Anyone know something about monetary policy?

Okay, so I'm a former econ major (albeit not a very attentive one), and I'm confused. The NYT has an article on the issuing of dollar coins, and the fact that they won't be successful until the dollar bill is withdrawn. The article includes this (to me) confusing note:

A banknote, since it is redeemable, counts as a government liability, and the Federal Reserve has to back it by buying securities, which earn interest. According to the Fed, there are now about eight billion dollar bills in circulation, so that interest income is considerable. Coins do not yield such income.

Huh? I always thought the purchase of securities (e.g. Treasury bonds) was just the Fed's vehicle to increase the quantity of money. From that perspective, whether you're issuing coins or bills is irrelevant. And what, exactly, is a banknote "redeemable" for? The USD is fiat money, i.e. "legal tender because we said so." Am I missing something here?

The new year in European elections

According to the calendar at the reference site Parties and Elections in Europe, following the Serbian election of last month, we've got a lull coming until March.

In March, Finland and Estonia, the twin Finnic nations (is that a legitimate adjective?), will head to the polls a couple of weeks apart. Estonia is first, and having been governed by various center-right coalitions since regaining independence, seems set to continue that trend. The country has grown extremely quickly and has gained a reputation for its innovation in e-government service provision. The interesting party to watch in the elections may be the recently founded Greens, who are apparently polling above 5 percent already with many undecided.

When Finland goes to the polls they figure to reelect the present coalition of the Finnish Center, the Social Democratic Party and the Swedish People's Party. Despite the occasional flare-up between the Center and Social Democrats, they are frequently in coalition together. In the polls, Center leader and current PM Matti Vanhanen is consistently well ahead of anyone else as a PM choice, but the SDP seems to be leading the party race, which could hand the post to SDP's Eero Heinäluoma. (SDP's Paavo Lipponen was prime minister 1995-2003). Either way, the clear public preference is a continuance of the coalition, which keeps the opposition conservative National Coalition party in the cold.

The other question to watch is whether Northern Ireland will hold an Assembly election in March. We should know soon whether or not this will go ahead. If so, expect the extremist parties (Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionists) to win pluralities on either side.

The British Isles will then see an active month of May. Wales and Scotland will elect their regional assemblies. While Scotland's SNP is ahead in the polls, they would need to form a coalition to have a majority at Holyrood, which might be tough with almost all other parties being unionist. That said, the current Labour-Lib Dem government might not win a majority either. This creates a possibly interesting role for the Lib Dems as SNP coalition partners.

Also voting in May will be Iceland, which apparently has been having some controversy lately about some environmentally questionable development projects backed by the center-right government. Spanish autonomous communities--except for the big ones like the Basques, Catalonia and Galicia--then vote at the end of May.

June is the end of this modest run, with the French holding legislative elections and the two-round presidential ballot. It doesn't seem prudent to make predictions, but all signs right now point to a Royal-Sarkozy showdown being won by the rightist Sarkozy. But hey, Le Pen made it into the runoff five years ago, so who knows?

As far as the overall European picture goes, the main story will be the French, since nothing will really change in Finland or Estonia.

He's cured!

I'm sure other people will comment on this with much more wit than I could ever hope to attain:

Ousted Pastor 'Completely Heterosexual'

Forced by a gay sex scandal to resign as president of the National Association of Evangelicals, the Rev. Ted Haggard now feels that after three weeks of intensive counseling, he is “completely heterosexual,” says an overseer of the megachurch Mr. Haggard once led.

If we could just get all those deniers who persist in their homosexual ways into therapy! Then they'd be cured for sure! Only question: would we be saved as a nation yet, or would we still have to bring back school prayer?

Eight months with the (ex-) in front

At the other home, I reflect on the last 240 days or so.

Celebrating 100 posts!

Well, this is my 100th post as a blogger. I started this whole thing up when I was a junior in college because I saw someone else do it and wanted to try it for myself. I'd been doing the whole "personal journal" thing but I wanted to move on and share my opinions with anyone interested.

On May 1, 2005 (almost two years ago now!) I put up my first posts, explaining my support for the Liberal Democrats in the British parliamentary election. Since then my views on some things have changed a bit; I continue to get more moderate as I grow, as is to be expected, I suppose. I've gone from being a big fan of socialism (in its ideal type) in high school to a rather loose type of social liberalism (in the European sense). That is to say that I still support rather more social programs than we see here in the States, but not in every case.

I still identify generally with the Party of European Socialists, which brings together all the social-democratic parties from the member states, but with a strong secondary liberal ("European liberal", that is to say more laissez-faire, not "American liberal") identification. It all depends on context, as I think the Swedish welfare state is a great thing in its context.

In Canada, I've gone from being an NDP sympathizer to more in the Liberal column, and while I liked Gerard Kennedy as a candidate, I had a strong feeling as the convention approached that Dion was going to take it. For the U.S. I hope that Canada continues its environmental emphasis and that actions from up north put more pressure on our government down here.

On the other hand, my views on some things are the same. I still think the German mixed-member proportional system is the best electoral system in most contexts. I still hope that someday American electoral reform will happen and I'm encouraged by events in Canada. And I'm still not a conservative. A few years back I challenged friends to name one issue on which I have conservative leanings. Nobody has succeeded yet, though I certainly can be classified as "moderate" in some areas.

