A Tale Of Two Downturns

Matthew Yglesias tells A Tale Of Two Downturns "Here’s another way of looking at the comparison between the 1930s and today. A chart that shows the path of real GDP indexed to the pre-crash peak:"



Whew.

Kevin Drum adds, "So yes: things are much better today then they were in 1933. Still, whenever I look at comparisons like this, I'm always struck by one way in which our situation today is worse. In 1933, nobody really knew what to do about a massive, persistent economic downturn. Keynes's theories hadn't yet gained wide currency, and conventional wisdom of the day was uniformly unhelpful. Certainly FDR was never a deliberate Keynesian: He did end up spending a lot of money, but mainly because he wanted to help people, not because he really thought that deficit spending per se was the answer to our problems. So in some sense it's forgivable that they didn't do a better job of combatting the Great Depression. They really didn't know any better."

Jaws a la Peanuts

I saw Jaws again over the weekend and it was great. It might have been my first time seeing it in a theater and that definitely made the experience better. Here's a fun mashup @grahams found. (Prints available here.)

On S&P, Downgrades, and Idiots

Economics of Contempt wrote On S&P, Downgrades, and Idiots. I can't verify any of it, but it's pretty entertaining.

Another Norm Down for the Count

Kevin Drum writes Another Norm Down for the Count "In the past, this has mostly been tacitly acknowledged, with opposition leaders reining in the bombthrowers when something serious enough was at stake. Not anymore. The president's obligation of responsibility still limits his actions on the global stage, but now, instead of this representing an outer boundary that restrains partisan attacks, it's just another political weakness to take advantage of. Needless to say, this is not a good sign in an allegedly mature democracy."

The European Debt Crisis

Dylan Matthews wrote Everything you need to know about the European debt crisis in one post. "Since the financial crisis hit in 2008, a wave of debt crises have swept the European Union, threatening various countries with default and putting the future of the euro in danger. Here’s what's happened, by country."

Paul Krugman has more up-to-date info on Italy today, A Self-Fulfilling Euro Crisis?.

On Obama

Kevin Drum wrote on Presidential Power "Has the White House really been staggeringly uncreative compared to Republicans? We don't have to guess about this. We recently had a Republican president in office for eight years and we can see just what he did."

"Contrary to his reputation, Bush mostly succeeded by pressing a moderate, and sometimes even liberal, agenda. Tax cuts aside, which he passed solely primarily with Republican support, the only real ruthlessness he showed toward Democrats on behalf of a conservative priority was the campaign hardball he played to add a union-busting provision to the Homeland Security bill. That was about it for presidential toughness. Ironically, the biggest show of ruthlessness during the Bush years was in the appointment of judges, but the ruthlessness there was wielded by Orrin Hatch, who made it easier to confirm conservative judges by peremptorily changing the blue slip rule in a remarkably cynical display of naked power politics. Democrats responded by filibustering a bunch of judges, which was also pretty unprecedented, and the whole thing eventually got resolved by a group of centrist senators called the Gang of 12. In this case, both sides displayed some ruthlessness, but not President Bush. He was just about the only person not really involved."

Drew Westen wrote an excellent piece in the New York Times yesterday, What Happened to Obama? that I highly recommend. He wrote the inauguration speech he would have liked to have heard, and then said.

"And perhaps most important, it would have offered a clear, compelling alternative to the dominant narrative of the right, that our problem is not due to spending on things like the pensions of firefighters, but to the fact that those who can afford to buy influence are rewriting the rules so they can cut themselves progressively larger slices of the American pie while paying less of their fair share for it. But there was no story — and there has been none since. In similar circumstances, Franklin D. Roosevelt offered Americans a promise to use the power of his office to make their lives better and to keep trying until he got it right."

Annoyance With Republicans

No surprise, but a lot of things the Republicans have done lately have annoyed me. Here are a few:

Steve Benen has a A timeline of events listing various things affecting the deficit since 1980. It's clear the Democrats have been more deficit conscious and yet the Republicans continually present themselves as the financially responsible party, and do so successfully!

