In order to get through the Senate, Chris Dodd (D-CT) has to get Dick Shelby (R-AL) agree on the bill, otherwise it’s filibuster city.
Dodd is now saying that they are close to a compromise on the bill.
Not clear on what is on the table, though Shelby appears to be getting more rigorous regulation of the GSEs (Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac) as a part of the deal.
Yep, speaking in Israel, George W. Bush made Nazi references with regard to Barack Obama’s suggestion that we might want to talk to potential adversaries:
“We have heard this foolish delusion before,” Bush said in remarks to Israel’s parliament, the Knesset. “As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”
This is repulsive. You have this sort of accusation made in a public forum by the President of the United States. What’s more, this misuse of WWII and the Holocaust was made before the Knesset in Israel.
This is unbelievably, and unspeakably low, and speaks to the mind of a man who has no moral compass whatsoever.
What surprises me the most is that I’m not stunned by this. This is exactly what I have been expecting from him, and so I’m not surprised.
That being said, had he been drowned at birth, the world would be a far better place.
After something like 20 years of fraud and deception, someone in the US military has noticed that Achmad Chalabi is a con man who has played the Neocons establishment like a freaking violin.
Sources in Baghdad tell NBC News that as of this week American military and civilian officials have cut off all contact with controversial Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi, the former favorite of Washington’s once powerful neoconservatives.
What is it that Tom and Ray Magliozzi say? “Unencumbered by the thought process.”
Dude, read up on Bush and His Evil Minions™. You got nothing on them.*
*Truth be told, neither are intellectual slouches, having degrees in from MIT.
I guess for those of us in the US, the big 3 are employment, energy prices, and real estate. So, going in that order, we have:
nitial jobless claims rising to 371,000 last week, though as I always state, this is a noisy number, and you need a few weeks, or better yet months to extract real meaning, but, quoting the article, “The trend in claims is still upwards and we expect new highs over the next few months.”
Matt Trivisonno has the withholding tax numbers, you know the social security taxes that employers take out of wages below about $104K, and they are way down too.
Here are the pretty pictures:
And on a quarterly basis
And on a yearly basis.
As to why these numbers fell? Because no one is making anything in the US in April. Industrial production fell -0.7% in the US. The consensus estimate was -0.3% down, and March output was ajusted to +0.2%, down from +0.3%. Not good.
In energy, Crude fell below $122/bbl, which is good, but Gas hit a new record, $3.776 a gallon, the 8th record in 8 days.
In real estate, we have the inevitable article calling the light at the end of the tunnel, when it is more likely an oncoming train, in Orlando, Florids, one of the worst hit areas. Inventory fell slightly, and sales are up a bit (0.2%), and the rate of decline of existing home sales is a bit better.
Me, I’ll go with National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo monthly index, which fell again. The home builders are in the business.
I would also note that even with the Fed rate cuts, mortgage rates fall seem to be pretty stubborn about staying above the 6.0% line, so there won’t be any help for the market there.
Europe, on the other hand, appears to be doing fairly well, with GDP increasing 0.7% across the Euro Zone in the first quarter, led by a sizzling, for the developed world anyway, 1.5% increase for Germany.
This makes it far less likely that the ECB will cut rates. Actually it makes it more likely that the ECB will raise rates, and as a result, the US dollar is down today.
It appears that the Loss in the special election has shaken them up something fierce:
House Republicans turned on themselves yesterday after a third straight loss of a GOP-held House seat in special elections this year left both parties contemplating widespread Democratic gains in November.
The Republicans have a real problem. When the Dems lost power in 1994, it was because of a few bounced checks in the house bank, not delivering on healthcare, and supporting NAFTA.
When you consider the war, child molestation (Foley), corruption, incompetence, etc. of the Republicans, it’s going to be a lot longer than 12 years for them.
Happy dance!!!!
In testimony before Senator Charles Schumer’s (D-NY) Joint Economic Committee, Paul Volker called for more, and more effective regulation of the financial markets.
There is a back story to all of this. Volker was one of the Fed members who tried to keep depression era policies in place, with folks like Alan “Bubbles” Greenspan out maneuvering him on things like the emasculation of Glass Steagall by the Fed before the law was repealed.
Well, not me, but my daughter and wife.
They will be seeing the normal Philly sites, IIRC.
Natalie has a field trip to Philadelphia today, and since that meant that they had to be to school early, I was at work late, because I had to wait for Charlie’s bus to pick him up and take him to Chatsworth.
One of the benefits of his new school is that his bus trip is much shorter, so he gets almost an extra hour of sleep in the morning. If he were still going to Forbush, the bus would have picked him up at about 7:45, not 8:35.
