January 22, 2009

Tyler Cowen's snippy review of the Cochran-Harpending book

You can read it here at Marginal Revolution.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

The Inauguration: An Orgy of Kitsch

As Dennis Dale noted even before the Inaugural Kitschfest, Milan Kundera pointed out that:
Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass! The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass! It is the second tear that makes kitsch kitsch.

In his fine new book The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution, Denis Dutton expands upon Kundera's insight:
The first tear is what we shed in the presence of a tragic, pitiful, or perhaps beautiful event. The second tear is shed in recognition of our own sensitive nature, our remarkable ability to feel such pity, to understand such pathos or beauty. A love of kitsch is therefore essentially self-congratulatory. In a withering critique of Sir Luk Fildes's The Doctor (1891, Tage Gallery), Clive Bell says that this famous portrayal of a thoughtful physician with a sick child creates what he calls a "false" emotion. What the painting gives us "is not pity and admiration but a sense of complacency in our own pitifulness and generosity."

The kitsch object openly declares itself to be "beautiful," "profound," "moving," or "important." But it does not bother trying to embody these qualities, because it is actually about its audience, or its owner. The ultimate reference point for kitsch is always me: my needs, my tastes, my deep feelings, my worthy interests, my admirable morality. ...

Kitsch shows you nothing genuinely new, changes nothing in your bright shining soul; to the contrary, it congratulates you for being exactly the refined person you already are.

Sound familiar?

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

January 21, 2009

"W."

Here's by review from The American Conservative of Oliver Stone's movie about the ex-President:

Given the limitations of Oliver Stone’s biopic about George W. Bush (modest budget, rushed production, lack of memoirs by the officials who started the Iraq War, and Stone’s own fading powers), “W.” turns out better than expected. Anchored by another charismatic performance by Josh Brolin (the hunter turned hunted protagonist of “No Country for Old Men”), this tragicomedy of regression to the mean offers a plausible depiction of the President’s resentful yet admiring relationship with his imposing father, and the complicated ways that set the stage for the 2003 Iraq invasion.

Brolin has emerged recently as such an enjoyable leading man to watch that he makes spending 129 minutes with George W. Bush fun.

The historical accuracy of Stone’s films has been improving since their nadir with the infuriating but stylistically dazzling “JFK” in 1991. Unfortunately, as the older, wiser Stone has gotten more honest, his aesthetic bravura has dwindled. I only noticed two scenes that seemed distinctly dubious: Dick Cheney ranting about America acquiring a global empire of oil, and a 1988 passage in which Dubya talks his dad into running the Willie Horton ad. (The undying omnipresence of favorite liberal talking points like Willie Horton in our cultural memory points out that history isn’t actually written by the victors, it’s written by the writers of history.) The great majority of the screenplay, though, strikes me as on solid ground, historically and psychologically.

Visually, Stone seems to be trying to make “W.” look even more like a made-for-TV movie (maybe one of those Dallas reunion specials) than the limited budget mandated. The score is weak. Other than a creepy-acting Thandie Newton as Condoleezza Rice, the supporting actors don’t look like much like their real-life counterparts (Richard Dreyfuss as Dick Cheney?), but turn in competent performances.

And don’t expect a complete portrait of the origin of the War—there’s barely any mention of the neocons or of Bush’s unquestioning political correctness that made him assume Iraqis (!) were ready for democracy.

Still, “W.” is entertaining, informative, and likable. It has not been a success with the critics, who are annoyed that it doesn’t condemn conservatism as inherently evil. Indeed, Stone’s depiction of George H.W. Bush as an old-fashion prudent conservative is downright hagiographic. The 6’-7” James Cromwell, best known as the farmer in the talking pig classic “Babe,” brings more gravitas to the role of the 41st President than did the boyishly goofy elder Bush himself.

Stone was the natural choice to film the empathetic screenplay by Stanley Weisberg (who cowrote “Wall Street” with him two decades ago) because he has much in common with the President, such as substance abuse problems, a religious conversion, and declining popularity. The son of a Wall Street tycoon, Stone entered Yale the same year as Bush. Stone’s rebellion played out more flagrantly. While Bush followed his father’s path (Skull and Bones, military aviation, oil, and politics), just more drunkenly, Stone volunteered for combat duty in Vietnam (as shown in his “Platoon.”)

