The US Dollar

I've gone on (and on and on) in the past about the precarious position of the US dollar in the international market, and to tell the truth, I'm surprised that it has done as well as it has. I've been expecting a run on the dollar for some time, and that run always seems to be put off through actions by various parties, domestic and foreign.

Today, a disturbing blog entry from bond trader John Jansen:

Prices of Treasury securities are registering mixed changes in overnight trading. “Mixed changes” in this environment is somewhat puzzling and even a bit troublesome.

The US market has always represented the ultimate safe haven venue yet this morning according to my screen at about 700AM New York time the yield on the 2 year note was actually several basis points higher than where it closed late yesterday. Indeed, the yield on every Treasury issue is higher than the level at which it finished in late trading yesterday.Is this the beginning of the end for the dollar and the Treasury market? Is this the first sign of the bursting of the bubble in Treasury securities? That market, in a sense, represents the ultimate bubble as it exists at the whim and caprice of foreign investors, who have as participants in a Faustian bargain, financed our war(s) and our lifestyle so generously over the last decade. Maybe even that bizarre construct is crashing about us as we speak.

Might be this the last massive shoe to drop?

The Mature, Elderly, Wrinkled, and Silver-Haired. With Style.

Awesome.

A blog devoted to the elderly encountered in the streets of New York and elsewhere displaying a unique sense of style.

"We have started a blog of our own that documents street style and fashion of the mature and wizened. Our aim is to take photos of elders with a unique sense of personal style that has developed with age. We noticed so many amazingly dressed older people in New York and are having a great time getting to know them, hearing their stories and capturing a bit of their style to share with others."

Awful News

Shit. After the high last night and this morning over Obama's win in Iowa there comes the crushing news that military blogger Major Andrew Olmsted who posted at his own site and at Obsidian Wings under the name G'Kar was just killed in service in Iraq.

Andrew was a conservative blogger that I deeply respected, and the military service in Iraq of someone so intelligent and insightful gave me a lot of hope that he and others like him could pull the fat out of the fire.

This is awful. I'm heartbroken over this.

Blog Have So Not-Stupid

Awesome.

Via Unfogged.

Parity

The Canadian dollar passes the US dollar in value for the first time in three decades.

The Canadian dollar hit parity with the U.S. dollar for the first time in 31 years on Thursday, capping a 62 percent rise from 2002 on the back of booming commodity prices and a deepening disenchantment with the greenback.

Don't think of it as the Canadian dollar increasing in value until it passes that of the US, think of it as the US dollar declining to less value than the loonie.

Vintage Laurie

From "A Bit of Fry and Laurie".

Lawrence Wright on al Qaeda

An interesting lecture on al Qaeda, well worth the forty minutes.



I share at least a part of his awkward position -- opposed to the invasion, and yet now opposed to a US withdrawal.

This Explains a Lot

I'm often taken aback when I hear Americans saying things like there's not much difference between left and right wing, or that they are meaningless labels. Taken aback in the same way that I'd be if someone said that blue and red were pretty much the same colour, for instance.

But this graphing of the ideological positions held by US presidential aspirants explains the problem -- they ARE pretty much the same in ideological terms:

This from Political Compass.

Please keep in mind that The Political Compass is a universal tool, reflecting the full spectrum of political thought, and applicable to all democracies. US politics are generally fought within a more confined space. While in mainstream America, Clinton, for example, may be seen as left leaning, in the overall political landscape, she is a moderate conservative. Someone like Kucinich, while seen by his severest opponents as an extreme left winger, would qualify as a typical social democrat in a European context.

This all confirms my own graphing last year, which compared the positions of the US and Canadian political parties.


Via Apostropher.

A Reminder

Thirteen years ago, the Rwandan genocide was triggered. Hilzoy of Obsidian Wings remembers a hero - Mbaye Diagne - who, against UN orders but with the implicit approval of his commanding officer, saved hundreds of Tutsi before losing his own life in the conflict, one of the fourteen UN peacekeepers killed in that mission.

That commanding officer, Canadian L. Gen. Romeo Dalliare, relates this about Major Diagne:

Major Diagne attended nearly every meeting with me after the war started, taking detailed notes and then rewriting the minutes so they would be legible. One evening as he sat at his desk transcribing, he felt the sudden need for prayer and slid off his chair to his knees on his prayer carpet, his head toward Mecca, as required by his Islamic faith. At that exact moment, a huge piece of shrapnel smashed through his window from a mortar explosion, flying through the space he had just vacated, bouncing off the walls and landing still red-hot at his feet. He came within a hair's breadth of certain death. Always dignified and composed, Daigne reported the damage to his window and then returned to his desk to complete his tedious but essential transcribing.

Great. Just Great.

This blog is now being linked to by the Wikipedia article on urination.

It's the first bookmark in the urinal subsection, and refers to this post I wrote several years ago about urinal etiquette.

Fame and recognition at last.