Ones and Zeros

$2300 per American, man, woman, and child, that’s the total. If you just count taxpayers instead of citizens it’s higher. And now the Bush administration wants a phrase in the bailout law that puts the Treasury Secretary above the rule of law and of the courts. They’re saying “trust us!” During the eight years of the Bush administration we have extended our trust too many times and we have been taken advantage of every time. Why trust them now?

Anytime a fast-talking salesman corners me, I distrust them. There’s very very little that can’t wait a few more days. This speed just makes me trust them less. As more information comes out, it becomes clearer that this isn’t a good plan, that it may be not just bad, but actually be a terrible plan.

So now is time to say stop. No bailout unless the American people have ownership. No bailout unless the top managers don’t get golden parachutes. No bailout unless there’s accountability! No bailout unless it actually addresses the real economic problems of all citizens, not just of Wall Street.

This administration has a lot of responsibility for this mess. The SEC chairman was appointed by Bush. This same chairman allowed waivers for all the failing investment banks to leverage themselves up to 30 to 1. The conditions for this to happen were caused by the failure of regulation and with the help of the Fed and Greenspan.

This administration has talked about the benefit of markets. One of the benefits is Schumpeter’s “creative destruction”. Or in more prosaic terms, letting companies fail. The problem with this is that the people that work there, or the other companies that depend on the failing company all suffer too. That’s why regulation was invented. It helps avoid people and companies getting carried away and pushing risk too far.

It would be nice to actually have government officials that learn from our own history and understand why we have the institutions we have. Gee, the way they’re behaving you might even start to think that the current government officials are just there to loot the country on behalf of their friends.

Bruce Shneier, the crypto and security author and expert, has coined the term security theatre for the type of thing that looks like it’s making us safer but is really for show. “All hat and no cattle” as they say in Texas.

Security theatre describes the ADIZ and FRZ around Washington D.C. that went into effect a year or two after 9/11. I’ll describe what these are for the non-aviation people reading, then I’ll tell you why they’re a bad idea.

The short version is this is a type of limited-access airspace, but one that only affects planes that have never been used by terrorists and are very unlikely to be used by terrorists. The ADIZ is bad since it wastes money, hurts people’s livelihoods, and most importantly uses scarce time by security and air traffic professionals that could be used more wisely. It can even impair flight safety in some cases.
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