Wintertime treats

Even if the holidays are over, it's never too late to revive two traditional winter classics, usually reserved for the holidays, but which will warm any winter's eve: egg nog and hot buttered rum.

Egg Nog:

Separate six eggs, placing the yolks in one bowl and the whites in another.

Slowly add 1/2 cup of white sugar to the yolks, mixing all the while. Slowly (again), add 2 cups of heavy whipping cream, anywhere from 1/2 cup to a full cup of milk (I used skim or 2% milk, as it's essentially a thinning agent), and then 1/2 cup each of black rum (Gosling's works well), bourbon (Maker's Mark or any sweeter bourbon) and Navan (the Madagascar vanilla-flavored cognac by the makers of Grand Mariner).

Then whip the egg whites until they peak and fold in. Generally allow the nog to sit, chilled, for a few hours before serving. "Fold" again before serving to achieve the best consistency; dash fresh nutmeg on top for optimal taste and aromatics.

Hot Buttered Rum:

This is even easier to make.

Simply mix one part butter with one part brown sugar, adding a dash of salt and whatever aromatic spices you desire: fresh nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, or even allspice, ginger, or mace or anything else.

Add the desired amount of rum (again, a black rum works best).

Then add boiling water and stir until all of the ingredients are melted and consistent.

Santiago de Chile: What We ♥d.

Santiago, like Chile, is much sleepier and conservative than its more lively counterparts along the Atlantic Ocean in Brazil and Argentina (and even, in some regards, Uruguay). Chilean culture doesn't steamroll you as immediately as, say, the tango-fueled Peronismo Italian-Latino hybrid that comprises Argentine culture. Peruvians huff that Chileans don't even have a true culture -- but rather stole it (or at least pisco sours) from Peru. Entering by coach or bus from the Andes is divine.

Neighborhood: Bella Vista. Hands down, the most energy in the city. Also home to La Chascona, one of Pablo Neruda's numerous homes in Chile, as well as any number of generally high-quality shops for lapis lazuli.

Monuments: La Moneda, the presidential palace, was worth the visit and worth the hassle of reserving a place over a week in advance. Unfortunately, the tour didn't include any information about the 1973 coup (the "other" September 11) against elected socialist president Salvador Allende; Allende and his presidential guard faced down the coup in the Moneda and Allende himself, after a defiant radio address, died in the struggle, having refused the coup leaders' offer of exile.

The national cemetery on the edge of town, and in particular the wall of memorials to the disappeared from the Pinochet regime, is a poignant bookend to a visit to La Moneda.

Day Trip: Valparaiso, a grittier port city, is home to a sea of hills and colored houses.

Game Change

What struck me about the new tawdry Heilemann-Halperin tome on the 2008 election was not necessarily what was picked up by the media, such as further chronicles of Bill Clinton's tantrums, the Reid "dialect" comment, or the poignantly voyeuristic Edwards spiral into political and personal disaster. This is politics as personal saga.

The book does a very good job of chronicling the relationships among and around the Clintons in a way that few books have yet achieved, although, as may be expected in a book of this nature, the winner -- Obama -- is presented nearly in the best light possible, excepting some moments of hubris. The book chronicles the Democratic nomination race grandly, but to the near exclusion of the Republican nomination race and to the extreme de-emphasis of the general election. I learned significantly nothing new about Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and very little about John McCain; certainly nothing to provide a window into the 2012 nomination fight. I also learned significantly little about the Bush administration's final year in power or even its view on the unfolding of the various events of the 2008 campaign. The Palin anecdotes have largely already flown through public discourse -- many flagged by Palin herself in her own book.

Two scenes, not covered by the initial media reviews, stand out.

The first is a window into that terribly lonely and exclusive club of ex-presidents:

Some days later, Bill received a phone call from George W. Bush. The current and former presidents spoke more often than almost anyone knew; from time to time, when 43 was bored, he would call 42 to chew the fat. In this case, Bush, tucked away at Camp David... wanted to reassure his predecessor that HE didn't think Clinton was a racist.

The irony of the situation tickled Bush, but he also felt sympathy for Bill. Hey, buddy, Bush said, I know you're coming under attack; you just gotta keep your chin up. Clinton thanked Bush - then treated him to a 15-minute tirade about the injustices that had befallen him and the sources of his suffering.