It’s unfortunate that Freud’s silly theories have discredited all psychological analyses based on nuclear family dynamics, because they can sometimes explain much about politicians. The ambitions of both Winston Churchill and Barack Obama, for example, were fired by political fathers who ignored their sons on the way up, before failing ignominiously.

George W. Bush’s Poppy Problem was the opposite of Obama’s: his father was an all around pretty good guy. As Stone commented, “Forty years is a long time to wait when your father is better at sports, politics, oil, money, diplomacy, and even academics than you are.” Nor did it help that his dad saw W.’s younger brother Jeb as his natural successor in the White House.

The relationship between father and son also had its good side. The father kept giving the prodigal son second chances, and W. finally repaid him, quitting drinking the day after his boozy 40th birthday party in 1986, in part to keep his behavior from distracting from his father’s White House run. He went on to be a surprisingly decent governor of Texas by concentrating on just four reforms. Then, the Peter Principle promoted him to his “level of incompetence,” the Presidency.

While the father was known as the In-Box President, the younger Bush wanted to be the opposite, the Pushbutton President, the decider who makes a few big, tough choices based on gut instinct, then lets the Pentagon sweep up without bothering him with tiresome details.

Rated PG-13.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

"The Women"

Here's my review in The American Conservative of last fall's remake of Clare Booth Luce's 1939 comedy classic with an all-female cast, "The Women."

Isn't it irritating when a know-it-all movie critic trashes a new release just because it's not as good as its classic source (whether that be an older film, book, play, TV show, or theme park ride). That's a tiresome routine because it's mathematically certain that most new movies will be comparatively worse than the material upon which they are based. The average new movie is, inevitably, average in quality, while the famous old works that Hollywood spends tens of millions adapting into new flicks were almost all above average.

On the other hand, the differences between the source and the new release offer useful clues to the filmmakers' point of view, and can illustrate the evolution of attitudes over the decades.

Therefore, my rule as a reviewer is to watch the new film first to see what my unbiased reaction is, then read the book or watch the old DVD.

The new version of "The Women" illustrates the value of this approach. It had been a couple of decades since I'd seen George Cukor's 1939 version of the satirical play by Clare Booth Luce (the future grande dame of the American Right) about Park Avenue ladies who lunch. So, I found the new film -- a chick flick buddy comedy about Mary (Meg Ryan) and Sylvia (Annette Bening), the squabbling best friends forever who eventually team up again to win Mary's husband back from the scheming perfume counter vixen Crystal (Eva Mendes) -- to be quite likable.

Compared to last summer's hit, "Sex and the City," "The Women" is shorter, less tawdry, somewhat funnier, and Meg Ryan is easier on the eyes than Sarah Jessica Parker. Some of the stars appear too Botoxed to manage understated facial expressions, but we don't live in an age of subtlety, so little is lost.

But then I watched the original from Hollywood's annus mirabilis of 1939, and it makes the 2008 effort seem like The Importance of Being Earnest as rewritten to serve as a very special episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show.

Norma Shearer, the stubby, cross-eyed Canadian whose indomitable determination made her Queen of MGM, brought her refinement and silent movie acting skills to the role of Mary, the betrayed upper class wife bravely trying to keep up the façade while crumbling inside. Shearer's real-life rival, Joan Crawford, who now seems too much the screen legend to be believable in most of her roles, was perfectly cast as the phony gold-digger Crystal. When playing herself -- an ambitious broad on the make trying to act the lovely lady -- she's awfully appealing.

And, in her first comic role, the great comedienne Rosalind Russell ("His Girl Friday" and "Auntie Mame") prefigured the I Love Lucy TV series by a decade with the slapstick willfulness of her Sylvia. In contrast to Annette Bening's sympathetic 2008 portrayal of Sylvia as a high-minded fashion magazine editor whose underlings want her to run sleazy cover stories on "How to Get Revenge," Russell's Sylvia was a spoiled stinker in Jungle Red nail polish who spreads poisonous gossip about Mary's marital troubles out of malicious glee.

The remake was intentionally declawed by its writer-director Diane English, creator of Candace Bergen's Murphy Brown television show, out of feminist loyalty to the team. English complained, "… the movie had very old-fashioned ideas that were in great need of updating … The original play and film were written as a poison pen letter to shallow society women who would stab each other in the back over a man … I had to figure out a way to shift the focus. I wanted to celebrate women …"

Self-esteem boosting female empowerment plot developments ahoy! (Aren't there any bitchy gay men left in Hollywood who could have done for the remake what Cukor did in 1939?)

