links for 2008-05-11

• Taxing the Harvard Endowment - Felix Salmon
• The Suffering of Soldiers - New York Times
• Double-Bubble Trouble in Commercial Real Estate - Gene Sperling
• Numbers Racket: Why the economy is worse than we know - Harper's
• Do Ratios make sense for Underwriting? - Richard Green
• American housing - Economist.com
• Ben Stein Watch: May 11, 2008 - Felix Salmon
• Regulating Evolution: How Gene Switches Make Life - Scientific American

Comments

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/opinion/11sun2.html

May 11, 2008

The Suffering of Soldiers

Several years into a pair of wars, the Department of Veterans Affairs is struggling to cope with a task for which it was tragically unready: the care of soldiers who left Afghanistan and Iraq with an extra burden of brain injury and psychic anguish. The last thing they need is the toxic blend of secrecy, arrogance and heedlessness that helped to send many of them into harm’s way.

“Shh!” said the e-mail in February from Dr. Ira Katz, head of mental health services for V.A., to a colleague. “Our suicide prevention coordinators are identifying about 1,000 suicide attempts per month among the veterans we see in our medical facilities. Is this something we should (carefully) address ourselves in some sort of release before someone stumbles on it?”

Dr. Katz’s hushed-up figure was nowhere near the number he gave to the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee last year; he said there had been 790 suicide attempts in all of 2007, and denied there was a suicide epidemic. The veterans affairs secretary, James Peake, apologized for Dr. Katz’s “unfortunate set of words” and promised more candor and transparency.

Give some credit, anyway, to Mr. Peake for realizing that there is no hope of denying or wishing away this problem. As the economists Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes made clear in “The Three Trillion Dollar War,” their analysis of Iraq, the medical toll of a war rises in a swelling curve for many decades after the shooting stops. The current suicide figures include a large proportion of aging and ailing veterans of Vietnam. Suffering for that long, on that scale, will not be covered up.

A study by the Rand Corporation last month found that nearly one in five service members returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, or about 300,000, have symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder or major depression. About 19 percent reported having a possible traumatic brain injury from these bomb-afflicted wars.

Alarmingly, only half have sought treatment, the study found, and they have encountered severe delays and shortfalls in getting care. The V.A.’s inspector general has faulted the agency’s case management of brain-injured veterans, and a federal lawsuit by veterans’ groups in San Francisco seeks to force the V.A. to streamline and improve treatment....

[anne]

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21431

May 29, 2008

Iraq: Will We Ever Get Out?
By Thomas Powers

1.

There is a working assumption among the American people that a new president enters the White House free of responsibility for the errors of the past, free to set a new course in any program or policy, and therefore free—at the very least in constitutional theory, and perhaps even really and truly free—to call off a war begun by a predecessor. No one would expect something so dramatic on the first day of a new administration but it remains a fact that the president is the commander in chief of the armed forces, and the power that allowed one president to invade Iraq would allow another to bring the troops home.

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in the current presidential campaign have promised to do just that—not precipitously, not recklessly, not without care to give the shaky government in Baghdad time and the wherewithal to pick up the slack. But Obama and Clinton have both promised that the course would be changed on the first day; ending the American involvement in the Iraqi fighting would be the new goal, troop numbers would be down significantly by the middle of the first year, and within a reasonable time (not long) the residual American force would be so diminished in size that any fair observer might say the war was over, for the Americans at least, and the troops had been brought home.

The presumptive Republican candidate, John McCain, has pledged to do exactly the opposite—to "win" the war, whatever that means, and whatever that takes. Politicians often differ by shades of nuance. Not this time. The contrast of McCain and his opponents on this question is stark, and if they can be taken at their word, Americans must expect either continuing war for an indefinite period with McCain or the anxieties and open questions of turning the war over to the Iraqi government for better or worse with Obama or Clinton. Which is it going to be?

It is not just lives, theories about national security, and American pride that are at stake. Money is also involved. The two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have already cost about $700 billion, and the economists Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes estimate that costs such as continuing medical care will add another $2 trillion even if the Iraq war ends now. But the true cost of the Iraq war ought to include something else as well—some fraction of the rise in the price of oil which we might call the Iraq war oil surcharge. If we blame the war for only $10 of the $80–$90 rise in the price of a barrel of oil since 2003, that would still come to $200 million a day....

