Month: April 2008

Iraq Update

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First, we are seeing
another surge in bombings across Iraq, which should make one doubt about the claims of success with the US military surge.

Part of the problem, of course, is that Maliki is fundamentally disinterested in anything other his own very sort term sectarian power needs. First, he actively participated in ethnic cleansing, and now the only groups providing any meaningful aid to the million or so internally displaced Iraqis are the militias.

As to the conflict with Sadr, which is all about Maliki trying to gain an electoral advantage, not Iran or “lawlessness”, Major General Jeffery Hammond has announced that the US military has no intention of moving any further into Sadr city, which sounds an awful lot like the start of a “Fallujah moment”, when the generals declare victory and pull out.

That being said, the Iraqi troops are not waiting for a declaration of victory, they are leaving now.

The episode began when Major Sattar, the leader of an Iraqi company that had taken up positions 700 yards in front of the Americans, suddenly appeared at Company B’s field headquarters in the southern part of Sadr City.

The major’s company had replaced a more battle-hardened Iraqi unit just two days earlier, and he had been unhappy to find that he would be occupying a position to the front of the better trained and equipped Americans.

I’d be unhappy if I were told that my job was to be a speed bump too.

Zimbabwe Update

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Well, the call for a general strike went over like a dead balloon, though I think that the excuse, that too many people are too near starvation to participate, has some validity.

In terms of a runoff, Morgan Tsvangirai says that he will participate if, “a tally verified by both parties and the Southern African Development Community shows no candidate won more than 50 percent of the vote”, as he has no confidence in the electoral commission, which is clearly in Mugabe’s pocket.

In terms of the brighter side of this whole mess, it appears that Thabo Mbeki is also a loser in this affair, as members of the ANC, including ANC leader Jacob Zuma’s proxy Matthews Phosa are openly criticizing him. (also here)

This is a good thing. With his unqualified support of Mugabe, and his quite frankly delusional opposition to the use of anti-virals to fight AIDS, Mbeki is well past any usefulness to either the nation of South Africa, or the southern African region as a whole.

Credit Default Swaps: Another Primer

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In 2002, Greenspan discussing the CDS said that, “The use of a growing array of derivatives and the related application of more sophisticated methods for measuring and managing risk are key factors underpinning the enhanced resilience of our largest financial intermediaries.

Now we have $45 TRILLION of potential exposure out there.

Bloomberg has a pretty good primer here, and it’s fairly entertaining, which goes along with the fact that “Frankenstein’s Monster” is in the title.

Obama Would Investigate Bush Law Breaking

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According to Attytood, in response to a question from Will Bunch, Obama replied that he, “would ask his AG to “immediately review” potential of crimes in Bush White House.”

That’s good, though I admit that there is a part of me that wants to see them all water-boarded, I know that this is wrong.

The question is how aggressively he will pursue people after the inevitable flurry of pardons in December and January, which will make this like peeling an onion.

Oops! Wholesale Prices Surge

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Wholesale prices rose by 1.1% in March, analysts had been predicting .4%, and over the past year, it has been 6.9% (I’m not doing the core rate bull sh@# for a 1 year reading, that’s enough time to smooth out the noise)

This means that there is more pressure to raise rates:

  • Lower interest rates make it cheaper to accumulate stock piles of raw materials and keep them off the market.
  • Inflation fears drive the dollar down.
  • Low interest rates drive the dollar down.

I don’t expect any interest rate increases in the next couple of months, but we might have seen the end of rate cuts, which have pretty much stopped working anyway.

Maryland Makes Foreclosure More Difficult

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I think that it is a good thing that the Maryland leg, and Governor O’Malley has signed into law, substantial changes in the time lines for foreclosures.

Basic gist of the bill is that the ender cannot file for foreclosure until at least 90 days after default, and there must be 45 days notice of foreclosure, with personal service, meaning a guy handing you papers.

It used to be theoretically possible to foreclose in 15 days.

Fannie and Freddie at Risk?

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Standard and Poors is warning that the GSEs are facing increasing risks as the housing crisis deepens, and so they might at some future time have to downgrade them.

