Tag: Obama

Root Causing the Bergdahl Release

 

First, Bergdahl is a weasel, and no one likes a weasel. Especially in trade for 5 guys who made killing Americans their mission in life.

But one might reasonably ask why Obama would think this was a good idea in the first place, besides the obviously politically expedient motivations.

The miscalculation stems from the worldview that veterans are victims deserving pity and sympathy and talk of being “warriors” to keep them happy. This worldview is implied by a disdain for military and the attitude that they are lower forms of life or inferiors that need coddling and special attention to keep motivated. This viewpoint is reinforced by all the talk of selfless warriorship and the various military culturally jingoistic expressions out there.

Naturally from this worldview comes the reaction to Bergdahl that

1) he was a victim (never mind how he got there)

2) other vets are victims (think “Wounded warriors” etc)

3) the public likes victim vets (“wounded warrior project”)

4) therefore, vets and the public will sympathize with Bergdahl and credit Obama for the release

Instead, the administration is finding out that no one likes rats, losers, or deserters, and that the military still has enough actual institutional pride to shoot this shitshow down publicly. Oops.

Very quick post, it’s like a 5-min essay contest before work – may update with links & etc later:

The Lost Argument on Gay Marriage

It’s important to know multiple (or at least your opponents’) sides of an issue.

Recently, Barack Obama came out for gay marriage, stating:

“But– but I think it’s important for me– to say to them that as much as I respect ’em, as much as I understand where they’re comin’ from– when I meet gay and lesbian couples, when I meet same-sex couples, and I see– how caring they are, how much love they have in their hearts– how they’re takin’ care of their kids. When I hear from them the pain they feel that somehow they are still considered– less than full citizens when it comes to– their legal rights– then– for me, I think it– it just has tipped the scales in that direction.”

Recently, Bill Clinton came out for gay marriage, stating:

“Among other things, these couples cannot file their taxes jointly, take unpaid leave to care for a sick or injured spouse or receive equal family health and pension benefits as federal civilian employees. Yet they pay taxes, contribute to their communities and, like all couples, aspire to live in committed, loving relationships, recognized and respected by our laws.”

Recently, Hillary Clinton came out for gay marriage, stating:

“LGBT Americans are our colleagues, our teachers, our soldiers, our friends, our loved ones,” said Clinton. “They are full and equal citizens and deserve the rights of citizenship. That includes marriage.”

Now, I am opposed to gay marriage because of my learning and thinking about why marriage exists in the first place on a variety of economic, biological, and social grounds. But if you’re going to argue for gay marriage, there are some at-least-reasonable-if-not-the-best arguments. The above political figures chose not to use them.

The usual arguments–articulated above–reflect the Marriage 2.0 view of marriage as a government-approved institutionalization of feelings, with the side benefit of reducing the paperwork required of a the government and a couple in contractually codifying certain living arrangements and tax benefits. These arguments are inherently reactive–they posit gay marriage as a response to other conditions for the benefit of a few people, not an active step towards improving our overall social framework–and emotional because they are all value-based without the supporting facts or philosophical underpinnings (is marriage really a right of citizenship?) to really evaluate them.

But the better argument, I think–less subject to reductio ad absurdum and counterexamples–is that marriage as an institution is a signal and assimilative tool. This would be the proactive approach oriented toward increasing social coherence.

Common acceptance of a historically neglected or abused people can be increased or ameliorated through adoption of all customs of the local populace. Additionally, the age-old argument over whether faith prompts works or works prompt faith plays a part here.

To draw a parallel (though of course not an exact analogy): conservatives often argue for more integration of immigrants–teaching english, local customs, to immigrants etc etc to better assimilate the population and enable their functioning in the society.

Marriage might be a sort of socially assimilative institution. If you perceive gays as outsiders wanting to be integrated into society, adopting and allowing marriage–the most fundamental social institution that Americans have–for those gay members would not only have the salutory effects of increasing the overall perception of marriage as a valuable institution but also displace the gay culture which previously existed, thereby strengthening the American cultural fabric as a whole.

