In case you are wondering about inflation, retail gasoline just hit a new high, breaking $4.10/gallon, even thoughoil prices backed off a little bit.
FWIW, it’s not just oil. BHP Billiton and China’s Baosteel just negotiated a 96.5%rate hike.
The currency markets are predicting that the ECB won’t raise rates again, so the dollar strengthened a bit.
Finally, in real estate, we are seeing soaring home equity line of credit delinquencies.
So, the South Florida Sun Sentinel reports that Florida Governor Charlie Crist has gotten engaged to be married, and they follow it up with a poll:
Honestly, I really don’t think that it could be any clearer that they, along with just about everyone in the know in Florida and the surrounding states, think that he is gay.
Are there any straight Republicans out there?
I’ve mentioned that Joseph Bruno, the Republican New York State Senate leader is stepping down, and I suggested that he was doing so because he believed that he would lose the majority in the next election.
Well, another shoe has dropped, giving him another reason to retire: The FBI raided his office just before he announced his retirement.
Hoocoodanode?
I’ve mentioned that banks now see that they need to deleverage, that is reduce the ratio of their assets to the money that they have borrowed, and now we are seeing the first steps, cheap sales of assets to generate needed cash.
I think that this is only the beginning.
Steve Schmidt, McCain’s new campaign manager, is a rove acolyte.
More of the same.
And Jesse Helms is very surprised.
He died today.
U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker dismissed the lawsuit by the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation claiming that the US government has wiretapped conversations with their lawyers, because the document that confirms this is classified:
A federal judge in San Francisco has dismissed a lawsuit that claimed the government illegally wiretapped conversations between lawyers and a client, a now-defunct charity suspected of terrorism.
The lawsuit relied on a classified call log the government turned over by mistake to the client, the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation. U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker barred the foundation from using the document and dismissed the suit, according to the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. He gave the foundation 30 days to file a new lawsuit using publicly available information.
Catch 22.
As is expected, the African Union studiously avoided any criticism of Mugabe, though it did call for a unity government.
This is to be expected. After all many of these leaders are in place through electoral processes that are similar to what happened in Zimbabwe, though obviously less extreme.
The AU is hoping for something similar to what happened in Kenya, where the person who stole the election remained in power but had to throw some patronage positions to the oppositions.
Meanwile, Tsvangirai has declined to negotiate a junior position in a unity government. He is saying that conditions are not right for talks.
This is not surprising, considering that violence and murder are still going on.
Additionally, I believe that Tsvangirai is explicitly rejecting any involvement in the negotiations by Thabo Mbeki, which is not surprising, since Mbeki is Mugabe’s butt boy.
The EU is calling Mugabe’s government illegitimate, and demanding that » Tsvangirai lead any unity government, though, unsurprisingly South Africa is rejecting both.
An indication that the instability may spread is the fact that Botswana has sealed off its border with Zimbabwe.
It’s unclear whether this is because it intends to sever relations, or if it is worried about refugee flows, or both.
Lots of gardening, and trimming back overgrown bushes, and I’ll be smoking chicken with my rub, so light posting.
As expected, today was a busy day, we had the ECB raising its benchmark interest rate 25 basis points to 4.25%, though investors were heartened that the accompanying statement appeared to make further hikes less likely.
We also had 62,000 jobs lost in the US, though the statistical witches brew known as the official unemployment rate stayed at 5.5%.
Of course, the “adjustment” for April and May added another 52K lost jobs.
Once again, I have to point you to Barry Ritholtz, who notes that the adjustments to that number are sick:
June 2008 was 177k versus June 2007 155k
Construction Gains +29k
Professional & Business Services +22k
Leisure and Hospitality +86k
Construction gained workers? Leisure and hospitality picked up 86K jobs? When the number of people traveling is dropping?
We need a truth and reconciliation commission for our economic stats generating agencies.
I would also note, as Mr. Ritholtz does, that the number of new unemployment claims jumped to 404,000, which does not include those people who will now get an additional 13 weeks.
What’s more, the SM nonmanufacturing index fell to 48.2% from 51.7%, indicating the service sector is taking it on the chin too.
It appears, however, that investors expected worse, as the dollar actually strengthened after all this.
Behold the power of low expectations.
However, despite the dollar strengthening, oil hit a new record, hitting $145.85/bbl mid day, and retail gasoline hit a new record too.
In real estate, we are seeing home mortgage rates down for the first time in 3 weeks, and we have demand for office space shrinking.
