Month: July 2008

Weakening New Labour May See Return of Old Labour

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It looks like following a Labour drubbing in Glasgow, Gordon Brown’s hometown, we are starting to see labor return to policies that benefit working folk, at least to the degree that they are absolutely forced to do so.

Labor has agreed to lower the age for the full minimum wage to 21. Previously £5.52 had applied to workers over 22, with those from 18-21 getting £4.60, and those from 16-18 getting £3.40.

Additionally, Brown acceded to demands for increased parental leave and to limit private contractors in the NHS.

It appears that in addition to the pasting taken in the Glasgow election, Labor’s campaign donations have shrunk, and so the party is more dependent on affiliation fees.

I sincerely hope that this is a death knell for the “third way” corporate suckups.

What the F&^% is Wrong With the Obama Veep Team?!?!

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Ann Veneman??? They are floating the name of Ann Veneman as a name under consideration?

She’s a Republican, she prevented farmers from testing their cows for Mad Cow disease, and she is a former member of the Bush administration.

These folks want a former Bushie as Vice President?

Obama needs to get whoever is leaking this to STFU, and to get whoever suggested this to STFU too.

BTW, it turns out that The Nation is all over this, and goes into some more detail, calling Veneman “uniquely awful”:

  • Her political strength is in California, which is redundant.
  • The rural and farmer communities distrust her, and in fact booed her when she visited “fly over” country.
  • Her background is as a vociferously absolutist supporter of free trade deals.
  • Her tenure as Ag Secretary was, “strictly pro-agribusiness, pro-pesticide company, pro-pharmaceutical.”
  • Is a big supporter of Frankenfoods.

Additionally, I think that some of Obama’s staff miss the bigger point: While his current supporters will ALL vote for him, this is the sort of choice that would demoralize them.

Note that the original source is Politico, and so is a bit suspect though.

Is the Media Beginning to Explore the Hypocrisy That is John McCain?

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John McCain has argued that Barack Obama has not attended enough hearings on Afghanistan. Well, ABC News’ Z. Byron Wolf burnt a very small amount of shoe leather, and determined that McCain has attended no hearing on at all on Afghanistan in the past two years, though McCain is apparently asking for a get out of jail free card on this because, “McCain’s years of previous foreign policy experience make up for his recent lack of attendance at hearing.”

It’s amazing that the McCain loving press is actually mentioning that he’s criticizing Obama for things he’s done worse.

Economics Update

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Wekk, retail gasoline has finally dropped below $4.00 per gallon, the first time in almost two months, oil moved very little, depending on grade, somewhere between ±$0.15/bbl.

Meanwhile, Nouriel Roubini is arguing that foreign central banks and sovereign wealth funds are increasingly less willing to take huge losses in order to bail the USA’s financial system out, and that this will lead to a systemic collapse, with, “ensuing fall of the U.S. will make this fire sale of the best U.S. private asset a true bargain basement deal: with the dollar price of these assets now imploding and with the U.S. dollar now in free fall non-residents will be able to buy most of U.S. Inc. for the cheapest bargain.”

One final note, and some information that shocked me, is the amount which short sales decreased in financial stocks as a result of the new SEC rules banning “naked” short selling: 98%.

S3 Matching Technologies is reporting that short sales in the newly regulated stocks fell by a factor of 50, which is far more than I would have expected.

Even if some of the decline in short sales was investors who were spooked by the new rules, it’s clear that the overwhelming number of short sellers are engaging in “naked” shorting.

Zimbabwe Update

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Both the European Union and the United States have expanded sanctions against Zimbabwe

As to the negotiations that have been going on for a few days, we have the ZANU-PF saying that the results of the runoff are ‘Non-Negotiable’, but that could be put down to normal gamesmanship in any negotiation.

As to what will happen in the negotiations, the The Grauniad* and the Times of London have two diametrically opposed views of what is happening next, with the Guardian suggesting that the talks are a ploy, and that Mugabe is using them for time to prepare for even more extreme violence against the opposition, and the Times of London suggesting that South Africa is insisting that Robert Mugabe and his allies to surrender real power in Zimbabwe.

I think that the Times is wrong for a number of reasons. First, as the Guardian notes, this sort of negotiation has happened before, in the late 1980s with Joshua Nkomo’s ZAPU party, with no real power devolving to ZAPU, and second because it would be completely out of character for Thabo Mbeki to insist that Robert Mugabe do anything.

I expect it to get much worse before it gets better.

*According to the Wiki, The Guardian, formerly the Manchester Guardian in the UK. It’s nicknamed the Grauniad because of its penchant for typographical errors, “The nickname The Grauniad for the paper originated with the satirical magazine Private Eye. It came about because of its reputation for frequent and sometimes unintentionally amusing typographical errors, hence the popular myth that the paper once misspelled its own name on the page one masthead as The Gaurdian, though many recall the more inventive The Grauniad.”

