Same old same old, behind schedule and over budget.
Taking tests out of the schedule though is not a good way to handle that problem. Insufficient testing means that we might field a system that does not work…Then again, maybe Bush and His Evil Minions™ don’t care if it works, and they just want a system fielded.
It would go along with the Republicans’ general policy of “faith based missile defense”
261 tons of Hashish in Afgan drug Bust.
That’s one serious case of the munchies.
Rising gas prices are leading more people to get out of their cars and use mass transit.
Shocking, huh?
HR 4279 is a very bad piece of legislation. Among other things, it:
Luckily, it’s unlikely to make it through the Senate in an election year, but this legislation is evil.
What too many people do not understand, including over 400 members of Congress, it passed 410 to 10, is that Patent and Copyright Law is at its Core Public Interest Law. It is not a property right, but rather a societal contract in which we all give up our rights in order to encourage artistic and scientific development through the granting of a temporary exclusive license.
It appears that Thain really wants continued access to the Federal reserve discount window, what I have called the sh%$pile for cash program, to continue in perpetuity, but is aghast at the thought that continued access might be predicated on greater regulation of investment banking as an industry.
You want the taxpayers on the hook for your mistakes, but you want the government out of your hair so that you can make those mistakes.
You sound an awful lot like those farmers who want the government off their back, and in the next breath ask for their subsidy check.
It makes one wonder how much a Harvard MBA is really worth.
The Economist is wringing its hands because the Democratic controlled Senate is refusing to confirm two Bush nominees to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. They think that it strikes a blow against the independence of the body.
They have it wrong. This is a good thing.
If the Democrats should have any goal in the next few months, it should be to absolutely prevent any permanent or long term personnel changes to the courts, the Fed, or similar bodies from Bush and His Evil Minions&trade.
They have an obligation to protect the American people from Bush.
They had to vote, “under a procedure that required a two-thirds vote for approval”, but they fell 3 votes short, so they will reconsider it in the next few days.
Seeing as how they got about 50 Republicans to flip, and that constituents will doubtless be calling those who did not flip, I think that this will pass with a veto proof majority.
Well, the Federal Reserve’s beige book is reporting that economic growth is generally weak, though better than the last one two months ago, but James Bullard, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis is saying that inflation is their primary worry right now, joining Bernanke and Federal Reserve Bank of New York president Timothy Geithner.
Canada is concerned about inflation too, with their central bank holding rates steady instead of lowering rates, as was expected, which pushed the Canadian dollar up.
I think that it’s likely that we will see inflation concerns in Japan driving central bank policy there too, as they just raised their 1Q GDP estimate to 4%, which is high enough to raise inflation concerns.
This would imply interest rates going up in the relatively new future, which would undoubtedly force another dip in house prices.
Of course, the resets coming in option ARMs may do this before rates get raised:
This is a scary picture.
There is some not bad news in real estate, Mortgage applications rose 10.9% last week, though one wonders how much of this is driven by bargain hunters REOs*, which was what drove the recent increase in existing housing sales.
More generally, the lack of confidence is not limited to real estate, as evidenced by the concerns that the LIBOR† is still not trusted, and that the proposed changes to it are largely viewed as inadequate.
In brighter news, rates are falling onauction rate securities, those financial instruments that were supposed to be as good as a cash account, but have locked up investor money.
This implies that some confidence in the auctions is returning to the market, and as a result, governments are redeeming fewer of the bonds, about $2 billion a week, down from over $5 billion/week for the past few months.
Still, we have problems in energy, with oil prices up over $5/bbl, and gasoline hitting a new record, $4.052/gallon.
*Real Estate Owned. Property which is in the possession of a lender as a result of foreclosure or forfeiture.
†London interbank offered rate, a critical measure used to do things like set credit card rates and mortgage rates adjustments.
Bloomberg wrings its hands over this, and calls the proposed regulation that would give asset backed debt a different ratings scale a “scarlet letter” for these instruments.
This letter is well deserved. What is clear is that these byzantine products cannot be rated reliably, and as such people need to be warned off of them.
They are also calling for more transparency in the ratings process, with the ratings companies making public the data that they used.
It’s a good start, but only that, a start.
I’m not a Catholic, but the idea of sex in a confessional booth just boggles my mind.
Go figure. A trigger happy, “shoot first and ask questions later”, doctrine, and when we kill their soldiers, it pisses off our nominal ally Pakistan.
They called it a “cowardly act”.
Actions like this put all aid from Pakistan at risk.
Well, I am paraphrasing, but he is saying that Mr. “Let’s Do a Favor for Charles Keating”, has ignored the problems created by abusive lending practices of the credit card and mortgage industry.
This is a good tactic. There is a reason why brutal thugs like Bonnie and Clyde became folk heroes, and it’s because Americans hate banks.
Well, finally someone with some moral authority is stating the obvious, that Mugabe’s, “regime has turned into a horrendous nightmare”.
There are reports of Znegociations regarding a power sharing arrangement too, but the MDC is saying that this is premature.
It looks like the right wing screamers just got to mount Jim Johnson’s head on their wall.
He has resigned as one of the members of Obama’s VP vetting committee.
We are back to the bitch slap theory of Republican politics.
It’s not about them being right, it’s about them making Obama look weak, which they did.
With mass transit and rail use skyrocketing, Bush is threatening a veto of the Amtrak budget, arguing that there needs to be less subsidies, despite the fact that rail passenger services world wide are subsidized, and that there should be private competition.
Private competition, huh? Who knew that Halliburton was getting into passenger rail?
It turns out that in addition to being tied to Sweeney, the Albany lobbying firm Powers & Company was also tied to Jack Abramhoff.
After the wife beating and drunk driving, who knew that former Congresscritter John Sweeney would be tied into Abramhoff?
I’m shocked.
I think that the fact that extending unemployment benefits is extremely popular with voters is why the Democrats split it out of the Iraq authorization.
They want as many Republicans as possible to have to choose between their political future and George W. Bush.
Voting against this will not look good in November.
Now Specter is saying that wiretapping should require some sort of judicial review.
That’s nice, but considering your record, we also know that when it finally comes down to a vote, you will snivel and vote with the Neanderthals in the party.
Been down this road before.
There are lots of people out there who have significant concerns about the safety of US food.
Perhaps if the AG department wasn’t spending more time promoting big AG’s agenda than actually regulating food safety, as it has with it’s ban on testing for mad cow, its definition of “organic”, and its attempt to ban milk labeled “BGH free”, we would have less concern.
This proposal is actually good policy, as Russia continues to see, with no small justification, NATO as a military institution directed against it.
That being said, she doesn’t really mean it:
“Speaking as a mom and as a strategist and a lifetime student and friend of the Russian people, I would love to live in a world where Russia wanted to be a NATO member and Russia had met the very high standards that NATO sets for openness, democracy, reform, rule of law that new NATO members must meet,” Victoria Nuland said in an interview with RIA Novosti and the Argumenty i Fakty weekly.
What she’s saying is that she wants Russia to be more like western nations, and then she would consider it.
When one considers the fact that at least two NATO nations, Greece and Turkey, spent much of their time in the cold war under military rule from a Junta, I would think that Russia has already met that standard.
Seriously though, Russian membership in NATO would go a long way towards easing relations.
As I’ve said before, the eastern expansion of NATO following the collapse of the Berlin wall was a bad idea, and this is one of the few ways to undue the damage done.
As to why the original NATO members enthusiastically expanded eastward, I think that it was two things, uncritical euphoria at the fall of the Warsaw Pact, and the desire for arms sales in the newly liberated countries.