Another question the new version raises is whether a classic comedy of manners can be adapted to an era that disdains manners as pretentious and undemocratic? The upper class just isn't as entertaining as it used to be. After the 1960s social revolution, the rich kept most of their privileges (such as being rich), but shed their traditional responsibility of edifying the masses with their starchy manners and dress. The current cult of authenticity allows the upper crust to live more casual, comfortable lives -- no more dressing for dinner! -- but, as the new "Women" demonstrates, less amusing ones, too.

Rated PG-13 for sex-related material, language, and some drug use.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Request

Last fall, a commenter here cited links to two academic journal articles showing higher mortgage default rates for blacks and Hispanics in the 1990s. Unfortunately, I didn't call attention to them at the time and now I can't find them. If you could repost them, I'd appreciate it.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

I'm on the Chuck Wilder radio show

Starting at 1:05-1:45 pm PACIFIC time.

You can listen in here over the Interwebs.

Update: Went well. An improved performance.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

How to defend George W. Bush

I'm not in the mood to defend George W. Bush, but I suspect that historians will eventually figure out that his big domestic / economic policy mistakes (e.g., allowing so much illegal immigration and promoting zero down payment mortgages to increase minority home ownership) stemmed from him assuming that the rest of the country was like Texas.

Bush had been a decent governor of Texas for six years. And Texas has continued to do relatively well in the eight years since he left Austin (e.g., there was hardly any Housing Bubble in Texas).

Bush knew Texas well, but he didn't know the other 49 states, especially not California. Approaches that worked okay in Texas proved disastrous elsewhere.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Finally, Subprime Foreclosure Rates by Race

A variety of evidence has long pointed toward minorities accounting for a disproportionate fraction of the defaulted subprime mortgage losses that set off the economic crash. This would hardly be surprising since the government pushed hard to increase lending to minorities of marginal creditworthiness in the name of increasing minority homeownership.

The Clinton Administration teamed up with leftist groups like Obama's colleagues at ACORN to push for more lending to minorities. The Bush Administration stepped up the pace, denouncing down payments as barriers holding minorities back from the American Dream, in part to convert the growing Hispanic population into homeowning Republicans.
But, like the guns of Singapore in 1941, the government's statistics-collecting apparatus is designed only to make sure that minorities are getting enough loans, not to count how often they default on their mortgages. So, we've been lacking direct data on foreclosure rates in the current Housing Bubble.

Back in October, a reader calculated from the federal Home Mortgage Disclosure Act database that minorities got half the subprime cash (for home purchases and refinancings) handed out in the big years of 2004-2007. Mortgage dollars (prime and subprime) for home purchases leant to Hispanics went up 691% from 1999 to 2006 and 397% for blacks (but only 218% for Asians and about 100% for whites). In other words, mortgage lending to Hispanics almost octupled from 1999 to the peak of the Housing Bubble in 2006. Thus, a sizable majority of defaulted dollars lost are in just four heavily Hispanic states: California, Arizona, Nevada, and Florida (what Wall Street called the "Sand States").
But, what about foreclosure rates by race?

Two economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Kristopher S. Gerardi and Paul S. Willen, have published an important paper, "Subprime Mortgages, Foreclosures, and Urban Neighborhoods," which provides a solid indication. For the state of Massachusetts, they laboriously matched up federal Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data (which includes ethnicity but not foreclosures) with county registrar office data, which can tell them if the property wound up in foreclosure but doesn't list ethnicity. By collating the two disparate databases, they wound up with foreclosure rates by race for Massachusetts.
Here's their abstract:
This paper analyzes the impact of the subprime crisis on urban neighborhoods in Massachusetts. The topic is explored using a dataset that matches race and income information from HMDA with property‐level, transaction data from Massachusetts registry of deeds offices. With these data, we show that much of the subprime lending in the state was concentrated in urban neighborhoods and that minority homeownerships created with subprime mortgages have proven exceptionally unstable in the face of rapid price declines. The evidence from Massachusetts suggests that subprime lending did not, as is commonly believed, lead to a substantial increase in homeownership by minorities, but instead generated turnover in properties owned by minority residents. Furthermore, we argue that the particularly dire foreclosure situation in urban neighborhoods actually makes it somewhat easier for policymakers to provide remedies.