The second is the September 2008 meeting, called by Senator McCain upon the "suspension" of his campaign to return to Washington to hammer out a deal with respect to the bailout, then vigorously opposed by House Republicans. During the meeting, a laconic Bush deferred to Hank Paulson (the Bush sources refer to him as their David Petraeus on the economy), the Democrats deferred to Obama, and McCain sat almost completely silent as Obama took over:

One Republican in the room mused silently, "If you closed your eyes and changed everyone's voices, you would have thought Obama was the president of the United States."

At one point, Obama is even said to have told Paulson point-blank, "I'm going to be president, and I don't want to inherit a financial system that's collapsed."

Amusingly, Ben Bernanke and Paulson are reportedly "flabbergasted" as McCain tries to draw a comparison between the financial panic and some recent management troubles at Home Depot.

Altogether, it's an engaging campaign wrap, but nowhere near the iconic Making of the President by Ted White (1960 election), the exhaustive What It Takes by Richard Ben Cramer (1988 election), Hunter Thompson's hilariously wild Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail (1972 election) or the split-screen autobiographical All's Fair: Love, War and Running for President by James Carville and Mary Matalin (1992 election).

Dare I say this takes its place alongside Michael Lewis's eccentrically delightful -- and certainly less well-known that that other Lewis book -- Losers (1996 election) and its fixation on the ill-fated Republican nomination fight waged by businessman Morry Taylor.

Haiti links

I've been traveling, so posting has been lighter than expected.

Nonetheless, Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution (a must-read!) has had some brilliant and original thinking on the path forward on Haiti, including:

-- thoughts on how to help Haiti,

-- the role that Haiti will play in American policy and its consequences for the Obama presidency,

-- an early call to grant temporary protected status to Haitians in the U.S.,

-- a bold statement about the severity of this crisis on Haiti's geopolitical future,

-- thoughts on why Haiti is so poor, and

-- an eerie and poignant comment hours before the earthquake, on what was shaping up to be a very good year, relatively, for Haiti's economy.

Among aid organizations, Partners in Health stands out -- Paul Farmer has been working in Haiti for two decades.

Glass-Steagall II

President Obama announced his plan for bank reform on Thursday.

Some initial thoughts:

(1) The timing, two days after Scott Brown's victory in the Massachusetts Senate race, seemed awkward and reactionary.

(2) If, as it seems today, Congressional Democrats can't pass a market-friendly health care reform that puts guaranteed profits in the hands of insurance companies, I'm skeptical about their resolve in the face of almost certain fierce lobbying from JP Morgan, Goldman and others.

(3) I'm not sure how, in reality, you can limit exposure to under 10% in every conceivable area that may be problematic, but I'm very interested in seeing more details. If actually enforced, it would very likely limit the risk of another LTCM or AIG or Bear Stearns moment of pure systemic panic. I doubt it would limit the risks of, say, the dot-com bubble or the real estate bubbles. When everyone's long on an asset that later turns out to be overvalued, it doesn't matter that the risk is spread out among all of us. But it would reduce the risk of "LTCM moments," for sure, which would be a net plus.

(4) The other part of the plan, make no mistake, is nothing short of a return to Glass-Steagall rules, abandoned with bipartisan support in 1999 at the apex of deregulation and the Greenspan era. Again, in reality, I'm not sure how you distinguish the use of deposits for single-family loans on the one hand, and the use of deposits for more exotic securities, on the other. I'm not sure I see a bright line as between prop trading and "traditional" banking activity. Regional banks are failing all over the country and they made conservative (or so they thought) investments in traditional banking investments. I'd prefer perhaps a revision of the capital ratios, or regulations that place mortgages and mortgage-backed securities on equal footing vis-a-vis capital ratios (One of the regulatory nudges that caused the panic was the banking rule that banks could have much more leverage, in terms of capital, if they invested in mortgage-backed securities rather than underlying mortgages, thereby creating an incentive towards the former).

(5) Also make no mistake that this really could mean a dismantling of Wall Street -- get ready for banking to flow to Hong Kong, Dubai, and (maybe) London -- and all the tax revenue that's been fueling the renaissance of New York City.

(6) Alternatively, having lived in an era without Glass-Steagall, it may be difficult to put the genie back in the bottle. Talent will flow out, our capital markets could become less dynamic, or we'll end up with odd international joint ventures that are flexible enough to avoid full regulation by any one national authority. Furthermore, although it's an unpopular argument, financial innovation can be a good thing -- there are valid uses for credit default swaps. They make markets more efficient in some cases -- for example, total return swaps are a tool to separate ownership and the beneficial incidents of ownership. On the other hand, there's validity in the notion that the financial/securities industry may have become too juiced, and that there are better uses, in terms of comparative advantage, of the best and brightest talent out of U.S. universities than a beeline to Wall Street.

