Year: 2007

Schadenfreude, Closet Edition

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The news about Senator Larry Craig is actually sad. No one should have to deny themselves to hold a political position.

What is more telling is how many closeted gays/bis there are at relatively high levels in the Republican party, Larry Craig, Lindsay Graham, Ken Mehlman, and persistent rumors about Karl Rove and Denny Hastert, for example.

The flip thing to do would be to suggest that people who hate themselves tend to be Republicans, but I think that it is something far more mundane. Closeted gays are non-threatening.

No matter how energetic they might be, or how devoted they might be to the cause, they are always going to be in subordinate positions, because if the try for the brass ring, they know that their fellow Republicans will destroy them.

Low Cost Carriers Lower Fares

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There has just been a study on the effect of Low Cost Carriers entering a market, in this case, Pittsburgh, and it shows that:

Fares in Pittsburgh dropped 27%, while the airport reported 360,000 additional passengers per year for a total economic impact of $1.8 billion, according to the study, written by Wilbur Smith Associates (WSA). Pittsburgh’s LCCs include AirTran, JetBlue, Southwest and USA3000.

In 2000, the average one-way fare to all destinations was nearly $192, one of the highest in the nation, said the report. “The expansion of low-fare service at Pittsburgh lowered this figure dramatically,” it said. “The average one-way fare decreased by 27% to $140 from 2000 to 2006, and fares to Pittsburgh’s top 15 destinations dropped 32% to $120.”

The people managing airports in Atlanta, Denver, and ESPECIALLY Dallas-Fort Worth, please take note. Being the bitch of the dominant airport in a region hurts air travel and the local economy.

Debt Resellers Knew That They Were Buying and Selling Bad Paper

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This should surpirse no one, that the big CDO (Collateral Debt Obligation) resellers knew that they were passing bad paper.

Why, you ask, would professional traders do this?

The answer is quite simple: DEAL FEES. I gotta keep buying collateral, in order to keep issuing these transactions as a CDO manager. Its my job: I gotta keep accumulating collateral, and I gotta issue the liability against that collateral.

Welcome to 3rd world Klepto-Capitalism, Wall Street style.

Fire Sale Begins

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One thing that you can be sure of is that any news story on real estate will be mindlessly optimistic. There is too much ad money out there for it to be otherwise.

In this case, they talk about rising new home sales, but ignore the following:

  • New Home sales are upon signing the contract, not closing, so you have cancellations that are not reported.
  • The sales are up because home builders are starting to dump their inventory. This is the early stages of the slump, not the end.

We are still very early into this.

A400M Progress

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There has been significant A400M progress, so the EADS (Airbus) Military transport seems to be back on track.

I think that this will be a winner. It’s bigger and faster than the (way too small) C-130 Hercules, but smaller and cheaper than the hideously expensive C-17, which with its turbofan engines is a Hoover for FOD on the runway.

The An-70 needs too much seed money, and it’s too noisy and well…too Russian (yes, I know that Antonov is Ukrainian, but it’s perceptions). See a cool YouTube of it here


Bootnote: It appears that a lot of people end up at this post because they are doing google image searches on the A400. For defense and aviation related stuff, about 10% of my output, I would suggest using the following tags: Aviation, Defense, Defense Procurement, Engineerng, Military, Missile Defense, Missiles, NASA, NATO, Naval, Nuclear Weapons, technology, Transportation, and UAV.

More Regulatory Joy From the Bush Administration

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This time, it involves mishandling nuclear fuel.

I think that we should move all nuclear fuel processing and waste storage to Crawford, TX.

For example:

The commission said there were two areas, the glovebox and an old elevator shaft, where the solution potentially could have collected in such a way to cause an uncontrolled nuclear reaction.

In response to discoveries of the screwups, they’ve locked down documents.

Delightful.

In Which I Disagree With Brad Delong

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Brad Delong quotes Lawrence Summers, who asks “Why Haven’t the Conforming Mortgage Cap Amounts Been Raised?”, and Mr. Delong further says, “These are wise questions. I don’t understand why the conforming mortgage dollar caps have not already been raised substantially.”

Let’s be clear here. They are probably both smarter than I am. They definitely both have far more training in economics.

