than the leader of a terrorist group whose goal is to bring down America through violent means. Forbes full list of the most wanted is here.

In less weighty news, Mildred Baena, Arnold Schwarzenegger's former housekeeper and mother of their child together,has decided to tell her story and share a photo of 13 year old Joseph. She says Joseph was told a year ago that Arnold was his father. His response was, "Cool."

She hopes Arnold and Maria can patch things up.

All the people that was rooting on me to fail, at the end of the day they have to wake up tomorrow and have the same life that they had before they woke up today. They have the same personal problems they had today. I’m going to continue to live the way I want to live and continue to do the things that I want to do with me and my family and be happy with that. - LeBron James in post NBA Final loss press conference.

From a public relations perspective, there is no doubt that this was an idiotic thing for LeBron James to say. (Full disclosure, I invested on the Heat to win the NBA title at the beginning of the playoffs so his failure affected me personally.) But it does raise questions - as sports fans - why do we care so much? And does our caring about sports detract from the rest of our lives? On the flip.