It just gets better and better.
It not appears the Merrill Lynch will take losses of at least $8 billion, up $3 billion from a few weeks ago, they are predicting 2 million foreclosures, 4x the estimate of the Bush administration, and housing inventories are at their highest in 20 years.
This neglects the fact that it’s not just subprime though, so it will get worse.
This has been todays bit of sunshine.
David Frum, the Canadian former Bush speech writer whose phrase Axis of Evil is probably responsible for a thousand or so American deaths had an essay on Marketplace, yesterday, and while I expect right wingers to lie, this is the first time in my not so young (I’m 45) life that literally every word out of his mouth was not the truth.
So, I’m sending them the following letter:
Subject: Re: No defense for Europe’s protectionism
In listening to Mr. Frum’s essay on defense procurement, the F-35, and the Eurofighter, I had a unique experience. This is the first time in my life in which I have heard a commentary where I know that literally every fact stated is incorrect. I am not suggesting that there is deliberate deception involved, but the only alternative is a complete ignorance of the subject involved.
Cases in point:
* The NATO allies will soon reach a crucial decision about their next-generation air-to-ground fighter plane. Two candidates have emerged as finalists: the US-UK-Dutch-Italian-Norwegian F-35, or an update of the Franco-German “Eurofighter.”
While the F-35 is intended to a large degree, perhaps primarily, for air to ground operations, the Eurofighter Typhoon is primarily an air defense fighter, though an air-to-ground capability is being developed for the plane in later tranches.
The Eurofighter is not a Franco-German endeavor. The French are not involved at all, having built the Dassault Rafale. The partner nations are the UK, Germany, Italy, and Spain. The F-35 is not a US-UK-Dutch-Italian-Norwegian project. Only the UK qualifies a very junior partner, and they have still not been given the information necessary to properly maintain the aircraft. The rest of the countries are simply customers.
* Just about everybody agrees that the F-35 is the better — and probably cheaper — plane.
When comparing the two aircraft, the Eurofighter is more agile, with a higher thrust to weight ratio and lower wing loading, and faster, it supercruises, and has a higher ceiling, much like the F-35’s big brother, the F-22, though the F-35 is stealthy, and the Eurofighter is not.
Additionally, the Typhoon can accommodate the Meteor, the long-range missile being developed in Europe, which has superior kinematics to the US AMRAAM, while the F-35, with its internal weapons stowage cannot.
Furthermore, the current prices are nearly the same, but you are comparing a design that is in production (Typhooon) with one that is still in development (F-35), and whose price is still escalating, so it to predict anything beyond parity in cost is simply wrong.
* It’s the plane that will be bought by the Israelis, who tend to be choosy about things bearing on national survival.
The Israelis will not be able to buy the Eurofighter, as political considerations of of the Typhoon’s sale to Saudi Arabia preclude this. Additionally, it will be purchased with significant US military aid, which requires that US equipment be purchased with these funds.
Additionally, the cancellation of significant defense purchases of French aircraft and British tanks in the 1960s, the Israelis do not feel that they can rely on the Europeans as a reliable source of supply.
* The Eurofighter is built on four separate assembly lines in four Western European nations. This redundancy creates more jobs, but at very high cost. High cost, in turn, reduces the number of aircraft the European allies can afford to purchase.
This applies to final assembly lines only , and it is, in fact not very costly. The evidence is in examining the F-16 program, the least expensive, and most numerious, of the previous generation of Western combat aircraft, where it has been assembled in the US, Korea, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Turkey.
I would note that given the facts to support his thesis are all wrong, his thesis itself is suspect.
As Atrios would put it, wanker of the day*.
*The “wanker” bit is not going in the letter.
So the Sox are now 2-0 in the series. Truth be told, I expect this to be a 7 game series though.
Consider this an open thread.
This getting a bit of mainstream play, because it is on CNN:
But one observer, Tom Schlesinger, the founder and executive director of the Financial Markets Center, a think tank that has followed the Federal Reserve closely for the past decade, believes the blame for the crisis falls squarely on the Fed and accuses the central bank of “regulatory foot-dragging” that has harmed the public.
Schlesinger maintains the Fed’s prevailing regulatory philosophy has shifted from that of 20 or 25 years ago, which in essence was “here is the line between right and wrong, don’t cross it,” to a current underlying policy that “anything and everything that might be called financial innovation ought to be embraced.”