Now, there are problems with that argument too. However, I think it’s probably the strongest logical (as opposed to emotional) case that’s out there, although I can hardly conceive of any of the quoted figures likening gays to culturally foreign immigrants.

Thoughtful criticism welcome.

WTF is going on at Intrade for the pres election?

One might expect, when seeing poll results like this:

Romney: 47%

Obama: 46%

or like this:

Romney: 48%

Obama: 47%

or like this (I hope this isn’t the same poll quoted in the first article):

Romney: 47%

Obama: 46%

that Intrade’s tracking of the presidential election, which I wrote about previously, would not look like this:

WTF?

giving B-Rock a 57% chance of victory to Mitt’s 41%.

However you care to count it, with the tumult of headlines and economic headwinds going on, I wouldn’t give an extra 1-in-5 chance of winning to the incumbent when money’s involved here.

So what’s happening here? Remember, one of these two candidates will win. There are, to be sure, 4-and-change months left until the election. But what can swing one way can just as easily swing another, and so one really must wonder if this is a wonderful arbitrage opportunity, or if someone’s manipulating Intrade and making its value as a prediction marker into excrement.

PS. 56.6% + 40.6% = 97.2%. So there’s definitely at least 2.8% of arbitrage opportunity in this market. Perot ain’t running this time around.

InTrade’s take on the Presidential Election

Intrade is a prediction market. In short, it aggregates the views of individuals into a composite probability of an event occurring by using a trading pricing mechanism. The prices reflect the implied probability of something happening. For instance, if Event A is trading at 2.90/share, then the market says the probability of that event occurring is 29%. I follow it to get a sense of what may be coming down the pipeline.

In particular, I follow the presidential markets. President Obama has, with the exception of the latter part of 2011, had fairly solid numbers for re-election. However, his prices have been dropping recently and dramatically, so I wanted to look at why this might be, and whether the market was functioning efficiently enough to be regarded as a credible indicator of the Fall ’12 race. Intrade provides charts and day-to-day data on trading in its markets.

This chart shows the recent history of the intrade prediction on the re-election of President Obama.

Obama Re-election price history

There are a few major jumps with apparent ties to a few news events, highlighted below. I researched some of these events on the wikipedia calendar summaries. Macro concerns–a la Europe, and so on–probably weighed in on late 2011, as I couldn’t find any single events responsible for the trough in that area.

Prices, with some real-world events

Interestingly, though the price has been more or less constant over the last few months (less late May/June), trading volumes have been jumping dramatically.

Trading Volume Summary Stats

Now, obviously the volume increase is at least partially attributable to the nearing presidential election. However, the massive jumps in volume (e.g. ~7%-200% swings) with the more-or-less negligible price change (from 60-54, a 10% change) tells me that more and more people from both sides of the aisle are getting involved and putting money on the table in this market.

As more people are putting money in the market, the market should function more efficiently per the research sited in the wiki article on prediction markets. That is to say that the price should be a more accurate indicator of the “wisdom of the masses” and a better reflection of what will actually happen.

Therefore, the price/probability of Obama’s reelection dropping in the face of increasing volumes is a bad sign for Obama’s re-election. Anything can happen, but if this trend continues (and I expect that it will), we’ll see dramatically increasing volumes, and we’ll see the Obama re-election probability dropping to sub-50 in the next 2 months. This will indicate a losing campaign in the fall.

Conditions for Obama winning, or staying above 50 in Intrade: improved unemployment figures and improving economic indicators, e.g. the S&P increasing. But with Europe about to blow up (again, or finally?) and a dropping stock market, I don’t see that happening in the near term.

An interesting study might be to correlate trading volumes with media coverage citations for both GOP candidates and Obama, but I’m not sure where to get that data.

****Update

Also, as a teaser– Right now, 7 June, Obama is trading at 52.7. Romney is trading at 43.3. Those added together equal 96% probability. Now, we know that one of those two is going to win in November. There is no 3rd option. Where is the other 4% of probability hiding out?