That being said, I think that, in a world where economic policy is run by sane competent men*, that any sort of recovery should answer some questions first:

  • Who is the target of the bailout. I would argue that distressed homeowners are the target, in which case it’s necessary to derive a targeted solution which maximizes the homeowners relief, and minimizes the amoung to which we indemnify the investors, loan companies, etc. Capitalism must allow for failure to be capitalism.
  • What regulatory changes must be made in order to prevent this from recurring, seeing as how any bailout increases the belief in further bailouts, and hence destructive risk taking. I think that much of this problem has its roots in the deregulation from the late 1970s through to the present day, so I recommend re-adoption of New Deal era regulations.

In terms of what I would suggest for initial steps:

  • An aggressive push to allow borrowers to negate loans due to violations of the truth in lending act, which allows buyers to rescind the loans and void the mortgages. (they still owe the money, but it becomes an unsecured loan, and the debtors have far more rights in terms or restructuring in bankruptcy).
  • A law invalidating all pre-payment penalties.
  • Reregulation of the lending industries to prevent further abuses.

*Yes, I know, that’s not the case right as long as Bush is in office.

D’Oh!!!!! Remember Homer Simpson is a Cartoon!

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And here we have a future Darwin award winner. The 14 year old who had overheating problems with his XBox*, and decided to cool it in a bowl of water.

He did survive, but was taken to the hospital with burns.

I might suggest that this kid not be given another video game console, and that perhaps he be sent outside to play.

*This is not a unique problem. The XBox has a reputation for thermal problems.

Scat Stealth Drone

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The Russians have unveiled a new stealthy combat UAV at the Moscow air show.

As I’ve said a number of times, the building blocks of stealth are publicly available, the equations were originally published in a Soviet scientific journal and are publicly available, so this is no surprise.


This appears to be mockups of various wind tunnel studies, and it also appears that the first prototype will be manned with a v tail.



Iraq War Brings Drop in Black Enlistees – New York Times

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There is an interesting article in the NY Times regarding precipitous drop in Black enlistment in the military.

The sharpest decline in black recruitment has been experienced by the Army, which has the most troops deployed in Iraq; black recruits dropped to 13 percent of the Army’s total in 2006 from 23 percent in 2001. In the Marines, with the second-largest force in Iraq, the share of black recruits decreased to 8 percent from 12 percent in the same period. There were also declines in the Navy and the Air Force, though not as great as those in the two other services.

To provide some perspective, note that Blacks are about 13% of the US population.

As a traditionally economically disadvantaged community, it should be noted that Blacks are traditionally more likely to enlist, as doing so is perceived as a way out of poverty and America’s profoundly dysfunctional ghettos.

“I’m not really into going overseas with guns and fighting other people’s wars,” said Mr. Finch, 18, headed to college this fall to study accounting.

While the fact that we are mired in a senseless quagmire in Iraq, this quote highlights another aspect of the drop, that many Blacks feel divorced from the US Government, and in particular George W. Bush, with whom the Iraq war is closely associated.

Additionally, it should be noted that one of the reasons that Black ghetto youth joined the military was to get away from gang activity in their neighborhoods, and because of the lowered recruiting standards, gang members, and gang culture, have increasingly entered the military.

Our military is being destroyed, and in a much more profound and long lasting way, by our fools errand in Mesopotamia.

George Orwell is Spinning in His Grave….Again

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Because the public access policy of the NHTSA certainly appears to be implementing what Orwell warned against.

Under the new access policy, no one is allowed to speak for attribution to the press under almost any circumstances. They have to get advance permission for the most routine things. This means that the press office cannot tell a member of the press who the director of the HTTSA is:

If you want to know something as simple as who heads the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, don’t bother to ask the safety agency’s communications office. Without special permission, officials there are no longer allowed to provide information to reporters except on a background basis, which means it cannot be attributed to a spokesman.

Without such attribution, there are few circumstances under which most reporters will report such information. This makes for interesting dealings with the office charged with providing information about the nation’s top automotive safety agency.

So, I will end the suspense about the boss’s identity. The administrator is Nicole R. Nason, who took over on May 31, 2006, after she was appointed to the post by President Bush.

And it is she who put the big hush on one of the government’s most important safety agencies.

…

H/t to the Carpetbagger Report

The First Serious Republican to Call for a Pullout Wins Iowa

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Strategic Vision Polled voters on a number of issues, including Iraq, and the results are interestting, particularly question 4.

4. Do you favor a withdrawal of all United States military from Iraq within the next six months? (Republicans Only)
Yes 51%
No 39%
Undecided 10%

Given those numbers, and given the number of candidates who are running, the highest in the polls gets barely 30%, the first credible* Republican candidate to call for a pullout wins Iraw.

*Credible means not a racist libertarian nutjob like Ron Paul.