Counterfeits and Fakes

Apparently China has been buying gold and silver using "ghost steel" as collateral; when people go to look in the warehouses, the steel isn't there. On the other hand, someone's been shipping "gold" bars that are mostly tungsten, which costs about a dollar an ounce. Are the Chinese paying with ghost money and getting counterfeit gold? Sounds like a caper movie where you're trying to figure out who is really cheating whom.

RIP Christopher Hitchens

Sometimes brilliant, sometimes incoherent, but always, as far as I could tell, fearless.

Confusion, doubt and uncertainty

It seems pretty certain the Osama bin Ladin is dead and that SEAL Team Six is the team that had the privilege of bringing that about. One would think our administration could make a simple, straightforward statement and then stand by it. One would also think that the news media could nail down a few facts rather than speculating too wildly; however, that doesn't seem to be the case (any more than it was for Katrina or other events--can't blame Obama for that). Here's the scorecard of what may have happened. I have no doubt that additional possibilities will unfold as the days pass. Meanwhile, remember that a lot of news is fiction.

Haiti relief

Tyler Cowen pointed out that Haiti is essentially not a functional country right now. So who is going to is going to rebuild the place?

The UN could take over, but hasn't Haiti already suffered enough over the past two hundred years?

I saw an op-ed by Tunku Varadarajan which says that France "must" shell out $22 billion as reparations for the 150 million francs France demanded (or extorted) from Haiti in 1825. This is obvious nonsense--France saw the 1825 amount as reparations for the loss of its property when Haiti revolted, so France will hardly feel an obligation to refund that amount.

Similarly, the Dominican Republic is right next door but is thinks less of Haiti than the US does of Mexico. Their main interest is going to be keeping refugees out.

The US has sent assault ship USS Bataan and aircraft carrier Carl Vinson plus escorts--which is to say, two towns worth of water and power utilities, medevac helicopters and hospitals, groceries, security, communications, etc--but that doesn't imply any lasting presence. I've seen a suggestion that the US take over administering Haiti, but I can't see any way that owning Haiti would be a benefit to us.

I've also seen a suggestion that Canada establish a protectorate, with a comment that there's a shared language, but that sounds equally implausible to me. Haiti's pre-quake population was about 30% of that of Canada; taking on responsibility for them would add a huge strain to Canada's economy, with no significant benefit.

One suggestion I haven't seen is that China might step in. China has been building infrastructure in Africa and there's no reason they can't do it in the Caribbean as well, particularly if they can leverage that into de jure or de facto control of the country. And if I were a Chinese military planner, I'd be interested in the strategic possibilities in having a base just off the US coast.

Across the border

I get exasperated with our country quite often, but...it could be worse. Haiti just had a 7.0 earthquake, and Mexico is a mess.

"What happened to Global Warming?"

Hopefully, sooner or later they'll figure out what's going on.

My favorite line: "those scientists who are equally passionate about [...] global warming argue that their science is solid."

As if we were really expecting them to say "We're passionately dedicated to this position, but the data is pretty ambiguous and the models are shaky at best."