Matthew Yglesias explains GOP Now Blocking Recess Appointments. The House is going to have short sessions throughout their August recess, which procedurally will keep the Senate in session, which means Obama can't make recess appointments. "I find that my mood around this fluctuates. Mondays and Wednesdays I’m frustrated by lefties who seem to see the unprecedented Republican obstruction the President is dealing with as part of an 11-dimensional chess game through which Obama “really” wants his progressive initiatives to be frustrated at every term. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I think this is the most damning critique of all. In the face of an opposition that’s been relentlessly innovative, the White House has been staggeringly uncreative. Rather than a game of tit-for-tat, the Republicans seem to be inside the administration’s decision loop, heading off their retaliatory options before the President has even exercised them."

The 11 dimensional chess line is a reference to several James Fallows posts, here's one of the latest, Obama as Chess Master: 'Think of Him as Bobby Fischer'.

But wouldn't it be nice if Obama could appoint people to fill the two vacancies on the Federal Reserve Board? " One of those seats is vacant because Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL) thought an economist with a Nobel Prize wasn’t qualified for the job. The nominee in question withdrew, and Obama hasn’t named anyone else. The second open slot nobody’s ever been nominated for."

Here are three isolated examples of simple mistruths.

Kevin Drum wrote How To Lie With Figures. His congressman John Bayard Taylor Campbell III (R-CA) sent a letter called a Taxpayer's Statement (a good idea) which under revenues included a line "Miscellaneous Receipts" that showed an 86.22% increase from 2009-2010 up to $95,873,000,000. The footnote explains it as "This includes taxes from a variety of places including gaming activity fees, Dept. of Interior fees, Puerto Rico, and other sources." which sounds nasty. Drum looked into it, "The vast bulk of that number, about $75 billion, is profit from the Federal Reserve's investments that have been returned to the Treasury. But even if you read the footnote you wouldn't know that. It just looks like the gummint is sucking up ever more of your money."

Drum also wrote When is a Regulation Not a Regulation?. "I don't remember now where I first saw this, but apparently the conservative community is in an uproar over proposed new rules that would classify farm equipment as commercial vehicles, thus requiring farmers to get commercial drivers licenses, keep detailed logs, submit to periodic drug testing, etc. etc. It would be expensive and annoying and farmers don't like it. Just another example of the overbearing Obama administration regulating us to death."

"So here's what seems to have happened. The FMCSA has long had rules that defined most grain haulage as interstate commerce and designated farmers hauling shared crops as commercial operators. This was never a big deal because they had never enforced those rules and neither had anyone else. But then Illinois decided to start enforcing the letter of the law and Illinois farmers were unhappy. So now FMCSA is asking whether these regulations ever made sense in the first place...But it looks like the outrage over this is yet another example of Obama Derangement Syndrome in action. Far from trying to implement a barrage of regulations on our nation's farmers, FMCSA is apparently trying to stop state officials from implementing a barrage of regulations on our nation's farmers."

Finally, here's Ezra Klein on Why do half of all Americans pay no federal income taxes? which I've heard going around lately. It's usually treated by the right as a negative, which I don't really understand because they want low taxes right? But I guess the issue is that it's the poor that don't pay taxes. And of course big companies like GE.

"A new report (pdf) from the Tax Policy Center breaks it down. In 2011, about 46 percent of households won’t pay income taxes. For about half of them, the standard provisions of the income tax wiped out their liability...For the other half, various tax expenditures wipe out their liabilities. Elderly tax benefits are the biggest player here. They get an extra standard deduction, an exemption for some Social Security benefits, and more. Then come various tax credits for children -- for instance, the Child Tax Credit in the Bush tax cuts -- and the working poor. And then come a lot of smaller credits that you can read about in the paper. "



"Many politicians complain about the number households that don’t pay income taxes. But they complain about them in very general terms. " The then quotes Sen John Cornyn (R-TX) doing so. "Would he repeal the Bush tax cuts? That would bring households benefiting from the expanded Child Tax Credit and the lower marginal rates back into the system. Would he propose that seniors get a smaller standard deduction, or pay taxes on their full Social Security benefit? Would he lower the standard deduction for non-seniors? Would he say that these programs should be conducted through direct spending rather than the tax code, and so the Earned Income Tax Credit will simply send low-income beneficiaries a check rather than first wiping out their tax liability? His statement mentioned tax reform, but it didn’t get into any of these details."

