Ameyaltepec black bean stew
I find this recipe improbable, but I enjoy it and it is cheap, easy, healthy, and eco-friendly. A version of it was first served to me by the de la Rosa family and I believe it was cooked by one of the daughters-in-law of Felipe de la Rosa.
Pour two cans of Goya black beans into a pot and let them simmer over low heat. In a separate pan, heat four fresh jalapeno chiles and one not-too-large cinnamon stick in canola oil, Mexican cinnamon of course. After a few minutes, stick that in a blender with enough water to make it work. Pour the blended mix back into the simmering black beans. Let simmer a bit more. Toss in a small amount of sliced white onions with five minutes to go (optional).
Serve with rice or fresh tortillas and squeeze some lime over the top. See if your local Latino market will sell you Mexican Coca-Cola.
When did Greek economic policy turn bad?
Stan Tsirulnikov forwards to me this very interesting paper (JSTOR, gated for many of you). Here is an excerpt from the summary:
For twenty years up to 1974, Greece enjoyed rapid growth, high investment and low inflation; during the next twenty years, growth and investment collapsed and inflation became high and persistent.
After 1974, debt and deficits rose sharply as well, and later EU transfers helped postpone the necessary fiscal adjustments. At this same time Greece was becoming more democratic, in part because the previous autocratic arrangements were collapsing. The figure on p.150, representing the difference between the two periods, is a knockout. And after 1974, the average rate of gdp growth goes from 7.1 percent to 2.1 percent.
The full reference is "The Two Faces of Janus: Institutions, Policy Regimes and Macroeconomic Performance in Greece," George Alogoskoufis, Economic Policy, Vol. 10, No. 20 (Apr., 1995), pp. 149-192.
Addendum: Here is an ungated copy.
Assorted links
What should be the penalties for oil spills?
The US Supreme Court has struck down a $2.5 billion punitive damages award against oil giant Exxon for its role in the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska.
The high court said the award should be reduced to the amount of compensatory damages in the case – $507.5 million.
That was from June 2008. Here is a more general history. Googling "exxon valdez punishment managers" does not yield obvious answers (what other problem does that remind you of?). The CEO, Lawrence Rawl, stayed with the company four more years until the mandatory retirement age of 65. Do you know more?
Here is one report on the BP CEO.
The new Arizona immigration law
Here is a perspective from Megan McArdle:
I'd be a lot more sympathetic to this law, in fact, if it required the police to check the immigration status of every single person they pulled over, without any gauzy "reason to believe" fig leaf to cover up what's really going on.
Raise your hand if you think that law could have passed in Arizona.
Now, anyone whose hand is raised, contact your psychiatrist immediately. You need to check the dosage on those meds.
If you think that immigration is a pressing problem, then the place to enforce it is in areas of life that are already regulated pretty intrusively: border crossings, employment, landlord/tenant relations. These are places where enforcement can be stepped up quite dramatically without massive intrusion into the ordinary lives of law-abiding citizens. But quasi-criminalizing looking different . . . well, it's not just wrong. It's un-American.
How much would a Greek devaluation help?
Arnold Kling is skeptical and while I am on board with the economics of the anti-Euro crew, and I think Greece should leave the Euro, I believe the anti-Euro argument is now being pushed too far.
For instance, contra Paul Krugman, I don't see Euro membership as, in this regard, the main economic difference between the British and the Greeks. Who has the Elgin marbles and how did they get there? What longer-run historical and cultural forces does this reflect?
Keep in mind there is nothing stopping Greece from cutting the nominal prices of its exports, right now, thereby altering its real terms of trade. Those prices just aren't *that* sticky, especially if the business model of the country is falling apart.
You could say that the real problem is sticky wages and not sticky export prices. Maybe so. Maybe the Greek exporters are saying "I won't cut my price because if I did buyers would want too much and I couldn't meet the market without hiring more labor and even new labor will work for me only at the old prevailing wage rate and, given that elasticities of demand are not high enough, I can't manage the mix of the new lower product price and the old wage rate."
Yes, some of that is going on. But it's also the case that the Greek economy is a mess, based on fiscal and sectoral delusions of various kinds. In fact the Greek economy has been a mess — most but not all years — for a long time before joining the Eurozone.
Marshallian joint supply, Russian style
Some Old Believers refused to eat the tsars' recommended new staple food, the potato, because it was an import from the godless West — potatoes were generally hated among the Russian peasantry on their first arrival, before their value in making vodka became apparent.
