Ron Reagan, Jr.

Ron Reagan's recently published book My Father At 100: A Memoir suggests that President Ronald Reagan was afflicted with Alzheimer's Disease while still in office — as early as three years into his first term as President.

What the mainstream media are omitting from their mention of the book is the following, indicating that (1) no conspiracy existed to cover up the President's alleged incapacity to govern and (2) President Reagan likely would have voluntarily left office if he had believed that his thinking processes were compromised by dementia:

"I've seen no evidence that my father (or anyone else) was aware of his medical condition while he was in office. Had the diagnosis been made in, say 1987, would he have stepped down? I believe he would have...

Read more of the book review in U.S News HERE. In my view, the portion about Ronald Reagan's having brain surgery revealing signs of Alzheimer's in 1989 does not contribute to Ron Reagan's credibility.

Also, please read Michael Reagan's response to his half-brother's book HERE. Not unexpectedly, Michael Reagan, whose book The New Reagan Revolution is due for release on February 6, is speaking out against Ron Reagan and his book.

As far as I can tell right now from the few available excerpts of Ron Reagan's book, the mainstream media are selecting statements out of context from that book so as to denigrate the memory and the accomplishments of President Ronald Reagan. Therefore, I have reserved a library copy of My Father At 100: A Memoir and will read the book for myself. Although I don't like Ron Reagan, Jr., I know of no way to judge what he has written other than to read his book and check his statements against the available facts from other sources. I've also reserved a copy of Michael Reagan's The New Reagan Revolution.

Keef's Life

Last week, since I had a 40 percent off coupon plus 5 bucks reward from a bookstore here, I asked barista Aco and Ujang what books to buy.

Ujang, somewhat unsurprisingly, came up with the Handbook of Development Economics. Aco, however, had (better) idea: the biography of Keith Richards, Life.

It's the book everybody in town now talk and write about. From David Remnick of Newyorker to Michiko Kakutani of NYT to our own Taufiqurrahman --who lambasted a mediocre review by a music critic-turned-political pundit in our you-know-what daily.

I ordered my copy. Keith Richards', that is.

To celebrate Keef's biography, the Cafe plays Happy from Exile on Main St. album and Salt of the Earth from Beggars Banquet album.

Supposedly Summer Reading List

OK, most of you will be glued to TV watching the World Cup. Aco has been deriving some lemmas regarding optimal direction for penalty kick, taken from Levitt paper. I know, you may think we economists have funny way in seeing things, including football, but, sorry, just live with that, OK? You will get used to, as many of you already did.

In the meantime though, the Cafe is preparing to buy books for your summer perusal. Here is the list
1. Fault Lines, by Raghuram Rajan
2. The Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life, by Paul Seabright
3. The Upside of Irrationality, The Unexpected Benefit of Defying Logic at Work and at Home, by Dan Ariely
4. Zombie Anthology -- ask Ujang for detail
5. Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolves, by Frans de Waal

And, oh, I start to, -whaddayacallit?-, tweeting.

Torture of Book Sale

I am at my local library now and could not decide what to buy from their ridiculously low-priced ongoing book sale: Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther, Carlos Fuentes' A New Time for Mexico, or Toni Morisson's Sula.

One thing I know I won't take is anything from Michael Moore.

I think I'll go for Goethe.

Update: Goethe's Werther has gone. No wonder, it costs just 50 cents.

Akerlof and Kranton's Identity Economics

Do economists simply disregard social norm in their analysis?

Contrary to common belief, economists have tried to incorporate social norms in at least three ways. First, in collaboration with psychologists, they tried to model an agent's maximizing utility behavior with additional constraint of psychological bias. Second, they also tried to take into account other's utility function into the representative agent's utility function; known as endogenous preference approach.

This first two approaches still hold up a single representative agent behavior as micro-foundation of a social phenomena.

Akerlof and Kranton, in their latest book, Identity Economics, 2010, offer a different perspective. They use more than one representative agent and respective utility function (they called it identities) in looking at a certain social pattern.

I have read this interesting and readable book for the general public, but haven't had time to peruse the more technical academic journal articles behind this book --those on the bibliography. With that in mind, this is my knee-jerk reaction: how do we decide the number of agents' types and utility functions we need to put into account in analyzing, say, gender and labor market in Indonesia? Two, three, four? What is the general rule for determining that number?

Nevertheless, the book shows that economics, after all, has never been an isolated subject full with stubborn students. It did not stop with Milton Friedman's book on Price Theory.

Why I'd Rather Buy Two Cups of Coffee and Muffins

Following a Facebook discussion here, Ujang and I are amazed on how our friends on the left take Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine seriously. I can not say anything on Klein's argument since I haven't read the book. And here is why.