Being the 2nd and 3rd largest borrowers in the world, they are firmly in the “too big to fail” camp, the regulators have reduced the reserve capital requirements for the GSEs (also here), and Congress making noise about increasing their lending limits*, I’m not particularly confident in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac remaining particularly solvent.

*Shoot me now, I’m agreeing with some puke economist from the Heritage Foundation.

Navy Ship Building Programs Face Budget Scrutiny

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It looks like there are a couple of very prominent targets for law makers looking to pay for Iraq, the DDG-1000, and MPF-F.

The DDG-1000, aka the Zumwalt class destroyer, is a very large, about 14,500 tons displacement (the Arleigh Burkes in service are about 8,500 tons, and the Ticonderoga class cruisers are only about 10,000 tons). It’s also very expensive, and as a result, the proposed buy has been cut from 32 ships to 7.

It is very much a product of the US Navy’s big ship fixation. It now looks to cost about 5x as much as the Burkes, and prices are still rising, and the benefits of a larger ship are largely outweighed by the disadvantages of having fewer ships.

Simply put, you cover less area with fewer ships, though the Maine delegation will certainly fight hard for these, as will Mississippi, as they will likely be manufactured at Bath Iron Works in Maine and Northrop Grumman’s Ingalls Shipbuilding in Mississippi.

The MPF-F (Maritime Prepositioning Force-Future) is basically an amphibious invasion fleet that will be standing ready around the clock:

But Democratic leaders of the House and Senate seapower subcommittees are discussing cutting their authorizations for the destroyer program to redirect funds elsewhere, and they have notably complained about shifting MPF-F definitions to a degree that they seem less enthusiastic about them than Littoral Combat Ships, for instance, which also have experienced programmatic troubles but appear to continue to enjoy congressional backing.

“I am concerned with the plans for the so called Maritime Prepositioning Force (Future) commonly known as the MPF(F),” House seapower chairman Gene Taylor (D-Miss.) said. “I am not convinced that the Navy and Marine Corps are in sync with the requirements for this force and I am not sure that the Navy has a reasonable plan to build these ships efficiently,” he said last month.

This is basically a way of saying that he does not think that the Navy has its sh%$ together on what it really needs from this.

My take is that the DDG-1000 is arguably inferior and more expensive solution to buying more Burkes, and I’m not sure that investing in “amphibious invasion fleets in a box” is something our current budget realities can support.

Power Drunk Psychopath Control Freak Principal Bans Tag

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In this case, I’m referring to Robyn Hooker, principal of Kent Gardens Elementary School in McLean, VA, who issued the edict because tag had become a game, “of intense aggression.”

One of the peculiarities of being a principal in the US, at least at public schools, is that you cannot work your way up through the ranks. You have to get a certification specific to being a principal.

Generally, this means that either you went in with the goal of being a principal, i.e. that you wanted to be “in education” but you did not want to teach, or you decided that you really didn’t like teaching that much.

So you get profoundly dysfunctional people like this, who think that any problem, and it appears that the tag was getting a bit rough can be solved with a mindless punitive over-reaction.

What’s more, they lack adult supervision, which is why teachers’ unions are the way they are. Would you want to work for someone like her?

Youngstown Gets It

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In response to a collapsing population, Youngstown, Ohio has made the obvious, though politically audacious, decision to downsize the city.

They are demolishing abandoned homes, and in nearly deserted blocks, giving grants to move the last residents out, and then tearing up the streets and power lines, and converting them to green spaces.

It saves money on maintenance, street lights, etc.

It certainly makes a lot more sense than some of the schemes which have taxpayers paying well upwards of $100K/job to subsidize employers.

Hot Jobs

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As I’ve mentioned before, I’m involved in working in nuclear power, specifically the cleanup/decommissioning side (Yes, I am Homer Simpson).

Well, I’m on a new project now, and it’s a hot one.

Normally, when I’m on a hot project, it means time constrained. In this case, it also means that we are talking higher levels of radiation in the material to be processed. (My earlier project was intermediate level)

It’s hot in the normal way too. The firm, or at least my division, is doing quite nicely, so we are time challenged on most things, and ramping up resources to meet the business needs.