Thabo Mbeki Can Kiss My Shiny Metal Ass

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Well, it appears that Thabo Mbeki, the friend of brutal genocidal rulers everywhere, is “concerned” about the possibility of crimes against humanity indictments against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, because it might make negotiations more difficult.

Once again, we see that there is no tyrant, no mater how homicidal, that Mbeki does not feel compelled to embrace.

He spent years claiming that HIV does not cause AIDS, and when public pressure required a reversal on that, he decided to create his own, “save the tyrants,” charity.

And the Noose Tightens Around Kurt Weldon

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You may recall that I wrote about lobbyist friend of former Congressman Curt Weldon Cecelia Grimes, who dumped her Blackberry in the trash at a at an Arbys.

Well, now she has pled guilty on destruction of evidence, and faces as much as 20 years in the slam.

The fact that she has pled out implies some sort of deal, and I think that Kurt, who currently spends his days trying to cut shady deals on Russian military equipment, is going down.

Epic Fail: Condoleeza Edition

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Condoleeza Rice, once more attempting to make the world look like it did before the USSR collapsed, has failed again, this time in attempting to form a NATO style security union.

In 1992, she suggested that Boris Yeltsin not be accorded the formalities of a head of state, because she thought that the USSR was coming back “real soon now”, and since then, she has done her level best to recreate a Soviet style menace out of Russia.

I imagine it’s because her so called area of expertise (see the Yeltsin example above), the USSR, has gone away, and so she is trying to recreate academic relevance.

Don’t worry dear, you sucked at being a Sovietologist too.

Cost of ‘Stealth’ Housing Bailout: $1.43 Trillion

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Steve Liesman at CNBC Runs the numbers on the housing bailout to this point:

Federal Reserve $446 B Term Auction Facilities, $150 B, Bear $29 B, $14 B Discount Window to Banks, Repurchase Agreements $88 B, Swap Lines to Euro banks $65B, Treasuries lent out for liquidity boost $100 B
Federal Home Loan Bank $274 B Advances to member banks
Fannie and Freddie $621 B
FHA $90 B Added since October
Total $1431 B

Ouch.

Venn Diagram of Bush High Crimes and Misdemeanors

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Slate has a good analysis of the various serious crimes of Bush and His Evil Minions™.

Note that this is just those crimes where the action at its core is wrong and official in nature, torture, illegal surveillance, illegal political hirign, and illegal political firings.

They even have an interactive Venn diagram (what’s below is just an image) of the whole sordid mess.

Surprisingly enough Abu Gonzalez is at the center of it all.

Senate Passes Housing Bill

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It already passed the house, so it will go to Bush, who says that he will sign it.

My guess on the total effect, very little, since there is no mechanism to encourage lenders to actually cut a deal.

The single thing that would help the most, and it would cost the government nothing would be to allow bankruptcy judges to modify mortgages for primary residences, as they can for investment and vacation property.

Maybe after January 21.

DDG-1000 Procurement Halted at 2 Ships

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This is a good move, the ships are too big and too expensive, costing at least 2½ times that of the Arleigh Burkes that they are to replace.

Susan Collins, the Senator from Bath Iron Works Maine, one of the two shipyards constructing the Zumwalt‘s, appears to be resigned to the termination of the program, though she wants more Burkes to be constructed, which are also made at BIW, which indicates that Congress won’t ram more DDG-1000s this down the Navy’s throat.

I would expect to see some investigation on integrating some of the DDG 1000 specific systems into the Burkes, specifically, the SPY-3 radar and the 155mm Advanced Gun System.

Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Admiral Gary Roughead, has been highly critical of the program since his appointment in September, 2007, and sent a letter to Sen. Ted Kennedy saying that the DDG-1000 would not be cheaper to opperate than the DDG-51 Burkes.

Rolls Royce Looking at Trades Between Time on Wing and Fuel Consumption

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RR is starting to look at the future of air transport propulsion, and it has everything on the table right now, including increasing maintenance to reduce fuel burn, which is as close to heresy as you can find in commercial aviation.

Time on wing has been king for a very long time. It’s one of the things that allowed early jet liners to beat their piston, and to a lesser degree turboprop (gearbox maintenance), competitors: that the could stay in service, and flying for a very long time.

It’s an interesting testament to the changes wrought by the increasing oil price spike, and it convinces me that open-rotor propulsion will make it to commercial use this time around.

Euros Look to Man Rate ATV-ARV by 2020

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They intend to make the automated cargo vehicle a manned space capsule in the next 12 years.

The ESA is already working on the Advanced Return Vehicle (ARV), which add a 1.5 tonne return capability to the existing Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV), and the manned vehicle would be similar to the ARV, though it would likely have a smaller propulsion section, as it would not be expected to boost the space station orbit.