…
He points specifically to the opposition to government regulation that flourished at the U.S. central bank under former Fed chief Alan Greenspan and has continued unabated under his successor Ben Bernanke.
(Emphasis mine)
The article mentions Greenspan’s Randroid* inclinations as an aside though, when they are actually the source of the problem.
He found anything that created disasterous bubbles to be an artifact of man at his most noble.
*He was one of Ayn Rand’s inner circle and bought into her nutzo worldview.
I think that she intends it as allegory, but I believe that Dick Cheney is actually nuts….Delusional…Batsh%$ insane. He is so confinced of his power, or more accurately the power of the US military-industrial complex, to do anything, including sewing a button on a fart.
Worked great in Iraq.
Insanity is doing something over, and over again, exactly the same way, and and expecting a different outcome.
Her essay is a good, if catty* read, and this time, for once, there is a point at the end:
As Pat Buchanan noted on “Hardball,” “Cheney and Bush are laying down markers for themselves which they’re going to have to meet. I don’t see how … Bush and Cheney can avoid attacking Iran and retaining their credibility going out of office.”
In other words, once our cowboys have talked their crazy talk, they have to walk their crazy walk.
*Like everything she writes.
It appears that someone at ICANN is feeding domain name lookups to people on the outside so that they can hold them for ransome.
If you have ever checked if a domain is available, and come back a few hours later to discover that someone has taken it, you know what I mean.
ICANN’s Security and Stability Advisory Committee is looking into suspicions that someone with access to search requests has been using this data to snap up potentially desirable domains, a process dubbed domain name front running.
Unlike traditional domain speculation, those who buy searched-for domains can be pretty sure of a potential interest when they attempt to sell their domains at a profit.
Damn straight. You already know that someone wants the domain, because they have searched for it.
Suspicions that the sharp practice is happening have not yet been proven, but are fuelled by user experiences suggesting something is amiss. Many people who check to see if a domain is available reportedly find it’s been bought by the time they return a short time later.
But the allegations are true, as anyone who has had this happen to them over, and over, and over again can attest.
If you want a domain, you need to snapit it up immediately after the search.
It should be noted that some budget budget wonks have uncovered a line item for a weapon to attack Iran.(h/t Attytood)
It’s for a modification to the B2 Stealth bomber so that it can carry the 30,000 penetrating pound bomb
Tucked inside the White House’s $196 billion emergency funding request for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is an item that has some people wondering whether the administration is preparing for military action against Iran.
The item: $88 million to modify B-2 stealth bombers so they can carry a newly developed 30,000-pound bomb called the massive ordnance penetrator, or, in military-speak, the MOP.
The MOP is the the military’s largest conventional bomb, a super “bunker-buster” capable of destroying hardened targets deep underground. The one-line explanation for the request said it is in response to “an urgent operational need from theater commanders.”
Hey, well, I’m sure the federal government has lots of uses for super “bunker-buster” bombs, such as, um, uh, na….
“You’d use it on Natanz,” said John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org. “And you’d use it on a stealth bomber because you want it to be a surprise. And you put in an emergency funding request because you want to bomb quickly.”
There is no reason to put this in an emergency request unless you have a target, and you want to hit it soon.
BTW, two snaps up to Will Bunch for this comment, “I’ve long been in the camp that the Cheney-Bush administration isn’t really as incompetent as it looks, that most of the worst stuff they do is 100 percent intentional. Putting your air-attack plans in a budget bill, however, is actually pretty incompetent. Hopefully they’ll get rid of this before Hillary can enthusiastically vote for it.“
Now I have to clean off my screen.
Oil ended the trading day at $90.46/bbl.
Fow what it’s worth, I think that the price is actually lower for Canadians than it was post Katrina, since with their currency appreciating against ours, this is the equivalent of about $74/bbl two years ago.
TOO DAMN EARLY!!!!
It’s not much of a surprise, the ‘Phants already set that date, but it is too damn early.
It has has been tweaked a bit, and made more restrictive.
Under the revisions, the program would exclude families earning more than three times the federal poverty rate. Low-income childless adults, which some states cover, would be phased out in one year. And states would have to be more rigorous in checking the validity of applicants’ Social Security numbers, an effort to exclude illegal immigrants.
I don’t know if it will pick up the requisite 13 votes, but if it the two “Democrats” who voted to support Bush’s veto, Gene Taylor (MS) and Jim Marshall (GA) they should be voted off the island. Any money spent on their races by the DCCC is a waste.
