Year: 2007

Google Earth Pics of Chinese Boomer

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The FAS has some pictures of the New Chinese SSBN at dock.

This was (note water mark) right off of Google.

22 years ago, Samuel Loring Morison was sent to jail for passing information almost identical to this to Jane’s Defense Weekly.

As to Mr. Morison. I believe he was properly convicted. His claims to want to publicize this notwithstanding, he was using classified information to get a job, and to get raises from Jane’s.

That’s why he leaked them, and I’m still conflicted about Clinton’s pardon of him. He deserved to go to jail, but the use of the Espionage act, which is a bad law to begin with, is troubling.

Even With the Sub Prime Market Crashing, Bad Paper Still Flows Freely.

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People know that this is crashing. People know that someone will be left holding the bag on trillions in bad loans, but they are still making bad loans.

It’s simple: In our “flexible and deregulated economy” the crooks make their money, and get out of town before the house of cards collapses.

At some point, a risk premium will be associated with investing in the US, and it will get very ugly here.

Subprime lending: Business as usual

A consumer group charges that many subprime lending abuses continue to plague the lending industry despite the recent crisis.
By Les Christie, CNNMoney.com staff writer
June 28 2007: 3:25 PM EDT

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — It would appear that subprime lenders have yet to learn from their mistakes. According to a consumer advocate group, abuses persist industry wide, despite the recent subprime mortgage meltdown.

At a Senate subcommittee hearing on ending mortgage abuse this week, the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) presented its findings on subprime loans included in 10 recent packages of mortgage backed securities.

“A lot of the terms that make these loans so dangerous are still being used,” said Keith Ernst, CRL’s senior policy counsel. “We had been told that these things are going away.”

More than three quarters of the subprime loans CRL looked at turned out to be adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs). 90 percent of those were hybrid ARMs – otherwise known as “exploding” ARMs.

Hybrid ARMs have two- or three-year periods of cheap, low-interest, fixed-rate payments, or “teaser rates.” But after two years, the loans reset at much steeper rates, which can prove fatal for homeowners who can’t handle the higher payments.

On a $200,000 loan with a teaser rate of 5 percent, for example, borrowers would pay about $1,074 a month. At reset, the interest rate could jump to 8 percent, adding nearly $400 to payments, which could continue to increase every six months.

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Republican Sex

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I came across this very amusing quote while perusing news of More on David Vitter, Patron Saint of Schadenfreude:

Jeanette says that most of the clients who wanted to be dominated were Republicans. She cracks a smile, then adds, “They wanted to be spanked and tortured and wear stockings–Republicans have impeccable taste in silk stockings–and these are the people who run our country.”

There appears to be a lot of self loathing there.

Quote of the Day: John Kerry

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The WaPo has a story on the Nixon admin wanting to co-opt Kerry and get him to run as a Republican.
Because of his background (He’s went to Yale), they thought that he might be able to bring him into the fold.

One of Kerry’s comments is prize:

I experimented with a number of things in college. Being a Republican wasn’t one of them. Besides, going to Yale doesn’t make you a Republican. Going to Bob Jones University makes you a Republican.

Lol!!!!!!

More Downward Pressure on the Dollar

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This makes it more likely that other nations will be putting part of the foreign reserves in non-US currencies.

This will place further downward pressure on the USD, and further upward pressure on interest rates.

Iran Asks Japan to Pay Yen for Oil, Start Immediately
uly 13 (Bloomberg) — Iran asked Japanese refiners to switch to the yen to pay for all crude oil purchases, after Iran’s central bank said it is reducing holdings of the U.S. dollar.

Iran wants yen-based transactions “for any/all of your forthcoming Iranian crude oil liftings,” according to a letter sent to Japanese refiners that was signed by Ali A. Arshi, general manager of crude oil marketing and exports in Tehran at the National Iranian Oil Co. The request is for all shipments “effective immediately,” according to the letter, dated July 10 and obtained by Bloomberg News.

The yen rose on speculation for an increase in demand for the currency, the result of Japan’s annual 1.24 trillion yen ($10.1 billion) of oil imports from Iran. Central bankers in Venezuela, Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates have said they will invest less of their reserves in dollar assets because of the weakening currency.

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Vacation, All I Ever Wanted….

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The fact that the Iraqi Parliament is going on vacation indicates that they know something that our morally bankrupt intelligentsia do not, that regardless of what they do, GW Bush will not pull out of Iraq.

If Lichtenstein were to conquer Texas, and claim it as their own right now, George Bush would not pull a single soldier out of Iraq to stop them and to take it back.