Going to war in Afghanistan and then Iraq was what the President wanted to do and he let nothing stand in his way. Afghanistan was not a hard sell but Iraq took real resolution. The arguments for war were weak to begin with and got weaker with time. The UN inspectors found none of the Iraqi weapons cited to justify war and asked only for some months to verify disarmament; the Security Council refused to pass a resolution for war; only Britain among America's most important allies joined the coalition of the willing to fight the war. But no setback cracked Bush's resolution and he went ahead. John McCain is content with the wars he will inherit if fate touches him with its finger, but Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama do not like the situation as they expect to find it. The war in Iraq promises only expense and failure, and the mix includes other daunting troubles—a Turkish military hovering just across the border from Iraq's quasi-autonomous Kurdish region, with one Turkish eye on the oil of Kirkuk; deepening connections between the Shiite government in Baghdad and Shiite Iran, which continues to ignore American threats of military action if it does not believably abandon its nuclear program; a safe haven for the Taliban in the Pakistani provinces bordering on Afghanistan; and loss of Pakistani support for American desire to take the war into the tribal areas. That safe haven made it impossible for the Russians to win, and it will soon obsess the Americans as well.

But set Afghanistan aside. Iraq is the big war. Getting out of Iraq will require just as much resolution as it took to get in—and the same kind of resolution: a willingness to ignore the consequences. The consequence hardest to ignore will be the growing power and influence of Iran, which Bush has described as one of the two great security threats to the US. Israel shares this view of Iran. No new president will want to run the risk of being thought soft on Iran. This is where the military error exacts a terrible price. A political conflict transformed into a military conflict requires a military resolution, and those, famously, come in two forms—victory or defeat. Getting out means admitting defeat.

Is it possible that the new president will have that kind of resolution? I think not; to my ear Clinton and Obama don't sound drained of hope or bright ideas, determined to cut losses and end the agony. Why should they? They're coming in fresh from the sidelines. Getting out, giving up, admitting defeat are not what we expect from the psychology of newly elected presidents who have just overcome all odds and battled through to personal victory. They've managed the impossible once; why not again? Planning for withdrawals might begin on Day One, but the plans will be hostage to events.

At first, perhaps, all runs smoothly. Then things begin to happen. The situation on the first day has altered by the tenth. Some faction of Iraqis joins or drops out of the fight. A troublesome law is passed, or left standing. A helicopter goes down with casualties in two digits. The Green Zone is hit by a new wave of rockets or mortars from Sadr City in Baghdad. The US Army protests that the rockets or mortars were provided by Iran. The new president warns Iran to stay out of the fight. The government in Tehran dismisses the warning. This is already a long-established pattern. Why should we expect it to change? So it goes. At an unmarked moment somewhere between the third and the sixth month a sea change occurs: Bush's war becomes the new president's war, and getting out means failure, means defeat, means rising opposition at home, means no second term. It's not hard to see where this is going.

We are committed in Afghanistan. We are not ready to leave Iraq. In both countries our friends are in trouble. The pride of American arms is at stake. The world is watching. To me the logic of events seems inescapable. Unless something quite unexpected happens, four years from now the presidential candidates will be arguing about two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, one going into its ninth year, the other into its eleventh. The choice will be the one Americans hate most—get out or fight on.

[hari]

There is an element of hypocracy and self-indulgence when it comes to Iraq invasion and its aftermath.

Politicians are getting themselves into a corner - to keep US troops in Iraq - for whatever reason(s) and they're going to regret their policy position because when Iraqi's starts exercising its full and legal (political) sovereignty over its teritory - it's very likely they'll ask US to leave them alone!

[anne]

http://www.juancole.com/2008/05/maliki-sadr-agreement-on-sadr-city-al.html

May 11, 2008

Al-Maliki Heads to Mosul
By Juan Cole

Reading news about Iraq is like watching Bill Murray's "Groundhog Day" in which you have to live through the same day over and over again. So the US and Iraqi governments have announced a new campaign against Sunni radicals in Ninevah province, especially Mosul. Take a look at this article, published late last January: * "Thousands of Iraqi army soldiers reached the northern city of Mosul on Sunday in preparation for what the government said would be a major offensive there against Al-Qaeda in Iraq, along with other Sunni militants."