Imagine you have 10 bucks in your pocket. Then somehow you read Tyler Cowen's review that says

Rarely are the simplest facts, many of which complicate Ms. Klein's presentation, given their proper due. First, the reach of government has been growing in virtually every developed nation in the world, including in America, and it hardly seems that a far-reaching free market conspiracy controls much of anything in the wealthy nations. Second, Friedman and most other free market economists have consistently called for limits on state power, including the power to torture. Third, the reach of government has been shrinking in India and China, to the indisputable benefit of billions. Fourth, it is the New Deal — the greatest restriction on capitalism in 20th century America and presumably beloved by Ms. Klein — that was imposed in a time of crisis. Fifth, many of the crises of the 20th century resulted from anti-capitalistic policies, rather than from capitalism: China was falling apart because of the murderous and tyrannical policies of Chairman Mao, which then led to bottom-up demands for capitalistic reforms; New Zealand and Chile abandoned socialistic policies for freer markets because the former weren't working well and induced economic crises.

You may then say, but hey, Tyler is a conservative free-market economist. Fine, what about Dani Rodrik -- a respectable Harvard's KSG economist who is sympathetic to industrial policy and once write a book asking whether globalization has gone too far?

You may expect at least a kinder view. Instead he said that Shock Doctrine is a bad book needs to be trashed and it is very hard to understand how Klein felt good about Argentina in 2002 that just collapsed into a severe economic crisis, with a more than doubling of the share of population in extreme poverty and a 10 percent decline in GDP.

Need more evidence from the left? What about Will Hutton from The Observer, UK?

In her delusional, Manichaean world view, privatisation, free markets, private property, consumer freedom, the profit motive and economic freedom are just other terms for corporate self-enrichment, denial of voice, limitation of citizenship, inequality and, sometimes, even torture. The discredited electro-shock psychological treatment of the Fifties, we learn, informed the thought system of the free marketeers; it is guilt by association and assertion rather than proof, a weaknesses of too much of the book.

The only positive review I came across is from Stiglitz (I can see your baristas here yawn). But even he said:

Klein is not an academic and cannot be judged as one. There are many places in her book where she oversimplifies.

Enough said, it is a small wonder that I'd rather spend my 10 bucks for two cups of good coffee and muffins than Klein's book.

But then the Facebook discussion and the overwhelming praise from my comrades on the left gets me thinking that probably I should give Klein a fair chance. Maybe I can borrow the book from local public library, if they have a copy. Yet one thing for sure, it would have a very hard time to compete with other books I considered worth reading -- and I have a long list of them already.

Slowly Reading Superfreakonomics

I am reading Superfreakonomics now. Very slowly. It's been two weeks and I haven't even reached the controversial global cooling chapter.

Somehow I don't find the book a page turner; perhaps because I found out that reading the original journal articles behind all of those anecdotes are more interesting. Those articles might not be as entertaining and have definitive finding as the book suggest (and oh, the math, too); but it is actually nice to see how those article's authors use their creativity (and hard work) trying to make interesting (and robust) case based on data.

Nevertheless, the book still serves a good entry point to those cute economic papers. Of course, you may have different opinion.

Facebook Solution

On a recent visit to my favorite secondhand bookstore here, I bought a small book with nice cover titled On Rumors, by Cass Sunstein. I like this short book while discussing its first two subtitles -- how falsehood spread and why we believe them-- (answer: informational and confirmatory cascade and group polarization) ; but not so much on the third -- what can be done.

It's a small wonder nonetheless, knowing that Sunstein, along with Thaler, is the leading figure in paternalistic libertarianism. He goes that to prevent falsehood to spread, we need to create a "chilling effect" against rumors through law.

But actually I like what he describes as (overly) optimistic market-for-ideas solution when he write:

"Perhaps the Facebook generation and its successors will treat a wide range of rumors, including negative and vicious ones, with bemusement or a yawn."

This is spot-on.

MUSLIM "HEROES" OF KUWAIT'S 99 COMIC HEADED FOR BRITISH TELEVISION

The UK Telegraph reports that Britain's dhimmis are helping to spread the propaganda of Kuwait's ludicrous so-called comic book over to the UK:

Named the 99, as each possesses one of Allah's 99 attributes, the characters include a burka-clad woman named Batina the Hidden and a Saudi Arabian Hulk-type man named Jabbar the Powerful.

They have proved a hit from Morocco to Indonesia and were recently named as one of the top 20 trends sweeping the world by Forbes magazine.

Now they are being brought to British television by Endemol, the production company behind Big Brother, with a mission to instill Islamic values in children across all faiths.

Or, more precisely, to indoctrinate the children of Britain with this frightfest. If George Orwell knew about this, he'd be spinning in his grave.

A book of un-common sense, soon to be on the shelf at the cafe of un-common sense

So about more than a year ago, Gary Becker called to Cafe Salemba. He said he liked the cafe and had been very much inspired by it. "And, your tagline: a cafe of un-common sense, I love it!" he added.

Of course I'm lying. It's the other way around: we have been inspired by Becker and the likes: Stigler, Levitt, Friedman (Milton and David, not so much Tom), and of course Cafe Hayek.

I just couldn't help fantasizing the scene of Becker calling me, as I came across his new book with Posner: Uncommon Sense. Recommended.

HBS, Hilarious B-school

Do you know how the HBS students made the school pay for the BMW they rode to school? Or the difference between Sloan, Kellogg, Wharton, and HBS?