They go on to write:
The first column in each panel of Table 3 shows the cumulative percentage of subprime ownerships that end in foreclosure. There are substantial differences between minority and white ownership vintages. For example, approximately 15 percent of black, subprime ownerships initiated in 2005 ended in foreclosure by December 2007, compared with 10 percent of Hispanic subprime ownerships, and 6.5percent of white subprime ownerships.
Here's data based on their Table 3:


Black Hispanic White Black / White Hisp / White
1998 8.5% 7.1% 4.1% 2.1 1.7
1999 9.2% 5.1% 2.5% 3.7 2.0
2000 8.1% 8.1% 5.4% 1.5 1.5
2001 8.7% 8.3% 5.2% 1.7 1.6
2002 8.9% 6.2% 4.8% 1.9 1.3
2003 8.6% 6.6% 5.1% 1.7 1.3
2004 12.9% 10.4% 6.6% 2.0 1.6
2005 15.0% 10.3% 6.5% 2.3 1.6
2006 10.2% 6.8% 4.1% 2.5 1.7

Keep in mind that these are cumulative foreclosure percentages up into 2007, with the year representing their "vintage." Normally, you would expect cumulative foreclosure percentages to decline as you get closer to the present since, say, a 2005 vintage mortgage has had less time for bad things to happen to the borrower than a 1999 vintage mortgage. But we see instead a rising cumulative rate peaking in 2004-2005. (And the 2006 ones will probably end up about as bad, or even worse, as the two previous years once their teaser provisions reset after a couple of years.)

So, in Massachusetts, the Non-Asian Minority foreclosure rate on subprime mortgages was about twice the white rate. That didn't change too much over the years, but the proportion of mortgages that were subprime and the proportion of mortgage dollars going to minorities changed radically in the Bush years, contributing sizably to the disastrous mortgage meltdown that began in 2007 and triggered the more general crash of 2008.
If that two to one minority to white foreclosure ratio seen in Massachusetts holds true nationally, where minorities took out half the subprime dollars, then minorities would account for two-thirds of all defaulted subprime dollars.

However, Asians probably have a lower default rate. On the other hand, they largely stayed away from subprime mortgages, so it's not a big issue. So, it's likely that minorities accounted for at least 60% of the subprime dollars defaulted.

In reality, what was truly disastrous was not total defaulted dollars per se but unexpected defaulted dollars. The financial industry expected a certain level of defaults each year due to family tragedies and the like, but they stupidly did not expect a systemic disaster from the government's efforts (e.g., President Bush's 2002 call to add 5.5 million minority home owners by 2010 by zero down payments on home purchases and other dubious means) to push minorities into home ownership. Thus, in California, the epicenter of the Bubble, the percentage of first time home buyers putting zero money down went from under 7% under Clinton to 41% in 2006.

Granted, Massachusetts is not the most representative of states. Still, this data seems to roughly fit what we see elsewhere in terms of where the foreclosures happened. So, it now appears likely that a sizable majority of the unexpectedly defaulted subprime dollars were lost on properties owned by minorities.

Many people can't believe that minorities could account for so much of mortgage meltdown, but there are now over 100 million minorities in the U.S. Furthermore, their mortgages tended to be relatively larger than one might expect because they tend to live in fairly expensive urban areas rather than in dirt cheap rural areas. In the 2006 vintage, for example, the average Hispanic's mortgage was slightly larger than the average non-Hispanic white's, and the average black's was only about 15-20% less. (The high cost of Hispanics' mortgages is due in large measure to so many living in California, where median home prices were almost triple the other 49 states average at the peak of the Housing Bubble.)

This is not to say that minorities are "to blame" for the Mortgage Meltdown. The bipartisan consensus in favor of raising minority homeownership rates through laxer credit standards deserves much of the blame. As does the financial industry's refusal to ask politically incorrect questions about how many NAMs (Non-Asian Minorities) in California and elsewhere could possibly earn enough money to pay back the huge mortgages being handed out in 2003-2007, or could find Greater Fools willing to pay even more to live in slummy neighborhoods.

January 20, 2009

NYT Gets Slimed

Andres Martinez writes in Slate:

As a native of Mexico and a lifetime admirer of (and former editorial writer for) the New York Times, I confess that part of me wants to feel a measure of pride that the Sulzberger family has turned to a Mexican businessman for help. ...

But my Mexican pride doesn't survive a moment's reflection. If the Sulzbergers think they can take Slim's money without tarnishing the newspaper's brand, then America's media elite must really think that Mexico doesn't matter.