For Shrub, it’s all about him, and Iraq, for various oedipal and addictive personality driven reasons is what he thinks he is.

Putting On Your Stupid Hat

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As some of you are no doubt aware, I’m in the SCA, a medieval re-creation group, which simulates a number of activities, such as cooking, calligraphy, garb, and medieval combat

For the past 5 years, between the kids, and my involvement in other aspect of the SCA, most notably cooking, and I haven’t put my armor on at all.

I put my armor and re-authorized (qualified to be a safe fighter) yesterday.

The combat is full contact, with rattan (a sort of solid bamboo) weapons, and we wear armor (16 gauge steel on the head, minimum).

I did OK, though after qualification, I laid down, and put my hand on a hornet, with the expected results, so I spent the next half hour getting Benadryl® on that the sting, and I decided not to fight after that, because the (admittedly minor, I’m not that allergic) swelling looked like a blister just waiting to happen.

When all is said and done, I did OK in the authorization bout. I actually “killed” my opponent from my knees after my legs were taken (think Monty Python and the Holy Grail), which I almost never do.

I’ve got to get back into my “getting hit over the head lessons”.

Unfortunately, fighter practice here is Friday night, which is right out because it’s Shabbos, so I can’t show up.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

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Clearances for Felons?

SSCI Warns Against Clearances for Ex-Convicts.
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence endorsed a statutory prohibition that prevents the Department of Defense from granting security clearances to former convicts who have served a year or more in jail, individuals who are mentally incompetent, are drug addicts, or have been dishonorably discharged from the military.

The Pentagon had requested a repeal of that provision, first enacted in 2000, and the request was approved by the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“The [Intelligence] Committee understands DoD’s desire to have more flexibility to give clearances to otherwise qualified individuals who are currently barred from receiving or renewing their security clearances.”
…

They are so short on people that they want to clear felons?

But still, they are engaging in anti-gay witchunts.

Welcome to our broken military.

An Unbelievably Bad Wall Street Journal Editorial

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Even by the standards of the WSJ editorial page, which has a relationship to truth analogous to the relationship that Ebola has to French kissing.

Mark Thoma, an economist, blogs writes about the vicissitudes of the Laffer curve.

What the Laffer curve says is that there is a point where tax increases, through depressing economic activity, and encouraging tax avoidance behavior, will actually depress revenue.

It’s fairly straightforward. the question is where this point.

So Kevin Hasset, comes up with the following graph:

What’s wrong with the graph? He’s plotting through three points out of over a dozen to push a lie.

A least squares regression gets this:

Tax receipts increase as taxes go up, now there’s a shocker.

In fact Laffer himself suggested that the point where tax receipts would drop would be well north of 50%.

There is the additional lie that much of what they are showing by way of Norway’s revenues are as a direct result of revenues generated by it’s massive reserves in fossil fuels.

Deliberately and transparently dishonest editorials are being given legitimacy because of the sterling news operation of the Journal, and is why there is a part of me that hopes that Murdock destroys the WSJ.

Please, Someone Lock These People Up With Leona Helmsley

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It appears that Blackstone partners may avoid taxes on their IPO profits completely.

Here is the short form:

...
The paper says that of the $4.75 billion raised by the Blackstone IPO, the firm attributed $3.7 billion to good will, an accounting term that estimates the value of the intangible assets rather than tangible assets such as buildings and equipment owned by the firm.

That $3.7 billion is taxed at a 15 percent tax rate used for capital gains, meaning that the firms’ partners had to pay taxes of $553 million on their gain.

But by transferring that good will to a new corporate structure, the firm is able to deduct that $3.7 billion as a business expense at a 35 percent tax rate, reducing taxes by $1.3 billion over a 15-year period, according to the report.

The Times reports that under terms of the IPO, the Blackstone partners are entitled to 85 percent of those tax savings, or $1.1 billion. They are also able to account for those savings as a lump sum, when adjusting for the current value of those savings over the next 15 years. That brings current tax savings to $751 million, or $198 more than they had been required to pay in taxes on the $3.7 billion gain seen from the IPO.
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Damn!!! It’s enough to make one a Marxist.

Truth is, I am, but Groucho, Chico, Harpo, Zeppo, and Gummo, not Karl.

Justice, and Conrad Black, Have Been Served. Will Richard Pearle be Next?

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Well, it appears that my report of the jury being deadlocked was a bit premature. They just found Conrad Black guilty of guilty of three counts of mail fraud and one charge of obstruction of justice.

One wonders about some of his well connected board members, like Richard Pearle and Henry Kissinger, who might now be at some risk of either civil or criminal proceedings for enabling his larcenous habits.

One can hope.