(7) To the extent investment banking talent does remain in NYC, that talent will flow to other as-yet unregulated shops like hedge funds and private equity. I'm not optimistic that the Congressional package of regulation shepherded by Barney Frank will really clip the wings on those unregulated groups sufficiently to tame capital markets in the way that these new "Obama/Volcker" reforms are designed.

(8) It's great to see Paul Volcker being taken seriously by the Obama administration.

Chile Turns Rightward

It is striking to consider that the 20-year reign of the center-left Concertación in Chile lasted longer than the 17-year regime of Augusto Pinochet, given that one of the key tasks of the past 20 years in Chilean public life has been to put to rest the ghosts and demons of the Pinochet era.

After defeating former president (and son of yet another former president) Eduardo Frei in today's election, Sebastián Piñera will take the reins of government as the first center-right president of Chile since the fall of the Pinochet regime and as the first duly-elected president of the center-right since Jorge Allesandri in 1958.

Remarkably, in a fact pattern that looks to repeat itself later this year in Brazil, a moderate leftist -- in Chile, Michelle Bachelet -- left office with high popularity but remained unable to carry a successor to victory. In many ways, Bachelet's popularity is somewhat of a second act in itself, coming after a horrible first year that saw the trashing of Chile's education system and of Transantiago, the public transit project in Santiago, the Chilean capital.

Presidents may not run for reelection in Chile (but can run after an interval out of office, as Frei did). It is certain that Bachelet may yet have another act in Chilean politics if she wants it.

Meanwhile, Chile has weathered the global economic crisis as well as any other nation, is generally regarded as the most dependable and stable of Latin America's economies, has escaped the boom-and-bust trap, given its dependence on commodities, especially copper, and has been fiscally prudent over the past two decades. Chile is is poised to benefit from good relations with the U.S., China and Brazil, and is set, this month, to become the first South American nation to join the OECD (although the real mystery may perhaps be why it took so long).

Piñera's campaign - LGBT-friendly and otherwise inclusive, remained socially progressive in a country where abortion is still illegal, pledged commitment to the social framework established by two decades of the Concertación and took pains to show that his election would not mark a return to the demons of the Pinochet era.

Elements with ties to the Pinochet era remain part of the Chilean right and in the Chilean aristocracy, as vividly portrayed in Isabel Allende's House of the Spirits, but if Piñera has even a mediocre term as president, he will nonetheless have successfully pushed Chile into a true two-party democracy.

Seattle: What We ♥d.

As compared to Vancouver, Seattle is not quite as cosmopolitan, Asian or, generally, international (although it may be safer, especially in comparing the "downtowns"). Fremont is funky, but seems trapped in 1995, but that may be with prejudice to the era of Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Nirvana.

Museum: The Seattle Asian Art Museum is a great way to spend a (rainy) morning or afternoon. The Chinese pillbox collection is a particular, if eccentric, delight. Be sure to note the sculpture in the front (Black Hole Sun!) and Volunteer Park's water tower observatory is a great place to view the Space Needle and the Seattle skyline.

Hip Bar: Sun Liquor. This bar captures the essence of Seattle. Unpretentious and a little grungy, but still sophisticated with a staggering attention to detail.

Coffee: Not to dwell on Capitol Hill, but Vivace is a hit, notwithstanding the long lines and the decidedly West Coast pace.

Food: Vietnamese Phở, just about anywhere you can find it.

Grocery: Uwajimaya, which comprises a full block of the International District. I found fresh galangal, among other Asian delights. Overall, I found the International District's Japanese quarter -- for Uwajimaya and food, as well as books and other stores -- to be the most vibrant of a vibrant set of Asian cultures.

Flora: Without a doubt, the variety of moss dotting the trees, sidewalks and otherwise throughout the city.

Olson Goes to China

The legal world is abuzz with Ted Olson's testimonial on behalf of gay marriage in Newsweek as Perry v. Schwarzenegger kicks off in federal court. He and David Boies, who faced off in Bush v. Gore in 2000, are joining forces to make the case that Proposition 8 is, in essence, unconstitutional.

