Stilltitled

The greatness — and also the abyss — of human potentiality is that it is first of all potential not to act, potential for darkness.

—Giorgio Agamben: Potentialities. Found via Caterina Fake’s post on its appearance in Cabinet through Paul Lafarge’s essay on the color black, which alighted on Giorgio’s observation and employed it to characterize the color black as one that conveys a sense of freedom, as in, to act or not.

Blackrock should buy Financial Engines, which went public today

Today, we are fulfilling the promise of a smaller government that lives within its means. The defenders of the status quo have already begun to yell and scream. They will try to demonize me. They will seek to divide us rather than unite us. But even they know in their hearts, if not yet in their minds — it is time for a change.

—Chris Christie, governor of New Jersey: via NYT

Even now, in the depths of a great economic crisis, local governments and school boards can’t hold back on the pressure that comes from the public sector unions…

Every department of state government has been asked to tighten its belt. And we will demand local governments do the same. We cannot and should not make state government shrink only to let local government expand….

—Chris Christie: transcript of budget speech, via NJ.com. Commendably, he pointed to the “9% pension increase granted by republicans in 2001 but never paid for by either party.” Christie later crystallizes the us vs them mentality of public sector unions and voters in terms of the teachers union: “The leaders of the union who represent these teachers, however, have used their political muscle to set up two classes of citizens in New Jersey: those who enjoy rich public benefits and those who pay for them.”

According to the latest compensation survey by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average state and local employee outearns his counterpart in the private economy with an hourly wage of $26.11, versus $19.41. That’s before benefits (pensions, health care, paid vacations and sick days and leaves) drive the disparity even higher, to $39.60 an hour for public employees and $27.42 for private workers.

—Jonathan Laing: via Barrons. Rising property taxes have not helped allay the “populist rage” that has emerged from the inequality between constituents and their municipal workers. Instead, it has driven NJ to a form of Massachusetts proposition 2 1/2, which capped property tax increases to 2.5%. Nonetheless, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities argued in2008 that the MA referendum “resulted in cuts to valued services rather than simply calling forth greater efficiency from local governments.” These are hard questions.

I worked for what I have. I deserve to have paid insurance. They shouldn’t knock people who work for it.

—Nanette Maurath, 64, Woodbridge school bus driver for 32 years, remarking on the free health insurance she now receives: via NJ.com

The 2005 reforms, driven by an exaggerated concern that debtors might game the system, instituted a series of paper-intensive procedural safeguards. All debtors must produce documents that estimate potential increases in expenses or income during the year to come, a monthly net income statement and a complex “means test calculation” that certifies expenditures in a large number of specific, carefully defined categories.

The result is a lawyer- and paperwork-centered system in which the families most in need of quick relief wait months to save up for the filing costs and attorneys’ fees necessary to file a bankruptcy petition. Although total expenses vary a great deal, the statutory filing fees are now almost $300 and lawyer’s fees alone average more than $1,000.

—Ronald Mann, professor, Columbia: via NYT

We did not enter the search business. They entered the phone business. Make no mistake: Google wants to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them.

—Steve Jobs, all-hands meeting at Apple, following the introduction of the iPad in January: via NYT. He would later say, about the HTC suit, “We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it.”

I’m sure it is going to get uglier. To beat Apple, Google is going to have to be very aggressive. If they are successful, it will put price pressure on Apple and the iPhone.

—David B. Yoffie, a professor at Harvard Business School: via NYT

I hope Google will abide by Chinese laws and regulations…if you want to do something that disobeys Chinese law and regulations, you are unfriendly, you are irresponsible and you will have to bear the consequences.

—Li Yizhong, China’s minister of industry and information technology: via NYT

There are many, many things that Google could do, that we chose not to do… One day we had a conversation where we figured we could just try to predict the stock market. And then we decided it was illegal. So we stopped doing that.

—Eric Schmidt, speaking at the Abu Dhabi media summit:via Fortune. There goes google, saving us from itself.

This is a new day and a different administration…Privatization is something I’d be considering whether or not we had the fiscal crisis we have now, whether or not we had the intractability of the public sector worker unions we have now

—Chris Christie, governor, NJ, who faces an $11b budget gap: via Star Ledger.

stacked with lobbyists and industry representatives with clients who would be affected by privatization

—Sierra Club, comments on Chris Christie’s privatization task force: via, Star Ledger

I’m very struck by the level of bearishness everywhere I go. I’m not obsessed with history. I’m bullish because I think the global economic recovery is on track and is going to be surprisingly strong. The world was falling apart in 2009. There’s been a tremendous change.

—Barton Biggs, who is expecting an additional 10-15% leg-up in the market for 2010: via Bloomberg

My recommendation would be for this typical investor to think outside the U.S., and when he thinks about the U.S. to be exclusively defensive blue chips. The chances of a softening again, not a big collapse, but a secondary softening in the economy are higher than the market believes.

—Jeremy Grantham, GMO, who views fair value for the S&P 500 at 875, 24% below the present value: via Bloomberg

Individual investors as measured by mutual fund flows have absolutely no current enthusiasm for equity investing. As a contrarian I view this environment of disbelief and skepticism as quite bullish.

—Steve Leuthold, March 5 report to clients: via Bloomberg. This comes on the heels of $369b of inflows to bond funds since March 2009 vs an inflow of only $23.4b for equities.

Today, we should all be paying attention to a new theme: the simultaneous and significant deterioration in the public finances of many advanced economies….Down the road, it will be recognised for what it is: a significant regime shift in advanced economies with consequential and long-lasting effects.

—Mohamed El-Erian, CEO of PIMCO: via FT.