Basically, the American media finds Mexico to be various combinations of comic, boring, depressing, and horrifying. We read more, pro and con, about Israel, a country of six million an ocean away, than we do about the country of 110 million with which we share an 1852 mile border. In the last few years, the LA Times has started to run colorful, tabloidish (and I use that term as a compliment) articles on Mexican politicians and mass murderers in hopes of getting the Mexican population of LA to try reading a newspaper, but that's been an exception.

Let's face it. The New York Times would never strike a deal with a U.S. tycoon of a similar profile, for fear of triggering real or apparent conflicts between the newspaper's coverage and the investor's interests. Not that you could ever find such a U.S. tycoon: The conglomerate of Slim-controlled telecom, banking, tobacco, retailing, insurance, construction, and other interests has been estimated to add up to 7 percent of Mexico's GDP. Even in his heyday, John D. Rockefeller accounted for only about 2 percent of the U.S. economy. As Forbes put it in its 2007 ranking of billionaires, Bill Gates or Warren Buffett would have to be worth $784 billion to have a similar share of U.S. wealth as Mr. Slim has of Mexico's wealth.

I should say this is an unaccustomed position for me. As an editorial writer at the Times and as editorial-page editor at the Los Angeles Times, I often found myself defending Big Business against a roomful of reflexively anti-corporate journalists. And, further bolstering my credentials as a capitalist apologist, my father was an executive for a large Mexican bottling company. But this is a bridge too far.

First, the scale of Slim's fortune, and the extent to which it was built on a government-sanctioned monopoly, is scandalously unique. ...

Whether a weak Mexican state can develop and implement muscular antitrust policies to rein in the likes of Slim and foster greater competition is one of the keys to our neighbor's prosperity, which shouldn't be a minor story for an American newspaper. (And it could become a national security story. Stay tuned.) ...

The point is, Slim doesn't have to interfere at all. I know from experience that publishers do intervene in the editorial process, as is their prerogative. And I can assure you that Slim's investment will be a factor, even if unspoken, in editorial decision-making henceforth at the Times. Perhaps Mexico's crony capitalism will remain a mostly neglected topic—but now conspiracies will be read into the neglect. ...

Slim wins either way. When writers and editors do lob an occasional piece into the paper critical of Slim, and they will, he will then be able to brag about it back home, absolving himself of charges of being a thin-skinned bully. Indeed, the conspiracy theory will then become that he ordered the Times—which everyone in Latin America will assume he controls, regardless of the reality—to be critical of him.

Setting aside any specific content in the paper, the mere fact that the Times Co. has allowed itself to become so dependent on Slim's fortune provides him with a priceless seal of approval. It becomes easier for him to write off his critics in Mexico as perennially frustrated leftist whiners. If any of what they alleged were true, after all, would the enlightened and liberal New York Times allow him to become one of its largest shareholders? Slim is lending money to the Sulzbergers for the same reason he has donated to Bill Clinton's foundation.

Just for fun, here's a picture of Mexican native Andres Martinez, who looks less Mexican than Carlos Slim does, and Slim (whose father was named Salim) is 100% Arab (Lebanese Christian).

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

"We have never been at war with Larry Summersasia!"

Natalie Angier of the New York Times writes, "In 'Geek Chic' and Obama, New Hope for Lifting Women in Science," which is the usual, but with one difference. Over the last four years, in practically all of these articles demanding more women get hired as professors of physics, former Harvard president Larry Summers would come in for some ritual denunciating.

But, now, there's no mention of Larry. Why not?

Because The One has chosen him. So, Larry's 2005 heresy has disappeared down the Memory Hole. Obama addicts can't handle cognitive dissonance, so Larry's cognitive dissidence shall never be spoken of again.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Who exploited minority subprime borrowers?

On the CreditSlips blog, Harvard Law School professor Elizabeth Warren (co-author of The Two Income Trap, which I reviewed for VDARE.com in 2003 here), wrote last summer:

From Redlining to Target Practice

posted by Elizabeth Warren

Redlining was a practice that banks once used: hang a map on the wall, draw a red line around minority neighborhoods, and deny all mortgage loans inside the line. The results were devastating--depressed prices because no one could get financing to buy homes and underinvestment in African American and Hispanic communities.