It's a stunning argument, and shows why the former Bush administration Solicitor General is among the top barristers in the country. It's safe to say that if Olson wins this case before the Supreme Court, he'll secure for himself a place among the top barristers in American history, alongside Daniel Webster, not just John Roberts.

I have little to add to this story that others cannot with greater sophistication; for now, it may be helpful to bookend Olson's Newsweek turn with this NY Times profile from August 2009, which includes this interesting nugget from Robert Bork:

Conservative colleagues are kinder, but many remain bewildered. Former Judge Robert H. Bork, a close friend who has called same-sex marriage a “judicial sin,” said he could not bear to speak to Mr. Olson about the case.

“I don’t want to get into an argument,” Mr. Bork said. “But I’d like to know why.”

From a critical legal studies perspective, Olson and Co. are likely counting on the votes of Breyer, Sotomayor, Stevens and Ginsburg. It takes one more vote, and that vote would likely come from Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the majority opinion in each of Romer v. Evans, the 1996 case that invalidated a Colorado constitutional amendment on the basis that it violated rational basis scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause and Lawrence v. Texas, the 2003 case that invalidated state laws against same-sex sodomy on the basis of substantive due process (for non-lawyers, essentially a sister doctrine of equal protection).

We can't probe Justice Kennedy's brain, but two takeaway points from Lawrence may show where this is headed:

In her concurrence, then-Justice Sandra Day O'Connor argued that the sodomy law not only violated the Due Process Clause, but violated the Equal Protection Clause under a rational-basis scrutiny -- i.e., that there wasn't a reasonable relationship to a legitimate government interest). (Incidentally, I'd be fascinated in the takes of both retired Justice O'Connor and Justice Souter on this case).

In his dissent, Justice Scalia argued as follows:

The Texas statute undeniably seeks to further the belief of its citizens that certain forms of sexual behavior are “immoral and unacceptable"... the same interest furthered by criminal laws against fornication, bigamy, adultery, adult incest, bestiality, and obscenity.... The Texas statute, [the majority] says, “furthers no legitimate state interest which can justify its intrusion into the personal and private life of the individual."....

This effectively decrees the end of all morals legislation. If, as the Court asserts, the promotion of majoritarian sexual morality is not even a legitimate state interest, none of the above-mentioned laws can survive rational-basis review.

Scalia is prescient in at least this regard -- presumably, under the Lawrence reasoning, Prop 8 and referenda and state laws like it could be rendered unconstitutional without even so much as proclaiming gays and lesbians as a protected class, and it's really just a jurisprudential baby step from Lawrence.

Vancouver: What We ♥d.

Wine: British Columbia wine isn't well known; the volume simply isn't sufficient for massive export. Okanagan Valley wines are a great place to start, but by all means do not cover the field. Poplar Grove's 2005 Syrah was the best I tried.

Design: nood (New Objects of Desire) is a fun Canadian line of well-designed houeshold products. The umbrella was exciting, especially in rainy Vancouver.

Leather: mo851. A Montreal-based company that designs bags and other leather goods. Move over, Jack Spade. Their colors are amazing, and the bags are designed so as to be neither too masculine nor too feminine.

Places: Sun Yat-sen Chinese Garden was well-designed and a delightful space, especially on a rainy day. Particularly peaceful in light of the not-always benign surroundings of Vancouver's Chinatown.

Food: Hapa Izakaya in the West End was a hidden gem recommended by a local. Even better when we found that the patrons were about 70% Asian, 30% hipster. The food was among the best Japanese fusion I've had. The Korean hot stone bowl with rice, egg, miso and pork was perfect in flavor and in presentation, and the tan-taka-tan shochu, flavored with shiso leaf, among the more palatable Japanese spirits I've tried. They also have a "Hello, Kitty" drink that's more dessert than libation. Salt Tasting Room in Gastown was also hip, edgy and of course delicious. Trust your waiter to choose as among charcuterie, cheese and condiments. Don't be afraid to try the beef tongue -- its grainy smoke flavor was the best sampling of the night, by far.

Coffee: For a chain, Blenz was better than most, including Starbucks. The mocha, prepared with dark chocolate, was especially decadent.

Boulez in Winter

From the NY Times:

It will be a homecoming of sorts for Mr. Boulez, who as Leonard Bernstein’s unlikely successor, directed the New York Philharmonic. He has been proving to New Yorkers ever since what they gave up.