What’s more, there should be no more accommodations. If there is no veto override, change a comma, and come back in a month. This program has something like a 2:1 support ratio among Republithugs, so there is no need to move toward them.
Not one step back. Be the Energizer bunny, and keep going…and going… and goineg..
Dr. Roubini reminisces aboutr how he was thought a lunatic in his latest blog post. A governor of the Chilean central bank commented “Usually at this kind of meetings I used to hear that the views of Nouriel Roubini about an impending financial and real hard landing are from the Moon. But this year there are plenty of “lunatics” around!“
Just so you know, these were the good doctors predictions form a year ago:
I would also note, that I have been predicting much the same since before December 2003, and additionally, I’ve been commenting on the downward pressure on the dollar, which I believe will lead to sever (double digit) inflation, though this may already have occurred, given how much the BLS and other governmental entities collude in tweaking the numbers to generate low numbers.
I can’t give an exact date and time, but I expect the dollar to weaken to more than $1.50:1.00€ before years end. 5 Years ago it was about $0.95:1.00€, and a few years befoire that, it was $0.72:1.00€.
So the dollar has fallen 50%.
Richard Griffin, the assistant secretary of state for diplomatic securitya former Secret Service agent who was once in charge of Presidential security.
However, this policy has come right from the top, from the man who mad private contractors a part of the military, Dick Cheney. Expect more of the same.
David Whororitz admits it in an interview with the George Washington University Hatchet, the Student Newspaper.
“I’m a prominent conservative but no one is inviting me to speak at their campuses,” Horowitz said in an interview with The Hatchet. “I had to create an event.”
Ummm…No, you are an obnoxious lying fascist clown, who jumped from one extreme to the other, and have since been trying to milk that for all it’s worth.
You have less credibility as a speaker than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad*, who at least believes the crap spewing forth from his mouth.
*And DAMN you for forcing me look up his name.
Yes Virginia, there is a bombing fairy, and he leaves a bomb under George W. Bush’s pillow every evening.
Bush is offering US airstrikes against the PKK to keep the Turks out of Iraq.
You can always trust the bombing fairy to pour gasoline on a fire.
Down 8%, they were expecting a 4% drop. Don’t let anyone tell you that this is over.
After Senator Chris Dodd announced his intention to filibuster any bill with Telco immunity, Senators Clinton and Obama announced that they support a filibuster of THE BILL that came from the Senate intelligence committee.
These are, of course, weasel words. It has to go through some more committees, Judiciary comes to mind, and it is inconceivable that it would do so without so much as a comma changed, so they were free to support the final product.
While Clinton has not clarified, Obama has now made it clear that
he will support a filibuster of ANY bill with telco immunity.
The by Bill Burton, the Obama Campaign’s spokesman:
“To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies.”
Biden is on board too, but Hillary is still using weasel words?
Iraq has revoked L. Paul Bremer’s grant of immunity to contractors, and so now the contractors in Iraq are considering cutting and running.
This is a good thing. They do more harm than good, they cost too much, and mercenaries are just plain wrong.
Furthermore, this is an action that must have somewhere near 100% support by the Iraqi public, and it useful for the average citizen to see the central government doing something productive.
I happen to think that God does not meddle in sporting events, except when people attempt to set themselves as models of piety as the Colorado Rockies have done.
In any real workplace, the EEOC would be on their asses about creating a hostile work environment, and it’s good to see sanctimonious people lose.
Full disclosure: to the degree I follow Baseball, I am a member of Red Sox nation.
Only, unlike New Orleans, they are not drowning the city in a bathtub, they are burining it in a furnace.
The LA Times has a fascinating interview with the former Fire Chief of San Diego.
Some Tidbits:
As UC San Diego professor Steve Erie puts it:
“It’s paradise plundered,” which happens to be the title of a book he’s finishing “about how developers run this town.”
Erie says that “developers own most of the city councils. In Poway, in Escondido, what they do is put homeowners in harm’s way. They’re able to control zoning processes, and they’re frequently behind initiatives that say no new taxes, no new fire services. It’s insanity.”
It’s not insanity. It’s how Republicans run society, by eating our seed corn.
Good!!!
The Republicans made a decision in 1988 to cut Lowell Weicker loose, and we should do the same with Kerrey. He’s all too often on Fox News, he supports the war, and he wants to privatize Social Security.
We can do without him, and taking the hit on the seat is a small price to pay on this.