But those bad old days are gone. Now some lenders seem to draw a line around minority neighborhoods, then paint a big bulls-eye on them. That's where they target their worst mortgages. Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley filed suit yesterday against Option One, the mortgage arm of H&R Block, alleging that they piled on costs for non-white families.

The specific examples are breath-taking: A black borrower with a 523 credit score paid $10,635 to refinance $167,000, while a white borrower with a 520 credit score paid $2,275 to refinance $200,000. Coakley said this was happening systematically across Massachusetts and elsewhere in the country. ...

Why isn't there an outcry against H&R Block? This is a well-known company with offices in minority and white communities across the country. Yes, they sold their housing unit this spring, but Coakley says this company followed procedures that systematically targeted minorities to pay far more than whites for the same loans. Coca-cola made national headlines years ago when some executives were caught on tape making racist comments. What about following policies that, if proven, show that this company stripped hard work black and Hispanic families of their money? Where are the boycotts and the cover stories in Newsweek and Time?

A commenter named Russ cut through the HLS professor's naievete and makes an important point:

Here we go again blaming the big bad lenders. I say these types of lawsuits are bunk. I am a black mortgage broker and the reason I say they are bunk is because I would bet a sizeable sum of money that the LOs [loan officers] banging those borrowers for $10k in fees are black too.

See, most successful LOs have a niche. And often that niche is race, ethnicity, religion, etc. That is how you earn business. Often times, when I see minority borrowers getting taken advantage of, it is by other minorities. They prey on the trust factor. The borrowers also don't make any effort to comparison shop. A five minute phone call will expose any broker/banker trying to take advantage of a borrower with excessive fees. Most brokers don't need to make $10k on a loan to be happy. However, without actually seeing the fee break down and specifics of the loan, it is hard to say if $10k in fees is excessive. On the surface it is, but there are times when it is justified particularly if that money is being used to buy out of a prepay penalty, discount points, etc.

Anyone with a 532 FICO score should be happy a bank is even willing to give them a loan, even if it cost $10k. A 532 FICO means you don't pay anything on time... EVER. I wouldn't loan a person with a 532 FICO a stick of gum. I have seen people 6 mos out of bankruptcy with scores higher than a 532. That FICO score is frame on the wall material. It also means one of the other bureaus scores were lower since lenders use the middle score!

It is hard to say these actions are systematic. I have NEVER seen a bank have different pricing for people based on race. The ONLY things that matter are credit, income, assets, property, and loan to value. Any pricing variation is ALWAYS done at the loan officer level since the LO is the one who ultimately controls price (rate and fees). That variation is based on how much work is needed to actually get the file closed. Subprime loans often take a ton of work - massaging credit scores, credit repair, etc....

Like I said, the only discrimination is at the individual LO level. Some LOs may charge more to unsavy borrowers regardless of race. If the borrower isn't shopping the LO and the LO feels they can get away with it, the borrower gets charged more regardless of race.

We know from the Ian Ayres study that Malcolm Gladwell and I notoriously disagreed upon that car dealers expect to extract more profit out of blacks than out of whites, so it would hardly be surprising if loan officer pile more fees on blacks on average. But, an awful lot of the loan officers doing the exploiting will be the same ethnicity. This is especially true for Spanish-speaking borrowers. Of course, borrowers with 532 FICO scores are exploiting lenders, as well. Everybody involved is exploiting savers and taxpayers, which, by now, you could say is pretty much the national pasttime.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

January 19, 2009

Canada's Half-Blood Prince

Here's the opening of my new VDARE.com column:

Barack Obama’s inaugural day is upon us…and Obamamania has reached such comic dimensions that I can’t bring myself to think seriously about it.

So let’s step back and consider Obamamania’s closest analog: the extravagant “Trudeaumania” that propelled an obscure law professor to the prime ministership of Canada in the fateful year 1968.

Pierre Elliott Trudeau had only three years’ experience in Parliament. But, much as Obama introduced himself to the public in his 2004 Democratic convention keynote address with 380 words about how he was the offspring of a mixed-race marriage, Trudeau was famously the son of a Francophone father and an Anglophone mother, making him accent-free in both languages.

As Time Magazine burbled in "Man of Tomorrow" on July 5, 1968:

He seemed a man neither of the left nor of the right, but a man for the future. His campaign was based on the simple, unequivocal proposition: ‘One Canada.’ As a bilingual French Canadian, he appears to be the right man to bring the French-and English-speaking peoples closer together.