That is from the still-excellent Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, p.545.
Assorted links
1. Recipes for a perfect roast chicken.
2. Helium shortage threatens cryogenics.
3. Via Alex, TED talks for entrepreneurs.
4. Bursts: "…everything we do, we do in bursts–brief periods of intensive activity followed by long periods of nothingness. These bursts are so essential to human nature that trying to avoid them is not only foolish, but futile as well."
5. Sample chapter from Diego Gambetta's Codes of the Underworld.
When is a new financial product “too risky”?
Can this be true? Paul Atkins writes:
For example, before 1996, certain initial public offerings of stocks were subject to merit review in certain states, where the state decided if a security is a "bad" investment and thus not appropriate to be offered to its citizens. In fact, this is exactly what happened to Apple Computer when it first went public in 1980. Massachusetts prohibited the offering of Apple shares because they were "too risky," and Apple did not even bother to offer its shares in Illinois due to strict state laws on new issues. What if federal bureaucrats had had the power to impose their judgment on a "risky" financial product (such as an IPO) on a nationwide scale, or every state followed Massachusetts' lead?
John Gray on Michael Oakeshott
John Gray often misfires, but still he is one of the smartest and most knowledgeable generalists around:
…Oakeshott was not without illusions of his own. He was able to disparage ideology because he believed tradition contained all that was needed for politics; he could not conceive of a situation in which a traditional way of doing politics was no longer possible. Yet that has been the situation in which the Conservative Party has found itself over the past generation. The leader and his cabal of modernisers could hardly expect to undo the more radical modernisation Thatcher had unwittingly imposed on the party. As Cameron will discover, one way or another, an ideologically driven Conservatism is here to stay – even if it means the party once again drifting into limbo.
The full review, which covers British politics and the forthcoming election, is here. Here is Gray, trying to dismantle A.C. Grayling's rationalism (hat tip The Browser), worth a read.
The culture that is Dutch
Potholes, stray garbage, broken street lamps? Citizens of Eindhoven can now report local issues by iPhone, using the BuitenBeter app that was launched today. After spotting something that needs to be fixed, residents can use the app to take a picture, select an appropriate category and send their complaint directly through to the city council. A combination of GPS and maps lets users pinpoint the exact location of the problem, providing city workers with all the information they need to identify and resolve the problem.
Here is more information, via BrainPicker. I wonder how well this would work in Rhode Island?
Good luck
It states that all illegal immigrants living in the United States would be required to "come forward to register, be screened, and, if eligible, complete other requirements to earn legal status, including paying taxes."
That's part of the new Democratic immigration plan. What do they do with the immigrants who aren't liquid enough or solvent enough to pay ten years' back taxes, not to mention those who have no idea what they owe?
Just asking. Does this plan contain a workable amnesty component at all, or is it just a border and employment clampdown?
There's more detail here, although no answer to my questions.
Assorted links
1. Angus Madison has passed away.
3. Make that PHIIGS?
4. When is a coded license plate objectionable?: the case of 14CV88.
5. Second Life economy at record high.
6. The Gini coefficient among writers, from Charles Stross.
Germany fact of the day
In essence, the Germans have already tried a lending bailout of Greece:
Add this to the list of reasons German taxpayers are unhappy about having to lend Greece money to ease its debt crisis: In effect, they already have.
Germany’s financial institutions hold some 28 billion euros, or $37 billion, in Greek bonds, according to estimates by Barclays Capital, extrapolating from International Monetary Fund data.
Germany’s regulators and many of its banks do not disclose precise figures, but an informal survey on Wednesday of the largest banks indicates that about half of that debt – rated as junk by Standard & Poor's since Tuesday – appears on the balance sheets of institutions that are owned or controlled by the German government.
And so Germany’s exposure to Greek debt already exceeds, by far, the $11 billion the country would lend to Greece as part of an initial European Union plan to help the country avoid default on its debt…
The full article is here. On a related note, EU officials are complaining about the downgrades coming from the credit rating agencies; at this stage of the game that is a stunning and instructive development. A lot of regulators simply do not want "honest" credit rating agencies and never will want that.
Charity markets in everything, Star Wars edition
It could very well be the ultimate car-obsessed/Star Wars fanboy fantasy. What is this latest object of our geekery? How about a car wash carried out by a gaggle of Princess Leias? And not just any Princess Leia, mind you, but slave Leia.
There is a photo (safe for work), about which you will have mixed opinions, and also videos. The full account is here and I thank John Thorne for the pointer.