He is the last great exponent of European modernism from the generation that emerged after the war. Born in Montbrison, in the Loire, the charmed and charming son of a wealthy factory engineer, a mathematics student turned musician, he attended the Paris Conservatory, where Olivier Messiaen helped introduce him to serialism. An agent provocateur for serial music before graduating and a master of hardball polemics, he caused even anxious luminaries like the aging Stravinsky to feel the need to earn his approval.

His Repons is lovely; Dialogue de L'Ombre Double for clarinet and electronics is a shorter, perhaps more accessible introduction to Boulez.

The Kennedy Center Players performed Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time last summer; it was among the best moments of musical delight I've had as an audience member.

With the deaths of Iannis Xenakis in 2001, Luciano Berio in 2003, György Ligeti in 2006 and Karlheinz Stockhausen in 2007, only a handful of lions like Boulez remain -- Steve Reich, George Crumb, Henryk Górecki, and Elliott Carter. Arvo Pärt and John Adams for the minimalists. Krzysztof Penderecki if you're truly serious.

All are significantly underrepresented among the Mozart, Brahms and Beethoven of contemporary performance houses.

54-40 or Coase?

Economics scholars (as well as students in property law in US law school programs) are familiar with the Coase Theorem.

The Coase Theorem states that in a world of zero transactions costs and clearly defined property rights (i.e., that you can buy property with relative administrative ease and you can be certain that the property is yours after you've bought it), the efficient allocation of resources is independent of the distribution of property rights.

The Coase theorem, as one of the lynchpin ideas of the law-and-economics schools, essentially says that it doesn't matter how the legal authority -- say, a judge -- allocates the ownership of the property, only that the ownership is clearly defined. At such point, the actors, who will know definitively how property right are assigned, will be able to negotiate and bargain for rights.

Driving recently from Washington state to British Canada, I wondered if perhaps nations act under a somewhat similar principle. Specifically, I began to wonder if the 1849 settlement of the Oregon Country (during the single term of James K. Polk, perhaps the most under-appreciated antebellum US president) served as the "legal allocation" allowing American and Canadian actors to settle in earnest what would become Seattle and Vancouver. Seattle's creation dates to 1851; Vancouver's incorporation was in 1866.

To be sure, there are other contemporary historical elements propelling the growth of Pacific Northwest cities -- various gold rushes, beginning with California's 1848 gold rush, as well as the general westward expansionary push. Certainly the inception of transcontinental railroads in the 1870s in both the US and Canada were a factor in the growth of Seattle and Vancouver.

Perhaps Dominion in Canada in 1867 could be identified as a secondary "Coase" moment, which, more than any other point in evolutionary Canadian history, marks the moment that Canada transformed from colony into nation-state.

An interesting question with implications for game theorists, political scientists, legal scholars and historians alike.

Tom Ford's film debut

All in all, a very good first film.

It was beautiful as expected from one of fashion's contemporary icons; the use of color contrast to symbolize life/emotion was definitely well-crafted, as were the visuals generally. (think of the use of red in Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love or the use of green in Hitchcock's Vertigo).

Colin Firth did a very solid job with the role and his acting was subtle in a film that was not otherwise subtle. But it's still a solid addition to thoughtful LGBT-themed cinema, and I hope it will receive at least some Academy Award buzz.

The script dragged in places, but I was less annoyed by that -- you'd expect the college kid to have some trite dialogue -- than by some of the cheap plays for audience emotion; Tom Ford could do with a little nuance in his next film. Perhaps surprisingly, the exploitation was more emotional than sexual. I loved the Carlos scene -- you'd also expect a fashion designer to have one scene with a model that oozes sexuality, and it was otherwise a fun respite from the heaviness -- but I wasn't impressed with the heartstring-pulling, such as using cute doggies (and other tricks) to get cheap emotional responses from the audience. The difficult "anything you can self-pity, I can self-pity better" scene with Colin and Julianne worked because its ugliness forced us, as an audience, to question the emotional complicity we've been developing with Colin's character.

I did like that, early on, he wasn't afraid to embrace the awkwardness of absolute silence - no dialogue, no music. The soundtrack, however, was effective and haunting.

The Hitchcock/Almodovar nod was cute but not too cute (think of Bertolucci's flop, The Dreamers).

Also one of the best period films about Los Angeles I've seen lately.

Interesting Seattle fact

The Space Needle, Seattle's 605-ft tower built for the 1962 World's Fair, and a touchstone of so-called "Googie" architecture, was originally painted orange.