Trudeau was Canada’s half-blood prince. J.K. Rowling made this term famous in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, but this concept out of fantasy has long had a shadowy salience in politics. In the Foreword to my book, America’s Half-Blood Prince: Barack Obama’s "Story of Race and Inheritance," the Editor of VDARE.COM, Peter Brimelow, defines a “half-blood prince” as:

An archetypal ambiguous figure in whom the various parts of a deeply-divided society can jointly invest their contradictory hopes. Such figures spring up regularly in conflicted polities.
Of course, under Trudeau, the French and English-speaking peoples of Canada only mod farther apart. But that wasn’t the point of Trudeau’s policy, it was merely the effect.

Trudeaumania didn’t last, but Trudeau did, clinging to power for a decade and a half. In that time, Trudeau fundamentally remade Canada in his own bilingual image—imposing French on English-speaking Canada and allowing Quebec effectively to ban English in French-speaking Canada—and driving the country permanently to the left.

[More]

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Neocons eyeing Obama

From the Wall Street Journal's editorial page:

Will Obama Bring Home the Neocons?
On immigration, the family, even defense, there is common ground.

by Gabriel Schoenfeld

"Neoconservative" and "neocon" have become terms of abuse, denoting right-wing extremism. But the original neoconservatives began mostly as left-leaning intellectuals who only deserted the Democratic Party after it fell under the influence of the counterculture during the Vietnam War. With Barack Obama about to become president, is there any chance neoconservatives will finally return to the roost?...

Don't let the doorknob hit you on the way out.

Now that seething hostility toward immigrants and the heartless work-place roundups of illegal aliens carried out by the Bush administration have brought the GOP low, neoconservative intellectuals will find little common ground with those Republicans who helped drive away Hispanic voters and marched their party off the electoral cliff. If Mr. Obama pushes for immigration reform that balances humaneness with respect for the rule of law, he will almost certainly draw in some neoconservatives.

Oh, so that's why the co-author of the McCain-Kennedy amnesty bill lost!

It is too early to say which way Mr. Obama will really swing in foreign affairs. But if it is toward resolve in the war against Islamic terrorism -- with an occasional humanitarian intervention thrown in -- he may well garner waves of support from quarters that were avidly tearing him down right up until Nov. 4.

"Waves" is putting it grandly -- Republican-voting Jews must have accounted for less than half a percent of the vote in 2008.

On the other hand, if he extends an olive branch to the neoconservatives ... he might pick up some surprising allies. He might also fracture the opposition's idea machine and help turn the Republicans back into the stupid party for years to come.

Yeah, without neocon brainpower, the poor dumb bastards won't come up with any more great ideas like starting a needless land war in Asia.

As a convenience for all the neocons out there, here's the District of Columbia form you have to fill in to change your party registration from Republican to Democrat.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Influence peddling

The NYT reported today:

The New York Times Company said Monday it had reached an agreement with the Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helú for a $250 million loan intended to help the newspaper company finance its businesses. ...

The deal comes as the Times Company looks to raise money amid flagging advertising sales and approaching deadlines to pay back $1.1 billion in debt in the next few years. ...

Mr. Slim will receive no representation on the company’s board or any shares with special voting rights like those of the Sulzberger family, which controls the company. Nonetheless, when Mr. Slim exercises the warrants, he will be among the largest single shareholders in the Times Company, owning up to 17 percent of the common shares outstanding.

The Sulzberger family members own about 19 percent of company and control it with a special class of voting shares.

Mr. Slim, one of the wealthiest people in the world, controls phone companies and has major investments in retailing, construction, banking, insurance, railroads and mining. In March, Forbes magazine estimated his fortune at $60 billion.

Mr. Slim first approached the Times Company in November, people briefed on the discussions said.

The net present value of the New York Times' expected future cash flows isn't worth all that much, but, if you already have tens of billions of dollars, it sure could come in handy to have the NYT on your side.

The future of the media business looks a lot like its past. In the 18th Century, writers didn't have good ways to get reliable cash streams from their intellectual nonproperty, so they were constantly working to get rich people as patrons.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

January 18, 2009

Average Credit Ratings by State

According to CreditReport.com website, the top ten states with the highest average consumer credit ratings are found among the people of:

South Dakota 710
Minnesota 707
North Dakota 706
Vermont 706
Massachusetts 703
New Hampshire 703
Montana 701
Iowa 700
Wisconsin 699
Maine 699

In contrast, the ten populations with the worst average consumer credit scores are:

Texas 651
Nevada 655
Arizona 659
New Mexico 663
Louisiana 663
South Carolina 665
Oklahoma 666
North Carolina 667
Arkansas 668
Mississippi 668

California (672) and Florida (673) are closer to the bottom than than the top.