Chart pr0n:
There is a big loophole in prop 13, the California initiative that limits property tax increases.
If you sell the property, the new owner is assessed at full market value, but if you sell the corporation that owns the property, there is no reassessment.
Honestly, I don’t understand why 60% of Californians still support the measure, when it has so clearly screwed up the state.
Well, this ruling shoots a hole in the claim that Dems are getting something from the current FISA clusterf%$#. The Judge says that the original FISA bill is the exclusive means for wiretap.
That being the case, this means that Bush has been violating the law already, and a felony to boot, and that the bill does not change the legal situation.
So the Dems have nothing, except for proof of high crimes and misdemeanors.
Oh, I forgot:
NOT ON THE TABLE! NOT ON THE TABLE!
Thank you Speaker Pelosi for taking impeachment off the table.
The rumor is that the US is yielding on contractor immunity in its negociations for a status of forces agreement in Iraq.
If so, this is the first smart thing done in Iraq since 2002.
Economist and former Clinton deputy assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury Brad Delong asks, “Is the Federal Reserve too volatile and hair-trigger? Or is the ECB too sluggish?“
I think that a more accurate answer is that Alan “Bubbles” Greenspan is an idiot, you will notice that the volitility, except for the steep decline at the end, is all under his watch, and “Helicopter Ben” throwing money out the window is as a result of Greenspan’s disastrous policies.
I would also note that the ECB is not charged with maintaining employment, just keeping inflation down, so they would naturally be slower to reduce rates. They have no balance to keep for them.
Insurrection in Tibet, Earthquake Algae Bloom, Floods, and The most protested torch relay in history.
And now a plague of locusts in China.
I agree with the author of the piece, “Locusts? What is going on here? The litany of near-biblical woes would seem to lack only a famine, frogs and smiting of the first born.”
Dude, I understand that you are all officially atheists and all in the PRC, but slaughter a few dozen goats or something.
You’ve done something to piss him off.*
*Note: this is humor, not serious. I’m making a joke in bad taste, not suggesting that God is actually punishing the Chinese people.
Joe Hagin, a White House deputy chief of staff. He’s been with Bush for a very long time, and he is yet another of the folks from Chiquita who pay terrorists to murder labor organizers.
I look forward to his memoir.
I tend to think that a solution to the US healthcare crisis may very originate from the states, where competition for jobs and businesses would push this along*.
As such, this raises the question of “health tourism” between the states, where people from one state would go to a state with more generous healthcare provisions.
It turns out that the EU is dealing with this problem right now:
European Union citizens will be able to receive most health care treatment anywhere in the 27-nation bloc without getting prior authorization under a long-awaited draft law published Wednesday.
Postponed for months because of fears in some countries of a large-scale increase in “health tourism,” the plan could extend options available to EU citizens who live in countries where waiting lists are long.
But the entitlement applies only to procedures that are publicly funded in EU citizens’ home states and reimbursement would be only up to the amount the procedure would cost in that country.
Obviously, there will be some bugs as this is implemented, but equally as obvious is the fact that by the time we get something here, the Europeans will have worked out those bugs, and we can benefit from their experience.
*Once the Erisa preemption clause is repealed, anyway.
I think that his assesment may be closer to reality than most of us would like to think:
Russia’s new president, Dmitri Medvedev, less swaggering than his predecessor but as touchy about criticism from abroad, said in an interview that an America in “essentially a depression” was in no position to lecture other countries on how to conduct their affairs.
With soaring oil revenues bolstering the Russian economy and Kremlin confidence, Medvedev brushed aside American criticism of his country’s record on democracy and human rights. He also said that a revived Russia had a right to assume a larger role in a world economic system that he suggested should no longer be dominated by the United States.
If, in 2001, he had said this, most of the world would have been stunned and appalled at the concept that US hegemony is failing.
Today, I think that there are a lot of silent nods and smiles, because the Europeans understand what it means in a monopolar world if the single hyper-power is run by a group of madmen.
It turns out that when Hunt Oil, run by a Bush political ally, cut a deal with the Kurds over oil last year, pissing off the Iraqi central government, and throwing a monkey wrench into the works of a comprehensive oil law, Bush and the state department not only knew about it, but they tacitly approved it.
Oh, well…Only 6 months and 20 days left for him and his to rape US interests for personal profits.
Rasmussen Reports™ has Barack Obama leading John McCain by 5 points 48% to 43% in Montana.
It’s gotta be an outlier, if not, maybe I’ll just toss it all in, and follow my heart and become a dental floss farmer out there.