I did not until I read this book, Ahead of the Curve: Two Years at Harvard Business School.

To give you some idea, it's written by Philip D Broughton, an Englishman, former Paris correspondence for British The Daily Telegraph, holder of undergraduate degree in Classics from Oxford, who decided to give up journalism for MBA at HBS even without knowing how to run Excel on the first day of the School. In short, a page-turner hilarious account with strong hint of typical Englishmen wits and dark humor on life at one of world's most prestigious B-Schools.

Recommended for summer reading and for those who contemplate to take B-school or live business and corporate life.

DC COMICS BECOMES DHIMMI COMICS

Coming back from a vacation I was on, I've made quite a discovery indeed: DC is going to allow for a team-up between its superheroes and those of the Kuwaiti-based Teshkeel that go by the Islamic religion. The UK Guardian published the following article:

They are superheroes battling injustice and fighting evil the Islamic way, and they are teaming up with some of the west's biggest comic book icons. Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman are among those joining forces with The 99, who personify the 99 attributes of Allah, according to Islamic tradition.

And I'm guessing that, in the official books published in Kuwait, the "heroes" themselves personify such traits as jihad, conquering other countries and dhimmifying those they consider infidels, condone such quranic verses as "Therefore, when ye meet the Unbelievers (in fight), smite at their necks..." (Qur'an 47:4), and even verses like “Forbidden to you are ... married women, except those whom you own as slaves” (Sura 4:23-24). That's exactly why to see these DC superheroes meeting up with a bunch whose religion and beliefs go entirely against their own will be one of the most implausible ever seen.

What will unfold on the pages of the collaboration between DC Comics in the US and Teshkeel Comics in Kuwait is yet to be seen, but the appearance of The 99 – who already appear in comics in the Muslim world – alongside archetypal American heroes would have been unlikely during the Bush years. DC Comics' president and publisher, Paul Levitz, believes the cross-cultural project is unprecedented.

Now that is hilarious. They make it sound as though most American comics actually did support the war against terror and uphold patriotic values. Sorry, but it was anything but that, and even now, they can't be counted on to offer a fully convincing portrait of superheroes fighting terrorism, even allegorically.

That aside, it's interesting to note that company president Paul Levitz has approved of this.

He said: "It is a long-standing tradition for characters to meet others in the fictional world, and over the years a lot of the superheroes have been translated into Arabic, taking on ethnic elements. But this is a nice step forward. The most difficult creative test is when you are working with the least precedent and when you're trying to reach an audience that has a different cultural bias and different interests."

It sounds like he may be subtly attacking the sensible audience if they're offended by this teaming of heroes who under better editorial would have more common sense with so-called heroes who could condone atrocities like jihadic violence and racism. If anything, this tells that Paul Levitz is clearly a bad lot himself. He was of course responsible for handing Dan DiDio the keys to the kingdom, and did nothing to stop Identity Crisis from being crafted. Once, he was a great writer, with plenty of Earth-2 and Legion of Super-Heroes stories to his credit. Now, it's clear that power and greed have consumed him, and I'm going to have to look upon him in disgrace.

Unlike their western counterparts The 99 do not wear disguises, unless you count the burka-wearing Batina The Hidden, nor are they outsiders with secret identities. They are ordinary people who develop extraordinary abilities after coming into contact with mystical gems infused with power and wisdom.

Only Batina, one of five females, is fully veiled, and although characters pray or read the Qur'an, they are meant to appeal to children of all faiths.

No kidding. Sorry, I don't buy that for a second.

But who are some of the people behind this particular "project"?

The team behind The 99 includes comic book stalwarts Fabian Nicieza, Stuart Moore, June Brigman, Dan Panosian, and John McCrea, who have all worked at DC Comics and Marvel.

And now I consider Nicieza and company as bad as leftist writers like Warren Ellis and Mark Millar, possibly even worse. Nicieza is clearly another of many burned-out comic writers who's naive to boot.

About 23 heroes have been launched and there are more to come.

Mutawa said: "We're building the brand slowly.

"It's difficult to have any kind of reading or comic book culture here because there is a lot of stuff that doesn't come in or it's censored. Certain storylines don't work and some stuff, like magic, just isn't allowed."

Really? In that case, how do they expect to craft anything fun to read? It does suggest though, that the Islamists behind The 99 despise Tales of the Arabian Nights, where plenty of magic is involved!

This is another reason why I find the big two in their current incarnation so alienating today, because they're willing to insult their own properties by involving them with others whose ideologies go completely against their own.

Update: here's an extra item on this from Jihad Watch.

Presidential Summer Reading

If you were to recommend summer reading for Indonesian presidential candidates, what are two books you want them to read?

My recommendation:
#1. Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman, to help them comprehend how market economy works, even if they eventually dislike it.
#2. Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger, to remind them how being phony can be so sickening for others.

What's yours?

Harold

My favorite summer reading: Harold and the Purple Crayon.

Harold is terribly funny. He mistook oatmeal bowl for a flying saucer.