You have a sinking feeling that al-Maliki is recycling old announcements in a futile attempt to distract the public from his climb-down in Sadr City. Al-Maliki left for Mosul Saturday along with a few cabinet members and close advisers. Curfews have been announced in some Mosul neighborhoods.

Ninevah governor Duraid Kashmula admitted to Al-Hayat that Mosul "has come to dominated by the leaders of al-Qaeda as a result of the delay in the military operation in the city."

What??! Mosul is Iraq's second largest city at 1.7 million, and it is under the control of "al-Qaeda"? How long has this been the case? All this time? While the US press was reveling in the "calm" in the country?

* http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2008/882/re34.htm

[anne]

http://www.juancole.com/2008/05/maliki-sadr-agreement-on-sadr-city-al.html

May 11, 2008

Maliki-Sadr Agreement on Sadr City
By Juan Cole

The al-Maliki government and the Sadrists pulled back from the brink in Sadr City on Saturday. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki had demanded that the Mahdi Army militia that serves as the Sadrist paramilitary give up its arms and dissolve itself. The compromise simply states that the Iraqi security forces would be allowed in to Sadr City to search for suspected medium and heavy weapons. The implication is that the Mahdi Army may continue to exist and may keep its light weapons (e.g. AK-47s), though it has to pledge not to walk with them in public.

The siege of Sadr City is to be lifted and the major roads in and out of it are to be unblocked, according to the agreement.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that the agreement stipulates that the government should have a court order to come into Sadr City. Arrests of rogue commanders have to to be based on warrants and not just "indiscriminate." There is nothing in the agreement about the Mahdi Army disarming altogether, as Nuri Al-Maliki initially demanded.

[spencer]

This is the first time I have read the Phillips Number's Racket article, and I must confess it is one of the most bias articles on economics I have ever read. In example after example he gives a political reason for changes without any real evidence and ignores the point that there are valid economic reasons for the data changes.

Take discouraged workers. When this was first introduced into the unemployment data it was for a completely different reason then what it has evolved into over time. One object of the unemployment rate is to provide a measure of labor slack in the economy and use it to estimate wage and inflationary pressures in the economy. In the post war era economic cycles were concentrated in the consumer durables sectors and unemployment was concentrated in many of the heavily unionized economic sectors like autos. Most of the unemployed or laid-off workers viewed their unemployment as temporary and fully expected to return to the same old job with the same employer in a short time. Many even came to be receiving some payment from their employer. Consequently they generally were not looking for work and if they were counted as unemployed it would distort the picture the numbers painted. To address this real problem the BLS started asking did you look for work. Since most laid-off auto workers and other unionized heavy industry workers were not looking for work they would say no. Consequently, the BLS excluded them from both sides of the equation-- labor force and the unemployed. This change in the data actually make the unemployment rate a more realistic measure of economic slack in the economy and the professionals who used the data fully understood what was happening and preferred it. Later, as the nature of unemployment changed in the 1980s and 1990s the information this question provided changed as the nature of unemployment changed from laid-off workers to fired workers and the concept of the discouraged worker emerged.

Phillips completely ignores the valid economic reasons why laid-off people not looking for work were not counted and treats this evolution of the data as if it were some political conspiracy.

I could go through essentially every point he makes and explain why there are good and valid economic reasons the changes were made. They are not the product of some dark conspiracy to fool the public.

This is a horrible article.

[spencer]

I would just like to make one point on homeowners equivalent rent. One reason this was introduced is that the old mortgage measure included interest rates. Consequently we had the perverse effect that the Fed raising interest rates to fight inflation actually caused reported inflation to rise.
Regularly in the 1970s we would have interest rates alone having a significant impact on reported inflation. Removing this major distortion to the CPI was the reason many business economist favored the shift.

Historically, rents and home prices have moved in lock step. That is to be expected since they are both essentially driven by the same factors. When homeowners rent was introduced no one had any reason to anticipate that the two measures would be different and the experience of the past decade where a large spread emerged between rent and home prices has been a historic anomaly. .

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/12/world/middleeast/12lebanon.html

May 12, 2008

Fierce Fighting Breaks Out East of Beirut
By NADA BAKRI

The fighting followed overnight clashes in the northern city of Tripoli that left at least two people dead and five wounded, according to security officials.