The real start of the conflict in Lebanon was the governmen, “included outlawing Hezbollah’s phone network, and sacking an airport security chief with alleged links to the group”, and now these moves have been reversed.
Not a good day for our guys in Lebanon.
The H1b program as it is now structured is a bad program, because it is used primarily to get low cost work, as opposed to its stated purpose, which is to allow the employment of people with unique skill sets.*
In any case, the Democrats have decided that an increase in the H1b limit, because the Dems have tied this to comprehensive immigration reform, and the Republicans can’t go along with that, because their base is a bunch of racists.
*The fix is actually pretty simple: Make the fees high enough that any H1B hired would be more expensive than a citizen or permanent resident. At that point, the fraud stops. You could auction off slots to set a price.
It’s good policy, though I would go further and make the rich pay for the whole war, and good politics, because it forces Republicans to vote against veterans benefits or vote for a ½% increase on taxes for couples earning more than $1 million.
Heh.
The Fed has decided that it will begin to examine ways of dealing with asset bubbles.
This contradicts with Alan “Bubbles” Greenspan’s dictum that, “it was in practice impossible to identify bubbles before they burst, and attempts to prick them by raising rates were likely to do more harm than good.”
Another well deserved nail in the coffin of Ayn Rand’s buddy’s reputation.
In search of increased returns, pension fund are diversifying into commodities.
If they are right, poor people starve. If they are wrong, people lose their pensions.
Life is good, huh? This is what deregulation defined as privatizing profits and socializing debts get us.
Home sales in Maryland fell more than any other state in the union in Q1 2008.
WooT!
Same as it ever was.
Routinely using drugs to pacify deportees, in violation of international law and human decency.
No evidence of medical problems, or of severe behavior, just convenience.
John Stewart v. Doug Feith.
This is ugly….fish in a barrel, children’s crusade, New Orleans Saints.
This makes a baby seal being clubbed look like Chuck Norris taking on a jillion Ninja.
Part 2
Yep, Schwarzenegger is proposing borrowing against lottery future earnings to balance this year’s budget.
What the Governator is doing is exactly what destroyed the Ottoman Empire, the sale of revenue sources in order to fund the current budget, with the inevitable crash.
Of course, as a Republican, he wants the crash, it’s the whole wanting to reduce the government, “to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub”, and insolvency works just as well as everything else.
I would hope that at some point, the voters of California come to their senses and repeal proposition 13.
The CPI rose less than expected 0.2%, though there was a huge delta in food, about 0.9%, 2.5% and 11% annually rates.
Look at my earlier posts on this issue, and you’ll see that the real inflation is far closer to 11% than it is 2.5%.
This has, for reasons unclear to me, led to the UD dollar strengthening in overseas markets.
Year over year foreclosures in the US are up 65%, and between the banks discounting these properties, and the builders discounting new homes, we have a way to go to bottom.
In investing, the dispute between Clear Channel, which had a deal to sell itself to a private equity firm, and the banks, who were trying to get out because they had no expectation of being able to resell the debt, has been settled. The buyout is now at 36$/share, as opposed to the earlier $39.20/share, so both sides took a haircut to get the deal done.
Still this indicates that the credit markets are still frozen.
Finally, we are back to the monoliner insurers. with MBIA and Ambac’s losses making the ratings agencies nevous.
If the ratings process was an honest one, they would have lost their AAA status over 6 months ago.
Seen around the blogs.
Verizon’s joining the LiMo Foundation (Linux Mobile)
Some people were expecting them to go with Google’s “Android”, but there are some reasons to go LiMo:
According to my friends in the biz, Verizon is the most locked down of the carriers….We’ll see how it proceeds.
I can’t believe that I’m agreeing with a regular contributor to the National Review’s “The Corner”, Jim Manzi, but I do.
The guy is a moron though, in the last ‘graph he claims that because Harvard employees (professors) give to Dems, the institution should not be tax exempt.
He is spot on when he calls Harvard a tax exempt “Hedge Fund”.
But he runs the numbers:
Receipts = $2 billion of operating revenue + $7.3 billion of investment income + $0.6 billion of gifts to the endowment = ~$10 billion.
Operating costs = ~$3 billion.
Profit = $10 billion – $3 billion = ~$7 billion.
This explains why Harvard’s net assets increased about $7 billion in 2007, from about $35 billion to about $42 billion.
This actually segues nicely into my previous post on executive compensation. Just how much is too much anyway?
If Harvard never generated another penny in investment, tuition, or gifts, they would be able to continue to operate for 12 years.
Too much is too much, and by making income (and donations) tax deductible, we are subsidizing “too much”.
I clearly understand how Harvard is the most egregious case of endowment abuse, but once we have determined that there is a problem and that it needs to be fixed, we are, as the joke goes, just haggling over price.