Why Climate Scientists Are So Perturbed

Why Climate Scientists Are So Perturbed - NYTimes.com "A recent report from the ClimateWorks Foundation in San Francisco does the best job I have seen of explaining, in layman’s terms, why scientists keep pressing the issue. In essence, society has put off the task of reducing carbon dioxide and other emissions for so long that it is on the verge of running out of time, the report argues. The document, written by Hal Harvey and Sonia Aggarwal, calculates that stabilizing the gases at a level low enough to avert severe damage to the planet will require that emissions peak by 2020 and then begin falling briskly — and no set of policies in place today is likely to cause that to happen.

At only 19 pages, the ClimateWorks report is an accessible summary of the inexorable mathematics at the root of the climate-change problem."

Downgrade

Here's Standard and Poor's Press Release.

I'm not a big fan of Megan McArdle but apparently she heard about it beforehand, U.S. Faces Possible Ratings Downgrade From S&P. "For a couple of days, I've been hearing rumors that one reason that US stocks were plummeting was S&P's delay in issuing its ratings; supposedly, the delay was because S&P was going to downgrade us, and they wanted to wait until after Friday's market close."

Krugman's take, "On one hand, there is a case to be made that the madness of the right has made America a fundamentally unsound nation. And yes, it is the madness of the right: if not for the extremism of anti-tax Republicans, we would have no trouble reaching an agreement that would ensure long-run solvency.

On the other hand, it’s hard to think of anyone less qualified to pass judgment on America than the rating agencies. The people who rated subprime-backed securities are now declaring that they are the judges of fiscal policy? Really?

Just to make it perfect, it turns out that S&P got the math wrong by $2 trillion, and after much discussion conceded the point — then went ahead with the downgrade."

Meet Comex

Forbes wrote Meet Comex, The 19-Year-Old iPhone Uber-Hacker Who Keeps Outsmarting Apple. I really don't know why Apple hasn't hired him yet.

Chart of the Day: The Real Employment Picture

Friday, Kevin Drum wrote Chart of the Day: The Real Employment Picture "The economy added 117,000 jobs in July. Unfortunately, we need to add about 150,000 jobs each month merely to keep up with population growth. So the real net job growth picture is actually negative. The chart below shows real net job growth since 2009, and it's obviously not a pretty picture. It would be nice if Republicans in Congress would allow us to do something about this."

How to find climate normals?

How to find climate normals? " If you're younger than 26, you have never seen a month where the global mean was as cold as the 161 year average. "

" If you're 35 or younger, you have never seen a global mean below climate's real normal."

David Frum Admits, Were Our Enemies Right?

David Frum wrote a very good post, Were Our Enemies Right? "Imagine, if you will, someone who read only the Wall Street Journal editorial page between 2000 and 2011, and someone in the same period who read only the collected columns of Paul Krugman. Which reader would have been better informed about the realities of the current economic crisis? The answer, I think, should give us pause. Can it be that our enemies were right?"

Krugman responds, Wrong And Right. "It’s kind of annoying when people claim that I said the stimulus would work; how much noisier could I have been in warning both that it was grossly inadequate, and that by claiming that a far-too-small stimulus was just right, Obama would discredit the whole idea? Of course, the WSJ also said that the stimulus wouldn’t work. The difference was in how it was supposed to fail. The WSJ view was that federal borrowing would crowd out private spending by driving interest rates sky-high, that the bond vigilantes would destroy the economy. Note that when the linked editorial was published, the 10-year rate was at 3.7%, with the Journal in effect predicting that it would go much higher."

Why the Market Dropped Today, It Was Europe

The Financial Times reports Spain and Italy rush to quell fresh crisis. "The flurry of activity came against the backdrop of another big sell-off in markets. Yields on benchmark 10-year Spanish and Italian bonds peaked at 6.45 and 6.25 per cent respectively. The premiums Madrid and Rome pay to borrow over Germany also reached euro-era highs of 404 and 384 basis points. Both the yields and ­premiums are close to levels that pushed Greece, Ireland and Portugal into bail-outs. The premium France pays to borrow over Germany also hit a euro-era high of 75 basis points. Analysts said it was difficult to see what could stop Spanish and Italian rates continuing to climb, particularly in light summer trading."

"In the US, the S&P dropped 2.6 per cent, its biggest one-day slide in nearly a year and turned negative for the year as it fell for the seventh straight day, a downward streak not seen since October 2008. Gold surged to a record just shy of $1,660 an ounce, while the Swiss franc hit all-time peaks against both the euro and the dollar."

Krugman says, "I really don’t know how this is going to play out; Italy and Spain are too big for extend and pretend, and they’re also too big to save. But this is huge, and just as worrying in its own way as the US crisis of governance."

Who will sit on the Supercommittee?

If you're not yet done with the debt deal the next question which Ezra Klein tries to answer is Who will sit on the Supercommittee?. Kevin Drum takes a shot at it too.

Ok, I'm done.

Budget Deal Negotiations

My thoughts at the end of this weekend were that the only difference between Obama and a GOP president on this budget deal, is a Republican president would have gotten this deal sooner. Also, with a GOP president I think the Democrat Senate could have held out for a better deal. That was when the deal was described as $3 trillion in cuts with no revenue. It turned out a little better than that. But there's been lots of debate about how the negotiations went. Here's some of the better pieces.

Jared Bernstein wrote Lousy Negotiating Skills Are Not the Problem and there were a number of followups which The Economist nicely collects in Budget brinkmanship in a conservative America.

Here's another collection from James Fallows, Let's Look on the Brighter Side! More on Chess Master v. Pawn.

Jonathan Chait wrote The Debt Ceiling Crisis And The Failure Of The Establishment. "The political assumptions here turned out to be badly wrong. The main problem is that the Republican Party does not actually care very much about the deficit. It cares about, in order: Low taxes for high-income earners; reducing social spending, especially for the poor; protecting the defense budget; and low deficits. The Obama administration and many Democrats actually do care about the deficit and are willing to sacrifice their priorities in order to achieve it, a desire that was on full display during the health care reform debate. Republicans care about deficit reduction only to the extent that it can be undertaken without impeding upon other, higher priorities. Primarily "deficit reduction" is a framing device for their opposition to social spending, as opposed to a genuine belief that revenue and outlays ought to bear some relationship to each other."

Jackie Calmes says RIghtward TIlt Leaves Obama With Party Rift, "That has some progressive members of Congress and liberal groups arguing that by not fighting for more stimulus spending, Mr. Obama could be left with an economy still producing so few jobs by Election Day that his re-election could be threatened. Besides turning off independents, Mr. Obama risks alienating Democratic voters already disappointed by his escalation of the war in Afghanistan and his failure to close the Guantánamo Bay prison, end the Bush-era tax cuts and enact a government-run health insurance system. “The activist liberal base will support Obama because they’re terrified of the right wing,” said Robert L. Borosage, co-director of the liberal group Campaign for America’s Future."

Greg Sargent nails itbest, "The simple answer: Dems weren’t prepared to allow default — no matter what. Republicans, by contrast, treated the debt ceiling hike as a necessity, but one that had to happen on their terms. In a remarkable act of political cynicism, they recast the debt ceiling hike itself as a GOP concession — even though they had already agreed it had to happen to avert an epic national crisis. And Dems made this possible by accepting the dynamics of the situation as Republicans defined it. Whether there was another alternative for Dems is another question."

Glenn Grennwald wrote: "The reported deal on the debt ceiling is so completely one-sided -- brutal domestic cuts with no tax increases on the rich and the likelihood of serious entitlement cuts in six months with a "Super Congressional" deficit commission -- that even Howard Kurtz was able to observe: "If there are $3 trillion in cuts and no tax hikes, Obama will have to explain how it is that the Republicans got 98 pct. of what they wanted," while Grover Norquist, the Right of the Right on such matters, happily proclaimed: "Sounds like a budget deal with real savings and no tax hikes is a go.""

Peter Wallsten and David Nakamura wrote in the Washington Post Did Obama capitulate — or is this a cagey move?. Obama can now say he avoided a default and he won't have to deal with the debt ceiling again before the election. "And Obama, branded a socialist by many Republicans for his big-spending stimulus program and his health-care overhaul, can declare himself a deficit hawk as he courts the political middle."

"Obama may declare victory, he said, but after relenting on taxes, “he’s playing hurt.” [Grover] Norquist said Republicans next year can make a case that the 2011 deal would have been far bigger had the GOP controlled the Senate and the White House. And they will argue that when it came to spending cuts, “Obama fought us every step of the way.” Norquist added that he was “pleasantly shocked” that Obama had not sought a debt-ceiling increase last year, when the president struck another deal with the GOP extending the Bush tax cuts — given that the president had far more leverage at that point."

Kathleen Parker wrote in the Washington Post The Tea Fragger Party. "The tick-tock of the debt-ceiling debate is too long for this space, but the bottom line is that the Tea Party got too full of itself with help from certain characters whose names you’ll want to remember when things go south. They include, among others, media personalities who need no further recognition; a handful of media-created “leaders,” including Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips and Tea Party Patriots co-founders Jenny Beth Martin and Mark Meckler (both Phillips and Martin declared bankruptcy, yet they’re advising Tea Party Republicans on debt?); a handful of outside groups that love to hurl ad hominems such as “elite” and “inside the Beltway” when talking about people like Boehner when they are, in fact, the elite (FreedomWorks, Heritage Action, Club for Growth, National Taxpayers Union, Americans for Prosperity); and elected leaders such as Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, head of the Republican Study Committee, and South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, who grandstand and make political assertions and promises that are sheer fantasy.

Meanwhile, freshman House members were targeted and pressured by some of the aforementioned groups to vote against Boehner’s plan. South Carolina’s contingent was so troubled that members repaired to the chapel Thursday to pray and emerged promising to vote no. Why? Not because Jesus told them to but because they’re scared to death that DeMint will “primary” them — find someone in their own party to challenge them."

The Debt Deal

I'm not sure what to make of it. Here's the White House's Fact Sheet: Bipartisan Debt Deal: A Win for the Economy and Budget Discipline.

Ezra Klein has his take on the Winners and losers. He also produced The debt-ceiling deal in one flowchart

Bad Plumer followed up with What the debt ceiling deal means for the unemployed since existing emergency unemployment benefits are set to expire at the end of the year.

Nate Silver describes The Fine Print on the Debt Deal. "If Democrats read the fine print on the debt deal struck by President Obama and Congressional leaders, they’ll find that it’s a little better than it appears at first glance. That’s not to say that the deal is a good one for them. It concedes a lot to Republicans, and Democrats may be wondering why any of this was necessary in the first place. But the good news, relatively speaking, has to do with the timing and structure of the spending cuts contained in the deal."

"If you’re a Democrat and you must accede to $1.5 trillion in cuts — and that’s literally the situation that Democrats will find themselves in if the deal passes through Congress — it’s going to be hard to do better than this $1.5 trillion in cuts. They are very heavily loaded with defense cuts, while containing few changes to entitlement programs or to programs which benefit the poor."

Ezra Klein wonders Will Democrats prefer the trigger? "The Joint Committee is charged with finding $1.5 trillion in savings over 10 years. The trigger would only cut $1.2 trillion over 10 years. The Joint Committee is likely to cut Social Security, Medicaid and a host of programs Democrats aren’t going to want to touch if taxes aren’t part of the deal. The trigger exempts Social Security and Medicaid, and $1 out of every $2 in cuts comes from the Pentagon. The Joint Committee is likely to cut a deal without revenue, and Democrats will have to explain to their base why they permitted, say, Medicare cuts while letting the GOP reject tax increases. The trigger lets Democrats blame Republicans for protecting the wealthy in the 2012 election."

Silver also wrote about What the White House Left on the Table. "Exactly half of the Democratic caucus members voted for the debt ceiling bill, which makes it hard to classify the deal as “terrible” from their point of view. But almost three-quarters of Republicans voted in the affirmative. And even the Tea Party came around in the end. By 32-to-28, members of the Tea Party Caucus voted for the bill."

"These results seem to suggest that Mr. Obama left something on the table. That is, Mr. Obama could have shifted the deal tangibly toward the left and still gotten a bill through without too much of a problem. For instance, even if all members of the Tea Party Caucus had voted against the bill, it would still have passed 237-to-193, and that’s with 95 Democrats voting against it.

Specifically, it seems likely that Mr. Obama could have gotten an extension of the payroll tax cut included in the bill, or unemployment benefits, either of which would have had a stimulative effect. Some Republicans would have complained that the new deal expanded rather than contracted the deficit in 2012, and Mr. Obama would have lost some of their votes. But this stimulus spending wouldn’t have overtly violated their highest-priority goals (no new taxes, and a dollar in spending cuts for every dollar in borrowing authority). And Mr. Obama, evidently, had a few Republican votes he could afford to lose."

Kevin Drum is less happy, Why the Debt Ceiling Deal Sucks. "It's a shit sandwich no matter how you look at it. And it's a shit sandwich in at least two very specific ways: (1) It means we'll continue to live in a fantasyland that says we don't need any tax increases even though our population is aging and we're plainly going to need higher revenues to support this demographic reality; and (2) we'll continue to live in a fantasyland that says our problems are primarily caused by discretionary spending. This is, of course, exactly the opposite of reality, which means we're going to screw the poor and do nothing serious about the long-term deficit. Nice work, adults."

Ezra Klein wrote today calling it A terrible, no-good, very bad deal. That seems a little hypocritical, but I agree with this: "The two reigning theories of our current economic moment are not opposed to one another. The economy is weak now, with too little demand and too little growth, and threatened by mounting deficits later. The answer, as any economist can tell you and as many told Congress, is simple: do more to support the recovery now and more to cut deficits later. In the short-term, we should expand the payroll tax cut, make a massive investment in infrastructure, continue funding unemployment insurance, and do more to aid the states. In the long-run, we should cut spending in entitlement programs as well as discretionary programs, and raise significant revenues and modernize the tax code by flattening the base and closing loopholes."

Nick Farina - An iOS Developer Takes on Android

Nick Farina wrote An iOS Developer Takes on Android a really interesting description of the difference between the two platforms.

South Korean Deluge

I didn't know about the South Korean deluge "After a month of heavy rain saturated mountainsides, a fresh deluge sent landslides sweeping into Seoul last week, killing 59 people. Ten were still reported missing. In a strange compounding of the misery, the landslides and flash flooding washed away landmines buried near an air defense unit in Seoul. Soldiers were searching for those landmines as well as North Korean landmines washed away near the border. A total of 76 landslides of different severity struck after the most intense rainstorm in Korea in the last century. Ten university students lost their lives while volunteering at a summer camp for kids when a landslide struck in Chuncheon. "If it keeps raining like this, no country in the world can endure this," South Korean President Lee Myung-bak said. -- Lane Turner (25 photos total)"

Inside North Korea

Great photos Inside North Korea "Earlier this year, David Guttenfelder, chief Asia photographer for the Associated Press, along with Jean H. Lee, AP bureau chief in Seoul, were granted unprecedented access to parts of North Korea as part of the AP's efforts to expand coverage of the isolated communist nation. The pair made visits to familiar sites accompanied by government minders, and were also allowed to travel into the countryside accompanied by North Korean journalists instead of government officials. Though much of what the AP journalists saw was certainly orchestrated, their access was still remarkable. Collected here are some of Guttenfelder's images from the trip that provide a glimpse of North Korea. [37 photos]"

Where Federal Taxes Are Raised and Spent

The Economist has a nice map, America's fiscal union: The red and the black "Where federal taxes are raised and spent"

Dealageddon

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Amid Debt-Ceiling Drama, Interest Rates Have Hardly Followed the Script

I liked this segment on the News Hour last night, Amid Debt-Ceiling Drama, Interest Rates Have Hardly Followed the Script "On Wall Street, stocks initially rallied Monday on the news of a debt-ceiling deal, but a weak report on manufacturing killed the surge. Economics correspondent Paul Solman reports on the financial world's reactions to the drama over a debt deal as part of his series on Making Sen$e of financial news." The link includes video and a transcript.

Data journalism at the Guardian

Data journalism at the Guardian: what is it and how do we do it? "These are some of the threads from my recent talks I thought it would be good to put in one place - especially now we've got an honourable mention in the Knight Batten award for journalistic innovation. This is about how we do it at the Guardian. In 10 brief points."

Metal on the Plains of Mars

Today's Astronomy Pic of the Day, Metal on the Plains of Mars. "What has the Opportunity rover found on Mars? While traversing a vast empty plain in 2005 in Meridiani Planum, one of Earth's rolling robots on Mars found a surprise when visiting the location of its own metallic heat shield discarded last year during descent. The surprise is the rock visible on the lower left, found to be made mostly of dense metals iron and nickel. The large cone-shaped object behind it -- and the flank piece on the right -- are parts of Opportunity's jettisoned heat shield. Smaller shield debris is also visible. Scientists do not think that the basketball-sized metal "Heat Shield Rock" originated on Mars, but rather is likely an ancient metallic meteorite."



I can't help but wonder what we'd be thinking if this heat shield wasn't from a ship that we launched. What would an alien think coming across it?