As a commentator, I can only hope my opinions are becoming more coherent and justified. I've had less personal time yet, paradoxically, have blogged more since graduating from UW, probably because I've gone full bore into the news as my form of recreation. My baseball watching has continued to diminish, to my philosophical regret, but practical inaction; and of course, I have plenty to say now about the practical experiences of teaching, over at my other home.

So, there it is. How much longer will I keep it up? No idea. As long as it's personally fulfilling, I'll be here. And that's what it comes down to: as many or as few people as may read my writing, in the end, it's what I want to write about and share.

A progressive income tax? Hmm...

Robert Reich has a simple suggestion as regards high and unjustified CEO pay: why not just restore real progressivity to the income tax? Sounds like a no-brainer to me, if it weren't for those "politics"...

Schoolyard penis seen from space

Despite being busy, I fulfill my obligation to post the most important news I can.

It took me a while to find it in the picture, but hey, it's there. That's an accomplishment to tell your kids about. Or maybe they'll find out on the Internet...

The opinion poll roundup

So, lately I have been feeling like there are not a whole lot of new developments. Maybe this is a dead period or maybe I just feel like it is. I am increasingly outraged by the behavior of the administration and in particular the wonderful Attorney General we have. (Who needs habeas corpus, and who needs to allow U.S. attorneys to complete their terms, anyway?) I am probably also dampened by the fact that I am just so ridiculously busy.

One of the things I did the other night, though, was surf through the polls at Angus Reid Global Monitor, basically a collection of opinion polls from around the world. It is interesting that some countries are quite well covered while for others no data is really available. However, the following came out:

• Despite the bombing at Barajas Airport and Zapatero's termination of the peace process, the PSOE appears to remain marginally ahead in Spain; elections are not due until next year.
  
• In Scotland, the pro-independence Scottish National Party maintains a small lead, 33-31% over Scottish Labour, but will anyone form a coalition with SNP? It probably depends on SNP's attitude toward the independence question--the party still claims it will hold a referendum at some point after taking power.
  
• With elections approaching soon (March) in Finland, almost 50 percent of Finns see incumbent PM Matti Vanhanen (Center) as the best candidate, with all other choices under 20 percent. Despite that, the Social Democrats, the current junior coalition partner, marginally lead the polls with around 25 percent, trailed by the Center and the conservative National Coalition. It looks like the current SDP-Center-Swedish People's Party coalition may be renewed, albeit with question about who the PM would be.
• In another Nordic country, Norway, the right-wing Progress Party, which has never served in government (having been blocked out even by the "mainstream right"), is in second in all polls--and a very close second, at that, to the ruling Labor Party. Were elections today, the Progress Party would take 25-28 percent of votes.
  
• To wrap it up for today, in Slovakia, the ruling Direction party (ostensibly social-democratic, but in partnership with right-wing nationalists and formerly ruling authoritarians) is hitting almost 50 percent by itself in the polls; the former center-right coalition that implemented economic reform is together under 30 percent. The top three parties are the three parties of the questionable ruling coalition.
  

Some Barack links

I know I haven't really been present lately, but things have been busy... check out the other home for details.

I'm just gonna come in here with a couple of links. First, The New York Times has an article on Barack's law-school days, detailing his rise from unknown to first black president of the Harvard Law Review. He was respected, the article says, and well-known for his ability to compromise and to not exactly let you know what his own opinions were.

Another of Mr. Obama’s techniques relied on his seemingly limitless appetite for hearing the opinions of others, no matter how redundant or extreme. That could lead to endless debates — a mouse infestation at the review office provoked a long exchange about rodent rights — as well as some uncertainty about what Mr. Obama himself thought about the issue at hand.

I don't think it's a drawback that Obama can be coy about his own opinions. Just because he can be doesn't mean that he always will be, all the time, or that he can't commit to opinions that he has.

Meanwhile, Barack has called for universal health care by 2013. No details yet, of course, but good to see that he is a part of this positive trend. I'm sure he will be able to find a way to nestle it into a dialogue-friendly approach.

Finally, while tooling around on YouTube I found this video of Barack on the Daily Show a year after his election as Senator, in November 2005. It's worth a watch--he's a funny man.

Update: Yeah, yeah, I can post the streaming video... I'm still not used to this whole thing. See below:

Serbian returns come in

As I noted in a post a couple weeks back, Serbian parliamentary elections took place today. I'm checking out the latest announcements of the Electoral Commission and it appears that the following is taking shape:

With 62% of ballots counted,

Serbian Radical Party (SRS) [nationalists] 28.32%
Democratic Party (DS) [Tadic's party] 22.67%
Democratic Party of Serbia--New Serbia (DSS-NS) [Kostunica] 16.38%
G17+ [conservative liberals] 6.79%
Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) [Milosevic's party] 5.64%
Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and coalition allies 5.33%

This is basically as the polls suggested. Vuk Draskovic's SPO is shut out with under 4%; SPS and LDP will scrape in.

DS and DSS will have to come to some sort of agreement to form the next government, along with at least one of the smaller liberal parties. Together, the Radicals and Socialists (the two hardline nationalist parties) will take about 40 percent of the seats.

UPDATE: The Economist has a piece. Point: there are three diverging views on Kosovo (the recommendations will be released at the beginning of February). The Radicals will raise hell no matter what, Kostunica is opposed and might support parallel actions toward secession by Bosnian Serbs, and Tadic and the DS would pay lip service to retaining Kosovo while seeking to maintain stability.

Two of these opinions will have to be accommodated in any new government.