Texas largely escaped the mortgage meltdown due to low land prices and high oil prices, but this suggests there might be trouble in Texas ahead if oil stays around $40 per barrel.

What does it all mean? As George Will coyly hinted in his obituary for Daniel Patrick Moynihan:
"The Senate's Sisyphus, Moynihan was forever pushing uphill a boulder of inconvenient data. A social scientist trained to distinguish correlation from causation , and a wit, Moynihan puckishly said that a crucial determinant of the quality of American schools is proximity to the Canadian border. ... [S]tates trying to improve their students' test scores should move closer to Canada."
Indeed.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Carlos Slim to bailout the NY Times?

The New York Times is the most influential journalistic institution in the world. The NYT decides, in the more marginal cases, for the rest of the news media what is and isn't national news. Obviously, if a jetliner lands in the Hudson River, everybody knows it's news. On the other hand, if a drunken stripper makes incoherent accusations against Duke lacrosse players, it's only news if the NYT decides to run two dozen stories about it, which lets everybody else in the media know that it's Real News Symbolic of Major Social Problems and thus they can sanctimoniously splash this salacious tripe.

The NYT, at present and probably for the future as well, is a big money pit. No doubt it will have to downsize itself tremendously. But likely so will its major competitors, so the NYT's relative influence over the rest of the media is unlikely to decline much.

Meanwhile, as the federal government takes over control of ever more of the decreasing amount of wealth in America, the long term relative value of having a stake in the most powerful news arbiter should be increasing. The NYT is, more than anything else, the chokepoint on political discussion in America, so as politics determines ever more of who gets his hands on America's wealth, the value of the NYT should go up.

The market disagrees, but Mexican telephone monopolist, Carlos Slim, who didn't get to be more or less the richest man in the world by passing up a chance to influence the government, is, not surprisingly, in talks to help bailout the New York Times. Once you've gotten the Mexican government eating out of your hand, the logical next step is the American government.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Other 46 states start to notice Sand States caused mortgage meltdown

From the Associated Press:

Foreclosure aid likely to help 4 states most

By Alan Zibel

WASHINGTON — The nation's foreclosure crisis is centered in four states. But taxpayers across the country will feel the pain of bailing them out.

California, Florida, Nevada and Arizona generated about half of all foreclosure filings nationwide last year, according to RealtyTrac, even though residents in those states hold just a quarter of U.S. mortgages. Since mid-2007, skyrocketing foreclosures in those states have been magnifying the national rate.

As I reported last September, even though the four Sand States (which have 21% of the country's population) accounted for about half the foreclosures, they must have accounted for an even higher proportion of the defaulted dollars, which is the key variable in setting off the world financial crisis. That's because median home prices in California were almost triple that in the rest of the country at the peak of the bubble.
As lawmakers prepare to spend up to $100 billion in financial bailout money on a sweeping foreclosure prevention plan pushed by President-elect Barack Obama, the discrepancy is adding another layer to a problem already confounding economists, politicians and homeowners....

The Sunbelt states now in trouble are the same ones that for decades have taken jobs and residents from states in colder climates. Plus, states like California were also breeding grounds for toxic home loans.

Plus, the Sand States have really, really nice weather this time of the year (e.g., it's been sunny and 75 in LA for the past week), which doesn't decrease resentment, let me tell you. So bailout programs mean that fraudulent Sand State homebuyers can continue to sunbathe this winter in their foreclosed backyards, while taxpayers in the rest of the country huddle indoors and pay for them.
... To be sure, not all foreclosures are in the four states dominating the numbers. And not all borrowers acted irresponsibly. Consumer groups say legions of borrowers were duped into loans that they didn't understand, and deserve assistance.

To be sure, importing millions of people with grade school educations into the Sand States didn't boost the local average level of financial literacy.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

"Crimestop"

From 1984:

... the speculations which might possibly induce a sceptical or rebellious attitude are killed in advance by his early acquired inner discipline. The first and simplest stage in the discipline, which can be taught even to young children, is called, in Newspeak, crimestop. Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer