Month: September 2007

Why Markets Cannot Be Relied on to Police Themselves

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Prudent Bear has put it better than I ever could* in his post, When markets lose their mind.

His point:

Subprime mortgages themselves exemplify irrational markets, yet the participants’ activities at each stage were economically in their own rational interest:

  • Low income consumers took on mortgages they had no prospect of affording because they believed from the experience of others that house prices would rise sufficiently to bail them out. In any case being often near bankruptcy the potential profit from successful speculation appeared to them greater than the potential loss from default.
  • Mortgage brokers sold subprime mortgages because they got a commission for selling them and were not responsible for the credit risk.
  • Investment banks packaged the subprime mortgages into multiple-tranche mortgage backed securities because they received fat fees for doing so and again had no real responsibility for the credit risk.
  • Rating agencies gave the upper tranches of mortgage debt favorable ratings, because they made a great deal of money from providing ratings for asset backed securities, needed to keep in the favor of the investment banks who brought them this attractive business, and had mathematical models (either their own or the investment banks’) “proving” that the default rate of the securitized mortgages would be low.
  • Investment bank and rating agency mathematicians produced models “proving “ that default rates would be low, ignoring the real-world correlations between defaults on low quality consumer debt, because they were well paid to do so – the alternative was to return to a miserable cheese-paring existence in academia.
  • Finally the investors bought asset backed securities because they could achieve a higher return on them in the short term than their borrowing costs, and could tell their funding sources (in the case of hedge funds) or bosses (in the case of foreign banks) that they were taking very little risk because of the securities’ high rating.

I do think that his post is incomplete in one area, which is in explaining how so many people with decent credit got caught up in this too.

US Once Again Pisses off Kurds

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The Kurds are as close as we come to having an ally in the region, and we seem to be determined to piss them off.

We just arrested an Iranian from a trade delegation.

But the Kurdistan Regional Government in a statement called the arrest “illegitimate,” said the man was a member of a trade delegation that had been invited to Sulaimaniyah by the local government and demanded that he be released.

This sort of stuff keeps going on. There is no learning curve.

My Thoughts on Jena

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I haven’t really commented on this, but I’ve gotten a couple of comments to the effect of, “Isn’t this a tempest in a teapot.”

The Answer is Hell No!!!

Let’s roll tape:

  • Some black kids hang out under a “white” tree, and nooses are hung on it the next day.
  • The principal wants to expel the f$#@s who did this, but the school board makes it a two f$#@ing day suspension.
  • The black students decide to sit quietly under the tree as a non-violent protest.
  • The police are called in, and the DA threatens the black kids (and it’s clear that is what he did) at a school assembly.
  • Tensions are inflamed with at least two instances of groups of white kids beating down a black kid, no prosecutions.
  • The same school board that allowed the noose hanging perps to walk refused to allow black students and parents to testify before them.
  • In the fight in question, the kid who was beaten up, but is not even kept over night.
  • The students involved in the fight are charged by the same DA who threatened them with attempted murder.
  • The one student who has made it to trial maintains that he wasn’t even there, but his public defender refuses to call any witness and the all white jury convicts him of aggravated assault.
  • That conviction has been overturned because an appellate judge basically said, “are you out of your f$#@ing mind charging this kid as an adult.”

You’re right, it’s just some uppity n***ers, no discrimination here.

How Long Before This is Hacked?

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I dunno, 15-20 minutes?

NBC unveils self-destructing, ad-addled anti-iTunes service
Published Thursday 20th September 2007 19:29 GMT“
By Cade Metz in San Francisco
Published Thursday 20th September 2007 19:29 GMT

Less than a month after its very public breakup with Apple iTunes (http://www.theregister.com/2007/08/31/apple_and_nbc_go_at_it/), NBC Universal has announced its own rights-restricting video download service.

With the new NBC Direct, due for beta testing sometime in October, you’ll have the power to download shows like “The Office” and “Heroes” immediately after they’re broadcast on national television – without paying a penny. But don’t get too excited. You can’t view these videos on more than one Windows PC. They’re riddled with commercials you can’t skip. And they self-destruct after seven days.

….

You got a love it. Take all the worst features of bloody mindedly stupid DRM, and wrap it all up in one tight package.

Blackwater Broke a Guy Out of Prison?

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Well, it turns out that theIraqi government has had repeated problems with Blackwater’s actions, with a number of incidents, including breaking Iraqi Electricity Minister Ahyam al Samarrai out of a Green Zone jail in December. Samarrai had been awaiting sentencing on charges that he had embezzled $2.5 billion that was intended to rebuild Iraq’s decrepit electricity grid.

This is getting out of hand.

New Haven Acknowledges That They Were Morons (Sort Of)

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Remember when I wrote about members of a 60+ year old running group being prosecuted under terrorism statutes for marking a trail? The local constabulary were talking about pressing charges for the “Hash House Runners”, a “Drinking group with a running problem”. For marking a running path with flour.

When the doctor who marked the path saw the commotion, he explained what it was, and offered to eat some of the flour, but these folks still kept freaking out, despite the fact that the FBI had sent out a notice about the “Hash House Runners” saying that they were not a problem some tome previous.

There has been a settlement, with the doctor and his sister doing some community service.

If I were them, I’d tell them to pound sand, and file suit against the city for malicious prosecution. They’ve run these races in Washington, DC without incident.

Braking: FBI Taped Ted Stevens In Anti-Corruption Sting

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Ted Stevens, perhaps the most odious Senator in the history of the body, is going down.

FBI Agents Taped Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens As Part of Corruption Sting

MATT APUZZO
AP News

Sep 20, 2007 19:15 EDT

The FBI, working with an Alaska oil contractor, secretly taped telephone calls with Sen. Ted Stevens as part of a public corruption sting, according to people close to the investigation.

The secret recordings suggest the Justice Department was eyeing Stevens long before June, when the Republican senator first publicly acknowledged he was under scrutiny. At that time, it appeared Stevens was a new focus in a case that had already ensnared several state lawmakers.

More as it comes, but right now, pass the popcorn.

Why Do Bill Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, et al. Hate Israel?

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It appears that “Israeli officials warned the George W. Bush administration that an invasion of Iraq would be destabilising to the region and urged the United States to instead target Iran as the primary enemy, according to former administration official Lawrence Wilkerson.”

No surprise there. I’ve always said that some of Israel’s biggest fans are more dangerous to it than its worst enemies.

Henry Wasman and the Case of the Inspector General Who Didn’t

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Henry Waxman has founc another winner in the Bush Administration, this tiem, it’s the Inspector General for the State Department.

Case in point, When asked to investigate allegations of slave labor in the construction of the Iraqi Embassy, he interviewed only those employees that the contractor hand picked for him to interview.

At the rate this guy is going, he’ll soon be Cheney’s chief of staff.

Russians Working on Hybrid Nuclear Submarine?

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The Russians haven’t had a secret ship program in years, so this is interesting:

Submarine: Military Secret Shows Up on the Internet – Kommersant Moscow

Municipal authorities in Sarov, Nizhny Novgorod Region, accidentally revealed the design for the latest Russian submarine when it posted an account of a meeting with its commander on its website. The high level of secrecy surrounding the submarine suggests that it is a unique experiment on the part of scientists and the military.

On September 6, the official site of the city of Sarov (www.adm.sarov.ru) reported on a visit to the city by the commander of the submarine Sarov Capt. 1st Rank Sergey Kroshkin. In the text, it stated that the Sarov was still in the stocks at the Severodvinsk but “the chief commander of the Navy has set the task of finishing work by the end of the year.” The number of the submarine project was given: 20120 and its technical and tactical characteristics as well. those data indicate that the new submarine is very similar to the Project 877 Paltus (Halibut) diesel submarine, but its water displacement is greater (3950 vs. 3050 tons).

The article further goes on to surmise that this submarine has a mini-nuclear reactor on board, so that it can function much in the same way as some of the new conventional boats out there that can stay under water for over a month.

It makes sense. While one could not deploy any great distance with a 500-1000 kw reactor, your time underwater once on station wound be nearly limitless (by comparison, the Seawolf is somethere in the 50,000 kw MW range and has a top speed of over 35 kts).

Saudis Appear To Drop Dollar Peg on Riyal

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The Saudis have been pegging the Riyal to the Dollar for years. One of the things that this requires is that the interest rates in the two countries remain the same, otherwise there are pressures for them to move relative to each other.
The Saudis have made it clear that they will not follow the recent Federal Reserve rate cuts.

This will place further downward pressure on the dollar, and make it more likely that other Arab oil Sheikdoms will follow suit. Kuwait actually preceded them on this action, breaking the peg in May.