It seems like yesterday. But it’s only been a little over five years since we were going through the same drill that is playing out today -- bemoaning the excesses of an asset bubble and hunkering down for the inevitable post-bubble shakeout. Five years ago, it was the equity bubble. Today, it’s the property bubble. These are not isolated events. As night follows day, one bubble has spawned the next. And we have the Federal Reserve to thank for this grand continuum and the cumulative toll it is taking on the US economy. Sadly, as America lurches from bubble to bubble, the endgame is looking all the more treacherous.

The debate has an eerie sense of deja vu. Today, there are those who dispute the very existence of a US property bubble. Similarly, five years ago, there were many who argued that US equities were not over-valued...

This is rubbish.

Morgan Stanley: Steve Roach on housing

The rest of the Beethoven symphonies will be broadcast and posted this week. Listen while you read the Grokster decision.

Symphony 6 will be broadcast on Monday 27th June, and available to download from Tuesday 28th June to Monday 4th July.

Symphony 7 will be broadcast on Tuesday 28th June, and available to download from Wednesday 29th June to Tuesday 5th July.

Symphony 8 will be broadcast on Wednesday 29th June, and available to download from Thursday 30th June to Wednesday 6th July.

Symphony 9 will be broadcast on Thursday 30th June, and available to download from Friday 1st July to Thursday 7th July.

BBC - Radio 3 - Beethoven Experience - downloads

Tommorow is the big day. This URL should have lots of links and analysis as the decision comes down.

SCOTUSblog - Discussion: Grokster

The Edit Profile form has been updated to be less confusing.

A new Change Password form has been added to the site and is available from the configuration menu.

A problem with column width in certain user's profiles has been fixed.

Some of the new user registration pages have been tweaked for clarity. If you don't have an account here at MemeStreams, make one.

MemeStreams Update: Edit Profile & Change Password pages

I was told this was cool. I need to check the music videos out apparently. I haven't looked at it yet. I will eat your soul.

Fat Pie

Newly empowered by the oil price boom which has put an extra $30 billion into Iran's treasury in the last 12 months, the Iranian religious authorities have now swept away the remnants of the reformist civilian government that won the last two presidential elections. All three main arms of the Iranian state, the government, the Supreme Council of the religious leadership, and the Pasdaran-Basij security force and power base, are now in the hands of militant Islamic hard-liners who see the U.S. and Israel as their mortal enemies.

World Peace Herald: Nuke crisis looms with hardline Iran

The Supreme Court may have just delivered an early Christmas gift to the nation's biggest retailers by its ruling Thursday allowing governments to take private land for business development.

Eminent domain: A big-box bonanza? - Jun. 24, 2005

How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a "star" we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model?

Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails. They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer

Ben Stein, author, actor, economist, speech writer, and pundt, column about how out of wack some of our perceptions are.

Ben Stein's final column

"Strong earthquakes in the New Madrid seismic zone are certain to occur in the future," states a fact sheet from the U.S. Geological Survey. "There is a 9-in-10 chance of a magnitude 6 to 7 temblor occurring in the New Madrid Seismic Zone within the next 50 years."

New Data Confirms Strong Earthquake Risk to Central U.S.

noteworthy wrote:
This paper by Steven Huybrechts won the National Defense University President's Award for Excellence in Writing in 2004. It's an interesting fusion of influences, many of which may be familiar to the MemeStreams community.

This is a awefully self serving perspective for an American to have. We don't run our internal government based on this philosophy and we don't seem to have this level of problem with it. The USA is unlikely to fragement, present political polarization notwithstanding, and the breakup of Canada predicted by one of the papers you reference is an idea that is as out of date as the reference. This reasoning here is also a little circular. World Government must operate on a might makes right model or it will degenerate into a might makes right model?!

We're biologically wired to do a lot of things that we don't actually do because in this society they are stupid things to do. The very definition of civilisation is the ability to rise above base instinct. There are certainly people in this world who are uncivilized. For example, people who chant "God is great" while dragging charred bodies through the streets. This is not something we ought to aspire to.

I think World Government must serve the interests of the people it represents. To the degree that representatives are not democratically selected the interests of the people are not represented. Even in the US we do not choose our UN rep directly. A person who is elected by electors we elected nominates someone who is approved by people we elected. The degree of indirection introduces a great deal of difference between the perspective of the representative and the perspective of the represented. Our UN rep represents a political party and not a country.

Of course, undemocratic countries are far worse. I'm somewhat sympathetic to Fukuyama's proposal for a league of democratic states. If Syria isn't qualified to participate in what we consider a reasonable world government then we shouldn't include them until they are prepared to represent the interests of their citizens. You aren't going to see the kind of leadership required to make that happen when everyone's attitude about the rest of the world is "fuck it, who cares."

Clearly, the US is not constrained by international law, and needed to demonstrate that to the middle east. The UN offers a forum for these people to present their views but we cannot allow them to use it to forward interests through some process technicality which are not in line with that of their people or the rest of the world.

On the other hand, many people in the United States are tremendously ignorant about the rest of the world. Americans aren't unique in this respect, but the ratio of ignorance to access here is probably unparralleled. "I don't know a damn thing about France" is rapidly becoming "The French are obviously irrelevent, all they do is surrender." Any student of Chinese history will tell you that when ignorance gives way to hubris you're one step away from a revolution.

RE: The Biology of Conflict [PDF]